Read Murder in the Rue Dumas: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery (Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mysteries) for Free Online Page B

there, and thought he had had a heart attack. They fled, not wanting to be found in the office.”
    “I’m sure. What were they doing in there, anyway?”
    “Looking for the name of the winner of some fellowship award—they both applied for it. That’s what Roussel was raking them over the coals about. He accused them of killing the professor over this award.”
    “
Merde
, Roussel,” Verlaque hissed. “What an ass.” While there were things that Verlaque respected in Roussel—the prosecutor’s hard work and bravery—he was constantly frustrated by the prosecutor’s impulsiveness, and he hated Roussel’s tasteless jokes and general need to be the loudest in any room. Short man syndrome, Verlaque thought, doubled in a Marseillais. The second thought he tried to erase, wanting to be politically correct. After all, he didknow a few men from Marseille who knew what it meant to be discreet.
    “Sir?”
    Verlaque shook some cigar ashes off of his jacket and answered into the speaker, “Sorry, Paulik. Please continue.”
    “I have a team going over Dr. Moutte’s apartment, and we’ve been calling all those who were at a party that he gave last night—Moutte’s secretary has a list. I’ve ordered those we’ve been able to contact to be present tomorrow morning in the school’s assembly hall at 9:00 a.m., even if it is a Sunday. Some people seem to have gone away for the weekend and we haven’t been able to reach them.”
    “Tomorrow morning’s perfect, thank you. Anyone else we can speak to on Monday. I’ll be in Aix any minute,” Verlaque said, and he hung up. He realized that he would not be able to return to Crillon-le-Brave this evening, so he would pay for Marine to take a taxi home. He had the sudden desire to go to Marseille, and he pulled the car over to look for the phone number of someone who was a new friend and a die-hard lover of Marseille, Olivier Madani. Verlaque got ahold of the filmmaker and suggested they eat at his favorite Marseille restaurant on the rue Sainte, run by a husband and wife team with, in a rare reversal of duties, the wife in the kitchen and the husband working the dining room as host. Each time Verlaque walked into the restaurant he felt like he was home—or a place he imagined felt like what a home should be: warm, dimly lit, with genuinely friendly owners. The restaurant’s patrons all seemed to know each other and hopped up and down, moving from table to table, as if eating could be a game of musical chairs. Verlaque loved the fact that he could walk up to the kitchen, which had a sliding window, poke his head in, and say hello to Jeanne and ask her what she was cooking for him thatevening. Jeanne cooked with local ingredients using many family recipes, the food rich and heavy but refined at the same time. “Fancy comfort food,” Emmeline had called it when he took her there. Jeanne and Jacques were now old, and Jacques walked from table to table with the aid of a cane. Verlaque imagined that they would retire soon, and no doubt close the restaurant, which saddened him.
    The bit of sun he had seen over Mont Ventoux from their hotel room had now disappeared. He drove into Aix and pulled up in front of the address Paulik had given him, seeing that the name of the building matched the street name—Jules Dumas. He squeezed his dark green antique Porsche between two police cars. Three young men—students, presumably—came up to his car and walked around it. “She’s a beauty,” he heard one of them say. Verlaque got out of the car and nodded to the students, who smiled shyly then turned back to their diversion of watching the police go in and out of their college, the students slightly bored by the entire procedure but for some reason unable to move on.
    Bruno Paulik came out of the building’s art deco front door and strode toward his boss. The two shook hands and then the commissioner groaned.
    “What is it, Bruno?” Verlaque asked. Paulik rolled his eyes and