The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne by M. L. Longworth Page A

and then crisscrossing horizontally, reminded Verlaque of the bare branches of Provence’s plane trees in winter. He stopped unbuttoning as he heard a ringing coming from the kitchen. Running down the hall, he grabbed his cell phone on the fourth and last ring.
    â€œ
Oui
,” he said, buttoning his shirt back up as he balanced the phone between his cheek and shoulder. For some reason he knew that he would not be going straight to bed but would be heading out the door. He had hoped the caller was Marine.
    â€œI’m so sorry, Antoine,” Pierre whispered.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Pierre?”
    â€œI’m not sure. I didn’t want to wake Jean-Marc—”
    â€œAnd so you woke me.”
    Pierre took a breath and quickly continued, “Well, Jean-Marc has to be in court at eight tomorrow morning, and you had mentioned that you were taking the morning off.”
    â€œTrue,” Verlaque answered. “And I was kidding about waking me. So what’s wrong? You sound anxious.”
    â€œJust before going to bed I noticed that my cell phone wasblinking,” Pierre explained. “I hadn’t heard it ring during the club meeting. The message was from René—”
    â€œThe painting guy—”
    â€œRight. He was frightened and whispering quickly into the phone. He was sure that he was followed down the rue Boulegon, and that someone was outside the hall, listening to him as he spoke.”
    â€œThat’s unsettling,” Verlaque replied. “He didn’t seem to be the kind of man to exaggerate or be paranoid.”
    â€œExactly. I just tried calling him, and there’s no answer. That’s why I’m heading out the door. I’ve got to check on him. And I was wondering—”
    â€œIf I’d come with you,” Verlaque said as he picked up his apartment keys off the kitchen counter and pulled his coat down from the coatrack.
    â€œTwenty-three rue Boulegon,” Pierre answered quickly. “Thanks!”
    Verlaque ran down the four stories of winding red-tiled stairs as quickly as he could. He knew that he would reach the rue Boulegon before Pierre, and he hoped that Pierre still had a key for the street door. He also hoped, as he turned left onto the rue Campra, that René Rouquet had fallen asleep and could not hear his telephone.
    It was almost 1:00 a.m. and Verlaque imagined—as he usually did when he walked late at night—that much of downtown Aix hadn’t physically changed since Cézanne’s time. The streetlights were now electric and the shop signs no longer painted
à la main
, but the buildings were the same, as were the narrow streets. People now slept, as they would have at 1:00 a.m. in the nineteenth century. Who had slept in his apartment? How many families had lived there before he bought the large seventeenth-century flat? When he tookpossession it was made up of four or five small, high-ceilinged rooms; Verlaque’s architect had removed as many of the walls as permitted to make a large one-bedroom loft. What would those former tenants make of his stainless steel dishwasher? Or his glass-walled bathroom?
    As he turned left onto Boulegon he heard footsteps running behind him. Pierre came up beside him and leaned over, gasping, with his hands on his knees.
    â€œHow did you get here so quickly?”
    â€œI ran,” Pierre said, coughing.
    â€œYou have the front door keys, I hope.”
    Pierre patted his back pocket. “I accidently kept them.”
    â€œLet’s go, then,” Verlaque said as they walked by the shuttered shops.
    â€œI’m so worried,” Pierre said, still out of breath.
    â€œHe’ll be fine,” Verlaque replied. “Is he a drinker?”
    â€œBinge drinker,” Pierre said. “Doesn’t drink for weeks and then ties one on at the Bar Zola. Why do you ask?”
    â€œBecause he may have had a few drinks to calm his nerves and now is