Treachery in Bordeaux (The Winemaker Detective Series) (9 page)

T
HE PRINTING PRESS’S OFFICE was functional, with a clinical ugliness that reflected the tastes of the entrepreneurs who had located in the industrial park. Virgile approached the counter, looking kind of timid, and grabbed an ad form. The secretary flashed him a big smile.

“Madamoiselle, I’m not sure how to fill in this form.”

“I’d be happy to help you.”

“Well, I’d like to sell a, well, a somewhat old car. Actually, a really old car. Let’s just say it’s not in such good shape, and I don’t exactly know how to describe it without scaring potential buyers away.”

“That is a little sensitive. You could say, ‘Average condition. Passed inspection.’ Or ‘Sold as is. Price negotiable.’ That’s what people usually put, but I don’t know anything about mechanics.”

The conversation continued in a bantering tone used by two people who seem attracted to each other without daring to show it. Virgile was playing for time, talking about things while he watched staff members come and go behind the window at the reception desk. A surly and sad-looking secretary was yawning as she made photocopies, a man was pushing a cart of newspapers, and a worker dressed in blue overhauls was on his way to the employee restroom to wash his hands. After a quarter of an hour, Benjamin’s assistant had barely filled in 10 lines of his ad form and was still chatting with the secretary, with no end to topics he cared nothing about. They talked about the Aquitaine Bridge project, the 35-hour work week, the point-based driving license, the teachers strike, traffic jams at the Place de la Victoire, the next Johnny Hallyday concert, taxes, the bad season for the Girondins soccer team—so many things that reassure people about their ability to judge the state of the world.

He was beginning to feel desperate when he finally caught a glimpse of Sébastien Guéret’s chubby cheeks. Their red hue betrayed poorly contained anger. The woman doing photocopies suffered a volley of reprimands and disappeared into the restroom to compose herself. Sébastien looked like a prosperous employer. An extra 10 kilos had been enough to settle him in life, giving him the self-satisfied look of a leader. When he approached the secretary, he took on an entirely different tone.

“Corinne, my dear, don’t forget to bring in my signature book after lunch break,” he said in a tender voice.

“Hey, we know each other, don’t we?” Virgile said, sounding almost enthusiastic.

Sébastien Guéret looked up and saw him. Dimples appeared on his blotched chubby cheeks.

“That’s right. You went to the wine school. Lanssien, isn’t it? Mr. Virgile Lanssien!”

“We were not so formal back then.”

“Sorry. It’s a habit. What are you doing these days? Still in wine?”

“Oh here and there. Some seasonal work on the estates when they need extra workers.”

“That’s finished for me. For a while, I thought I liked it, but after my father’s accident, I had to take care of the business. And in the end, I like it. If you’ve got some time, I can show you around. It’s all brand new. We moved in last February. It was a lot of work but was worth it.”

Sébastien wasn’t exactly boastful, but he couldn’t hide his pride. He invited Virgile to follow him and gave him a detailed description of each of the offices, starting with his, paneled in faux cherrywood veneer, followed by the accounting department, the invoicing computers and the storage room. He went on about the advertising market that was growing with the chamber of commerce and other institutions, paper he bought by the ton, rising prices and storage issues. Virgile listened and nodded, pretending to be impressed. The personnel began to disappear for lunch.

“Don’t forget to lock up after yourself!” Sébastien yelled out.

Then, lowering his voice, without dropping the haughtiness, he added, “You have to keep a tight rein, otherwise they’ll be the end of you. Jerks! Believe me, it’s not easy to run a business like this.”

“I’m sure,” Virgile said, giving him a knowing look.

“Some of them miss the old man and try to make things hard for me. I’ll end up firing them one day or another, believe me. For that matter, I want to build an entirely new team.”

“Times change,” Cooker’s assistant said, thinking that might be an appropriate comment.

“If I had listened to my old man, we’d still be in the old neighborhood with run-down offices, only 1,300 square feet, crappy orders and no potential for growth. His accident and his dead legs are really sad, but to be honest, he had turned down the wrong road awhile ago. No pun intended. He put all his money into printing catalogs for regional artists, for Sunday painters nobody knows about. His passion for lousy paintings cost us a lot of cash. Not to mention all those paintings he felt he had to buy to help out those freeloaders who didn’t have enough cash to buy their own paint.”

“He was like a patron.”

“Patron my ass! It almost ruined us, and my mother was happy when I finally took over the business. It’s not always easy for her. She has to take him around in his wheelchair like a kid, wash him and help him to the bathroom. You get the picture. But he leaves us alone now. We give him enough to buy one or two paintings from time to time, and that’s all he asks. Come on, let me show you the best part yet.”

He opened a double door that led to the machine room filled with shiny new rotary presses. Sébastien explained how each one worked, talked about the 10-year loan, the write-off, how he had to keep changing the equipment for the graphic designers, particularly since
Le Béglais Pratique
had tripled its print run. Virgile couldn’t stop him, and it took his cell phone ringing and ringing before he consented to a break.

“Excuse me. I’ll be just a moment,” Sébastien whispered. “If you want, you can wait for me in the hallway and have a coffee. I’ll be right there.”

“No problem. Take your time,” Virgile said.

Once Virgile was alone, he walked around the deserted offices and looked under some piles of papers without really knowing what he was looking for or even if there was anything to find. He put a euro into the coffee machine and continued his tour with a burning-hot cup in hand. Sébastien Guéret’s office was open, the lights were on, and his computer was snoozing. Virgile hit a key, and the screen lit up. He clicked on the “mail” file and scanned the list, which he judged to be of no interest, and then he opened the file called “projects.” Several files were arranged under small colored icons. Cooker’s assistant shuddered when he saw one called “Moniales” at the bottom of the list.

Without thinking, he clicked on the web browser icon and pulled up the Cooker&Co.com webmail. It was taking forever. He logged in and sent the file to Cooker’s address. His heart was pounding, and his shirt was suddenly damp. If only Sébastien could keep talking on the phone! The seconds dragged on. When the file was fully transferred, he opened the privacy settings window and erased any traces of what he had done.

He immediately returned to the lobby and had time to finish his coffee before Sébastien came back, excusing himself for being so long. Virgile told him he had an appointment in town and promised to stop by again. They said goodbye with an emphatic handshake.

As soon as he got into his rundown Renault 5, Cooker’s assistant called his boss, “Sir? Are you at the lab? I’ll be at Allée de Tourny in 15 minutes. Wait for me in your office. I just sent you an email.”

THE Cooker & Co inbox had several messages in it, including one from the owner of Vistaflores in the Argentine Pampas, where Benjamin was expected for the next winemaking season. There was also a note from Margaux, who wrote with news from New York, but Virgile immediately clicked on the Moniales file. It took awhile to download, but when he was finally able to open the document, Cooker had a totally unfamiliar reaction.

“Holy shit! That can’t be!”

The third overmantel was right there, lit up on the screen. Occupying the entire page was the Château Moniales Haut-Brion and its perfectly balanced facade, its rounded steps, its Doric columns and its dark slate roof. The little chapel’s tympanum was depicted in heavy brushstrokes. The painter had portrayed the building correctly, without respecting the enclosure’s proportions. The vineyards appeared larger and spread beyond the walls. Because the overmantel had been photographed and scanned, the colors were exaggerated. The graphic designer who had laid out the accompanying information had been careful not to cover any part of the château’s imposing structure, because it illustrated the significance of the announcement:

Moniales Residence

A corner of paradise two steps from central Bordeaux

30 upscale apartments just minutes from downtown

Near the university and shopping centers

Pool, tennis courts, playground, quality facilities

Offer yourself outdoor luxury in the heart of the city!

“Well done, Virgile! Well done!”

They opened another file. This time it was a spreadsheet with construction costs, profitability thresholds, supplier estimates and financial prospects that were a little difficult to decrypt. They scrolled through several dozen pages, a cold succession of measurements, percentages and sums. Enough to make them dizzy.

Benjamin picked up his telephone and immediately called Alain Delfranc. At this hour, he had probably finished the dinner service and was quietly smoking his pipe at the window of the kitchen.

“I have news in the Moniales Haut-Brion case. We just discovered something huge.”

“Where are you calling me from?”

“From my office on the Allée de Tourny. I’ll admit that this is a little too big for me.”

“OK, don’t move,” Alain ordered. “Starting now, don’t touch anything else.”

T
aste that!”

Cooker lifted the glass to eye level. Then he lowered it slowly, tilting it slightly in front of the white tablecloth to judge the wine’s dark color and slightly oily texture as it slid slowly down the side.

“It’s good,” he said without showing any enthusiasm. “Very good, even. What is it?”

“Is the fabulous Cooker, the imperial winemaker afraid of losing face?” Alain teased him gently.

“Not at all, my friend. I can tell you that there is sun in it. It’s from the South. Perhaps it is made with syrah.”

“You’re getting warm. You’re even quite close.”

“Or rather, it’s grenache noir and carignan. In any case, it is a blend like that. There is also some mourvèdre, and perhaps a little cinsault.”

“You’re almost there.”

“Its attack is not so subtle. It is well structured. You can feel the tannins. There are hints of berries and a slight touch of warm spices. It’s well done.”

“So?”

“Perhaps a Côte-du-Roussillon. You can smell the terraces, the stone and the
tramontane
wind.”

“You’re burning hot.”

“I’d say a wine from Collioure, with a characteristic personality and a very concentrated licorice finale. Perhaps it’s Les Espérades from the Vial-Magnères domaine. It resembles that kind of wine.”

“Damn. How do you do that?

“You do your job, and I do mine,” the winemaker said, drinking another mouthful. “And what if you told me a little about yours.”

“The one that used to be mine,” Alain Delfranc corrected, lifting his index finger, “and that I was right to run away from, considering how rotten the world is!”

“In any case, you did me a great service by bringing the Moniales case to the police. Thanks to you, they were able to intervene more effectively.”

“I think that if you had brought it to their attention yourself, they would have passed it from department to department,” Alain admitted, “and they would have taken longer to order the search.”

Benjamin served himself another glass of Collioure, lit up a Villa Zamorano—a falsely rustic robusto from Honduras he had yet to taste but that he had heard about. He settled into his armchair and let out a thick puff of gray smoke.

“So, now you can tell me exactly what he confessed to, our Guéret.”

“Everything, absolutely everything! He didn’t try to deny anything. He was working for his uncle, Robert Guéret, who is a real estate developer who sells on the side, well, an unscrupulous fellow who helped out his nephew when Gilles Guéret had his car accident. He invested in the printing presses and got bank loans to help Sébastien. In exchange, he asked for some small services. The kid wasn’t a hard one to corrupt: He was a little snot who wanted to get ahead and most of all to prove to his mother that he could succeed better than his father had.”

“So it was Uncle Robert who planned the whole thing?” Benjamin asked, letting his neck lean back on the headrest.

“When Gilles Guéret had his accident, Sébastien was an intern at the Moniales Haut-Brion, and that is when the uncle got involved at the paper. He convinced the kid to stop his oenology studies and to take over the family business. Obviously, he put out some cash to persuade him, and he asked him to make a wax imprint of the cellar keys. The kid succeeded. Apparently it is not very complicated. He took advantage of a moment of inattention on the steward’s part to take the keys from a jacket hung at the door of the tank room, and he simply molded them in a special wax. Then he used the impressions to have the keys made. ”

“Had he planned the hit for a long time?” Cooker asked, setting down his empty glass.

“Not at all. It was when he went to pick up his nephew from the château that he got the idea of ruining Denis Massepain’s life and then offering to buy the estate, with the intention of building luxury apartments. No kidding. An estate of that standing, with several acres of trees and a small brook has great appeal to developers. But that you saw on the documents.”

“Yes, I saw. But that doesn’t explain how they managed to get past the alarm.”

“Guéret Jr. had overheard a conversation between Denis and the steward. One of them had mentioned a year, but it seemed out of context. Guéret realized that it was actually the code to the alarm. When he returned to put that damned yeast into the barrels, he entered the four numbers, and the alarm was turned off. He’s not dumb! In fact, he’s quite clever, because he specifically chose to pollute only some of the barrels so it wouldn’t look like a malicious act.”

“Absolutely. For the uncle and the nephew, it was just the first part of a strategy designed to drain Massepain’s morale and put a proverbial knife to his throat. In any case, they intended to go as far as they needed to get their hands on the Moniales. They were ready to act as soon as their attacks succeeded. That was clear when the uncle used Sébastien to begin building his marketing campaign for the luxury apartments. It was all in perfect order—starting with the overmantel used in the initial advertising. The whole campaign included posters, brochures, ads, promotional materials, all produced free of charge by the Guéret presses, of course!”

“And the overmantel …”

“That is another story. It is, for that matter, exclusively your story. Had you not gone out looking for that painting and then instinctively put two and two together when you discovered the connection to Sébastien, this crime would have played out. Nobody would have known. For that matter, I would like to know how many dirty deeds of the kind have been carried out in the Pessac and Talence areas! Behind all those buildings, luxury apartments and suburban houses there must be some pretty sleazy politicking, scheming, bribing, intimidation and power plays.”

“Better not to imagine them. What good does it do? But how did they get their hands on that overmantel?”

“That was just by chance. Sébastien’s father had bought the painting some time ago, and it had been lying around in a back hallway. The son had known about it since he was little, and he thought it would be good for the marketing campaign. You can picture the spirit: a fine old home with some history. Very chic! Even small-time swindlers can have class.”

“Alain, I have to admit something that is not very honest on my part.”

“It’s time for the great confession!” the innkeeper said as he lit his pipe again.

“Yes, I have to tell you about a really ugly thing I did, a dirty trick you should never ever pull on a friend.”

Alain Delfranc’s started to turn pale.

“Are you serious, Benjamin? Or are you joking?”

“No, I’m serious. And if I tell you, promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

“OK, OK.”

“Your Collioure. I knew what it was with the first mouthful. I wrote about it last week for an English magazine.”

“Cheater! And on top of that, you dragged out the pleasure, just so I’d think more of you?”

“No, no. Just to make fun of myself.”

HE made the decision when he woke up. He would use the first introduction to Blaye he had written. Just to be sure, Benjamin reread his new attempts to describe it and ended up throwing them away. He then immediately called his editor to tell him there would be no modifications, with the exception of three words he absolutely had to change: “milksop” for “coward,” “bloody” for “bloodthirsty” and “diverse,” which fit better than “contrasted.” When he hung up, he did not feel all that self-assured and was afraid that his final instructions would not be followed. He drank two cups of tea and decided to take Bacchus on a walk to clear his mind.

He didn’t return until lunch, his boots caked with clay and his face damp with perspiration. The dog was in no better shape than his master. His tongue was hanging out, he was dragging his paws, and he didn’t even bother to bark when Virgile’s Renault 5 came speeding up Grangebelle’s gravel.

“Hello, Mr. Cooker. Your friend Denis has sent over four cases of Moniales Haut-Brion to thank you for what you did.”

“Of course you told him that tomorrow I’m off to Burgundy and that I would stop by to see him when I get back.”

“I’ll be sure to do so. When you are gone, I’ll drop in to make sure everything is going well, but we can already say for sure that this year’s wine has been saved. Alexandrine is sure of that. ”

“Keep the cases, Virgile. You deserve them as much as I.”

“Mr. Massepain gave me four, as well.”

“He’s a gentleman. Let’s go in. Elisabeth must be waiting for us to eat. I think she prepared a beef
estouffade
with olives, mushrooms and a good red wine—a Canon-Fronsac she managed to steal from me.”

Before sitting down, Benjamin grabbed a book from the shelf and handed it to his assistant.

“Here, Virgile, it’s a pleasure for me to give you this. I grant you the leisure of not reading Montaigne and of frowning on Montesquieu, but you cannot not read François Mauriac.”

“Maltaverne
. That’s an intriguing title.”

“It’s a fine text. I’ll be honest with you. I would give anything to have never read it so I could enjoy discovering it again. Indeed, that is the only advantage of youth.”

“Thank you. I’ll start reading it tonight.”

“Read it whenever you want, Virgile. Tonight, in a week, in a year. It doesn’t matter. Great writing is like a great wine. It finds those deserving of it.”

THE END