“Maybe,” Maggie said. “I loved the stories you told about Stan at his apartment.”
Ted nodded. “I didn’t know him as long as the others,” he said. “But what we had was for keeps.”
“Yeah, he had that effect on a lot of people.”
“I still can’t believe he’s gone.”
“I know.”
“Do you want to have dinner tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“You have plans?”
“No. I…I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure if you have plans?”
“No, I’m not sure I want to. You know I’m married, right?”
Ted laughed. “Oh, like that means anything in Paris!” he said.
“Are you joking?”
“Yes, yes, I’m joking. I wouldn’t dream of hitting on a married woman.”
“Now you’re joking.”
“Sorry. But I’m just as happy to go to dinner with you to enjoy your company and nothing more. Not to worry.”
“Can I take a rain check? I really need to get to the bottom of Stan’s apartment. He was incredibly neat and tidy but still—it’s a lot of stuff to decide what to do with.”
“How about I bring groceries to your place and make you dinner?” Ted clapped his hands together as if this was just about the most brilliant idea he could imagine. “Then you could work and I would feel like I was helping but still not intruding.”
Maggie had to admit the plan had its merits. For the slightest of moments she found herself wondering what Laurent would be doing tonight.
“What would you make?” she asked.
Maggie spent her afternoon stacking and sorting all of Stan’s home office. She intended to leave the laptop until last. When she taped up the final box, she allowed herself to take a break and sat on the couch, her shoulders aching from the position of being hunched over most of the day.
It was amazing how you could get to know someone, she marveled, just by going through their things. The first hour, she felt like she was invading Stan’s private world, but by the time she started to become more efficient about what was worthless and what wasn’t, she had become hardened to the special little notes he might scrawl in the margin of some book or the collection of museum magnets he seemed incapable of passing up. She was thankful that he had been so organized. She had been instructed by her father not to discard anything—regardless of how worthless it may appear—until after the will was read lest it was some treasure that he had bequeathed.
Regardless of how streamlined she became with the task, it was a sad day’s work. She found herself looking forward to Ted’s arrival and that first sip of wine that would signal the end of the hardest part of her day. She glanced at the clock. He would be here within the hour. She scanned the results of her labor. Was there anything here Ted shouldn’t see? she wondered. Everything looked straightforward—the evidence and detritus of a man who lived alone, who loved books, clothes, his friends. Her glance fell on the laptop. But that may well tell a different story, she thought.
Before heading into the bedroom and, eventually, her bath, she picked up the computer and slid it under the couch. Not the greatest of hiding places, she admitted, but at least someone would have to be actively searching for it to find it.
And that would tell a lot in itself.
Jean-Luc pushed away from the dining table. He had already gained twenty pounds since his marriage. A bachelor’s life had left little room for any excess culinary enjoyment if it meant making it himself. Jean-Luc cooked minimally and never had enough money to waste on restaurant meals. He watched his beloved Danielle as she swept the dirty dishes from the table, a lightness in her step which meant she had prepared a surprise dessert for him. Jean-Luc loosened his belt another notch.
They lived on her money, in her home. After a lifetime of odd jobs—many of them underhanded—and usually seasonal, Jean-Luc had little to offer her but his love. His complete and undying love. And his respect. All of which she had no experience with in her previous marriage. It was more than enough for her. He listened to her as she hummed in the kitchen, readying whatever presentation she was creating for his delight. He swore he would not let his pride interfere with their happiness.
“Have you talked with Maggie since she left?” he called to her.
Danielle popped her head out the kitchen doorway. “She has only been gone a day,” she said. “Close your eyes, now!”
Jean-Luc dutifully closed them and tucked his hands into his lap. A prior surprise had ended up down the front of his shirt when he’d blindly brought a hand up to scratch his nose just when his beloved was placing an oversized wedge of cream pie in front of him.
“Open your eyes!”
When he did, he gasped in true delight at the marvel of burnt sugar crisscrossing the top of one of his very favorite delights: crème brûlée.
“Do you like it?”
She knew he loved it. For a moment, tears threatened him as he looked at her beaming face, so happy to please him, so full of love for him.
“I love it, mon amour,” he said hoarsely, reaching out to take her hand as she sat back down at the table. “How is it that I deserve you?”
She smiled and handed him a spoon to crack the hardened top of the custard.
“Why did you ask me about Maggie?” she said.
Jean-Luc shrugged. “Laurent thinks she has left him.”
“No! I thought they were getting along well.”
Jean-Luc spooned past the hardened sugar surface of his dessert to the creamy depths within. “He is convinced she wants to divorce.”
“For what possible reason?” Danielle looked truly strickened.
“He says she hates the country. Hates being married to a farmer.”
“That makes no sense,” Danielle said. “He must be misunderstanding. Men do so often.”
“Perhaps you could talk with her?”
“Yes, of course. Do you mean call her?”
Jean-Luc sighed. “I am very selfish to always want you here,” he said. “You used to go to Paris often.”
Danielle took his hand in hers. “While you are here, I am not lured by anything Paris has to offer,” she said.
He smiled, a tinge of guilt for all that he had when Laurent was in such pain.
“Laurent’s wife does not feel the same.”
“You want me to talk with her.”
“I don’t want you to, no,” Jean-Luc said. “But Laurent is being stupid and prideful. He will not stop her and she cannot be allowed to simply go.”
“I’ll leave tomorrow,” she said.
“Perhaps,” he said, feeling his recent euphoria beginning to slip away. “Perhaps the weekend is soon enough,” he said.
She squeezed his hand. “I am the luckiest woman in all of France,” she said. “And you are a good friend to Laurent. In spite of himself.”
“I know,” he said, missing her already. “It is quite a sacrifice.”
Maggie moved out to the balcony where Ted was smoking and handed him his brandy snifter. Dinner had been lovely. Not too fussy, more assembled than cooked. Maggie noted with pleasure that the kitchen was still neat and orderly.
“Quite the chef,” Maggie said, as she sipped her own brandy and smiled at him before turning to look at the mesmerizing view of the Cathedral lit up, its buttresses in majestic flight spotlighted in the dark.
“Not really,” Ted said, turning to her. “Unless you call putting cheese, olives, roasted peppers and cold chicken on a baguette cooking.”
“I call it delicious,” Maggie said. “And I thank you. The wine was good too. All of it was lovely.”
“You get a lot of work done today?”
“I got a decent start anyway.”
“That’s good. Where in the States did you say you were from?”
Maggie looked at him and smiled as if just saying the name was fun. “Atlanta,” she said. “And you?”
“Nome.”
&
nbsp; “God, as in Alaska? I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from Alaska.”
“Not surprised. There’s only, like, nine of us.”
Maggie laughed. “So how did you break out? Someone with your looks, you must’ve been a statewide celebrity.”
“Yeah, it actually wasn’t a benefit, being good looking in what is still, basically, a frontier environment.”
“I can imagine.”
“I mean, here’s me, interested in acting and fashion and literature in a state that is all about fishing and trekking and flying and shit.”
“Must’ve been hard.”
“You have no idea.”
“So?”
“Well, I headed off to school in California.”
“Where they prized what you had to offer.”
“I’m more than a pretty face, Maggie,” he said with mock seriousness.
Maggie laughed. The wine and the brandy combined with the bracing air and the invigorating company to help ease the unhappiness out of the day for her. She sat down in one of the outdoor chairs.
“How’d you end up in Paris?” she asked him.
“This led to that,” he said, sitting down next to her. “I got into modeling which turned out to be so much easier than acting.”
“No memorizing.”
“Exactly. And then I started writing because I had a lot of time on my hands between modeling gigs.”
“You’re a writer?”
“I am. I’ve got two romance novels with an American publisher and now I only model when I want. Usually just Paris Week, to keep my hand in.”
“That is so cool.”
“You’re not a writer? I thought Stan said you were.”
“Not really. I wonder why he said that. Although, to tell you the truth, since I’ve been here, I have been writing down the odd scene or description. It’s almost like I’m thinking about writing a story on some subconscious level.”
“That’s often how it starts.”
“And you never married?”
“Boy, that was a jump!”
“Well, I guess it was the thought of you writing romance novels that made me wonder. Most romance novels are written by women, aren’t they?”
“I’m not gay, Maggie.”
“No, I know,” Maggie said, hurriedly. “Or, at least, I didn’t think you were.”
“I was married once a long time ago,” he said. “It wasn’t for me.”
“It’s hard,” Maggie admitted, her glance stealing back to the darkened façade of Notre Dame.
Without warning, Ted leaned over and kissed her. Maggie pulled away, spilling her brandy in the process.
“Ted, no,” she said. “I can’t do this. I thought you understood that.”
“Can’t fault me for trying,” he said, grinning.
Maggie stood up. “This friendship won’t work if I have to be on guard against some move of yours, Ted. I’m married and very happily.”
“Sure, okay, sorry about that,” he said.
Maggie brushed at her sweater where she’d spilled her brandy.
“Why don’t we go inside so you can attend to that?” he said, standing, too. “I may not know a lot, but I do know a few things about the care and repair of clothing.”
That made Maggie smile. As they reentered the apartment, Ted passed Maggie on the way to the kitchen.
“Do you have cotton towels?” he asked. “And l’eau gazeuse?” He went to the refrigerator. At the same time, Maggie noticed that one of the little drawers to the coffee table was half open and she tried to remember if she had forgotten to shut it.
“Whatever I have is in the kitchen,” she called to him as she set her brandy glass down and moved to the couch. She started to close the little drawer when she noticed a four by six inch photograph sticking out.
Had she done this in her hurry to get ready? She thought she had emptied this drawer. She pulled the picture out and looked at it. It was a photograph of her uncle taken many years earlier. He stood with his arm around an attractive young woman and something about the way they stood made Maggie think it was not a platonic relationship. Looking closely at the woman she was surprised to realize that it was Diane. Much younger, with a smile on what was now a permanently frowning face, and dressed downright provocatively in a mini skirt and tight sweater. Maggie turned the photo over. Someone—and she did not recognize the scrawl as her uncle’s—had written the date: 1994. And one word: Asshole!
Chapter Seven
Jeremy stood silently on the street corner watching the day’s fading light extinguish and then cloak the street in varying shades of gray. When he’d seen Ted go into the apartment hours earlier—with a bag of groceries!—it had been difficult to believe that Stan’s niece was actually using Stan’s home as a pied à terre from which to date someone known to everyone in town to be the randiest, most promiscuous man in all of Paris. Finally, after a very uncomfortable ninety minutes whereupon he was finally forced to buy a sandwich and anchor a café table on the street corner, he saw the two of them emerge from the building to sit on the balcony.
Stan’s balcony. The very balcony that he, Jeremy, had spent so many pleasant evenings laughing and talking with Stan. Now Stan was gone for good and so were those evenings—or any hope of future ones. And his niece was simply picking up the baton and carrying on as if nothing had happened. Had Stan left the flat to her? Had the will been read yet? Did she know something? Did she suspect him?
His phone vibrated against his chest and he plucked it from an inside pocket.
It was Bijou.
“Oui?”
“Where are you?”
“What do you want, Bijou?”
“Did you know Stan’s niece is in town?”
“I heard.”
“I cannot imagine how. I just heard from her.”
“She called you?” Jeremy involuntarily turned away from the balcony to focus on his conversation with Bijou.
“Earlier this evening,” Bijou said. “She wants to see everyone.”
“And so she called you?”
“I called her when she was in the country, did you know that? I told her that I thought she should come back to Paris.”
“You did what?!”
“Jeremy, are you drunk? Where are you?”
“Why did you want her back in Paris?”
There was a pause. “Well, why not?”
“Because she does not accept the police report on Stan’s death, that is why,” Jeremy said, turning back around to look up at the balcony. It was empty. “She thinks he was murdered.”
“Well,” Bijou said, “maybe he was. Did you ever think of that? Makes more sense than him jumping to his death in the middle of a party.”
“You’re just angry because it was your party,” Jeremy said, furious with himself for missing the part where the two went back inside.
Bijou hung up on him.
It didn’t matter, he thought. Now comes the interesting part. If he was right about what happened next, he would not see Ted emerge from Stan’s apartment building until very early tomorrow morning. He signaled to the waiter and ordered a whiskey. Before it came, his phone chimed and he looked at the screen to see that Bijou had sent him a text.
It read, “Tomorrow at Le Bal. 8 p.m.” Before he could reply, he was stunned to see Ted approach his table from across the street.
“Bon soir, Jeremy,” he said, hunching his shoulders into his peacoat as if that would keep him warmer against the cold night. “Dining alone?”
Jeremy’s mouth gaped in surprise as Ted waved to him and trotted down the sidewalk in the direction of his own apartment.
Another chime from his cell phone, still in his hand, alerted him to yet another text from Bijou. This one read simply: “Putain.”
The next day, Maggie was up early. Pulling on jeans and her heavy wool coat against the chill winds whipping around the sharp corners of her street, she ran down to the corner boulangerie for her usual bag of sugar p
owdered and drizzled breakfast. The neighborhood bistro had just opened its doors as she walked back to her flat so she went in for a large café crème, wondering when the French in Paris had started offering take-out coffee. The café in St-Buvard still professed to be outraged by the whole concept, forcing anyone with a caffeine fixation to actually sit and drink it out of ceramic cups while watching the world go by. Maggie knew her uncle had a perfectly serviceable espresso maker in his kitchen but she was sure it would take longer than she had to spend in Paris to figure out how to work it.
She planned on spending her day finishing up with Stan’s paperwork, boxing up his photo collections, and packing his clothes. He had two closets full of suits, sweaters, shirts and shoes. Assuming that many of the pieces were vintage and therefore valuable, Maggie would wait until after she heard from her father before she decided what to do with them. It occurred to her that some of his friends might like a tie or handkerchief as a treasured memento.
Especially whoever pushed him off a balcony to his death, she thought as she taped up the last box. Stan knew everyone at that party, she was sure of it. He wouldn’t have gone onto the balcony with a stranger—not with Maggie downstairs and not knowing a soul. He went with a friend. A friend who killed him.
The question was which one?
At lunchtime, Maggie pulled out the remnants from last night’s supper. She felt good about how she had left things with Ted. She liked him a lot and could really use a friend in Paris, but she didn’t need the complications he seemed only too willing to create. She felt she had been honest with him and direct. Now it was up to him, she thought as she smeared a long swathe of mustard on her sandwich.
When the phone rang she realized her first thought was always going to be that it might be Laurent.
It wasn’t.
“Hey, Maggie,” Ted said. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Just enjoying the rerun of last night’s supper. Thank you again.”
“Oh, good,” he said. “Listen, you did say you wanted Diane there tonight, right?”
The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4 Page 92