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

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  She wore a thin black turtleneck and a pair of cotton slacks. Very French, she thought when she had packed them. Now, she just shook her head. She had circles under her eyes and the lipstick she’d brought made her look too corporate in spite of her outfit. Elise could’ve pulled it off, she thought with a sad smile. Elise could’ve pulled off looking sultry in clown shoes.

  When her phone rang, she picked up and was delighted to discover it was Michelle.

  “Bon soir, Maggie, do you have dinner plans for tonight?”

  The restaurant they decided to meet at was a short walk from Maggie’s hotel. Maggie noticed it was a classic Parisian brasserie, with polished wooden floors, deeply recessed paneling and moldings, lace café curtains and all of it lit by candlelight. Michelle had made reservations and was waiting for Maggie when she arrived.

  Maggie still couldn’t believe her luck at finding Michelle Zouk. It many ways, it was like getting a piece of Elise back. The sober, non-crazy piece.

  Maggie ordered the veal with a salad and a spicy eggplant gratin. Michelle ordered a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

  “I’m so glad you called,” Maggie said as they waited for their meal. “I pretty much finished up everything I had to do in town, and now I’m really just waiting around until my flight leaves on Friday.”

  “Did you get your answers?”

  Maggie sighed. “I guess I was hoping to find evidence that would indicate that Gerard killed Elise. I don’t know how, really. And if I did, I’m not sure what I could have done about it.”

  “The police are not doing their job in Atlanta?”

  “I really don’t know what they’re doing, to tell you the truth. They say they have someone in custody.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, but to accept their suspect as Elise’s killer you have to believe that Elise was killed for no reason, that it was just random bit of violence.”

  “You want her to death to have meant something.”

  “I guess so.” Maggie took a sip of the wine. It was bright and velvety on her tongue. “I saw Nicole’s birth certificate today. Gerard wouldn’t give his name as the father.”

  Michelle shook her head as if to indicate she was not surprised by anything Gerard did. The waiter came with their salads. Michelle immediately cut into her crudité. Like all the French, Maggie noted, food was a serious business with her.

  “I went to the neighborhood where she lived in Montmartre, too. I have to say it was disgusting. My mother would’ve wept.”

  “Monsieur Dubois has much to be responsible for, I’m afraid. Starting with moving her to that slum.”

  Maggie toyed with her food. “You know, Michelle, there was another murder that happened the night before I flew to Nice.”

  Zouk stopped eating. “Another?”

  “She was a coworker and a friend of mine.” Maggie felt hot tears spring to her eyes. It was true she and Deirdre never went out for drinks after work. She hadn’t had her over for dinner, nor had she ever met her boyfriend, Kevin. But it felt like they were friends.

  Michelle gave Maggie a pained look. “I am so sorry, Maggie. This is very hard on you.”

  Not half as hard as it is on Deirdre, Maggie thought, concentrating on her plate again. Or Elise.

  “Anyway,” she said, taking a ragged breath and reaching for her wine. “Since Gerard was probably in France at the time Deirdre was killed, I’m open to believing that he might not be involved in Deirdre’s death. Maybe her murder was random. I don’t know. It’s all so confusing.”

  “Of course, I see.” Michelle said. She caught the eye of their waiter and asked him to bring two crémes brûlées.

  “Everything you told me about Elise being in rehab fits with what I learned in Cannes, but it really only shines light on that murder. Not the one I’m really interested in.”

  “You have no more work to do in Paris?”

  “Not really.”

  “What if I was to tell you that Gerard Dubois is here?”

  Maggie’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth. “Gerard is in Paris?”

  “Oui. And I know where you may find him.”

  Maggie’s mind began to reel. She looked out the brasserie windows, then back at Michelle. “I kind of promised I wouldn’t talk to him.”

  “Of course, very sensible. He is a dangerous man. I just thought you would want to know. But if there was some way you could talk with him in public, that would be good, non? If you like, I would be happy to accompany you. The dog would not have the nerve to hurt us together.”

  Maggie licked her lips and pushed her dessert away. Gerard in Paris! I can finally get some answers. Her mind raced as she remembered how vile he had been in their last interaction. She wouldn’t be so naïve as to think it would be easy. But Michelle was right; together they would be safe against him.

  “Was it your papa you promised? Because I can talk to him if you like.”

  “No, it was my boyfriend.”

  “Oh, these men of ours! They are so protective, non? They think we are little flowers that need to be carried around in a buttonhole, comme ça.” She mimed putting a rose boutonniere in her lapel and smiled.

  “Yeah, he’s seriously protective when it comes to Gerard,” Maggie said.

  Michelle nodded and spooned into her crème brûlée. Maggie noted that Michelle ate delicately, almost theatrically, holding the spoon in front of her after each dip into the pudding as if she expected to be photographed for Paris Vogue. “But otherwise he supports you, yes? That is very important. Love is all very well…”

  “He does. Mostly. I have to say he’s losing steam with it though. He’s French, by the way.”

  “Yes?”

  “As a matter of fact, I met him during all this. When I came to Cannes to find Nicole, he helped me get her.”

  “How did you meet?” Michelle turned to the waiter and ordered coffees.

  “It was through another guy, an Englishman, who my father was in contact with. Laurent was brought in to help us find my niece.”

  “Gerard has a brother named Laurent,” Michelle said.

  Maggie felt her stomach tighten. What an odd thing for her to say. “Well, I guess it’s a common name, huh? Laurent’s last name is Dernier, not Dubois.”

  Maggie watched Michelle put her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with shock, almost as if a video had been slowed down. Maybe, on some level, Maggie knew what Michelle would say. Maybe a part of her had always known. She found herself wanting to reach out, to physically stop the words from coming out of Michelle’s mouth.

  “Your boyfriend’s name is Laurent Dernier?” Michelle shook her head.

  Maggie didn’t answer. She watched Michelle’s mouth as the words tumbled relentlessly out.

  “Oh, chérie, is this possible?” Michelle whispered. “That is the name of Gerard’s brother.”

  26

  Maggie rubbed the sleep from her eyes but remained in bed. She had slept badly. When she’d finally drifted off, she heard the slow, harsh rumble of a Parisian service truck making its early morning delivery.

  Laurent was Gerard’s brother.

  She felt a dull cramp in her chest as the words formed and images of him unfolded: Laurent lying to her, Laurent being “helpful” during her investigation, Laurent feigning ignorance about Elise and Nicole, Laurent listening patiently with such understanding and support during her frustrating months of questions and tortured bafflement.

  Bastard! Liar!

  She swung her legs out of bed with no intention of going any farther, but she forced herself to stumble to the tile-cracked bathroom to splash water onto her face. For a minute she wasn’t sure she wasn’t going to throw up into the hand-painted ceramic basin. As she looked in the mirror, she saw the tiny vein under her left eye begin to pulse.

  She ran into the bedroom and snatched up her purse, pulling out the picture of Elise and baby Nicole. She held the picture, mouth agape, until she finally sank down on the bed. It had been th
ere all along and she had missed it…or just refused to see it. The birthmark on Nicole’s forehead was faint, but clearly visible. It extended into her hairline. Elise’s daughter had been born with a visible birthmark. An identifying one.

  Maggie stared at the picture and thought of the little girl living with Maggie’s parents. She saw Nicole’s face at Elspeth’s dinner table. She saw her mother’s bright and loving face as she bent over the little girl in a conspiring, happy moment. She saw an image of Laurent holding Nicole on his knee and murmuring to her in French. So it’s true, she thought.

  She isn’t ours.

  Her thoughts returned to Laurent. And he’s known all along. She felt an icy wave of nausea ooze through her when the realization came to her that the real Nicole was almost certainly dead. And that’s something else that Laurent knew, she thought numbly, in blind disbelief.

  And has known all along.

  She spent the day walking the chilly streets of the Latin Quarter until the sun died and she had succeeded in exhausting her body, if not her mind. Looking up at the famous pointed bronze tower soaring toward the sky from the roof of Notre-Dame, Maggie sat on the cold, stone bench and allowed the agony of the last twenty-four hours to permeate through every molecule of her body. She watched the familiar façade of the cathedral, with its Gallery of Kings, and ached with a memory of her first visit here with her mother and Elise.

  She remembered the Cokes and pommes frites they’d lunched on after Mass that Sunday so many years ago. Her mother had indulged her girls, her two bright, happy girls. She remembered Elise, already beautiful at thirteen, smiling coquettishly at the young brutish waiter and sipping her Coke as if it were Drambuie. Even then, Elise had a style and a vision of who she was.

  Maggie gazed up at the screaming faces of the gargoyles and hellhags rimming the cathedral. Human, lunatic heads attached to hunching dog’s bodies, wailing souls, shrieking griffins and goblins.

  Laurent smiling, presenting Nicole as the long lost relative.

  Laurent standing in her mother’s rose garden.

  Maggie wrenched herself off the stone bench and stood, wavering, for a moment in the square. She walked quickly away from Notre-Dame, pushing past the lavender sellers and the Nikon-necked tourists, away from the sparrows bathing in the mud puddles and the pigeons staking out the stone saints in the cathedral gardens.

  She crossed to the back of the church and headed south on Rue Dante au Double. The street was busy for a Sunday afternoon. Shops were closed on both sides. Banks and bakeries, sandwich shops and boutiques were tightly shuttered up.

  She had left dinner abruptly last night, unable even to arrange to meet back up with Michelle to plan their confrontation with Gerard. Last night she just wanted to be alone, and to cry for a very long time.

  She felt stronger today. She turned as the Rue Dante jagged westward, and then stopped. This was Elise’s neighborhood, where she lived before Gerard got his hooks into her and moved her to the slum in Montmartre. Students were everywhere. Clean, well scrubbed, if disheveled, young people who scurried and playfully shoved each other on the sidewalks and looked like they had a place to go.

  She walked to the intersection where she remembered seeing a sign for the Metro. She was surprised that she seemed to know where to go next. It was almost as if Elise was guiding her. She took the subway—never more aware of the filth and despair in each station platform as she passed. While changing trains in the cavernous, urine-saturated halls of the Chatelet station, a tiny Indian girl, half the age of Nicole, held out her hand and touched Maggie’s skirt.

  The child was making an appeal for money, but to Maggie it felt like the curious, investigative nuzzle of a wild animal that doesn’t know enough to be afraid. She saw the child’s parents sitting in dirty, stained sari and pajamas, a cardboard cigar box in front of them, filled with euros. She gave the girl fifty American dollars and smiled at her, as if it were the gift of a benevolent, spoiling auntie, not pity money for food begged from a total stranger.

  She surfaced on Boulevard des Capucines and the Opera House soared into view.

  To her left was the Café de la Paix, her destination. Its bright, striped awning stretched the full length of the block. She hurried toward it. Perhaps now all her pain could finally come together in one seamless ache. Perhaps now, here, where it all started, where Elise met Gerard and began the whole series of events that would hurt so many people, Maggie would be able to get the perspective she craved.

  She stood at the door of the café and peered in, amazed at the number of people crammed into the overflowing outdoor seating area that eddied and bulged into the street. Her chances of getting a table without a reservation at the famous Café de la Paix were about as good as making partner at one of the larger law firms back in Atlanta—without a college degree.

  The waiters, in starched white shirts and black bowties, scurried past her, balancing huge silver trays over their heads. The constant movement and noise was spellbinding.

  And then she saw him.

  In the massive, confusing jumble of smoking, drinking, masticating humanity, she saw the one person she expected least to see and, had she thought of it, should have counted on seeing.

  Roger Bentley sat alone at a corner table, protected from the hubbub and cacophony by two barely visible earphones. He was engrossed in a hardback book and was drinking wine. His food had not yet arrived.

  Maggie was moving toward him before she had time to realize what she was doing. She stood in front of his table, her hands clenched at her side, her mouth open to try to speak. Her frustration and anger rendered her painfully mute.

  Bentley looked up and a smile spread across his face. He stood, placing the book on the chair beside him.

  “Well, I say! Maggie Newberry. In Paris! What a surprise!”

  “That girl isn’t Nicole,” Maggie finally managed to get out. She stared him in the eyes, eyes that danced and feinted, cajoled and convinced.

  “Fine, just fine, and you?” Bentley looked behind her. “You’re dining with friends? Alone?” He gestured to the empty chair at his table. “Join me. Well, I’ll be switched. Maggie Newberry, in Paris.”

  Maggie placed her hands on his table. “Roger, I...” She didn’t know what to say. He looked at her with confidence, even pleasure. Her anger began to evolve into confusion.

  “Please, dear girl, sit down. You look all in. Been shopping? Have some wine.” He reseated himself and waited until she sat down across from him. “Such a nice surprise, I must say. Garçon!” He waved over one of the speeding waiters and asked for another wineglass and a menu. “So, old girl, what brings you to Paris?”

  Maggie took a deep breath. “That girl isn’t Nicole,” she repeated.

  Bentley sighed and removed his earplugs. Maggie heard the faint strains of some sort of classical music before he turned it off. He paused for just a moment, then said sadly, “Ah, no. I’m afraid not.”

  The waiter brought the glass and menu, but Bentley waved the menu away. “The mademoiselle will have an omelet also.” He turned to Maggie. “They’re jolly good here. Like nothing you’ve ever tasted.” The waiter departed and Bentley poured her glass.

  Just like old times, Maggie thought in bewilderment. “Where is Nicole?” she asked bravely.

  “That is hard to say.” Bentley flapped his napkin out onto his lap.

  “Is she alive?”

  “I don’t believe so, no.”

  “I see.” Maggie felt her hands begin to tremble and she pushed them into her lap under the table.

  “You must see it from my position, Maggie.”

  “You flimflammed me!” she cried, and then looked around at the other diners, who had turned their heads in their direction. She really didn’t feel like making a scene in one of the world’s most famous restaurants. “It was all a set-up,” she said more softly. “Did you kill Nicole?”

  “You must be joking! Are you serious? Maggie, really! I cannot imagine you would ev
en—”

  “Roger, I haven’t got the energy for this bullshit of yours. I really don’t. Maybe the gendarmes will have more patience for it, but I’m not up to it.”

  “Jolly well put. Yes, well. All right, from the top.” He ran a hand through his dark-blond hair and massaged his jutting chin. He looked at her as if he were about to drastically cut the selling price on a set of china they were haggling over. “We took advantage, shall we say, of an existing situation. I knew the child had died—”

  “You knew the murderer?”

  “I’m not sure there really was a murderer, my dear. I believe the child died...naturally.”

  “I thought natural causes involved old age, Roger.” Maggie felt warm. Her cheeks were flushed.

  “I’m just telling you what I know, pet. The girl was dead. Maybe an accident, I don’t know. What I did know was that her mother’s family had money and they had never laid eyes on the girl.”

  “How did you know Elise hadn’t sent us a photograph of Nicole?”

  “Honestly, Maggie, you must think I just took up the business or something. I’m not a total git, you know. It was known to me that Elise was disinherited.”

  “That’s not true!” But Maggie knew it was.

  “In any event, the child was not bandied about in snapshots to doting grandparents. Am I wrong?”

  Maggie didn’t answer him.

  “It was quite the ready-made scam, if I may say so. Something an artist dreams of. Rich family, dead main players...nothing but for a chap like me to step in and make it all happy and right.”

  “Is that what you think you did?”

  “You were happy. Your parents, I take it, were happy?”

  “And the little girl? Is she happy?”

  “My dear woman! The child, who is an orphan by the way, was rescued from a ghetto of incest and poverty. Am I to believe that my taking her away from that and dropping her into the lap of one of the wealthiest families in Atlanta, Georgia, was doing a disservice to the little mite?”