“Who said it was murder?” Ben said, slurring his words and putting to rest any doubt Maggie had about his condition.
“I found out today that the city’s homicide department is handling her death.”
“Well, there you are. My sister, the supersleuth. Dad would be proud,” Ben said sarcastically.
“We’re all so upset,” Haley said. “The police talked to us, not that I had anything to say. I’d taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed early with one of my headaches.”
“Yeah, thanks bunches by the way for the iron-clad alibi, Haley,” Ben said. “Good to know you can be counted on to be unconscious when it counts.”
“They don’t suspect you, Ben,” Haley said, her voice tinged with the slightest of plaintive whines.
“Okay, well, anyway, I just wanted to check in,” Maggie said, turning away. “And to tell you guys to go on to Domaine St-Buvard without me. I’ll follow along tomorrow or the next day.”
“You’re staying in Nice?” Haley asked. “Whatever for?”
“God, don’t encourage her, Haley,” Ben said from the couch. “Will what’s-his-name pick us up? I know how the French are when it comes to time. I’m not waiting in a circa World War II train station for him to finally remember what time it is.”
“Ben, stop it,” Haley said. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“What else is new,” Ben said in a low voice as Maggie slipped out into the hallway.
“I am so sorry, Maggie,” Haley said. “He has been under unbelievable strain lately for a couple of different reasons. Please don’t listen to him.”
“Don’t worry, Haley,” Maggie said, leaning in to kiss her sister-in-law’s cheek. “I never have.”
*****
The next morning, Annie insisted on meeting the rest of the tour group at breakfast.
“These were Lanie’s colleagues,” she said as Maggie locked their hotel room door. “And her boyfriend, Olivier. He was on the tour too. Oh, he must be devastated.”
“Lanie was traveling with her boyfriend?”
“Well, they didn’t room together, but they were definitely an item. He’s the videographer on the tour. Olivier Tatois. I met him briefly last winter when he came to Atlanta with Lanie.”
They took the elevator downstairs to the hotel breakfast room. Maggie wasn’t at all sure what to expect, but she could tell Annie was eager to meet these people.
When you’ve lost everything, even the faintest wisps of the person you lost counted for something, Maggie thought sadly. Perhaps Annie was hoping to get a little piece of her daughter back in the memories and joint affection of these people. The minute they walked into the room, Maggie sensed that was not going to be possible.
She recognized Bob Randall immediately. His travel show was syndicated, and had been for several years. He was considered the ultimate authority in European travel-on-a-budget for the average American. His affable downhome style translated well in his television series, and while he’d been doing it for at least a decade Maggie was surprised to see he didn’t look a day older than when he’d first started.
A tall man, Randall broke away from the group gathered around a large round table and strode to where Maggie and Annie stood hesitating in the café entrance.
“Mrs. Morrison,” he said, his hand outstretched to take Annie’s. “I am so sorry to meet you under these circumstances. Every one of us here loved Lanie dearly.”
Annie’s eyes fill with tears. “Thank you, Mr. Randall,” she said hoarsely.
“Please call me Bob, and come meet the others on our tour.” He tucked Annie’s arm in his and pulled her away from Maggie toward the table. Maggie followed. She noticed her brother and Haley remained seated. Haley smiled wanly at her but Ben scowled into his coffee and did not look up.
“Everyone, this is Lanie’s mother…”
“Annie,” Annie said softly as she nodded at the two couples and two single women at the table.
“Annie,” Randall said. “Move over, Anderson,” he said to the distinguished looking man seated next to a hatchet-faced woman in her mid-fifties with a brand new face-lift. “Annie, this is Jim and Janet Anderson. They were playing the part of the tourists for our little experiment. And there’s Ben and Haley Newberry across there. You may have already met them.” Maggie noticed Ben still didn’t look up.
“To my left is Mademoiselle Desiree Badeaux, and to her left, Miss Dee-Dee Bell, both of whom worked with your daughter on this tour.”
“Competed, he means,” Dee-Dee said as she smiled at Annie. She looked a little plain to Maggie, even dumpy. “We were all going after the same prize. I really admired your daughter, Mrs. Morrison. She was a total ballbuster, but I mean that in the nicest way.”
Maggie noticed Annie’s look of confusion as she turned from Dee-Dee to the French woman next to her that Randall had introduced as Mademoiselle Desiree Badeaux, although Maggie did think it had been many years since the woman could honestly claim that title.
“Madame,” Desiree said, nodding curtly at Annie. Pencil thin and wearing a bone-hugging knit dress, Desiree clearly cared very much about her appearance. Maggie guessed she was mid- forties. Her dark hair was bobbed and offset high cheekbones and full lips.
“We are all just so upset at what happened to our darling Lanie,” Randall said. “My mind is still blown. I cannot adjust to what happened.” He grinned as if this were an endearing trait they should all enjoy knowing. Maggie winced. Celebrities were a special case unto themselves, she thought.
He pulled a chair out for Annie and Maggie slipped into a free one next to Haley.
“Thank you all,” Annie said as Randall poured her a cup of coffee from a pot on the table. “I wanted to meet you because you were all important to Lanie.” She looked around the table, her eyes resting on Maggie as her touchstone.
“I was hoping to see Olivier this morning,” she said, an attempt at a smile trembling on her lips.
“Oh, my gosh, didn’t you hear?” Dee-Dee stopped in the middle of applying lip gloss. “He’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?” Annie looked at Maggie as if she might possibly know.
“They arrested him, I heard,” Dee-Dee said, snapping her purse shut loudly. “He found the body, you know.”
What an ass you are, Maggie couldn’t help think.
“Arrested Olivier?” Annie looked around the table, bewildered. “But Olivier loved Lanie. That’s impossible.”
“Well, you know the French,” Dee-Dee said with a grimace. “Cherchez la femme. Or in this case, I guess it would be l’homme. Anyway, they wouldn’t have taken him away if they didn’t know something we don’t know.”
Maggie watched Desiree’s reaction to Dee-Dee’s words. The look that Desiree gave Dee-Dee was one of undiluted loathing.
“That can’t be,” Annie said to the group. “I know Olivier. He would never hurt Lanie.”
“Love makes you do strange things,” Dee-Dee said.
“What would you know of love?” Desiree sneered. “From what you see on television soap operas?”
“You French think you own the whole love and passion thing,” Dee-Dee said, turning in her seat to face the Frenchwoman.
“I imagine anyone might own it more than a woman who has never known a man’s touch,” Desiree said.
Whoa! Score one for Team France, Maggie thought as Dee-Dee’s face blushed deep red.
“All right, ladies,” Randall said. “We have company. Let’s try not to bicker, shall we?” He turned to Annie. “And yes, losing Olivier will put a considerable crimp in our taping abilities for the remainder of the tour but I feel sure we—”
Maggie spoke up. “You’re continuing the tour?” She glanced at her brother and Haley. “I was told you were canceling it.”
“Of course we’re continuing the tour,” he said. “I mean, it’s horrifying and all that but I’ve got a production schedule back home and we need to get this co-anchor question decided.”
�
�When are you leaving?” Maggie asked.
Randall shrugged. “The police have Olivier as their man and they see no reason why the rest of us need to remain in Nice. We leave for Cannes early tomorrow morning. Desiree will be presenting on our first stop on the Côte d’Azur. I’m not counting Nice as part of the test because of Lanie dying and all.”
Maggie saw Annie swallow hard. God! These people were insensitive. She looked at her brother but he was studiously working not to look at her.
“I understand Ben and Haley Newberry are dropping out of the tour?” Maggie said.
Ben snapped his head up when she spoke.
“Yes, unfortunately,” Randall said. “They have other business in France. They were never scheduled for the coastal part of the tour in any case. Just Provence to Nice.”
Oh, really? Her brother returned her steady gaze. Caught in a bold-faced lie in front of half a dozen people and he stared at her as coolly as if it had never happened.
“I’m sorry,” Randall said, looking at Maggie now. “I didn’t catch your name. You are a relative of Lanie’s?”
“A friend of the family,” Maggie said. She couldn’t resist glancing back at Ben when she said that and was rewarded with a look of disgust as he rolled his eyes and directed his attention back to his coffee.
*****
“Mademoiselle Morrison drowned to death in her bath,” Inspector Massar said, intoning the words as if passing sentence. He spoke no English, and as Maggie sat in front of him, Annie at her side, she couldn’t help but be amazed that she had come so far in her linguistic abilities that she was actually serving as translator.
But how the hell was she going to translate that?
“Then why do you believe she was murdered?”
“The body suffered blunt force trauma to the upper cranium,” he said, pointing to his own head. Annie followed his hand motions with her eyes. Maggie was grateful she couldn’t understand what he was saying.
“Do you have the murder weapon?”
Massar fidgeted in his chair. “Not at this time.”
“Then are you sure it’s murder? Isn’t it possible she could have slipped and fallen?”
“There was a word written on her forehead, Madame,” Massar said abruptly.
A burning sensation formed in the pit of Maggie’s stomach. Any hope she’d held out that it might truly be an accident evaporated immediately.
“May I ask what word?”
His eyes flickered to Annie and Maggie instinctively clenched her stomach muscles. The word must be a bad one. And one that Annie might recognize.
“Slut,” he said. “The killer wrote the word slut across the body’s forehead.”
Annie reacted by turning to Maggie and gripping her arm. “What’s he saying? Why is saying that word?”
“He…he’s trying to explain to me why he believes Lanie was murdered and didn’t accidentally drown in her bath.” Maggie felt Annie’s nails dig into her arm and she forced herself not to pull away.
“Why is he saying that word?”
“It’s a little confusing,” Maggie lied. “I’m not sure what word he’s really saying. I’m sorry. My French is still a little spotty.”
She heard the air come out of Annie in a long sigh, as if she’d been holding her breath.
Maggie turned back to Massar. “That’s an English word.”
“C’est ça.”
“Well, why do you have a Frenchman in custody? If it was him, wouldn’t he have written salope or prostituée?”
“Slut is shorter,” the detective said with a shrug.
“Do you have any other evidence that makes you believe it was Olivier Tatois?”
“We can prove that the key used to gain access to Mademoiselle Morrison’s room that night was used by Monsieur Tatois.”
“Really?”
“It was found in his possession.”
“But that wouldn’t be unusual, right? Since they were sleeping together?”
“That is true.”
Maggie couldn’t believe how impervious the man was to her questions. He not only didn’t seem to hold back information from her, he didn’t act as if he cared one way or the other.
Maybe he was close to retirement or something.
“May I ask you if the body…if Mademoiselle Morrison was wearing face makeup?”
Massar frowned. “Of course not. She was in the process of taking a bath.”
“If she wasn’t wearing makeup,” Maggie said, “why do you think she was expecting her lover?”
His eyes darted away, as if considering this. He was too French not to see the logic in it. In the end, though, it didn’t matter. He shrugged—that maddening, classic Gallic gesture that ended all conversations without satisfaction or resolution.
Laurent did it all the time.
“Monsieur Tatois has no alibi for the time in question,” he said.
Well, jeez, neither do you and somehow you’re not in a holding cell facing a charge of murder.
“Will that be all, Madame Dernier?” Massar said, standing, effectively ensuring that it was, in fact, all. Maggie stood and so did Annie.
“When will you release the body to her mother?”
“The autopsy will be finished tomorrow. Madame Morrison may make arrangements to have the body shipped to the United States by Friday.” He held out a hand for Annie to shake and then offered his hand to Maggie before escorting them out of his office and down the long hall to the lobby of the police department.
As the two stood on the street corner, Maggie put her arm around Annie.
“Come on, Annie,” she said. “Let’s find a quiet place to talk.” She glanced down the long pedestrian shopping street studded with multi-colored and striped umbrellas over café tables and was about to move toward the closest one when she noticed a familiar form sitting at one of the tables.
Desiree sat facing her, smoking feverishly, focused on her companion, to whom she was gesticulating wildly. The Frenchwoman’s face was contorted into a heavy sneer, the force of which nearly made Maggie gasp for how instantly it transformed Desiree’s features into something ugly and raw. Whatever she was saying, Annie didn’t need to be anywhere near it, Maggie decided.
As she tugged Annie away in the opposite direction, Maggie heard the same cawing bray of laughter coming from Desiree’s companion that Maggie remembered hearing at breakfast when Bob Randall had shown his amusement over some trivial thing.
Four
It looked more like the opening act for a circus than one of the world’s most famous beachfronts.
Maggie watched a long line of joggers, cyclists, roller skaters and even a few acrobats walk, ride and roll two deep past the café table where she sat with Annie. Add the odd Segway and baby stroller, she marveled, and you’d have a parade of the strangest collection of narcissists and showoffs to rival Venice Beach.
Doesn’t anybody in Nice own a computer? Maggie had seen tourists with their noses stuck in tablets and smartphones in as gorgeous and remote hideaways as Mürren, Switzerland, and yet here in the middle of civilization it seemed the Niçois wanted nothing more than to prance along the boardwalk, to see and be seen.
Strike that, Maggie thought wryly as a mime danced by, his hands climbing nonexistent walls as he moved. Nobody cares that much about seeing. They all just want to be seen.
The waiter brought the carafe of rosé Maggie ordered, but Annie put her hand over her wineglass and asked for bottled water.
“I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Maggie,” she said.
Maggie frowned, dragging her attention away from the circus of people and vehicles along the Promenade des Anglais. “What do you mean?”
Annie sighed. “Lanie and I were estranged. Had been for years.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m afraid the reason for it involves you.”
“Me?”
“Even now, I’m ashamed to say it. I’ve tried for years to
redeem myself to Lanie. But she wouldn’t listen.”
“I don’t understand. What happened? I remember you were the coolest mom I knew. You understood me better than my own mother did. I can’t tell you how fondly I remember our talks around your kitchen table.”
“That was right after the divorce. I wasn’t doing very well at all.”
“I thought you were awesome.”
“Well, I wasn’t. In fact, what I was mostly was drunk. Lanie and I were fighting daily. She blamed me for her father leaving. She was probably right. Once…no, more than once, I told her I wished her father had gotten custody of her but I needed the child support money so that’s why she was with me.”
“Annie, don’t do this to yourself. It was a bad time for you. I’m sure Lanie understood that when she became an adult.”
“I told her I wished you were my daughter.”
“Oh.”
“Not just once. Several times. Whenever you came over, you and I would talk—just as I imagined in my fantasies that Lanie and I might some day.”
“I…I had no idea.”
“No, you wouldn’t. The more I drank, the more I began to think that you were the daughter I really deserved, and Lanie was just part of my punishment. I was messed up. Eventually I got help and kicked the booze, but by then the damage to Lanie was done.”
“She must have hated me.”
“No, she hated herself for not being you. For failing me. For failing her father.”
“I can’t believe this. My friendship with Lanie did end abruptly, and I never knew why.”
“Well, now you do. You probably also never knew how important you were to me during that time, did you?”
Maggie shook her head, stunned at Annie’s confession.
“You are the last person to owe me anything,” Annie said. “I ruined my relationship with my only child, and her friendship with you—a friendship she could have really used during that time.”
Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) Page 31