Nightmare in Burgundy by Jean-Pierre Alaux, Noël Balen

them.
    He went over the text several times in its entirety and remembered having read it many years earlier. It was a prayer for the restoration of Israel, a heartfelt plea for justice. Nothing in the text where the vineyard was invoked managed to awaken in him the least hint of a clue. He got out of his car, pulled out his cell phone, and punched in the number for Robert Bressel as he strode through the courtyard across from the farmhouse. He motioned for his assistant to hurry up as he waited for Bressel to answer.
    “Hello,” he said simply, since Bressel claimed to have an ear for voices.
    “Mr. Cooker, good timing! I just came back this minute from the police station in Nuits-Saint-Georges, and there’s lots of excitement there.
    “The investigation is making progress?”
    “They took some photos of the graffiti and made enlargements so that the handwriting specialists could analyze them. According to my information, nothing jumped out at them.”
    “They couldn’t say if it was the same person each time?”
    “I am pretty close to the captain,” Bressel explained. “But he doesn’t tell me everything.”
    “However, that is an important point.” Cooker’s words remained suspended in silence. “Hello?”
    “I’m still here, Mr. Cooker. I am weighing what you just said. Do you think that the latest writing on the road might not have been written by the same person?”
    “It’s just a theory. They don’t exactly match. But maybe it’s because of the way the writing was done.”
    “I am not following your reasoning,” the reporter confessed.
    “Writing on a vertical surface with a can of spray paint would have to differ slightly from writing on a horizontal surface. You understand? The act of bending over and tipping the can has to modify the handwriting. That’s without even considering the conditions, which had to be challenging. There was more urgency.”
    “That makes sense, especially since it all happened at nightfall, around seven-thirty, according to the autopsy report. It was still early, and there was a bit of traffic.”
    “That’s what I was thinking. I went to the scene, and if you examine everything very carefully, you notice some nuances, slight changes, compared with the graffiti in Vougeot and Gilly. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen the writing at Adèle Grangeon’s.”
    “You seem to be giving this matter a lot of thought,” Bressel observed in a tone that could be interpreted as respectful, intrigued, or sarcastic.
    “I can’t help it,” Cooker responded a bit curtly. “And by the way, I also had the chance to see your nephew in Dijon. Strange boy!”
    “Pierre-Jean is a brilliant young man, but he has never had much luck. He deserves more than that job at the library, and I think he is bored there.”
    “He told me a lot of interesting stories, but I didn’t learn anything. I had the impression that he was taking me for a ride.”
    “I’m surprised to hear that. That’s not like him.”
    “What I mean is that he didn’t give me any leads, and he kept changing direction. At the end of the day, I felt a bit lost.”
    “Pierre-Jean never says anything without a reason, so that surprises me. Perhaps he didn’t have any insights.”
    “Possibly. Did he talk to you about our meeting?” the winemaker asked as he signaled to Virgile to put the cases in the trunk of the convertible.
    “No, I haven’t spoken to him since your visit.”
    “You don’t see each other regularly?”
    “Very rarely. He’s pretty introverted. He lives in his books and doesn’t mix with people much. He has a hard time with his looks, and I am afraid he’ll end up a bachelor. It’s true that he has never been attractive. He was in love once, a girl in his class, but she went off and married some wife-beater. He’s good-natured, though, and remarkably sensitive. I think he never quite recovered from the blow of not getting the job of curator of the historical archives.”
    “That’s