Murder à la Carte (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series)

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Maggie handed her the coffee cup and wondered if Eduard put his timid wife up to these visits. Surely, she was too shy to initiate them herself?

  “Merci again for the couscous, Danielle,” Maggie said, sipping her coffee. “Laurent will be très happy. And the cassoulet you sent over day before yesterday was parfait. Really yummy.”

  Danielle smiled happily, even prettily, Maggie thought. She found herself feeling sorry for this country wife of a vigneron, whose role in life seemed to be to entertain and please, to dress well and always to act with propriety. Maggie had no doubt Danielle would have chosen a much more private, less social life for herself.

  “I am glad your family enjoys it,” Danielle said, her eyes flitting from the framed pictures to hanging tapestries on the living room walls.

  “It was terrible, n’est-ce pas?” Maggie said.

  Danielle looked quickly at Maggie. “Eduard is telling me very little about what happened.” She shook her head. “Rien,” she said. Nothing.

  God, Maggie thought suddenly, she thinks Connor bought it in our living room or something.

  “He was killed in the cave,” Maggie explained, pointing in the direction of the kitchen. “Hit on the head and drowned in a vat of wine.”

  “He is drowning to death?” Danielle stared toward the kitchen.

  “Well, no.” Maggie bit into an almond cookie. “The cops think the bash on the head is what finished him off.” She looked quickly at Danielle to see if this talk was upsetting her, but it didn’t seem to be.

  Danielle leaned back into her chair, her coffee in her hands. It was the most relaxed that Maggie had ever seen her.

  “They asked Eduard many questions,” Danielle said.

  “I’m not surprised.” Maggie snuggled back into the couch and Petit-Four immediately claimed her lap. “They questioned the whole village.”

  “They did not talk with me.”

  “Oh, well.”

  “Perhaps they only questioned people who they think have killed Monsieur MacKenzie?”

  “You mean only suspects?” Maggie shook her head. “They questioned my parents too and they certainly weren’t suspects.” She fed a cookie to the dog. “They questioned me for that matter,” she said, smiling at Danielle.

  Danielle smiled back.

  “Anyway,” Maggie said, brushing cookie crumbs from the wool lap rug on the couch, “it looks like the really invasive part of their investigation is over.”

  “Comment?”

  Maggie gestured once more in the direction of the kitchen. “They’ve finally left. They’ve been here for the last four days. Didn’t you know that?”

  Danielle smiled politely and shook her head.

  “Yeah, it’s been really nice.”

  “Yes?”

  “No, Danielle,” Maggie laughed. “It’s been the pits.” Maggie’s eye was caught by a movement outside. She saw the diminished figure of Laurent conferring in the distance with another figure she assumed must be Jean-Luc. She frowned as she watched them, their dogs bounding and leaping around them.

  “...then who it will be?” Danielle was asking.

  “I’m sorry, Danielle.” Maggie turned back to her guest. “What were you saying?”

  “If the police know who is killing Monsieur MacKenzie.”

  Maggie shook her head. “I think they’ve got some ideas, probably,” she said. “And maybe even some leads. Who knows?” Maggie’s eyes darted back outside to the two figures in the vineyard. “Maybe they even have some evidence that they aren’t telling us about.”

  “Evidence?” Danielle looked decidedly nervous all of a sudden, Maggie thought.

  “Well, I don’t know for sure,” Maggie said, watching the woman slowly lose the relaxation and calm she seemed to have had earlier.

  Danielle placed her coffee cup on the flat, square table between them and perched on the edge of her chair.

  “Maggie,” she said earnestly, licking her lips and looking around the room as if to confirm that they were truly alone. “I have information for the police about Monsieur MacKenzie.”

  “You do?” Maggie raised an eyebrow.

  Danielle nodded, and a silver crescent wave of hair escaped her perfect coif and grazed her cheek. She replaced the hair deftly with her hand.

  “They did not ask me,” she said, by way of explanation. “I would have told them, yes?” She looked down at her cooling coffee. “But they did not ask me.”

  Maggie placed her own coffee cup down on the table and leaned forward. “Danielle, didn’t you tell Eduard?”

  “Bien sûr!” The woman’s head jerked up. She looked at Maggie for one naked second and then looked away. “Of course,” she said more calmly.

  “But he didn’t think it a very good theory,” Maggie said.

  “Comment?”

  “Eduard didn’t like your idea.”

  Danielle nodded. “I know some things,” she said, her hands beginning to tremble.

  Maggie frowned. She knows things that Eduard doesn’t know? That seems highly unlikely.

  But she smiled encouragingly at the woman.“What is it, Danielle?” she asked. “What do you know?”

  Danielle waved a hand in the air and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she was smiling bravely.

  “Celà ne fait rien,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. What matters...” She took in a long, steady breath, “...is that I know who killed Monsieur MacKenzie.”

  “Who?” Maggie asked in an affect of earnestness, leaning toward Danielle conspiratorially. “Who did it, do you think?”

  Danielle gripped her coffee cup and stared into it. “Gaston Lasalle,” she said in clear, solemn tones.

  Maggie blinked, then relaxed and leaned back into the couch.

  “I know,” she said to Danielle. “He’s my first guess too. You know him, do you?”

  “He is an evil man,” Danielle said, her eyes once again straying around the room. “A man of much hate and...” She hunted for the word. She looked apologetically at Maggie. “...vengeance.”

  “His father was the one they hung on our property, wasn’t he?”

  Danielle looked as if she had been slapped. “You know this?” she asked.

  “Well, I...they told us when we first came here.”

  “C’était horrible,” she said, her eyes staring off over Maggie’s head. “C’était un meurtre horrible.” It was a horrible murder.

  “How old were you when it happened?” Maggie asked gently.

  “Ten,” she said. “I was a girl of ten.”

  “Yeah, well, in any case, it can’t be Gaston, you know?” Maggie said. “I mean, as much as we’d both like it. And I agree with you, je suis d’accord, he fits the motive criterion perfectly.”

  Danielle frowned. “I am not understanding you,” she said. “He is the killer.”

  “Well, no, Danielle,” Maggie said, reaching for another cookie. “He can’t be. He wasn’t even here that night. Ironic, huh? Everyone in St-Buvard, practically, was here, except for the one person who’s the most likely to have done it.” Maggie offered another crumb to the dog.

  “Maggie, you are wrong.” Danielle shook her head, nearly spilling the coffee she held in her hand. “Lasalle was here that night. I saw him. Everyone saw him. Your husband threw him out of the house.” Her eyes widened for emphasis. “Gaston Lasalle was here.”

  3

  Maggie let out the clutch slowly and felt the engine shudder and die. She hadn’t been thrilled with the used Renault but they couldn’t afford to keep shelling out three hundred dollars a week to rent a nicer vehicle. She turned the key again and this time the engine engaged and roared to life. She still hated this car, she told herself, as she pushed the stick shift into reverse and eased out the clutch until she had backed out of their driveway. She couldn’t help but think of Grace’s beautiful, sleek Mercedes as it had looked in her drive on Thanksgiving Day. Regal, superior, luxurious―with no funky clutch.

  Laurent had not
returned from the fields after Danielle Marceau had left. Maggie guessed that he had been persuaded by Jean-Luc to go into town for a quick, before-dîner nip or two.

  Maggie settled back into the cracked upholstery of the old Renault and concentrated on driving to the village without a mechanical incident. When Danielle had told her the news about Lasalle being in her house on Thanksgiving, she had wanted to race right out to the fields and confront Laurent. Why hadn’t he told her? But, in the end, she knew it didn’t matter. She knew what Laurent would say: that he hadn’t wanted to worry her, that he thought he had taken care of it...and none of it would help to soften or cool her anger. The fact was, Gaston had been there that night after all.

  Carefully, Maggie negotiated one of the first of three switchbacks on the road to the village. She remembered the shouting she’d heard when she was upstairs talking with Madame Renoir. Obviously, the commotion had been Laurent escorting Lasalle out the door on his ear. Doesn’t this change things? she wondered. Isn’t Gaston Lasalle the police’s number one suspect?

  Maggie drove slowly into the center of town, her eyes searching the outdoor tables of Le Canard for a familiar Blackwatch jacket. Perhaps she should talk to the police herself? She hadn’t mentioned Lasalle’s aggressive behavior to them before because, of course, she hadn’t thought he could be involved in Connor’s death.

  This would change everything. Danielle was right. Of course, Lasalle was their man.

  There were no parking spots in front of the Dulcie’s charcuterie so Maggie parked on the opposite side of the fountain in the village square. She wasn’t sure it was a real parking spot, but she wasn’t worried about meter maids.

  As she opened the shop door of the charcuterie, her mind was a jumble of questions and murder scenarios. Normally, she shrank back from the inevitable rows of hanging pigs, their dainty feet pointing upwards, their large, nasty snouts visible from any direction in the shop. But this time, she pushed past them as if they were no more offensive than a beaded curtain in a gypsy’s parlor.

  The shop was crowded this afternoon, and Maggie found herself idly inspecting fat snakes of sausages coiled into speckled pyramids as she waited her turn: Toulouse, Cumberland, and Andouille. The five women customers in the store chattered away, with Maggie able to pick out the words “Connor Mackenzie” and “les américains.” It occurred to Maggie that they probably grouped Laurent under this label too, although, of course, they knew he was French. Aware that they hadn’t noticed her arrival, and intending to keep it that way for as long as possible, Maggie made herself unobtrusive next to a particularly unpleasant brace of plucked pheasants that swung conveniently at face height.

  She recognized none of the women in the shop except Madame Dulcie, who was cheerfully and efficiently waiting on her customers, wrapping up one bloody purchase while listening to the order from the next in line. Maggie couldn’t help but note how differently this shop was run from Madame Renoir’s boulangerie, which was friendly and warm but always disorganized, as if the baker had just opened up shop and wasn’t quite in control of things. Maggie smiled. It was one of the things she liked best about Madame Renoir, she decided.

  “Ah! Madame Dernier!” Madame Dulcie spoke sharply, but not unpleasantly. Several heads swiveled toward Maggie and all conversation ceased.

  Maggie smiled. Madame Dulcie’s flint-sharp eyes examined her intently.

  “Bonjour,” Maggie said, more to the whole shop than Madame Dulcie.

  A few of the women nodded to her, (perhaps a little curtly? Maggie wondered.) Madame Dulcie pushed a wrapped parcel across the counter to one of the women. The butcher’s thin arms looked skeletal to Maggie, but hard and strong, too. With her lean, angular face and high cheekbones, she looked like an unkempt Duchess of Windsor dispensing pork ribs and lamb brisket to the poor.

  “It is a shame what happened at Domaine St-Buvard,” Madame Dulcie said, looking not at all concerned or displeased with the “shame” of what happened.

  Maggie moved to the counter; the other women edged aside for her.

  “Je cherche le jambon d’agneau,” Maggie said, aware that the women in the store were listening carefully to her French. She looked up at Madame Dulcie. “Avez-vous le―”

  “I have the leg of lamb, yes,” Madame Dulcie replied impatiently in English. “You want the bone in or out, Madame?” She frowned at Maggie.

  “Um, I need the bone taken out,” she admitted, looking briefly over her shoulder at the other women. They stood, five of them, in their brown and black cloth coats and capes, a few frowning, most simply curious. Maggie looked back at the meat case.

  Madame Dulcie popped her head into the back room and shouted a few words to Monsieur Dulcie. Maggie caught a glimpse of him before the door swung shut. What she saw looked like something out of a Stephen King movie. Monsieur Dulcie stood, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, bloodied from neck to knees, an oversized butcher’s knife hanging limply from his left hand. The door swung shut before Maggie could see if the look in the butcher’s eyes was dull or bright.

  “Bon,” Madame Dulcie said as she returned to Maggie. “It will be five minutes, no more.” Before Maggie could respond, Madame Dulcie looked past her to the hesitating gaggle of customers and bid them all loud good-byes, even waving her hands as one would to shoo away a flock of recalcitrant chickens. “Allez! Allez!” she said, smiling for the first time since Maggie had arrived at the shop. “Au revoir, à bientôt!” The women alternately huffed out or shrugged good-naturedly and departed with only glimpses over their shoulders. Before they were completely out the door, their gossiping chatter began again.

  The door slammed shut, bouncing the attached bell hard against the door port and cutting off its ring as abruptly as a knife killing a cat. Madame Dulcie leaned over the counter until Maggie could smell her breath, fragrant with anise― probably pastis.

  “Everyone thinks they know who killed the American,” Madame Dulcie said, her eyes glittering.

  Maggie watched her old face, its sharp lines pulling in all directions at once, and found herself wondering, idiotically, if the old girl had had a face lift at some point.

  “Really?” Maggie said.

  “They think, perhaps, it was Monsieur Marceau, hein? What do you think?” The woman smelled like blood, Maggie decided.

  “Monsieur Marceau?” Maggie asked, not sure she’d heard correctly.

  “Oui. He hated the American.”

  Maggie cleared her throat and resisted glancing at the door where her leg of lamb was being boned. “Well―” she started.

  “Eduard said as much, you know.”

  “Said that he’d kill Connor?” Maggie asked.

  The butcher’s wife nodded sagely. “The whole town has heard it,” she said, now wiping up bits of fat and chicken skin from the counter top with a dirty rag.

  Maggie didn’t believe it. Eduard had never given any indication that he didn’t like Connor.

  “‘I will kill you, you filthy interloper!’ ” Madame waved her rag in the air and then tossed it back onto the counter where she attacked a stubborn brownish red stain. “Everyone heard him. More than once.”

  “But why?” Maggie dug in her purse for money, thinking that having it ready might hurry things along. “Why on earth would Eduard hate him so much that he’d―”

  “Acht!” Madame Dulcie replied gruffly. “Because of the American museum, n’est-ce pas? The American would build the museum on land next to Eduard’s...also he would build a parking lot right next to Eduard’s oldest vines.” The woman smacked her hands together to indicate the close proximity of this.

  Maggie stared at her. “Museum?” she said, aware that her mouth was hanging open just a little.

  “Bien sûr.” The woman continued to rub the counter.

  “Connor...the American was going to build a museum in St-Buvard?” Maggie stared at the woman as if the woman had gone quite colorfully mad before her very eyes.

  “Everyone knew of it,�
�� Dulcie said matter-of-factly.

  “I didn’t know of it,” Maggie said, flustered. “Who is ‘everyone’?”

  “The whole of St-Buvard. The American did much bragging about his museum.”

  “I don’t believe it.” But Maggie spoke softly, as if to herself.

  Suddenly the woman barked out an impatient order over her shoulder and then looked back at Maggie. “Almost finished,” she assured her. “Your husband knows good meat, eh? When he comes to my shop for meat, he knows what he wants, exactement.” The woman smiled at the thought of waiting on Laurent.

  “And precisely where,” Maggie asked, feeling a large weight seep into her shoulders and neck, “was the American going to build this museum?”

  Maggie knew the answer before the woman spoke the words.

  “Mais, Domaine St-Buvard, of course.”

  4

  Laurent surveyed the gnarling vines that poked up from the ground like spirits reaching out from a graveyard. He touched the base where the stocks had been severed, then wiped his fingers against his corduroy slacks. The sun was low in the sky, spilling an effusive display of pink and burnt orange over the countryside. The winter horizon seemed to close up on him, making him feel as if he could bump his head on the low-hanging late-afternoon clouds as they drifted by. The air was cold.

  “Sort of a severe pruning, wouldn’t you say?” He spoke to Jean-Luc who watched him through serious, undisclosing eyes. Alexandre said nothing.

  Some time during the night, an ax had been taken to several of Laurent’s plants. Laurent counted the damage. Twenty vinestocks destroyed. The vines were far enough away from the farmhouse to have been mutilated anytime after dark without arousing the dogs. He watched the hounds as they sniffed the ground―almost contritely, it seemed to him.

  “Perhaps it is a prank,” Jean-Luc offered, looking at the damage, at the dogs.

  “Yes,” Laurent said lightly. “I’m sure that’s just what it is.” He clapped a heavy hand down on the old vigneron’s shoulder, making the man jump. “I must be more vigilant, I see,” he said. “I’ve been enjoying the good life. The life of a vigneron, hein?”