Late Harvest Havoc (5 page)

“Excuse me, Captain Roch. I have to relieve my bladder. It can't wait.” He patted Bernadette's hand, and she pulled his wheelchair away from the table.

Benjamin felt sorry for the old man, who needed so much help. He understood the bleach smell now—there were times “it” probably didn't wait. And yet, at this late juncture in his life the man had found more than a nurse in the woman who tended to him. Apparently, he had found affection, as well.

Everyone watched as the two left the room, the nurse limping slightly.

Roch turned to the younger son, breaking Benjamin's train of thought. “André, has your family received any threats?”

“No, we haven't received any anonymous letters or strange phone calls, if that's what you want to know.”

“No quarrels with the neighbors?” Roch asked.

Before André could answer, Deutzler returned to the kitchen and reclaimed his patriarchal spot at the head of the table. Bernadette took her place behind him.

“In Ribeauvillé, just about everyone makes wine,” Deutzler said. “If one man's wine is better than his neighbor's, then so be it. Captain Roch, I never had many friends, but until today I didn't think I had any enemies. Now I have to revise my opinion. Sixty plants ruined. It's not the end of the world, but it says a lot about the intentions of this crackpot.”

“If I ever get my hands on him, I'll beat the crap out of him,” Iselin said.

“It would be very foolish to take matters into your own hands,” Roch admonished. “We'll find this person, and he'll face the consequences—legally.”

Benjamin tried hard to read in the Deutzlers' expressions and body language what they weren't telling the captain. Véronique had stepped away from the group and gone to sit down without taking so much as a sip of her riesling. She looked nervous, and her hands were placed protectively on her belly.

“Now taste this one,” commanded the old man, pointing the neck of the second bottle as if it were a sawed-off shotgun. “It's my son's vintage. Real Alsace muscat! I await your verdict, Mr. Cooker.”

The weakling was watching Virgile. Did he have something to fear from Virgile, with his leading-man looks? This was odd, as the
Cooker Guide
had the power to make or break a vintage, and Benjamin was used to all eyes being on him. Virgile stood back and let the master advance his pawns.

“Perhaps it should be a little cooler…”

“You know very well that cold compromises the aromas,” replied Iselin, whose unflattering figure made him look all the more arrogant.

“You're right, but only if it's too cold—under ten degrees Celsius,” Virgile said. “We're far from that.”

“The young man is correct,” Deutzler said. “Véronique, could you please get us some chilled glasses?”

Virgile waved his hand, signifying that it wasn't necessary. Then he turned to Roch. “What possible link could there be between the Deutzler family and the Ginsmeyers in Ammerschwihr?”

“If we believe Mr. Deutzler and his sons, none at all. Other than…”

“Other than what?” Virgile said as he fixed his gaze on the daughter-in-law, who had turned pale.

“Other than the fact that Mr. Deutzler's younger son, André here, was in seventh grade in Colmar with the Ginsmeyers' only daughter. You must admit, Mr. Cooker, the connection is tenuous.”

“I see,” Benjamin said. “Mr. Deutzler, have you and the Ginsmeyers always been cordial with each other?”

“I really don't know them, to tell the truth. I've never even tasted their wine.”

“You're depriving yourself of a great pleasure,” Benjamin said.

“I'll take your word for it, but Alsace is full of good winemakers. I don't need to tell you that.”

“And you, Véronique, have you tasted the wines from the Ginsmeyer estate?” Virgile asked. His candor would have fooled anyone else, but not Benjamin.

“Um, to tell the truth, no. I mean, yes… I think I drank some at the baptism of one of the nephews. I don't remember very well.”

Suddenly, she turned as white as a ghost, and her eyes rolled back. Vincent Deutzler's daughter-in-law went limp in her chair.

Roch rushed over and yelled to his colleague, “Call for help.”

“I think she'll be fine, Captain,” said Benjamin, who remembered Elisabeth's pregnancy with Margaux as though it were yesterday. “It's too warm in here for a young woman in her condition. Let's open the windows and get some air flowing. And, Bernadette, please bring her a glass of water. Did you know about this, Mr. Deutzler? Certainly it should give you a ray of joy in this bleak time.”

“As long as it's not the child of the devil,” Deutzler sputtered. He moved his hand and spilled his muscat on the table.

“Papa, what an idiot you can be!” Iselin yelled, rushing to open the windows. That done, he went over to Véronique and took her in his arms. He wet her lips with a few drops of muscat, and the sugary scent of verbena and mint water gradually revived her.

6

He loved it perfectly ripened, when the golden crust was nice and firm, and the rind had gone from soft to creamy. As with wine, Benjamin Cooker assessed Munsters with his nose. He'd plunge his knife in to reveal the center of this cheese from the Vosges plateau. The more tenacious and rustic the aroma—even a tad repugnant—the more the cheese lover's nose quivered. To heighten his appreciation, he'd prolong the moment before putting a robust slice on his tongue.

The headwaiter at the Échevin knew all of the winemaker's sensory predilections, but made no show of it. He had therefore cut a double portion and eagerly set it on the dish of this rather exceptional customer.

Ordinarily, Benjamin enjoyed his Munster with a gewürztraminer. The cheese never failed to release the wine's myriad notes of ginger and honeysuckle. This time, however, he ordered a pinot gris,
sélection de grains nobles
, from the Frick winery in Pfaffenheim. The day had been sufficiently eventful to earn him this reward at dinnertime, even if it was a bit syrupy.

“And for you, sir?”

“No, thank you very much. I won't be having any cheese,” Virgile said politely.

“My boy, there is something lacking in your upbringing that would almost justify a lawsuit against your parents,” Benjamin joked with a full mouth. “A meal like this without cheese is like a cassoulet without sausage.”

“Why would I need to set out to sample the more than three hundred cheeses that please the palate when I already know that only one—
chèvre
—can satisfy me? Perhaps if I became your son-in-law, as the old winemaker in Ribeauvillé suggests, I would be more open to the cheese platter.”

“That's not for me to decide, Virgile. My daughter's love life is her business alone. I believe she is not indifferent toward you. But at the same time…”

There followed a silence that reflected some embarrassment, or perhaps reserve, on the part of this man of few words when it came to feelings, especially feelings about his family. More to the point, he didn't want to imagine Virgile and Margaux together.

“Virgile, you're busy sowing your oats. Maybe someday you'll settle down, but for now, enjoy yourself—within limits, of course. Your career should still be your priority.”

“Maybe you're right,” Virgile conceded as he used his knife to push the breadcrumbs from his rolls into a little pile on the tablecloth.

“You know, Virgile, if you were visiting Margaux in New York, you'd have a bread plate and not get your crumbs all over the table.”

“I'm making a neat pile, boss. I used to do this all the time when we were eating with my granddad. It took him forever to finish his cheese course, going on and on with his war and hunting stories the whole time. Who needs a plate for bread anyway?”

“I think bread is almost a first course in the United States, and here it's part of the meal. That aside, the fact that you don't like stinky cheeses shouldn't keep you from tasting this incredibly heady pinot gris,” Benjamin said.

Virgile didn't need to be cajoled. The two men clinked their glasses as they wished each other health and success. Having taken a first sip and smeared the Munster on his bread, Benjamin launched into a lesson.

“Do you know, son, why we raise a glass to each other's health?”

“No, boss, I confess that I don't. It just seems to make sense when you're enjoying the company and a good glass of wine.”

“According to historians, the custom dates to the Middle Ages, when poisonings were quite common. Every nobleman had in his service a taster whose job was ensuring that the nobleman's food wasn't laced with cyanide.”

“Yes, now I remember. I did know that.”

“Well then, why do we toast?” Benjamin asked.

“I'm waiting for you to tell me.”

“When they knocked their pewter mugs together, the mugs would spill into each other. If one of the diners had poisoned another diner's mug, he wouldn't drink the wine, and, therefore, he would expose himself. This is also why, to this day, you must always look each other in the eye when you toast.”

With a brisk motion, the waiter, armed with a tiny brush, obliterated the little pile of breadcrumbs Virgile had fashioned, returning the tablecloth to its pristine state. Then he presented the dessert menu. Both Benjamin and Virgile opted for
fraisier à la vanille bourbon
. Benjamin savored the strawberry cake with his late-harvest dessert wine and delivered his reflections on the eventful day.

“This Captain Roch is a little twerp, and his sidekick is his gofer. If they're able to catch our vineyard vandal, you can make me pope.”

The winemaker was still fuming that the officer had suspected him for even a moment. The very idea was intolerable. He also hadn't reported the tire slashing. The person who did it would never be found anyway.

The vineyard vandal would continue to commit his crimes with impunity. The incompetent Captain Roch didn't have a clue. The world of wine was steeped in resentments and ulterior motives, and the gendarme was just prattling off clichés. “Revenge is a dish best served cold. There's a story behind that,” the crew-cut officer had said when he was leaving the Deutzler home.

“Let's assume he's right,” Benjamin said. “Revenge is a dish best served cold. So do you think he'll try to find out who, if anyone, had a longstanding motive to hurt the Deutzler family? I doubt it. Let's see how the papers handle this tomorrow. If it makes the headlines, the police might have enough incentive to put some effort into finding the maniac. One thing's for sure. If the police don't do anything, he'll strike again.”

“Boss, who says it's a single individual?”

“You've got a good point there, Virgile. We can't exclude the opposite assumption.”

Benjamin used his guillotine to snip off the top off his Lusitania, and a woman at the table across from him gave him a nasty look. Even though smoking in restaurants had been prohibited for some time, Benjamin still forgot.

“You can't even enjoy a good cigar anymore,” the winemaker muttered. He smiled at the woman, sniffed the maduro wrapper, and put the cigar in the breast pocket of his tweed jacket.

“Let's go into the lounge and have a plum brandy,” he said to Virgile.

“You'll have to go without me, boss. That night at the Mango did me in. I'm beat.”

“Amateur.” Benjamin was already heading toward the door. Outside, two other men afflicted with the same addiction were inhaling their
puros
with satisfied looks on their faces.

The cold fog wasn't going to dissuade Benjamin from walking through the city at an hour when most of Colmar was still under the covers. In the gray dawn, it seemed that only he and the garbage collectors in their neon-colored uniforms were up and about. He grinned at their shouting and banging with no respect for those who had the luxury of sleeping late.

The aroma of coffee escaped from windows here and there on the Quai de la Poissonnerie. Benjamin peeked into one or two and saw a few people starting their day. And yet, not a single café had raised its metal curtain. The winemaker longed for a hot drink, even if it was a bad cup of tea.

Wrapped in his Loden and a cashmere scarf, Benjamin strolled with a strange familiarity in this city, rich with half-timbered buildings. It had always been like this in Colmar, with its curious seventeenth-century Maison des Têtes and its Flemish inscription, its former customs building, the Koifhus, whose roof resembled the one at the Hospices de Beaune, and the Auguste Bartholdi museum with his sculpture
The World
in the courtyard. And then there was the Isenheim altarpiece at the Unterlinden Museum, which the art lover and man of faith had spent much time studying during his first visit to Colmar twenty-five years earlier.

As Benjamin continued walking, the city slowly came to life again, even though some nighttime revelers hadn't called it quits. On the Quai des Tanneurs, Benjamin passed a group of drunken boys wielding beer cans, one of whom belched a greeting.

Benjamin crossed the street, drawn by the scent of warm bread. He pushed on the bakery door, but the expression on the owner's floury face told him that he needed to wait until exactly seven o'clock. It was no use.

The solitary walker felt friendless in this historic and beautiful town, which, ironically, was known for its modesty. Finally, he wandered to the Saint-Martin Collegiate Church. In a café on the square, the owner of a bistro called Père Tranquille was cranking up his coffee machine.

On the counter, the front page of the morning newspaper announced, “The vine reaper strikes again in Ribeauvillé.” A large photo showed the extent of the damage and the look of disappointment on Iselin Deutzler's face.

Despite the scarcity, indeed, complete absence of clues, the journalist had managed to gather a fair amount of information, some of it not to Benjamin's liking. He was annoyed to find that he was mentioned in the article, which took up most of the space above the fold.

“I saw Mr. Cooker with a younger man on that very same slope,” one area resident was quoted as saying. “If you ask me, it's very strange that he'd be here so soon after the Ammerschwihr vandalism. What was his business in this part of the country, anyway?”

The journalist claimed that he had tried to reach Benjamin. If that were so, the winemaker wondered, why weren't there any messages for him when he returned to the hotel? It didn't matter. He wouldn't have spoken to the reporter anyway.

Benjamin didn't care for the café's selection of teas, so he ordered a double espresso and two butter croissants. When he accidentally spilled two oily croissant crumbs on the newspaper, the café owner added to the unpleasantness.

“If my first customer mucks up the newspaper the way you are, what will the others say? A little respect, please.”

In response, the man from Bordeaux reached into his Loden for a two-euro coin and casually placed it on the counter without even looking at the rude proprietor.

“I didn't mean to offend,” the owner said. “I was just trying to make small talk. There's nothing worth reading in the paper anyway.”

The café owner was a short and squat man with shifty eyes and a double chin. His bushy eyebrows and downturned mouth gave him a generally sour look. His Alsace accent, meanwhile, was sharper than a Laguiole knife.

“Doesn't it seem strange to you that someone would go around at night bleeding his neighbor's vines?” Benjamin asked.

“I can tell you're not a local, or else you'd know that things like this have always happened. They just didn't get written up in big newspaper stories. Pouring oil and poisons on a neighbor's plants—I've seen that done further back than I can remember. And as far as the Ginsmeyers are concerned, if there are any winemakers. I don't feel sorry for, it's them.”

“They don't deserve to be punished because they're successful,” Benjamin objected, brushing the croissant crumbs off his wool sweater.

“Oh, we know very well where that success comes from…”

“Meaning what?”

“You are talking, sir, to a pure-blooded son of Ammerschwihr. I could tell you a lot of nasty things about the Ginsmeyers and their so-called success.”

The winemaker decided to share a joke to lubricate the café owner's tongue. “You know what Sacha Guitry, the actor, said about success?” he asked.

“No, but I think you're going to tell me,” the pudgy bar owner replied.

“‘For a man, success is earning more than a woman can spend.'”

“And for a woman?”

“‘It's marrying that man!'”

The café owner's face finally lit up with a smile that revealed teeth yellowed by years of smoking.

“When it comes to marriage, the Ginsmeyers know a thing or two.”

“There's nothing repugnant about marrying a rich woman,” Benjamin said.

“True, but I wouldn't say that about black market dealings with the Germans during the war.”

“In Alsace, Germany wasn't really the enemy,” Benjamin said.

The café owner's face flushed with anger. “I won't stand by and let you accuse us of that,” he thundered.

“World War II was three-quarters of a century ago. For someone bent on revenge, don't you think that's a long time to wait? And how many resistance fighters are still around, anyway?”

“Enmities can go back much further, believe me.”

“You've told me either too much or not enough,” said Benjamin. “Justify your accusations.”

“If the cops did their work better, the culprit would already be locked up.”

“Which means that you have your suspicions?”

“Exactly!”

“A name, perhaps?”

“In Ammerschwihr, everyone knows who did it. Consider, sir, that for years, the Ginsmeyers bought the silence of a dozen winemakers by paying them double the market price for their harvests.”