"When in Rome?"
"Yeah, something like that."
"So I heard from Sheila that you have a minor bombshell to share with me tonight and I cannot imagine why you haven't said something by now."
Maggie stopped scooping up the cassoulet and swiveled toward him. "Oh, my God, Ted, how could I have forgotten!"
"I know, right?"
"It's so amazing and I'm totally over the moon about it, really. It's just that there has been so much going on..."
"Like your neighbor getting offed."
"Yes, can you believe that? And the police haven't been back to the crime scene or asked me to come down to give my statement or anything."
"Did you see something to make a statement on?"
"Well, no, but they don't know that. They should exhaust every avenue, you know? Really unbelievable."
"But back to Sheila…”
"I've sent her two more chapters—which she loved and now I have a New York literary agent. Your New York agent, in fact. I can't thank you enough for sending her those chapters."
"No problem," he said drinking down the rest of his champagne.
"Is Diane okay tonight?" Maggie asked as she peered into the living room. Diane was still standing at the French doors, hugging her arms as if she were cold and not talking to anyone.
"Yeah, why?" Ted said as he followed Maggie's gaze.
"She just acts so..."
"Miserable?"
Maggie looked at Ted for a moment as if she were getting an idea.
Ted frowned. "What is it? Spinach in my teeth? Awesome spinach puffs by the way."
"No," Maggie said, dropping the ladle back into the largest take-out container. "It just occurred to me that without Jeremy here there really is no point in continuing with this." She waved a hand to indicate the food sitting on the dishes on the kitchen counter.
"Wow. So it really was for his benefit. Want me to get rid of everyone?" Ted asked brightly, rubbing his hands together.
"I think you'd be doing all of us a favor," Maggie said, reaching for her champagne flute and refilling it.
Thirty minutes later, Ted and Maggie were alone, sitting on the couch and picking at the duck confit and bean casserole. Denny and Bijou had left together, abandoning any attempt at romantic subterfuge. Diane had left before Ted had even finished speaking.
Now, relaxed—if disappointed in the failure of her evening and her plan to reveal Jeremy as Stan's murderer—Maggie kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet under her. Ted was in the process of reenacting the scene earlier tonight where he asked Denny where his cat burglar clothes were and if he felt uncomfortable coming into the apartment through the front door instead of the window.
"He said he came in from your neighbor's balcony, by the way."
"Genevieve's? Did she know it?
"I thought you said she was out of town that weekend."
"You know, you're right. What a jerk. I still can't believe he broke into my apartment and the police did nothing."
"I can't believe you had him to your apartment for dinner," Ted said, looking at her over the rim of his wine glass.
"Well, it was all part of my really idiotic plan to force Jeremy into a public confession," Maggie said with a sigh.
"And you thought having Denny here would help that?" Ted shook his head. "Me, I always thought Denny looked guiltier than anyone."
"He has no obvious motive."
"Does anyone?"
"Good point. Anyway, I feel like I defused his interest in me by allowing him five minutes alone with Stan's laptop."
"You what?!" Ted nearly dropped his wine glass. Maggie was surprised at his reaction.
"Don't worry," she said. "I did it so I could see what, if anything, he deleted from it."
Ted mopped up drops of spilled champagne from the coffee table.
"And did he delete anything from it?"
"He did," she said leaning back into the couch and gazing out onto the image of the church through the windows, now hazy with a heavy fog drifting in. "But it wasn't worth killing over."
"In your opinion."
"That is true," Maggie admitted. "People kill for what you or I might consider trivial reasons."
"Can you share with me what it was?"
Maggie smiled. "It doesn't matter, Ted. And it only makes Stan look bad, too. Let's let sleeping dogs continue their slumber and your memory of him intact."
Ted's face relaxed. "I can live with that," he said. "I miss him."
"Yeah, me, too."
"So aside from the fact that Jeremy was a no-show tonight—"
"Which makes him appear even more guilty to me."
"But when you consider all the facts, it's possible that this whole party idea tonight might very well have been to trap the wrong man. Do you agree?"
Maggie looked uncomfortable. "I was fishing," she said. "I figured if I didn't flush out Jeremy, I might notice someone else looking guilty. I don't know. I guess I'm not very good at t his."
"What made you think to have a dinner party of all things? It's really kind of a strange tactic, don't you think?"
"It's how Ellery Queen did it, gathering everyone in a room and go around one by one and break everyone down until you get to the main suspect. It sounds so stupid when I put it into words. You're American. You probably have seen Ellery Queen in action."
"I have, in fact."
"I admit, at one point I imagined trying to explain it to my husband and that's when it really started to sound insane. I probably should have used that as some sort of gauge but because he's so against my being here and doing this, I left what I predicted his opinion would be out of the equation."
"So you didn’t talk to him about it?"
"No. I decided I didn't need the ridicule or lack of support or whatever I knew I could count on from him."
"You sound bitter."
Maggie looked at him with surprise. "Do I?"
"And your husband sounds like a jerk."
"Well, he's not," Maggie said, her face hot with annoyance. "He's not at all. If anything, he's long-suffering," she said, beginning to feel the misery of earlier in the evening return. "Frankly, I'm beginning to think I didn't deserve him."
"Whoa," Ted said. "That's wild. You are such a gorgeous creature, Maggie, I can't believe there's a guy out there makes you feel like you don't measure up."
"That's not how I feel," Maggie said. "I'm just seeing some things I've done, or said in the past that were bratty and careless and how he never really called me on it. He just put up with it."
"And now? Sounds like there's an and now to this story."
"And now, he appears to have found someone who is a lot less work," she said quietly, sipping her wine.
Ted leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "One thing I know, dear girl," he said. "Is that regardless of what you have done and said to your husband, I am here to tell you that you are totally worth the work." He leaned over to kiss her on the lips but she stopped him.
"No, Ted," she said. "I'm not ready for this."
Ted pulled back and examined her with a slight frown. "But maybe someday, you think?" he said. "I'm not wasting my time?"
"Is being friends with me a waste of time?"
"Well..." Ted scratched his chin and grinned. " If friendship is all I have to look forward to, I might invest a tad less time, I admit."
Maggie smiled tiredly at him. "No promises," she said. "I'm a long way from wanting anyone but Laurent."
"Even if he's cheating on you?"
Maggie looked back to the touchstone of the church outside the window. "I don't know," she said. "Maybe even then."
An hour later, Ted had gone home and Maggie was tucked into bed, exhausted but too wired to sleep. She glanced at her cellphone on the bedside table. Was it really that easy for him to just write her out of his life? she wondered with a deepening sadness. No phone call, no texts, no word from him in nearly three weeks.
Really, Laurent? Maggie bu
ried her face in her pillow and cried softly, quietly although there was no neighbor to hear or care. After a few minutes, she got out of bed, went to the bathroom and washed her face with cool water. She went back to the bedroom, grabbed her phone and the quilt off the bed and settled down on the couch in the living room to watch television with the sound muted. It was after three in the morning and she could still hear people laughing and talking at the bistros and bars in the alley below her apartment.
She looked at Ted's wine glass on the coffee table and smiled. Thank God for him, she found herself thinking. After the attempted kiss, he had quickly moved on to safer ground by encouraging her to talk about her manuscript. Maggie had surprised herself by how talking about the work totally distracted her from her situation with Laurent and the unsolved mystery.
Clearly, I should have been writing books all along, she thought wryly. Ted loved her prose but was quick to point out little habits she had exhibited that she would do well to quit. In some ways, she realized, talking to another writer was the first dose of true camaraderie she had felt since Grace left. Better in some ways, since she and Grace—although the dearest of friends—were so very different. Grace was polish and elegance and style and Maggie was quirky and neurotic and casual. She grinned just thinking of her friend.
But as good as it was to talk to Grace, she realized that even that wasn't as primal as connecting with someone who knew and felt the process of writing. The connection she had felt with Ted tonight wasn't sexual and it wasn't romantic although she admitted it could easily turn into that. It was a meeting of two like minds, of two creative spirits who knew how it felt to bleed from the fingertips when trying to fashion just the right phrase to elicit the desired reader response. Nothing against any of the other people in her life, but that connection was valuable to her. And new.
Ted had given her a list of websites to help with self editing as well as advice on dealing with their joint literary agent. Maggie still couldn't believe she had representation. She had always thought that took years of struggle and rejection. It had all happened so fast and so easily. A pinprick of regret touched her buoyant memory of the talk with Ted when she thought, for a moment, of what Laurent would think if he knew. Would he be proud of her? Or would he just be grateful that she had finally found a hobby of her own to give him some peace?
When she thought of that last point, she realized how far down a bad road she had come with Laurent. It struck her that she had developed an intricate web of resentment to match his wall of defensiveness over her neediness. Did she really think that the man she fell in love with in the south of France four years ago would only feel relief at her accomplishment? Relief to get her off his back? If that was true, it was her doing entirely. She had crafted that sad state of things, snarky comment by snarky comment. And, if by some miracle owing only to Laurent's strength of character and love for her it wasn't true, then she was only continuing a long line of injustices to him to believe it now.
Can people change? She sat up straight and looked at her cellphone. Was it really possible for her to shed the insecurities and chronic homesickness—which she realized now was really just a grass is greener mindset—to accept and appreciate the goldmine of love and opportunities she had here in France with Laurent?
And if people can change, she thought, biting her lip, is it too late to do it?
Suddenly, as she watched the phone, the screen lit up with an incoming call. For one mad, hopeful moment, she thought it must be Laurent and she snatched up the phone and pushed Accept before she saw that it was only Ted.
"Hey, Ted," she said, trying to hide the deep disappointment in her voice.
"You still up?" She thought his voice sounded tense and it occurred to her a phone call in the middle of the night wasn't good no matter who it was from.
"Is everything okay?"
"Not really," he said, blowing out a long exhalation. "I found out why Jeremy was a no-show at your party tonight."
"Jeremy? Did something happen to him?"
"You might say that," he said crisply. "The cops fished his body out of the Seine an hour ago."
Chapter Fourteen
Jeremy dead? Did that even make sense?
Maggie thanked the cashier at her corner boulangerie, took the paper triangle that held her warm chocolate crepe and plunged back into the crowds on the Quai Saint Michel. The streets were full of more tourists than usual this morning, as Maggie elbowed her way to a bench in the park at the back of the cathedral. Even in November, the birds were a nuisance and never more so than in the square behind Notre Dame. Maggie watched the tourists tear off bread from their fromage sandwiches to lure the sparrows to alight on outstretched hands. She had been charmed by the bird feeding a month ago. Now she wondered if the tourists were also equipped with bottles of antibacterial wash.
She looked at the river, green and fierce in the cold weather. It was inconceivable to her that that is where Jeremy had ended up. He was always so cold, she thought. He was always so buttoned up, with a scarf against the chill. To have ended up at the bottom of the cold, cold Seine...She shivered and shoved her breakfast away, suddenly not hungry. Three bold pigeons landed on her bench and she shooed them away.
Ted had found out through Bijou who had found out through, of all people, Jeremy's mother, who had called her in hysterics after being contacted by the Paris police. Maggie was impressed the police had contacted anyone at all. She wouldn't have been surprised if they'd just tagged him and shelved him away in some obscure morgue for nonnationals. Ted had also heard from Bijou by way of Jeremy's mother that the police considered it a mugging gone bad.
Of course they did, Maggie thought. If it hadn't been for the chain around his neck, they probably would've chalked it up to another suicide. She peeled a piece of crepe off and tossed it to the ground, which prompted a vortex of feathers as the pigeons fought each other for it.
If Jeremy killed Stan, then who killed Jeremy? And if Jeremy didn't kill Stan, what does his death mean to the whole investigation? It was not believable that his death was a coincidence. She turned and looked in the direction of Stan's apartment. It also was no coincidence that Genevieve was murdered.
But what did it all mean? How did all the pieces fit together? And if whoever killed Stan also killed Jeremy, why was the murderer still going around killing people? Was this a fashion serial killer or was he done now?
The worst of it, in Maggie's mind, was the fact that Jeremy's murder happened without question during the time she had everyone at her apartment for the dinner party—effectively giving everyone a very tidy alibi. So was there somebody new she needed to be looking at for Stan's murder? Someone she hadn't met yet? She ripped off a large chunk of the crepe and threw it to the birds.
She obviously was nowhere near finding the person responsible for any of these murders, she thought with disgust. Laurent was right. Grace was right. Danielle was right. She should never have come to Paris. She should have left it to the police. She was no closer to finding Stan's murderer and had only succeeded in tanking her marriage in the attempt. Maggie shredded the rest of the crepe and gave it to the birds, drawing glances of annoyance from a young couple who were trying to make out on a nearby bench and were now waving away birds drawn to the feast Maggie was dispensing.
Her phone buzzed and she looked at the screen to see that it was Ted. She pushed Not Accept. She wasn't in the mood to talk about it, rehash it, or analyze it. Without thinking, she punched in her parents' number in Atlanta. Her father picked up on the second ring.
"Hello, darling," he said with enthusiasm. "I was just going to call you. Everything alright?"
Maggie decided against mentioning the latest body count. She had really only called to hear his voice or her mother's. As soon as he spoke, she felt herself relaxing.
"It's fine," she said. "Just thinking about wrapping things up here and heading back to St-Buvard." Her words surprised her because up until that moment she didn't realize that t
hat was exactly what she wanted to do. "Or some place," she added lamely.
"I'm sure Laurent will be glad to have you back," her father said.
I wish I were so sure, she thought, watching the pigeons continue to fight and peck at each other over the crepe.
"But I'm glad you called. I have some interesting information about Stan's will."
Maggie frowned. "Really? Like what? He decide to give a hitherto undiscovered yacht in Monaco to the League of Women's Voters?"
"Again, darling, I must confess to not understanding your wit," her father said but he was laughing. "No, I found out who John Newton is."
Maggie snapped her attention back to the phone call.
"I'm listening," she said.
“Well, I’m frankly astonished to have to tell you,” her father said, deliberately revealing his information as teasingly slow as possible. “That John Newton is a sixteen year old boy.”
“Okay, well, that’s just perverse.”
“It’s not like that, darling,” her father said with a hint of annoyance. “He is Stan’s son.”
“His son?” Maggie She gave a gasp and her hand flew to her mouth as the surprise sank in. She smiled tentatively and shook her head in wonder.
“That’s right. It seems that Stan impregnated a friend of his and whether as a result of a night of romance or through the aid of a clinic and a test tube I do not know, so please don’t embarrass us both by asking. The short story is that you have a cousin.”
“Short story is right,” Maggie said. “We’re talking O. Henry short story here. Newton?”
“My understanding is that Stan wanted to give the boy his name but was afraid it would complicate things if too many people knew he was the father.”
“I am totally shocked, Dad,” Maggie said, shaking her head. “Do we know the mother?”
“Turns out, we do,” he said. “It’s Diane Zimmerman.”
Maggie looked out over the Seine and felt a few pieces of the puzzle click into place in her mind. “That kind of makes sense,” she said slowly. “What about the will?” she asked. “The one I found on Stan’s computer leaving everything to her?”
The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4 Page 100