Murder in Nice

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  “Only you didn’t go?”

  “Non. I had an errand to run. When I returned, I felt it would be too late to disturb her.”

  “But if she was expecting you, would you really have been disturbing her?”

  “Why all these questions? This is what the police asked me.”

  “Sorry. It’s just that I got the idea that Lanie wasn’t expecting a visit from you. It was late when she took her bath and she had no makeup on.”

  “The light sucks here,” Olivier said, picking up the tripod and collapsing the legs into one. The flashlight, still attached to it, bounced an erratic beam crazily around the stone room. Maggie’s stomach lurched to watch it.

  “You want to set up somewhere else?” she asked.

  “Where the hell are they?” he said, looking over his shoulder toward the door.

  “I was wondering the same thing.”

  “You are cold, Maggie?”

  “Aren’t you? It’s like a walk-in freezer in here.”

  “During the Protestant Reformation, the Abbaye was used to imprison suspected Protestants.” Olivier replaced the lens cap on the camera, his eyes focused on the task. “It is said that any poor soul left in the abbey’s dungeon, even on the hottest day of the year, would perish from the cold within fifteen hours.”

  “Wow. You really know your history, Olivier. You could give the tour.”

  “I overheard Desiree rehearsing it.”

  “Really? When was that? Because I thought she only rehearsed alone in her hotel room.”

  Olivier looked at Maggie and she was struck by how flat his eyes were. For a moment, she wondered if he might be feeling ill. Suddenly, in one swift movement, he unsnapped the light from the tripod and shoved it into her hands. “Wait here,” he said, then turned and walked to the main entrance and disappeared around the corner.

  Maggie was so startled that she stood holding the light and gaping after him for a full five seconds before breaking into a run to where he had gone. Before she reached the outer hallway leading to the entrance, her ears told her what her mind could not believe.

  He had slammed the door behind him.

  Eighteen

  This isn’t happening. It can’t be.

  The door was too heavy for Olivier to have accidentally shut it. And it didn’t close on its own.

  Maggie stood in front of the door, her hands against the heavy wood, her cheek pressed against it.

  Why would Olivier shut her in here? Was he about to do something he didn’t want her to see? That must be it. She turned to look behind her and flashed the beam of her light upward but the darkness came within feet of her.

  Does that make sense? If he doesn’t somehow kill or neutralize the others, then there were five people out there who knew she was locked in here! Her hands felt damp, and without looking at them she knew they were trembling.

  Olivier knew she was in here. Her hand traced the wood grain in the door and felt along the hard iron hinges with her nails.

  Olivier had put her in here.

  Why? Were they all in on it? What possible reason? Were they all in on Lanie’s murder? And somehow I got too close to the truth? Maggie heard the sound of her own heartbeat thrashing in her ears. She felt a sudden urge to sit down before her legs gave out on her.

  Would Laurent miss her yet? And come looking for her? What would they do with her purse? Her bags?

  She took a step back from the massive door and tried to breathe slowly to combat the panic. They were either going to come and let her out or they weren’t, she reasoned. If they come back, my problem is solved. If they don’t… She rubbed her free hand against her jeans and was surprised to feel even in the cold that it was damp with perspiration.

  If they don’t, I’ll just have to find another way out.

  She directed her light in the direction she’d come and felt the coldness permeate her bones. Something unimaginable, untouchable was urging her to stay back, to go no further. She hesitated. Staying in front of the door wouldn’t help her get out. She took two steps toward the cloister, the muffled sounds of her shoes and her pounding heart the only noise in her head.

  The camera bag! Olivier had left it behind. There might be a cell phone in it. Maggie hurried back to the cloister. Forcing herself to ignore the ghostly grotto walls that engulfed her, she shone the beam in front of her and ran to the bag. Setting the light down so its beam was directed downward, she threw back the flap of the bag and dug into it. There was an energy bar, a lens cap, and a wad of papers. In frustration, Maggie emptied the bag onto the slate floor, hearing the sounds as the contents hit the ground as eerie preludes to some low-budget horror movie about to inch toward its climax.

  There was nothing in the bag that could help her. Maggie felt a wave of nausea thunder through her and she sat on the floor to steady herself until it passed. This is panic, pure and simple, she admonished herself. And panic was the enemy to planning and reason. Panic was not going to get her out of here.

  When her stomach settled, she stuck the energy bar in her sweater pocket and picked up the papers. She shined the light on them and saw they were a set of three sheets stapled together and folded into a tri-fold. The words were in French. The title of the pages read, L'Abbaye des Martyrs. Scanning the document, she saw it was a description of the abbey. Maggie flipped to the back sheet, where someone had written in an obviously female hand: remember to stand over the crypt when talking about the hermitage.

  Maggie looked away from the paper. These were Desiree’s notes for the presentation. She looked toward the entrance hall. Unless she’s doing it outside, in which case I wouldn’t hear her, Desiree is not giving the presentation…but she clearly intended to. Maggie looked back at the sheet.

  Why are Desiree’s notes in Olivier’s camera bag?

  *****

  Maggie sat in the dark with her back against the north wall of the cloister. She wanted to preserve the light battery for as long as possible. How she wished she wore a watch like in the days before she used her cell phone for telling time. Laurent still wore one because he wasn’t tied to his smartphone like she was. She thought back to the moment when Olivier told her she didn’t need her purse.

  No purse, no cell phone.

  She figured she had been in here at least an hour, maybe more. And still Olivier hadn’t returned. So he was likely gone with the others. And he wasn’t coming back. This wasn’t a joke, sick or otherwise. This was Olivier trying to…get rid of her? Kill her?

  She glanced at the camera bag. If Olivier and Desiree are together, does that mean Olivier was in on the attack on Dee-Dee?

  How stupid can I be? Because I liked him—just like Annie—I didn’t want to believe he could be guilty.

  So did Olivier kill Lanie after all?

  She rubbed her hands together, trying to create some kind of friction or warmth. Her teeth chattered. Olivier had said they were in the cloister, whatever that was. Were the cloister and the dungeon the same thing? Did the same warning go for the cloister about not staying here longer than fifteen hours if you didn’t want to die a freezie-pop?

  She picked up Desiree’s notes and snapped the light back on. Waiting for rescue in the cloister was as stupid as waiting for rescue by the door. If Maggie was going to find a way out, she needed to get off her butt and find it.

  While there wasn’t a map in the notes, Maggie thought the descriptions might help to at least orient her. She read the first page and then looked around where she was sitting. It appeared she was in the north gallery of the cloister. She stood and aimed the light above her head, where she saw leaping traverse arches supported by ornate brackets that were decorated with elaborate carvings.

  Weird, she thought, flicking the light over the carvings. Everything from the floor to ten feet up was barren and bald, with all the fancywork happening way over your head where nobody could see it. Except the angels. Her beam caught the carving of a leering maw of a monster and she nearly dropped the light. When sh
e steadied her arm, she saw the monster was devouring a man whole.

  Lovely. I’m sure that got everyone in the mood to pray.

  Her fingers and toes were tingling painfully and she rubbed her fists against her slacks to relieve them.

  Some of the other columns and brackets showed carvings of human heads. Many appeared to be in distress, others were outright screaming in agony.

  None of this is helping. She eyed the small window over the arches. I can’t climb up there. Her eyes flicked to the stone archway that led out of the cloister. It was darkened and she had no idea where it led. But she also knew staying in the cloister wasn’t getting her any closer to getting out. She glanced down at the paper in her hand.

  Built in 1030, the dungeon in Saint Jean’s chapel is the oldest existing part of the abbey. It is situated off the cloister and consists of a narthex with two parallel naves—the older one cut into solid rock and leading to the cemetery.

  Maggie felt her scalp prickle. She did not want to go there. If she knew anything, she knew she did not want to go there. She looked again at the dark archway. But a cemetery is usually outside, isn’t it?

  She shone the light into the archway and realized the beam had dimmed considerably. She figured if she and Olivier had entered the abbey around nine o’clock, with the summer sun just setting, and she’d been in here another hour, then she had at least seven hours of the darkest part of the night left.

  Her light wasn’t going to last one more.

  A fissure of fear pierced her and the need to hurry fluttered through her chest.

  That’s panic. Don’t pay attention to it. Don’t give in to it. She walked to the archway, her wavering light beam weakly piercing the darkness before her, and entered it.

  It was a long tunnel of stone. The obviously colder temperature wrapped around her immediately. No matter how far she held her arm out, her light wouldn’t reveal an end to her path, just more darkness. Every step she took she found herself imagining she would suddenly come upon a skeleton grinning at her from a cage hanging from the stonewalls.

  One of the poor Protestants. She unconsciously crossed herself. But this is the only passageway from the cloister. The notes say it leads to the dungeon in Saint Jean’s chapel.

  Desiree’s notes, she reminded herself. Could they have been planted for her to find? And was she now walking right into a trap they’d laid for her?

  Stop it. They’re not that smart. If you can’t trust the stupid notes, you’ve got nothing.

  Careful where she placed her feet but mindful of the minutes she had remaining with the light—What would I do if it quits on me right now? Feel my way through the tunnel?—Maggie walked quickly, her shoulder once scraping the wall when she didn’t see the tunnel curving around until it opened onto a room flooded with moonlight.

  She ran into the room, desperate for the light and space it afforded after the dark, narrow tunnel and felt the chill of a hundred opened graves against her bare skin. An arcade of rounded Romanesque arches rested on columns that seemed to beckon her forward.

  Floral designs were carved in the columns at eye-level and the room seemed perfectly round, with no other passageway except the one she’d just taken.

  The light was coming from a set of eight high windows that flooded the area with moonlight. She snapped off her light, hoping to save a few precious minutes, and walked to the center of what looked like a rotunda.

  What was this place? Could it be the dungeon? Except it had light and space, whereas the cloister was much more forbidding. On the other hand, for whatever reason, it was colder here.

  Much colder.

  She walked a slow circuit of the room to feel its dimensions and to see if there was any possible exit, but also to warm herself. Her teeth were chattering again.

  Maggie knelt in the center of the rotunda and pulled the energy bar from her pocket. She wasn’t particularly hungry but had read somewhere that eating helped your body produce warmth. She wasn’t sure if that was true but it was worth a try. She forced two bites down and put the rest away. Before she finished chewing, an explosion of nausea gripped her stomach and forced the food back up. She retched it out onto the stone floor.

  Her muscles quivered under her sweater as she hunched over the vomit, and even in the cold she felt a light sheen of perspiration form across her forehead. The frustration of failing at even the simple action of fueling herself brought tears to her eyes. She knew she was feeling helpless and weak, cold and tired. And afraid. And any one of those things was enough to derail her best efforts to find a way out of this place.

  “Hello!” she called, listing to the sound of her voice ricocheting around the stone room. “I need a hand here! If you’re not too busy!”

  She listened to the reverberating of her voice as it dissipated into the walls. “Hello,” she called softly, her voice pinging back to her in gentle, mocking waves against the hard surfaces. Screw walking for warmth. That’s probably a myth, too.

  She settled down on the hard floor and wrapped her arms around her knees, drawing them to her chest. She could hear her heart pounding through her legs. She closed her eyes and began to sing.

  When Jemmy was a newborn, Maggie sang to him. Laurent was delighted at this sign of normal maternity from her, she knew, but she didn’t sing because she wanted to provide lullabies for her little lamb—or at least, that wasn’t the main reason. She sang because it gave her courage and she could hear it in her voice—the strong tones, the spot-on keys. And she sang because hearing her seemed to confuse Jemmy into silence, at least temporarily.

  In fact, Maggie remembered years ago when she rode competitively but suffered from nerves she would sing on horseback before her set. The singing, straight from the diaphragm, always calmed both rider and horse.

  Now, she gripped her legs and sang Amazing Grace, all three stanzas, slowly and in varying pitches and levels, listening to how her voice reflected back to her—strong and sure. Little Jemmy. Maggie missed him so much right now, physically longing to feel his chubby, active little body in her arms. She slapped a hand to her mouth to stifle the sob that would spoil all her good work up to now in keeping the terror at bay.

  Why had she left him? Haley looked at her like she was an alien, wondering how a loving mother could leave her adorable child for so long. And why had she?

  Maggie looked into the dark realms of the rotunda. Surely a church was as good a place as any to admit she’d felt relief when she drove away from the house and climbed onto the train that took her away from him.

  Was she so insecure as a new mother that she’d rather just run away? Is that what she was doing? A cold needle of dread pierced her spine. Is that what she saw in Annie too? Is that why she understood Annie’s guilt so well? Because Maggie, too, was a bad mother?

  I love my baby, she thought fiercely. He may deserve a better mother than me, but I’m what he’s got. She rubbed tears from her face that she hadn’t realized she’d shed. Is that what Annie told herself too?

  No. No way. When I get out of here, I’m not leaving that boy until they pry my fingers off his lunch pail on the first day of Kindergarten. I will not be that Mom. I will not be Annie.

  She jumped to her feet and pulled out the sheet of paper again. I am coming back, Jemmy. Mommy’s coming back right this damn minute.

  “Where am I?” she said out loud. “The church passage, that must be that creepy tunnel, leads to a natural cave, which is the dungeon, which leads to the graveyard.” She looked around. “Is this a natural cave? Is it even really a cave?” She glanced once more up at the windows overhead. “Maybe they don’t mean cave the same way I do. But whatever they call it, it is supposed to lead to a cemetery, by God.” She pushed from her mind the other fact she knew about the dungeon: that it was the place a prisoner could die of hypothermia within fifteen hours.

  She snapped the light back on, noticing the beam was even weaker, and directed it to the far wall—the most natural place to put a corresp
onding exit to this maze. She walked closer, feeling the excitement of moving and taking direction, when her foot slid in the vomit on the floor and she dropped the light. As if on roller skates, she careened helplessly across the floor before falling hard against a wall she hadn’t seen.

  Maggie heard her own scream as she plummeted down, through the floor and past it, plaster and stone and straw and dirt churning up around her as her body flailed in the air, falling, falling…

  *****

  Grace walked down the smooth, wide steps to the living room. The taxi would be at the front door momentarily and she was sure she heard Laurent come in. She set her luggage down in the foyer and saw he was seated in the living room facing the French doors and the terrace. He had what looked like a glass of whisky in his hand.

  “Howdy, stranger,” she said. “I thought I heard you come in. Are you alright?”

  Laurent looked up from his obvious distraction and smiled mildly at her. “You are going out?”

  “I’ve got a taxi coming. I’ll be gone tonight and possibly tomorrow. Haley has all the details.”

  “Bon.” He turned away from her and back to his thoughts again. That was totally not like Laurent. Perhaps now would be a good time to see where it all led.

  “Haley went to bed early,” Grace said, reaching for his glass and taking a small sip. “She had a headache.”

  Laurent said nothing. His eyes followed the horizon of his vineyard—he couldn’t see even a quarter of it at this time of night. But, of course, he knew where it was without looking.

  “Heard from Maggie today?” she asked. “I thought she was coming home tonight.”

  Laurent absently patted his shirt pocket. “I left my phone upstairs. The battery was dead. She was supposed to come tonight, but you know Maggie. It might not be until tomorrow.”

  “I hate missing her but I’ll catch up with her on Sunday. Have you seen Ben this evening?”

  “I have.”

  “Well?”