Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

for the battery in my barn. I’ll attach it overnight and your car will be fine tomorrow.”
    Bruno quickly cleared some of the jumble in the back of his van and turned his sports bag into a makeshift seat. Then he went back to the house for his keys and called the duty sergeant at the gendarmerie to ask if the patrols were out. He’d have to drive through town and over the bridge, and the last thing he needed was to try to talk himself out of a breath test. Jules answered the phone sleepily and told him all was quiet.
    Once they were en route, Jacqueline spoke from the back.“That was an amazing dinner, Bruno. Really, I can’t think when I ever dined as well.”
    “And those wines were heavenly,” added Pamela.
    “Sadly, I can’t afford to drink like that often,” he said.
    Jacqueline chattered away happily until he came to the Bar des Amateurs, where she asked to be dropped off, saying she had to meet someone for a nightcap. Raising his eyebrows slightly, Bruno pulled over and let her out. She thanked him again before running into the bar. He drove through town.
    “I’ll bring you your car in the morning,” he told Pamela. “Then you can drive me back to my house to pick up my van.”
    “I’ll have some coffee ready for you. About eight?”
    “Fine. I’ll bring some croissants.” They drove on in silence over the bridge, then she turned to him.
    “Jacqueline certainly seems to have gotten over Max’s death pretty fast,” Pamela said. “I thought their relationship was more serious than that. But then, she’s still very young.”
    “She’s still a kid in many ways, although I suspect she can be a calculating one,” Bruno said. “But I honestly wondered if she’d come tonight. I thought she might be too upset. How’s she going to get back to your place?”
    “I know she left her bike at the
cave
. She came straight to your dinner from work with Hubert and Nathalie.”
    “Did you notice her showing off about wine to Hubert over dinner?”
    “Who could have missed it?” she said with a laugh. “Nathalie was looking daggers at her. It’s just the way Jacqueline is, realizing how attractive she is to men and trying out her powers. She’ll grow out of it.”
    “You haven’t grown out of it.” He grinned in the darkness, his eyes on the narrow road ahead.
And not many women do, thanks to
le bon Dieu, he thought.
    “I hope I’m a little more subtle than that. She’s in her earlytwenties, finished with her education. You’d think she would have matured by now,” said Pamela, staring ahead. Bruno felt comfortable with her in the strange mix of intimacy that came with driving together at night, almost like a confessional.
    “Tell me what brought you to Saint-Denis.”
    “A divorce. I married far too young, almost straight out of university, and my husband was in banking, working very long hours in the city. It was the usual story. He fell in love with his secretary. Well, he probably fell in love with the money, but she happened to be around and available. I was teaching, which I quite enjoyed, but not enough to devote my life to it. I’d always loved France, so when we sold the house and divided the property it was an opportunity to come here and have some horses. It worked out very well for me, but he’s divorced again, poor man.”
    Poor man? Was she still attached to him? “What did you teach?”
    “History and French, to children between the ages of twelve and sixteen who were always getting lost on school trips to Paris. Thanks to them, I’ve been up the Eiffel Tower three times and seen the
Mona Lisa
and the Sacré-Coeur four times each. The fourth time I should have been going up the Eiffel Tower I was looking for a child we’d lost at Napoléon’s tomb in the Invalides. Knowing the girl in question, I was sure she was plotting to steal the body. A little devil.”
    “Maybe Jacqueline was like that when she was a child,” Bruno said.
    “I think Jacqueline was rather more cunning, after what we saw this evening,” she said. “By the way, I meant to ask her if she likes horses. I’d be glad to have someone help exercise them. That new doctor, Fabiola, says she like horses.”
    “Maybe you could teach me to ride someday,” said Bruno. “Properly, I mean. I’ve sat on a horse and walked a few trails,but I remember seeing you and your friend Christine in the summer galloping through the field. It was a marvelous sight and made me envious.”
    “I’d love to