Bordeaux: The Bitter Finish

by Janet Hubbard

  “When is your shoot?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow morning. I’m not sure how I was invited to this evening’s event. My new fiancé just spent a couple hundred thousand euros on wine, so I’m thinking that’s what it’s about.” She buckled her seatbelt, and gave him a coy look. “Did I mention that I’m engaged?”

  Olivier pretended not to know. “Who is he?”

  “A British singer in a fabulous rock band. No one you know. And you? Any luck with the American blond detective you threw me over for?”

  Olivier knew how vindictive she could be, and decided to be vague. “We see each other when we can.”

  “I still hate her, you know. She’s the only competition I ever had. She made me drink again.”

  Neither Vincent nor Véronique had ever learned to accept personal responsibility, Olivier thought. Vincent’s father took care of any trouble Vincent got into, and Véronique was on her own at fifteen, and a drug addict by eighteen, yet both had narcissistic personalities. “You’re well now?”

  “I’m off drugs, if that’s what you mean.”

  “A rock musician doesn’t seem the best solution.”

  “I wasn’t looking for a solution. Now that he’s into wine, maybe I’ll finally learn something about it.” She lit a cigarette and blew smoke in his direction.

  “I need your help tonight,” Olivier said. “I’m on the Ellen Jordan case, and need to pose as a wine collector.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I wondered why you agreed to go with me. What do I get if I don’t reveal your true identity?”

  “I hadn’t thought of an exchange. What do you want?”

  “To sleep with you.”

  Olivier couldn’t believe that Max had been right from the start. “You have a beautiful room in Saint-Émilion. It’s close to the château.”

  “Half the reason I accepted this gig was to see you, Olivier. I miss you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Olivier said.

  She pouted. “You should have told me.”

  “I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “Maybe not to you.”

  “I can leave you at the hotel while I go to a tasting at the Laussac Château. I should be there no more than an hour.”

  “I’ll go with you. I don’t have to change.”

  He acquiesced, figuring that this would put them on reasonably good terms. There was no question that her earlier hold on him was gone. But that didn’t prevent him from admiring the golden hair falling around her shoulders, and the face that women all over the world tried to imitate.

  Chapter Nineteen

  April 5

  Max and Vincent entered the fabulous entrance hall where dozens of people had gathered for the tasting. Original abstract paintings by Braque and Léger hung on the walls. Chantal Laussac wove in and out among her guests, impeccably dressed in a beige suit, white silk blouse, Hermès scarf, and pearl necklace. Max had to admit that she was impressed at the grace of the woman who had lived her life as a BCBG, or bon chic-bon genre.

  She came up and briskly shook hands with each of them, then led them to a large table covered with glasses and uncorked bottles of their more recent vintages. A bevy of young people manned the tables, chatting up the elegant clientele. Guests stood in clusters swirling the wine in the glass, then sipping, rolling it around in their mouths, and spitting into special porcelain basins located along the walls.

  A slender, wiry man approached them, and shook hands. “What a scandal we have with Ellen Jordan,” he said to Vincent in French. “We almost canceled today’s tasting, but thought about all these people from afar who would be disappointed.”

  Vincent introduced Max to Monsieur Laussac. “This has been a busy week for you,” Max said. “The dinner, and now a tasting…”

  “Two separate properties,” he said. “It’s an important time for us.” He gave her a skeptical look. “Madame Jordan has never come with an assistant before. Do you speak French?”

  “Un petit peu…”

  “A little. That usually means not at all. If you don’t speak French, what was your job?”

  “Actually, I’m in training to become a sommelier. Mrs. Jordan agreed to accept me as an intern.”

  “I hope you aren’t going to tell me you fall into the group of young tasters in the U.S. who are shunning Bordeaux wines for Burgundy.”

  Max didn’t know that was the case. “I don’t follow trends.”

  “What did you taste with Ellen Jordan?” he asked, looking up at her. His bald pate was so shiny she could see her reflection in it.

  Max decided to lie to see if she got a reaction. “Pascal Boulin’s Terre Brulée.”

  He made a face. “What did you think?”

  She wracked her brain for something to say. “It was young, but it had a kick to it. More a Miles Davis riff than say, a melody by Franz Schubert, which is what this staid wine I’m sipping is like. His is sexy.” He stared at her as though she had lost her mind, and she suppressed a laugh.

  Vincent had reappeared at Max’s side, and now guffawed. “We’re switching to musical metaphors now?” He took Max’s arm and asked Laussac if he could show her around. “Of course,” François replied. As they walked away, she overheard Laussac say in French to a guest who had joined him, “American women. So full of themselves.” Feeling their eyes on her, Max fluttered her fingers behind her, praying she wouldn’t trip in her new pumps. She was surprised to find that she was having fun with the bimbo role.

  Vincent led the way down a flight of stairs into a room where six stainless steel thousand-liter vats stood, and continued down another flight of ancient steps that brought them to a vaulted underground chamber lined with barrels that Vincent spoke of reverently as made of French oak. The glow from soft ceiling lights bounced off the wood. Max had the sensation of being in a cathedral.

  Vincent explained that the juice from the grapes fermented in these for a few weeks, then once the sugar converted into alcohol, the new wine would be transferred to oak barrels for aging. Max felt Vincent close behind her and when she turned to say something to him, he pulled her toward him and kissed her on the lips. Max stepped back, flustered. The awkward moment was broken by Chantal speaking from the doorway. “Oh, pardon. I am taking my friend Éloise to see our private collection.”

  Vincent handled the interruption with aplomb by asking if they could join them. “We were admiring the barrels,” he said, and the two women twittered. Max was speechless with embarrassment. Chantal motioned for them to follow her as she passed through the chai to a door marked privé, which she unlocked with a key. The walls were covered with mold. They stepped gingerly over cobblestones until they approached a massive iron gate.

  Chantal reached over and switched on a light that illuminated hundreds of cases of wine carefully arranged in rows. “Voilà. We save at least ten cases from each vintage,” she explained. “And we have wines from other châteaux that my family has collected over a long period, some of them dating back to the 1700s.”

  “How do you protect it?” Max asked, thinking of how easy it had been for someone to break into Pascal Boulin’s storeroom.

  “We haven’t had to until recently. We were broken into a few months ago, and some of our finest vintage wine was taken, including a magnum of a Château Haut-Brion 1945, impossible to get today, and a Chateau d’Yquem 1900.” Max thought about the Mouton-Rothschild that had gone missing.

  “Why wouldn’t they take it all instead of a few primo bottles?” Éloise asked.

  “A bottle or two is rarely noticed, or noticed when it’s too late. François only discovered these missing because he came down for a bottle to celebrate my aunt’s birthday.”

  Éloise interjected, “They also took cases of more recent vintages, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. Several cases of our ’92 that we were preparing to lock in the
private collection.”

  “And the value?” Max asked. She realized from the change of expression on Chantal’s face that she considered the question gauche.

  “The two bottles were priceless. I don’t know about the others.”

  “What will the thieves do with it?” Max persisted, having instinctively switched into detective mode.

  “Sell to collectors, many in Asia, who have recently been insatiable in their thirst. The old vintages add to the owner’s social status. I’ve heard recently, though, that there were so many scams in Asia last year that collectors are exercising more caution this year. Many of the brokers who sold to them lacked integrity. Obviously, I’m not referring to someone like Vincent, whose father and grandfather before him have sold our wines, but there are many newcomers out there.”

  “I hope you won’t be like Cheval Blanc and start selling from your château,” Vincent said. He explained to Max that some producers wanted to eliminate the en primeur weekend, and sell their own wines, breaking a long tradition. “If that happens,” he said, “we middlemen could be eliminated one day.”

  “François continues to support the current way of doing things,” Chantal said. “With my encouragement.”

  “What’s an example of a pricy wine?” Max asked.

  “The 2009 Bordeaux was a great recent vintage,” Vincent said. “And prices reflect that. For their wine that was still in the barrel, Château Cheval Blanc’s 2011 en primeur release price was $622 a bottle, and the 2010 vintage was $1,200 a bottle.”

  That’s around $300 a glass, Max calculated. More than I earn in two days. And it’s not even bottled yet.

  “I really must get back to my other guests,” Chantal said. A grating sound caught their attention and they grew quiet.

  “Ohe?” Chantal called down the dim corridor, and hearing no response, she marched down the alleyway, calling out.

  A voice came from the shadows. “Madame.” A swarthy man, stocky and of medium height, wearing a baseball hat and a brown jacket, stepped out into the light. His dark eyes shifted to Vincent, and lingered on his face, but Max couldn’t read his expression. She noticed that his shirt collar was buttoned at the neck.

  “What are you doing here, Monsieur Martin?” Chantal asked. “Monsieur Laussac gave you strict orders to ask before you entered the cellar again. I heard him.”

  The man’s expression was defiant. “I left my jacket here last week, and I came to fetch it.”

  “I see.” Chantal stood looking uncertain as to what to do next. “Bien. I’ll wait. We’ve just had a new lock put on our family cellar gate.”

  “I don’t see what for,” he said. “If somebody wants something they’ll get it, no matter what you do.”

  He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in front of him, causing Chantal to wave it away from her face. “I need to return to my party.”

  She stood with a stoic expression on her face until he said, “I can get my jacket later. But I need to see Monsieur Barthes for a minute before I go.”

  “Monsieur Barthes? Now?” She looked from one to the other.

  “This isn’t a good time, Yannick,” Vincent said.

  “It’s a shipping problem.” Vincent hesitated, then told Max she should continue back to the tasting room with Chantal. He politely excused himself and joined the man.

  “I’ll send my husband down to lock up,” Chantal said.

  Vincent stopped, and looked back. “I can lock up for you if you like.”

  “Okay,” Chantal said simply, handing him the key and moving quickly toward the stairs.

  When Max glanced back, she saw that the two men were making a rapid retreat down the alley, their voices raised in argument. She caught up with Chantal and Éloise. “Sometimes it feels like Yannick Martin is taking over,” Chantal said. “He seems to have some control over François, which I know sounds ridiculous.” Max was alongside them now. “Oh, Mademoiselle, I’m sorry, we will speak English.”

  “Thanks. The man back there. Who is he?”

  “He’s our foreman.”

  “I notice he limps,” Max said.

  “Limp?” she asked. “I don’t know that word.”

  Max demonstrated, and Chantal shrugged, “His work is physical,” she said, uninterested. The women went back to speaking French, and Max heard Éloise say, “You think she has her eye on the foreman as well?” This was followed by a giggle.

  “Oh, Éloise,” Chantal said. “How unkind. I was thinking, though, of warning her about our local ladies’ man.”

  Max suddenly felt disenchanted with the role-playing, especially being associated with Vincent. He caught up with them, and possessively put his hand on Max’s arm. She wanted to shake it off. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Yannick occasionally drives a truck for me and needed directions.”

  “Yannick Martin drives for you?” Chantal asked. “With that wife of his always complaining about her circumstances, I suppose he has to do some moonlighting. It’s strange, though, to have our foreman taking on other jobs. My husband knows about this?”

  “I assume so.”

  “Everything’s changing,” Chantal said to Éloise and Vincent. “The old loyalties are gone.” They arrived back in the chai. Chantal and Éloise went up the stairs to the tasting room. Max started to follow, but Vincent held her back, telling the two women that he and Max would join them in a minute. “Take your time,” they said, and closed the door, leaving them on the dimly lighted stairs.

  “Ignore those old conservatives,” Vincent said. “Chantal probably hasn’t been kissed in a decade and it’s been longer than that for the giggling idiot.”

  “You need to know something, Vincent,” Max said in a firm voice. “I’m unavailable. Don’t think for one minute this is going anywhere.”

  “Pardon, Max,” he said. “A kiss is harmless enough, d’accord?” He opened the door and, gripping her elbow a tad too tightly, led her into the crowded tasting room, where they came face-to-face with Olivier, his eyes so dark and unfathomable that they seemed to be burning a hole in her. “Bonsoir, Monsieur Chaumont,” Vincent said, “I think you two know each other?” Olivier shook hands with Vincent, and nodded to Max. Noticing Véronique at his side, Vincent continued, “That was quite a photo of you two kissing at the airport. A friend sent it to my phone.”

  Max’s heart thumped uncontrollably. The model looked fabulous in a silk blouse, short skirt, and tall boots. “Oh, may I see?” Véronique asked in a whispery voice as she tossed her wild mane of hair back dramatically. Max was struck by how her hair, skin, eyes, and even her teeth sparkled.” Vincent was too happy to oblige, whipping out his phone and finding the photo in record time. “It’s sweet,” the model said. Max couldn’t believe how jealousy could so quickly swamp the few social graces learned from her mother. Véronique, flashing a brilliant smile at Vincent, said, “Oh, are you going to be at Cheval Blanc?”

  Vincent, keeping his hand on Max’s arm, said, “We’re going to the Le Saint-James for dinner.”

  “You can’t beat the view,” Olivier said, as he and Max exchanged glances, “and the food is pas mal.”

  “Maybe we should switch to the Cheval Blanc event instead,” Vincent said to Max. He squeezed her elbow, and she considered the awkwardness that might ensue, but preferred that to being alone with him. She couldn’t think straight enough under the circumstances to say why she had taken such a sudden dislike to Vincent, other than to say he was smarmy, a term that Olivier wouldn’t be able to grasp.

  “The Saint-James is a better choice,” Olivier said, not giving her a chance to respond.

  Why do I want to kick Olivier in the balls and leave him on the ground? Max thought. All resolve to treat the evening with a degree of objectivity had dissipated. The superficial charm of the people surrounding her was starting to get to her. She longed for her father’s blunt verbal k
icks in the ass, Walt’s avuncular, somewhat grumpy, reassurances, or Joe’s asshole-ness. She stood at full height, once again eye-to-eye with Olivier, reminding herself that two nights of lovemaking did not instill loyalty.

  Someone beckoned to Vincent, and he excused himself. Véronique removed her hand from Olivier’s arm and sashayed over to say hello to Chantal. Max followed her with her eyes, noting how warmly Chantal received the model.

  Olivier said, “I’ll drop her off at her hotel when my event is over. The Saint-James is only a kilometer from where I live.”

  “You’re repeating yourself.”

  “Are you upset?”

  “You could have encouraged Vincent to go to Cheval Blanc.”

  “We agreed that this was a work night, didn’t we?” He lowered his voice. “I’m worried about Véronique going volatile if she’s in the room with you all evening. And besides, Vincent knows my identity.”

  “Véronique was obviously shocked to see me. Why’d you bring her here? So Vincent could parade his photograph of the two of you in a kiss at the airport around?”

  “The kiss was nothing, and she insisted on coming. It’s okay, Max.”

  “Do you know how stupid you sound? And it’s not okay. I had bad feelings about this evening from the start.”

  All of Max’s defenses sagged as the model came to claim Olivier. “Come on,” Véronique said, taking his hand. “I have someone I want you to meet. You have the dinner tickets?”

  Olivier shot Max a guilty look. Max had had it. What was going on was primal, but she couldn’t control it. When Véronique turned to pose for a photographer, Max took the opportunity to say what was on her mind to Olivier. “You had a problem with my language subterfuge? I have a problem with the way you’re manipulating two women. You know what I think the problem is? There’s nobody in your life to call you on your shit. Your parents think you’re a god, Abdel also worships you. You have no wife, and when you did, she walked off with someone else, which is a nasty-ass statement of saying you didn’t add up. Who says to you: ‘Are you kidding me? Are you really treating her this way?’ My father does that. And so do my fellow detectives. I don’t get away with anything.” Olivier looked stricken. “You go your way and I’ll go mine tonight,” Max said. “And we’ll see where we are later.”