Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (13 page)

T
hat night, Inès left her office punctually at seven thirty, as she always did. She had finally caught up with the pile of work that had accumulated while she was away, and was looking forward to getting home to her little apartment, having a cup of green tea from Mariage Frères, her sole extravagance, and spending time mapping out a plan to get the Tottinguer case moving with Capucine in hiding. She told herself for the thousandth time that going on that boat trip had been lunacy.

Before the trip everything had been perfect. She had had just enough evidence to open a criminal
instruction
on Tottinguer. She had lined up the ideal Police Judiciaire detective to handle the investigation. Not only was she almost without peer at criminal investigation, but she also had considerable financial expertise. And it had all come unglued because of a brass shell case.

Ruminating over the wisdom of replacing Capucine with another detective, she walked slowly down the cement staircase of the underground parking lot where she kept her little Citroën during the day. Deep in thought, she sauntered the narrow tunnel, only wide enough for a single row of cars on either side. The place always made her think of an endless mine shaft.

By the time she reached her car, she had almost, but not quite, concluded that replacing Capucine with another officer was the right thing to do. Even if Nathalie’s murderer were found, it was possible the IGPN investigation of Capucine would result in her dismissal from the force or reassignment to an administrative function. In any case, she really couldn’t wait any longer, now could she? The tricky part was going to be finding another officer even half as good as Capucine.

There it was, her little Citroën. It was so old, it was getting unreliable. She really should replace it. But buying a car was such a hassle.

She squeezed into the tight space between her car and the one next to it. As she leaned forward to slide the key into the lock, she was struck by a violent blow in the middle of her back. She found herself on her hands and knees, her head spinning, with no memory of falling. She shook her head to clear it. She was dealt an even more violent kick to her buttocks, slamming her face down on the cement floor. The world began to ease away from her. She felt squeezed into a closet-size room with walls of grainy cement flecked with red. Her nose was plugged shut, and she couldn’t suck enough air through her mouth to fill her lungs. She heaved and gasped, the loudness of the tortured sound scaring her.

Strong hands jerked her up onto her knees. While she was still being held from behind, a man loomed up in front. Her head sagged. The one behind her reached deep into her hair, scratching her scalp, and snapped her head up.

The one in front was just a slip of a boy in his teens, at the edge of emaciation. Jeans designed skintight dangled around his skinny legs; a long, thick chain hung from belt loop to pocket; his eyebrows were decorated with an almost comical number of piercings; a large ebony disk distended one earlobe.

The boy slapped her. She saw his arm move and she heard the report, but she felt nothing. It was as if she was observing the scene from inside her little room.

“Bitch. I’m going to teach you to keep your place and not stick your ugly face where it doesn’t belong.”

She heard another report and felt a jolt like an electric shot. The pain shocked her. Her lungs froze. She was drowning. Her body willed her to convulse forward, but her hair was still held tight. After an eternity the pain subsided enough for her to take shallow puppy breaths, which brought no relief and instead intensified her agonized want of air.

Through a dun mist she saw the boy’s hand unzip his jeans and extract a member so long and skinny, it could have belonged to some barn rodent. She wanted to look up at his face, but her eyeballs refused to obey.

“Open up, bitch!”

The command made no sense to her.

Another violent slap. The ebbing tide of her consciousness slipped away. The boys began punching her face rhythmically, as if performing a gym exercise. Again, she could see the fists arriving and could hear the blows resonating in her cranium, but could not feel them. She noticed his member had become flaccid and he needed to hold it up with the hand he was not using to slap her. Everything went chalkboard black-gray. She had no idea exactly at which point she lost consciousness. Later, she was aware of rising up on her knees, her forehead still resting on the ground. She was alone. She could breathe through her mouth. Not well, filling her lungs. She remained immobile on her knees for an eternity.

The world sharpened into focus. The pain had become a whole separate, not entirely unwelcome, presence. She was elated. She had a profound sense of achievement.

Her handbag, implausibly, was right next to her. She extracted her BlackBerry and touched the speed dial for her secretary.

“Oui, madame.”

“Marie, listen to me very carefully. I need you to call both
Le Figaro
and TF1 and tell them that I’ve been assaulted in the parking garage next to the office. Tell them they both will get an exclusive to the TV and print story, which is breaking right now. When you’ve done that, wait for exactly half an hour—you’re going to need to give them time to get here—and then call emergency and have the SAMU come and pick me up. I want the SAMU fully covered on TV. Do you understand?”

“Of course, Madame. You want a close-up of you being loaded into the ambulance.”

“You’ve got it! You’re a treasure.”

Inès remained on her knees. Her elation evolved into an even deeper sense of contentment. Far sooner than she expected, she saw the flashing yellow light of the first news truck reflected on the far wall. She started to smile. But it hurt her mouth terribly and wouldn’t look right on TV, anyway.

A
lexandre had become a devotee of the village. Every morning after breakfast he would amble down the hill to buy newspapers, kibitz the pétanque game, and drink an apéro at the café. Then, at the first note of the Angelus, he would wander back to the mas to lift the lid of Magali’s cocotte and let the aromas of her lunch stir his appetite.

Capucine used this interlude to shower and administer all the
petits soins
so dear to Frenchwomen. That morning, when she switched off her hair dryer, Capucine heard the shrill vibration of one of the confiscated cell phones in the cardboard box on her desk. She bounded down the hallway, trying for the phone before the caller hung up.

It was Inès.

“I’m glad you called,” Capucine said. “I was going to try to catch you before lunch. I’ve had some ideas for the case.”

As she spoke, Capucine caught sight of the
Midi Libre,
one of the local newspapers, propped up on a stack of books in the center of the desk, undoubtedly left by Alexandre.

PARIS JUGE D’INSTRUCTION ASSAULTED IN PARKING GARAGE
.

Beneath the headline was a sooty picture of someone being loaded from a gurney into a SAMU paramedic van. An official photo of Inès was inset in a corner.

“Inès, this is absolutely horrible. What happened? Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay. I was beaten up, but it’s nothing that won’t heal in a few days. The worst of the injuries is two cracked ribs. The good news is that today the bruises are gruesomely photogenic. I’m even scared to look at myself in the mirror. There’s going to be a small press conference in my hospital room, which will be glorious for our case.”

“Glorious?”

“Don’t you see? It means that the Tottinguers are panicking. But they’ve blundered. Not only am I not in the slightest bit intimidated, but they’ve also transformed me into a latter-day Joan of Arc.”

“Inès, you’re sounding very stressed, almost a little irrational. This is no time to be thinking about work.”

“Capucine, listen.” Inès grunted from the pain of sitting up. “There’s been a development I haven’t had the chance to tell you about yet. Last week Maître Lévêque invited me to lunch. He proposed a deal, not too thinly veiled. If I agreed not to investigate EADS.” The international consortium that now owned most of the European defense and aeronautic industry had become one of the most powerful indistrio-political institutions in Europe.

“Lévêque, would make sure I was leaked enough evidence to prosecute not only the son, André, but the entire management board of the banque Tottinguer, as well.”

Capucine said nothing. There was an awkward silence. Inès’s breathing rasped painfully. The rasping had a decidedly artificial quality to it.

“Did you accept his offer?”

“Of course not. The Tottinguers are whitebait. Lévêque made it clear there are salmon in the river. I’m going after them.”

There was another long pause with more labored breathing.

“But I intend to eat the whitebait as an appetizer before I get to my main course of salmon, and you’re going to help me net them. The first step is to get young André behind bars, in
garde à vue
. That has to happen this week. I need you to get the evidence. Once you get that done, you and I will begin to put pressure on the wife. She’s sure to cave in. She’s the biggest chink in their armor.

“And once I’ve relished my whitebait, I’m going to put together a large squad from the fiscal brigade and carefully take EADS apart brick by brick. Of course, you’ll be a key member of the team. You’re going to be amazed at how large our salmon will be. I think we’ll be setting some world records.”

“The last time we spoke, you were talking about finding someone else to work on the Tottinguer case.”

Inès made a guttural noise, which Capucine at first thought was pain but then realized was irritation.

“That was before they blundered and attacked me. Now timing has become all important. I can’t afford to wait for the PJ headquarters to assign me someone and then bring him up to speed. And, anyway, no one’s going to be as good as you are. I want you to come to Paris immediately.”

“Inès, aren’t you forgetting that I’m virtually a fugitive? How can I traipse around Paris, interviewing people and making arrests?”

“You’re not even close to being a fugitive. So you’ve been a bit sloppy, not calling PJ headquarters and reporting the Nathalie case, but so what? They’ll get over it. All you need to do is get a few brigadiers who are loyal to you to do the legwork and make the arrests, and when you start working on the Tottinguer wife, wear a wig or something and have one of your brigadiers sign the procès-verbal. The only downside will be that a brigadier will get all the credit.”

“Aren’t you forgetting about the internal police?”

“Capucine, be reasonable. Your brigadiers can keep their mouths shut, can’t they?”

Capucine opened her mouth to remonstrate. The situation was absurd. Inès had definitely become irrational. It must be the painkillers.

Capucine heard the voices of several people on the terrace. Could Alexandre have been irresponsible enough to invite some of the villagers to lunch? It was exactly the sort of thing he would do.

“Inès, there are people outside,” Capucine said in a whisper. “I’m going to have to get off the phone.”

She slipped into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and walked out to the front of the house, her hair still damp. She was nonplussed. David, Isabelle, and Momo were standing on the terrace, talking and joking, while Alexandre passed around glasses of pastis.

When they caught sight of Capucine, Isabelle’s and Momo’s eyes softened with affection, then tightened in concern. Isabelle stepped forward to kiss her boss’s cheek but instead hugged her awkwardly. Momo emerged from behind Isabelle and enfolded Capucine’s hand in his ham-size paws.

“You look like you’ve been under a lot of strain, Commissaire,” Isabelle said.

“Not at all. That’s just because my hair’s wet. I’m fine.”

Isabelle made a moue of doubt.

“What prompted you two to come down here?” Capucine asked.

Isabelle gave Capucine a blank look of incomprehension.

“We’ve both been following up on the stuff you gave us to research, right?” Isabelle asked. “And we found a bunch of things that might be useful. I was going to write it all up and e-mail it to you, but David suggested we leave work early, hop on the TGV, come down for the weekend, and report in person. He picked us up at the station in Marseilles.”

“David?”

“Yeah. I’ve been talking to him a couple of times a day about the case.”

Capucine guessed that David had fallen back on his PJ habit of making a daily report to Isabelle, his former direct superior. The two might find it impossible to make small talk without bickering but formed a tight-knit team when it came to police work.

Alexandre emerged from the house, holding a massive stoneware cocotte.

“
Allez, les enfants.
Lunch. Magali and I have been working on this dish, which comes straight from heaven, for the past two days. As the
Guide Michelin
says, this alone is worth the trip. David, I left two open bottles of Domaine de La Laidière on the counter. Can the rest of you go get what we need to set the table?”

When everyone was seated, Alexandre removed the cover of the cocotte with a flourish.

“
Nougat de bœuf.
Six different meats—beef rump, beef shank, salt pork, fresh pork rind, calf’s foot, and oxtail—are marinated for a day and then cooked for five hours with garlic, tomatoes, orange zest, capers, onions, carrots, leeks, anchovy fillets, a bottle of red wine, and a four healthy shots of cognac.”

“No nougat?” Capucine asked.

“Of course not.” Alexandre frowned histrionically at his wife. “The nubby nature of the thing is supposed to make you think of nougat candy with fruits on it. Or at least the Niçois did when they came up with the dish.”

There was a long silence as the dish was savored and the Bandol sipped.

At first, the conversation was as congenial as any first meal of a weekend house party. But gradually, a note of strain arose between David and Isabelle. Capucine expected it. Isabelle was always hostile to authority, and now her former subordinate was a mayor, and was rich and on the road to a position of power in the Assemblée Nationale.

“Quite some shack you’ve got here, Monsieur le Maire,” Isabelle said.

David looked sheepish. “Yeah, well, my book sold very well, and I got a very nice advance for the next one. I didn’t really know how to invest the money. As it happened, the American banker who lived here lost a lot of money in the U.S. recession. He came to see me at the
mairie
to see if I could help him sell. It had been on the market for months, and he had no takers. He was ready to let it go for far less than market value. So I snapped it up, even though I don’t really know what to do with so much space. Maybe I can turn it into a school.”

Isabelle snorted. “A school for hairdressers or a school for fops?”

Delighted, David grinned broadly. They were back to their sibling banter. This was as good as old times.

Just as Momo began to serve himself a second helping of the nougat, Capucine asked Alexandre to clear the table.

“I’m sorry, dear, but we really need to get to work.”

Everyone stood up. With visible reluctance, Momo put the serving spoon back in the cocotte. Alexandre, who had an oil-and-vinegar complicity with Momo, filled his plate to overflowing and poured him another glass of wine.

“Les enfants, don’t forget to do the dishes. I’m going to stay out here with Momo, catch up, and not let this most excellent La Laidière go to waste.”

It took Capucine a good half hour to herd her team back to the terrace table. Alexandre smiled at them, lit a cigar, and wandered off into the aromatic hills.

“Let’s start with you, David,” Capucine said. “How far did you get with Nathalie?”

“How far did I get? How far didn’t I get? Remember, my cover was that I was a guy who had had a fling with her and was looking to hook up again. I hit the yacht clubs and sailing bars in Îles d’Hyères, Antibes, Villefranche, and Saint-Tropez and added Porquerolles. It was a rich lode. I ran into nine guys who had been over the course a few times and were more than happy to compare notes on the roughs and greens in great detail.”

This was said purely to goad Isabelle, who cocked her arm to deliver a punch to his upper arm, thought better of it, contented herself with a deep growl. Momo barked a seal-like laugh. Capucine smiled.

“No one knew the slightest thing about her past. She never talked about her hometown, her family, or anything like that. She’d been a boatie for as long as anyone could remember. Mostly, she did pickup jobs on crewed charter boats, but she also made it on a few ocean races. She’d sign on as cook and stand her watches on deck with no set job. In other words, she was galley slave and rail meat.”

Isabelle stood up in a fury.

“Isabelle, it has nothing to do with sex,” David said. “Get your head out of the gutter. On a racing boat anyone who isn’t doing anything sits on the windward rail, dangling their legs, using their weight to help the boat heel a little less. They’re called rail meat.”

Isabelle ground her teeth.

“But she didn’t get many ocean-racing rides. Her normal MO was to hook up with some skipper and sign on crewed charters with him. Charter companies like that. They want the skipper and the cook to be an item so chartering hubby doesn’t get carried away. Anyway, word has it that she was kicked off a lot of boats because charter hubbies
did
get carried away. The last time that happened, her skipper hookup didn’t want to have anything more to do with her. He knew he’d never find gigs with her in his baggage.

“So she hung around Mediterranean Anchorage Yachts, sucking up to yacht charterers, hoping she could find a berth as a boat girl. The guys I had a drink with in Port Grimaud said her marketing technique was something to behold.”

“Good work, David,” Capucine said. “What about you, Isabelle? Tell us what you found out.”

Isabelle drew herself up. Skilled as she was at her job, she was always nervous when put on the spot.

“Since Monsieur High-And-Mighty Mayor is so keen on boats, let’s start with those. I told Momo to check out Florence Henriot at the Agence France-Presse. Tell her what you found, Momo.”

“Well,” Momo said. “I spent a couple of days over there, in what they call the morgue. It’s only half computerized. They have computers where you look stuff up, and it directs you to a box in this big warehouse. Then you have to look it up in the publication it appeared in. If you want copies, you scan them on the computer. They had a ton of crap on Henriot. Most of it was pictures of her showing up, winning some race, looking all beat to shit but still kind of pretty in a kick-ass way, if you know what I mean.

“So after a big race, the second Route du Rhum she won, you start seeing pictures of her in the society magazines, all dolled up, looking like a million euros, wearing fancy clothes, with her hair all up high on the top of her head. You know what I’m talking about, right? These postage stamp–size pictures of the fat cats having a good time at parties, trying to show every last one of their teeth. Well, the funny thing is that in a lot of these pictures she’s with this Tottinguer guy.” He paused, looking at Capucine to see how this went down.

“That’s not all that surprising,” Capucine said. “His firm was sponsoring her boats. It’s natural enough they’d get the maximum publicity value out of her.”

“Yeah, sure. So then I notice that a lot of the listings were in the not so hoity-toity press. A few of them were in these celebrity gossip magazines that are getting sued all the time. In those you see her in places like Ibiza with Tottinguer. But he’s not going for publicity. He’s usually got his arm around her waist, and her boobies are swinging free. In one or two of them he’s giving her a good, deep, wet smooch. The only thing I can add to that is she’s got one hell of a rack.”