Little Death by the Sea

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  “Yes, yes, yes. Honestly, Laurent, give up the grip on this, would you? Je suis bored with it, okay? I won’t talk to him. Enough already. Finis. Done.”

  “Et Madame Zouk,” he continued. “You trust her?”

  “Yes, of course. What’s not to trust? I mean, she was Elise’s friend. She’s not the enemy or anything. In fact, she’s being a big help.”

  “I miss you. I do not understand what is this stuff you cannot know here in Atlanta.”

  “Have the cops come out with a line on Dierdre’s killing yet?” Maggie ran a hand through her tangled hair and tried to remember the last time she’d washed it. Atlanta?

  “Nothing.”

  “Figures.”

  “Maggie, will you be long in Paris?”

  She heard the exasperation that had been hovering in his tone for the full conversation. “I miss you too, sweetheart,” she said, looking again at her reflection in the mirror that hung opposite her bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the phone onto her knees. She knew this call was costing a fortune.

  “Then why not come home?”

  “I am coming home. Just as soon as I talk to a few more people.”

  “Who know nothing.” His voice came across the transatlantic line without emotion or energy. In fact, it occurred to Maggie that his whole attitude since she’d arrived in Paris had been pretty unsupportive. It was clear that Laurent was beginning to lose patience with Maggie’s search for Elise’s killer. She turned away from her own reflection.

  “Who probably know nothing,” she agreed. They were both silent for a long moment. “I’ll call tomorrow,” she said, finally. “And be home probably the day after that. I love you, Laurent.”

  “Et moi aussi,” he said, almost sullenly.

  After they’d hung up Maggie sat holding the phone for a few more minutes. Slowly, she stood up, replaced the phone on the nightstand next to her bed and went into the bathroom to splash cool water on her face. It was only seven in the evening and she didn’t feel like staying in her room, but she had no place she could think of to go. She tidied up her make-up and pulled a comb through her black hair. Mindlessly, she tied it back in a single ponytail with a dark blue ribbon and stared at herself in the mirror.

  She wore a black cotton turtleneck and a long, pleated navy skirt. Very French, she had 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 dramatic outfit. Naturally, Elise could’ve pulled it off, she thought with a sad smile. Elise could’ve pulled off looking sultry and exotic in clown shoes.

  Maggie sat down at the writing table crowded into one corner of her room and shook out a few postcards from a tissue-thin paper sack. She addressed one of the cards to Brownie and one to her parents. She wrote cheery, generic sentences on them, stamped the cards and placed them into her handbag for posting the next day. She wanted to call her mother to talk about Elise and to talk about herself and Paris, but decided against it. She’d be home in a few days. Plenty of time to tell her everything then.

  She picked up a blank postcard and thought of her office back in Atlanta. She thought of Pokey and Patti and Bob and Jenny and Gerry and the rest of them and how they must have reacted to the news of Dierdre. She imagined the look on each of their faces when they realized that little Dierdsie wouldn’t be showing up for traffic meeting any more. She pushed the postcard away, with its familiar image of Notre-Dame, and thought, sadly, how far away she felt tonight from the people she cared about. I should be with them. I should be sharing their grief in the office. My God, Gerry is probably having a full-blown, living-color nervous breakdown about now. I was mad to think he would take it okay. She looked again at the postcard and let the full weight of her melancholy envelop her.

  When the ringing of the phone interrupted her satisfyingly sad mood, she jumped and then snatched it up hoping it was Laurent again.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Maggie? It’s Michele. I’m downstairs.”

  Michele?

  “Michele Zouk,” the voice said. “I’m here to take you to dinner. You don’t have plans, do you, cherie?”

  The restaurant was a short walk down the street from Maggie’s hotel. It featured polished wooden floors, deeply recessed paneling and mouldings, offset by the dramatic Brunschwig & Fils wallpaper pattern, ecru lace café curtains and all of it lit by candlelight.

  The menu was equal to its setting. It featured a simple, but well-planned French cuisine of roast meats and fish at a fixed-price of only 32f, wine included. Maggie made a mental note to eat there for the rest of her stay in Paris.

  Talking herself into believing that the French were kinder to their young cows than the Americans, Maggie ordered the veal with a salad, an eggplant dish of some kind, and crème brulée. Michele Zouk ordered a Cabernet Sauvignon.

  Michele looked wonderful. Her hair fell like a dark curtain to her shoulders, framing the face that even made other Frenchwomen pause and admire her. Surprising Maggie, and overturning one of her fashion theories, Michele wore a one-piece lemon-yellow catsuit. Anyone else in the outfit would look like a big, wingless canary, Maggie thought. Zouk still looked enigmatic.

  Maggie was beginning to feel at home with the Frenchwoman.

  “I saw Nicole’s birth certificate,” Maggie said. “Gerard wouldn’t give his name as the father.”

  Michele cut into her crudité. Like all the French, Maggie noted, food was a serious business with her.

  “I think I got an idea of how she lived when I saw where she lived in Montmartre. Michele, it was disgusting. It’s hard to believe my sister lived there. I mean, she was always a little, you know, artsy...even a little sloppy, but this place was a real dump. My mother would’ve wept.”

  “Monsieur Gerard put your sister through many changes, I’m afraid.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s just what he did.” Maggie toyed with her food for a moment. Zouk had nearly finished her meal. “You know, Michele, I don’t know whether or not Gerard really killed my sister—“

  “He is absolutely capable of it.”

  Maggie hesitated, watching the other woman. “Yeah, I believe that,” she said finally. “But there has been another murder that the police think is connected with Elise’s.”

  Zouk stopped eating and looked at Maggie. “Oui?”

  “It happened the night before I came to Paris. She was a friend of mine.” Maggie felt hot tears spring to her eyes and she was surprised. Wasn’t Dierdre a friend of hers? It’s true they never went out for drinks together. She hadn’t had her over for dinner, nor had she met her boyfriend, Kevin, ever. But she mourned her. She would miss her.

  “You knew another victim?” Michele gave Maggie a look of pity and caring. “I am sorry, Maggie. This is very hard on you.”

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

  “Anyway,” she said, taking a ragged breath and reaching for her wine. “I’m open to believing that Gerard might not be involved in Elise’s death.”

  “Yes, of course, I see.” Michele said. She caught the eye of their waiter and asked him to bring their desserts. “And why are you in Paris, then, Maggie?”

  “Funny, that’s just what my boyfriend asked me tonight.”

  “You have a boyfriend in America? He supports your...what are you calling it..?”

  “My investigation. Yes, mostly. He’s losing steam with it though. He’s French too.”

  “Yes?”

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

  “And how did you know him?” Their custards came and Michele ordered coffees for both of them too.

  “Well, he was a surprise, really. I met him through another guy, an Englishman, that my father had contact with. Anyway, Laurent was helping this Englishman find my niece.”

  Michele no
dded and spooned into her crème brulée. Maggie noted that Michele 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.

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

  Maggie felt her stomach tighten. What an odd thing for her to say, she thought. “Well, I guess it’s a common name, huh?” she said lightly. “Laurent’s last name is Dernier, not Dubois.” Maggie watched Michele and her reaction came slowly, almost as if a video had been slowed down. Maybe, on some level, Maggie had already known what Michele would say. Why else would she have watched her so closely, waiting for her response? Why wouldn’t she just have dug into her own egg custard without another thought to the topic?

  “Your boyfriend’s name is Laurent Dernier?” Michele was not eating her custard either.

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

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

  Chapter Nineteen

  1

  Maggie rubbed the sleep from her eyes but remained in bed. She had slept badly, finally falling asleep, miserable and exhausted, in the early hours of the morning. As she drifted off, she had heard the slow, snarling rumble of a Parisian delivery truck as it began its early morning route.

  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 the child, Nicole. When she thought of his passive, sweetly uncomprehending eyes during her frustrating months of questions and tortured bafflement, she wanted to smash his dear, familiar face with both her fists.

  Bastard! Liar!

  She swung her legs out of bed with no intention of going any further. Finally, 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.

  Suddenly, she ran into the bedroom and snatched up her purse. She pulled out the picture of Elise and Baby Nicole. It had been there all along and Maggie had refused to see it. The birthmark across the baby’s cheek extended into her hair line. Elise’s daughter had been born with a significant birthmark. An identifying one. Maggie stared at the picture and thought of the little girl living with Maggie’s parents. In her mind, she saw Nicole’s face as she sat 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 the birth certificate of the child that Elise had given birth to. 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 instantly to Laurent. And he’s known all along. He knew that this child was not Nicole, was not her niece. Suddenly, she felt an icy wave of nausea ooze through her when the realization finally hit her that the real Nicole was almost certainly dead. And that’s something else that Laurent knew, she thought numbly.

  And has known all along.

  2

  Looking up at the famous pointed bronze tower soaring towards the sky from the roof of Notre-Dame, Maggie leaned against the back of a 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—each of the twenty-eight granite replicas of France’s Kings looking much like the other—and ached with a memory of her visit here with her mother and Elise.

  She remembered the Coca-Colas 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 saw Elise, beautiful at eleven, her little lips pink and full against her creamy complexion, watched her smile coquettishly at the young brutish waiter and sip her Coke as if it were Drambuie. Even then, Elise had a style and a vision of herself.

  Maggie gazed up at the screaming faces of the gargoyles and hellhags rimming Notre-Dame. 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, beneath which, she knew, lurked the Crypte Archeologique. She began walking, quickly, away from Notre-Dame, pushing past the lavender sellers and the Nikon-necked tourists, away from the sparrows bathing in mud puddles and 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, even for a Sunday afternoon, and Maggie was surprised to see so much gaiety and laugher as she walked.

  Are all these people going to a party or something? she wondered as she rushed down the narrow sidewalk. Shops were closed on both sides. Banks and bakeries, sandwich shops and boutiques were tightly shuttered up. And still the people came in hordes, smiling, hugging, chewing on golden wands of bread, and walking.

  Maggie turned abruptly as the Rue Dante jagged westward, and then she stopped. There, in front of her, was Elise’s first apartment. The cheery little shuttered upstairs flat had a window box spilling over with geraniums and mums. The windows had yellow shutters against a light blue building front of shops and restaurants. The street at this juncture—not much more than an alleyway—was full of life and activity. A boulangerie faced the flat, with a small, academic bookstore situated next door. Students were everywhere. Clean, well-scrubbed, if disheveled, young people that scurried and playfully shoved each other on the sidewalks and looked like they had a place to go.

  She looked up at the cheery little window. l5 Rue Dante au Double. Gerard had taken Elise from this sunny spot and spirited her away to Montmartre.

  Maggie shifted her purse strap to her opposite shoulder and looked around for a place to sit. There were no cafés on this part of the street. She looked up once more at the window but couldn’t imagine Elise’s face in it.

  Slowly, she turned and walked up the street to the intersection where she remembered seeing the sign for the Metro. She was surprised that she seemed to know exactly where to go next. It was, she thought sadly, as if a part of Elise were guiding her.

  She took the subway—never more aware of the filth and despair in each station platform as she passed. At one point, while changing trains in the cavernous, urine-saturated halls of the Chatelet station heading toward L’Opera, a tiny Indian girl, half the age of Nicole, held out her hand and touched Maggie’s soft chamois 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 mother and father sitting in dirty, stained sari and pajamas, a cardboard cigar box in front of them, filled with francs. She gave the girl fifty American dollars and smiled largely at her as if to make her believe that it was the gift of a benevolent, spoiling auntie, and not pity money for food begged from a total stranger.

  She surfaced on Boulevard des Capucines with the magnificent Opera House the first image that soared into view. Holding her breath at the sight of it, Maggie had the overwhelming sensation of a coma-victim awakening to a world that has been living and breathing and loving and hating furiously for centuries...while she slept.

  To her left, was the Café de la Paix, her destination. Its bright, striped awning stretched the full length of the block and 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 for which she’d so diligently searched.

  She stood at the door of the café, peerin
g in, amazed at the sheer number of people crammed into the overflowing outdoor seating area which eddied and bulged into the street, and at the enormous sea of bodies pressed together inside the café itself. This was madness to think she could just pop over to the famous Café de la Paix and expect to grab dinner. Her chances of getting a table seemed 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 each other, balancing huge silver trays in the air over the heads of the diners. It was like watching a Fellini movie, Maggie decided, as she followed the dizzying activity. 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 small corner table, protected from the hubbub and cacophony by two barely visible earplugs. He was engrossed in a hardback book. He was drinking wine, his food had not yet arrived.

  Maggie’s feet were moving toward the center of the dining room before she had time to accurately register what she had seen. Within seconds, she stood in front of his table, staring down at him, her hands clenched at her side, her mouth open as if she would speak.

  He looked up questioningly and recognized her instantly. A smile escaped him and he stood up, placing the book on the chair beside him.

  “Well, I say!” he blurted cheerfully, “Miss Newberry! In Paris! What a surprise!”

  “The child isn’t Nicole,” Maggie said. She stared him directly in the eyes, eyes that danced and feinted, cajoled and convinced.

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