“I’ll call Fabrice tomorrow,” Verlaque said. “He’s the president.”
Marine had her eyes closed, and Antoine wasn’t sure if she was listening. She opened them and said, “When I think about it, Rosalie—Michèle is her real name—was very extroverted, but it was almost forced, like she wanted to entertain us for some reason. Make us all like her. As if there was a hidden agenda—”
Verlaque smiled and rubbed his hands together. “Nobody fools Marine Bonnet.”
Marine pulled the sheet up to cover her shoulders and turned toward her husband. “There is an ocean of history between Valère and Michèle . . . I sense that not all of it is clean.” She yawned and said, “Michèle was just the tiniest bit aggressive with him.”
“Poor Valère,” Verlaque said.
“Picking sides?” Marine asked, smiling.
“I’d defend anyone who wrote Red Earth.”
“Me too. But perhaps we’re being biased, given our literary tastes. Maybe Valère deserves her antagonism. Who knows what went on between them? Besides, Valère has an eye for the ladies.”
“Really?” Verlaque asked. “Did he make a pass at you? I’m sure you can defend yourself.”
“No, not a pass as such,” Marine slowly answered. “But he’s the kind of man who looks at a woman with a certain intent, an intent that is very clear to the person being gazed upon.”
“Have a good day with the philosophers,” Verlaque called to Marine before shutting the door. Out on the rue Adanson, he felt so happy he could almost sense his heart swelling and constricting with each beat. He had spent years as a grumpy bachelor, and now here he was, married to someone who made him happy every single minute. He was realistic enough to know that their marriage would not always be this easy—his own parents’ had been a disaster—but for now he would allow himself to bask in the glow of newlywed bliss. “Bliss,” he said aloud, using the English word, slowly emphasizing the double s. “Bliss.”
By the time he got to the Palais de Justice he was hungry, even though Marine had forced him to eat granola for breakfast (he refused to eat it with yogurt—that seemed entirely too healthy—and he poured milk in instead). He walked through the giant central courtyard, where a statue of Mirabeau himself—Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, orator, politician, spendthrift, and skirt chaser—pointed in the direction of a law chamber, although the inside joke was that he was indicating the toilets. Verlaque nodded in Mirabeau’s direction and headed up the stairs to his office, where he knew his too-posh secretary, Mme Girard, would be waiting for him to approve and sign a stack of papers.
“Bonjour, Mme Girard,” he said as he saw the well-coiffed sixty-year-old walking toward his office with, yes, a stack of papers. She was tanned and had just returned from a two-week vacation somewhere in the Caribbean but he couldn’t remember where. No tropical island held any interest for him, except Cuba.
“Bonjour, Juge,” she answered, trying not to look down at the judge’s belly, which, in her opinion, seemed to get bigger every day. “The commissaire is on his way.” She handed him the papers and almost did a little curtsy before turning around to walk back to her desk.
“Thank you,” he answered, taking the papers with a bigger than necessary smile. He walked into his office, leaving the door open for Bruno Paulik. Turning on the espresso machine that sat on a glass-top console—he had brought in his own furniture, just one of the many reasons, he knew, other Palais de Justice employees thought him a snob—he sat down, getting out his grandfather’s fountain pen and a jar of ink.
“Knock, knock,” said Paulik as he walked into the office.
“Good morning,” Verlaque said, looking up. He saw that the commissioner held a small white paper bag. “Michaud’s? Brioches?”
“One for each of us,” Paulik answered, setting the bag on the desk. “I’ll make the coffee.”
“The machine should be ready,” Verlaque said. “What’s on the books for today? Besides paperwork and the incredibly fascinating case of the mayor’s extortion ring. Bus pamphlets, right?”
“There were signs too.”
“Huh?”
“The communications company was paid for signs too,” Paulik said, while bent down, hands on knees, watching the thin stream of espresso pour into a porcelain demitasse. “You know, those big signs they put in bus shelters.”
“Have a seat and let’s go through it together,” Verlaque said, opening the bag from Aix’s best patisserie and taking a glazed brioche. It was so fresh that he almost crushed the soft dough between his fingers.
Paulik carried the espressos over and sat down. “Well, Yvette Tamain—”
“Remind me how long she’s been mayor.”
“Twenty-three years.” Paulik bit into his brioche. “Her term finishes next year. She and her party recently paid a company called AixCom to design and produce pamphlets and signs explaining the new municipal bus routes. The company charged 250,000 euros for the work, but apparently it only cost 40,000. An intern at the municipal tax office caught the discrepancy.”
“Incredible,” Verlaque answered. “Bravo for the intern, but not to the missing 210,000 euros of public funds. They will have to be brought before me and officially put under investigation. Does this intern have enough proof?”
Paulik nodded. “Yes, she does. And she claims she can follow the money to Tamain’s next election campaign and a long weekend she and her cronies spent at a five-star hotel in Saint-Tropez.”
“Who’s in on it?”
“Tamain and her campaign manager, Damien Pacaud, and the CEO of this AixCom, Gilles Gavotto. After the bus campaign, AixCom was hired to publicize the opera festival and a recycling campaign.”
“Payment for their cooperation,” Verlaque said. “I’m not looking forward to this. Tamain and I have never liked each other.” He leaned back and sighed. “Why does my colleague in Nice get all the interesting investigations?”
Paulik laughed. “I read about that this morning in Le Monde. The kidnapping of the heiress?”
Verlaque nodded. “Did you see the cast of characters who made up the kidnappers?”
“You could make a Hollywood movie about it,” Paulik said. “A retired Michelin-starred chef, a hotel
