Blackbird Fly (33 page)

Merle walked slowly out to the winery for the
afternoon tour. In the tasting room she reapplied lipstick and
brushed her hair. Did she look different? A little sunburnt, that’s
all. When she was young she imagined everyone could tell when she’d
had sex, that she smelled different, looked different. But this was
France. It was safe to assume everyone made love before breakfast.
Even you, Merle Bennett.

The group bought nine jugs of wine, pleasing Odile —
if that thin smile could be called pleasure. Merle didn’t mind the
walk home. A group of workers in a tiny pickup truck passed her,
standing in the back, chanting, fists waving. Was there going to be
a farm strike? What would that mean to Château Gagillac? She walked
on, finally used to French drivers who intentionally passed so
close her skirt blew up. She wore scarlet underpants just for
them.

The setting sun turned the sky purple, the oaks on
the hillside lit through from an inner fire. In front of the house,
a little blue car. Annie was here! She saw Tristan’s head over the
roof and began to run.

Chapter 34

After wine from Château Gagillac, a dinner of pork
roast and potatoes with Albert, Valerie, and Pascal, and a tour of
the house and garden, the company went home. Annie and Tristan were
tired from their travels. In the garden, under the acacia tree, the
expected talk of trips around the surrounding countryside came up.
Annie was excited to visit old castles, museums, wineries, and
babbled about Lascaux Two, the re-creation of the stone-age cave
with the incredible animal paintings.

They sat in the garden as dusk fell. Tristan claimed
fatigue and went inside to listen to music. “So where have you
been?” Annie said, leafing through her guidebook.

“
I haven’t been anywhere,” Merle
said. “Tristan didn’t tell you?”

“
Tell me what?” Annie had braided
her hair and wore a peasant blouse with wide, turquoise trousers
and Birkenstocks, full vacation mode. “You fell off another
ladder?”

Merle told her about the squatter’s death and the
compromise her lawyer had made to get her the house. “I can’t leave
the village without the inspector’s permission.”

“
That’s bullshit. I’ll talk to him
tomorrow.” Like Pascal Annie had full faith in her skills at
persuasion.

“
There’s another reason I can’t go.
Come on, I’ll show you. We have a secret room,” she said, pulling
her sister inside and getting Tristan to push the cupboard back. In
the basement Merle unlocked the wine cave. Annie’s eyes were wide
as she descended through the trap door. “Go on, step in,” Merle
said, pointing the flashlight down at the step, then at the racks
of dusty bottles.

“
Oh my God,” Annie said. “Have these
been here for hundreds of years?”

“
Just fifty or sixty. But in wine
years, that’s better than a hundred.”

“
Really?” She was examining the
bottles, holding them up to the flashlight.

“
I searched around on the internet.
There are three labels, three different years. The Pétrus could be
worth a thousand dollars a bottle, maybe more. The others a little
less.” The search had actually placed their value much higher but
Merle didn’t want to count on that. Unlike Harry she preferred to
low-ball.

They locked up the cave and pushed the cupboard back
into place. Outside, they brushed the spider webs off their
clothes. “What are you going to do with it?” Annie asked.

“
Sell it, I hope.” Merle sat down
again on the iron chair. “Someone else knows about the wine. The
woman who was living here with Justine LaBelle gave me the key to
that gate. She told me ‘they’ would kill for it.”

“
Who’s ‘they’?”

“
It could be the mayor for all I
know. He hates my guts for some reason.” The mayor had been hostile
from the beginning. Why didn’t he want her in the house — because
he knew about the wine? Or was it because Justine LaBelle was a
Redier, one of his black-sheep relatives? “Look, it’s important
that nobody knows about the wine downstairs. I haven’t told anyone
except Tristan. It’s like sitting on buried treasure. It makes me a
little crazy.”

“
Why don’t you just get it out of
there?”

“
How? I haven’t even told you about
all the stuff that’s going on. I’m working at this winery — touring
English-speakers around — and there’s something funny going on
there. There might be a farm strike. And then there’s the
outhouse.” Merle waved her sister over to the latrine. “We were
demolishing a wall inside and guess what we found — a skeleton.
Somebody had put this woman, dead or alive we don’t know — rocked
her in behind this stone wall.”

“
Christ. Have you got any ghosts
with chains rattling in the night?”

“
Just mice. But I’m on the
lookout.”

Annie leaned back in her chair and let her head drop
back. “I suppose we can’t drink that wine. It’s too expensive. It’d
be like drinking gold.”

“
We drank two of them. We had to
find out if they’d gone bad. We have one more vintage to
examine.”

Annie’s eyes lit up. “You know how to make a girl
feel welcome.” She looked around the garden, at the crime tape on
the
pissoir
, at the roof, and laughed. “I brought twelve
books. I thought I could get all caught up on my reading.”

Merle lay awake next to her sister, listening to the
village go to bed. The sweeping of steps, a rug beaten against a
wall, a cat howling, a shutter latched. She made a list in her head
for tomorrow. The caulking needed work. The rock pile needed to be
moved. Annie might help paint the bathroom ceiling. She’d wanted
excruciating detail about how her klutz of a sister had broken her
wrist. The stupid thing was hot and dirty and it itched. The grate
for the chimney — Pascal, perhaps.

Annie’s shoulder was silhouetted against the window.
Merle hadn’t told her yet about the discoveries in the parish
registry. If Merle could have avoided it now, she would. But she
owed it to the woman to uncover the truth. Dominique, a blond child
playing in Malcouziac’s streets, grew up to be a Bordeaux whore
named Justine LaBelle.

A sad story but a familiar one. Was it because of her
fourteenth year? Who had made her pregnant, debauched her, sent her
on a long and winding path ending at the bottom of the cliffs of
Lucrezia? Who could be so cruel?

The next day was sunny again; it had been weeks since
rain had fallen. The stones felt warm to the touch as the sisters
passed the houses. Merle opened the door to the gendarmerie where
Madame Cluzet pointed them to the inspector’s hotel where he had
gone for lunch.

The hotel sat on a back street, definitely the
economy place. The paint was peeling on the shutters and the carpet
in the lobby was worn and dirty. They walked through to a darkened
bar where a small group of tables and chairs formed a smoky lounge.
The inspector sat in a corner, papers spread over his table,
contributing to the fog.

“
Capitan Montrose, that’s his name,”
Merle whispered. “We have to speak French with him.”

He stood up as they approached through the tables,
taking off heavy black-rimmed glasses. He wore a rumpled gray suit
and white shirt, more bureaucratic than fashionable. His tie was
blue, his fingers tobacco stained. Merle introduced her sister and
they shook hands.

“
Sit down, please.” He waited as
they settled into chairs. He discreetly turned his paperwork
over.

“
We need to speak about the
passport, and confining my sister to the village.” Annie leaned
forward, engaging him with her eyes. “This can’t continue. You must
return her passport to her or we will have to protest through the
U.S. Embassy.”

“
I am sorry, madame. Your sister is
a suspect in a murder investigation.”

“
And what’s happening? Is there
progress?” Merle asked. “Have you found Sister Evangeline or any
other witnesses to the murder?”

He stared at her silently.

“
You haven’t found her dead, I
hope.”

“
Non.
”

“
Are you going to charge my sister
with a crime?” Annie asked.

“
We shall see,” he said.

“
She has a job in New York City. You
can’t keep her here indefinitely. She has a family at
home.”

“
I’m retaining a lawyer. Antoine
Lalouche in Bordeaux,” Merle said. “Do you know him?”

“
Non, madame
.”

“
Monsieur l’Inspecteur
,”
Merle began, sitting forward now, “I have some new information
about Justine LaBelle. Maybe you already know it.” He nodded for
her to continue. “She was born here in Malcouziac, and her real
name was Dominique Redier. Did you know that? Redier. She gave
birth to an infant when she was fourteen years old. My husband was
that child. The couple who adopted him owned the house on rue de
Poitiers.”

“
What?” Annie whispered.

Merle stared at the policeman. His stony expression
never changed. “That is why, as Justine LaBelle, she returned to
live in the house. That was her connection.”

He smoked and thought about that. She continued. “Her
name was Redier. Both the mayor and the gendarme share that name.
Are they perhaps the ones that Sister Evangeline warned me about?
The ones who would kill to get into the garden? Was it the bones in
the latrine that they wanted to conceal?”

He tented his fingers, concentrating hard on her
choppy accent. Could she trust him with the knowledge of the wine?
She shivered involuntarily.

Annie said, “Have you identified the remains?”

“
Without a missing person report,
some idea who she might be, it is very difficult. After the war,
records were lax. So many people died or disappeared, or left the
country in those years.”

“
My sister is making progress on
this case. Not necessarily more progress than you,
Monsieur
l’Inspecteur
.” Annie smiled and by God he smiled back. “But
please let her work. Let her leave the village for day trips to
gather more information. We have been very open with you,
Inspector.”

“
Where would you go?” he
asked.

“
To a convent,” Merle said. He
didn’t need to know why. Annie shook his hand and turned away but
Merle stayed. He asked, “When?”

“
Today. Sister Evangeline wasn’t a
nun. But we will find out today for sure. I think she was hired to
get into that house.”

“
To kill Justine
LaBelle?”

“
Possibly. But why would she give me
the key?”

As serious and solid as he looked, he also appeared
adrift, as clueless today as he’d been on day one, the stains on
his shirt accumulating. “I do not think you are a murderer, madame,
but I cannot afford to take chances. You will not make me
sorry.”

Outside, Annie waited for her. “What is all this
about Harry? He was adopted?”

Merle put her arm through her sister’s and pulled her
toward the plaza. “Super-genealogy sleuth, here. His birth mother
was the woman who was killed. I’m sorry to have to tell you this,
Annie. It’s embarrassing. But she was a prostitute, that’s what
everyone says. An ugly old whore from Bordeaux.”

“
So those people in the car accident
on Long Island weren’t his parents?”

“
Adoptive. I don’t even think he
knew he was adopted. Guess where we’re going now that you got me a
day-pass?”

“
Lascaux?”

“
Equally as thrilling. Right after I
give Tristan his duties as guardian-in-chief.”

The hills to the south of Malcouziac rose and fell
with each stream and valley, turning at small towns perched on
hilltops. The sky was an infallible blue. She drove Annie’s rental,
a little Peugeot. Annie sat with her knees curled under her,
reading her guidebook. A fundamental differences between sisters:
Merle had not brought one guidebook with her; she’d had to buy one
here. Annie brought three.

“
It says here that the Carmelites
came to France after the death of St. Teresa. She was that
super-nun in the Holy Land who reformed the order. They were wild
and she made them all calm down and look inward. Made it
contemplative and cloistered.”

“
I’ve heard of her,” Merle said.
“Teresa of Avila.”

“
Right. That was in the 1500s. The
first Carmelite convent was founded in 1604. Now there are almost a
hundred in France. No wonder Frenchmen are such horny bastards.
Present boyfriends included.”

“
You have a French
boyfriend?”

Annie smirked. “The Carmelites were suppressed during
the French Revolution. Oh, this is good. Right before the
revolution was King Louis the fifteenth. His daughter Louise became
a famous nun. He —
au contraire
— was famous for his godless
debauchery. You remember Madame de Pompadour? And Madame du Barry.
His lady friends.”

“
So Louise — his namesake — was the
shining example of virtue? Princess and nun?”

“
Something like that. This convent
we’re going to was founded in the twelfth century. That was men —
monks. They died out, or something, about the fourteenth century.
There were soldiers occupying the place during the revolution and
most of the good stuff was stripped out of it.”

“
So when did the nuns
come?”