CHAPTER THIRTY
PRESENT DAY
CHÂTEAU CLEMENT
Cady
Cady put the chicken and vegetables in the oven to roast so that they would be ready at six and would have time to rest before she and Fabrice sat down to dinner at six thirty.
At six twenty-five, she called Fabrice to the table. He appeared in the doorway, looking surprised. “Dinner? At this hour?”
“What’s wrong with the hour?” she asked.
His expression suggested she must be an alien life-form. “I don’t eat dinner until eight thirty or nine.”
“Oh. Well, then, today will be a new experience.”
He glared at her. She returned the stare, unblinking.
“Fine, we’ll eat,” he grumbled. Opening a drawer, he took out a flashlight and handed it to her. “Go down to the wine cellar and bring up a Sancerre from the Haut-Goujon.”
“A Sancerre?” Cady repeated, unfamiliar with the many varieties of French wine. In her world, wine was red or it was white.
“Oui. From the Haut-Goujon.”
“Haut-Goujon. Got it,” she replied, making a mental note. Sancerre, Haut-Goujon. “And where might I find the wine cellar?”
Fabrice showed her a small door off the hall. “Down those stairs, to the left. I can’t remember if it’s the second or third door. You will see—it is a room with many bottles of wine.”
“Very funny,” Cady said. She took a deep breath and started slowly down the stairs, her flashlight piercing the darkness below. She glanced back at the doorway. Fabrice stood there, backlit by the lamp in the hallway.
Cady shivered. She felt as if the damp stone walls were closing in on her, and she batted spiderwebs away from her face as she descended.
At the bottom of the stairs, she swung her flashlight beam around the cellar, noting a series of groin vaults and broad stone arches that led in many directions. Some of the arches opened onto cramped windowless rooms, but others were larger.
Okay, this is most definitely where the killer lurks at night.
Either that, or... could this have been the dungeon at one time, where the seigneur of the area locked up recalcitrant peasants? Did French châteaux even have dungeons? She wished she knew more about French history.
Olivia had been right about one thing, at least: France was not what Cady had expected.
After running into a few dead ends, she located the wine cellar. It was a dark, low-ceilinged space, reminiscent of a cave, and she had to crouch to enter through the stone archway. The cave smelled of wine and must, and contained half a dozen huge oak barrels as well as numerous wooden racks filled with dusty bottles.
“Sancerre, Haut-Goujon,” she repeated, checking label after label, but without luck. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, my dear Sancerre.”
After many minutes of searching the wine racks, pulling out first one bottle and then another, wiping off the dust and reading the label, she gave up. The chill and gloom of the place were getting to her, so she grabbed three bottles at random and hurried upstairs to the warmth and brightness of the kitchen.
“I said theSancerre,” Fabrice groused when she set the bottles on the table.
“This was the best I could do before the killer found me.”
“What?”
“I tried, but it’s a little confusing down there, not to mention cold and dark. You’ll have to draw me a map next time if you want a particular bottle. For now, let’s eat.”
“Red wine with chicken,” Fabrice complained, uncorking the bottle and pouring a deep red liquid into two goblets. “It is an abomination.”
“So don’t drink it,” Cady replied, setting the baguette and a small plate of butter on the table, then taking her seat.
