Pinot Noir

by Lorraine Evanoff

  The doors opened and the staff resumed their post-lunch duties. As soon as the teller removed the closed sign, Louise was first at the window. She greeted the teller and handed her the business card she had received form the branch manager in Auxerre, with the name of the Brussels branch manager, Luc Legrand. The teller gave Louise a perplexed stare. Louise took this as a bit of a challenge and returned the teller’s stare, upon which the teller blushed, trying to hold back tears. Softening, Louise became concerned.

  “Is something wrong?” Louise asked in French.

  “Forgive me,” the teller said, composing herself. “Monsieur Legrand was killed last night.”

  Shocked, all that Louise could think of was The Banker’s Grave. Collecting herself, she asked, “What happened?”

  “We don’t know. There is an ongoing investigation.” The teller remembered her professional duties. “I’m sorry. Perhaps there is someone else who can help you?”

  Louise needed to focus on the mission now more than ever. “I had hoped to meet with a wealth management expert.”

  “Of course.” She pointed to a chair in the waiting area. “Please have a seat, and someone will be out shortly.” Louise waited for about five minutes until a man in his forties, wearing a grey suit and an unremarkable tie, approached her.

  “Boujour, I’m Bertrand Brunel.” Louise stood and shook his hand. “Please follow me,” he said somberly, and led her to his office.

  “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” Louise said, taking a seat in front of his desk.

  “Of course,” he replied. “How can I help you today?”

  “Well, I was referred to Monsieur Legrand by the manager of the Beaune branch, Yves Renard.”

  Brunel looked startled. “Yves Renard?”

  “Yes,” Louise replied. “He’s my account manager in Beaune. I wanted to see about placing some of my deposits into a higher interest-bearing account.”

  Brunel stared as though trying to make sense of something.

  “Is there something the matter?”

  He squinted. “May I look up your account?”

  “Of course.” Louise handed him her checkbook.

  He typed on his computer. “Yes, I see, premium checking account, 1.5% interest.”

  “Correct. I’m leaving those funds in there for six months to establish my credit for the purchase of a house in Burgundy.”

  “You would definitely benefit from moving the funds into a higher interest, short-term investment account. Perhaps three months with automatic renewal.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Louise said.

  Brunel entered all the details into his computer. “I’ll be right back with your paperwork.”

  While he was out, Louise looked around the office. It was a similar sterile décor, with Brunel’s corporate photo on the wall like Renard’s. A detail stood out on the portrait as plain as day. On his lapel, Brunel wore the same pin she had seen on Renard’s portrait, a badge with two crossed swords. Louise made sure her face remained composed when Brunel returned and handed her the documents and a pen.

  “Please sign here and that should take care of it.”

  Louise signed and stood to leave. “Thank you for your help.”

  “If you need anything else, please contact me any time.” He handed her a business card. “Do you have any other questions?”

  No time like the present, Louise thought. “Actually, I’m curious about the pin on your lapel in the photo. Monsieur Renard wore the same pin in his portrait. What is the significance?”

  “We were both part of the 4th Regiment of Chasseurs à Cheval that was re-created as the regiment of reconnaissance of the 1st Belgian Corps.”

  “You were a knight?”

  He gave a demure smile. “Mounted rifleman. After the reorganization of the Armed Forces in 1993, the regiment of mounted rifles was reduced to a Squadron. That’s when Renard and I left to work in the private banking sector. Monsieur Renard struggled. He was a competent banker, but he was forced to resign from our branch.”

  “Forced to resign?” Louise asked.

  “Nothing was ever proven, but he was accused of fraud.”

  “What kind of fraud?”

  Brunel was taken aback slightly by the line of questioning and chose his words carefully. “Falsifying client records. The bank has zero tolerance of even the slightest misappropriation and found that Monsieur Renard might have been collaborating with a fraudulent assessor.”

  Louise used bank terminology to make the conversation chummy. “An assessor making misleading property valuations?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said.

  “Thank you for your candor.” Louise shook his hand, and he escorted her to the door. “What is the quickest way to Château Du Lac Hotel in Genval?”

  “It is very easy, only about twenty minutes away. Continue east on Chaussée de la Hulpe and it will become route N275 south. Stay on that route to Genval.”

  “Thank you again. Au revoir.”

  T H I R T Y – O N E

  January 12, 2002

  The location of the June 2000 Bilderberg conference, Château Du Lac Hotel in Genval, was a popular vacation destination. Modeled after a Rhineland abbey, the ivy-covered white brick hotel with its single lighthouse tower reflected serenely in the lake surrounded by Belle Epoque homes. Louise parked and entered the hotel to look for more information on its intriguing history and found a display near the lobby in three languages. It was originally built on mineral springs as a spa in 1906 due to the renowned quality of its mineral water. In 1934 John V.B. Martin acquired the château and ran it as the Indian Tonic production plant. Over the next decades, the Martin family transformed the old factory into a convention center and five-star hotel, becoming the Martin’s Château du Lac.

  The sprawling resort was the sort of place that made Louise’s palms sweaty. Any place where people prowled for celebrities was kryptonite to her. Yet, there she sat in the lobby, reading the French political magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur, doing her own prowling. Michael lingered out of sight reading the same plaque Louise had just read, trying to figure out what trail she was on.

  “Qu’est-ce que je vous sers?” the waiter asked Louise.

  “De l’eau chaud avec du citron, s’il vous plaît.” A moment later, the server delivered the simple recipe. She squeezed three lemon wedges into plain hot water and took a long drink. It was one of those household remedies that worked. Whether psychosomatic or real, she immediately felt her liver release toxins from the night of drinking cognac. Sipping soothingly, she almost missed the drama playing out before her eyes.

  At the other end of the lobby, two men were having a heated discussion while a tall, beautiful, teenaged girl passively stood by. One man looked like he could have been from Eastern Europe, ostentatiously dressed in Gucci loafers and designer jeans with his linen shirtsleeves rolled up, revealing hairy forearms. The body language of the other man with red hair indicated he was guarding the girl. He abruptly took her hand and brusquely escorted her out of the hotel. After what Louise had learned about the serial murders, these older men fighting over a teenaged girl was suspicious enough for her to want to follow.

  Louise left cash on the table and went out to her car. She pretended to look through her purse while keeping an eye on the red-haired man leading the young woman to their vehicle. Louise got in her car and waited until they took off before putting it in gear and following at a safe distance, with Michael not far behind. They headed southwest of Lake Genval for about forty minutes until the driver slowed and turned down a lane to what looked like a private château that was open to the public. Louise waited for a minute, then turned into the treelined lane and drove through a dovecote entrance gate. She pulled into the pulverized gravel parking area of a seventeenth century château made entirely of stone with two Rapunzel towers.

  Michael had stopped on the main road, knowing that Louise had successfully found the same chateau that Jean-Phil
ippe’s agent had infiltrated. He felt assured that she was on the right track and could count on her to call him and confirm her whereabouts. He left to meet Jean-Philippe at his monastery in the Sonian Forest nearby.

  Louise waited in her parked car until the man got out of his car, opened the passenger side door and escorted the young woman to the back entrance. Louise got out and entered the front door of the main building. There was no one at reception, so she scanned one of the colorful brochures, marketing the château as a Catholic center, like a monastery, but for lay people to attend spiritual retreats. According to the brochure, in addition to the main château, an old mill and an old farmhouse had been converted into guesthouses. There was also a chapel and a Marian shrine. There was a picture in the brochure of the couple-in-residence who oversaw the place, the wife managing the accommodations, and the husband maintaining the buildings and grounds. Louise rang the bell, and the wife emerged.

  “Bonjour! Bien venue,” she greeted Louise in the same nasally Belgian French as the café owner in Sars-la-Buissière.

  “Bonjour.” Louise smiled, then inquired in French, “Do you have any rooms available? I’ve been exploring in the area, and this place looks wonderful.”

  “Yes, of course,” she replied. “How many guests?”

  “Just me,” Louise said, handing her a passport and credit card. Until then, it hadn’t occurred to Louise that she, a woman of a certain age traveling alone, might seem odd. She had been living such a sheltered independent life exiled in paradise, it sometimes came as a shock to see herself in the eyes of strangers. A French expression popped into her head, vieille fille, which translated literally to old girl, but colloquially it was the term for spinster. Even though it was an obsolete concept, Louise felt self-conscious now checking in alone.

  “How lovely for you to take time for yourself.”

  “Yes, it will be nice to have some alone time.”

  “Eh, oh, cocotte!” a man shouted from the back.

  The groundskeeper’s wife put her hands together and looked to heaven then back at Louise. “Lucky you!” She came from behind the desk and handed Louise a heavy antique skeleton key. “Here’s your room key. My name is Ferdinande and that is my husband, André. Do you have any bags?”

  “I’ll get them later,” Louise replied.

  “Follow me.” Ferdinande headed down the darkly lit hallway toward a heavy wooden door that was ajar, silhouetting André holding a rake in one hand and a basket in another.

  “What’s taking so long?” André asked in the nasally French.

  “We have a new guest,” Ferdinande replied.

  They took a path down to the back of the property and Ferdinande pointed to the converted mill, now a guesthouse.

  “The second door is your room. Follow me and I’ll show you the grounds.” They walked toward a pond, and Ferdinande pointed to the chapel. “There is a service in the chapel at 7:00 every morning that you are welcome to attend.” She indicated an outdoor shrine, a semi-circle of manicured hedges enclosing a raised bed of various plants, and a row of candles on wire stems, completing the front of the circle, all surrounding a statue of the Virgin Mary on a pedestal. “At the Marian shrine, the votive candles are free for you to light and offer blessings.”

  The sudden blast of a gunshot startled Louise.

  “What was that?” Louise asked.

  “Oh, that is Father Gregory. As you can see, our property sits precariously over a marsh. Even the word Brussels from old Dutch Broekzele means home in the marsh. The slightest erosion can destabilize our parish.”

  Louise saw a monk in full cassock, the traditional long black robe buttoned up the front, with a wide sash around the waist, over a white collared shirt and black pants.

  “Is that Father Gregory?” Louise asked.

  “Yes. Monks and nuns often stay here and volunteer to help with the property. Father Gregory has taken it upon himself to help with our gopher situation.”

  Louise watched the monk, who appeared to be on the young side of his thirties, sitting near the lake doing his five decades of the rosary prayers. To her amazement, he interrupted his prayers, took a revolver from his cloak and aimed it at one of the nearby gopher holes, waiting. A superfluity of nuns walked by, saw the monk with a weapon, and hurried away in the other direction. A gopher popped its head up out of the hole, and the monk fired off a shot with a marksman’s precision, eviscerating the little critter. The monk resumed his five decades of the rosary prayers. The presence of nuns and the devoted groundskeepers notwithstanding, Louise speculated the center might be more than just a religious sanctuary.

  “Thank you, Ferdinande,” Louise said, after they’d both turned away from the scene. “I’ll go get my bag and leave you to your work.”

  “Dinner is at 19:00 hours in the main hall.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  Louise walked through the garden past the Marian shrine. As she approached the parking area, she noticed an idling black sedan that looked familiar. She backed against the wall to keep out of the driver’s line of vision and rummaged in her bag for the piece of paper. As she suspected, it was the same license plate number she had seen in Auxerre. The driver was the mysterious man she had also observed leaving the bar in Pommard. Even as a shiver of fear was warning her, it also reassured that she was on the right trail. Louise waited for the car to drive off before retrieving her bag then went to her room.

  Louise settled in, and the phone was in use again.

  “Hi, Charlie.”

  “Louise, where are you?”

  “Belgium. Just outside of Brussels.”

  “You are in a different city every day,” Charlie observed. “That probably means you have some news.”

  “There have been some major developments, which I won’t go into now. But if my suspicions are correct, I’m closing in on something really big.”

  “Big, as in setting up an arrest?” Charlie asked.

  “Big, as in international conspiracy.”

  “Should I alert the local law enforcement, or our people in the region?” Patrick asked.

  “Not yet. I won’t make any moves until I have something actionable. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  Charlie offered the usual, “Okay, stay safe,” and hung up.

  Louise changed into her yoga clothes. The showiness of her limber and lithe body contorting in different ways always brought all kinds of characters out into the open much like insects from a house on fire. One time on the island, when it was only her and Big Steve on the beach and not another soul for miles, a speedboat pulled out of nowhere. The boat full of young male divers had been checking her out with high-powered binoculars and maneuvered in for a closer look. Louise laughed at the simple idiocy of the crew and invited them to the bar for drinks, with Big Steve as protection, of course.

  Louise walked to the garden and found a prime spot, away from the target range of the armed monk, who seemed to have finished the gopher hunt for the time being. She sat on the grass in lotus pose, the chilly air invigorating her, and went into a meditative mindfulness. As she breathed and repeated her mantra, her senses were both heightened and impervious to distractions.

  During this state, a realization came to her. It was about the recurring dreams she’d been having. They were all about danger, and voices calling to her. What were the dreams trying to tell her? She recognized that most of the voices sounded like Jean-Philippe. Was he trying to send her a message? She needed to adjust her pose to open chakras.

  Sitting on her knees, she leaned forward and placed her elbows on the ground and clasped her hands together creating a cradle for her head. She brought her legs up into a headstand while silently repeating the affirmation, I am love and light. The crown chakra, or Sahasrara, symbolized by a circle and a thousand petals, like a lotus flower, was the seventh chakra, located at the top of the head. The crown chakra is considered the gateway to the cosmic self or the divine self, to universal consciousness. Doi
ng headstands allowed the crown chakra access to the utmost clarity and enlightened wisdom.

  Louise felt the energy stimulated around the crown of her head. Remaining in the headstand, she opened to a wide-legged pose, pushing out through her heels. She bent her knees and pressed the soles of her feet together, opening her knees wide while keeping her toes pointing upwards. She brought her knees together, keeping her bottom slightly back, like sitting in a chair. She crossed one thigh over the other and wrapped one calf around the other in eagle pose. The various headstand poses helped to stimulate and activate her crown chakra.

  “Impressionnant,” Father Gregory said.

  Louise focused her eyes and saw the legs of the monk. As she held the pose, she observed the gun in his right hand, cupped below his left hand, which was holding the rosary beads that draped to the left of the crucifix and hung down in a loop. Keeping her legs crossed, Louise bent at the waist and lowered her feet to the ground. She extended her hands up, tilting her face toward the sky, her back to the priest. Uncrossing her legs with her feet in place she pivoted 180 degrees to face the priest. She brought her palms together in front of her heart. “Namaste.”

  “Amen,” the monk replied.

  “Did I distract you from your work?” Louise said, assessing the firearm. It appeared to be antique with a 6-inch octagon barrel, a mottled gray patina and walnut grip.

  “Excusez-moi,” he said diffidently, slipping the gun inside his robe. “It is not exactly God’s work. But it seems a necessary evil.” He offered his hand. “I am Father Gregory.”

  “Hello,” Louise said, shaking his hand. “I’m Karen.” She nodded toward the now-concealed weapon. “Interesting form of charisma.”