Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery (27 page)

Aix's bus station wasn't a bus station as such, just a street where the buses came and went, with a temporary portable that served as an office. Jules Schoelcher walked up the ramp and into the stuffy room, where he saw two long queues, each with about eight or nine people waiting. On a whim, he selected the second queue, because it had a female employee. He hoped to work some charm, as Magali had done at Lotus. If that was how the south worked…

Amazed by how long some people took to buy bus passes or get directions, he tried to hide his frustration when he finally got to the front of the line. “Hello,” he said, working on sounding as cheery as possible.

The middle-aged employee didn't look up but continued typing something into the computer. After a few seconds, she replied with a weary “Yes?”

“I'd like to buy a bus pass, for the Aix region, please.”

“You'll need to show a student card.”

Annoyed, Schoelcher coughed. “I'm not a student anymore.”

“Lost your license, then?” she asked, her voice starting to show the tiniest bit of enthusiasm. Schoelcher noticed it right away and decided to run with it.

“How did you guess?” he asked, laughing. “Lost the last two of my twelve points this week, talking on my cell phone while driving. Not handy if you're a gardener.”

The bus-station employee looked at Schoelcher's tanned, muscled forearms and smiled.

“So…I need a pass that will get me to my clients out in Éguilles…and Rognes.” He paused and took a gamble. “My pickiest clients too, with the fanciest houses.”

“
Ah oui,
” she replied. “Big houses out that way. Show-offs. There's a pass you can buy that will get you from Aix to all the villages north. But how will you get your equipment around?”

He stood still, stunned, and then said, “They're letting me use theirs, until I do my driving lessons over. Generous of them, eh?”

She laughed.

“Is there a bus that goes directly from Éguilles to Rognes?” he asked.

She looked at him as if he had asked the stupidest question in the world. “No, of course not.”

“Oh, that's a drag,” he replied, getting out his wallet. “Do the drivers share the routes? You know, mix it up?”

“What's it to you?” she asked, her gaze narrowing.

“Oh, it's nothing. It's just that the guy I had yesterday was in a foul mood. I didn't have the bus pass yet, and I took a long time finding the right change.”

“Hey, it's a tough job. Yeah, they switch routes. So don't worry.”

“Great. I'll buy the pass.”

“Thirty-six euros. I'll take down your information.” She asked Schoelcher for his address, phone number, even an e-mail address, which he declined. Easy for any bus employee to find the street address of a young woman living alone, he noted silently. But how would the bus employee know that both Mlles Montmory and Durand had lived alone?

When he had paid her in cash, she said, “Smile into the camera poised at my left.”

“You're taking my picture?” he asked.

“Yeah! It's for your bus pass. Smile!”

They'd have the women's photographs too, he noted.

“The bus to Rognes,” he asked as she was waiting to print out his card, “is it busy?”

“Of course!” she answered, opening a box of candy and putting one in her mouth. “Especially before and after school.”

“Oh, kids coming into Aix in the morning?”

“Yeah, to their high schools. And at night, going home.” She glanced at his downtown address. “But you'll be coming back into Aix at night, against the flow.”

“Right! Thank goodness. A whole busload of teenagers,” he said, raising his eyes and trying to laugh.

“They're total brats,” she replied, handing him his pass. “No respect anymore. But you'll be fine; the night buses back to Aix should be pretty empty. Probably just you and the driver.”

Schoelcher nodded and put the shiny new pass in his wallet. “You have no idea how much help you've just been.”

She yawned. “My pleasure.”

J
ules Schoelcher arrived back at the Palais de Justice to find Paulik and Flamant in Paulik's office, hunched over Paulik's computer. “How did it go at the bus station?” Paulik asked, looking up.

“Brilliant,” Schoelcher replied, tossing his bus pass on the commissioner's desk. “They have records of your address and phone number and your photograph. There's no direct route from Rognes to Éguilles, but the drivers share routes. And a bus-station employee could easily look up the information on the computer. But on my way back here, I kept thinking: how would they know that the women lived alone?”

“They couldn't,” Paulik replied.

“Right,” said Schoelcher. “But a driver could.”

“How so?” Flamant asked.

“By talking to the women.”

Flamant sat back. “Yeah, you're right. By chatting them up.”

Schoelcher nodded. “If you're a single woman, and you go
into Aix sometimes at night, the bus is often empty. So where do you sit?”

“Behind the driver,” Paulik answered. That's where he would sit too—not for protection or out of politeness, but because of his motion sickness. “Did you say the bus is often empty on the way back to Aix?”

“Yes,” replied Schoelcher. “I thought right away of Mme d'Arras. Her body was found not far from the road.”

Paulik turned to Flamant. “Alain, can you break into the bus-station employee Web site?”

Flamant pretended to roll up his sleeves. “
La magie commence,”
he said, waving his fingers in the air. “Just give me two seconds.”

“How was the funeral?” Jules Schoelcher asked Paulik, whispering.

“Terribly, terribly sad,” the commissioner replied. “I introduced myself afterward and got accused by Mlle Montmory's oldest brother of not doing enough to find this guy.”

“I'm sorry, but I understand his anger.”

“So do I,” said Paulik. “I have two sisters.”

“And the interview with Mme Chazeau?”

“Not very useful,” Paulik said. “She seems to have hated her sister, but she has an alibi…at the office with two colleagues. She confirmed that Pauline d'Arras was difficult to get along with, but that we already knew. And she's furious that we called her son in for questioning. I didn't tell her that he's coming back here at the end of the day.”

“Bingo,” Flamant said, looking up.

“Already?” Paulik asked.

“Yeah. I was just waiting for you two to finish talking. What are we looking for?”

“Well,” Paulik said, sitting down, “male bus drivers…”

“Gisèle Durand preferred younger men,” Schoelcher said. “Her former boss wrote that in her statement.”

“So under the age of forty,” Paulik continued, impressed with Schoelcher.

“With a police record would be useful,” Paulik said.

“
Nada,
” Flamant answered, staring at the screen. “They're all clean. They probably have to be to get a bus driver's license.”

“Ones who
weren't
working the nights that the women were attacked,” Paulik said. “With the possible exception of Mme d'Arras.”

Flamant took out a pencil and began taking notes. “They're having an employee picnic next Sunday,” he mumbled.

Paulik rolled his eyes and smiled. “Keep looking….”

“Okay, here's last Friday's schedule,” Flamant said. “Doing the Rognes–Aix route in the afternoon was Guy Mézery. That's the guy that recognized Pauline d'Arras, right? Who said she seemed confused?”

“Yes,” replied Paulik. “And the evening shift?”

“Jean-Pierre Bondeau,” replied Flamant.

“What time did he get off?” Paulik asked.

“Eight p.m.”

“He could have driven back to Rognes after his shift,” Schoelcher said. “Dr. Bouvet could have been an hour off on the estimate for the time of death.”

Paulik nodded. “Did Bondeau work last Wednesday?”

“I'm looking, I'm looking,” Flamant replied, squinting at the screen. “Yes, the day shift, it looks like—from seven a.m. to three p.m.”

Paulik clapped his hands. “Suzanne Montmory was attacked after work, in the early evening. Give me his address, please, Alain.”

Flamant read off the address of an apartment complex on the west side of Aix. He looked at his watch and added, “Bondeau just finished his shift.”

Roger Caromb knocked at the door and stuck his head in the office. “Christophe Chazeau is here, boss,” he said. “I've put him in interview room number two and given him a coffee. But he looks like he could use something stiffer than that.”

“Thanks, Caromb,” Paulik replied. He looked at his watch. “I'll go and interview Chazeau, and then go to the bus driver's house on my way home. Flamant, if you could come with me, and, Schoelcher and Caromb, if you guys could pore over the files one more time, trying to link these three women together, in case we're wrong about the bus employees. What kind of man would be able to see where they live, and that they lived alone?”

“Plumbers, electricians,” Schoelcher suggested.

“Great; go through their bills again, phone Mlle Montmory's colleagues, and ask if she had any work done to her apartment recently,” Paulik said. “Who else?”

“Deliverymen,” Caromb said. “Those big grocery stores deliver now.”

“Excellent, Roger,” Paulik said. “You find out which grocery stores deliver to Rognes and Éguilles and see if the women were on the client list. They'll have records of recent deliveries.”

Caromb saluted the commissioner. “Consider it done!”

Flamant thought of his fiancée, looking at the La Redoute catalog until late in the evening, obsessing over drapes for their new apartment. He hoped that, once they were married, she'd calm down a bit on the interior-decorating thing. “The big catalogs deliver too,” he said.

“You're right,” Paulik said. “My wife loves the home furnishings in La Redoute. That's yours, then, Alain.”

“Yes, sir,” Flamant replied. So it didn't end at marriage, apparently.

Paulik and Flamant walked downstairs and into the room where Christophe Chazeau was waiting, his head in his hands. He looked up at the policemen and asked, “Where's Antoine?”

“Not here,” Paulik said, sliding a chair out and sitting down. Flamant stayed in the back of the room, leaning against the wall.

“I have some bad news for you,” Paulik said.

“What now?”

“Your car had mud from a vineyard in its wheel wells. And traces of grapes.”

“Oh no,” Chazeau said.

“Care to explain?”

“I was at a vineyard on Friday night, before our cigar-club party,” Chazeau answered, sighing.

“Why didn't you tell us?”

“I freaked out when I found out that Aunt Pauline was killed in a vineyard, and then, when you called me in about the will…I knew it would look so bad!” Chazeau said. “Like it does now! I didn't think you'd be low enough to take a mud sample off my car!”

“I'm afraid that's part of our job,” answered Paulik. “Which winery were you at, then?”

“Not at Domaine Beauclaire,” Chazeau answered. “I was on the other side of Aix, at Domaine Frérot et Fils. I wanted to buy a few bottles to take to the party, and a friend had recommended their reds.”

“Why didn't you tell us?” Paulik said. “I still don't get it. That's your alibi.”

Chazeau shook his head. “They weren't around; there was a
note on the door that they were all in the vineyards. I didn't want to be late, so I turned around and left.”

“The vineyard mud?” Paulik asked.

“I have a new Porsche Cayenne,” Chazeau answered. “Their parking lot, and the dirt road into the domaine, were muddy, but I didn't mind because of the new SUV. I was having a bit of fun, driving through the mud.”