Free The Vintage Caper by Peter Mayle Page A

Valley.”
    Her cell phone rang. She looked at it, made a face, sighed, and put down her champagne. “My lawyer. Excuse me.” She got up and walked away to take the call.
    Sam had noticed this before in France, and couldn’t make up his mind whether it was due to good manners or fear of eavesdroppers. But whenever possible, the French tried not to inflict their cell phone conversations on other people, preferring to find a private corner somewhere. It was a civilized habit that he wished his compatriots would adopt.
    While he was waiting for the call to finish, he went back over the notes he’d taken during the château visits. At each château, they had asked who the regular clients were, the big buyers with serious caves to keep stocked. For the most part, the answers they had been given were unsurprising: Ducasse, Bocuse, Taillevent, the Elysée Palace, the Tour d’Argent, one or two private banks, half a dozen billionaires (whose names, of course, were not revealed). In other words, the usual suspects.
    Sam sat and stared at his notes. And as he stared, another question occurred to him, a question that they hadn’t thought of asking. He was still mentally kicking himself when Sophie came back from her call.
    He leaned forward, looking as pleased as a dog that had just unearthed a previously forgotten bone. “You know those old French detective movies?”
    Sophie looked blank.
    “You know, when the detective remembers something he’s overlooked?”
    Still no reaction from Sophie.
    “There’s this moment of revelation. He smacks his forehead with the palm of his hand.” Sam suited the action to the word. “ ‘Zut!’ he says. ‘But of course!’” By now, he had a broad smile on his face.
    “Zut?” said Sophie. “What is this z ut and the head-slapping? Are you all right?”
    “Sorry. Yes, I’m fine. But it just struck me that maybe we’ve been asking the wrong questions. Maybe we should be asking if anyone has tried to buy those particular vintages and been disappointed, because they’ve all been sold. Maybe there’s an obsessive enthusiast out there, someone like that guy who wanted to line his cellar with vintages from 150 years of Latour, someone who’s determined to fill the gaps in his collection at any price. That’s a motive, isn’t it?” His face was a hopeful question mark.
    Sophie pursed her lips and nodded slowly. “It’s possible,” she said, “but in any case, we have nothing else to try.” And besides, she thought, this was much more amusing than sitting behind a desk dealing with a vigneron’s insurance claim for frost damage. “Well, what do you want to do? We go again to the châteaus? It’s better than the phone, I think.”
    “We go again to the châteaus. Bright and early tomorrow morning.”
    Sophie looked at her watch, frowned, and picked up her handbag. “I’m going to be late for my meeting, and my lawyer charges by the minute. So tomorrow—shall I come for you at ten?”
    “Is that bright and early?”
    “Sam. This is France.”
    Sam woke early. The night before, there had been second thoughts, worries about dragging Sophie out for another day of dead ends. But sleep had restored his optimism, and the sun was shining. A good omen. He decided to go out for breakfast, found a busy café opposite the Grand Théâtre, and settled down with a café crème and the Herald Tribune .
    A glance at the headlines did little to improve the morning. It was business as usual throughout the world. There were more wildfires in southern California, a futile barrage of political name-calling in Washington, the ever-thickening fog of pollution in China, unrest in the Middle East, tub-thumping from Russia, alarm and despondency in Europe, and a dose of gloom from Wall Street. Scattered throughout this litany of woe were advertisements for watches and handbags, each one more ostentatious than the last. A reminder that no matter how bad the news, it would never overcome the