Murder in the South of France: Book 1 of the Maggie Newberry Mysteries (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series)

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  “My sister’s apartment here in Cannes.”

  “Hardly an apartment, but where she was living, yes. I waited with the motor running. My friend came out of the…dwelling, with the child in his arms. He deposited l’enfant in the car and I departed.” He shrugged and took a sip of his wine.

  “Where did you take her?”

  “To an apartment near here. A jolly nice woman was waiting for us. She took the girl. That’s it.”

  “Were you paid?”

  “I told you. I was helping a friend.”

  “Will you take me to this address?”

  “If you like, Miss Newberry, but I can tell you the child is no longer there.”

  “How do you know?”

  Bentley sighed and motioned to the waiter hovering in the wings of the café. “I know, Miss Newberry, because I just do.” He turned and spoke briefly to the waiter, his French competent but abrupt. The man disappeared into the restaurant. “Look, she’s not there any longer but I believe I know where to find her, and isn’t that the whole point?”

  “I’d like to see this place that you took her. Is it a permanent address? Does the woman live there all the time or was it just a temporary thing?”

  The waiter returned with another bottle of red wine and two chilled bottles of Evian. He deposited the mineral water, one at each of their elbows, and began to decant the wine. Bentley watched the man intently, as if ready to jump in and do the job himself if necessary. Bentley was handsome, Maggie decided, but his features were sharp, nearly hawk-like.

  The waiter finished pouring the wine and left. Maggie reached out and touched Bentley’s hand as he reached for his glass.

  “You told my father Gerard was a very bad man.”

  Bentley looked at her sadly. “I did not know it at the time.”

  “But he is bad.”

  “Yes, Miss Newberry. The child is, in my opinion, in some danger by remaining with Dubois.”

  “He’s had her for six months now.”

  “So I would say that time is probably critical, wouldn’t you?”

  Maggie looked around the restaurant, as if expecting to see Gerard and her niece seated nearby. “Is she in Cannes?”

  “Oh, not Cannes. Surely you must be aware by now of the cost of a single room for one night in this town? I imagine, as Monsieur Dubois didn’t have a pied-à-terre here himself—and probably wouldn’t have been foolish enough to have taken the girl there even if he had—that she is somewhere in the country.”

  “And that’s where she’s been all this time?”

  “Presumably.”

  “And you think you’ll be able to find this place?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  “May I ask how?”

  “Why don’t we see how things go, shall we? I hate to tip my hand—and by doing so, get your hopes up in case things go awry. Let me try a few avenues, knock on a few doors, and see where it all leads.”

  “I’d like to be a part of this door knocking, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’m afraid that is impossible, Miss Newberry.” Bentley pushed aside their collection of dishes and glasses and drew an ashtray toward him. “I would suggest instead that you try to enjoy what the South of France has to offer. Why not hire a car and see the palace at Monaco tomorrow?” He lit his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of gray-blue smoke into the air above her head.

  “There are some enchanting little villages along the way. I personally recommend Villefranche—a charming little place—or Juan les Pins. You remember the song? Do a little sightseeing and let me see what I can uncover. If it turns out we are successful, you will have to leave the country quickly, with a person who will possess false identification and a forged American passport. It would be best if you were as uninvolved as possible until that time.”

  Maggie nodded. She knew he was right.

  “Just leave it to me, Miss Newberry. If all goes well, by this time tomorrow you will have your niece, her forged papers and two tickets back home to the U.S. Everything neat and tidy.”

  Maggie stared off into space, across the tables of diners and into the happy nighttime streets of Cannes. Dark gypsies, bejangled and braided, waved their wares of bracelets and bells, beaded necklaces and earrings from the sidewalk in hopes of attracting attention. Some accompanied their selling with soft crooning, which caught on the calm Mediterranean breeze and wafted back to Maggie at her table. The music of the night mingled with the scent of olives and lemons and dusky perfumes that pooled in the air over the little café.

  The sensation of being slightly drunk seemed to muffle her hearing and her vision, and she found herself woozy and unclear. But Bentley was right about one thing; she had come here for a single reason: to find Elise’s lost daughter. Elise, herself, had been lost a long, long time ago.

  Later that night, after she’d fallen into a fitful sleep that gave her no real rest, Maggie awoke, pushed back the duvet and scrambled out of bed. She flipped on the light in the bathroom and stood on the cool tile as she waited for her heart to stop pounding. She looked at her reflection in the warped mirror over the bathroom sink. Oh, Elise.

  They hadn’t heard from Elise in three years. At the age of thirty-two, she had dropped out of sight, with only the briefest, most painful glimpses of her filtering back to them in Georgia. Elise had dropped out of her art classes. Elise had had a baby. Elise was arrested. Drugs? Prostitution? Assault? The news was always vague, and always bad.

  Maggie rubbed her hands over her eyes and turned out the bathroom light. She went back to bed, her head throbbing from the night’s overindulgences.

  As she tried again to drop off to sleep, her mind began to relentlessly review and catalog the day’s events. She groaned and attempted to block out the image of Elise on the cold gurney, the puffed mass of tissue masquerading as a face unrecognizable and hideous. It was then, when she was trying not to remember the sights and odors of the experience, that a single memory shot through the rest and made her sit bolt upright in bed.

  Too distracted by the horror of everything else at the time, Maggie only this minute registered what she had seen: a discolored puckering or dimple was half hidden by the stringy brown hair arranged around the body’s shoulders.

  Just above Elise’s right ear was a bullet hole.

  2

  Maggie jabbed a sliver of toast into the cracked and leaking soft-boiled egg in her eggcup. The morning had started off in a totally different vibe than last night had ended. As soon as she awakened—her head pounding in ways she didn’t think people actually lived though—she remembered how Bentley had “handled” her.

  Get her loaded and she’ll be easy to manipulate. Put her on a sightseeing bus and get her out of your hair.

  Well, if Roger Bentley thought he could cut her out of the face-to-face work necessary to get the job done, he could damn well think again, she thought fiercely.

  Especially for thirty thousand dollars!

  “I can’t say how long, exactly, negotiations will take.” Bentley looked starched and smart in the late-morning swelter. He certainly didn’t look like he’d matched Maggie glass for glass for over three bottles of high-octane rosé. He flapped his cotton napkin out across his lap and smiled across the breakfast table at her. He had again chosen their meeting place, the sunny and fairly private outdoor dining deck of yet another famous, old Cannes hotel, the Majestic.

  “Might be a few days, actually. Need to be prepared to wait. All good things, and all that.” He smiled at her and reached over to pour his coffee. “But I’m very happy with my plan—”

  “Which you feel no need to share with me.” Maggie stared at her speared eggcup, the toast point weakening at the base and beginning to collapse into the murky yellow.

  “I hope you understand. I feel that I’m protecting you, Maggie.”

  On the face of it, she knew the service he was providing here was one she’d be hard-pressed to find someone else to do. If he hadn’t called her father, they w
ouldn’t even have gotten this far in their attempt to find Elise’s daughter. In fact, up until that moment Maggie and her parents had chosen to believe that Nicole was happy in France—if not in Elise’s custody, then with her father.

  Roger Bentley had put an end to that little fantasy with one phone call. He convinced Maggie’s father that Gerard, Elise’s old boyfriend and Nicole’s father, was a man who would eventually destroy the child. He insisted that he could locate the child for them and, in a single phone call, the Englishman had galvanized the Newberry clan into action.

  That his call had come within minutes of the devastating one informing them of Elise’s death by accidental mischance was unanimously viewed by all as enormously fortuitous.

  Maggie watched the Englishman in the dining room of the shabby but still elegant Majestic Hotel and had to admit that if he hadn’t called and offered to help them find the girl, they wouldn’t even be this close.

  Bentley attacked his breakfast with gusto, spreading the delicate French jellies onto his croissants with almost exaggerated hand movements, carving up his sausage and broiled tomatoes as if he didn’t expect to eat this well again for a very long time.

  “Allo? Roger? I am here, yes?”

  The voice came from behind Maggie.

  “Laurent! Wonderful! Come, sit down, Sit down,” Bentley motioned to the empty chair next to Maggie. The man appeared to her right, and even without immediately looking up the impression Maggie got was that he was a very big man.

  “Maggie Newberry, this is Laurent Dernier. Laurent, Mademoiselle Newberry. He’s going to help us with our project. Coffee, Laurent?”

  Maggie felt her irritation with Bentley ignite again. She did not turn to look at the newcomer, but tapped the side of her coffee cup gently with a silver butter knife.

  “Look, Roger...” she began.

  Bentley ignored her. “Been doing a bit of a brain tease on an engineering project in Algeria, Laurent has,” Roger bubbled. “What’s the name of it, old chap? Rather like that Super Collider thing you Yanks were putting together, I think.” He turned to Maggie. “You know all about that, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for an answer, swiveling back to face the newcomer. “Sit down and tell us about it, Laurent. It’s measuring or subdividing molecules or some such thing, isn’t it? Terribly clever, our Laurent,” he confided to Maggie.

  “It was just a consulting job,” Laurent said, still not seating himself.

  “Of course it was! Couldn’t afford the full bill of having you pull on rubber gloves and really going to it, I should say not.” He turned back to Maggie. “Man’s a mathematical genius.”

  “My family cannot afford any more money,” she said curtly.

  “I say, Maggie, who’s talking about money? Laurent’s here to help us get the job done. The price is the same, of course.”

  “You are unhappy about me, Mademoiselle?”

  “No, no, no, Laurent. Mademoiselle Newberry just takes her time warming up to people, don’t you, Maggie?” Bentley smiled, but Maggie detected the slightest edge beneath his tone.

  “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, really.” She turned briefly to Monsieur Dernier without looking at him, then turned abruptly back to Bentley. “It’s just that the nature of my business is rather delicate, and I would hope that you’d know the fewer people who know about it, the better. If you say you need this man to get my niece back, well, okay. Just understand my position, if you can.”

  “I should leave, Roger. She is not comfortable.”

  “No, hold on.” Maggie turned to look at him fully for the first time. He was extraordinarily good-looking she noted, and forced her mouth not to fall open. Broad chested and large, he was easily six foot four. His face was calm, with a sweetness to it that almost seemed to belie his size. His eyes were piercing and dark, almost pupil-less. His light brown hair was thick and worn long to his shoulders.

  He was looking at her with a kindness she had never felt from a total stranger before. It was a look between friends. Good friends. “I....well, you’re already here, so let’s just go on, okay?” she said, feeling a little flustered. “Forget it, all right? All right, Roger?”

  “Of course, all right.” Roger shrugged and reached for another roll. He winked at Laurent, making sure that Maggie noticed.

  “If you are sure, Mademoiselle.”

  “Yes, yes. I’m just a little rattled is all. If you can help, well, then thanks. I appreciate any help anyone can give me.” Annoyed and shaken by her reaction to Laurent’s effect on her, Maggie pushed her breakfast plate aside and reached for the champagne bottle. Laurent leaned over and took the large flagon from her, and Maggie smiled her thanks as he poured the champagne into her orange juice tumbler.

  “Right. Let’s map out our day, shall we?” Bentley took a swig of his coffee and dropped his napkin onto the table. “First, I will begin with Step One of Plan A. Laurent, you will take Mademoiselle Newberry to Section Two of Plan A at the designated hour.”

  “Hold on, Roger,” Maggie said, frowning. “Why do I have to go someplace special? Why can’t I just hole up in my hotel room and wait for your call?”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you have jolly little flair for adventure? It may not be a phone call, that’s why.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Must you understand everything? You Americans—”

  “And I’m officially sick of the you Americans shtick. I want to know—”

  “You always want to know! Bloody hell! Can’t you trust someone else to carry out the details without your having to know?”

  “Roger! Arrête! Stop, now, both of you! You are causing a big performance, no?” Laurent leaned over and patted Maggie’s hand in a gesture that was half consoling, half reprimand.

  He wagged a finger at Roger. “She is upset, no? Her sister is dead and she is....ahh, triste....very sad. The responsibilité is yours, Roger, n’est-ce pas?”

  Roger placed his cup down. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I quite forgot myself and the situation. You must excuse me. I know things are very hard on you now.”

  Maggie knew she must look as tired as she felt. She nodded gratefully at Laurent and then looked into Bentley’s canny green eyes. “Do what you have to do,” she said.

  He smiled at her and then at Laurent. “Good girl.”

  The street cleaners crept the early morning streets wielding their large garden hoses like weapons, rinsing away the rubbish and debris of last night’s party. Maggie watched them from her hotel window. The early morning air was cool.

  The Mediterranean sun had not yet had the chance to perform its mellow alchemy on the coast. Maggie watched as two bedraggled partygoers picked their way across the rough stones of the Rue des Etats-Unis back to their hotel. The woman wore a gold lamé gown with a pointy, cone-cupped brassiere over the top of it. Her hair looked like she’d gone swimming at some point in the evening. Her makeup looked it, too.

  Maggie watched the man with her, his bowtie limp but still attached at the throat. He was handsome, but not young. She watched them until they disappeared around the corner. On their way back from somebody’s yacht moored in the harbor, no doubt, she thought. Most of Cannes’s parties happened on somebody’s yacht, or so she’d been told.

  She’d been in France for almost a week now. Each day Bentley either made an appearance at her hotel to assure her that the recovery of Nicole was imminent, or sent messages of similar content via Laurent. Laurent was a constant in her daily routine: escorting her around Cannes and Cap d’Antibes, climbing the hills with her in Monaco, which led to the Grimaldi palace, picking up the tab at frequent café stops, and always listening intently—sympathetically—to her protestations that the search was taking too long.

  She wasn’t sure what to think of Laurent. He was kind, and in spite of his bad English she could tell he was intelligent too. Perhaps too much so. Maggie got the impression Laurent held cards he wasn’t showing. Nonetheless, she felt drawn to him. Among his m
any other talents touted by Bentley, Laurent obviously had a very special way with people.

  Maggie forced herself not to think about the bullet hole she’d seen in the body’s head—in Elise’s head. She knew that if Elise had been murdered, the way she lived it couldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. But whereas the matter of Elise was out of her hands, the case of her daughter, Nicole, was not. Maggie had booked two seats back to Atlanta for the next morning. The thought of returning to Atlanta without the little girl produced a hard knot in the pit of her stomach. Elise’s daughter, lost somewhere in France, in the custody of her brutish father.

  Maggie clenched her hands. She thought of the expression on her mother’s face if she got off that airplane alone.

  Downstairs, Laurent was waiting for her. He stood next to the Gray d’Albion check-in counter, flipping through a Paris Express. She hesitated a moment on the staircase when she saw him. His was a rough handsomeness, she decided. Weathered, been-there. She liked it, and she liked him. It was clear he’d begun to grow on her in a way that was pleasant, and slightly worrisome. And she was sorry about that because the timing was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  Laurent looked up and caught her watching him from the top of the stairs. Tossing the magazine onto the counter, he bounded up the stairs to meet her, his bulk looking insubstantial and light when he did so. He gathered up her pullman and carry-on bag in one movement, and she thought for a moment that he would snatch her up as well.

  She had long registered that Laurent had an unsettling effect on her, and felt flustered at his nearness.

  “You had a good night?”

  “Yes, thanks. So, now where?” she asked, a little breathlessly.

  “Vas-y, Maggie.” He led the way down the stairs. “I have the automobile, this way, so.” She kept her sights on Laurent’s back as he pushed open the revolving door before her and led her to a waiting yellow Citroen. He opened the trunk and piled her luggage into the back, then looked up at her and smiled again.