“And then you’ll go back to France?”
Laurent looked at Maggie and then touched her chin gently with his thumb and forefinger.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Okay? I am here today.”
Great. One of those live for the moment types, Maggie thought as she pulled away from him and 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 Elise.” 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.
“Comment?” 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.”
“Maggee...it is their job. They will find out qui—“
“Laurent, you don’t understand! The cops are chasing psycho nut cases right and left in this town. There’s one in particular who’s been killing people near and around my own neighborhood...”
“Mon Dieu!”
“That’s right. So one more weirdo to them is just one more weirdo...”
“Merde! Maggee, if I had known...”
“Well, if you’d written me, I’d have told you. This has been a particularly bad summer for crime in Atlanta. I’m sure it’ll affect our rating nationwide...but my point is, the guy who stabbed and strangled Elise—“
“Maggee, Maggee, I think you are too upset right now. I think you need to forget a little bit. All this about stabbing and—“
“I can’t forget.” Maggie’s eyes hardened. “God, Laurent, you want to look at my mother’s face and ask me to forget? I put that look there! If I’d have told them Elise was back...if I’d have just picked up the damn telephone. What was I trying to do? I should have driven Elise straight to Brymsley that night...” Maggie clutched her starched damask napkin with her fists. “Okay, so I didn’t. I’ll take it to my grave regretting it but there’s no reversing it. It’s done. And now I’m trying to tell you that it’s the police who are going to forget. And then everyone will forget and the bastard who killed her will have gotten away with it! And then 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 compris.” He patted her hand as it lay on the elegant damask tablecloth. “But first, you will work with the police, eh? You will see what they have?”
“Yes, of course.” Maggie sighed and covered her eyes.
“And Laurent will help, yes?” He reached over and held her hand. “I can be very resourceful, non?”
Maggie looked up him and smiled.
“Thank you.”
The big Frenchman shrugged.
“Ahhh, well.” He leaned over toward her, allowing a quick look over his shoulder first. “But I think our first effort should be to find where we are to be sleeping tonight, oui?” His eyes twinkled and Maggie heard herself laugh for the first time in two days. It had a hollow, flat sound to it.
3
He flipped the frontispiece over and stared again at the tiny, precise handwriting. To my darlingest Aged Parent for Christmas 1975 from his wiley wabbit, Elise. John touched the cover of the leather-bound Dickens book and stared straight ahead over his desk. He remained this way, cradling the book in his arms, his face impassive, his eyes dry, his gaze unwavering, for nearly an hour. Finally, he replaced the book on his desk and stood up. He turned off the desk lamp and, not bothering to straighten up all the way, walked with heavy, laborious movements to the door of his study. The house was dark and shrouded with the stillness of the coming dawn.
Such a wiley, dear spirit.
4
Maggie curled her feet up under her in the hammock and stretched her shoulders. After a heavy picnic lunch á la Becka that had her seriously thinking about fasting for the next week, she and Laurent had spent the bulk of the afternoon napping and reading in Brymsley’s large garden. She watched him trying to get comfortable in the twin hammock that hung alongside her own. He looked like a giant water buffalo trapped in a fisherman’s tuna net.
“Trouble, Laurent?”
“Non, non,” he said wrestling with the knotted ropes a little less frenetically as if to prove it.
“Look,” she said twisting around to face him. “I need to think out loud about all this stuff, okay?”
“Mais, oui,” he said cheerfully.
They had spent the night wrapped in each other’s arms in Maggie’s bedroom. To have been apart that first night had been unthinkable, even at the risk of embarrassment or disapproval from her parents in the midst of their grief. Laurent had held her, petted her, consoled and loved her until the early hours of the morning. They had slept little and parted discreetly before breakfast.
“Okay, you know what my main question is?”
He shook his head, nearly depositing himself on the manicured lawn beneath them.
“Why Elise? And if I answer that question, I always come up with the same answer.”
“Gerard.”
“That’s right. Gerard. He’s evil enough to have done it and perverse enough to have a motive. After all, now his wife and child were going to be together and, presumably, happy. Don’t you think it fits in with his character profile that that might drive him wild? The notion that they didn’t need him. Were, in fact, going to be better off without him?”
Laurent frowned and looked unconvinced.
“Did you tell the police about Gerard?”
“Well, yes, but I didn’t get the impression they were really listening. They did take down his name and stuff.”
“They will question him.”
“I suppose so.”
“Absolutement. But I think, perhaps, they will think his reason to kill her is a little...”
“Weak?”
“Oui. Façile. Not good for killing, I think.”
“I think you’re wrong, Laurent. You, of all people, ought to know about crimes of passion.”
“Moi?” He sounded startled.
“Well, yes, being French and all.”
“Ahhh, oui, of course.”
“I mean, Gerard had a child by Elise. He’d lived with her for nearly seven years. She was beautiful and she rejected him by coming here to her family. I mean, he’s disgusting and all, but he probably thought his pride was being attacked or something. Did I tell you how he just opened up the car door and dumped her out onto the concrete? Yeah, Gerard is definitely my number one suspect.”
“You must not speak with him.”
“Laurent, don’t be ridiculous.”
“I am serieux, Maggee. If he is a murderer, I cannot have you with him. Ce n’est pas possible! Je suis serieux, Maggee!”
“Oh, settle down. Honestly,” Maggie felt a little annoyed and flattered by Laurent’s protestations. “If I talk with him at all, you’ll be there. Okay?”
He looked unhappy with the compromise.
“I probably can’t even find him, you know? And besides, he may be my number one suspect, but I’m not stopping there. I’m going to talk to everyone I can think of who might know what happened that afternoon in my apartment.”
“The police, certainment, have—“
“Yes, yes, I know, they’ve talked with everyone already. Maybe they missed something. I keep telling you, Laurent, the police aren’t going to give this case the care they might because they have bigger fish to fry, comprenez?”
“Bien sûr.” He looked over at her and smiled slyly. Hopelessly entangled and looking extremely uncomfortable, he gave a sigh and eased his head back against the hammock pillow. “And so we will fry the little fishes together, n’est-ce pas? And together, we will find the truth.”
Maggie leaned back into her own hammock. The truth, she thought. Of why Elise died and of the dangerous someone who had been in her apartment that day.
Chapter 10
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1
Laurent placed the bag of groceries on Maggie’s butcher block table. The bag was straining with gleaming bulbs of eggplant, peppers and tomatoes. He rubbed his hands together lightly and pulled from the bag a small tin flask of olive oil, a long baton of French bread and a bunch of green grapes.
Maggie watched him bemusedly from the doorway of the kitchen.
“Where did you get all that stuff?” she asked.
He turned to look at her, as if caught by surprise.
“Oh, Maggee, there you are!”
“Here I have been all morning, Laurent. It’s you who’s been out doing God knows what. What is all that stuff there?” She smiled at him.
Laurent wagged a finger at her and shook his head. He continued to unpack his groceries.
“You are eating the frozen dinners all the time, non? “ He waved in the general direction of Maggie’s freezer as if to imply that even owning a freezer was somehow a shameful thing.
“Not all the time.” Maggie peered around him at the groceries. “I eat Cheerios in the morning sometimes.”
“Mon Dieu,” Laurent muttered. He held up a white block of cheese wrapped tightly in plastic wrap.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Fromage de chevre,” he said.
“Goat cheese.”
“Very good, cherie.”
“I hate goat cheese.”
“Mix it with your Cheerios. It’s good for you.”
“Cheese isn’t good for you,” she said moving into the kitchen. She wrapped her arms around his middle. “Cheese is bad for you. The whole world knows this but the French. Fact is, we’ve been keeping it from you.”
Laurent tossed the cheese onto the counter and turned to face Maggie.
“You and the whole world?” he said, smiling down at her.
“We’re very close.” She raised up on her toes and kissed him then laid her head against his broad chest and felt the strength and security of his arms around her.
The police had allowed her to return to her apartment and she and Laurent were in the shy, but definite, throes of moving in together.
“Your asparagus is wilting,” she said teasingly.
“Not possible,” he said, giving her a last squeeze before releasing her and turning back to his bag of deli-goodies.
He piled all the vegetables in an impressive heap on the table in the tiny kitchen and spoke to her over his shoulder.
“I am making dinner for nous deux. Us two. You are going out now?”
“I won’t be long,” Maggie replied, leaning against the doorjamb, watching him. “I’m going to talk to some of the people in the apartment complex about what they saw the night Elise was killed. And don’t tell me the police have already done that because you’ve already told me that and I’m still doing it, right?”
“Bien sûr.” Laurent begin rinsing the vegetables, the water sputtering over them and most of the kitchen counter too.
“Look, I’ll be back for lunch, okay?” Maggie continued to stand in the doorway, wearing a loose sweatshirt and jeans and sneakers. For some reason, she wanted his blessing.
He turned and looked at her.
“You must do it,” he said simply and shrugged.
An hour later, she was back in the apartment. Laurent seemed involved in his omelet-flipping and onion-parboiling.
“You are not being gone very long, cherie?” he said, cheerfully.
“Nobody saw anything ” she said.
Laurent slid the golden crescent of fluffed egg onto a stoneware dish, sprinkled on a few sautéed peppers as garnish and set it down in front of her at the kitchen table. He put his hand against her cheek.
“Do you want me to come too?” he asked gallantly. “I will tell them: ‘you better answer her questions! Or Laurent can be very mechant...very nasty.”
Maggie smiled and took his hand in hers.
“Come sit down with me. I don’t want to eat alone,” she said.
“Jamais, ma petite,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze and moving back to the kitchen to get his coffee cup and a basket of croissants.
He took another platter of eggs from the warming oven and joined her at the table.
“Tell me,” he said, pouring cream into his coffee.
Maggie picked up her fork. The eggs were beautiful, light and fluffy and she suddenly realized that she was hungry. “They were....I don’t know, why were they so cross? I wasn’t selling anything. It wasn’t their sister who was murdered.”
“Maggee.” Laurent looked sympathetically at her and shook his big head.
“I shouldn’t assume people want to help, I guess. I mean, I thought they’d think it was a waste of time and maybe boring, but the two people I talked to this morning...well, not so much the guy, but the woman definitely was rude to me.” She took a bite of her eggs. “Laurent, am I going to get terribly fat living with you? Because I can’t afford a whole new wardrobe.”
As Laurent smiled at her, there was a knock at the door.
“That’s funny,” Maggie said into her mouthful of eggs. “People have to buzz you from outside. They can’t get inside to knock on your door.” She threw down her napkin and started to get up. “Usually.”
Laurent was ahead of her. He went to the front door and swung it open.
“Oui?”
The man in the hall seemed startled to see Laurent. It was the man from the last apartment that Maggie had visited.
“I...I wanted...is Maggie here?” He peered nervously into the apartment. Maggie jumped up and hurried to the door.
“Yes, I’m here. It’s Bill, right?”
“Yeah, listen...” He looked up at Laurent as if he definitely didn’t trust saying what he had to say in front of this huge tank of a man. “...uh, I’m going out now, but I remembered something that, if it matters—“
“What? You heard something?”
“Well, I completely forgot about it until just now. I mean, there was so much excitement and everything the night of the...you know...and the cops were asking all their questions, so it just went outta my head. Now, I’m not positive, you know?”
Maggie nodded eagerly.
“You want to come in?”
He shook his head.
“Naw, we’re going out, just leaving.” He looked down the hall as if someone was standing at his doorway waiting for him. “But I remembered I saw this guy in the hallway that afternoon. Well, I’m pretty sure it was that afternoon. Might possibly have been the afternoon before, you know?”
My God, Maggie thought. Had he seen the murderer?
“I mean, he just does deliveries, you know? So, I thought, no big deal and I don’t want to get anybody into trouble, okay?”
“What do you mean, deliveries?”
“From the grocer next door, you know? Sometimes he’ll send his boy out to deliver stuff, only he’s not really a boy, more like...” and he tapped his head as if to indicate the person might be brain-damaged or perhaps mentally unstable.
“I see.” Maggie was already thinking of her next step.
“Well, thank you very much,” Laurent said, about to close the door on the man.
“Yes, thank you,” Maggie said hurriedly. “Thanks for taking the time.”
“No big deal, bye.” He turned on his heel and was gone.
Laurent ushered Maggie back to their cooling eggs.
“It is a good clue, yes?”
They reseated themselves and Laurent tucked into his omelet with enthusiasm.
Maggie toyed with hers.
“Yeah, it’s great. Maybe.”
It was possible, she thought. Just possible. She took a deep breath.
3
The shop around the corner from Maggie’s apartment building served as grocery and pharmacy for the whole building. It was a harmonious hodgepodge of sewing notions, eyecups and prophylactics, with creaking wooden display bins filled with plump fruits and vegetables. The shop also distributed for a fairly nice
Buckhead bakery. Although the grocery was not more than five minutes walking distance from Maggie’s own apartment, she’d only been in the place three times in the four years she’d lived at The Parthenon. It was so much easier just to swing into the parking lot of Winn-Dixie on her way home from work. Driving past the little neighborhood grocery, she’d always gotten the impression that just the elderly residents of the area shopped there. She’d seen them trudging along the sidewalk in front of the place, their wire and wicker baskets and, occasionally, their walkers, banging against their knees.
Maggie pushed open the shop door, hearing, as she did, the off-kilter tinkle of the bell that announced another customer. To her right seemed to be the drug store portion of the shop, complete with an abbreviated soda bar counter and a large, inflated mortar and pestle which hung over three peeling leather stools.
To the left was the grocery section of the market, certainly the main force behind the little store’s revenue. In addition to the colorful bins out front, there were two rows of tinned and boxed goods. The place smelled of Ivory soap and soft fruit. Maggie was surprised at how complete and chock-a-bloc the store was and wondered how in the world it managed to survive in a neighborhood where all the real money hopped in BMWs and shopped for their Wheaties in strip shopping centers. Surely, the old-timers she saw doddering about the neighborhood, loyal or not, weren’t enough to keep this place afloat?
“Can I help you, Miss?”
The proprietor came from behind the soda counter, wiping his hands on a towel that he’d tied in front of his slacks. He smiled industriously at her. His sparse gray hair capped a wise old head, it seemed to Maggie. His eyes didn’t smile so much as they drilled. They were drilling now.
“I’m Maggie Newberry? I live next door and wondered if I could ask you a few questions?”
“If I can help, I’ll sure try!” he said happily. Too happily. He clapped his hands together and then rested them on his hips. There was no one else in the store.
“You have a delivery boy?”
“Why?” He cocked his head at her like a bird watching a caterpillar.
“Well, because I think he may...he may have seen something that happened in my apartment building and I’d like to talk with him about it.”
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