Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5)

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  “No, he had to go out but he said Jean-Luc came over to mind her. Danielle’s at Lily’s today. It sounds like it’s a death watch or something.”

  “I hate to hear that. So it’s Jean-Luc and Z today?”

  “Oh, my God, Grace, he’s crazy about that little girl! You have brought new life to his world. And Danielle’s, of course.”

  “Glad to be of service. He must have come over awfully early on a Sunday morning.”

  “Yeah, he must have gotten there seconds after you and I left. Laurent said he heard him bringing the milk in.”

  “Zou-zou loves them both.”

  “Can’t have too many people who love you,” Maggie said. “Unless, of course, they’re putting your photos in weird wallpaper collages in their back bedroom or something.”

  “Well put, darling. And speaking of that, did you run into Roger in there?”

  “No, he doesn’t work on Sundays unless there’s a body that’s been discovered, and even then, you know how lazy he is.”

  Grace laughed. “No, but I’m heartened to hear it sounds like he’s settled down a bit.”

  “Yeah. I have no idea what Laurent told him but it seems to have worked.”

  “Laurent definitely has a way about him.”

  “That is true,” Maggie said, rubbing her stomach.

  “You feeling alright, darling?”

  “I am just so ready to get out of this fat suit, I could scream. How about you?”

  “I’m not the one about to go into labor any minute. Oh, there’s my phone.” Grace picked it up and looked at the screen. “The call failed,” she said. “But it was from Danielle. Can we go some place in this adorably quaint and antiquated town where I can get a damn phone call?”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  Grace tossed her phone back in her purse and sighed. “I’m fine. I talked with Windsor last night and he’s eager for me to come back with the baby.”

  “Come back…?”

  “Not like that. He misses her. We’ve been gone a month.”

  “Are you afraid he won’t let her come back with you?”

  Grace hesitated and then shook her head. “No, not really.” She shrugged. “It’s Windsor.”

  “Yeah,” Maggie said. “A good guy.”

  “Yes, yes, a good guy. Get the waiter’s attention, will you, darling? I’m going to try my luck with better phone reception out under the plane trees.” Grace stood up and looked around. Sure enough, three tables with one to two ogling Frenchmen per table grinned at her.

  Well, at least it looks like dating won’t be a problem, she thought with a sinking heart as she wound her way through the tables to the street in front of the café.

  * * * *

  If there were another way to do it, by God, he would have done it. How things had gotten so far down this path, he would never know. But now that he’d started, he knew he couldn’t stop until it was finished.

  He parked his car down an adjacent alley to the café. Because it was Sunday, it had been difficult to follow them without looking like theirs were the only two cars on the highway. But also because it was Sunday, there was no one to see him sitting now in the car, waiting, watching.

  Dernier’s wife went across the street to the jail and the other one—the beautiful one—walked into the café, clearly waiting for her friend to finish her errand. That meant he had time. Probably more than enough, but in the event that he was, once again, fatally wrong about that, he wiped the sweat from his palms and grabbed the ice pick out of the glove compartment. He hesitated just a moment to pray—for everyone’s sake—that he would not be seen, and left the car.

  Chapter Twenty

  Danielle smoothed the covers back over the withered hands. They were pale, but that was not surprising. Lily had never been one for the outdoors, for walks or gardening. Her hands, for as old as she was, still looked younger than Danielle’s after sixty-five years of an active life under the Provencal sun.

  “Are you the only one?”

  Danielle was mildly startled by Lily’s voice. Lily had been asleep, soundly, she was sure of it. But now she regarded her with an alert, cool gaze.

  “The only one, what, my friend?” Danielle asked, settling down on the bed next to her.

  “Here to watch me die.”

  “Don’t say that. You’re not dying today.”

  “You are the only one.” Lily turned her face away and Danielle stood to pull the curtains back from the long window in the room. The early morning fog had burned off, leaving a crystal clear autumn day. The kind of day that made you glad to be alive, Danielle thought.

  “The others will be coming, soon,” Danielle said. “It’s still early.”

  “Not for me,” Lily said, looking out the window at the brilliant blue sky.

  “Can I get you something? Are you thirsty?”

  Lily turned her gaze back to Danielle. “We were never close. Why is it you are here when my family is not?”

  “I was always sorry our friendship…faded. And then, when life intervened, I married. It became too difficult to have the time for other things.”

  “I heard about Eduard,” Lily said. Danielle turned her head sharply to her. “Oh, yes. You didn’t think I knew? You married badly, Danielle.”

  “The first time, yes.”

  “And I never married at all.”

  “We each made our choices.” Danielle watched Lily carefully, wondering if the woman was fading into dementia at the end.

  “You remember Bernard, of course?”

  Danielle stared at her uncomprehending when an image of a boy, a handsome young boy with very black hair and the bluest snapping eyes, came roaring back into her memory.

  Bernard.

  “You remember him, don’t you?”

  Danielle had been in love with him. How could she have forgotten? She was so young, not even sixteen, but they had kissed in the washhouse. Her first kiss. As she sat by Lily’s bedside, she remembered the relentless, impenetrable quiet of the thirteenth century stone house, the coldness and the dampness of the interior wilting her dress, her hair. And she remembered the boy who put his warm lips to hers and made her feel alive for the first time in her life.

  And very nearly the last.

  “I do,” she whispered, seeing him in her mind—laughing, always laughing.

  “He’s a butcher in Dijon now. And fat.”

  Danielle brought her attention back to her friend.

  “He was my first,” Lily said. She laughed bitterly. “My only. I know you never knew that. You only knew when he stopped speaking to you at school.”

  Danielle’s skin tingled. The memory of the nausea of the rejection came rushing back to her as she sat on Lily’s bed—sixty-six years old, the bulk of her life behind her, her youth, her beauty, what there had been of it—and she was filled with an uncomfortable, unusual feeling spreading to the tips of her fingers.

  Rage.

  “You took him for yourself,” Danielle said, her words stilted and blunt as she fought to quell the sensation of anger building in her chest.

  “I gave him myself,” Lily said, watching her intently. “You gave him kisses. Would you have done more?”

  Danielle couldn’t respond. She didn’t know. I was only fifteen…

  “Yes, I took him.” Lily looked back out the window as if she were seeing the boy, herself. The handsome future butcher from Dijon with the laughing blue eyes and the shiny black hair. “And so we both lost him.”

  They sat quietly together, lost in their memories of their first love, and when their eyes finally met, full of all the sadness of lost opportunities and lost youth, Danielle realized she wasn’t angry at all. She reached out and took Lily’s pale, cold hand and held it in her warm one.

  “I am virtually a vegetarian,” she said, a smile forming on her lips as she watched Lily’s startled face slowly form into a mute, gasping series of heaving laughter.

  * * * *

  Maggie strug
gled into the car seat and waited for Grace to start the car.

  “Buckle up, darling,” Grace said as she backed out of the tight parallel parking spot a block from the café.

  “I can’t,” Maggie said. “I’m too fat.”

  “That’s not true, dearest, and I won’t get on the highway until you do.”

  Maggie groaned and pulled the strap across and under her belly. “I am so ready for this to be over,” she said, squirming uncomfortably in the seat.

  “I know,” Grace said, taking the entrance ramp onto the D7.

  “I don’t remember you looking like this,” Maggie said, eyeing her suspiciously. “In fact, I don’t remember you looking any different when you were pregnant with Z than you do right now.”

  “I was, of course, gargantuan. You were just so self-absorbed you never noticed.”

  “Oh, funny. Thanks. I just think some people can carry it off with style, and other people just look like they’re always searching for the nearest all-you-can-eat buffet.”

  “You do not look fat, Maggie. You look pregnant.”

  “Oh, quit trying to mollify me. And you know what the worst of it is? Laurent and I had just figured out how to be happy together, you know?”

  Grace gave her a side glance.

  “I mean, just when I stopped whining about being homesick and having nothing to do, we really came through the fire out onto the other side. And now this!” She gestured to her stomach. “What in the hell is this going to do to us?”

  “Well, it’s a little late to be thinking about that now.” Grace said, smiling.

  “I totally do not want anything to torpedo what we’ve got together,” Maggie said, staring morosely out the car window at the brown and yellow landscape of the passing scenery.

  “What makes you think it won’t enhance it?”

  “Okay, now I know you’re mollifying me. Everyone says having kids makes marriage harder. And I have only recently figured out how to be happily married.”

  “There’s more to it than that. Kids may add more stress to your relationship with Laurent, that’s true.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “But they also bring a whole lot more love and joy into your life as a couple.”

  “How does that fit with the first thing you said?”

  “I don’t know, darling, but it does. You just have to trust me on this. You and Laurent are fine now and you’ll be fine after the little blighter is born.”

  “How about better than fine?”

  “Don’t push it. The most you can hope for is that it doesn’t screw things up. Hoping for it to make your marriage better is crazy. You’re not hoping to make things better with this baby?”

  Maggie shook her head. “No, I can’t imagine being happier with Laurent than I am. That’s why…” she rubbed her stomach, “…as excited as I usually am about meeting this little fellow, I find myself fretting that he’ll somehow hurt what I have with his daddy.”

  “I know very few things for absolutely certainty, darling,” Grace said, putting on her sunglasses against the bright autumn day. “In fact, me less than most. But I am completely confidant in saying, knowing your man the way I do, that that will not happen.”

  “A part of me knows that,” Maggie admitted. “I’ve never met anyone on this planet that I trust more than Laurent. How did I ever get so lucky that he could love me back?”

  “I’m sure I have no idea. But speaking of how you were able to save your marriage by shaking off such nonessential worries like homesickness and not having a job to occupy your mind, any word from your editor?”

  Maggie grimaced.

  “She hasn’t returned your emails?”

  “No.”

  “Still think everything is okay because you have a contract?”

  Maggie sighed. “I read the contract last night.”

  “In a rare moment of panicked insecurity?”

  “Yeah. And it seems that by missing the deadline, I’ve already voided the contract.”

  “Oh, Maggie!”

  “I know. I cannot believe how stupid I am. I can’t believe I screwed this up.”

  “Darling, do you know why? I mean, I’m sure book contracts are very difficult to acquire, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, don’t talk about it, Grace! It just makes me sick!”

  “No, come on, now. You’re a big girl. Why did you sabotage yourself like this? Especially after you just got through telling me that it was partly the book writing that kept you and Laurent together.”

  “Yeah, when you put it that way, I really sound self-destructive.”

  “Quit the negative self-talk and tell me what is going on with you. And thank you, by the way. I like to be reminded that I’m not the only basket case in this friendship.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m pretty sure you can always count on me for that,” Maggie said bitterly as she picked at the hem on her tunic. “I just freaked when I saw all the corrections that she wanted. It just…overwhelmed me. And then I started to think that maybe I shouldn’t be doing this, you know? That maybe the editor was right.”

  “What do you mean the editor was right? They bought your book. They bought two future books from you. She wasn’t setting you up to fail, Maggie! She was helping you get published.”

  “Don’t you think I see that now? Now, when she’s not taking my phone calls anymore? Now, when my contract is voided and my name is shit in the world of New York publishing?”

  “All right, sweetie. I guess learning the lesson is what’s important. At least someone liked your writing well enough to buy it.”

  “Yeah, now all I have to do is have lightning strike twice in the same place and not throw it away with both hands when it does.”

  Grace looked over at her friend and smiled sadly. “Something like that.”

  “Your phone’s vibrating,” Maggie said distractedly.

  “Do you mind getting it, darling? I’ve got my hands full just figuring out the exit to St-Buvard.”

  “That’s not for ages yet,” Maggie said, as she punched on the phone.

  “Hello? Oh, hey, Danielle. Everything okay?”

  Grace frowned and glanced at Maggie questioningly. Maggie held up a finger to her while she listened on the phone.

  “Okay, let me ask her,” she said. “Danielle says Jean-Luc says that Zou-zou is getting hungry and does she take her bottle warm or chilled?”

  Grace snorted and Maggie couldn’t help but notice that she even did that adorably. “Tell her to tell him that it doesn’t matter. I’m usually lucky to get the carton all the way out of the fridge before she’s guzzling it down. Tell him not to bother heating it.”

  “Did you hear that, Danielle?” Maggie said.

  In all his years, never would Jean-Luc have imagined he would some day be in the position he now found himself in. Contorted, on the floor, his rump high in the air with a squealing two-year old bouncing on his back, her little heels digging into his ribs, Jean-Luc had to admit he had never been happier.

  His friends down at Le Canard would think he had lost his mind. A bachelor well into his sixties before he finally married, Jean-Luc had never known or expected the experience of fatherhood. He had long accepted that there would be no children to whom he might pass on what little wisdom he had, so the thought that the joys and pleasure of being a grandfather might yet lie in store for him had never occurred to him.

  He gathered his giggling jockey up into his arms and gave her a wet kiss on her forehead. “Snack, Zou-zou?” he said. “Or read a book?”

  “Snack! Snack! Snack!” the little girl sang, wrapping her chubby arms around his neck.

  “I agree,” he said. “I have already called Grandmama Danielle this morning to ask how Mademoiselle likes her milk. Milk is a good snack for Zou-zou, yes?”

  Zou-zou began counting her fingers and singing as Jean-Luc carried her into the Dernier kitchen—a marvel of gleaming stainless steel, burnished hardwood and gleaming cop
per pots hanging from an overhead rack the size of a small Peugeot.

  Jean-Luc was a farmer. His father had been a farmer. His brother, ah, well. Jean-Luc looked at the chubby baby in the crook of his arm, her fat little legs wrapped around his skinny hip as if it were she who orchestrated her perch and not he. Someday he would tell her about his brother. It was a fine story. A sad story, to be sure, but majestic in its sadness.

  Young people today weren’t interested in the war, at least not that war. They cared little about who fought, or who died, so that they might enjoy their iPods and video games. Zou-zou began to fuss and he bounced her on his hip to distract her. Someday, she would want to hear about Grandpapa’s brother, the war hero. Someday, she would ask to hear the whole story again and again.

  “Mon lait, Papa,” she said to him. “Zou-zou a faim!”

  “I know you are, cherub,” Jean-Luc said holding her in one arm and her empty bottle in his free hand. “You will let Papa fix it for you, eh? Oui?”

  “Now, Papa! Zou-zou a faim now!”

  Jean-Luc loved that she was always hungry. He and Laurent had laughed about that. It meant that you could always make her happy just by feeding her. He set her on the floor and she instantly plopped down onto her bottom.

  Nearly seventy years old and never blessed, until his precious Danielle, with a wife or children, no one was more astounded than Jean-Luc at the pull this little one had on his heart. When she looked at him with those saucer-big blue eyes, he was powerless to deny her anything. He chuckled, remembering his conversation with Danielle earlier that morning.

  “Children won’t thank you for giving them everything they want, Jean-Luc,” she had admonished. “Children need boundaries, not endless chocolate bon-bons.”

  “Oh, yes, my dearest, like you do with her?”

  He loved to tease her and they had laughed well at that. Zou-zou was their first, their only, grandbaby. And while it was true, she was not blood related to them, she was theirs, nonetheless.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a piercing shriek from the floor.

  “Ma petite,” he exclaimed. “Papa is doing it as quickly as he can!”