The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Instead, he kept his expression under control.

  “I understand, Babette,” he said, quietly.

  She turned abruptly away from him and left the room, not bothering to shut the door behind her. Connor listened as he heard her leave through the front door and wondered if she’d taken anything on her way out.

  He’d been a fool to think he could continue to see the girl under the circumstances. But he’d so wanted to try sculpting that body. It was at the perfect stage of its ripeness, not quite showing but not quite normal. A state halfway between the virginal girl and the maternal woman.

  He looked at the barely touched form of clay. What a shame, he thought. He had had such high hopes for this particular piece.

  3

  Madame Renoir dusted the flour from her hands and suppressed a gasp of delight when she saw the two American women coming toward her shop. She had just been about to close up―that useless Babette had not even shown up for work today―when she saw Madame Van Sant and Madame Dernier get out of the handsome black automobile in front of the Dulcie’s charcuterie. To her exquisite pleasure, the two women bypassed the butcher shop and headed straight for her own boulangerie.

  Quickly, she scurried to the back of the shop, past the ovens and the large, mixing tables coated with flour, small clouds of the white dust still hovering gently above the floor, to the back room where she kept her milk crates, gumboots and brooms. Shifting her large body sideways to enter the small room, and listening for the sound of the bell at the front door, she reached into one of the large crates crammed up against the wall and the back door. She picked out two of the fattest, biggest puppies, clutching them to her ample bosom, and squeezed once more back through the narrow opening. As she walked through the back preparation room, the heat of the now-cooling ovens still warming the room, she could hear the tell-tale tinkle that heralded her customers’ arrival.

  “Madame Renoir?” Grace called as she opened the door of the little shop. “God,” she said to Maggie, “I gain weight just smelling the stuff in this place, you know?”

  They had finished most of their shopping in Aix―a twenty-five pound frozen turkey sat wrapped and strapped in the back seat shoulder harness of Grace’s Mercedes as testimony―and had decided to pick up their bread and Maggie’s pumpkin pie order at Madame Renoir’s.

  “Unfortunately,” Maggie said, eyeing the delectables in the bakery display case, “I practically live here.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No, really. Laurent and I both love fresh bread for dinner every night...”

  “And you mean to tell me you don’t stock up on a few eclairs and custard-tarts while you’re about it?”

  “Bonjour, Mesdames!” Both Grace and Maggie jumped, startled by Madame Renoir’s sudden entrance. She was red-faced and caked in white, and holding to the front of her broad, pale blue smocked tablier a squirming pair of poodle puppies.

  “Pour vous, Madame!” the woman chortled shrilly as she pushed one of the wriggling dogs into Maggie’s arms. “Et aussi pour vous, Madame. Pour votre petite fille, oui?” She shoved the other puppy into Grace’s hands, who held it as if it might explode at any moment.

  Maggie shifted the bundle of lapping tongue and curly fur in her arms and murmured her thanks to Madame Renoir, while staring in laughing surprise at Grace, who, up until this moment, Maggie could not have imagined looking awkward or uncomfortable in any situation.

  “Merci, Madame. Mais, pourquoi?” Maggie asked, peering into the puppy’s sleepy face. She quickly checked the sex of the dog―a female―and decided, on the spot, that a year’s quarantine, or whatever the United States required for re-entry with an animal, could be suffered. It suddenly occurred to her that a pet was precisely what she needed during her year in France.

  “Pourquoi?” The baker grinned idiotically at both women, beaming as broadly as if she had produced the pups from her own litter. “Parce que, je veux vous donner un cadeau! Simplement!” Because I want to give you a gift, that’s all.

  Grace smiled generously at the woman and said to Maggie through her smile: “I can’t keep this thing. Windsor will shit.”

  “Madame?” Madame Renoir looked encouragingly at Grace as if she still needed some last, minor commitment from the American to accept the dog.

  Grace held up her puppy―a very active male―and smiled too widely. “Merci beaucoup, Madame. Ma fille sera très contente, très heureuse!”My daughter will be thrilled. She glanced at Maggie. “Taylor will have it skinned and eaten before dinnertime tomorrow, you watch.”

  The puppy wrapped his needle-sharp teeth around a glittering button on Grace’s double-breasted knit top. She attempted to pull the dog away from her buttons.

  “Ouch! You little monster! It bit me!” Grace looked at Maggie’s own docile puppy and she began to laugh. “God, this figures,” she said. “You get perfect-puppy there and I get the hound from hell. There’s no justice. How did this happen to us? Didn’t we just come in here for some bread?”

  “I told you,” Maggie said, watching the big blinking eyes of her puppy, “I come here a lot. It’s probably some sort of archaic bonding thing between proprietor and customer that she does with all her prized customers and you just happened to be here when the gift-giving portion of the rite happened.”

  “I’m riddled with luck.”

  “How do you say, ‘again’? I want to thank her again.”

  “You know I’m going to make you take this little rotter too as soon as we’re outside the shop.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Grace. I’ll tell Taylor and you’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “God, you wouldn’t.”

  “Merci, Madame,” Maggie said, giving her puppy a little shake to indicate why she was thanking the woman. “Merci, encore.”

  “I don’t think that’s right,” Grace said, now holding her animal with both hands away from her Chanel country skirt.

  “She gets the idea.”

  Madame Renoir waved her hands at Maggie as if to signify that the giving of the puppy was nothing.

  “Votre tian de dourge sucrée est prête,” she sang out to Maggie. Your sweet pies are ready for you. She pulled out a large tray from under the counter and set it gently on the surface between them. On the tray sat two dozen small ramekins of what looked like orange pudding with caramelized topping drizzled over each.

  “My God, they look wonderful,” Grace said, still struggling with her dog for ownership of her buttons. “They smell even better. What are they?”

  Maggie looked a little closer, aware that Madame Renoir was watching her with some trepidation.

  “Well, they’re not pumpkin pies,” she said, finally, softening the words with an encouraging smile to Madame Renoir. The baker produced a small silver teaspoon and scooped the center out of one of the tians. She held it out to Maggie.

  “This isn’t really a pâtisserie, Maggie, darling,” Grace said softly. “There are lots of places in Aix. In fact, Aix is famous for its...” Grace watched Maggie as she tasted the spoonful of creamy, sweet pumpkin.

  Maggie looked up at Madame Renoir who, having accurately deciphered Maggie’s reaction, was beaming again.

  “C’est magnifique,” Maggie said to the baker.

  “Bon! Bon!” Madame Renoir began bundling up the puddings in various cardboard boxes while Maggie and Grace selected baguettes for the evening.

  “Où est Babette cet après midi?” Grace asked absently as she steered the little dog’s muzzle away from her large, gold earrings.

  Madame Renoir made an impatient hand gesture in Grace’s direction and rattled off a rather cross explanation of the girl’s absence.

  “You know, it’s weird,” Maggie said, plopping her dog on the floor to see what it would do. “Did I tell you what happened to me the first and last time I saw Babette?” The puppy shook its curls, then sat quietly at Maggie’s feet. It looked up at Maggie as if awaiting instructions.

  “You mean Gas
ton getting a freebie feel?” Grace eagerly deposited her own dog on the floor. “You told me. What a cretin.”

  “Est-ce que vous connaissez Gaston Lasalle?” Madame Renoir said suddenly to Grace as she pushed the wrapped tians toward Maggie on the counter.

  Surprised by the question, Grace told the woman that Gaston had helped pick the grapes at Domaine St-Buvard. She pointed to Maggie and said that Madame Dernier had spoken with the man and found him very unpleasant.

  The baker reacted dramatically. She turned to Maggie and began babbling frantically in French.

  “What in the world is she saying, Grace?” Maggie looked from Madame Renoir to Grace and back to the baker again.

  “I don’t...it’s kind of fractured,” Grace said, trying to keep one eye on the hand-wringing of Madame Renoir and one eye on her puppy as it pounced on her Ferragamos. “Something about...he’s a bad man...very méchant...very, I guess, evil? Oh, he’s a Bohémienne, and...”

  “What do you mean, like an artist or something?” Maggie frowned. Gaston Lasalle certainly hadn’t struck her as the sensitive type.

  “No, no, Bohémienne...that’s the Provençal word for gitane...you know...gypsy.”

  “Lasalle’s a gypsy?”

  “Will you let me listen? Dog, stop it!” Grace shouted at the puppy as it lunged again at her shoes.

  Madame Renoir wiped her hands against her apron, but only succeeded in coating them with more white powder. She turned to Maggie and shook her finger at her slowly. Her eyes looked worried and sad. Her words were slow but still incomprehensible to Maggie, who nodded seriously as if she could understand.

  “Oh, my God,” Grace said, glancing at Maggie for emphasis.

  “What?” Maggie asked. “What is she saying?”

  “You are not going to believe this.” Grace pushed the attacking puppy aside with her foot. “Madame Renoir says Gaston Lasalle is the grandson of the gypsy they hung in your vineyard.”

  “Faites attention,” the woman said sternly to Maggie. She pushed the package of wrapped tians closer to Maggie and held her hand firmly. “Be careful, Madame,” she said in English.

  4

  Laurent scooped up the steaming, saffron-yellow polenta onto two plates. Maggie watched him from her stool. She had been delighted to return from her shopping expedition with Grace at a little before six in the evening, to find Laurent emerged from his cave, and cooking up a cozy dinner à deux. She held a glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape as she watched him work.

  “You have brought a fougasse?” he asked with surprise, lifting the flaky flat bread from its wrapping paper.

  “Madame Renoir pressed it on me,” Maggie said as she watched Laurent break the bread up and then position two roasted quail on one plate and four other birds on the second plate. “She thought she’d upset me,” she continued. “You know how she is. Her way of dealing with stress is to give you free buns.”

  “I love fougasse. “

  “Well, then, I guess my little trauma was worth it.”

  Laurent gave her an admonishing look from under his thick eyebrows. But he said, “The news about Lasalle is troubling you?”

  “You don’t think it’s bizarre that the guy whose dear ol’ granddad is publicly and gruesomely offed in our vineyard shows up to pick our grapes? In the same vineyard? You don’t think that’s weird?” She decided, once more, to withhold a report on her little run-in with Gaston in front of the boulangerie two weeks ago.

  “You watch too much American TV,” Laurent said. “We will try one of our own wines, tonight,” He positioned salad leaves on two glass dessert plates.

  “Really? Is it ready?”

  “This one is meant to drink a little young. It’s not wonderful. But it is not bad, I think.”

  “Gosh, Laurent, what’s that?” Maggie pointed to the salad. “You should have told me you’d run out of lettuce, I could’ve picked some up for you. You don’t have to rip the weeds out of the yard.”

  Laurent’s smiled affectionately at her as he picked up a fork and gestured at the salad. “Dandelion leaves, rocket leaves, lamb’s lettuce.”

  “No Ranch dressing, I guess.”

  “Grilled goat cheese in olive oil.”

  Maggie sighed. “Anyway, I got all the stuff for dinner on Thursday. I think.” She picked up the salad plates and walked into the part of the living room that they used as their dining area. Laurent followed with the dinner plates and a bottle of wine under his arm.

  “Bon,” he said. “And you had a nice visit with Grace. That is very good. I am glad. Sit, sit, Maggie. It is getting cold.”

  “Well, aside from the dog relieving its surprisingly large bladder all over the front of Grace’s blouse...did you know she wears, like, original Chanel? The rest of the afternoon was pretty uneventful.”

  “Dog?” Laurent asked absentmindedly as he began working the cork out of the bottle.

  “Yes, didn’t I mention that? Madame Renoir gave Grace a dog. Cute little thing, smart too. Poodle, I think.”

  Laurent poured their glasses.

  “Try that,” he said.

  She took the large balloon glass in her hand and sniffed the wine’s bouquet.

  “I haven’t a clue as to what I’m trying to smell,” she said.

  “Just drink it, Maggie,” he said patiently.

  “Mmm-mm, tasty,” she said. “Very nice. Vin du Laurent. My favorite brand.”

  “It is a little young.”

  “No, no. It’s nice.”

  “A little too much tannic, too, I think. No matter.” Laurent studied the bottle with his own hand-scrawled label on it. “It will get better as I do. You will see.”

  “Well, the polenta is wonderful, as usual,” Maggie said. “And not fattening either, I’ll bet?”

  “Madame Marceau was here today.” Laurent cut into his quail.

  “Really? What did she want?”

  “She left you a gâteau for Thursday’s dinner, she said.”

  “No kidding? That was sweet.”

  “It is a Gâteau de Fruits Battus,” he said.

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “It is a traditional cake for a vigneron’s wife to make. It is made from the broken, too-ripe grapes.”

  “Are you telling me I’m supposed to make this grape-cake too?”

  “Non, non, I am just telling you. That is all.” He looked at her with mild exasperation. “Also, Jean-Luc stopped back by today.”

  “Quelle surprise,” she said, cutting into the polenta.

  “He brought us a couple of good dogs.”

  “Excuse me?” She looked up from her plate.

  “Dogs. You know.”

  “I know what dogs are. What do you mean, ‘he brought us a couple of dogs’?”

  Laurent shrugged. “Which part is unclear?” he asked.

  “Do not be smart with me, Laurent. We have dogs now? Is that what you’re saying? We’re pet owners?”

  “These are not pets,” he said. “They are hunting dogs. Guard dogs. Dogs to go for walks with―”

  “But plural. ‘Dogs’.” Maggie frowned at him. “As in, more than one.”

  Laurent took the napkin from his lap and tossed it down on the table next to his plate, scowling.

  “Jean-Luc comes to my house to give me les cadeaux and I am going to say, ‘Mais, non, I must ask first my girlfriend?’ C’est ridicule.“

  “Well, gee, Laurent, I’m glad you find it so ‘ridicule.’ May I ask where these new members of our family are now?”

  “I have put them in the little walled-off part in the―”

  “In our garden?”

  “They are perfectly safe there.”

  “What if they dig up stuff and crap all over the terrace and―”

  “Enough, Maggie,” Laurent said sternly, resettling his napkin. “They are not to be doing any of those things. Pas du tout.”

  “Yeah, ‘pas du tout’. What are they, hounds or something? They’re gigantic, aren’t they?” />
  “They will not be in your way. You are not to worry.”

  “Well, thank you, Laurent,” Maggie said sweetly. “That relieves my mind considerably. And, well, dearest, I have something to tell you too.”

  “Yes?” Laurent frowned and chewed, watching her.

  “I, too, have acquired a dog today without first asking your permission.”

  “It’s a joke.”

  “You’ll think so, chéri.” Maggie laughed in spite of herself as she saw Laurent’s eyes narrow. “Especially since this dog will not be sleeping in the garden at night.”

  “You are making a joke to get back at me.” Laurent allowed a small smile but glanced around the room as if expecting the emergence of a dog at any moment.

  “I’m not, Laurent, I’m really not.” Maggie began to laugh, suddenly relieved and tickled at the same time. She would let Laurent have his smelly old hounds to go cavorting around his precious vineyards with. He could hardly object now to Madame Renoir’s little gift to her. “I’m calling her Petit-Four, since I got her from a bakery.”

  Laurent stabbed at the remaining rocket leaves on his plates and shook his head. “I will never understand your kind of humor,” he said.

  “Yeah, ditto.” Maggie took another sip of her wine. “So, why did Jean-Luc give you dogs in the first place?”

  Laurent grinned. “It’s just until we have children of our own, he says.”

  “For crying out loud.”

  They both laughed and Laurent leaned over and took her hand and squeezed it.

  “Je t’aime, Maggie “ he said.

  “I love you too.”

  “You are excited about your parents coming tomorrow?”

  “I can’t wait to show Mother the house and all. I want to make this a Thanksgiving to remember always. I mean, think of it, Thanksgiving in Provence. It’s going to be perfect.”

  “Perhaps Nicole will make friends with little Taylor, yes?”

  “I don’t know,” Maggie said doubtfully. “I mentioned it to Grace and she didn’t seem too sure. You know, she almost never talks about her. Do you think that’s odd?”

  “Connor says the child is very bad.”