The argument she had assuaged herself with earlier—that Briande was a professional services provider and therefore somehow not to be considered a stranger in the sense that Laurent had meant—sounded ludicrous to her now as she stood before her slowly smoldering spouse.
“I’m sorry, Laurent,” she said meekly. “I met him in his office in broad daylight and I just didn’t think you meant stranger in that way.”
“It appears that next time I will have to carefully define my words,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
“No. I’m sorry, Laurent. I knew what you meant. I just had to see for myself if he wasn’t a better candidate for Jacques’s killer. I don’t have an excuse for going back on my word.”
Laurent set his wineglass down on the counter and reached out for her, drawing her slowly to him. She felt like she could melt into him, so strong and capable was he. He made her feel like he could take care of everything. It occurred to her that their child would get that very same feeling from these arms and the thought made her smile. He tilted her head back and kissed her mouth and then pushed her hair from her face.
“So we have both had our indiscretions with the truth, yes?” he said.
“Yes,” Maggie said, enjoying how easy it was to lose herself in the depths of his dark brown eyes, the curve of his full lips, so close to her face.
“And going forward,” he whispered, kissing her neck and moving his hand down her back to cup her bottom, “we will be better to always tell the truth, the whole truth.”
“And nothing but the truth,” she said, smiling into his neck and loving the smell of him mixed with sun and sweat and somehow even lemons.
“Bon,” he said, kissing her deeply.
An hour later, they lay in bed together with the remnants of a lovers’ picnic on the bed with them. It hadn’t occurred to Maggie until they had an evening without Grace in the house that her presence had been somewhat oppressive. Living with a depressed person, Maggie thought, doesn’t do much for the rest of the household. She felt guilty for being so grateful for the respite, but she couldn’t deny that she and Laurent needed this connection—now more than ever.
“How long do you think we have before these lazy nights of love and food are behind us?”
Laurent looked at her and frowned. “Why would that be?”
“When the baby comes, Laurent. We won’t have the energy for anything like this until he goes off to college.”
“Vraiment?” Laurent looked around the bed with its covering of saucers of cheese and tapenade, aioli and crusty bread.
“Grace says forget ever having a moment to yourself after the baby comes.”
Laurent shrugged and removed a small saucer of olives to the bedside table. It pleased Maggie that he didn’t seem to care how the baby might disrupt their lives. He was so affable (about most things anyway), it was hard to imagine a little thing like a crying baby derailing his schedule or his usual good mood.
“You haven’t asked me anything about that horrible woman’s visit this afternoon.”
Laurent sighed and brushed crumbs from the duvet. “Always I am putting up with these things when you are investigating your little mysteries. A strange woman comes to my house to threaten my pregnant wife? How can I be surprised?”
“Well, I certainly did nothing to provoke her visit!”
“Then why did she come?”
“I have no idea! Or, I mean—if I were to make a wild guess—it might be because I spoke with her daughter, that equally horrible Michelle, and before you get started, Laurent, this was before we agreed that I wouldn’t talk to strangers, although, I’d already met her so technically she wasn’t really a stranger.”
“The woman today was Jacques’s ex-wife?”
“Yes, and she threatened to make life worse for Julia if I talked to Michelle or Lily again. Can you believe that? She said she knew someone high up in the police department.”
“As do you.”
“Except my contact in the police department doesn’t talk to me, let alone do special favors for me.”
“Is it too much to hope it will remain so?”
Maggie snapped off the bedroom lamp and snuggled down with Laurent in bed. He wrapped his arms around her.
“I wonder if there’s something specific she’s afraid I’ll find out?” she mused sleepily.
Laurent yawned. “Perhaps she is not as uncaring as you think. Perhaps she is trying to protect the old woman’s peace in her last days.”
Maggie sat up and snapped the lamp back on. “What do you mean last days?”
“Maggie, the light…”
“Is Lily sick?”
Laurent rubbed his face and gave her a long-suffering look. “I heard it from Jean-Luc,” he said, stifling a yawn, “who heard it from Danielle that Lily has cancer of the throat. The doctors say she is terminal and it will be not much longer now.”
Maggie stared at him. “How much not longer?”
“Three months.”
The next morning, Laurent woke Maggie in bed with a kiss and a steaming cup of café au lait. She pushed her pillows up behind her to sit up and see out the bedroom window. From this vantage point, she could see the pickers combing the vineyard outside like somnolent locusts, creeping along and methodically stripping the vines as they went.
“Have you been up long?”
“Oui,” he said from the doorway. “Grace came home early this morning and went back to bed. She said that Zou-zou will stay with Danielle and Jean-Luc for a little while.”
“I suppose that’s probably best. She’s not in really great shape.”
“Non. Make her a tray before you leave, yes? Chocolat is good for sadness. I have des pains au chocolat for her.”
“I will. Where is it I’m going?”
Laurent grinned. “Je ne sais pas, chérie, but I know it’s somewhere. Fais attention, eh?” Be careful.
“I will.” Maggie took a luxurious sip of her coffee and sank a little further into her pillows. “Love you, Laurent,” she said as he vanished from sight.
“Je t’aime aussi,” he called from the hall.
Maggie looked out her window until she saw Laurent’s familiar form moving steadily through the throng of workers in the field. If this wasn’t his favorite time of the year it was pretty close. Not only was it the culmination of a year long cultivation of his grapes—the hours of tending, staking, feeding, watering and weeding—not to mention the hours of talking and arguing about the grapes with the other vintners in the area. Just organizing the all-important construction of the best supports for the vines was an ongoing project. If a French vineyard was a high school, then harvest time was the prom, Maggie thought with a smile. She put a hand on her very pregnant belly and felt the movements and flutters of the little one inside. Your birthday will probably come right around harvest time. So your Papa will always be in a state of high excitement. A little foot seemed to kick her hand in answer. God, I hope you’re a boy. As soon as the thought was in her head her mouth fell open in surprise. She had no idea that thought was even there.
She never thought she had a preference one way or the other. And the way Laurent falls all over Zou-zou, it was clear the man was born to have a little girl. So where did the thought come from? Her eyes went out the window again where she picked out his form again. She saw him clapping a worker on the back. Laurent was such a man’s man. Was she hoping to give him a boy to share his passion? A boy to trot at his heels and keep his name? Well, it’s true, she thought. A girl to wrap him around his little finger, to make his eyes fill with pride and tears at her strength, her poise, her beauty. A little girl to sit on his lap and call him ma Papa.
But first, a son.
After a long hot shower, Maggie pulled on one of the last sundresses she owned that still fit her and was aghast that she appeared to now be getting larger by the day. The dress pulled across her bust and her belly making her look like she squeezed into it—which she had. Before she even made it down
stairs she was feeling tired and hot, and it wasn’t eleven o’clock yet. She tiptoed by Grace’s room first and confirmed by the sound of soft snoring that she wasn’t up yet. In the kitchen, she put a tray together containing three pain au chocolat and a sliced pear. She debated between a glass of milk and coffee and finally opted for the milk. She didn’t know how long Grace would sleep and the coffee would cool too quickly.
She left the tray and moved into the living room, where she and Laurent kept their desktop computer on an old battered desk that had belonged to Laurent’s uncle. He had never met the man but the desk was one of the few pieces of furniture that hadn’t been rubbish, and Maggie knew Laurent had been pleased to keep something of his family, his past.
She lay down her own pain au chocolat on the desk and wiped her fingers on the cloth napkin. Laurent would fuss at her for not using a plate so she was careful to pick up all the flakes from the delicate croissant that she left on the desk. She opened up a browser and typed in “poisonous mushrooms.” It took only a few moments to see that agaricus mushrooms were common in the area and looked not at all deadly. She studied the picture on the website showing them nestled in a clump at the base of a tree.
She printed out the picture on their wireless printer, polished off her breakfast and went to pour Grace’s milk in the glass.
Were the deadly mushrooms really that commonplace? Could anyone collect them pretty easily? She picked up the tray and walked carefully upstairs with it. What I wouldn’t give to see the history on Michelle’s computer! She wondered if the police had taken Julia’s computer and assumed they probably had.
She stood outside Grace’s door and listened. She didn’t hear snoring anymore, but she didn’t hear anything else either. She hesitated, wondering if she should knock or just leave the tray. Finally, she set the tray down. Even if Grace was awake, she probably wanted to be alone, Maggie reasoned. She tiptoed away from the door and back downstairs. As she collected her purse, the photo from the printer, and the car keys from the hook in the mudroom outside the kitchen, she noticed the mail had been delivered. It had been poked through the mail slot which perched over an old wicker basket that had probably served the same purpose since the days when the mail had come by horse and wagon. She glanced in the basket in passing and saw her name on a long white envelope on top.
A very formal long white envelope. Curious, she picked it out of the basket and looked at the return address label. It was from the Aix Police Department.
Whatever in the world? She quickly opened it and pulled out a short piece of paper that, in essence, informed her that she was required to show up for a hearing in two weeks time on a charge of jaywalking. For a moment she just stood in the mudroom and frowned in confusion. Was it a joke? She looked at the return address again and saw that it was embossed. It was legitimate.
Jaywalking?
And then it came to her: Son of a bitch.
Roger.
She stuffed the letter into her purse, refraining from ripping it into two neat pieces first. Whatever his game was, she couldn’t do anything about it and she would not let it emotionally derail her in the process.
What a jerk!
Taking deep breaths to restore her calm, Maggie settled into the driver’s seat of the car and placed both hands on the steering wheel to steady herself. When she looked up, she saw Grace standing in the window of her bedroom. As soon as Maggie saw her, Grace moved away.
Maggie felt a wave of helplessness wash over her. Grace had come to Domaine St-Buvard to heal, to answer questions, to rest before the big battle—whatever. And she had landed, if not on a rocky bed of disgust and anger from her best friend, then certainly not in the warm and loving support of friends. A part of Maggie wanted to rush upstairs and tell Grace that she loved her no matter what and to beg her to tell her everything—every horrible, spider-crawling, fantasy-killing confession she needed to make in order to survive this terrible passage. But the other part of her just wasn’t sure.
Maggie stared up at the empty window and realized she wasn’t sure about why she and Grace were friends. Or why she had chosen Julia to take her place. She wasn’t sure if the baby was such a great idea, especially as different from each other as she and Laurent daily proved themselves to be. When it came right down to it, she wasn’t sure her best guesses weren’t usually just wildly wrong and ultimately damaging to everyone around her.
Face it, she thought, as an unbidden image of Julia came to mind, If you can’t trust your instincts about something so basic as the people you choose as your friends, what other kinds of mistakes in judgment are you making?
In the end, she decided not to go back inside and put the car in reverse and backed up the long drive. She knew the forest where Julia went most often, and if she had any hope of getting there and back before dark, she needed to go now. As soon as she was on the highway, she steered her thoughts away from Grace and Julia as much as she could and tried to focus on what she hoped to find this afternoon.
First, a clue or some evidence that proved someone else—Michelle or Annette would work nicely—had been to the area, possibly to dig up poisonous mushrooms would be ideal. Failing that, Maggie didn’t really know what to expect beyond the fact that this was a place that Julia went to. A lot.
So. Three months. Poor Lily. But what a vulture Michelle was! Michelle, who cursed the timing of her father’s dying because he failed to hang on long enough to inherit—so that Michelle could then inherit. Did Lily have any idea of the monsters around her she called family? And now Florrie was next in line. Well, at least he seemed like a decent guy. Too bad he was related to such scumbags.
An hour from St-Buvard and just before the outskirts of Aix, Maggie saw the sign for Indian Fôret Sud. Julia had mentioned it many times to her. She was sorry now that she had never taken the time to come here with her. The memory of her last conversation with Julia came back to her as she parked the car. So much anger. And fear. Maggie shook her head. It was like she wasn’t the same person who Maggie had known and lunched with, gushing on about her mushroom cookbook and teasing her about how motherhood would leave Maggie with no time for girlfriends.
Maggie tucked her purse under the seat and grabbed the picture of the poisonous mushrooms she had printed out from the Internet. The parking lot held three other cars, which surprised Maggie. All three vehicles looked like they might belong to farmers—they certainly weren’t rental cars. Why would farmers come to the forest? Making sure her cellphone was in her pocket, Maggie left the car and took the first path that led from the parking lot into the woods. The ground was scrubby and brown but punctuated with bright pockets of rosebay and the pretty yellow Spanish broom. She imagined Julia must have walked this same path every time she came here. She looked around and she couldn’t help but think of Julia in this place. This was her world. It was her Zen, her church, her milieu. This was where she made her discoveries. Maggie could just imagine her friend’s laugher and squeals of delight as she uncovered this fungal jewel, or that one. Maggie left the trail, holding on to the long saplings and eased herself down an easy incline. She was aware that there were wild boars in the area and she hoped they would react properly to pepper spray—as in run in the opposite direction.
Her breathing was coming a little hard and she cursed the fact that Laurent was probably right; the late pregnancy was slowing her down and she should be resting more. The heat of the early fall day was dissipated by the canopy of leaves that had yet to fall and Maggie was grateful for the shade. Stepping through the thick bushes off the trail—and praying they weren’t riddled with poison ivy—she spotted a clump of mushrooms at the base of a withered banyan tree. Pulling the printout from her pocket, she edged closer to the grouping. She knelt down next to the mushrooms and tried to compare what she saw on the ground with what was in the picture. They looked identical. But they also looked very much like the mushrooms that she and Laurent bought from the market in Aix each Saturday. Hell, they looked like the mus
hrooms she used to buy from her local Kroger back in Atlanta. She sank to one knee in the damp dirt, unable to balance easily at her new heavier weight.
“Crap.” She pulled herself up using the side of the tree by grabbing a low hanging branch, which promptly broke off in her grasp nearly sending her over backward. She caught herself in time and leaned against the tree, taking a moment to regroup. Could Julia possibly have made a mistake? They look so much like the poisoned mushrooms in the picture. Could she have accidentally fed Jacques the wrong mushrooms? She shook her head. But Julia ate the omelet, too.
She said.
Maggie hated the kernel of doubt that seemed to be interfering with every theory she developed lately. Could Julia have done it? Could she have planned it? Reminding herself that she hadn’t known her all that long, Maggie stooped again to look at the mushrooms and, although not sure why, snapped a photo of them. As soon as she stood up she heard somewhere close by the sound a dry stick makes when a heavy foot treads on it. Whirling around to see who or what was approaching, Maggie was struck full in the face by a hard, wide hand that grabbed her harshly, covering her nose and mouth.
Chapter Thirteen
Maggie fought for breath as she clawed at the hand over her face. At first she could only smell and feel what was happening to her. Her sight seemed to have failed as she grappled with her assailant. Even at eight months pregnant, she felt light and inconsequential in the punishing grasp of the much larger man. She struggled to free herself from his tightening grip. At the exact moment she knew she was losing the fight for breath, he took his hands from her face. He held her at arms’ length from him. She stumbled against him, gasping, her knees weak and doing nothing to support her weight. He held her in her standing position, his arms shaking with either exertion or anger.
When she had gotten her breath back enough to register her surroundings again, she saw that it was him.
Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) Page 13