The Grave Gourmet (3 page)

Abruptly, the gurney returned, pushed at speed by two men, far more quietly this time now that it was laden with the body in a thick black plastic body bag.

Capucine shot up. “What's this? I gave instructions that nothing was to be touched without my authorization.”

“Hey,” said one of the forensic experts. “We took all the shots we needed, zipped up, and got rolling. Your brigadier back there thought that was just dandy. Anyway, we don't have all day for amateurs to be poking at our stiff. This one's a real stinker and we need to get it in the reefer fast. If you want to play kissy face with it you can come down when we do the autopsy.” The two experts pushed the gurney out the door.

Capucine stormed into the kitchen.

“Brigadier Lemercier, what's the meaning of this? I gave you a direct order that the body was not to be disturbed.”

From behind her an sepulchral basso profundo intoned, “Now, now missy,” almost as if it were the incarnation of her conscience. She wheeled and was startled to find herself facing a man so pallid and desiccated he could have been the victim himself returned to give his deposition before being driven off. But she intuited it was merely one of the forensic experts whose physiognomy had been molded over the years by occupational mimetism. “You have your work to do, and we have ours. At this stage there is nothing noteworthy about the body,” he continued in his astonishing voice.

“Besides,” said Isabelle, “it was completely icky.” She made a stage pantomime of disgust and pinched her nose. “You definitely wouldn't have liked it. This, by the way, is
Ajudant
Dechery from forensics.” Capucine danced a mental jig between reaching for her Sig and bursting into tears.

Behind Dechery she could see the door and inside of the walk-in splotched with gray aluminum fingerprint powder. One expert was taking flash pictures with relentless monotony. A second was putting samples of the produce from the walk-in into small plastic containers.

“Also,” continued Dechery, “those idiots from the commissariat left the door to the fridge open all morning. Damn body was ancient enough as it was and they had to warm it up for me. That's where all this stench comes from.”

Capucine was barely able to speak through the clenched teeth of her rage. “Were you able to estimate the time of death?”

“My dear, the best I can do is guess and say he had been dead at least two days and probably no more than five or six. Obviously we'll know better once we do the autopsy.”

“Any idea of what killed him?”

“Well, I'll tell you. It's a good thing I don't have the money for this sort of place. Certainly looks like food poisoning of some kind. Almost sure to be from bad produce. You can't beat good old
Clostridium botulinum
for a painful death. Do you know what he ate?”

“I was just going to figure that out myself,” Capucine said, comparing the dupe sheets and menu codes.

“Here you go. He had pheasant
ravioles
in a pheasant consommé to begin with, then sweetbreads grilled on licorice root, and finished with an avocado soufflé. Doesn't sound too bad, does it?”

“There's nothing on there that screams out botulism unless some of it was canned. But that's all idle speculation. We'll know for sure what caused the death in about a week. The bacteriological cultures of the stomach samples take that long to develop. What makes it a bit simpler is that there are no sources of nonbacteriological poisons in anything he apparently ate. You know, mushrooms or oysters or anything like that. Anyway, you won't hear from us until the cultures are done.”

With a sinister, deep laugh Duchamps went back to the walk-in. A white painted outline was visible on the floor and the walls were now almost completely covered with fingerprint powder. When the team moved out to start work on the kitchen, Duchamps closed the door with a metallic clang and affixed a large octagonal orange seal across the jamb. It had a distinguished look, almost as if it was the latest honor Diapason had been awarded.

T
hat night Capucine was unable to sleep. Woken repeatedly by her squirming and noisy plumping up of pillows, Alexandre finally ironically growled an old French proverb, “Sleep is even more perfect when it's shared with a loved one.” Capucine jumped out of bed and stalked off to the living room sofa dragging a needlepoint coverlet, pillow under her arm.

The next morning she was still despondent as she arrived at the headquarters building of the fiscal branch; she didn't have the slightest clue what to do next. The approach to white-collar cases always seemed to flow like water from a spring, but now she was utterly stymied.

Even the unintentional cynicism of the fiscal division's address—122, rue Château des Rentiers, the coupon clippers' castle—failed to cheer her up, as it invariably did even in the worst of her moods.

For lack of anything better, her plan for the day was rudimentary, a quick run-through of her office at Rentiers to deal with any departmental effluvia that might have emerged during the night and then down to the Quai des Orfèvres to sic the three brigadiers on the restaurant staff. If in doubt, keep everyone busy.

She was stunned to see a man installed at her desk, a rather attractive man—a very attractive man, actually—his feet on its top carelessly strewing her meticulously ordered stacks of files, poking amateurishly at the keyboard on his lap—her keyboard, actually—lost in childlike concentration. For a brief, wild flash she thought that the room had been reassigned and this was the new tenant waiting impatiently for her to remove her possessions. But that was impossible. This man just couldn't be in the financial brigade. He didn't look at all like an accountant. He looked more like a rock star, or at least a wannabe rock star: designer jeans, Western belt with a large silver buckle, pistol in an American-looking basket weave quick-draw holster, artful stubble, brown eyes smoldering with brooding eroticism.

As Capucine approached the desk, the liquid mahogany pools of those eyes languidly detached themselves from the monitor and lapped over her body. She felt beyond naked; the pools seemed to coalesce in her intimate crevasses.

“Now it makes perfect sense that Tallon put you on my case,” the man leered. “I didn't get it before, but I sure get it now.” Capucine blushed, simultaneously outraged and seduced.

Unceremoniously, he dumped the keyboard on the desk. It fell upside down. He uncoiled with serpentine grace. He put out his hand. “Jeanloup Rivière, at your service. I fervently hope.” His ogle transformed the phatic into a leaden double entendre.

“B…But I thought you weren't due back until Monday.”

“Little sister, it turned out to be a goddamn computer course. I spent as much of the day on the beach as I could but that got old fast. So I told them I had been called back for a crisis and here I am. Did you miss me?”

“I've never met you.”

“You should have. If I'd been here you wouldn't be scratching around in the dust with nothing to show for your time.”

“How do you know what I've been up to?”

“Little sister, little sister. I've been with Tallon since the ass crack of dawn this morning. The hot news is that he's decided to keep you on the case full-time. And he's put me on another case. A real honey. Some citizen did a woman in and left pieces of her body in twenty different metro stops. More my style, Tallon must think. And the best part is that he's asked me to be your guardian angel. You know, show you the ropes, keep an eye on you and all,” Rivière said with a leer so exaggerated it looked like farce.

Despite herself Capucine broke into a smile.

“And the good news just keeps on coming. He's even given you my three musketeers for the duration. They seemed happy enough about that. Momo told me you were way more decorative than I am. Anyhow, let's get our delicious asses out of here and get some work done. We've got to jump-start this puppy.”

As they arrived at the Quai des Orfèvres Rivière suddenly dropped his cartoon Lothario routine and switched to caricaturing an aloof superior officer.

He peremptorily ordered Capucine to obtain the names and stations of all the police guards of the official buildings and embassies in the vicinity of Diapason for the night of the incident. Capucine looked blank.

“You know, Lieutenant, the
vigies,
those poor sods who are too dumb to make gendarme rank and spend their days stuck out in front of public buildings like sacks of cabbages. Beats the hell out of me why they get automatic weapons. They can hardly hold them, much less shoot them. I'll bet they're not loaded.” Capucine had no idea why he wanted the list. But he wanted it within the hour.

Fifty minutes later Capucine was in Rivière's office being undressed by his eyes once again, this time even more thoroughly. He now seemed to know where all the clips and snaps were. Once his inspection was over he ran his eye down the list, circled two names with a fat marker, and shoved it back at her. “Here. Find out where these two guys are right now. They have stuff to tell us. Get back to me in fifteen minutes.”

As she rushed off she lashed out at herself. Here was exactly the sort of man she despised most in life: vulgarly macho and arrogantly stupid. And here she was all a-twiddle, rushing around trying to please him. He was attractive, yes, but her reaction was still despicable.

Within the allotted time frame Capucine returned with the addresses the two vigies were currently guarding. Rivière now seemed to be concentrating on her legs. He was clearly a man of eclectic tastes. “That took long enough. Let's get going.”

Their first stop was six hundred yards down the rue de Varenne from Diapason at the entrance to a huge eighteenth-century
hôtel particulier.
Rivière clapped the blue dome light on the roof of his car and bounced it up on the sidewalk at speed, screeching to a halt in front of a doltish policeman in an ill-fitting uniform. As if in a blind rage Rivière jumped out and roughly grabbed the man's body armor.

“You Durand?” he sneered.

“Y…Y…Yessir!”

“You deserted your post on Friday night. I'm going to take you down to the Quai and write you up right now. This isn't going to be some little review board slap on the wrist. Your ass is going to get fired and you're not going to get a centime of pension when I get through with you. Count on it, my friend!” As he spoke he shook the vigie hard enough to rattle his teeth.

“Sir, please, please, I only stepped to the corner to have one cigarette.”

“One! You little shits think you've joined a smoking club. You think we pay you to stand around on street corners chatting with your buddies without giving a good goddamn about the buildings you're supposed to be guarding. Is that it?”

“Sir, please, I only had two or three cigarettes that night.”

“Durand, you're truly pathetic. Two or three, my ass. Did anything unusual happen? Your only hope is to tell me something I might want to know, otherwise I'm going to pull you off duty and put you on write-up right now. Better make it good.”

“Sir, please, I didn't really see anything. Nothing. Just this one delivery being made.”

“Out with it, Durand.”

“I was having a smoke on the corner and having a natter with Vigie Clement, who was guarding the Austrian Embassy just across the street.”

“You mean the Austrian embassy that's two hundred yards down the street.”

“That's the place. So Clement says to me, ‘Check this out. Here are a couple of guys actually making a delivery to that fancy restaurant at 2:30 in the morning. These rich dudes don't know the difference between night and day.' He said two guys were carrying a big bag into the restaurant. That's all, sir. Then I went back to my post. But I didn't see it. Clement did.”

“And why didn't you report it when the bulletin went out?”

“Well, it didn't seem all that important, it was just a routine delivery, right, and I couldn't very well have said I was off station, now could I have, sir?”

Back in the car Rivière breathed hard through his nose like a bull in an arena, in the grip of his endorphin rush. Capucine felt she should be humiliated at participating in the shameful bullying of a pitiful human being worthy of her every compassion. But she was almost as exhilarated as Rivière. It was like being on a roller coaster. She wanted to shoot her arms up in the air to intensify her giddiness.

Vigie Clement turned out to be considerably lighter than his colleague and was easily lifted off the pavement. He delivered the entirety of his brief testimony with his heels a good two inches clear of the street. He had walked down from his station to the corner opposite Durand's post. From that vantage point he had had a full view of the side entrance to Diapason. At around 2:30 he had seen two men drive up in a car—manufacturer not noted, much less license plate number—and remove a six-foot-long duffel bag from the trunk. With a man holding each end of the bag they carried it into the restaurant straining under the weight. He had not seen them get back into the car since he had had to return to his post quickly. He was keenly sensitive to the responsibility of his duties and couldn't in all conscience stay away from his post for too long no matter how interesting things were. He was sure the lieutenant would be sympathetic to that.

As he got back into the car Rivière put his hand on Capucine's thigh. “Voilà, little sister. That's how it's done. Now we know how the body got back into the restaurant. I did the hard part. All you have to do is find those two guys. Think you can handle that?”

T
he next night again proved sleepless for Capucine. At first light a clamor in the kitchen woke her from a fitful half sleep. She found Alexandre at his massive stove resolutely making omelets, his brow crinkled in concentration. The aroma of
cèpes
richly colored the kitchen. Alexandre never looked this determined so early in the morning.

“Poor
bébé
, Alexandre said, bleary-eyed, “you spent most of the night tossing and turning. And when you did get to sleep you kept mumbling about an astrolabe and a missing chart.”

“I remember that. I was dreaming that I was on Columbus's ship and we had no charts and were sailing around in circles.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Alexandre tsked, gently nudging an omelet with a spatula. “This can't go on. It's not just your distress. Any more sleep deprivation and I won't be able to write my name, much less a restaurant review. But fear not. I have the solution! You need a Sancho Panza to point you in the right direction on this case and I, magnanimous as ever, am volunteering.”

The natural feminist in Capucine revolted at the idea of yet another male mentor. Why did men eternally think women were complete incompetents? Not replying, Capucine went to the Pasquini coffee machine that had been her Christmas extravagance for Alexandre and applied herself to the concoction of a large café au lait. As the steam geysered up through the milk her irritation fell away with the suddenness of a damp bathrobe dropping off her shoulders. Alexandre was right, she
was
tilting at windmills. How silly she was being about it all. The idea of Alexandre jiggling along behind her on a trotting mule made her want to giggle. Her accumulated tension erupted into an attack of schoolgirl silliness. She picked up a colander, put it on her head, and said, “So be it.
Alors
, my faithful squire, what are our plans for the day?”

“See, you're getting better already. My noble master, we are going to do the knightly thing. We're going to have a long leisurely lunch at Diapason and see if we can't start some hares.”

Capucine sat bolt upright. “We couldn't possibly do that! You'd never get a reservation. Tallon would never let me take the whole afternoon off. It's not even ethical. Would I be there as a flic or as your wife? I'd be abusing your position. We'd be spying on a friend. Everyone would stare at me.”

Alexandre laughed cheerfully as he slid the omelets onto their plates. “I've already spoken to Jean-Basile and he'll make room for us. But you'll have to take that utensil off your head or people really will stare at you.”

In the end it was Tallon who convinced her. “Lieutenant, a good soldier always capitalizes on the advantages of his terrain. You have the potential to obtain key insider knowledge. You're here to solve a case, not to explore ethics.”

Still harboring misgivings, she parked the Clio illegally on the corner opposite the restaurant and rushed in, fifteen minutes late once again. Alexandre was perched on the edge of the hostesses' desk, peering intently into the décolleté of the striking young blonde. The hostess smiled back at Alexandre coquettishly.

As Capucine hurried in Alexandre grinned and said, “Dear, this is Giselle, who just started two months ago. It seems her predecessor left because—”

Just as Capucine began to clench her teeth the maître d' floated up so smoothly he might have been on ice skates. “
Bonjour,
Madame le Lieutenant,” Bouteiller said with a tight but sincere smile. “Will madame follow me? Your table is ready.” Capucine smirked in silent satisfaction at the reversal of roles. Normally Alexandre, invariably lionized in restaurants, would be the honored guest. She sailed past him, gloating, and beckoning with a crooked finger.

At the table Capucine couldn't resist chiding Alexandre. “You're sadly mistaken, my good squire, if you think unbridled randiness is integral to the Sancho Panza role.”

Alexandre was saved from the need of a retort by the sacrosanct rogations of ordering food and drink. As he carried on his dialogue with the maître d', Capucine looked around the room. There was not an empty seat. But the sound of American English did seem conspicuous in the buzz of conversation. For the thousandth time she wondered why it was such a distinctive trait of Americans to speak in public places as if they were on stage. Also, there might be more than the usual number of Japanese. Or maybe she was just being unusually observant.

In due course the appetizers arrived. For Alexandre a lobster claw reconstructed from pigeon breast and Brittany
homard
and for Capucine Périgord foie gras on a bed of pureed noix de Saint-Jacques. Alexandre's nostrils quivered like a hound dog's. For him life never got better than this.

Halfway through his lobster he sighed and said, “Let's get to work. Time to compare notes. I'll show you mine and then you can show me yours.

“From the press's point of view this is now a dead story. Poor Delage was too dull to be newsworthy. And Renault has done the most boring thing they could and put the chief financial officer temporarily in charge. He's even less newsworthy than Delage and he'll just sit as still as possible trying very hard not to rock the boat until the board appoints a full-time president after an eternal deliberation.

“On the other hand, the rumor mill of well-heeled Paris is cranking full strength. They've decided it's definitely a case of food poisoning. If a bigwig wants to impress a colleague by inviting him here, he's laughed at. ‘Are you trying to poison me? What have I done to you?' Overnight poor Jean-Basile has become a laughingstock. It's his worst nightmare.”

“But the place is packed,” Capucine said.

“You're right, but they're all tourists. Not a member of the establishment in sight,” Alexandre said with obvious exaggeration. “If this keeps up Jean-Basile might as well put up a souvenir stand in the front. With that delicious creature up there he'd make a killing selling little Eiffel Towers with thermometers in them.”

“The irony of that,” Capucine said, “is that the forensic people have now decided it wasn't food poisoning after all. Of course they hem and haw and say nothing will be definite until the cultures are ready in another week, but since the death was from respiratory failure it could only have been the result of a chemical poison, botulism, or bad oysters. Since there were no preserves or oysters on the menu, logically it had to be a chemical poison of some sort. Mind you, they're a little put out that none of the classic poisons showed up in the autopsy, but they're doing another round of tests and hoping for something totally obscure.”

Alexandre harrumphed. “And I'm sure they will come up with something. There hasn't been a case of food poisoning in a three-star restaurant in the entire history of France.”

Just then the maître d' returned with two
aide-serveurs
bearing tiny silver cups on transparent crystal dishes.

“Madame le Lieutenant, monsieur,” Bouteiller said, “this is a little surprise to clear your pallets between courses. Oyster sorbet with a mousse of sweet Melissa, lemon-scent geranium, and verveine,” he announced proudly.

“The plot thickens,” Alexandre said with a frown.

“I beg your pardon!” the maître d' said with concern.

 

The meal marched on with its stately cadence. Main courses of rack of lamb raised to inconceivable heights with lemon and coriander for Alexandre and a dish of carrots, kohlrabi, turnips, and radishes brilliantly seasoned with an intricate mixture of Indian spices for Capucine. Then the cheeses, incomparably better than elsewhere, presumably because they were conditioned in a sixteenth-century cellar by a master
affineur
, one of Labrousse's cronies. After, the desserts, strawberries in an undeconstructable sauce that had the aroma of hibiscus but none of the taste for Capucine and a soufflé of pistachios, pralines, and black chocolate for Alexandre. Finally, coffee and a plate of sweet macaroons made with vegetables from Labrousse's own country garden, tilled by horse alone where no chemical had ever penetrated.

Capucine's almost postcoital afterglow was blown away by Labrousse's appearance. He shambled down the aisle between the tables smiling with only the bottom of his face at the few remaining patrons and made his way as directly as he could to Alexandre and Capucine's table. Despite his seemingly insuperable talent in the kitchen he was decidedly more haggard than when Capucine had seen him on Monday. An aide-serveur rushed up with a chair and Labrousse sat down with a thud. “
C'était?
” Labrousse asked with the brutal understatement French chefs use when speaking of food. “Was it as expected?”

Alexandre smiled warmly at him. “
Rien à dire
.” In a country where everyone was a food critic and felt no meal should pass without a retort,
rien à dire
, nothing to complain about, was the highest possible accolade. Labrousse beamed.

“It was exceptional, even for you,” Capucine added. “I particularly loved the oyster sorbet. It tasted more oystery than oysters in the shell.”

“That's the whole idea,” Labrousse said. “It's all the rage, this molecular gastronomy. You extract the essence of the produce and reconstitute it with a few tricks from the laboratory and it becomes something entirely new with heightened flavor.”

“But,” Capucine went on, “we didn't see any oysters in the kitchen on Monday.”

“Ah, my dear, always the police officer. Of course you didn't. It's a tradition that goes back to the Revolution. Good restaurants never serve seafood of any kind on Monday. The patrons would think it had been sitting in warm kitchens all day Sunday, and that just wouldn't do.”

Labrousse brightened up slightly. “Let's drink a little sip of something.” He arched an eyebrow at a waiter who was removing tablecloths and whispered to him when he scurried over. “It's a very old
alcool de framboise
that I get from a friend in the Midi.”

When the waiter had gone, Labrousse deflated as the exhilaration of the afternoon's stint at the stove wore off. “Did you really think it was up to standard? I nearly thought I'd lost it with all this business. You have no idea how the police have affected me.”

He flushed and grabbed Capucine's hand. “My dear, I certainly didn't mean you. Without you there I don't know what I'd have done!”

The crystal decanter of framboise arrived, nestled in a silver tureen of crushed ice, and was poured out into tiny, tulip-shaped crystal glasses. The chemical bite of freezingly pure alcohol with barely the faintest hint of raspberry slashed through the lingering taste of lunch that was just beginning to go stale in the mouth.

“Let me tell you,” Labrousse continued, “the situation is impossible. The tension in the kitchen is strong enough to separate the sauces. The slightest incident becomes a serious dispute. But that's not the worst of it. My patrons are abandoning me. Did you see who was here today? There were so many cancellations that I had to let in some of the backlog of Americans and Japanese. If I do too much of that I won't have a French client left.”

He took another sip of his framboise.

“The situation is
grave
.”

When it was finally time to go, Alexandre walked Capucine across the street to her car and held the door open for her. “As your Sancho, my advice is to focus on Renault. If your lab boys wind up deciding it's murder after all, as they undoubtedly will, it's almost inevitable the solution will be there.”

As her car proceeded off at its leisurely pace Capucine thought about it. He was right, of course, but she still had the distinct feeling that the entire outing had been well engineered as the sort of maneuver a mama fox attempts when trying to draw the hounds away from her cubs.