Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) by Alexander Campion

price, you get the item. Do you understand how that works?”
    Capucine nodded.
    “Well, we received a pre-auction bid for ten thousand euros for this particular piece. I was very surprised, believe me.”
    “Now that is interesting. And who placed this bid?”
    Bertignac furrowed his brow. “That’s confidential.” But as he said it, he was already pecking at the keyboard of his computer. He tilted his head back and made an exaggerated frown, peering at the screen though his half-glasses, moving his head back and forth, searching for the right focal distance. “Here are the personal details.”
    Capucine walked over to the computer and took out her notebook.
    “Madame Chéri Lecomte. I know her. She has a stand at the Puces. Obviously, she doesn’t buy pieces at Drouot to sell at the Puces, but she does acquire the odd item every now and then for her own collection. But never anything even as remotely expensive as what she bid.”

CHAPTER 15
    A ccording to the police database, Chéri Lecomte owned and operated stand D-44 at the Marché Cambo. Capucine decided to pay an unannounced visit.
    This time around Capucine noticed that the rows and stands were labeled with little white enamel plaques high up on the walls. Row D turned out to be the location of the Vuitton stand she had visited. A sixth sense told her Chéri Lecomte would turn out to be the woman in the red dress at the communal lunch.
    Her sixth sense was absolutely right, but what it didn’t prepare her for was being recognized.
    “Commissaire Le Tellier, what brings you to my stand?”
    Like starlets running into each other at a cocktail party, there was a three-beat pause as the two women examined each other’s outfits. Today Lecomte wore a white ruffled-front silk blouse and a pearl-gray pencil skirt that Capucine suspected was Givenchy from an antique clothing boutique. The bright red soles throbbing from the front of the heels of her black pumps shouted they were Louboutins. With ruthlessly plucked eyebrows and pearly white teeth beaconing from behind plump carmine-red lips, she had the radiantly healthy bloom of a sixties pinup. Capucine felt invulnerable in the elegance of her new pale blue silk suit by Rochas. And her dark blue Sergio Rossi slingbacks were way more attractive than those tacky Louboutins.
    Capucine smiled sweetly. “How is it you know who I am?”
    “The Marché Biron is a tiny village. It’s news if anyone sneezes. And when a commissaire of the Police Judiciaire turns up, well . . .”
    “Then you must be aware I’m investigating the death of Jean-Louis Brault.”
    “Of course. How could we not spend all day gossiping about a celebrity who turns up dead in a trunk from our neck of the Puces?” Lecomte said with a laugh.
    Capucine was again struck with the difficulty of pigeon-holing Lecomte. It wasn’t just the retro look. Even though her French was faultless and perfectly idiomatic, there was something unmistakably foreign about her. Maybe it was just that she seemed so out of place at her stand. In any event, Capucine was forced to concede she was a strikingly attractive woman.
    “I hope I’m not going to disappoint you, but other than gossip, I don’t know anything at all about that trunk or how Chef Brault happened to be in it.”
    “Actually, I’m here about something else. I understand you placed a pre-auction bid on a Menton rafraîchissoir at Drouot. Can we talk about that?”
    Lecomte was momentarily taken aback. “How did you hear about that?”
    “I was alerted that the piece had been sent to Drouot by Chef Brault just before he died.”
    “Oh my God!” She seemed genuinely surprised. “I had no idea. It says ‘private collection’ in the catalog.”
    “So it does. The interesting thing is that it turns out that the piece is a fake.”
    Lecomte’s pencil-thin eyebrows rose almost to her hairline.
    “It’s been removed from the auction,” Capucine added.
    “How odd. I didn’t know that. I never