Murder à la Carte (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series)

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

Jean-Luc was dressed in a muddy-blue smock, dark trousers, with a black cap settled on the back of his gray head. His hands were pushed deeply into the pockets of his smock. He cleared his throat. “I don’t feel good about asking you this,” he said, his guttural French only lightly dusted with the patois of the area.

  Then don’t ask, Laurent thought coldly. But he said nothing.

  “I’ve been authorized, you see...” Jean-Luc paused and looked out toward Laurent’s land.

  It was clear to Laurent that the old man was an unwilling messenger this afternoon. Or was that simply the impression Jean-Luc wished to convey?

  “Laurent, shall we not go inside? To discuss our business?”

  “I enjoy looking at my vineyard,” Laurent said pointedly, not looking away from the vines or the horizon.

  Jean-Luc nodded miserably next to him and let the moment pass. “It is a little cold for an old man’s bones,” he said as he rubbed his arms with his hands.

  Finally, Laurent looked down at him. He had liked this old fellow from the beginning. Had trusted his judgment, been grateful for his help and attention in harvesting Laurent’s grapes and in turning the grapes into a decent wine. Jean-Luc had seemed part brother, part uncle to Laurent, who had not had the luxury or the opportunity to enjoy such a relationship when he was a boy. Laurent reflected that even Maggie’s father was more friend to him than advisor or father. And, of course, John Newberry wasn’t French.

  “You’re right,” Laurent said. “It is a cold day. Come inside. There’s a fire in the hearth.” He turned and led the way back into the house.

  Once inside, Laurent scooped up Maggie’s little dog, who had been watching them intently from the doors that led to the garden and deposited her on the couch facing the fireplace.

  Jean-Luc stood before the fire, its flames active and warming. He held out his hands to the small but fierce blaze and stared into its depths.

  Laurent disappeared into the kitchen and returned with two large glasses of pastis. He handed one to Jean-Luc, who hesitated before accepting it.

  “Merci,” the old farmer said solemnly.

  “You were saying that you were authorized?” Laurent said, trying to keep the taunt out of his voice. His betrayal by Jean-Luc was about to be complete, he knew.

  “Laurent, I don’t want to ask you this,” Jean-Luc repeated. Laurent felt himself angered by Jean-Luc’s reluctance as well as by what he knew the old farmer had to say.

  “You mentioned that,” Laurent said dryly, draping one arm on the mantle of the fireplace and facing his guest.

  “I have been authorized to ask you what, exactly, it would take...rather how much money you would require....” Jean-Luc’s words trailed away as he stared into the fire.

  “You can’t even look at me, Jean-Luc.”

  Jean-Luc tore his eyes away from the flames and looked directly at Laurent. His face was creased with sadness, testimony to the heavy weight he was carrying. He doesn’t want to do this, Laurent thought again, a small hope welling up in him that the friendship could still be saved.

  “We can pay whatever is necessary to buy the property,” Jean-Luc said.

  Laurent didn’t reply.

  “Name your price, we will get the financing to cover it. Within...within reason, of course.”

  “You mean, ten million francs would not be considered reasonable?” Laurent asked.

  Laurent watched Jean-Luc blanch immediately.

  “Ten mill...million...?” Jean-Luc stuttered. “You cannot be serious.”

  Laurent turned away from Jean-Luc and drained the rest of his drink. “I’m not serious,” he said grimly. “It was a joke, old friend.” Without looking at him, he could feel the man relax somewhat next to him. “I have not been entirely honest with you, Jean-Luc,” Laurent continued, still looking into the fire. “Mostly because I wasn’t sure, myself, what I wanted. It wasn’t my intention to string you along.”

  The two men faced each other again.

  “You don’t wish to sell,” Jean-Luc said.

  “Not at any price.” Laurent set his pastis glass down on the mantle with a smart smack. “Tell Marceau that. The property is not for sale. Laurent Dernier is not leaving St-Buvard. “

  “I see,” Jean-Luc said.

  “That makes two of us.”

  Laurent turned behind him to see Maggie, her arms full of grocery bags, her hair, like a rumpled curtain of black velvet, laying in a windswept tangle around her shoulders. She stood watching the two men from the front hall.

  Chapter Sixteen

  1

  Grace adjusted the softly hissing teakettle on the gas ring. She thought with amazement of Taylor’s nanny...Beatrice, wasn’t it, this week?...who had actually volunteered to take Taylor to the show in Avignon this morning. Grace shook her head with wonder tinged with guilt. Not only did Taylor seem to like this sweet, shy au pair, the child was actually beginning to respond in kind. Grace reflected on their breakfast together earlier that morning and thought of the look on Taylor’s face as she reached across the table for the honey toast and then stopped to get visual approval from Beatrice first. The idea that Taylor would consult someone, anyone, before she barged ahead with her own schedule of wants was a new one for Grace. Yes, Taylor certainly seemed to like slim, unexciting Bea...maybe she even loved her, Grace thought with surprise. She poured the boiling water into the china teapot and found herself thinking that now the whole world could finally see that Taylor wasn’t just a difficult child, but rather, a child with endless, loving possibilities―with difficult parents.

  And aren’t you a self-centered pig to think of it that way? She gave the grounds a quick stir and then buried the teapot under an enormous quilted cozy. Her stomach rumbled from hunger and she put a quick hand over it, reminded―as if she needed that―of the presence of the baby. Yes, they’d been lousy parents to Taylor, she thought. She hadn’t been Shirley Temple and they hadn’t been Ward and June Cleaver either. Or Roseanne and Dan Conner, for that matter. Oh, they’d gone through the motions, of course. But there had been a good deal of equity in supporting the Taylor-As-The-Bad-Child story. They’d received all kinds of condolences― sometimes even commiseration―and they’d never had to be held accountable for their less than understanding attitude toward the poor kid.

  Grace found tears springing to her eyes. She wiped them away quickly and then heard Windsor stirring upstairs. Whether he would be speaking to her this morning was anyone’s guess, but somehow she didn’t think it wise to break the ice with her terrible revelations on the raising of their firstborn. She touched her stomach again. Oh, little one, she thought. What in the world am I getting you into?

  2

  “Exactly when were you going to let me in on this?” Maggie stood in the kitchen, her arms crossed in front of her, her mouth set in a grim line.

  Laurent picked up a large haddock and began rinsing it carefully under the tap.

  “Laurent?”

  He sighed and shook the wet fish before laying it out on his clean chopping board.

  “There is nothing to tell, Maggie,” he said tiredly. He looked up at her and smiled weakly. “Because I told Jean-Luc I would not sell, does not mean we will stay.”

  She threw up her arms melodramatically and stomped to the other side of the small kitchen.

  “Do you mind not playing word games with me?” she said. “I mean, at least until we’re both proficient in the same language?”

  Laurent tossed down his large butcher knife.

  “Peut-être aimeras-tu me parler dans ma langue―pour une fois?” he asked bitingly. He watched her face flush with anger and confusion.

  “Speak English,” she said.

  “Ah, yes, always I am to speak English, n’est-ce pas?” He placed his hands on his hips. “But we have been here three months and you are not bothering to learn my language.”

  “Oh for Pete’s sakes,” she said, a little unsure of herself now.

  “We live in France to
day.” He waved a broad swath in the air to encompass the kitchen and all of France. “We are not on Peachtree Street.” He turned and jabbed a large finger at the fish on the cutting board. “We eat French food here― oh, but, that Maggie does not like!” He made a face as if to mimic her distaste. “Maggie misses Johnny Rockets! Maggie wants her microwave popcorn and her diet Coca-Colas. Maggie wants everyone to be speaking English or she will ignore them...”

  “That’s not true!”

  “It is true!”

  “I hate you, Laurent, I really do.”

  “Tell me in French.” He turned away and began chopping up the fish.

  “Who ever heard of making fish stew for Christmas Eve supper?” she said suddenly after a long pause.

  He said nothing, but turned and gave the soaking mussels a perfunctory stir with a wooden spoon. He opened the refrigerator and took out the leeks, giving Maggie a sidelong glance at the same time. She was staring at the floor, miserable, tears rimming her eyes.

  He was about to drop the leeks in the sink and put his arms around her to tell her it wasn’t important, none of it was important, when she looked up at him and said haughtily: “Faire le pot au feu de poissons pour le soir de Noël est ridicule.” Making fish stew for Christmas is ridiculous.

  Laurent burst out laughing and did take her into his arms. “I love you, Maggie,” he said.

  “Speak French, you lout,” she said, but kissed his ear. “Go ahead, make yourself miserable. We have trouble enough communicating, but if that’s what you want....”

  “Perhaps we could take it slowly, hein?” He smiled at her. “A little each day, oui?”

  She laid her head against his chest. “I’m sorry, Laurent,” she said. “Je m’excuse. I know I haven’t been trying to learn. I know I’ve resisted getting into the swing of things.”

  “Je ne m’en porte pas plus mal,” he said, kissing the top of her head. It hasn’t bothered me too much.

  “It’s so hard to hear the person you love and not be able to understand him,” she said.

  “How do you think men have felt about women for years, eh?”

  “Très amusant,” she said, looking up at him. “I’m calm now. Can you tell me what all of that was about with Jean-Luc?”

  He ran his hand down the length of her long, dark hair. He loved her hair, loved how it lay in satiny sheets of jet black like an Oriental doll’s hair, how it swung when she moved. He gently pulled her hair back from her face and touched her chin with his thumb.

  “Maggie, I want to stay. You must know that.” He watched her eyes fill with fear and resignation. “But,” he continued. “I will not stay if it is not what you want. What I told Jean-Luc is the truth, I will not sell to him or Eduard or anyone else. Domaine St-Buvard is mine now and if I never work another week of its fields, myself, it will be mine to give to my son someday. Comprends-tu?”

  “I understand,” she said, softly.

  “I will sublease it to a farmer to work it, to care for it. But I will not sell it.”

  “Why is it so important to you?” she asked.

  Laurent held her tightly as he looked past her shoulder through the French doors and out to his fields, where row after row of vines were lovingly wired and taped, trimmed and pruned.

  “What have I done with my life?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper. “Where have I been and what have I done? Domaine St-Buvard is my castle, my place of rest and my triumph.”

  “You mean it’s home.”

  “Yes, home,” he said, looking into her sea-blue eyes for a positive response, a mutual understanding. He pointed toward the fields. “I own this, Maggie. This land is mine. Perhaps only another Frenchman would understand how... necessary that feels.”

  Maggie stood up on tiptoes and kissed him firmly on the mouth. “I understand it, chéri,” she said. “I just don’t know what to do with it.”

  Laurent gave her another quick kiss and then turned away to deal with his leeks. She watched him slice the vegetables, and add the fish head and chopped onions to a heavy skillet of olive oil.

  “I talked to Madame Dulcie today,” she said, trying to fight the feeling of hopelessness that had begun in her heart. “Grace didn’t show.”

  “Ah, yes,” Laurent turned to look at her and gestured with a paring knife. “She called after you left to say she was feeling ill. I forgot to tell you.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Maggie said, as he turned back to his work. “I figured as much. Anyway, Madame Dulcie told me the inside scoop on Patrick Alexandre and the woman he killed. Really interesting stuff. Did you get around to listening to the tape from Madame Lasalle? The gypsy?”

  Laurent scattered fennel seeds in the skillet and then reached for the hand tape recorder sitting on a kitchen shelf.

  “I was listening to it just before Jean-Luc came over,” he said, snapping on the recorder. “Ecoutons-le ensemble, okay?” Let’s listen to it together. He filled the skillet with water and then covered it. “I still think it was dangerous, Maggie, for you to have gone there alone. The gypsies―”

  “Oh, speak French, would you, Laurent?”

  Laurent smiled and shook an admonishing finger at her. The voice of Madame Lasalle invaded the pleasant quiet of the kitchen.

  “I think this was the part where I was asking her about Gaston―”

  Laurent shushed her and listened while lifting the skillet lid to salt the water. He reached up and snapped off the tape recorder.

  “She said Gaston was a loving little boy, very helpful to his mother.”

  “Really?”

  “She said he was always very smart but that he would occasionally have l’attaque...seizures.”

  “You’re kidding? Gaston’s an epileptic?”

  Laurent shrugged and began quartering potatoes with swift movements of his knife.

  “It is not so unusual,” he said. “Gypsies.” He leaned over and turned the recorder back on. “Her husband died ten years ago,” he said, chopping potatoes. He listened to the tape. “On the night of the murders, she was sleeping in the family trailer when a young man came from the village to fetch her mother. It was about her father, Ricardo.”

  “Ricardo’s the one they hung, right?”

  Ignoring her, Laurent listened carefully to the tape. A full minute passed before he spoke again. “He had been making a delivery of anchovy bread to Domaine St-Buvard―something he did quite regularly, it seems―when he heard a lot of noise and screaming...”

  The voice on the recording imitated the sounds of gunshots and then shouted: “Au secours! Au secours!”

  “She says her father said he heard calls for help but that he...” Laurent listened in silence for a moment and then shook his head. “Merde,” he said.

  “What? What ‘merde’? What happened?”

  Laurent turned off the recorder again. “He ran away. Your gypsy woman says her father was afraid of trouble in the form of les gendarmes―and so he ran away from the house.”

  “Well, what’s so―?”

  “He left his delivery load of anchovy bread on the ground when he fled.”

  “Merde.”

  “Gypsies are not very smart.”

  “What else does she say?”

  Laurent turned the recorder back on.

  “Ricardo was taken to a cabin nearby and held for a few hours after the murders were discovered.” He poised his knife over the potato and waited, listening to the woman’s words on the recorder. Then, he leaned over and switched the recorder off again and continued chopping. “And we know what happened after that.”

  “Poor Ricardo,” Maggie said, looking at the recorder. “She told me the truth, then.” She glanced at Laurent. “I wasn’t sure she would. She didn’t have to, you know. She knew I wouldn’t have known the difference.”

  “A noble people,” Laurent said dryly as he added the potatoes to the boiling skillet.

  “But it’s weird,” Maggie said, “that Ricardo would be delivering bread there,
and Jean-Luc, too? Oh! Did I mention that I told the village vicar we’d be stopping by for midnight Mass tonight?”

  “I am sure,” Laurent said with a shake of his head, “that no matter how well you speak my language, or I yours, I will never understand your sense of humor.”

  3

  Windsor dusted imaginary flecks of dandruff from the shoulders of his cashmere jacket. He stood facing the full- length mirror in the downstairs hallway and pushed his chin out of the way of the collar of his turtleneck sweater to better see the effect of the sweater’s burgundy color against the dark gray jacket. He smoothed back the sides of his neatly trimmed hair. Pretty good, he decided. He jerked downward lightly on both lapels of his jacket and flicked an offending dog hair off his sweater front. He could hear the sounds of Grace’s last- minute touches upstairs. She padded lightly from bed to dresser to bathroom on the creaking ancient floorboards overhead.

  He wished he could feel differently about things. He wished he could feel the way he had a mere six weeks ago― before Connor died, before all of this mess happened. The reflection in the mirror began to sag just a little. Then, an evening out―especially Christmas Eve―would’ve involved the prospect of laughter and good company. Then, whether it was the result of being the husband of the beautiful and witty Grace Van Sant (it had never occurred to him that Laurent or Connor or Jean-Luc, for that matter, didn’t desire her madly) or whether as a result of some witticism he would inevitably deliver during the course of the night, the preparations for the evening would have been filled with anticipation and excitement. He stared dismally at his reflection in the mirror.

  He turned away from the mirror and walked into the expansive parlor. It was six o’clock and the outside light was long gone. Somebody―perhaps the new nanny?―had pulled the heavy drapes closed, and the room looked serious, a little somber even, as if one might expect to find a coffin propped up and on display in some corner. Windsor moved to a small mahogany bar and made himself a strong gin and tonic. Now he could hear Grace on the staircase. She was actually humming as she descended. He took a long sip from his drink and waited for her to appear in the doorway.