Dead in the Dregs: A Babe Stern Mystery by Peter Lewis

Author:Peter Lewis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Wine writers, Mystery & Detective, Crimes against, General, Napa Valley (Calif.), Wine and wine making, Fiction, Burgundy (France), Vintners
ISBN: 9781582435480
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2010-07-13T01:14:28.630033+00:00

19

I drove through the twisting, narrow streets of Chambolle. Domaine Carrière was located on the back side of the village set beneath an outcropping of rock. I pulled into the shadow of a brick wall topped with wrought iron. The domaine was beautifully kept, its stone buildings like rustic barns covered in ivy, a willow and lacy pine enclosed in a brick-lined, fenced garden. I crossed the courtyard where a man was stacking cases of bottles sheathed in plastic and asked for the patron. He pointed toward the buildings.

I crossed the cuverie, its floor and walls concrete, the room outfitted with a row of foudres, a double concrete fermenting tank, and a pair of stainless steel fermenters, and descended to the cave. A small anteroom led to the first cellar, where a man crouched over a barrel with his back to me, topping it off with wine from an unmarked bottle.

“I am looking for the patron, Monsieur Carrière. Is he here?”

“Oui,” he said, not looking up from his work. I did a double take. It was Jean.

“Pitot?” I said. He glanced up from the barrel. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Is this where you work?”

Panic crept into his eyes. The bottle in his hands shifted and wine spilled across the barrel.

“Merde!” he muttered. He set the bottle on the ground and stood up. He didn’t move, nor did I. Neither of us knew what to do.

“I’m not afraid of you,” he said, his chin raised defiantly.

Nor was I afraid of him. I simply hadn’t expected to run into him there. In my mind, I was on the trail of Feldman and, wanting to exhaust the possibilities of where I might find him, needed to get the conversation with Carrière out of the way.

“Le patron?” I said.

He jerked his head to indicate that the winemaker was somewhere farther inside the cave.

“You and I have to talk,” I said. “Don’t go anywhere.” I turned away and then looked back. Pitot was visibly squirming where he stood, his body language suggesting he couldn’t make up his mind whether to follow me or run for his life.

Off the first cellar was a second, twenty by forty feet, with two aisles running between three rows of double-stacked barrels. As I entered it, I looked back over my shoulder. Pitot was watching me.

Cave gave onto cave, each portal linteled by an I-beam set into the stone so low that I had to stoop as I passed from room to room, each chamber smaller than the next but all vaulted, the individual blocks of their construction indiscernible beneath a darkened slick of mold. Electrical conduit ringed each room at regular intervals, and from the zenith of its belt, a white porcelain shade hung like a corona around an oversize bulb that cast a dim light into the gloomy atmosphere. The marcs and sous marcs, wooden struts like train ties that anchored the oak barrels, ran the length of each chamber above pea gravel. The barriques,

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