Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery) Read Free Page A

veneer of antiquity. The contrived mix of burnt siennas and red ochers intending to create the look of “the Venice of France” exacerbated Capucine’s irritation.
    Alexandre was still partially enveloped in the arms of Morpheus. For him, seven thirty was hardly the hour for a levee. Left to his own devices, he would have begun his day at ten at the earliest. He looked balefully at Capucine from under lids three-quarters closed. It was clear that he would remain mute until he had taken the first sip from the split of champagne he had ordered, further escalating Capucine’s ire.
    “All right, I admit I made a mistake, too,” Capucine said. “Inviting Inès was an impulse. I confess she intimidates me. And, yes, she may be a little too, well, intense, and, well . . .” Capucine lowered her voice. “Maybe just a bit too plebeian for this crowd.” Her volume returned to normal. “But still, we talked it over with Serge, and he had absolutely no problems with her. Remember? But inviting on the spur of the moment not one, but two, people you ran into at a café, and proposing that they sleep on the sofa of an already overcrowded boat, without even thinking of consulting anyone, well, my dear, that’s frankly quite over the top.”
    Capucine’s tirade was interrupted by the arrival of room service.
    The restorative power of the good monk Dom Pérignon’s sparkling wine on Alexandre was never anything less than astonishing. Halfway through his flute Alexandre’s ebullient bonhomie was fully restored.
    He favored Capucine with his most fulsome smile. Capucine thawed, but only around the edges.
    “Serge will be over the moon when he sees Aude. Trust me. And Régis is a good buddy and an excellent cook. Between the two of us our victuals alone will make the trip worthwhile.”
    “That remains to be seen.”
     
    Nearly an hour late—after all, the physical elements of post-squabble reconciliations are not to be rushed—Capucine and Alexandre stood at the end of a long floating dock, facing the ample stern of a generously proportioned sailboat. Their friend Serge, transformed from his Paris persona, stood sixty-five feet away at the bow of the boat. In the City of Light, in trim Italian suits worn tieless, with the top two buttons of his silk shirts left undone, he seemed always prepared for a paparazzo to snap him for the lifestyle pages of the glossies, which seemed never to tire of him. Now he had recast himself into a Mediterranean sailing bum. Clad only in shorts and boat shoes, he was already deeply tanned, his cheeks stubbled, his hard, flat chest adorned with a luminescent jade juju hanging from his neck on a leather thong. He stood next to a fresh-faced young man in a blue polo shirt marked MEDITERRANEAN ANCHORAGE YACHTS. Both peered intently at a clipboard, checking off the boat’s inventory. Serge’s bubble of self-importance was palpable even from the dock.
    Capucine and Alexandre greeted Inès, who hovered twenty feet from the stern. Exchanging inanities about the glory of the weather, the trio waited to be invited on board once the inventory was complete. A couple clanked down the aluminum ramp leading to the dock, their shrill argument far louder than the ringing of the metal plates under their feet.
    “I saw the way you were hitting on that waitress! You’ve reached the point where you don’t even wait for lunch. You’re on the prowl even at breakfast. And you have the effrontery to do it right in front of me!”
    It was hard to detect even a vestige of the sensitive Sciences Po Angélique in her current headhunter manifestation. The Modigliani face and shock of chestnut hair were still there, but her earlier delicacy had been overlaid by the intransient hardness of a top-of-the-line headhunter. On the other hand, Dominique, dreamy and placid in the storm of the harangue, remained the quintessential artist, concerned only with adjusting the knot of his fuchsia Liberty Print neck scarf.
    Catching