Grand Cru Heist (3 page)

Cooker was still amused after he hung up. He had to share the story with someone. He would tell Gaétan, or maybe he would confide in the lanky Morton, who turned out to be as tall and dried up as a Tuscany yew tree. He was savoring a Cohiba and reading the
Herald Tribune
.

As soon as there was silence in the hotel lobby, the Englishman abandoned his reading and slipped his thin glasses into the inner pocket of his jacket. Then the owner of the Morgan got up and headed toward the clearly uninhibited guest whose telephone conversation had been all but public.

“
Excusez-moi
, sir, are you not Mr. Cooker, the well-known winemaker and critic?”

The man spoke broken French mixed with Oxford English. His diction was a little precious, as were his gestures. Cooker confirmed his identity with a smile and shook the Englishman’s hand.

“Let me introduce myself. Robert Morton. I work in London for a wine brokerage.”

“So, we share three passions,” Cooker was quick to point out.

“I have no trouble imagining the first, but I must admit that I don’t know what the two others could be, Mr. Cooker.”

“From what I can tell, there are cigars, and are you not the happy owner of that dream car that’s perfect for taking in Loire Valley’s castles?”

Morton grinned. He rubbed his chin and asked the winemaker if he’d like a cup of tea. “Unless you would prefer coffee.”

“With pleasure,” Cooker said. “Thank you.”

“A cigar?”

Robert Morton opened his shagreen case and took out a cigar with a band that Cooker recognized. He handed the Havana and the guillotine cutter to Cooker, whose friendship he seemed keen to nurture.

“So, Mr. Cooker, you like English beauties? I truly understand.”

“Not always English, but I would go to Rocamadour on my knees for a Morgan.”

“Where’s that?” the Brit said.

The winemaker gave Morton a lesson in the history of that town in southwestern France that had attracted pilgrims for centuries. Smoke swirled above their heads, as the two men sized each other up. When Gaétan asked if they wanted more tea, they were speaking in English. There seemed to be no stopping them. Between two thick curls of smoke, they discussed New World wines, convertible sports cars, French and English rugby teams, Médoc wines, the cost of real estate in Périgord, southwestern French gastronomy, Charles de Gaulle, Churchill, Lady Diana, Charlotte Rampling, and Lord Byron, not to mention Cooker’s recent misadventure in Paris.

Toward the middle of the day, the young woman who shared Morton’s bed showed up, yawning. It looked like she had just climbed out of bed and thrown on a pair of jeans and a tight T-shirt. She was beautiful, tall, and had a lofty neck. With her full bust, she almost looked like a naïve and mischievous cherub—or a fallen angel whose steel-blue eyes said much about the pain they hid. Her elegant bone structure accentuated hollow cheeks and sensual lips.

“Did you sleep well, Oksana?” Morton asked in a flat voice.

Cooker was convinced that she meant little to this dandy, who pretended to know more about life than his age seemed to imply. For that matter, it took skill to guess the slender man’s age. His flashy signet ring did, however, betray new money. That did not make the man any less likable. The new friends jumped at the idea of going to lunch at the Château d’Artigny. But the Morgan had only two seats. Oksana would be sacrificed on the altar of machismo.

“Go back to bed, darling. Tonight, we have a long drive. We have to be in Bordeaux before midnight.” Robert Morton pecked her on the forehead.

Gaétan dried champagne glasses behind the bar and Cooker saw him looking her up and down. She pretended not to notice and walked out, swaying her hips in a way that was both seductive and rejecting.

3

Morton and Cooker finished off two bottles of Vouvray. Their meal was copious, with a coriander-flavored
nage de langoustines
, mullet filets sautéed with endive, veal tenderloin with morels, and a slow-cooked carrot and orange dessert. Then Artigny’s sommelier dug up some aged rum that called for two cigars—double coronas from Partagas. After everything he had been through in Paris, nothing was more important to Benjamin Cooker’s morale than savoring the present.

The two men were in brilliant form and raised their glasses to life, love, and their respective success. By the time Morgan revved up his sweet engine to drive back to La Tortinière, neither of the two men could even pretend to be lucid. The aged rum from Martinique had definitely cheered them up, and the road from the restaurant back to the hotel seemed to have quite a few more bends and curves than it did earlier in the day. Even the chill in the air was not enough to nip their euphoria. A frowning Gaétan met the two staggering men in front of the hotel.

“Did you have a fine lunch, sirs?” he asked and then stammered, “Um, Mr. Morton, the young woman accompanying you preferred to call a taxi and asked me to tell you not to try to contact her. Uh, that’s what she said.”

The Englishman swore under his breath. Cooker looked down and said, “I’m terribly sorry. It’s my fault.”

“Not at all, Benjamin. It’s perhaps the best thing that has happened to me today.”

“If you say so,” Cooker said, looking doubtful.

“Gaétan, a double rum, please.”

“Right away, sir,” the concierge responded. “And for you, Mr. Cooker?”

“The same,” the winemaker said, keen on not abandoning his partner in crime.

Robert Morton collapsed in an armchair. It swallowed him up. His bony knees and the wounded-bird expression on his face were all that Cooker could see. Morton emptied his glass in one gulp and asked for his hotel bill. This bothered Cooker. Morton was evidently more concerned than he had said. The winemaker tried to dissuade him from driving in his state, but in vain. The Englishman insisted that he could not be late for his appointment in Bordeaux and waved a weak good-bye.

“Business, my dear Cooker. You know what our line of work requires.”

Cooker nodded. He finished his rum, and, from La Tortinière’s front steps, watched Morton zoom down the drive in his vintage Morgan.
Well, that was a short-lived friendship,
he thought. Not wanting to be alone, he headed to the bar and ordered another rum from Gaétan, who said nothing.

Mr. Morton was a strange man.
This
Cooker knew. Otherwise, he knew very little about him, although he was sure their paths would cross again. He intuited it as he examined the bottom of his glass, like a fortune-teller reading tea leaves. Alas, the hotel’s rum was more rustic than the one at Château d’Artigny, and Cooker did not finish his glass. He huddled in a chair for a long time, missing Morton already. He would have liked to see Oksana in her tight jeans again, and he would have loved driving that Morgan, even just around the grounds or on a short trip to Montbazon.
Had it all been a dream?
The rum was making him doubt the very existence of the eccentric and enigmatic Morton.

He ended up falling asleep in the armchair. The crackling of wood and the pungent aroma of smoking vine shoots awakened him a short time later. Gaétan had lit a fire. Cooker apologized to the concierge, as if he had been caught red-handed being lazy.

“Would you like to have dinner in your room tonight, Mr. Cooker?” Not giving the winemaker a chance to gather his thoughts, Gaétan added, “I can make you a truffle omelet, if you’d like.”

“Nothing,” Cooker said dryly.

Then, changing his mind, he added, “Please, bring me a glass of water and two antacid tablets.”

Gaétan made a teasing face and removed the glass of rum from the table. Cooker pulled himself out of the armchair and walked over to the fireplace. Heat was beginning to spread throughout the dark lounge. He thought about Grangebelle and Elisabeth, who was alone in that large house with nobody but Bacchus. At this hour, they would be able to see strands of light from the Blaye power station rippling on the silt-laden waters of the Gironde.

§ § §

Cooker couldn’t sleep that night and took a sedative. When he woke up, a young waiter who looked nothing like Gaétan brought a tray into his room at the promised time: Grand Yunnan tea, bread with butter and apricot jam, just the way he had it at Grangebelle. The famous winemaker was not a man to change his habits. He had asked that they find him an English-language paper,
The Herald Tribune
if possible, but there was only the French daily,
Le Figaro
, on the tray. The teenager apologized, as if he had made a serious mistake. Cooker stopped himself from snarling and said, “It’s not important.”

He then informed the boy that his shirt was buttoned wrong. The boy looked down, horrified, and apologized again, “Don’t hold it against me, sir. I had to replace Gaétan at the last minute. Nobody knows where he is.”

Cooker started questioning the replacement, who turned out to be the owners’ nephew.

“Perhaps he’s sick and can’t answer the phone?”

“I don’t know, sir. We knocked on his door, but nobody answered. Mrs. Olivereau said he never sleeps anywhere else.”

Cooker, who was both surprised and impatient to find out more, plopped his toast back on the plate.

The boy looked like he had said too much and asked to be excused. Cooker pulled a ten-euro bill out of his pocket and handed it to the teenager. Then he stood silently in front of his window. He heard the door close behind him and tried to focus on the distant statue of the Virgin Mary. A layer of milky fog covered her from head to toe. Cooker put on his glasses, as if it would help him glimpse the Madonna’s thin smile.

It was nearly eleven in the morning when he finally decided to leave his room. Reading
Le Figaro
was not enough to remedy the disagreeable sensation of being hung over. He wasn’t nauseous, but he was definitely grumpy.

When he started down the stairs, he was surprised by all the activity in the lobby. Four local police officers were questioning the hotel owner, who appeared to be saddened by what she was hearing.

“Yes, that’s her,” Mrs. Olivereau said, pointing at the dog-eared picture the officer showed her.

A young cop was jotting down everything that his superior officer said. He was squeezed into a uniform that was too tight, and his face reddened when the officer started talking faster.

“You say she arrived with a certain Mr. Morton yesterday morning? What was he like? Can you describe him?”

Cooker stopped on the stairs, his hand on the rail. He held his breath, not wanting to miss a word of the conversation.

“Can we see the couple’s room?” the detective asked, sounding somewhat satisfied with the way things were going.

“The room was cleaned immediately after Mr. Morton’s departure. I fear you won’t find anything there,” said the château owner, who now seemed very distraught.

“It’s a formality,” the captain said without looking at her.

As he stood on the stairs, Cooker knew the investigators would eventually notice him, and they did. It was hard to tell if they looked at him with scorn or suspicion. They turned back to the reception desk, as if it were the hotel owner’s responsibility to announce the identity of this very distinguished guest, who was wearing an impeccable suit but still seemed a bit disheveled from the night before.

“Ah, Mr. Cooker. Did you sleep well?”

“To be honest, not at all.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” the owner said. She then explained the presence of the police with a short sentence. “These men are here to ask some questions about the young woman who was here with Mr. Morton yesterday.”

“Oksana?” Cooker asked.

“Do you know her?” the captain asked.

“I would have liked to know her better, if you see what I mean,” he said with a mischievous smile, trying to cover his sudden concern that something had happened to her.

“What was her name again?”

“Oksana. That is how she was introduced to me. I didn’t ask to see her ID. I’m pretty sure that she was not French. Isn’t that so?”

“You are right,” the captain answered. “She was born in Minsk.”

Cooker slipped his hands into the pockets of his flannel pants. “I’m not all that sure she was over eighteen,” he said.

“Nothing escapes you, does it, Mr., um, what was your name again?”

“Cooker. Benjamin Cooker,” he said, handing his card to the captain, who looked suitably impressed.

“You look familiar. Have I seen you on television?”

“I rather doubt that,” Cooker said.

The young officer who was taking notes looked at Cooker with wide eyes. The winemaker suspected that he wasn’t used to seeing people standing up to his boss.

“Mr. Cooker, what do you know about Robert Morton? I believe you had lunch with him yesterday.”

“Nothing. I know nothing,” Cooker said before adding, “That is, nothing I have had time to verify. I can only tell you about his car and his supposed business as a wine broker. I could tell you everything about his Morgan but zilch about him.”

The telephone at the reception desk rang. The hotel owner grabbed it.

“It’s for you, Mr. Cooker. It’s Chief of Police Fourquet from Paris.”

“Please excuse me,” Cooker said, slipping between the officers to take the phone.

“Yes, Chief. Some good news?”

The lead local officer at the reception desk was obviously hanging onto every word Cooker said and seemed irritated by how easily the winemaker took charge.

“Where is that you say? In Leipzig?”

Cooker’s face suddenly lit up.

“What state is it in? Good, good. How did you find it? Aha! German intuition, perspicacity and rigor! I never understood how they lost the war.” Cooker laughed.

“What’s my new license plate again—1955 JO 6I, you said? I didn’t know all the subtleties. Do I owe you a Château Latour? A 1961, of course. That was a fantastic year. No, really, it’s my pleasure. It won’t be at La Tour d’Argent, though. Too many bad memories.”

Had Cooker been in the same room with Chief Fourquet, he would have kissed him on both cheeks. After thanking him again, he hung up the phone, looking thrilled.

“Captain, if you stopped a navy-blue Mercedes with a French license plate reading 1955 JO 6I and found an Albanian wearing an Orthodox cross and sunglasses behind the wheel, what would you do?”

The captain stared at him. He didn’t seem to appreciate how familiar Cooker was being with him.
He probably considers me insolent,
Cooker thought.

“Uh, I would check his identity and his driver’s license.”

“Wrong answer, Captain! Europe does not have any borders anymore, and you should know, my friend, that the car was stolen, and the plates were faked by someone who did not know that the letters ‘O’ and ‘I’ have been banished from European plates.”

The captain blushed. Cooker grinned.

“Champagne, Mrs. Olivereau! Champagne for everyone. My car was just found in Germany. Which, for a Mercedes, you must admit, is not out of the ordinary.”

The waiter from breakfast was lining up the champagne flutes on the counter. Cooker summarized his recent experience in Paris. The winemaker’s relaxed approach seemed to have an effect on the foursome of local police, and they took off their caps and sipped a little champagne.

Cooker went on to praise the hotel and its owners, along with the staff that was so attentive to detail and able to react so quickly. But he added that he had hoped to see Gaétan. That is when Cooker, realizing he still had questions about Oksana, asked the captain why he was inquiring about her.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Cooker. She’s dead,” the captain replied. “A jogger found her body this morning on the banks of the Loire.”

Cooker frowned as the captain explained that the prostitute from Minsk, who was barely seventeen years old, had been strangled with copper wire, which was also found on the riverbank. It didn’t appear that she had fought back. She still had her clothes on, and they weren’t dirty or torn. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry. The only thing she had with her was a card from the Château de La Tortinière. It was in the back pocket of her jeans. Scribbled on it was a cell phone number.

Nobody at the hotel, not even Cooker, had spent any time with her. Morton had treated her like some kind of plaything that he wanted to keep all to himself.

“The only person who could perhaps tell you anything, Captain, is Gaétan, our concierge, but he didn’t show up for work today,” Mrs. Olivereau said, obviously not in the mood for the Deutz, whose fine bubbles were quite out of place, considering the circumstances. It was clear to Cooker that nobody felt like celebrating.

“It’s not like him,” Mrs. Olivereau said. “He’s a real asset here, and he’s always available.”

“Did you try to call him at home?” the captain asked, setting down his glass as well.

“He lives on the grounds, but he didn’t answer his door when we knocked. We finally opened it with our own passkey. He wasn’t there.”

“Doesn’t he have a cell phone?”

“We thought of that, but it just goes to voice mail.”

Cooker, who had listened without saying anything, set his champagne flute on the fireplace mantel and turned to the hotel owner. “Would you mind giving us his cell phone number?”

“Of course, Mr. Cooker.”

Mrs. Olivereau wrote down her employee’s number on a piece of paper. She held it out to the winemaker, who approached the captain.

“Would you mind comparing this number with the one you found in Oksana’s pocket?”

The captain scowled but followed Cooker’s suggestion.