“Finished? How is that poss—” Maggie stopped with her hand frozen on the wall switch as she snapped on the light in the anteroom.
“Julia confessed today,” Laurent said.
Maggie heard him at the same time she saw the motionless little body of Julia’s lovebird at the bottom of the brass cage.
Chapter Eighteen
Laurent decided that telling Maggie over the phone last night had been one of the truly bad miscalculations of his life. Sometimes she acted so calm and composed that he forgot she was also a hormonal, pregnant woman prone to exaggeration and over simplification from years of too-stimulating American television. She had been nearly hysterical when he walked into his house, the dead bird in her lap, and more tears than he remembered seeing from her in the whole time that he’d known her.
He figured it had to be the pregnancy.
This morning he brought her a tray of tea and toast. Although he would never understand the American and English fascination with rough, scratchy toasted bread when beignets and croissants were available, he’d compromised by slicing and toasting brioche, buttering it and serving it with a little pot of fresh raspberry jam.
“Any chance you will stay in bed today?” he asked as he set the tray down on the bed.
“I’m not sick, Laurent,” she said, eyeing the tray but making no move to reach for the teacup.
“Je sais.” I know. He stood next to the bed and placed a hand on her cheek. “I’m sorry, chérie,” he said.
“I don’t suppose it matters,” she said. “The confession. The lovebird.”
“Ah, Maggie.” He lifted her chin in his fingers but she pulled away.
“I guess you’re happy, though,” she said. “There’s definitely no murder case to distract me now.”
“Okay,” he said, moving to the door. “Grace is up when you want company. I’ll be back around dinnertime.”
“Sure,” Maggie said, looking away as he left.
No, whether he’d told her on the phone or told her in person would probably have made no real difference in the end. She will have to come to her own happy ending with it all in her own time. Or not.
Maggie bit into the toast and watched Laurent through the bedroom window as he maneuvered their Renault down the driveway and disappeared around the stand of the tall hundred-year-old cypress trees that lined the opening to their property. She sighed. He was probably happy to escape, she thought, and she could hardly blame him.
Just thinking of that tiny, vulnerable little body at the bottom of the cage was enough to bring tears to her eyes. She sniffled and the sound brought Petit-Four out from under the covers where she’d been patiently waiting for Maggie to get up.
It was worse because the little bird was so beautiful, so colorful with its pale peach head and bright green and pink wings. It was hard to see something so gaily colored, just lying there. Dead things should be brown or grey, she thought inanely. They shouldn’t be so beautiful even in death.
She sipped the tea and felt a wave of guilt at how she had treated Laurent. He always took such good care of her. He couldn’t help that he didn’t want her to get hurt or kidnapped or whatever crazy scenario he had dreamed up if she continued to try to help Julia.
Julia. Maggie felt the tears threatening again and she took a quick restorative sip of the tea and leaned back into her pillows. She heard Petit-Four sigh and relax when she did.
So Julia had given up. Maggie had been wrong not to press the issue with her after Julia had hung up on her that time. Why didn’t she push it? Had Maggie’s feelings been hurt? Maggie frowned and pulled the duvet back to swing her legs out of bed. Well, it didn’t matter now. Nothing did. Julia was going to prison for a murder she did, or didn’t commit, and Maggie was going to have this baby in any event. Preferably sooner rather than later.
She showered, dressed and carried her breakfast tray downstairs. It was a little past eleven but she wasn’t surprised not to hear Zou-zou’s high pitched laugher ringing through the house. Grace had obviously shifted the child to Danielle’s house in order to give Maggie a quiet morning. Downstairs was silent except for the sound of Petit-Four’s nails against the hardwood floors of the hallway.
Suddenly, the little dog barked and ran to the front door.
What the hell, dog? Maggie thought with annoyance, realizing how pleasant the silence had been up to now. She walked to the front door and pulled it open expecting to see nothing and was startled to see a large man in uniform with a huge roll of carpet over his shoulder.
“Special delivery for Madame Dernier,” the young officer said, hesitating only long enough to nod a brief salute to her before pushing his way past her to the living room.
The lavender fields were not totally spent. Annette could see how they would have been glorious a few months earlier, but the late cold snap that had delayed the grape harvest this year had also extended the beautiful vistas of dramatic lavender just a little bit longer. The neat mounds of purple positioned against the golden autumn trees were as pretty as a tourist’s postcard. She threw her cigarette out the car window, blowing smoke against the inside of the windshield.
“Can you smell the scent from here? It’s faint, but it’s there.”
She sighed and turned to him in the passenger’s seat. “I can’t smell the fucking lavender, Florrie,” she said.
“Well, it’s a ways off,” he said, fumbling for the crank on his door to lower the window a little more.
As sunny as the day looked, the Mistral had settled around the morning like a death shroud. It was cold and windy outside of the car.
“Roll up the window, for God’s sake,” she said. “I’m freezing.”
“We could do this at my place,” he said easily, cracking his knuckles and making her want to shoot him where he sat.
If she only had a gun.
“It’s a lot warmer there. And I made a ratatouille.”
“Are you insane? You are talking about ratatouilles? We are meeting here, Florrie, because of the disaster of our last meeting. You do remember that, do you not?”
He shrugged. “Now that everyone knows…”
“Everyone does not know! Nobody knows!” She fished another cigarette out of her purse and tapped its filter against the steering wheel. “I must have been mad to even think about doing this.”
“You hated him more than anyone,” Florrie said quietly. “It is fitting.”
“Fitting,” she spat. “Tell me again how it is to my benefit? Because you can trust me about this, widowhood suits me very well.”
“You were no longer married to him, Annette,” Florrie said.
“Whatever.”
“I have, of course, a sizable fortune of my own to offer you.”
“As sizable as Lily’s?”
She noticed he shifted uncomfortably and that made her smile. Just a little.
“Perhaps not,” he admitted. “But not inconsequential, I assure you. Let me ask you, is it true you had no idea that Lily intended for you to have it after Jacques?”
“You hate that, don’t you?”
“Not at all. Lily knows I am comfortable. It makes sense that she would want to take care of …” Florrie groped for words.
“The widow of her beloved nephew?” Annette said, grinning at him. She lit her cigarette and blew out a thin jet of smoke into the car’s interior. Florrie cranked down his window again. “What do you think? Do you think I knew before he died that I was next in line?”
Florrie was watching her carefully. “I really don’t know,” he said. “Did you?”
Annette turned away to stare back out at the picture postcard view. Her smile grew as she thought of the money that would soon be hers. It grew as she imagined the home she would build. Finally. The home she had always dreamed of owning. The laugh was bubbling up inside her and she let it come. She heard herself cawing with mirth—a most unladylike sound—but it didn’t matter. She was rich! And she didn’t need Florrie’s pathetic fortune or anyone else’s p
atronage ever again. She could do what she wanted, when she wanted. As her laughter eased, she turned to see Florrie’s face with its expression of horror and, yes, revulsion, and she didn’t care. She didn’t care! She was rich enough now that she need never care.
“Oh, yes,” she said to him, blowing smoke between them, her lips stretched tightly over her teeth in a predatory grin. “I knew.”
* * *
Maggie poured her tea and brought the mug with her into the living room to curl up with an afghan and Petit-Four on the couch. She usually loved to watch the weather from the French doors that opened off the terrace and gave a sweeping view of the vineyards. Today the vineyards look like naked crosses in a cemetery—one where massive casualties have resulted in a homogenous attempt to honor and remember everyone because there’s too much death to do it one at a time. The rows of staked vines looked desiccated and creepy, the wooden structures holding only stripped black branches if anything at all.
The terrace, with its brittle canopy of yellow linden leaves, had enjoyed afternoon relief from the autumn sun all month. Now the leaves lay scattered on the stone tiles, not a single one left on the branches, allowing the sun drill relentlessly onto the patio.
Maggie sipped her tea and felt the weight of her failure. She touched her stomach as the baby moved restlessly inside her. It’s so unfair. This should be a time of amazing anticipation and excitement for me. And for Laurent.
Her eyes strayed again to the ugly rows of stripped vines. The phone rang. She leaned across her dog to reach it on the side table.
“Hello?”
The voice that answered hesitated, and then was clipped and businesslike. “Hello, Maggie. Is your husband home?”
“Nope. Just me, Roger.” Maggie put her hand on Petit-Four’s head, feeling her silky curls between her fingers. “Why are you calling? Did you get a complaint about someone loosening the bolts on the wheelchairs down at the hospital? Are you calling to fine me for burning the soufflé this morning?”
“Look, Maggie…” There was a pause that Maggie didn’t try to fill. “I’m sorry…about all that,” he said.
Maggie didn’t answer immediately. Finally, she said, “Your guy delivered our rugs and stuff back. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Look, I’m calling to say I got some information about Julia Patrick’s case and I told Der—your husband, that I would keep him informed. I want you to know, Maggie, that I take no pleasure in telling you that Madame Patrick was arraigned this morning on the charge of first-degree murder…”
Maggie felt like she had been punched in the stomach.
“…and is being moved tomorrow to a more…secure facility.”
More secure. He’s trying to make it sound like it’s for her safety or something.
“Anyway, if you want to see her, I can arrange that,” he said. “But it will have to be tomorrow morning.”
Maggie’s eyes were swimming with tears. The one thing she thought never in a million years would happen, was happening. Julia was going to prison.
“Maggie? Will you come?”
“Yes,” Maggie said, her weariness so bone deep she had to sit down on one of the barstools before she fell down. “Yes, I’ll come.”
* * * *
The streets in the old part of Aix were never more beautiful in Michelle’s opinion than early in the morning. The tourists weren’t up, the shops weren’t open, so all the people with more money than need weren’t lining up yet to buy more useless things than they could never use.
Had Michelle ever felt like she had enough?
Even when her parents were still together, there had been no money. She could remember them when they were together. She had been young, but not so young. There had been few treats, she remembered that. But there had been enough for her mother to dress and have her hair done. Yes, there had been enough for that.
Michelle sat on the park bench in Parc Rambot, a white paper bag of day-old rolls next to her. Two pigeons stared at her from the pavement in front of her. She’d made the mistake of throwing a piece of bread to them. Now, nothing short of death would release them from their focus on her as their benefactor. She thought of the chickens she had killed last month and smiled. She had hidden behind a farmer’s truck to witness the bitch’s reaction to the car’s damage and the note. She hadn’t been disappointed.
She reached into the paper bag and threw another piece of roll to the two pigeons, hitting one in the head. She watched them fight over it until several more birds appeared. She picked up the rock she had brought and waited until two were trying to peck the bread more than each other. It was the so-called lucky one who would die, she decided. The one with the bread. The one with more than the others. She waited until the largest bird had taken possession of the bread and she fired the rock at it, hitting it full in the chest. She was rewarded by a terrified squawk and a cloud of feathers as it and the others flew away. She was sure she saw his wing at an unnatural angle. She saw the bread sitting on the pavement, and the blood on the pavement next to it, and she smiled.
The next time she would be smarter. As with the car, she would take her pleasure from afar. It wasn’t quite as satisfying, but it was more certain. It didn’t matter quite so much that she saw the bitch contorted on the ground in agony. It only mattered that it happened. That was the mature approach. The adult approach. But then, if her plan came off as she imagined—and it was so simple, how could it not?—she felt sure she would be able to have both.
Grace tiptoed down the stairs, Zou-zou’s stuffed bunny in her hand. She walked into the kitchen and opened the door to the cave, where she could hear someone, probably Laurent, moving boxes around. She shivered in the doorway of the basement stairs. It occurred to her that this was the first time she had been at this spot in Maggie and Laurent’s house since Connor was murdered. In the basement. On Thanksgiving Day three years ago. A wave of sorrow and loss slammed into her and she grabbed the door jamb to keep herself from sagging to her knees.
Dearest Connor. How I have missed you these last three years. And here is where you died. Full of life and piss and lies and so much laughter. And your life seeped out of you in the coldest part of a one hundred year old basement while I was drinking and eating turkey upstairs. Grace took a long breath and hardened her thoughts. Connor was gone and Windsor was going and it didn’t help anyone to dwell on it. She pushed away from the basement and the innocuous sounds of Laurent tinkering and working below.
She moved into the living room and sat down next to Maggie on the couch. “Don’t you two ever watch television?” she asked as she nodded to the notebooks and mini tablets on Maggie’s lap.
“We do,” Maggie said absently. “We watch Netflix sometimes.”
“You’re kidding. You get Netflix?”
“Yeah, it came to France a few months back.” Maggie pushed her notebooks away and arched her back trying to massage the base of her spine. “God, I’m in agony. I cannot remember the last time I slept through the night. Just to turn over requires being fully awake and practically getting out of bed to reposition. This part of the deal sucks.” She looked out the French doors to the vineyard beyond. “Promise me it gets better when he’s born.”
“When he or she is born, you mean.” Grace sat cross-legged behind Maggie on the couch and put her hands on her friend’s shoulders and began to massage between her shoulder blades. Maggie groaned with pleasure.
“It gets better as far as being able to move around more easily,” Grace said. “But it’s worse as far as always being exhausted. Much worse. Plus there’s the worry. Once the little dear’s born, you will never again have a single worry-free moment until you drop down dead of old age.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it for me,” Maggie mumbled.
Grace laughed. “It’ll all work out, darling.”
“Sure doesn’t feel that way now.”
“That’s because this whole Julia business is complicating everything.”
Maggi
e turned to face her. “I cannot believe she confessed. She did it to protect her boyfriend, I’m sure of it.”
“Probably.”
“I’m sure she’s really discouraged. I was doing what I could but I got nowhere. It’s been three weeks and she’s still in jail. She obviously lost faith in anyone being able to help her.”
“These things take time. Especially with your being on such a short leash. Half the people you needed to talk to you couldn’t because of Laurent.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I know things look bleak at the moment. Trust me, nobody knows better than I do how one or two setbacks can color the whole picture.”
“She’s given up on me, Grace. She’s given up on herself.”
“Well, you can’t give up, too, sweetie. Things have looked this black before.”
“Have they, Grace? The police have a confession, plus incriminating forensic evidence. And I don’t have anybody better than who they have in jail right now. If I were Jules, I’d be confessing too.”
“Now you’re just feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve got all the late trimester discomfort to deal with, not to mention hormones, but you need to snap out of it. For Julia’s sake, if not for your own.”
“This is so unlike you, Grace.” Maggie turned her back again so Grace could resume massaging her shoulders. “But I like the new you,” she moaned.
“Come on, sweetie, bounce some of your theories off me. I’ve been out of the game but I’m back now. What have you got?”
“Well…” Maggie rotated her neck and gave a deep sigh that Grace interpreted with satisfaction was from her ministrations. “I still like Mathieu for this. I’m sure he could have done it. He has no alibi but plenty of motive, and he’s got the same access to the crime scene that Julia did. Plus, it explains why Julia would confess.”
“Okay, that’s good. So you think it’s Mathieu.”
“Well, except for the fact that Annette is still my number one suspect. Especially since we learned she inherits when Lily dies. And she has no convincing alibi for the time in question.”
Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) Page 20