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

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Darla searched his face and tried to smile encouragingly.

  Maggie lay on the guest bed in her parents’ house and stared up at the white ceiling. Tiny, fluorescent stars blinked back in a faint constellation painted on the ceiling. Maggie had never noticed them before.

  She had looked into her parents’ eyes as they tried to understand when she told them of Elise’s murder earlier that day. She held her father’s hand and watched him nod as if she were warning him that the Dow Jones might plummet soon. She watched her mother weep, and, impossibly, nod understandingly as to why Maggie hadn’t called when Elise showed up.

  After all the talking, Maggie had cried. She cried for the daughter who had finally come home, for the impetuous artist, the hopeless romantic, the recalcitrant single mother. But most of all, she cried for the sister she’d known so little.

  The next day, Maggie sat in the gathering room with Nicole. The room was a light and cheery place, which captured the sun’s needles of light and spun them into prisms and rectangles of luminescence.

  Nicole’s face, as usual, gave nothing away. Her eyes, large and implacable, met Maggie’s gaze easily.

  “Grandmère is very unhappy right now,” Maggie said. “And it’s me who’s done it, you see.” Maggie reached over to pat out a wrinkle in Nicole’s cotton corduroy jumper.

  Will she never come out of the warm little burrow in her mind and join the rest of us? Is wherever she is so nice and safe that we will never know her?

  Maggie leaned over and touched Nicole’s baby-soft cheek and thought, for an instant, that her eyes flickered in response.

  Are you all we have left of her now?

  “Darling?”

  Maggie turned to see her mother enter the room and her heart ripped at the sight. Elspeth had obviously had a hard night. Her beautiful face was weary and lined.

  “Did Brownie leave?” Elspeth asked.

  “He had to get back. He said he’ll call later.”

  “I’m sorry I missed him this morning.”

  “Are you going to come in?”

  Elspeth shook her head and tried to smile. “I think I’ll read in my room today, darling, if you don’t mind. Annie will be here shortly to look after Nicole. How are you, ma petite?”

  The girl looked blankly at her grandmother.

  “What are your plans for the day, Margaret?”

  Maggie shrugged. “I might go back to my apartment and pick up a few things. Detective Burton said I could. They’ve got some people there, I guess, to help me. Then, I don’t know.”

  There was a brief silence before Elspeth turned to leave.

  “Mom, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about Elise.”

  “I know, darling. But it doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t know how I can live with myself.”

  “Don’t be silly, Maggie. It’s in the past.” Her mother’s back seemed to stiffen during the exchange, as if her body couldn’t lie as easily as her voice could. “Let’s not talk about it in front of Nicole.”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  “There doesn’t seem much point. I’m off now. Dinner is at six, as usual.”

  “Okay.”

  Maggie watched her mother’s retreating back and felt worse than before Elspeth had come downstairs. She looked back over at Nicole, who was watching Elspeth’s departure.

  “She’s really sad right now, Nicole.”

  The little girl blinked once and looked at Maggie.

  Did Nicole somehow know Maggie had cheated her out of her one last chance to see her mother? Did she, unencumbered by the love that bound Maggie’s parents, feel free to hate her aunt for her stupidity and selfishness? For surely selfishness had been a major part of it, Maggie thought. The notion of presenting Elise to her parents as if she were a beribboned parcel had loomed dominant in Maggie’s daydreams.

  When the doorbell sounded, it was so gentle and musical that, for a moment, Maggie thought it was one of the many house clocks unobtrusively heralding the hour. Elspeth had a passion for clocks of all kinds and collected them to the point where her husband had finally forced her to weed them out of the house. It was true, Maggie thought as she got up from the heavy Queen Anne armchair to answer the door, the house had begun to resemble a large and noisy clockmaker’s shop a few years ago. All the ticking and chiming and onerous hourly and quarter hourly booming had nearly driven her poor father mad, and served as the starting point for hours of family jokes.

  Maggie walked to the end of the sitting room, where two pairs of French doors led out to the garden. Although not the main entrance, the garden portal was the closest to the driveway and so the one most commonly used. Besides, Elspeth said she liked the idea of visitors enjoying her garden as they walked to the door. She thought it much friendlier than the tedious, precision-manicured box hedges and bricked path that led to the front, with its massive columns and imposing porticoes.

  “A little bit of Tara goes a long way,” she liked to tell her daughters. “The point is not to intimidate people.”

  “Just to have more money than them, that’s all,” Elise had quipped in return.

  Elise had never given her mother much quarter.

  Maggie peered through the panel sheers in the door and, seeing nothing, pulled open the doors and stepped outside. The warmth and humidity of the morning struck her. The air conditioning had prompted goosebumps on her arms and legs, but they dissolved upon contact with the moist Southern air.

  She stepped out onto the flagstone patio that curved away from the double doors. A small stone bench sat nearly hidden among a cluster of spirea, forsythia and camellia. Vines of thick, glossy ivy snaked along the ground and up and over the dry stone wall that contained the whole garden. The fragrance from the rose bushes—lurching their way up a rickety trellis—was light and sweet on the heavy Georgia air.

  A blooming bush of American Beauty roses shook slightly in the corner of her vision making her turn, hands still on the door handles, to see a tall man standing next to the bush of blood-red roses.

  It was Laurent.

  9

  Maggie stood quietly, her breath sucked out of her. He was wearing jeans and a blue jersey tee shirt. His eyes smiled sadly at her.

  “So,” he said softly. “I am here.”

  She released the door handles and moved out onto the bricked, terrace steps. Laurent caught her in his arms and lifted her off the ground. She wrapped her arms around his thick, sunburned neck and laid her cheek against his chest. For this perfect moment, she didn’t care to see his face, examine his eyes, hear his story, or mark his changes. It was just enough that he’d finally come.

  “Mon amour,” he murmured. He held her for several moments and then set her down and looked into her eyes. “I know it is bad for you now, chérie.” He leaned down and kissed her. “But it will be all right now. Laurent is here.”

  Maggie kept her hands firmly on his arms, as if afraid to let him go a second time. He was so looming she had the odd sensation that he blotted out the morning sun, at the same time he brought light into the garden. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she said. “After nearly six months of no word, no letter.” She felt her heart crumble into his hands as she looked at his handsome face, so longed for, so well remembered. And loved.

  “I told you I would come,” he said, his eyes probing hers.

  “I just can’t believe I’m seeing you again, that it’s really you.” She knew she should let go of him, but she couldn’t bring herself to. “Where are you staying?”

  “With you, bien sûr!” Laurent smiled and she felt her heart expand in her chest in an attempt to encompass her joy. Bien sûr.

  “How in the world did you find me? How did you know I’d be here?”

  Laurent waved away the question as if it were a fly droning about his head. He nodded toward the interior of the house. “Come, I think I am meeting la mère?”

  “Margaret? Is everything all right, darling?”

 
Maggie turned to see her mother standing in the French doors, Nicole positioned at her side like a miniature sentinel.

  “Mother.” Maggie dropped her hands from Laurent’s arms and turned to face her mother. “This is a good friend of mine. I...we met in France. He helped us get Nicole back. Laurent Dernier, this is my mother, Elspeth Newberry. Mom, this is Laurent.”

  Elspeth Newberry stepped forward onto the flagstone pathway and offered Laurent her hand. He took it in his large sunburnt hand and murmured, “Enchanté, Madame.”

  Elspeth’s eyes darted to Maggie, but her smile stayed intact. “I am pleased to meet you, Laurent.”

  “I am so sorry about your daughter.”

  Elspeth’s eyes filled. “Merci,” she said, turning to lead the way into the house.

  Laurent looked at Maggie. Ça va? She nodded and reached out to take his arm again. Oh, baby, ça va, she thought.

  That night at dinner Maggie couldn’t help but feel as if he had always been with them. As foreign as he was—from his size to his accent to his very maleness in what had become an increasingly feminine household—Laurent just seemed to belong at the Newberry family dinner table. Maggie was pleased to notice her mother had seen to it that the big Frenchman would not be homesick or hungry his first night in Atlanta. She had Becka, their cook, prepare a rabbit smothered in rosemary, followed by mini crockpots of honey and saffron crèmes.

  Nicole sat between Maggie and Laurent, her brown hair gathered in a French braid with gold velvet ribbons interlacing the plaiting. She wore a simple chocolate-brown shift. Its floppy Peter Pan collar displayed Nicole’s small head like a cabbage on a platter.

  At several points in the evening, Maggie saw Laurent watching Nicole closely, and once or twice he attempted to engage her. Nicole sat at the dinner table quiet and seemingly unseeing, her only movements the slow, robotic ones that carried her spoon from her plate to her mouth.

  Laurent’s meeting with Maggie’s father was a warm and friendly one. John Newberry was good-humored, if a little wounded in general, and he welcomed Laurent wholeheartedly into his home. Watching the two of them talk at dinner made Maggie wonder if Laurent and her father might become friends someday.

  After dinner, her parents and Nicole retired to the gathering room to read or watch TV, leaving the deserted dinner table to Maggie and Laurent.

  “Becka will bring coffee in a bit,” Maggie said, as she leaned back into her chair. She had almost gotten her fill of looking at him and reassuring herself that he had, indeed, not forgotten her.

  “I like your maman and papa very much. They are good people.”

  “They are.”

  “They love that little girl, too. Such a sad one. Tch-zut!” Laurent sucked his teeth and shook his head.

  “I’m not sure she’s really Elise’s.”

  A thin veil seemed to come down between them and Laurent suddenly looked guarded. “Of course she is your sister’s daughter. Roger took her from Gerard’s house.”

  “I know, Laurent. It’s just that she’s nothing like any of us, you know?”

  “Give her time, Maggie. You are so impatient, I think.” He smiled at her.

  “Why did you come, Laurent?” Maggie leaned across the starched white tablecloth toward him. He pulled out a blue packet of Gitanes and lit one from a box of matches. He held the smoking match between his fingers and looked at her inquiringly. She got up and walked to the large walnut hutch in the dining room and began rummaging around for an ashtray. “Do you have business in town or something?”

  Becka, a middle-aged black woman with shiny, dark skin nearly the color of the hutch, entered the room carrying a silver tray with a coffee pot and creamer. The sugar bowl was delicate light-blue china, with two matching cups and saucers.

  “Hey, Becka.” Maggie pulled a crystal ashtray from one of the drawers of the hutch and returned to the table.

  “Your mother and father havin’ their coffee in the livin’ room,” Becka said as she unloaded her tray.

  “You are the chef, Madame?” Laurent stood up from his chair.

  “I cooked it, if that’s what you mean.” Becka hid a smile.

  Laurent kissed the tips of his fingers with a loud smacking noise. “C’etait magnifique! It was better than anything in Paris or on the Cote d’Azur, absolument.”

  Grinning, Becka hugged the tray to her chest and backed out of the room. “Well, I’m glad you liked it. G’night, Miss Maggie.”

  “Goodnight, Becka. You outdid yourself. It was delish plus.”

  The cook exited the dining room with a loud swish of the swinging door.

  Maggie thumped down the Waterford ashtray in front of Laurent. “What were you saying about being here on business?”

  Laurent looked at her with surprise. “I have no business except for you, ma petite. I am here to be with you.”

  Maggie felt a flush of pleasure creep up her throat to her face. She scraped some breadcrumbs from the table and emptied them into Laurent’s ashtray.

  “How long are you in town for?”

  Might as well come right out with it.

  Laurent frowned. “I’m here to be with you,” he repeated. He looked around the cavernous dining room with its dual hanging chandeliers. “You do not live here.”

  “No. The cops made me move out until they’re done with the…crime scene.”

  “How long?”

  “I can move back day after tomorrow.”

  “We will move back then.” He shrugged as if it was all just so simple.

  Maggie felt a thrill run through her when she realized he wasn’t leaving right away. She also couldn’t help but imagine a few scenarios in her head where the two of them would be together in bed again. She must have telegraphed what she was thinking by a blush, because Laurent grinned knowingly at her.

  “You know,” she said, trying to change the subject and get a better handle on her emotions. “I never did get straight what it is you do for a living. I mean, can you afford to just take time off like this?”

  Laurent poured her coffee and then his own before answering. He held up the china creamer and she shook her head.

  He poured a hefty dollop of cream into his coffee. “I am en vacances, oui? On vacation?”

  “And then you’ll go back to France?”

  Laurent touched Maggie’s chin gently with his thumb and forefinger. “Don’t worry, okay? I am here today.”

  Great. One of those live for the moment types. Maggie sipped her coffee.

  “You have been through very much. To have a sister die...” He shook his head and clucked his tongue.

  “I intend to find out who killed her.” Maggie was surprised to hear the words coming from her mouth. Up until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that she would do anything but wait to hear from the police.

  “Pardon?” Laurent set his coffee cup down in its saucer and held her gaze. “The police will find out—”

  “No. They won’t. They don’t care.”

  “It is their job.”

  “Laurent, you don’t understand. The cops are busy chasing psycho nut cases right and left in this town. There’s one guy who’s been raping people near my own neighborhood—”

  “Mon Dieu!”

  “To the cops, one more weirdo is just one more weirdo.”

  “Merde! Maggie, if I had known...”

  “Well, this has been a particularly bad summer for crime in Atlanta. The guy who strangled Elise—”

  “I think you are upset, Maggie. You need to forget a little bit. All this about strangling and—”

  “I can’t forget.” Maggie’s eyes hardened. “God, Laurent, you just need to look at my mother’s face. I put that look there! If I’d have told them Elise was back, if I’d just picked up the damn phone. I should have driven Elise straight here that very first night.”

  Laurent frowned but let her talk. He seemed to know she needed to. She clutched her starched damask napkin with her fists.

  “And we
ll, okay, so I didn’t. I’ll go to my grave regretting it, but there’s no reversing it. That’s done. But I’m trying to tell you that it’s the cops who are going to forget. And then the bastard who killed Elise will have gotten away with it. And I’ll never be able to look my mother and father square in the eyes, or myself, or—”

  “D’accord, d’accord, all right, then. Je comprends.” He leaned over and lifted her effortlessly into his lap. “But you will work with the police, eh? You will see what they have?”

  “Yes, of course,” Maggie said, completely flustered and surprised to find herself nestled in his arms, her legs draped over his strong forearm. His shirt smelled like sun and citrus.

  “And Laurent will help, okay?” He touched her chin so she would look at him. “I can be very resourceful.”

  She shook her head in amazement. “I just can’t believe you’re really here.”

  The big Frenchman shifted her in his arms so he was leaning over her, his face just inches from hers. Maggie felt her stomach do flip-flops in anticipation of the kiss she knew was coming. He leaned in closer and whispered conspiratorially. “But first I think we find where we are to sleep tonight, oui?” His eyes twinkled and Maggie heard herself laugh for the first time in two days.

  That night, and the following two nights until they moved out, they spent wrapped in each other’s arms in Maggie’s childhood bedroom. Even at the risk of disapproval from her parents in the midst of their grief, to stay apart had been unthinkable. Laurent held her, petted her, consoled and loved her until the early hours of the morning. They slept little and parted discreetly before breakfast.

  At Laurent’s insistence, until the morning they drove away from her parents’ house and headed toward Maggie’s apartment in Buckhead they did not discuss or think about the details surrounding Elise’s murder. He had been emphatic.

  Just before leaving the small double bed they shared that first morning in Maggie’s room, Laurent held her and carefully, lovingly, laid down the ground rules. “You will attend to this matter after we leave, yes?”

  “By this matter, you mean find the guy who killed my sister?”