Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3)

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  “Will you call her? What will you say?” Haley Newberry glanced at her husband from where she sat on the bed. He seemed tired, as if he hadn’t shaken off his jet lag, although they’d been in France for over week already.

  “The truth,” Ben said. He stood at the balcony overlooking the Promenade des Anglais. “That we’re coming earlier than planned.”

  “I hope you’ll at least present it as a request,” Haley said.

  He turned to look at her. “Why? They sit on a farm counting their money and watching the grapes grow. How could our coming a week early possibly be a problem?”

  She hated seeing him like this. Tense. Distracted. Hard.

  “You’re right,” she said. “It probably won’t be. You’ve never met her husband, have you?”

  Ben turned away again. “You know I haven’t. What was the point?”

  Right, Haley thought sadly. Because it’s not like you cared about deepening the relationship with your sister.

  “Does she think it odd that we’re visiting now?”

  Ben went to the dresser and picked up his cell phone. “I have no idea what she thinks.”

  “She was good friends with Lanie, you know.”

  “A thousand years ago.” He punched in a number and turned back to the balcony view.

  Haley waited. It was hard to imagine death in the midst of such intense beauty. The azure-blue of the Mediterranean seemed to frame everything around it with a storybook semblance that belied everyday woes like hangnails or indigestion…or death.

  “Hello, Maggie. This is your brother, Ben. I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”

  Haley allowed herself one more glimpse of the sea over Ben’s shoulder and then retreated to the bathroom for her shower.

  *****

  Maggie waved her hand to command quiet from Laurent and Grace in the kitchen where they were feeding the children their breakfast. She handed a spoon of stewed apricots to Laurent and settled on a barstool.

  “Hey, Ben,” she said, “we’re really looking forward to your visit next week.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. There’s been a change of plans.”

  “Oh?”

  Maggie was surprised to realize the thought that he might be canceling prompted a surge of relief. She looked at Laurent, who was studying her over Jem’s head.

  “Yes, there’s been an accident here on the tour,” Ben said. “Haley and I are having to drop out.”

  “An accident?” Maggie focused her full attention to the phone call, but still saw Grace out of the corner of her eye turn her body toward Maggie.

  “Actually you know her,” Ben said. “Lanie Morrison? I think Haley mentioned in her email to you that she was one of the tour guides?”

  “Lanie had an accident?”

  Maggie detected the brief hesitation before her brother answered. “She did,” he said. “She was found this morning. She was…unresponsive.”

  Maggie stood up. “She’s dead?”

  Laurent tapped Maggie on the wrist to get her attention. He mouthed qui?

  “Lanie Morrison,” Maggie said to him. “The one I went to school with. Ben says she was found dead this morning.”

  “And so of course the remainder of the tour is cancelled,” Ben said on the line. “Haley and I were hoping we might come to Domaine St-Buvard earlier than planned.”

  “Yes, of course,” Maggie said, trying to process this news. “How did she die?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Well, how did you find out about it?”

  “Maggie, I’m happy to answer any questions you have when Haley and I arrive, which, if it’s all the same to you, will be tomorrow evening.”

  “Is her mother coming over?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Lanie’s mother. Ann Morrison. I assume she’s coming to Nice to bring…Lanie home?”

  “I don’t know about any of that. Will you or someone meet us at the train station? And is Arles the closest one?”

  “What? Oh, yeah. Arles. Call us when you’re about an hour out and one of us will be there with the car.”

  “Very good.” He hung up.

  Maggie sat and stared at her phone. “God, he’s a jerk.”

  “Lanie died?” Grace asked, holding Zouzou on her hip, a spoon in one of the child’s chubby fists.

  “That’s what he said.” Maggie shook her head. “She was only thirty-five. How did she die, I wonder?” She looked at Laurent. “As I understood it from Haley, this was Lanie’s chance to earn a permanent slot on Bob Randall’s television show.”

  “Maybe she had health issues?” Grace asked.

  “Maybe.” Maggie looked around the kitchen. “Can you guys finish up breakfast without me?”

  “Why?” Laurent asked, frowning.

  “I just want to look at something on the Internet,” Maggie said as she gave Jem a quick kiss and hurried into the living room where her laptop was. Booting up quickly, she typed in the name Ann Morrison and found the phone number she was looking for.

  *****

  If it had been tricky finding reasons to leave Domaine St-Buvard before Jem was born, it was positively onerous now, Maggie thought as she accelerated on the A8 heading toward Nice and the coast. Unlike Laurent, she needed a break from time to time from the constant monotony of rural life. Having Grace live with them helped immensely. But even a glass of wine and your best girlfriend is no substitute for a weekend shopping trip to Paris, she thought with a smile.

  Maggie reviewed her conversation yesterday with Lanie’s mother. Annie Morrison had been distraught, of course, but her relief was palpable over the phone line when Maggie offered to meet her at the Nice Côte d’Azur airport. Maggie had never met Lanie’s father. He and Annie had divorced years ago and he’d long since passed away. For reasons she couldn’t put her finger on, Maggie wasn’t surprised to hear that Annie had never remarried.

  It took three hours to drive to the coast from Domaine St-Buvard, and as Maggie drove she reran the tapes in her head of her efforts to convince Laurent that she needed to go. Not surprisingly, he resisted the idea. She knew he didn’t mind taking care of Jem. That little duty he embraced with enthusiasm. Maggie was lucky to pry the child out of Laurent’s arms. Her husband had always begun his day patrolling his vineyards, only now he did it with Jem tucked in one arm. Thinking of the image of Laurent and Jem outlined against the horizon this morning as they returned from their vineyard walk reopened a kernel of worry in Maggie.

  There was definitely something going on with the vineyard and with Laurent. Normally, he would return from his walk with a spring in his step. He used to say it was like visiting a special lover—you always felt great afterward.

  Maggie shook her head and grinned in spite of herself. The French.

  But lately there had been no spring in anybody’s step and no cheerful mood spreading into the late morning and the afternoon. Lately there had just been motions being gone through and items ticked off a vast to-do list.

  Not at all Laurent’s style.

  Maybe Grace would have some luck finding out what was up, Maggie thought. This was actually a perfect opportunity for her to use her quiet skills to find out those things Laurent worked to keep hidden—Laurent, who was the most closed, private and secretive of men. But then, Maggie thought with a smile, he’d never really been up against a true Southern belle in her prime before.

  She took the airport exit and parked the car, focusing on the task at hand. She hoped Lanie’s mother would lean on her. Annie admitted on the phone that she spoke no French, had in fact never been to France. Maggie hurried to the receiving line of the incoming flight from Atlanta and scanned the crowd for sight of her, wondering if she’d have trouble recognizing her. The last time she’d seen her, nearly eleven years ago now, the woman had been seriously overweight.

  Annie was easy to pick out in the crowd, and Maggie realized with a sinking heart it was not because Annie was heavy. While everyone else was
moving quickly—to locate luggage, greet loved ones, find ground transportation—one woman was trudging, head down, through the throng as if looking for something on the ground. Maggie’d had plenty of time on the drive over to imagine the horror of losing your only child. Now that she was a mother herself, the thought was especially harrowing. She couldn’t imagine what Annie was going through. And she didn’t want to.

  “Annie!” she called to the heavyset woman walking toward her. Annie lifted her head, her face flushed for a moment, but the light that flickered in her eyes quickly extinguished when she saw Maggie.

  For a moment she thought it might be…

  Maggie moved to her side and put her arms around her. As soon as she did, Annie began to weep, her shoulders shaking in Maggie’s embrace. Seeing the naked pain of Annie’s grief was almost unbearable. But when Maggie reminded herself of what Annie was attempting to bear, she held her tighter and let her cry as long as she needed to.

  An hour later, they were driving up the coast to Nice. Annie spoke very little. When Maggie’s hand wasn’t on the gearshift, Annie was reaching for it.

  “Where did you book?” Maggie asked gently.

  “I…Lanie’s hotel,” Annie said, her voice raspy and hoarse from hours of crying.

  “The Soho,” Maggie said. “Do you want to check in first?”

  Annie shook her head. “No. I want to see my baby.”

  Her words raked a chord of pain across Maggie’s heart. They’ll always be our babies, she thought as she pictured Jem laughing and clapping his hands; her gut twisted painfully.

  She drove to the Bureau du Coroner off the Rue de la Prèfecture and parked in the public parking lot. Hand in hand, she and Annie walked into the police morgue where Lanie awaited them.

  After giving their details to the officer at the front desk, Inspecteur Alphonse Massar met them in the lobby. Maggie was surprised to see he was elderly. In fact, he looked to be nearing retirement. A tall man with grey hair and a tightly trimmed, grey pencil mustache, he entered the lobby and bowed curtly to both women. He had such a strong military bearing about him that Maggie half expected him to click his boot heels together. He glanced at her, but without much interest. If Maggie had been expecting him to reach out to Annie with words of comfort or solace, she was disappointed. She held Annie’s hand tightly and stayed close.

  This next part was not going to be easy.

  They followed Massar down a long hall of offices. Maggie was surprised to see Massar’s name on one of the doors. It made sense, she reasoned, for the police to share real estate with the bodies they collected from the city. It was certainly tidier and more convenient that way. Something about his office door bothered her, but she pushed the feeling to the back of her mind. She needed to be present in every sense of the word for Annie.

  Massar led them into an elevator, which took them two floors below the main entrance. There, the temperature dropped significantly. Maggie had the sense that they were literally entering a catacombs of graves buried deep beneath the city’s vibrant and pulsing core. Perhaps Annie did too, for her hand clutched tightly at Maggie’s.

  Massar opened a door to a large room, for which Maggie was grateful. She was already having trouble breathing just thinking of how far below the surface they were. She didn’t think she could handle a small room at this point.

  A table was set off to the side against the wall, a draped body on it and a large overhead lamp poised over it. Massar strode to the table and waited for Maggie and Annie to catch up to him. He turned on the light and, once they were standing next to him, jerked back the drape to reveal the corpse. Annie sank to the floor without a sound and Maggie, momentarily stunned, failed to move fast enough to catch her. Massar whipped the drape back over Lanie and knelt next to Annie. Maggie took a step back and felt her stomach lurch.

  In the background of her mind she heard Massar talking to Annie in French. The words didn’t matter. The voice was kind. Maggie stared at the draped body and a series of images burst into her head: Lanie in her cheerleading outfit; Lanie lip-syncing to a Backstreet Boys song in her mother’s living room; Lanie drinking her first beer and laughing when most of it ended up down her shirt front.

  And underneath it all was the niggling memory of what she’d seen on the walk down to this terrible place—the door with Massar’s name on it and the plaque under it that read Enquêteur Homicides.

  Homicide detective.

  Three

  “They think she was murdered,” Maggie said to Grace on the phone that evening after she and Annie had checked into the Soho—Annie had begged her to stay with her. After her afternoon, Annie promptly took two sleeping pills and went to bed. Maggie spoke on the phone from the balcony, the door open in case Annie needed her.

  “You’re kidding. Why?”

  “I don’t know but I intend to find out.”

  “Does Lanie’s mother know yet?”

  “No. She’s so upset about it all that she hasn’t really asked any questions about how Lanie died. Just the fact that she did is occupying all her mental abilities at the moment.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I know. Me too. It’s awful, Grace. Just terrible to think of one of our own little dears…”

  “I know, dearest, so shut up. I don’t want to think of it.”

  “But the point is, the cops are looking at this as a homicide. If Annie asks them, they’ll have to give her answers.”

  “Because that strategy has worked out so well for us in the past.”

  “Problem is, I don’t think she wants to ask too many questions.”

  “Well, she probably would if she was told the truth about how Lanie died, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe. But I’m not sure she can take much more. And telling her that her daughter is not only dead but was murdered definitely qualifies as much more.”

  The sound of the hair dryer falling to the carpeted floor made Maggie whirl around to see Annie standing not four feet from her, her eyes wide with horror, mouth open.

  “Oh, shit,” Maggie said into the phone.

  *****

  The café faced the Quai des Etats-Unis and the brilliant blue of the sea beyond. Only in Nice did the café chairs face the street rather than the table, Maggie noted as she poured her bottled water into a glass. It was the dinner hour but neither she nor Annie had done anything but pick at their meals—omelets with pommes frites and the omnipresent bowls of citrus olives.

  “I didn’t know how to tell you,” Maggie said. “I thought you’d had enough for one day.”

  Annie looked like she’d aged twenty years since Maggie had seen her last. She wasn’t sure part of that hadn’t happened just since she picked her up at the airport today. After her unsuccessful attempt at napping, Annie had agreed to go out with Maggie to talk about what the new information meant.

  “You think Lanie was murdered.”

  “It’s the only obvious explanation as to why her case is being handled by a homicide detective,” Maggie admitted. “You haven’t talked to anyone about how she died?”

  Annie looked around the street helplessly, as if expecting to find someone to answer the question for her. She looked at her hands in her lap. “No. I heard all that mattered. I came.”

  “I understand,” Maggie said. “Of course. But now that you know it was not an accident…” She waited until she thought Annie could handle the rest of her sentence before proceeding. “You’ll want to talk to Inspecteur Massar about what he knows.”

  “Of course. Although…” Annie looked up and squinted in the direction of the Mediterranean. “It won’t bring her back.”

  “No,” Maggie said slowly. “That’s true.”

  “Will you go with me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Will you call him for me and ask him to see me?”

  “First thing tomorrow.”

  “Will it make a difference in my being able to…take her home, do you know?”

  Maggie
leaned across the table and took Annie’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Let’s take it one step at a time, Annie. Okay?”

  Annie nodded bravely, her eyes straying once more to the impossibly beautiful, intensely blue sea that seemed to fill the horizon.

  That night, Maggie was relieved to see that Annie was exhausted enough to finally sleep. Once she was sure Annie was asleep, Maggie slipped into the hallway of the hotel. She’d gotten Ben’s room number from the concierge when she’d checked in. His room faced the front of the hotel, one flight up.

  Maggie took the elevator and quickly found his room. She knocked and heard all conversation in the room cease when she did. Light footsteps moved to the door and it opened just a crack. Maggie recognized her sister-in-law, Haley, peering out at her.

  “Maggie!” The door jerked fully open and Haley stepped into the hall, her arms instantly around Maggie. “We wondered if we’d see you tonight. Come in, come in.”

  Her brother’s wife was a statuesque blonde. Even at thirty-six, Maggie still saw the bouncy cheerleader in Haley. The athletic thighs that had bounded to the tops of human pyramids now regularly lunged across the clay courts of Atlanta’s ALTA tennis tournaments.

  “Hey, Haley,” Maggie said. “I just wanted to touch base with you. I haven’t had a chance before now.”

  Over Haley’s shoulder, Maggie saw her brother lounging on the couch in the inner room. He didn’t bother getting up or removing his legs from the coffee table. She saw an open wine bottle on the table.

  “How is Lanie’s mother?” Haley asked, her hand still on Maggie’s arm. “She must be devastated.”

  “She is, yeah. She finally went to sleep.” Maggie stepped into the living area of the room and her brother lifted a glass to her as she entered. She wondered for a moment if he might be drunk.

  “Bonsoir, little sis,” Ben said. “Welcome to Nice. The shittiest city in paradise.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Haley said. “We’re all just so shaken up about this.”

  “Did you know she was murdered?” Maggie said to her brother. She hadn’t seen him in over two years and was surprised to see that he’d aged. In her mind, he always remained the same: tall, athletic, thick brown hair and riveting blue eyes. Handsome, of course. All the Newberry men were good-looking in that bland, Anglo-Saxon way. Now that she really looked at Ben, his mouth seemed to have taken on a permanent twist to it. Like a sneer that just stayed.