Verlaque replied, “I told you: I’m reexamining her death.”
“No good will come of it,” I said. “She’s dead. She fell off a sailboat during a storm. That’s all.” Verlaque was about to say something when the house phone rang. I almost jumped out of my skin. Sandrine came running into my office wringing her hands. The commissioner was right behind her, and he said to me, nodding toward the phone, “This might be it.”
I gulped, picked up the receiver, and quickly put it on speaker phone. “Âllo,” I said. I tried to stop my voice from cracking.
A male voice said, “M Barbier, please listen carefully. We have your son.”
“Stepson,” I cut in.
“Shut up. To ensure his safety, please bring fifty thousand euros, in a duffel bag, to the chapel in Puyloubier.”
“But that will take time—” I tried to say more, but he immediately cut me off.
“We will give you two days to get the cash together. Be at the chapel on Sunday at midnight. Alone. Please walk. No cars. Do you understand?”
“And then what?” I asked. “Will Erwan be there? How do I know he’s all right?”
We heard a muffling sound, and Erwan came on the phone. “Valère,” he said. “Please do what they say. I’m sorry . . . I just went outside to look at the stars and have a ciggie . . .”
There was more muffling, and the other voice came back on the phone. “We will see you at the chapel. Alone.” Before I could ask any more questions, the line went dead.
“How did they get the house number?” Paulik asked.
“I’m afraid I’ve been careless,” Sandrine quickly said, her voice trembling. “I’ve given it out in the village as the cell reception is lousy here.”
“We have two days,” Verlaque said as he paced the room. “Did you recognize the voice?”
“Certainly not,” I replied. “He seemed to be trying to hide a southern accent. It popped up now and again.”
“They were obviously watching the house,” Paulik said. “But how did they know that Erwan is your stepson? He could have been just a casual visitor, stepping outside to look at the stars, as he said.”
I held up my hand. “I still don’t think Erwan is behind this.”
“The whole village knows of M Barbier’s wealth and fame,” Sandrine said. “It’s no secret.” She paced back and forth, and I winced when I took a good look at her clothing: tight, stretchy faux-leopard-skin pants with a red tube top and matching high heels. I pictured her the night before, at my bedside. That’s when it clicked: When she came into my bedroom to calm me down, she had been fully dressed, just like that. Not in her pajamas.
“So they would know he has a stepson,” Verlaque said. “And it would be easy enough to find a photograph of Erwan on the Internet. But how did anyone in the village know that Erwan was here? Unless, like the commissioner suggested, they were watching the house.”
“Wait,” I said. “He stopped at the bar to ask for directions.”
“Who?” Verlaque asked.
“Erwan,” I continued. “The cabbie was Polish and didn’t speak French.”
I saw the judge look at the commissioner, who nodded. The judge asked, “How would they know the Parisian asking for directions is your stepson?”
“I took Erwan to an awards ceremony last year, and a few weeks later there was a photo spread in Paris Match. I felt sorry for him, and anyway I had no one to go with.” Sandrine threw me a look of disappointment. Once again, I was alienating my new friends. And what would they think if, or when, they found out . . .
Valère’s hands had slowly slid off the table and were now resting in his lap. Justin saw the fatigue on the writer’s face. How different Valère Barbier was now, compared to the jovial man who had come bouncing into the restaurant a few hours before. Justin snuck a look at his watch; it wasn’t yet eleven, and he knew there was still much more story to be unraveled. He had to get Valère to talk more. “Sandrine,” Justin said, pouring them both water, “do you think she had been out that night?”
Valère said, “Of course. She couldn’t have changed that quickly. But even if she was deceiving me, I still needed her as a friend. I felt guilty. We had been arguing, too. Stupid things, like the house renovations.”
“Leopard-patterned wallpaper?”
Justin’s comment evoked a laugh from Valère, which is what he had hoped for. “She wanted to change the kitchen,” Valère said, pushing his water aside and pouring them each more wine. “I thought it was perfect, except for the old gas oven. There was a little shallow round stone sink, which Sandrine said I should take out and replace with a double stainless steel job. The walls were rough-hewn stone, and some former occupant or servant had fastened thick wooden shelves to one of them, supported by simple metal brackets. One of the first things I had done was to put a selection of Agathe’s smaller earthenware bowls on them, along with some big Riedel wineglasses. I saw Sandrine eyeing the shelves, imagining oak cupboards in their place. But we agreed that the outside of the bastide, and the views, were perfect. We’d had long discussions about that.” Valère smiled and took out his cell phone. “I’ll show you some photos.”
“I love this one,” Justin said, looking at Valère’s phone.
Valère nodded. “A few months before I moved in, an acquaintance in Paris advised me to get a gardening team out to the bastide and install a drip system. It was excellent advice, because when I arrived in late spring the gardens were thriving, and the grass was still green. In a photograph taken in springtime, the field between my house and Hélène’s vineyard was full of wildflowers.”
“Look at that emerald-green lawn,” Justin said. “It’s practically Technicolor. And so is that purple flower. Lavender?”
“Yes, it was in full bloom when all the shenanigans began. That photo was taken from the
