Provence - To Die For by Jessica Fletcher Read Free Book Online

again. Au revoir.”
    He turned and loped back through the arch toward the table. The knives would need washing again.
    “Too bad you have not had the opportunity to see the school kitchen. It is very old and charming.”
    “Yes, too bad,” I echoed.
    The elevator came and we stepped inside. I turned around and watched the door close on the ancient courtyard. I wasn’t at all sorry my car had come early. I was ready to leave.

Chapter Three
    Marcel was a very confident driver, but I was not his equal as a passenger. As his little car hurtled down the country road, I held tight to the side of the seat near the door, and tried not to close my eyes. The combination of crooked streets and traffic had kept his driving to a crawl in Avignon, but once outside the city’s crenellated walls—a legacy from the later years of the papal occupation—he was liberated. He stomped the accelerator to the floor with his right foot, and I doubt he ever lifted it the entire trip to Martine’s.
    An unlit, unfiltered cigarette hung from the comer of his mouth, and as he talked, it bounced up and down. He was a carpenter by trade, but it was winter. The summer tenants had gone back to their homes in Paris, London, and New York, and things were slow. He filled in by providing transportation to those who lacked it.
    He pulled a card from his shirt pocket, letting go of the steering wheel and inspiring what I was certain was a stream of colorful language from the driver of a truck he nearly sideswiped. “This is the number of Madame Roulandet,” he said. “She runs the village bakery.” He handed me the card and pulled the car back into the lane ahead of the truck to an accompaniment of blaring horns. “When you need a ride, you call her the day before, and she will find me. Est-ce compris? Understand?”
    I took the card but vowed I would find another way to get to Avignon for my cooking class. I didn’t think I’d live through a repeat of this harrowing ride. Even if I arrived alive—which was up for debate—my nerves couldn’t take it again.
    “You look worried,” he charged, his bushy black brows rising over his tinted glasses. “I am a very safe driver. I never have accidents. Martine, she didn’t tell you?”
    “I think she forgot to mention it.”
    “Everyone drives like this in France. It’s normal.”
    The car flew past a cluster of yellow stone buildings up a hill that Marcel indicated was the village of St. Marc, careened around a corner, and jounced off the pavement onto a dirt road. Fortunately, no human or animal was nearby. The plume of dust in our wake would surely have choked any living thing engulfed by it. As we aimed for a building on a rise just ahead—I prayed it was Martine’s farmhouse—I saw olive trees whizzing by my window.
    Marcel skidded to a halt before a graceful two-story building nestled among bare-branched shrubs and trees. Its facade appeared to have been stucco at one time, but over the years chunks had fallen off, and patches of brown showed through the dingy white paint. Martine had ignored the aging walls, but had painted the wooden shutters a bright turquoise and the front door a deep red. The effect was eccentric, like an elegant dowager wearing vivid makeup.
    Marcel climbed out of the car and went around to the trunk to haul out my suitcase, while I groped around the floor of the car to retrieve my handbag, which had fallen off my lap during the wild ride. I paid him, nodded as he repeated his instructions to call the baker if I needed him again, and watched as he steered the car around a large tree and drove back toward the village in a cloud of his own making. In a few moments the growl of his engine faded away, and silence descended.
    I stood still, listening to the whoosh of the wind and the skitter of dried leaves across the dusty driveway. I’d been waiting a long time for this trip, relishing the anticipated peace in the hectic months that preceded it, and eager to put the