Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

kissing …,” she began. She stopped and closed her eyes. Bruno and J-J just looked at her, letting the silence build. Her eyes opened but seemed to focus on nothing.
    “My head was over the side of the vat and I was holding the rim with both hands. Max was behind me, he was … he was very passionate. Then he was slumped on me, a deadweight. I was trapped; I couldn’t move.”
    She burst into tears, and let them fall down her cheeks. “I couldn’t move, and he didn’t respond. I thought he was asleep or that he’d passed out. I didn’t know what was happening, and even though my head was over the side of the vat I was dizzy, like I was fainting. I managed to push him away, and his head hit the side with a thud and I panicked.”
    Jacqueline stopped, looking down at the ground. Bruno waited, his eyes fixed on her. J-J was immobile beside him.
    “And when did Cresseil come into the barn?” Bruno asked.
    “I climbed out of the vat and I must have been screaming because the old man came out of his house. He saw me at the door of the barn and pushed me aside and went in. I saw him climb the steps and then he crumpled and fell, right from the top of the steps. He just fell and lay there.”
    “So why didn’t you call the emergency services, the
pompiers
, the ambulance?” asked Bruno.
    She shook her head. “I don’t know. It was that damned dog, yapping. It was hardly able to move, its back legs crippled, but it kept creeping across to the old man and yapping and howling and turning to snarl at me. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t shut it up. I didn’t know what to do.”
    “So you killed the dog.”
    “I hit it on the head with a big stone to knock it out, but the stone was so big.”
    “Your lover was dead. The old man was dead. The dog was dead,” Bruno said flatly. “You came here to Saint-Denis determined to ruin Bondino’s project. Max’s death gave you the perfect opportunity. You began to work out in a very cold-blooded way how this could be made to damage your cousin, to have him blamed for murder and take your revenge on the family.”
    “You don’t know what they did to us,” she snapped back, her eyes suddenly ablaze. “They arranged the killing of my grandfather, they cheated my mother out of what was hers. They built their fortune on fraud. They’re the killers, not me. I didn’t kill anybody.” She stared defiantly into Bruno’s face. “And you know something else? They’re going to destroy this precious town of yours. They’re going to take your land and take your water and make their usual mass-produced crap. They’re going to swallow you all up, just like they devour everything else.”
    Bruno just smiled and slowly shook his head. “No, they aren’t.” Into the silence came the sound of a distant car, drawing closer. J-J let out a deep breath, looked up the driveway and said, “My men.” Then he looked down at Jacqueline and snapped his handcuffs onto her wrists.

42
    The leaves were thick on the ground at the edge of the woods, a fringe of browns and yellows and the occasional splash of red starting to cover the charred expanse of the field. Farther across the barren soil, the ruins of the large shed had crumbled under the rains and wind. Bruno felt himself shiver slightly as he remembered the sound of the gasoline can exploding and watching Albert topple to his knees in the flames. Beneath him, the gray mare twitched, perhaps feeling his brief shiver, perhaps sensing the change in his mood. Pamela had said horses could do that. He leaned forward to pat the horse’s neck.
    “It’s all right, Victoria. Just a memory,” he said. The horse stood calmly, patiently allowing Gigi to sniff around her feet. The horses had grown accustomed to Bruno’s dog, but Bruno had yet to get comfortable with being astride an animal that seemed so much larger and more powerful underneath him than it did in the stables, and that kept him so high off the ground as he looked across the field.
    “This is where it started,” said Pamela, bringing Bess to a halt alongside him. “There’s an old English saying, ‘Red sky at morning, shepherd’s warning.’ You remember the huge glow?”
    “I remember. And I remember the hat you wore at the adoption ceremony. Cresseil told me you reminded him of his lovely Annette. He was right. You do look a little like her. I saw some of Cresseil’s old photos.” He looked at her. “You’re more beautiful.”
    She smiled at him. “Do you