Little Death by the Sea

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Gerard nodded almost gently.

  “I wanted to screw her,” he said.

  “Why should I believe you did not kill her?” Maggie said. “You were there. Witnesses saw you there.”

  “Mademoiselle,” he said sarcastically, his tongue flicking out over his cigarette filter like a snake’s. “Gerard was there. Gerard did not kill Elise.” He sighed. “I went to Elise’s door.” He held Maggie’s gaze.

  “How...how did you know where I lived?” she asked.

  “I am following you when you bring her home, yes?”

  Maggie felt her skin crawl.

  “She is very sick when I see her,” he continued, drawing hard on his Gitane. “She will not come away with Gerard. The pig! She is fou...and very noisy. I am telling her to shut up! Shut up!”

  Maggie’s mind swelled with disgust for the man who sat next to her on the sofa in the elegantly shabby lobby of L’Etoile Verte.

  “I am taking, for me, the things ma femme should be giving me.”

  Maggie snapped back to attention.

  “What things should she be giving to you?”

  Grinning, Gerard dug into his pocket and pulled out a wax-paper packet no bigger than a deck of cards. He placed it on the sofa between them.

  Maggie looked at the packet, then reached out to pick it up.

  He grabbed her wrist and held it firmly.

  “You are paying, Gerard, n’est-ce pas, Mademoiselle?”

  “I am not paying for what I have not seen,” she spoke calmly, forcing her dinner to stay in her stomach.

  He released her.

  “Regarde,” he said.

  Gingerly, she picked up the little packet as if it were full of incubated rattlesnake eggs and opened it.

  Elise’s gold charm bracelet. A pony, a little artist’s easel, a piano, a miniature book. Both girls had been given charm bracelets when they turned ten years old. Maggie had lost hers on a Girl Scout camping expedition the following year. Their mother had added to Elise’s bracelet over the years...up until the time Elise had moved away. Now, Elise’s gold-braided bracelet made a soft tinkling sound in Maggie’s hands, every spare loop filled with a tiny, bobbing gold charm except for the space left by the little Scottie dog that had been found in Maggie’s apartment the night Elise died.

  She looked back up at Gerard.

  “You took this bracelet from Elise in my apartment?”

  He nodded.

  Maggie looked back at the bracelet in her hand. How was it possible that Elise had kept the bracelet? Through crack houses, prostitute wharves and slums? All these years? And something so bourgeoise? So hated a reminder of her boring, civilized southern past?

  She looked at Gerard, her fingers closing loosely around the packet of charms. “Why did you take it from her?” she asked quietly.

  He smiled wickedly. “Because it was important to her, yes? She is always loving her beautiful bracelet...it is from when she was a little girl, no?” He looked at Maggie eagerly as if expecting her to agree with him.

  “How much?” she asked dully.

  “One thousand francs.” He grinned broadly and she noticed his yellow stubs of teeth.

  She tossed the charms back into his lap. They fell between them on the sofa.

  “Keep them,” she said.

  “Eight hundred francs!”

  “I don’t want them.”

  “You are a pig!” Gerard looked at her with a stunned expression on his face. “I cannot take less than eight hundred francs!”

  “And you are une idiot. I don’t want the damn thing. What else have you got to sell?”

  “Mademoiselle.” His face turned into a wheedling mask of pathos and need. He placed the bracelet almost lovingly on Maggie’s knee. “Gerard is needing money tonight.”

  “Not my problem.” Maggie forced herself not to look at the charms. “Gerard is...” he groped for the words. “Gerard is needing money tonight,” he repeated.

  “Did you hit my sister that day?”

  “I...no, I did not hit—“

  “Liar!”

  “Gerard is not lying!”

  Maggie stood up abruptly, causing the charms to tumble to the rug in a muffled jangle.

  “You hurt my sister, threatened her, beat her...and now expect me to give you money? Is that how the French do things?”

  “I did not hit her!”

  Whatever drugs he’d done prior to coming to her hotel were obviously on the verge of kicking in. Gerard sat transfixed, staring up at Maggie as she stood over him.

  “Gerard might get hurt if he doesn’t get money?” she sat back down. She glanced over at the hotel desk to double-check the lack of interest they were generating with the night manager. He continued to stand, hunched over the counter, reading a magazine and drinking a Coca-Cola. He acted incurious about anything except, perhaps, his own misery at having to work tonight.

  “Oui, mademoiselle,” Gerard said, scooting himself a little closer to Maggie. “It could mean my life.”

  “Do you have anything else to tell me?” she asked softly.

  “To...to tell you?” Gerard looked at her, hopefully, his pitted and ravaged face blinked a kind of peace like a neon light. That would be the drugs, Maggie thought as she watched him. “Your sister, she is making me hit her. She is very bad to Gerard. She is hurting my ears! Screaming!”

  “You said she was sick that afternoon.”

  “Yes, sick. She is not getting her...how to say it?”

  “Her fix? Her drugs? Is that it? Elise was strung out?”

  Gerard smiled sweetly. He cocked his head at Maggie almost shyly.

  “I am thinking so, yes,” he said.

  “So, you did hit her a little bit,” Maggie offered.

  “Just a little bit, perhaps.”

  He closed his eyes softly, the smile still on his lips and seemed to go into a sort of trance. Maggie watched him sleep for a moment. Then, her eyes caught a glimpse of the bracelet at his feet. Carefully, she bent down and picked it up and slipped it into her purse.

  Gerard’s eyes fluttered open. He grunted and looked drowsily at Maggie.

  “You need to go now,” she said to him.

  “Eh?” He snorted and looked around the lobby without seeming to focus.

  “You need to go, Gerard. I’m calling the gendarmes to come for you. They are going to put you in jail to rot for a hundred years where no one will know but me where you are or what happened to you.”

  He looked at her in confusion.

  “Les gendarmes...?” He struggled unsteadily to his feet and took a few hesitant steps toward the door. The night clerk turned, briefly, from his magazine to watch Gerard.

  “You are giving me my money,” he said loudly.

  “No, scumbag,” Maggie said, standing up too. “I’m giving you a five minute headstart on the police. Comprenez-vous?”

  He cursed her loudly but continued to move in the direction of the lobby exit.

  “Gerard will hurt you!” he shrieked.

  The desk clerk, now looking bulkier and younger than Maggie had originally thought, moved from behind the desk counter to approach Gerard. He spread his hands out in a questioning gesture.

  “Qu’est-ce qui le prend?” he said to Maggie. What’s his problem?

  Ignoring him, Maggie spoke directly to Gerard:

  “Gerard will hurt no one,” she said.

  For a moment, she thought he would attack her, but, in the end, he was probably too far gone for that kind of energetic performance. He screamed another round of French curses at her and then allowed himself to be crowded out of the lobby in a shuffling dance of pushes and threats by the stout night concierge.

  When he had gone, the clerk gave Maggie a sour look and spoke roughly to her in a language she was, finally, glad she’d never bothered to learn. She smiled contritely until he turned away and back to his magazine. The clock over his shoulder showed that it was nearly two in the morning.

  Maggie should
ered her purse and walked to the elevator. Now, she thought gravely, she could leave. She had seen what she had to see, she had talked to the devil himself and found out what she needed to know. The elevator doors opened for her and, stepping inside, she thought of the other little girl, Nicole, who had died without her maman on a warm summer’s night in the South of France. Pushing the number of her room floor, Maggie closed her mind to the image. She would put her grief away into a little box and push it to the back of her mind to be brought out later—later when she was stronger, when she was less tired. Much later.

  2

  “I guess all this sort of puts the final nail in your plans to bail out of Dodge City, huh?” Maggie chewed on a croissant and leaned against the interior of the phone booth. The morning sun was bright in her eyes. She blinked and wished she’d brought a cup of hot coffee with her. Or had broken down and made all her phone calls from her room—and hang the cost.

  “The movers come in two weeks,” Gerry said. “And I’m meeting a guy in Savannah tomorrow morning who’s interested in buying my share of the business. Don’t worry,” he said quickly. “You’ll be brought in on all that if it comes together. And...” he took a long breath as if overwhelmed with the speed of things himself.”... we land in Auckland the week after that. Haley is thrilled, really excited.”

  Yeah, I’ll just bet, Maggie thought, watching some French workmen construct a makeshift awning over a shop across the street from her phone booth. She took another bite of her croissant and noticed the oil the bun was leaving on her fingers.

  “And Darla?” she said through her mouthful.

  “Darla might not be excited about it, but she’s committed to going. This has really gotten to her too, Mags. When we got the contract on the house here? That sort of pushed her over the edge, I think. Then it really started to feel real for her.”

  “How was the memorial service for Dierdre?” Maggie said, switching the subject. “I felt bad about not being there.”

  “It was nice. I read some stuff. A poem by Houseman. Her brother talked about her, you know, gave the eulogy.”

  “I wished I’d been there.”

  “You were missed. It was really sad. Everybody cried through it.”

  “But nice.”

  “Yeah, well, you know.”

  There was a pause.

  “Got a job, yet, down there?” she asked.

  “Got a bunch of interviews and they’re as good as got. New Zealand’s economy has been in bad shape for awhile now, but their advertising community is pretty healthy. Plus, they respect outsiders, probably more than they should. They put Yanks and the Brits in all their top spots.”

  “So, you’re expecting to do well on the job-market scene.”

  “I am,” he said briskly.

  “Gerry, I am not indicting you for moving to New Zealand, so I would appreciate it if you would take that defensive tone out of your voice when you talk to me. Is that possible?”

  “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. But, I mean, I have to have a certain mind-set to pull this thing off, you know? I can’t relax or the whole thing will fall apart, and no, Darla is not leading cheers from the sidelines about all this. She’s going to New Zealand with the same attitude that the penal colonists went to Van Dieman’s Island, okay?”

  “And you still believe—“

  “With my whole heart.”

  Maggie sighed. One of the French workmen reminded her of Laurent. He stood on the bottom rung of the ladder and yanked on a long rope pulley. She watched the gray striped awning flap open over the metal scaffolding.

  “Well, that’s important,” she said.

  “Glad you think so.”

  Minutes later, after she had given Gerry a bare-bones rundown of her time in Paris and then assured him she would be back in the office by Thursday, she was dialing Detective John Burton’ office number.

  He picked up the phone himself.

  “Burton, here,” he snapped into the phone.

  “Detective Burton? This is Margaret Newberry.”

  “Yes, Miss Newberry.” His voice mellowed noticeably.

  “I’m calling you from Paris where I’ve been doing some investigating of my own...?” She rushed on before the inevitable lecture and suggestion she contact Victim’s Families Anonymous could begin. “And I’ve talked with Gerard Dubois.”

  There was a slight hesitation on the line. Then,

  “I see,” he said. “Maybe you’d better tell me about it.”

  3

  “Non, non, merci, Roger, I am happy you called me.”

  Laurent switched the telephone to his other ear. He stood in Maggie’s small galley kitchen, leaning against the stove, regarding the red plastic wall clock opposite him. He wore a pair of faded bluejeans and trainers with a stark-white cotton T-shirt.

  “Well, I thought you’d want to know, old chap. Bit of a surprise for me, I can tell you...running into the girl like that.”

  “Mmm-mm, yes, I can see that,” Laurent said, thoughtfully. He stretched out an arm and examined the hairs on it. His T-shirt strained across his chest as he took in a long breath.

  “Not sure what you’ll want to do about it,” Roger continued on the other line. “She’s dead keen to get to the bottom of this Nicole business, I can tell you. I’m afraid you’re in for it, squire.”

  Laurent sighed into the phone.

  “Well, thank you for calling, Roger. I will handle it from here,” he said.

  “I know you will, old darling. Listen, I’m to Cap D’Antibes next month. I don’t suppose you’d be...?”

  “Ach, non, Roger.” A thin smile found its way to Laurent’s lips. “Not this time, mon ami.”

  “Ahhh, well. Never hurts to ask. Take care of yourself, Laurent. Cheers.”

  “Adieu, Roger.”

  Laurent hung up the phone slowly and then rubbed a large hand across his face as if to erase his very features. Ahhh, Maggee, he thought sadly.

  4

  “No, Michele,” Maggie said, cradling the telephone against her cheek while she threw another sweater into her suitcase. “Gerard denied killing Elise. I’m not surprised and I’m not sure I care any more. I mean, if he did kill her, what am I supposed to do about it? Make a citizen’s arrest, or something? There’s no damn evidence or the Atlanta cops would’ve nabbed him. He’s, like, this mega-loser....so blitzed on dope he probably couldn’t crack an egg let alone devise a foreign murder. I mean, this whole trip was nuts.”

  The French woman murmured softly on the other end.

  “Do not give up, Maggie,” she said.

  “I am giving up,” Maggie said. “Besides, after what I’ve learned about Elise and...and Laurent, I’m afraid I just don’t have the energy or...passion, if you will...to try to prove Gerard’s guilt. I guess that makes me a pretty lame excuse for a sister, but that’s the way it is.”

  “Perhaps Gerard did not strangle the life out of her on that night, cherie,” Zouk said. “But he has killed your sister as surely as if he held the sash that tightened around her throat. He put an end to her art. He put an end to her family. He put an end to her friends and time took care of the rest. Elise was alive with her friends. She could not live without her art. She was an artiste!”

  “You don’t get it, Michele,” Maggie said, tossing her cosmetic bag into her suitcase and snapping it shut. “I don’t care any more. Okay? Elise lived her life the way she had to and if she crapped all over her family as a result of it...well, what’s new about that?”

  “I hope you will write me, Maggie, as your sister did,” Michele said quietly.

  “I will.”

  “And also to tell me when you find Elise’s killer.”

  Maggie sighed. “I’ll write you, Michele. Michele?”

  “Yes, cherie?”

  “What do you think of Gerard’s brother, Laurent?”

  “Cherie, I do not know the man very well. Only that he makes his living as le voleur...the con-man. But what is it matter
ing now? Oh, you must get to the bottom of this Laurent fellow, absolutement! There are too many questions, eh? But if it is love...” The knowing smile was as evident to Maggie as if she’d been in the same room with her.

  Truly, the French are not like the rest of us, Maggie thought with a touch of admiration in her heart for her new friend. She said farewell and wished she could believe the same philosophy.

  5

  It was still early evening but Maggie didn’t begrudge the taxi ride. After all, Montmartre was not necessarily a safe place to be at any time. She paid the driver and stepped out onto Rue Caulaincourt. She walked quickly and with purpose. The Moulin Rouge windmill sliced through the thick night air, beckoning the streetlife inside in a slow, insidious, come-hither gesture. People bumped into her as she walked, she held her purse tightly to her stomach, hurrying faster now to find the little alleyway.

  When she found it again, it yawned before her, dark and unwelcoming. Maggie took a breath and turned into the cobblestone avenue that led to Elise’s old apartment.

  She’d said good-bye to Michele and had felt a genuine sense of loss. The woman had cared about Elise. She seemed to care about Maggie too. Maggie was starting to recognize just how rare that feeling could be.

  The shuttered windows stared down at her like jack-o-lantern eyes from the apartments that lined the little street. She glanced up at the landlady’s window. Like the others, it was closed to the world. No sign of light or life behind it.

  Maggie slowed her pace as she passed beneath Elise’s window and looked up. Nothing. She turned the corner at the end of the alley and stopped. There it was. Montmartre Cemetery.

  From where Maggie stood, she could see oversized granite urns and what looked like miniature Washington monuments punctuating the row after row of plain stones—which looked like a field of gray surfboards jammed into the ground. The wind picked up as she stared at the semi-darkened graveyard. Little, luminescent stubs of white crosses jutted out from the hard ground. Stone angels and fierce cherubs guarded long-dead babies under ghostly great trees, their leaves having long dropped onto the patient graves and markers.

  Maggie crossed the street and entered the cemetery through the arched gateway which led to a stone trellis and a pergola, as gay as a garden wedding.