It wasn’t fair. Haley would give her soul to have a little one such as this—would never even run to the grocery store without him, let alone gallivant up and down the French coast for three days. She snuggled Jemmy tighter in her arms and felt the sun’s rays warm the top of her head.
My time will come, she reminded herself as she reached out to the patio table to make sure the baby monitor was still on. Zouzou was a good little napper, but that didn’t mean Haley wanted her waking up by herself in her room, regardless of what Grace said. Haley would give her ten more minutes and then go up to her.
One of these days, I’ll have a house full of children of my own and wonder what I ever did with myself when I was childless.
Even the word, said silently in her head, caused a faint chill to run down her arms. Childless. She glanced involuntarily at the bedroom window where she and Ben slept. The chill deepened and she had to stop herself from rubbing her arms. It wasn’t cold, she admonished herself. It was a beautiful sunny day deep in the south of France.
But Haley’s eyes didn’t leave the bedroom window, and while she was able to prevent herself from disturbing the baby by rubbing the goose bumps on her arms, she wasn’t quite able to stop the feeling of acrimony when she thought of her husband.
*****
Laurent and Maggie stopped for a late lunch of mussels and pommes frites with a very good bottle of Rosé and then drove the coastal road south to Marseille. Maggie had assuaged Laurent’s concern about her cut (“I tripped over my suitcase and fell into an outdoor postcard carousel”) and congratulated herself for not misrepresenting the truth too badly. She rationalized that she knew she couldn’t avoid his worrying about her safety, but the least she could do was not make it any harder on him.
She sent a group text to Randall and Dee-Dee explaining that she and Laurent would be briefly rejoining the tour. Randal responded by sending directions to a restaurant in Marseille.
Once in the town center, Laurent turned onto the Boulevard la Canebière. The street was teeming with tourists, who reflected a strong Arab presence. Maggie knew Marseille had a huge Moroccan population and they seemed out in force today. She looked at the navigation tool on her smartphone.
“Turn left on the Rue Longue des Capucins,” she said. “The restaurant should be on our right.”
Laurent slowed for the turn. His phone rang in the console, but when she went to reach for it he snapped it up.
“Whoa, Tiger,” Maggie said. “Your girlfriend should know better than to call you in the daytime.”
“I always enjoy your humor,” Laurent said, looking at the screen of his phone.
“Everything okay?”
He tucked the phone away in the pocket of the driver’s side door, his face unreadable. “Bien sûr,” he said. “Just something about the vineyard.”
“Isn’t it always? Oh, there it is on the right. That’s Randall standing out on the sidewalk.”
Laurent pulled up to the curb and stopped. Maggie turned to him in surprise.
“You’re not going to park?” she said.
Randall came over to the car and Maggie rolled down the window, still waiting to hear Laurent’s answer.
“Glad you could make it,” Randall said, his face flushed and his eyes darting from Maggie to Laurent.
He probably thinks I brought my husband here to beat the crap out of him, Maggie thought with satisfaction. Let him stew a bit.
“Bonjour,” Laurent said to him through the window before turning to Maggie. “I must get back to St-Buvard.”
“But we just got here!”
“Enjoy your day. When you’re finished, take the train to Arles. I will pick you up at the station this evening.”
“Are you serious? What’s going on? What was that call about?”
“It was nothing, chérie. Go on now.”
Randall piped up. “We can give her a ride to the train station. No problem.”
“Bon,” Laurent said, leaning across Maggie to open her door. “Call me when you are there. If I can’t meet you—”
“What do you mean if you can’t meet me?”
“I have a sudden engagement that may go into the evening.”
“Laurent, you are so lucky I’m not the jealous type because you are being seriously mysterious and I don’t mean that in a good way.”
“If Maggie is free tonight,” Randall said, looking over his shoulder where Desiree appeared in the doorway of the restaurant, “and she could possibly stay on one more night, we’re doing the final show from Arles tomorrow. And then we can take her straight to her front door in St-Buvard.”
Maggie stared at Randall in surprise but Laurent didn’t hesitate.
“Bon,” he said, unhooking Maggie’s seatbelt. “Her bag is in the backseat.”
Maggie watched in astonishment as her husband worked in tandem with Randall to hustle her out of the car and onto the street. Laurent gave her a quick kiss before she climbed out of the car and then drove away.
She stood on the sidewalk watching his taillights disappear in the crowded street.
“Wow. He’s a big guy,” Randall said as he picked up Maggie’s bag.
She turned to him. “I still might call the cops,” she said. “Just watch yourself.”
“I always do, my dear,” he said, sweeping an arm out to indicate she should precede him into the restaurant. Desiree stood to the side to let her pass, and when Maggie looked into her face she saw that Desiree was smiling.
It was not a nice smile.
No words needed to be exchanged. It was as clear to Maggie that Desiree had followed her to Nice and stolen her purse as if the Frenchwoman had stood up and admitted it to her face.
Desiree killed Lanie and now had possession of the only piece of evidence that proved it.
Maggie’s stomach roiled as she passed the Frenchwoman, but she straightened her shoulders and marched into the darkened interior. It was an African restaurant and smelled of incense mixed with the fragrance of curry, onions and many unidentifiable spices.
Maggie allowed her eyes to adjust to the dark until she saw a large round table with the others gathered around it. Three bottles of wine pinned the center, with multiple glasses in front of Jim and Janet. Jim sat with his head propped up on an unsteady elbow and Maggie saw Janet’s eyes glittering with excitement from six feet away.
“You came back!” Janet said, clearly drunk. “You’ll want to meet our guest of honor. Or is that the reason you came back? It would be for me.”
Maggie saw the young man sitting to Janet’s right—the infamous Olivier, she thought as she took a seat next to him. Desiree and Randall rejoined the table.
Maggie wasn’t surprised that her reentry to the group had been treated with little fanfare. In fact, she preferred it that way. Except for smug glances in her direction, Desiree largely ignored her, spending the rest of the afternoon nearly sitting on top of Randall at the table. From what Maggie could see, the Frenchwoman ate very little.
Maybe that’s how French women really stay slim, Maggie thought, pulling at her now snug waistband. They just don’t eat. Big secret.
“Bonjour, Madame,” Olivier said to Maggie. His easy smile made his handsome face even more appealing. He was dark-haired with cerulean blue eyes and full lips. Maggie couldn’t help but think, Well done, Lanie.
“Bonjour,” Maggie said. “You’re Olivier, I guess.”
“Oui.” As if the introduction clearly came with reason to sober his happy expression, he promptly frowned.
“I’m so sorry about Lanie,” Maggie said, wondering if anyone else had thought to offer him condolences. Innocent until proven guilty, she reminded herself.
“Merci, Madame,” he said solemnly.
“Call me Maggie.”
“Maggie,” Dee-Dee said, slurring the word just a bit. “I got a new cell phone.” She held up a phone with a pink fuzzy cover on it.
“I know. We’ve been texting back and forth, remember?”
“Oh, right. Also? I’m doing the final presentation tomorrow. Olivier will be able to tape it too. I’m so excited.”
“Oh, that’s cool,” Maggie said, her glance taking in Desiree, who seemed to be working hard at ignoring the conversation by burying her face in her wineglass. “Where?”
“The Arles Amphitheater,” Dee-Dee said. “I’ve got a kick-ass presentation, too. Everyone’s going to love it.”
Desiree snorted but said nothing.
A waiter approached the table with a wide tray of steaming plates and began distributing dishes around the table. Plates of bourek and pastilla wraps made the rounds, with everyone heaping their plates with the fragrant potato wraps. Although she and Laurent had eaten not two hours earlier, Maggie felt her mouth water at the overpowering scent of spicy chicken, almonds, and onions. She put two wraps on her plate and prayed they weren’t more than five hundred calories a serving.
She turned to Olivier, who poured a glass of wine and placed it in front of her.
“Thank you,” she said. “So did you know they’d put you straight to work when you rejoined the tour?”
Olivier shrugged. “Bob said I always had a job. I need the money.”
“Did I hear right,” Maggie asked him, “that it was Annie who helped you?”
“She is like a mother to me. A wonderful woman.” His eyes lit up as he spoke and Maggie was struck by how young he really was and what a terrible ordeal the last few days must have been for him.
“Do you have family in France?” she asked. “I think Annie said you were from Algiers?”
“No, no family here,” he said sadly. “And now I am grateful for that so they do not see me imprisoned like a dog.”
“When do you have to go back to Nice?”
“My lawyer said he would call me.”
Maggie was aware that the table had gotten noisier. Only Desiree spoke French well enough to understand her conversation with Olivier, and she was far enough across the table that Maggie didn’t worry about her overhearing. Even so, she moved her chair closer to him and lowered her voice.
“I need to ask you, Olivier, if you have any idea of who might have hurt Lanie that night.”
Olivier put down the wrap he’d been about to take a bite out of and faced Maggie earnestly. “I know exactly who killed my precious love,” he said, tears jumping to his eyes and emotion turning his hoarse whisper ragged. He fought for control and drank down the contents of his wineglass before putting his face close to Maggie’s ear. “She calls herself French, but her real name is murderer.”
When Maggie pulled back to look into his eyes, she saw him glance at the head of the table…where Desiree sat licking grease from her fingers.
*****
It had to be the noisiest hotel Maggie had ever attempted to sleep in. She sat up in her bed and worked to push her earplugs in tighter. She wasn’t sure what kind of rooms the rest of the people on the tour had ended up with, but hers had definitely been an afterthought. Her bed—a twin with a wilted comforter that made her wonder if the linens had been changed in the last month—was shoved up against the window facing the street.
She touched the wall and wasn’t surprised to feel it vibrate with the sound of the live music coming from the bar across the street. A scream, muffled only by the closed window and the shouts from the other street revelers, made Maggie hold her breath until it ended in hysterical laughing. She glanced at her phone on the nightstand. The screen read three o’clock. That meant nine o’clock Annie’s time, she thought.
Did she have any real news to tell her? She swung her legs out of bed and went to the room refrigerator for a cola. She opened it. Empty. Sighing, she groped in the semi-darkness for her robe and found her slippers.
Maggie could tell Annie that she finally met Olivier and she saw why Annie thought he was innocent. He seemed like a really nice guy. She opened her hotel room door and peered down the hall. Doesn’t seem like much of a report, though.
She turned back to the room and picked up a handful of euros and her room key and dropped them in her robe pocket and then slipped out the door into the hallway. She remembered seeing a vending machine down past the elevators. She had no idea if the other members of the tour group were even on her floor but, if so, she strongly preferred not to accidentally run into any of them.
The vending machine stuck out into the hallway like an obscene road bump. Maggie shook her head, wondering how anybody managed to get past it with suitcases in tow. The minute she reached it, she heard a footstep on the far side of it.
Crap. Anybody out and wandering the halls of this dump at three in the morning is probably not somebody I want to bump into. She tucked herself into the shadow of the vending machine to wait for whomever it was to pass.
It had always been Maggie’s belief that whispering was more noticeable than just speaking in a low voice. She had that theory confirmed the longer she stood there.
“Rot in hell, bitch,” a familiar voice mumbled loudly. “Glad you’re dead. I’ll show you blackmail.”
Maggie’s scalp crawled. It was Jim. Drunk and clearly half out of his mind, but definitely him.
Was he talking about Lanie? Maggie heard a door creak open on the other side of the machine and held her breath to be able to hear better.
“Get in here, you old fool. What are you doing out there confessing to the world?”
Janet’s voice.
“Your fault,” Jim said loudly, not bothering to whisper any longer. “I told her. I said some things follow naturally, as dawn follows night. I told her that. Bitches die bashed to death in their own bathwater.”
“Shut up! You’ll wake the whole hotel,” Janet hissed, her whispered voice louder and more distinct than Jim’s.
“As natural as the consequence of being an evil bitch,” Jim said, the tail end of his words muffled as he entered the room before the door slammed shut. Maggie eased out the breath she was holding.
Was Lanie blackmailing Jim?
She left the shadows and tiptoed back to her room, her thirst forgotten. She settled back on her bed still wearing her robe, her mind spinning and the sounds of the street party still throbbing through her wall. She wouldn’t call Annie tonight after all. Not yet.
Not until she found out why Lanie was blackmailing Jim.
And if it had been enough for him to want her dead.
*****
God knows he didn’t want to have to do this. Ben went to his wife’s leather valise and felt in the inside the zippered panel. If that arrogant Frenchman had left him any alternative at all, he wouldn’t have to. The pocket held only one long envelope with several sheets of paper inside. At first he hadn’t seen the point of all the research—none of it cheap and all of it time-consuming—but he was glad now that he had it. He pulled the envelope out and took a step toward the window and looked out.
Haley was sitting under a beech tree with both children. They should pay her by the hour. He took a quick step backward in case she looked up. Satisfied that she was otherwise engaged at least for the present, he went to the dresser in the bedroom and found a letter opener in the top drawer.
He slit the envelope open and withdrew the folded sheets of paper inside. One was a photograph. He didn’t bother looking at it. He knew what it showed. Another was an old copy, taken from microfiche, and he treated it gently. As far as he knew these were all originals. Under the circumstances, copies would be useless. They wouldn’t stand up in court and they wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny that they hadn’t been altered. These few pages, even old and damaged, were worth everything to him. Replacing them would be next to impossible. It had taken nearly a year of single-minded, obsessive daily research to obtain these.
He refolded the sheets and tucked them back away then slid the envelope into his front coat pocket.
Why did he feel guilty about this? What possible reason could he have for not reveling in his triumph?
He heard the sound of his nephew squeal with laugh
ter and his heart squeezed at the sound. The boy looked like his father, but there was something in the eyes…something that told Ben the child was a Newberry where it counted.
He touched the envelope through the silk of his jacket lining and looked out the window to the long undulating horizon of hectare after hectare of lush vineyard. These documents will destroy everything I see now. The vineyard, the house, the marriage.
Maggie’s happiness.
He allowed a tremor of guilt to ripple through his stomach, then shook it off.
In the end, she’ll thank me. It doesn’t matter that this is now the only way for me to avoid prison. Think of that! That frog bastard would rather see me rot in jail than sign a simple piece of paper that would hardly change his life at all, except to make him richer.
No, Dernier deserved this. It was the bed he’d made and now he could lie in it. As for Maggie, it was her own self-absorption and willfulness that put her in the bed next to him.
Ben hesitated as he turned to exit the room, his hand resting on the bedpost. Would Maggie and his father ever forgive him? It’s true the old man was fond of Dernier, but after all…
Ben tightened his grip on the bedpost and stuck his jaw out.
… I am blood.
Fourteen
Maggie stared at Janet and Jim as they sat in the breakfast room of the hotel. Jim looked ill and Maggie was frankly surprised to see him up and about this early. He’d sounded practically deranged last night. Janet was buttering her croissant and looking around the cramped dining room as if comparing it to the Waldorf. Her mouth was twisted into a grimace of distaste.
Must suck to have to pretend to be rich, Maggie thought, sipping her café crème. She knew she probably should’ve had an espresso instead. Would’ve saved about a thousand calories, but since she was putting butter and jam on her croissants this morning she thought it best to accept her current what-the-hell dietary attitude and just have the drink she really wanted.
Olivier sat by the window with Dee-Dee, which Maggie thought was nice of him. After the duck-maiming incident in Cassis it appeared that even the other crazies in the group were giving Dee-Dee a wide berth. She’d brought the definition of whack-job to a whole new level. Even so, Maggie hated seeing how haunted and wistful the woman always looked.
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