“As per usual,” Grace said with a smile.
“It was your relentlessness, in the end, that moved the boulder,” Roger said as he walked through the door. He went to Julia and held out his hand. “Je suis desolée,” he said. “Again, please forgive my error.”
Julia shook his hand and then hurriedly retreated back to Mathieu, where she wrapped her hands around his arm. She turned to Maggie. “I’ll be by when you and the little sausage are home, okay?”
“Yeah, that’ll be good. Bring Mushroom Boy with you. I seriously owe him one.”
“Ciao,” Mathieu said, lighting up the room with the first smile Maggie had ever seen him give.
When they left, Roger came over to Maggie and peered into the blankets of the newest Dernier. “So,” he said. “A boy.”
“Yep.”
“Good job.”
“I’m pretty sure that part was out of my hands.”
“Your husband must be very proud.”
“Yeah, he’s decided to keep me a little longer.”
“I will never understand your sense of humor.”
“I know.”
“Do you two want to be alone?
“Knock it off, Grace. You’ve met Inspecteur Bedard, haven’t you?”
“Years ago,” Grace said, holding out her hand. “I had forgotten how positively dishy he was. Oops, did I say that out loud?”
Roger stared at Grace with his mouth agape and Maggie burst out laughing.
“Go easy on him, Grace,” she said. “He’s easily confused.”
Roger cleared his throat and turned his attention back to Maggie, giving Grace one more curious look. “Do you want to talk of shopping?”
“Okay, I’m almost positive you mean talk shop, and hell yes, I do. What have you got?”
Roger crossed his arms against his chest. “Well, first of all, we found Florian Tatois.”
“You did? How far did he get? Did you get him on that steamer out of Marseilles I told you about? Has he formally confessed?”
“He did not get very far at all.”
“It’s been twelve hours! I could walk to Marseilles in twelve hours!”
“We had an all points bulletin out on him, as you know, but when we went to process the crime scene at the crash site…”
“Oh, God.”
“…we found him pinned beneath the wreckage.”
Maggie chewed her bottom lip and watched Roger’s face. She looked down on the cherubic face of her little son and the tension in her brow relaxed. “How did that happen, do you think?” she asked quietly.
“Well, clearly, he got himself caught on the tractor hitch on the back of the car.” Roger shrugged.
“Is he alive?” Maggie asked.
“Somewhat.”
“I love the French,” she said to Grace. She turned back to Roger. “So, no confession.”
“No. But it doesn’t matter. As you saw, Madame Patrick goes free and there are no other suspects. His confession to you fits the facts of the case.”
“How is it you think I solved this case? I was clueless until the murderer was sharpening his butcher knife over me.”
“It’s just as I said. Your relentless probing unsettled everyone, most particularly the murderer. Even with a suspect in police custody he didn’t feel comfortable. It is one of your great gifts, Maggie. The ability to badger people into doing crazy things.”
“Aw, you old flatterer,” Maggie said.
“But not far wrong,” Grace said.
“I forgot you were still here, Grace.”
“And you said yourself,” Roger continued, “that when you saw my text that Annette had been murdered you knew immediately the killer must be Florian Tatois.”
“Sure.”
Roger shrugged. “I did not make that immediate connection, you see.”
“That’s because you weren’t working the whole inheritance angle like I was. Once you focus on that, it’s obvious.”
“That’s just the point. I should have been working all the angles.”
“Yeah, but I had a motive, Roger. I was trying to prove my friend innocent.”
“I too have a motive, Maggie, although I can understand why you might not realize it. I am supposed to be trying to get the actual perpetrator of the crime.”
Maggie shifted the soft, small weight of her little lad in her arms and folded back his blanket to better see his face.
“How did it go down with Annette?” she asked quietly.
“Are you sure you want to hear it? Today?”
“I’d just as soon hear it and then never have to hear any of it ever again.”
Roger sighed. “She was strangled in her apartment. The forensic evidence, I’m sure, will confirm the confession Tatois made to you.”
“And she died immediately?”
Roger frowned. “Of course. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that Florrie hoped Lily would hang on longer than she did. If her designated heir died before her…”
“Oh, I see what you mean. I do not know who inherits now. It won’t be Michelle through Annette—since Annette died first—unless Michelle is Lily’s third choice beneficiary.”
“I don’t suppose it matters. There’s no money to inherit anyway,” Maggie said. “Was Annette’s boyfriend all strung out, I guess?”
“Her boyfriend?”
“You don’t have to be coy, Roger. We figured out that Annette was boffing someone in the police department.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Okay, have it your way.”
The door from the hallway pushed open and Laurent entered the room carrying a large grocery bag, his brown hair long and ruffled around his face. It must be windy outside, Maggie thought with a smile when she saw him. He and Roger shook hands.
“Handsome boy you got there,” Roger said to him.
Laurent accepted his congratulations, then gave Maggie a quick kiss and murmured something to the baby in French before setting out the food on Maggie’s bedside tray.
Grace peered into the bag. “Ohhh, religieuse au chocolat!” she said. “Laurent where ever did you get them at this hour?” Grace pulled out a large chocolate éclair from its paper sheathe. “You know your wife’s passions, that’s for sure.”
“Laurent’s a magician,” Maggie said. She looked up from gazing at her baby’s face, a smile on her lips, and locked eyes with Roger. The moment was quick and then gone. Roger clapped his hands in a gesture that heralded he was about to leave.
“Oh, won’t you stay for some boulette d’Avesnes?” Grace said, still rifling through the grocery bag. “I can’t imagine you’ll ever see such a thing in a hospital again.”
“No, no,” he said. “I too have a young one who awaits me at home. I just wanted to say, before we wrap this up, formally, that I am sorry, Maggie for not working more closely with you on this.”
“That’s okay, Roger.”
“No, no it really isn’t. Nobody knows better than I that, at the very least, if you’d had my help, we would’ve solved this murder much faster, and without your nearly having to have your baby in a ditch beside the road.”
“Or in the smoking hulk of a car at the bottom of a cliff,” Grace said under her breath.
“Anyway, I want you to know, and this I swear to you—next time we will work together.” He glanced at Laurent, who paused in his unpacking but whose expression was unreadable. “If your husband approves, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” Grace said.
“Shut up, Grace,” Maggie said. “And thank you, Roger. I look forward to that.”
“Oh, one more thing,” Roger said as he was leaving. “I arrested Michelle Tatois this morning.”
“You’re kidding. What for?”
“You go on, Inspecteur.” Grace said to him, smiling sweetly. “I’ll fill her in on the details. But thank you for your prompt attention to that.”
Roger nodded to Laurent and then Maggie, and finally to Grace
, where the corner of his smile tweaked noticeably higher, and then left.
“What details?”
“A little matter of an attempted poisoning with the idiot girl’s fingerprints all over the milk bottles and your doorknobs and mailbox and God knows what else.”
“Poisoning? When?”
“Well, I’m not sure when she did it,” Grace said, “but yesterday Jean-Luc said the milk smelled bad and I found bleach stains on the counter where he’d spilled it trying to get it into Zou-zou’s bottle.”
Maggie whistled and the baby instantly screwed up his face and let out an annoyed whimper. She jostled him to settle him down again.
“So it looks as if the whole troublesome Tatois clan is either dead or in jail,” Grace said.
“Or on life support,” Maggie said.
“I think Roger has a point, though.” Grace said, “You do have a gift for unsettling people, darling.”
“Bedard said that?” Laurent said.
“He did. Would you agree, dearest?” Maggie said, smiling up at Laurent as he leaned over her.
“Absolument.” He kissed her soundly.
After their picnic supper, Grace left with the car to go back to Domaine St-Buvard where Danielle and Jean-Luc waited with Zou-zou, and Laurent settled into an armchair next to the bed with his son in his arms.
“He looks like you,” Maggie said.
“Non, he looks like his beautiful Maman.”
“Well, he’s ours and that’s all that matters. I’m so happy, Laurent.”
“Et moi, aussi, chérie,” he said. “Oh! I pulled your email messages from your laptop at home.”
“Anything interesting?”
He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to her. “Your editor apologizes for not getting back to you. She was having emergency appendix surgery.”
Maggie read the printed email in amazement, her mouth open. She looked at Laurent, who was totally focused on his child, and then back at the paper. “I’m going to have it all,” she said. “I’m really going to have it all.”
“Bien sûr, chérie,” Laurent said, looking up at her with a smile. “Haven’t I been telling you that all along?”
Maggie smiled at him, watching him hold their son, her heart so full of joy she fought back tears. After a moment, she said, “But what you haven’t told me yet is how you ended up coming to my rescue driving Jean-Luc’s car.”
“I met Danielle on the road coming back from Lily’s.”
“You were on foot?”
Laurent shrugged, his concentration on his son. Maggie watched him pick up the baby’s tiny hand and kiss his fingers.
“How did you know how to find me?”
“I went to Florrie’s bar first. Some kids on bicycles said they saw a man and a fat lady get in a car going south toward the D7.”
“Thanks for that. So you headed toward Aix?”
“Oui. When I got to the curve above Pontès, I just followed the fireball off the first exit. It was like a beacon leading me to you, ma chère. Always I am seeing explosions and destruction in your path. It is like the little crumbs of Hansel and Gretel.”
“Very funny. But that cliff is a good thirty minutes from Florrie’s bar. How did you get there in ten?”
“I drove very fast.”
“I can’t believe how everything turned out,” Maggie said, her eyes filling again.
Laurent looked up and smiled at her. “Je sais.”
“And thank you for working things out with Roger. It’s helpful to have a friend on the police force. Even if he is terrible at his job.”
“Oui. But he is moving ever steadily up the ladder. Someday he will be Commissariat de Police…as long as you are doing his work for him, of course.” Laurent stood up and settled the sleeping baby back in his bassinet.
“This is the last time, Laurent. I promise. Never again.”
“Shhh, Maggie,” Laurent said with a wry grin. He leaned over her and tilted her face toward his to kiss her. “Let us not begin young Jean-Michael’s life by having him hear his Maman tell outrageous lies to his Papa, eh?”
Interested in seeing what happens next to Maggie?
Check out Murder in Nice, Book 6 in the series!
If you’d like to be notified when each of next books in this series comes out, sign up here:
http://eepurl.com/LIUuj
If you are new to this mystery series, you might want to see how it all began in Murder in the South of France, available free wherever ebooks are sold.
Books 7 & 8 in the Maggie Mystery series—Murder à la Mode and Murder in the Latin Quarter—will release April and July 2015.
About the Author
Susan Kiernan-Lewis lives in Ponte Vedra, Florida and writes about Europe, mysteries and romance. Like many authors, Susan depends on the reviews and word of mouth referrals of her readers. If you enjoyed Murder in Aix, please consider leaving a review saying so on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com or Goodreads.com.
Check out Susan’s website at susankiernanlewis.com and feel free to contact her at [email protected].
Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) Page 27