Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (5 page)

N
athalie stood on the second step of the salon companionway and faced forward, looking over the bow, her eyes flush with the top of the deckhouse, a floating crocodile searching for prey. With slow eyes she followed the group as they walked around the cove. She hated them all, and she hated the boat. They were too rich, too pleased with themselves, too full of self-confidence to be interesting. And the boat was also too rich, too plastic, too fat and sluggish.

As the group started up the long sloping steps leading to the old town, Nathalie grabbed the rim of the overhead hatchway and swung herself onto the salon floor. Time to get to work. The brand-new boat already had the musky aroma of too many people sleeping in a confined space. It made her feel more at home, but she knew they couldn’t stand it. Even at sea they wanted the scent of lavatory pine. Damn them all to a Formica-coated hell.

On her knees, she rooted through the locker under the sink and found a red plastic bucket, a handful of cleaning cloths, and a bottle of
nettoyant
Carrefour. She mixed a healthy swig of the green liquid with water from the freshwater tap and went into one of the heads to attack the bowl. In the telephone booth–size enclosure the heat was stifling. She thought of turning on the air-conditioning, but it wasn’t worth the effort of going up on deck and starting the engine. Instead, she took off the thin checked shirt she had knotted under her breasts and threw it on the cabin bunk.

This was that cop’s cabin. She sure didn’t look like a cop with her fancy clothes. Still, despite the clothes and the fact that she was a flic, she was not as bad as the others. And her big teddy-bear husband was kind of cute in an odd sort of way. She could see herself with him. She undid the top brass button of her hacked-off jeans and slid her hand down over her belly. She really could see herself with him.

She yanked her hand out, leaving the button undone, and stood up.
I wonder if she has a gun,
she thought.
Flics are supposed to carry even when they’re off duty. At least on TV they are.
She rooted though the drawers of Capucine’s locker and found two clips of ammunition but no gun.
I wonder where she hides it. Probably in her panties.
She laughed and rubbed her abdomen with four fingers, itching to get under the waistband of her cut-off jeans.

I have to stop doing that. I’m doing it at least three times a day. If my mother was right, I’m going to explode in so many pimples, I’ll look like a pizza. What I really need to do is get off this goddamn plastic tub and get a real life.

She heard footsteps coming down the companionway and turned around. It was the painter one. He was probably the worst of all. He couldn’t even think of going up on deck without some fancy outfit that included a silk neckerchief knotted around his neck.
What an asshole.
Still, those wiry bodies with their stringy muscles could be good if you played them right.

Dominique—that was his name, wasn’t it?—slid around the cabin door and smiled down at her. Even with that stupid thing around his neck, he did have a cute smile.

“They’re making you work while they all go off to play? That hardly seems fair, does it?”

“I’m here for the money, not to socialize.”

Without answering, Dominique ran his finger through the sweat on her collarbone and put it to his lips. Yeah, there was definitely something usable about this one.

“Everyone needs to socialize now and then, don’t you think?”

His finger continued to trace patterns on her upper chest, slowly working down to the gully between her small, hard breasts. She said nothing. He dropped to his knees, and his finger wandered gently downward, past her navel, into the gap left by the undone button of her shorts.

With his other hand he grabbed her wrist, stood up, attempted to lead her to the bunk.

“Not here. Come with me.”

They climbed up the companionway, crossed the deck, then dropped down the forepeak hatch into her coffin-size cuddy.

He was like a rangy animal. As she reached up to latch the hatch, he yanked off her shorts, threw her down on the narrow bunk, and was at her like a jaguar. It took less than a minute. No wonder they call it
la petite mort
—the little death. She screamed, the release liberating. The world came back into focus, glorious, filled with sunshine and hope and joy. She sighed happily.

But he was not finished. He pounced on her, rougher than ever. He dragged her off the bunk, flipped her over the spinnaker bag that filled half her coffin-size cabin, her butt at the apex of the pile.

She started to say no—she hated it there; it hurt; it had a terrible impact on her intestines. But it was too late. He was already halfway in. There was a sharp pain. Then she forced herself to relax and felt almost nothing.

It was over in seconds. She felt the liquid ooze within her. He withdrew with a jerk, smirking, proud of himself, leaving her deflated and depressed. She couldn’t even muster the energy to get mad.

“All right, you can get the fuck out now. I have to get to work and clean your crappy plastic boat and then go buy provisions so you can get sozzled and eat your delicious meals.” The hollowness of her complaint depressed her even further.

Marking his disdain, he touched a finger to his lips and placed it gently between her legs. He stood up, slipped into his clothes, knotted his ridiculous kerchief with ridiculous care, slipped out of the cuddy. She burned with desire to let him experience a spinnaker pole whacked hard upside his ear. Instead, she downed what was left of a quarter bottle of cheap cognac in two gulps, stood up on the bunk, and hurled the empty at the next boat over, gratified by the visible dent it left in the gel coat.

Wouldn’t life be perfect without the need for men?

B
y ten o’clock that night the crew was exultant in the B’52, the bar-nightclub opposite the berth Serge had initially targeted. Even at that early hour, the noise level made conversation all but impossible. There was no doubt it was the town’s hottest spot. Hemmed in by writhing, gyrating golden youths, they drank the club’s namesake drink, flaming B’52s, claimed to be made with only three painstakingly poured layers of Kahlúa, Baileys Irish Cream, and Grand Marnier, which were then set alight to produce an evanescent blue flame, dramatic in the almost pitch-black room.

With histrionic brio Serge downed his drinks into an open mouth, oblivious to the pain. The only one who showed the slightest interest was Alexandre, who looked quizzical for a moment and then disappeared behind the bar.

When he returned, he whispered in Capucine’s ear, “Just as I thought, the bartender pours a layer of well-heated hundred-twenty-proof
rhum agricole
from Guadeloupe on top. That’s what produces the extravagant flame.”

The evening wore on. Capucine and Angélique were solicited as dance partners. Florence had disappeared from the table and could be seen in the distance, in earnest conversation with the bartender, drinking what looked like chilled Perrier. Aude’s glacial inscrutability discouraged invitations. When slow dances came up, Capucine noticed that Angélique folded herself into Dominique’s arms. Conversation among the nondancers stalled, degenerating into telegraphic utterances that floated out, hanging limply over the table, defying reply. The only one who seemed to be having fun was Dominique, who danced sensuously with his wife while his eyes ping-ponged back and forth among the coterie of well-tanned nymphets in the club.

At twelve Serge stretched, yawned, and looked at his multi-dialed watch. “There’s no hope our crew is going to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on deck at five a.m. tomorrow morning,” he said at large. “The only thing to do is shove off now. Good thing I collected our passports from the capitainerie this afternoon. Let’s have one more drink and get going.”

Twenty minutes later, Serge was doing his best to steer the boat through the narrow gorge by the light of a powerful flashlight he had found in the tool kit after spilling the contents over the salon floor. Even though he was more or less drunk, he had the good sense to drive the boat at a slow speed. One white cliff would appear in the beam of his light, and he would rectify his course, but in no time the opposing wall would appear just as threateningly.

After one particularly close encounter, Florence elbowed Serge away from the wheel, snapped off his light, took the helm, and let the light of the full moon guide her. “Why don’t you all go to bed? I’ll call you if I need anything.”

Serge stretched out on the cockpit settee and fell asleep instantly.

As they went below one by one on unsteady legs, the motor accelerated to cruise speed and the boat became rock hard on a steady course. After a few minutes, those few who were still awake noticed the irritating throb of the engine cease, heard the rattle of the sails going up, felt the boat assume its normal heel, and sensed the natural rhythm of the sea taking over. They were at sea under sail.

At three in the morning Capucine was dragged into a nightmare. She was in a Chinese dungeon, being interrogated by a sinister Fu Manchu–like character with mustaches dangling well below his chin, grinning evilly as he adjusted a device that dripped water on her forehead. She squinted her eyes shut tight. She would never talk, never, never, ever.

“Capucine, wake up.” Water dripped on her face from the hood of Florence’s foul-weather jacket. “I need you on deck. Nathalie’s replacing me, and I want you and Inès on watch with her. You don’t have to do anything. Just keep the conversation going so no one goes to sleep. There are squalls coming. Nathalie can handle herself, but if you think you need me, just come and get me.”

Capucine shook herself awake and bumped into Inès in the salon. They both had foul-weather jackets in their hands.

On deck, the tangy salt of the sea breeze was a tonic. It blew the last of the alcohol out of their systems. Capucine and Inès stood for a moment, breathing deeply, admiring the phosphorescent glow of the bow waves.

Nathalie, at the helm, shot them a belligerent look. The squall had passed through, and the plastic leather of the cockpit settee was slick with water. Both Capucine and Inès spread out their foul-weather jackets over the banquette and sat face-to-face, their legs touching.

The night wore on with the rhythmic swaying of the boat and glimpses of the extravagant panoply of stars through holes in the black clouds. They spoke disjointedly, straining to see if Nathalie was listening. Once she was sure Nathalie was in her own world, Inès launched into a sotto voce plan of attack for Tottinguer, tapping Capucine’s knee point by point for emphasis. As Inès gesticulated, her jacket fell on the deck at the foot of the settee.

Nathalie groaned to herself.
Goddamn that fucker.
I knew this would happen. She clutched at her lower abdomen and moaned again.
I’ve been in the head the whole fucking afternoon. And for what?
She flicked a switch on the column of the wheel, activating the autopilot, doubled over at the waist, cursed one more time. The boat steered itself, both wheels jerking back and forth like a vaudeville song and dance number. Heavy drops of rain fell.

Nathalie groaned a deep lament, half moan and half wail. “I told that fucker I didn’t want to do it, but do they ever listen?” she asked herself rhetorically. More drops of rain fell.

Lurching, she picked up Inès’s jacket, shrugged it on, flipped the collar up, and turned her torso to face Capucine. Thunder crackled in the distance. “I’ll be back in a sec. Don’t worry. The boat will take care of herself.” She ran across the deck and disappeared into the dark.

Five minutes later Inès began to fidget. “Where is she?”

“She went up there to have a pee. She’s probably communing with nature. She’ll be back. Don’t worry,” Capucine replied.

But after another five minutes, Capucine had lost the strength of her conviction. “Stay here for a moment,” she said to Inès. “I’m going to see if I can find her.” It began to rain in earnest. She slipped on a jacket and inched forward. Thunder cracked so near the boat, it made Capucine jump. A second later, lightning lit up the boat as brightly as a theater stage. The deck was completely deserted. There could be no doubt about that.

Capucine ran back to the stern and extracted the yellow horseshoe life buoy from its cradle on the rail, along with the attached dan buoy, a six-foot pole with a red flag on top set in a float. Once out of its rack, the life buoy gave off the strong stench of human urine, overpowering the clean ozone smell of the storm. A good number of beer-soaked males must have peed over the stern, hanging on to the whiplike pole for support. As soon as the dan buoy hit the water, a pulsing strobe began to wink. In a few seconds it vanished into the oily black night.

Capucine went below and opened the door to Serge’s cabin, half expecting that somehow Nathalie had teleported herself there and was vigorously disporting herself. But Serge lay flat on his back, clad only in the tan shorts he had been wearing in the bar, legs wide apart, mouth slack open, the cabin reeking of stale alcohol.

She shook him awake. “We may have a person overboard.”

He shook his head violently to clear it. “Who?”

“Nathalie.”

Serge jumped out of his berth, pushed Capucine aside, and made for Florence’s cabin, only to discover that Florence was already on her feet at the navigation console. She flicked some switches and raced up the companionway. By the time Capucine returned on deck, it was brilliant with masthead lights and even more conspicuously empty than it had been in the strobe flashes of lightning.

T
he deck lights went out. Purple retinal images danced in Capucine’s field of vision, leaving her disoriented. It took long minutes for the splotches to disappear and her night vision to reemerge. Finally, she was able to discern the line between the greater darkness of the sea and the lesser darkness of the sky. The storm had passed through, leaving a clean sea smell. Far over the horizon, episodic, soundless flashes of lightning flared.

The sails had been dropped into drunken, disordered piles, as if the boat had broken. Standing tall, her eyes sweeping the middle distance, Florence manned the helm. Next to her, like a little boy yammering for his mother’s attention, Serge sputtered, “We need to turn around, do the ‘man overboard’ drill, come up into the wind, jibe around, reach the position where she went overboard. Hurry. Hurry.”

Florence ignored him.

“We’ve already turned around and are heading back over our course, and the sails are down,” Capucine said.

They came up to the pulsing dan buoy and took it on board. They motored on, staring sightlessly into the inky black. There was no sign of Nathalie. There was no sign of anything.

“We have no idea when she went over the side,” Capucine said. “The best thing you can do now is to try to contact the nearest port and see if there’s any way to put up a search helicopter.”

Energized, Serge bustled below.

In less than a minute he returned with the gravitas of a heroic naval officer who had serious news to share. “I was unable to raise anyone with the VHF on channel sixteen. Also, there’s no signal on my cell phone. But the good news is that we are only thirty-five miles off Porto Cervo. If we steer two-six-oh, we could be there in less than four hours.”

Before he had finished speaking, Florence spun the wheel and the boat heeled in slightly as it made a sharp turn to starboard. “Serge, I need you to get the sails back up,” Florence said curtly. “We don’t have enough gas to make port on the engine.”

Serge set to work cranking the main halyard while Aude held the limp sheet, waiting for the sail to fill. Régis, looking a little dazed, took flash pictures of the deck. He went to the bow and continued snapping.

Serge barked at him, “Régis, this is no time for your blog. Get the jib up as fast as you can. We don’t have a second to lose.”

But Régis hesitated, taking several pictures of the bow area, even kneeling down to put the bow pulpit in dramatic perspective, before he came back to the jib halyard winch in the cockpit.

Three hours later Serge was able to raise the port captain’s office in Porto Cervo on channel sixteen, the international distress frequency. The conversation reverberated loudly across the salon.

“Porto Cervo? This is
Diomede.
Mayday. Mayday. Mayday,” Serge said in English, imitating Humphrey Bogart in one of his seagoing films.

“
Diomede
. Isa you sinka?” said a young voice with the sleepy calm of someone who had heard it all before, too many times.

“No, Porto Cervo. We’re not sinking. We think someone has gone overboard.”

“
Va bene.
That’s a not a Mayday. That’s a
pan.
You coma inna port and tell me alla about it. I see what I canna do for you.”

“Copied, Porto Cervo. We’re six miles out. We’ll be with you in less than an hour. Over and out!”

They reached Porto Cervo as dawn broke. Even though the little harbor seemed as lifeless as if the world had ended, the port captain’s office in Porto Cervo was easy enough to find by the
GUARDIA COSTIERA
sign high over a steep vertical wall at the very end of a long marina filled with the largest boats Capucine had ever seen. The problem was that there were no empty berths.

While Serge fretted, Florence tied the boat up next to the bottom step of a stone stairway leading up the vertical wall. Capucine and Serge walked up the mossy steps and discovered a new-looking white stucco building with a factory-made pine door. Serge opened it imperiously and strode in. Inside, a very young man in white trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt with black epaulets with one slim silver band sipped coffee from a thick demitasse. He looked up, unimpressed, caught sight of Capucine, and sprang to his feet.

“I’m the skipper of
Diomede.
I radioed you. Remember?” Serge asked.

The man smiled lazily, his eyes never leaving Capucine’s breasts. “The Maydaya. You surviva.
Benissimo.
” He eased around the desk and moved a chair two inches to indicate that Capucine should sit. He ignored Serge.

“Ensign,” Capucine said, producing her Police Judiciaire ID wallet, “I’m Commissaire Le Tellier of the French Police Judiciaire. We think a woman fell overboard thirty miles out at sea and would like you to send up a helicopter in the hopes that she may still be found.”

Butting in, Serge handed the man a slip of paper with latitude and longitude coordinates. “This is as close as I can reckon to where she went over. I’m the skipper.”

It was as if the ensign had only just understood the situation. He sat up straight.

“
Commissario,
” he said, his hands raised in the air, as if to appease the gods, his eyes still glued to Capucine’s breasts. “Of course, of course.
Che tragedia! Che orrore!
I’ll call the helicopter service immediately, immediately. You must forgive me. This is Porto Cervo. All we have here is movie stars and celebrities. Everything is an emergency. I had no idea you had undergone such an
enorme tragedia.
”

He searched frantically though a dog-eared phone directory on the desk and punched in a number. The ringing at the other end could be heard clearly through the phone’s handset. As they waited, an even younger man in a white uniform with entirely unadorned black epaulets rushed into the room and whispered in the ensign’s ear in eager sibilants. He was waved away in irritation.

The man cupped his hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver. “He is telling me that your boat is moored at our stairway, which is normally forbidden. But, Commissario, you are welcome to remain there as long as you like.”

His sycophantic smile was interrupted by a voice on the telephone. A rapid staccato of Italian ensued. The conversation over, he smiled warmly at Capucine.

“
Va bene.
They are sending a helicopter. I let you know what they find.” He spoke only to Capucine. It was as if Serge was not in the room. “You looka tired. Go sleepa. I call you the
minuto
I heara something. I take cara everything.”

Back at the boat, Capucine and Serge found no one on deck and only Aude and Régis in the salon. They sat at either end of the settee. Aude, impassive as ever, read from a very thick book. Régis typed energetically on his laptop. At the sight of Capucine, he sprang up.

“Everyone’s gone to bed,” Régis said. “They were exhausted. We wanted to wait for you two, even though we’re punched out, as well.”

“Go to sleep. They’re sending out a helicopter. They’ll let us know if they find anything,” Capucine replied.

Punctuating her words, the drumbeat
thumpa-thumpa
of a helicopter flying close overhead reverberated in the salon.

The next morning the members of the group seemed strained and ill at ease with each other. Alexandre realized that a communal breakfast was the last thing anyone wanted. He, Capucine, and Jacques began the long climb up the mossy stone steps, hoping to find a café not too far off. When they were halfway up, Inès called out to them to wait for her.

They sat at a table on the terrace of the small quai-side café and drank
caffelatte,
made with impossibly thick espresso mixed into frothy steamed milk, and nibbled tasteless industrial buns from clear plastic wrappers.

“I trust it hasn’t escaped your attention that the delightfully raunchy Nathalie was wearing Inès’s jacket,” Jacques said, surveying the colossal yachts with insouciance, ripping the wrapper off a
cornetto,
an industrial glazed croissant.

“That was the first thing I thought of,” Capucine said.

“So you don’t think it was an accident?” Alexandre asked, unwrapping with grave suspicion a
bombolone,
a brioche-like industrial pastry. He frowned, having found a topic that interested him more than people lost at sea. “It’s curious that the Italians, from whom, after all, we have inherited our gastronomic heritage, have utterly surrendered their art of
boulangerie
to industrial processing.”

“Of course it wasn’t an accident!” Inès said with verve. “Someone on that boat has been after me from the very beginning. First, I was nearly washed overboard by that so-called gust of wind. Then they tried to run me over in Bonifacio. And finally, they threw me overboard. But it was the wrong person!” She laughed victoriously.

She tapped Alexandre energetically on the arm. “That means someone’s worried that I’m on their trail, don’t you think, Monsieur le Journaliste?”

Alexandre looked at her. He frowned deeply, pensively chewing an exceptionally dry-looking Mulino Bianco, and said nothing. Capucine was positive he hadn’t heard a word she had said.