Burgundy Page 2

  Her last text had been preemptory, which made him wonder if she might be experiencing the same uncertainty he was. As they had only spent time together solving murders, he was interested to see how they would be together, without the adrenaline flowing. What better place than Burgundy, where, other than a few thefts, crime didn’t exist? She liked to play Scrabble, and he had picked up the French version. She had expressed her intention of rereading War and Peace—the greatest novel ever written in Olivier’s mind. As far as he knew, her other hobbies were action-packed. She participated in jiu-jitsu competitions and went on long runs through Central Park. She had begun taking salsa dancing lessons with her new police partner, Carlos, and showed Olivier the latest moves on FaceTime. Another favorite activity was drinking beer with her buddies at a bar on Amsterdam Avenue, evidence of which arrived regularly in the form of selfies.

  He used his ID to park in an illegal zone, and rushed five minutes late in to the arrivals section of the airport. Max’s tall silhouette filled the doorway leading from customs; pausing to scan the room, then striding with long legs to him, a big smile on her face. She wrapped her arms around him, and squeezed him in a bear hug, after which she bestowed kisses on each cheek, and then his lips were on hers. Max was back. All doubts dispelled in one breathtaking moment.

  Chapter Three

  Isabelle Limousin de Laval stood in the doorway of her stately home in the village of Auxey-Duresses, ten miles from the ancient walled town of Beaune, the wine capital of Burgundy. Tall and regal, she kept her penetrating blue eyes fixed on the passengers who emerged from the car. Max was the first out; she ran to her grandmother and merged the French and American traditions of exchanging kisses on each cheek, then enveloped her in a warm embrace.

  “Can you believe we really pulled this off?” she asked her grandmother in French, but her grandmother’s attention was riveted on her daughter, who was walking up the sidewalk.

  “You look well, Maman,” Juliette said, exchanging cheek-to-cheek kisses with her mother as though they had seen each other the week before, when it had actually been two years, and a thirty-year lapse before that.

  Max saw her grandmother’s chin tremble, the only display of emotion. “I am glad you have come home, Juliette.”

  They turned at the sound of Hank swearing. He had already lifted two suitcases from the trunk of the car, and was struggling with a third. Olivier, who was waiting to greet Madame Laval, rushed to help him.

  “Do you think the two of them can manage?” Isabelle asked in French, and Max looked to see if she was being sarcastic, and saw that she was. “Come inside,” Isabelle said to Max and Juliette. “Hank will surely find other things to do to prolong meeting up with his old nemesis.”

  “Maman!” Juliette chastised her mother. “We’ve just arrived and already…”

  Isabelle turned before Juliette could finish her sentence, and mother and daughter followed. The house was hundreds of years old, with pigeonniers, or dovecotes, on either side of the open gallery along the front of the house, and a beautiful stone staircase leading to the front hall. The entrance hall was vast, with stone steps elegantly winding up to the first floor. “Your childhood room awaits you,” Isabelle said to Juliette.

  The heavy, carved wooden front door opened and Hank and Olivier entered. Max thought this might be the first time she had ever seen her father look intimidated. He shook Isabelle’s hand, and said “Bonjour, Madame.” Max imagined them as hawk and crow as they stood there assessing each other.

  “Bienvenu,” Isabelle said coolly. “Juliette will show you where to take the suitcases.” Her gaze turned to Olivier. “Lunch will be in one hour. I do hope you are staying. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must see to preparations.” She vanished through a door Max had not noticed.

  “She hasn’t changed in thirty years,” Hank said. “She must be at least seventy-five now, right?”

  Juliette smiled, “Seventy-six. The stroke two years ago took a toll on her.”

  “You kiddin’ me?” Hank said. “I meant her attitude hasn’t changed.”

  “Neither has yours,” his wife said.

  Olivier picked up Max’s suitcase and asked “Where to?” Juliette pointed upstairs to the guest room. Max took the stairs two at a time. “I feel like I’m in a fairy tale,” she said when they entered her room.

  “Fairy tales are horror stories,” Olivier said. “At least the ones I know. They are how I learned about evil.”

  “And all that evil led you to become an examining magistrate, right? You needed to set the world aright.”

  “That’s the short version.”

  She laughed.

  They looked around at the high-ceilinged room with windows overlooking the undulating fields of vineyards of the famous Côte-de-Beaune. Max rushed to the window to look out, suddenly feeling self-conscious. He had been formal since their arrival. After dropping their bags at the apartment the day before, Olivier had driven them around the city, stopping for a light lunch in a café near the Eiffel Tower. Hank told Olivier he had been following the news and wished he could have been there to take down some of the attackers in November. From there they spoke of the American soldiers and friends who had stopped a terrorist from blowing up the train from Amsterdam to Paris. Olivier had nodded, but said very little.

  After Juliette and Hank went off on their own to see Juliette’s sister, Max and Olivier strolled along the Seine. He had looked thrilled to see her at the airport, but she hadn’t broken through his reserve. He had taken her to dinner at one of his favorite restaurants in the Sixth Arrondissement—Bouillon Racine, a brasserie built in 1905, which today boasts a fabulous interior of engraved mirrors and beautiful walls. The waiter rushed to greet them when he saw Olivier. “You will only find Parisians here,” Olivier had said. He gave a sardonic laugh. “Actually, you will only see Parisians in the city these days.”

  She had tried to bring up the attacks again, and he had said, “Let’s wait on that discussion. I’m happy just to sit here and look at you.”

  After dinner they drove to the hotel and met her parents for a nightcap. He apologized after an hour and said he would be off. She had gone for a run early the next morning, and then Olivier arrived to drive them to Burgundy.

  “Let’s drive up to the village of Saint-Romain,” Olivier said, and soon they were on a road that Max would describe as a bicycle path leading up, up to a cluster of beautiful stone houses. Hardly anyone was about. Olivier parked the car, and they ventured down a path that led to a park overlooking a valley in the distance.

  The sun shone through the clouds, casting the valley into a mirage of light and shadow. Max stood transfixed. “It’s weird, Olivier. I am standing here looking over a magnificent corner of France, and instead of being happy, I feel regret that I’m such a stranger to it.”

  “I think I understand that.”

  “I also feel like I’m a stranger to you. We’ve been apart too long, and I regret that, too.”

  He reached for her hand. “I’m sorry if I seem tenuous.”

  “Tenuous, I can handle. Aloof, I can’t.” She wanted to add that depression was on her list of things she couldn’t handle, too, but didn’t. Instead she said, “You’re probably in hangover mode from the attacks in November. Hank says it took five years for New York City to return to normalcy after 9/11.”

  “They predict there is more to come. If not here, then Belgium or Germany. Hangover is a good word for how many of us are feeling. And on that note, let’s go sip a glass of white wine.” He pulled her to him and kissed her on the lips. Max’s heart raced as she reminded herself that Olivier moved at a snail’s pace compared to her. He drove her around to see the countryside covered with vineyards, though the vines wouldn’t be lush until summer. “I’d like to work in the vineyards one day during the harvest,” she said.

  “I’m glad I had the opportunity when
I was younger. The work is backbreaking, but the rewards far outweigh the pain. The dinners alone make it an unforgettable experience.” They stopped at a little café and sipped white wine. Their conversation veered from Hank’s retirement to Olivier’s brother’s success in Australia. Nothing to arouse emotions.

  As they drove into Isabelle’s driveway, they saw Juliette sitting on the low stone wall in front of the house, looking out onto the rolling hills. “I feel like I am completely back in my childhood,” she said, “as though the past forty years never happened. I am walking with my father across that field to visit Isabelle’s friend, Anne, and her husband, Gervais. It was an idyllic time.”

  A bell sounded and Juliette joined them on their trek to the house, where a round table was set in an alcove off the kitchen. A bottle of Puligny-Montrachet Le Caillevet 1er cru, had been opened, and was waiting to be poured. Juliette studied the label, and explained to Max that here the labeling was quite different from Bordeaux and other areas. Each label is a petite histoire, she said, and Max could appreciate the analogy, noticing the amount of printing on the label. “The village wines are allowed to take the names of the famous wineries, and so it’s important to understand the differences.”

  Olivier tasted, “Fresh. A good nose of summer flowers. Excellent.”

  Juliette sipped. “I love tasting the minerals from the soil. It sets our chardonnays apart.”

  Jeannette brought a dish of feuilleté d’escargots à l’oseille, snails in a puff pastry with a creamed herb sauce, to the table. Hank said he didn’t know when he had tasted anything so delicious, and Isabelle looked pleased. The conversation was desultory, as they settled in, catching up on each other’s news. Juliette mentioned that she had been making a list of places they had to visit, and people, too. Olivier invited them to a dinner at his parents’ house, an hour south, in the village of Viré, the date to be announced once they were settled.

  The next dish to arrive was poulet à la moutarde, and Juliette said that it had been her favorite dish when she was a child. Isabelle’s housemaid, Jeannette, brought in a bottle of red wine to accompany it. “It’s a local wine made by the Prunier family,” Isabelle said. “The daughter, Estelle, has taken over and is doing a magnificent job.”

  Olivier asked Hank how he was enjoying retirement, and Hank admitted he wasn’t used to it yet. “I’ve been volunteering a bit in a couple of the public schools where Juliette is teaching French.”

  “He teaches these middle school children that crime doesn’t pay,” Juliette said, “and they listen to him.”

  Hank chuckled. “They’re so relieved to be out of French class they’ll believe anything I say.” Turning to Isabelle, he said, “I read in a magazine about the guy who tried to poison the famous Romanée Conti vineyard for extortion purposes in 2009. What a scandal.”

  “An entire book was written about it,” Juliette said. “By an American, of course.”

  Isabelle shrugged. “Most people here don’t even know about it. Only two grapevines were damaged. The extortionist was a man who stewed in prison after bungling a house robbery and decided to try extorting money from a famous domaine, but was picked up and put back in prison.”

  “He hanged himself in his cell in 2010,” Olivier said. “Case closed permanently.” He smiled, “Surely it’s been made into a movie in the U.S. by now?”

  They laughed. Isabelle said, “I’m certain the highly esteemed owner, Aubert de Villaine, would be happy for the story to disappear. He would be much happier to put the focus on the climats, or vineyards here, being listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”

  “What is it about his wine that deserves such attention?” Max asked.

  Olivier said, “The British wine critic, Clive Coates, said it best: It’s the purest, most aristocratic, most intense example of the pinot noir grape, and I agree. You would be fortunate to get a vintage bottle for ten thousand dollars.”

  “Supply and demand,” Hank said. “Everybody wants what they can’t have.”

  “Thieves have been breaking into a few cellars, stealing certain bottles,” Isabelle said. “Because the bottles are numbered and can be traced, the theory is that unscrupulous collectors will go to any length to get a certain rare bottle.”

  “It can’t be anything like the scale of thefts and counterfeiting that we uncovered in Bordeaux,” Max said.

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” her grandmother agreed.

  Olivier said, “Some of the finest vineyards produce no more than fifty cases, as opposed to the four thousand cases a famous winery in Bordeaux makes.”

  “And the grapes that grew a few meters away will bring in half of that,” Isabelle said. “Because they are not designated grand cru or premier cru, the income is much less for the producer.”

  “That must create some fights,” Hank said.

  “Most people accept the system that was put in place in the 1930s,” Isabelle said. “Though some work hard to change their appellation. My good friend Anne’s son-in-law should have a better rating for his wines, but he is a rebel and doesn’t adhere to the rules of the ruling body, the AOC. They dictate how many plants you can have, and how far apart they have to be, for example. They have existed for as long as I can remember, but not until recent years, when prices have skyrocketed, have they become like spies, checking to make sure no one produces one liter more than his allotment. It’s absurd.”

  “And this is the same woman who produces the most extraordinary chardonnay in the land?” Olivier asked.

  Isabelle smiled. “One and the same. She has worked very hard to prove her father and brothers wrong about her, and happened to surpass them all with her skills.”

  Juliette said, “Wasn’t there an old myth that women tainted the vineyards?”

  Isabelle scoffed. “Not the vineyards, but the presence of a woman entering the room where the wine was fermenting could damage the wine. Women here in Burgundy are finally being recognized for their fine wines, but there are far fewer than there should be. With my few vines, I joined their organization called Femmes et Vins de Bourgogne. There are only forty-eight of us, and I barely produce a glass. But at least we can support each other.” Lunch was drawing to a close when Hank said, “Juliette told me that Anne’s daughter died.”

  Isabelle’s face drooped. “Caroline died last year of breast cancer at age thirty-eight, leaving behind her husband, Jean-Claude, and a son, Luc. A tragedy. And now Anne is finding the time to fight with Jean-Claude because her daughter left him one hectare of grand cru land that her father had bequeathed to her.”

  “But the inheritance laws are quite specific as far as the children and the spouse are concerned,” Olivier said. “Any property governed by French inheritance law cannot be disposed of by will. The two classes of heir who possess an inalienable right to a proportion of the property are the surviving descendants and, if there are none, to the surviving spouse.”

  Isabelle said, “Yes, and in this case, Luc inherits a share, which means Jean-Claude would need his agreement to sell or even rent out his house. But Jean-Claude can set up a special clause to deal with that. As for Anne and Jean-Claude, in the end you hope to have a good notaire, for the last word rests with them and their interpretation of the law, which can differ.”

  Max wanted to ask why her mother had not inherited from her father when he died, but knew this wasn’t the time to ask. Isabelle suggested that everyone get some rest and said they could make plans after. “Dinner will be at nine,” she said. Jeannette began clearing the table as they moved outside from the kitchen.

  Isabelle approached Olivier. “Monsieur Chaumont,” she said. “I wasn’t going to bring this up, but Anne telephoned before lunch and I felt that I should speak to you.”

  “Bien sûr,” he said. “Shall we go back inside?”

  “Non, non. She accepted a young grape-picker, a girl from the U.S., who showed
up on a beat-up red Vespa to help with the harvest last September. Anne, like many vineyard owners today, no longer hires pickers from other countries because of the bureaucratic demands, but she was so taken by this girl that she accepted her. Soon the girl was living with her, and the next thing we all knew, Anne had asked her to stay through the winter. Of course she is trying to replace her daughter by…”

  Olivier tried to disguise his impatience over Isabelle not getting to the point. “And the problem?”

  “The girl took off a few days ago, and hasn’t returned. Jean-Claude saw her at a party with some unsavory people a couple of nights ago, and Anne is frantic.”

  Olivier didn’t think it sounded out of the ordinary, and said so. He was met with a strong stare from Isabelle, indicating that she would not have brought the subject up if she agreed with his quick assessment, which led him to say, “There’s nothing to say unless it is known that she left against her will. Why don’t I stop by later and listen to what Madame Bré has to say about the missing girl, who, I assume, must have a prénom?” What he didn’t add was that he relished the opportunity to meet the woman who made wine that turned the senses upside down.

  “The girl’s name is Lucy Kendrick. I’ve invited Anne to join us for dinner. You will be here, of course.” She turned and walked up the slight incline to the house.

  “What do you think?” Max asked him when her grandmother was out of hearing.

  “What do I think? I think Burgundian women are formidable to the point of being intimidating. It is daunting to imagine sitting at table with those two grandes dames!”

  Max laughed. “I meant the girl on the red Vespa.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing but the imagination of two women suffering from ennui.”