Read Chapter 6: Missing Man

The ledger was still in his hands when the weight of it became unbearable. Alex closed it, pressed his palms flat against the leather cover, and tried to slow his breathing. Passports. His father's face staring up from five different names. Cayman shell companies buying barrels at prices that would make a Bordeaux first-growth blush.

He heard Claire's footsteps before she spoke.

"I didn't know what you'd find," she said from the cellar entrance. "But your father believed you'd know what to do with it."

Alex shoved the ledger back into its hiding place and stood, wiping dust from his trousers. "Who else knew about this room?"

"Your father. Me. No one else alive."

"Étienne Belrose."

Claire's face tightened. "Étienne knew about the wines in the main cellar, not this. But he was your father's right hand for thirty years. He suspected things."

Alex stepped out of the hidden space and let the false wall close behind him. The carved stone cross slid back into place with a soft scrape. "When did Étienne leave the estate?"

Claire looked away.

"Claire. When did he leave?"

"He didn't leave." She crossed her arms, protective. "He disappeared. A week before your father died. One morning he didn't show up for the sorting. His cottage was empty. Clothes gone. No note, no goodbye, no word since."

Alex stared at her. "And no one thought to mention this to the police?"

"Your father reported it himself. The gendarmerie in Nuits-Saint-Georges opened a file. But Étienne had no family, no debts, nothing that suggested foul play. They assumed he'd simply walked away. Your father didn't believe that." Her voice dropped. "He searched for Étienne for two weeks. Personally. Every day."

"Searching for his missing cellar master while someone was planning to kill him." Alex felt the pieces trying to connect, but the gaps were still too wide. "Why would Étienne disappear? Did he have enemies?"

"He had arguments." Claire's eyes met his. "That's what the workers remember. The last month before he vanished, Étienne was fighting with your father constantly. Voices raised behind closed doors. Slamming doors. The whole vineyard heard it."

"What about?"

Claire shook her head. "I don't know. Étienne would shut down if anyone asked. But the timing—a week before your father's death, the two loudest arguments anyone could remember." She paused. "I always wondered if they were arguing about the same thing."

The estate yard was quiet when Alex stepped outside. The morning sun had burned off most of the fog, leaving the rows of vines stretching down the slope in clean lines of green. A tractor rumbled somewhere below, and he could hear the murmur of voices from the sorting shed.

He found two workers by the old press house, a man and a woman in their fifties, both wearing the weathered aprons of people who had spent decades in the vines. They stopped talking when he approached.

"Did either of you know Étienne Belrose well?"

The man—Gérard, Alex remembered from his first tour of the estate—scratched his chin. "Thirty years I worked under him. Toughest boss I ever had. Fair, though."

"You heard him argue with my father?"

Gérard exchanged a look with the woman, whose name Alex didn't catch. She spoke first. "Everyone heard. They didn't bother to lower their voices at the end."

"What were they saying?"

"Étienne wanted your father to go to the police. About something. We heard him say it through the office window. 'You go first, or I go alone.'" She shrugged her heavy shoulders. "Your father refused. Shouted back that going to the police would get everyone killed."

Alex felt a cold line run down his spine. "When was that?"

"Day before Étienne vanished." Gérard nodded. "Next morning, no Étienne. His cottage clean as a whistle. Like he'd planned it."

"Or someone cleaned it for him," Alex said quietly.

Neither worker responded. The woman looked away, suddenly interested in the vines.

Alex thanked them and walked the perimeter of the property, his mind churning. Étienne had evidence, or knew where evidence could be found. He wanted to go to the police. His father refused, claimed it would get them killed. Then Étienne vanished, and a week later his father was dead anyway. Whatever his father had been trying to protect by staying silent hadn't worked.

He was halfway up the gravel drive to the main house when he noticed the car.

A black Peugeot, parked on the access road where the tree line thinned, maybe two hundred meters from the estate gates. No one got out. The engine wasn't running. Through the driver's window, Alex caught the glint of sunlight off a pair of binoculars. Then the binoculars lowered.

Alex didn't slow down. He kept walking, casual, toward the house. But he marked the license plate in his memory: two letters, three numbers, a departmental code he didn't recognize.

Inside, he found Claire in the office with a stack of papers from the estate's accounting years. She looked up when he entered.

"Black Peugeot on the access road," he said. "Watching the property."

Claire moved to the window and pulled the curtain aside. The car was still there, a dark shape against the green. "How long has it been watching?"

"I don't know. I just noticed it."

"That's Vichet's way." She let the curtain fall. "He doesn't threaten with phone calls or visits. He parks a car where you can see it, and it stays there, day and night, until you understand what it means."

"It means I'm being watched."

"It means whatever you found in that cellar, you're not allowed to move it." Claire turned back to her papers. "There were cars like that when Étienne disappeared. I thought nothing of it then. Now I wonder if Étienne saw one too the day before he was gone."

Alex stood at the window, keeping to the curtain's edge. The driver's door of the Peugeot opened. A man got out, adjusted his jacket, and lit a cigarette. He didn't look toward the estate. He didn't need to. His presence was the message.

"We need to know what happened to Étienne," Alex said. "If he had something, he might have hidden it—somewhere he knew only my father would think to look."

Claire was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "Êtienne had a sister. In Lyon. She was the only family he ever mentioned."

"Do you have an address?"

"I know the town. His grandfather was a vintner in Fleurie. The family kept a house there." She found a pen and wrote on a scrap of paper. "That's all I have. He never spoke of her much."

Alex took the paper. Lyon was two hours south. He could drive there and back in a day. The car on the access road would follow him if he left the estate. Or maybe it would stay and watch whoever remained.

"Before you go," Claire said, her voice lower now, "there's something else you need to know about Étienne. Something I didn't tell you earlier."

"What?"

She hesitated, then pulled a folded photograph from the pocket of her apron. It was creased and faded, showing two young men standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the estate, circa the mid-1990s.

"Étienne wasn't just your father's cellar master. He was your father's half-brother." Claire held the photograph out to him. "You never asked why Étienne stayed loyal to a failing estate for thirty years. That's why."

Alex looked at the photograph. His father's face, younger, in the unmistakable posture of family.

"I never knew," he managed.

"Your father didn't want you to know. He and Étienne fell out over a woman many years ago—your mother. Étienne loved her too. He stayed anyway, out of loyalty." Claire's voice was careful. "Whatever they argued about before Étienne vanished, it wasn't about the past. It was about the future. And Étienne was trying to protect it."

Alex slipped the photograph into his coat, beside the insurance policy. Outside, the man in the black Peugeot had finished his cigarette and was getting back into the car. He didn't drive away. He just sat there, an unmoving accusation.

"How do I find the sister?"

"It's written on the paper." Claire nodded toward his hand. "That's the thing, Alex. Whatever Étienne knew, he may have passed it to her before he disappeared. He was a careful man. He knew the going would be hard."

The word echoed in Alex's mind. Not *gone*. Going. As if Étienne had known his disappearance was coming.

Alex looked at the paper. One name, one town, no address.

"Her name," he said, reading the paper, "is Mathilde Belrose."

"Go," Claire told him. "And don't take the main road. There's a farm track behind the eastern plateau that leads to the D-974. He won't follow you there."

Alex nodded once. Then he went upstairs to get his keys, the photograph of his father and the uncle he never knew burning against his chest, and the man in the black Peugeot shifted in his seat like a predator settling in for a long wait.