Chapter Two
Maggie jabbed a sliver of toast into the cracked and leaking soft-boiled egg in her eggcup. The morning had started off in a totally different vibe than last night had ended. As soon as she awakened—her head pounding in ways she didn’t think people actually lived though—she remembered how Bentley had “handled” her.
Get her loaded and she’ll be easy to manipulate. Put her on a sightseeing bus and get her out of your hair.
Well, if Roger Bentley thought he could cut her out of the face-to-face work necessary to get the job done, he could damn well think again, she thought fiercely.
Especially for thirty thousand dollars!
“I can’t say how long, exactly, negotiations will take.” Bentley looked starched and smart in the late-morning swelter. He certainly didn’t look like he’d matched Maggie glass for glass for over three bottles of high-octane rosé. He flapped his cotton napkin out across his lap and smiled across the breakfast table at her. He had again chosen their meeting place, the sunny and fairly private outdoor dining deck of yet another famous, old Cannes hotel, the Majestic.
“Might be a few days, actually. Need to be prepared to wait. All good things, and all that.” He smiled at her and reached over to pour his coffee. “But I’m very happy with my plan—”
“Which you feel no need to share with me.” Maggie stared at her speared eggcup, the toast point weakening at the base and beginning to collapse into the murky yellow.
“I hope you understand. I feel that I’m protecting you, Maggie.”
On the face of it, she knew the service he was providing here was one she’d be hard-pressed to find someone else to do. If he hadn’t called her father, they wouldn’t even have gotten this far in their attempt to find Elise’s daughter. In fact, up until that moment Maggie and her parents had chosen to believe that Nicole was happy in France—if not in Elise’s custody, then with her father.
Roger Bentley had put an end to that little fantasy with one phone call. He convinced Maggie’s father that Gerard, Elise’s old boyfriend and Nicole’s father, was a man who would eventually destroy the child. He insisted that he could locate the child for them and, in a single phone call, the Englishman had galvanized the Newberry clan into action.
That his call had come within minutes of the devastating one informing them of Elise’s death by accidental mischance was unanimously viewed by all as enormously fortuitous.
Maggie watched the Englishman in the dining room of the shabby but still elegant Majestic Hotel and had to admit that if he hadn’t called and offered to help them find the girl, they wouldn’t even be this close.
Bentley attacked his breakfast with gusto, spreading the delicate French jellies onto his croissants with almost exaggerated hand movements, carving up his sausage and broiled tomatoes as if he didn’t expect to eat this well again for a very long time.
“Allo? Roger? I am here, yes?”
The voice came from behind Maggie.
“Laurent! Wonderful! Come, sit down, Sit down,” Bentley motioned to the empty chair next to Maggie. The man appeared to her right, and even without immediately looking up the impression Maggie got was that he was a very big man.
“Maggie Newberry, this is Laurent Dernier. Laurent, Mademoiselle Newberry. He’s going to help us with our project. Coffee, Laurent?”
Maggie felt her irritation with Bentley ignite again. She did not turn to look at the newcomer, but tapped the side of her coffee cup gently with a silver butter knife.
“Look, Roger...” she began.
Bentley ignored her. “Been doing a bit of a brain tease on an engineering project in Algeria, Laurent has,” Roger bubbled. “What’s the name of it, old chap? Rather like that Super Collider thing you Yanks were putting together, I think.” He turned to Maggie. “You know all about that, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for an answer, swiveling back to face the newcomer. “Sit down and tell us about it, Laurent. It’s measuring or subdividing molecules or some such thing, isn’t it? Terribly clever, our Laurent,” he confided to Maggie.
“It was just a consulting job,” Laurent said, still not seating himself.
“Of course it was! Couldn’t afford the full bill of having you pull on rubber gloves and really going to it, I should say not.” He turned back to Maggie. “Man’s a mathematical genius.”
“My family cannot afford any more money,” she said curtly.
“I say, Maggie, who’s talking about money? Laurent’s here to help us get the job done. The price is the same, of course.”
“You are unhappy about me, Mademoiselle?”
“No, no, no, Laurent. Mademoiselle Newberry just takes her time warming up to people, don’t you, Maggie?” Bentley smiled, but Maggie detected the slightest edge beneath his tone.
“Look, I don’t mean to be rude, really.” She turned briefly to Monsieur Dernier without looking at him, then turned abruptly back to Bentley. “It’s just that the nature of my business is rather delicate, and I would hope that you’d know the fewer people who know about it, the better. If you say you need this man to get my niece back, well, okay. Just understand my position, if you can.”
“I should leave, Roger. She is not comfortable.”
“No, hold on.” Maggie turned to look at him fully for the first time. He was extraordinarily good-looking she noted, and forced her mouth not to fall open. Broad chested and large, he was easily six foot four. His face was calm, with a sweetness to it that almost seemed to belie his size. His eyes were piercing and dark, almost pupil-less. His light brown hair was thick and worn long to his shoulders.
He was looking at her with a kindness she had never felt from a total stranger before. It was a look between friends. Good friends. “I....well, you’re already here, so let’s just go on, okay?” she said, feeling a little flustered. “Forget it, all right? All right, Roger?”
“Of course, all right.” Roger shrugged and reached for another roll. He winked at Laurent, making sure that Maggie noticed.
“If you are sure, Mademoiselle.”
“Yes, yes. I’m just a little rattled is all. If you can help, well, then thanks. I appreciate any help anyone can give me.” Annoyed and shaken by her reaction to Laurent’s effect on her, Maggie pushed her breakfast plate aside and reached for the champagne bottle. Laurent leaned over and took the large flagon from her, and Maggie smiled her thanks as he poured the champagne into her orange juice tumbler.
“Right. Let’s map out our day, shall we?” Bentley took a swig of his coffee and dropped his napkin onto the table. “First, I will begin with Step One of Plan A. Laurent, you will take Mademoiselle Newberry to Section Two of Plan A at the designated hour.”
“Hold on, Roger,” Maggie said, frowning. “Why do I have to go someplace special? Why can’t I just hole up in my hotel room and wait for your call?”
“Anyone ever tell you that you have jolly little flair for adventure? It may not be a phone call, that’s why.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Must you understand everything? You Americans—”
“And I’m officially sick of the you Americans shtick. I want to know—”
“You always want to know! Bloody hell! Can’t you trust someone else to carry out the details without your having to know?”
“Roger! Arrête! Stop, now, both of you! You are causing a big performance, no?” Laurent leaned over and patted Maggie’s hand in a gesture that was half consoling, half reprimand.
He wagged a finger at Roger. “She is upset, no? Her sister is dead and she is....ahh, triste....very sad. The responsibilité is yours, Roger, n’est-ce pas?”
Roger placed his cup down. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I quite forgot myself and the situation. You must excuse me. I know things are very hard on you now.”
Maggie knew she must look as tired as she felt. She nodded gratefully at Laurent and then looked into Bentley’s canny green eyes. “Do what you ha
ve to do,” she said.
He smiled at her and then at Laurent. “Good girl.”
The street cleaners crept the early morning streets wielding their large garden hoses like weapons, rinsing away the rubbish and debris of last night’s party. Maggie watched them from her hotel window. The early morning air was cool.
The Mediterranean sun had not yet had the chance to perform its mellow alchemy on the coast. Maggie watched as two bedraggled partygoers picked their way across the rough stones of the Rue des Etats-Unis back to their hotel. The woman wore a gold lamé gown with a pointy, cone-cupped brassiere over the top of it. Her hair looked like she’d gone swimming at some point in the evening. Her makeup looked it, too.
Maggie watched the man with her, his bowtie limp but still attached at the throat. He was handsome, but not young. She watched them until they disappeared around the corner. On their way back from somebody’s yacht moored in the harbor, no doubt, she thought. Most of Cannes’s parties happened on somebody’s yacht, or so she’d been told.
She’d been in France for almost a week now. Each day Bentley either made an appearance at her hotel to assure her that the recovery of Nicole was imminent, or sent messages of similar content via Laurent. Laurent was a constant in her daily routine: escorting her around Cannes and Cap d’Antibes, climbing the hills with her in Monaco, which led to the Grimaldi palace, picking up the tab at frequent café stops, and always listening intently—sympathetically—to her protestations that the search was taking too long.
She wasn’t sure what to think of Laurent. He was kind, and in spite of his bad English she could tell he was intelligent too. Perhaps too much so. Maggie got the impression Laurent held cards he wasn’t showing. Nonetheless, she felt drawn to him. Among his many other talents touted by Bentley, Laurent obviously had a very special way with people.
Maggie forced herself not to think about the bullet hole she’d seen in the body’s head—in Elise’s head. She knew that if Elise had been murdered, the way she lived it couldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. But whereas the matter of Elise was out of her hands, the case of her daughter, Nicole, was not. Maggie had booked two seats back to Atlanta for the next morning. The thought of returning to Atlanta without the little girl produced a hard knot in the pit of her stomach. Elise’s daughter, lost somewhere in France, in the custody of her brutish father.
Maggie clenched her hands. She thought of the expression on her mother’s face if she got off that airplane alone.
Downstairs, Laurent was waiting for her. He stood next to the Gray d’Albion check-in counter, flipping through a Paris Express. She hesitated a moment on the staircase when she saw him. His was a rough handsomeness, she decided. Weathered, been-there. She liked it, and she liked him. It was clear he’d begun to grow on her in a way that was pleasant, and slightly worrisome. And she was sorry about that because the timing was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Laurent looked up and caught her watching him from the top of the stairs. Tossing the magazine onto the counter, he bounded up the stairs to meet her, his bulk looking insubstantial and light when he did so. He gathered up her pullman and carry-on bag in one movement, and she thought for a moment that he would snatch her up as well.
She had long registered that Laurent had an unsettling effect on her, and felt flustered at his nearness.
“You had a good night?”
“Yes, thanks. So, now where?” she asked, a little breathlessly.
“Vas-y, Maggie.” He led the way down the stairs. “I have the automobile, this way, so.” She kept her sights on Laurent’s back as he pushed open the revolving door before her and led her to a waiting yellow Citroen. He opened the trunk and piled her luggage into the back, then looked up at her and smiled again.
“It is not far, okay?” he said as he helped her in, then squeezed himself into the driver’s seat. The motor started with a jerk and the car pushed out into the early morning Cannes traffic. Maggie turned to watch his profile as he sped through the streets, whirling down alleyways, only to emerge unscathed (as did, miraculously, the pedestrians) on the other side.
“La voiture, elle est vôtre?”
He turned his head to look at her, his eyes wide. “Comment?” He neatly avoided hitting a woman walking a French poodle by driving the car onto the sidewalk and then returned to the street.
“La voiture, cette voiture.” She tapped the dashboard of the car.
“Ahhhhh!” He closed his eyes and smiled. Maggie wished he would keep his eyes on the road. “Mais, oui, yes, c’est ma voiture.”
Now, that’s more like it, Maggie thought, pleased with herself. He spoke quickly, beautifully. There was even a glimmer in his eyes that wasn’t there during his labored English attempts.
“Oui,” she said. “C’est très belle.” She clutched the door handle as they revisited the sidewalk, this time to pass a little Renault Laurent obviously felt was going too slowly. “Mais, vous...vous driv-ez très fou...” She knew she was making up words but it was still her best shot.
She edged closer to the window and watched the colored, striped awnings and tents of the city’s marketplace spin by. Her eyes caught a crazy-quilt of color: tulips, asparagus, strawberries, bananas, hanging sausages, live chickens caught by their feet and twisting at the ends of long ropes, and all of it flying by in a hectic haze.
“Can we stop for breakfast?” she asked. “Est-ce que nous nous arrêtons pour le petit déjeuner?”
“Why you are speaking le français? It is because Laurent’s English is very bad, non?”
“Je parle votre langue even worse and you know it.” She turned to catch him looking at her curiously, a smile hidden behind his lips. “Breakfast, oui or non?”
“Ah, mais oui!” He turned the car abruptly into what looked like a brick wall but turned out to be a sort of bricked-up alcove serving as a parking lot. Laurent was out and helping her with her door before she had untangled her legs from the straps of her purse where it had been sitting on the floor of the car.
She could still see the gaily colored tents of the early morning market and knew they were on the outskirts of Cannes. Laurent led her to a small café and ordered two coffees. They settled themselves at a rickety outdoor table with a view of the street and, surprisingly enough, the Chateau des Abbes de Lerins. Laurent pointed it out to her.
“You see les Isles de Lerins? La?” He pointed to the islands off the gulf and then turned and pointed to the hill overlooking the water where the castle sat, tall and ominous. “Et le château? Castle, yes?” He lit a cigarette, shaking an unfiltered one from his Mediterranean-blue packet of Gaulouises, offering it first to her. She shook her head.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw their waiter leave the café and cross the street to a facing boulangerie, where he purchased one croissant from the baker. She watched him return to the café, place the roll on a small dish and then bring it to their table with their coffees.
Smiling hugely, Laurent took in a full breath while surveying the view they had of the Gulf of Napoule.
“Are we going someplace special today?” Maggie took a sip of her coffee.
“Ah, yes.”
Do the French say “Ah” before every sentence they utter, Maggie wondered. It was almost as if even a comment must be savored like a piece of tender lamb smothered in rosemary.
“I will take you to a place. And then Roger will come with the little girl.”
“And meantime? More sightseeing?”
“Not today.” He paused to look at her, as if assessing how much she could handle hearing. Or maybe that’s just my imagination?
“Roger will not come with the little girl until late. Your coffee is good?” He smiled at her and she felt a definite thrill filter through her, although whether from excitement or a tiny needle of fear, she wasn’t sure. Did she imagine that his English seemed to be remarkably better today?
“So, we’re still basically waiting for Roger, as usual. Is that
it?”
“Oui. We are waiting again.” Laurent finished his coffee and stared out at the Gulf, its startling blueness twinkling in the sunlight. His eyes suddenly looked hooded and careful to her. It occurred to Maggie that Laurent might have had other things he’d prefer to have done than shepherding her around the South of France for the last five days.
An hour later, Maggie stood with her back to the interior of a room and looked out over a little garden. A jumble of flowers and weeds, it looked as if it had been untended for years, yet was somehow more beautiful for its neglect. Geraniums exploded in uncontrollable bushes of rich reds and oranges to border all sides of the waist-high stonewalls which enveloped the tiny plot. Roses grew wild everywhere in snaking vines along the ground and up a rotted wooden trellis that reached toward the French doors and patio where Maggie now stood. Over the garden wall she could see the Mediterranean Sea—just a patch of it, but enough to fill her with delight. The air was fragrant with the scent of lemons and roses.
“C’est magnifique, n’est-ce pas?” Laurent stood to her left, a glass of white wine in each hand, his eyes squinting against the sunlight, his voice light and already familiar to her.
“It’s beautiful.” She turned and held her hand out for one of the wineglasses. “You know the people who live here?”
“No one could live here.” He gestured at the ruin of the place: the garden a tangle of weeds and garbled, wayward shrubbery, the panes broken out of the French doors. There was a small wooden table in the one-room cottage, with two shaky benches propped up against it.
“But, a view of the sea? This property must cost a fortune. To just let it rot like this…” She walked out onto the patio with her wine.
Laurent followed her. “It is not a good house.” Paint had peeled off in strips to lie in crinkled husks on the floor.
“I don’t care if it’s the local crack house, Laurent. Location is everything. You could tear this place down and put a double wide here. I mean, look at that view!”
“Incredible, non?” Laurent said softly.
“It really is. The whole area is. I’d never been to the Riviera before. At least now I know what all the fuss is about. Mind you, the major fuss has to be the prices. A sandwich at the Hotel Splendid cost thirty euros! A bottle of Perrier there cost almost ten.”
Maggie suddenly felt uncomfortable, as if Laurent’s silence and the quiet beauty of the cottage were working together to unsettle her. “Um, when did you say Roger would be coming with Nicole?” She turned to face him, her back to the panoramic blue view.
“In a little while.”
“What is a little while? Hours?”
“Oui, Maggie. Hours.”
“And we’re to stay here? But, there’s nothing here for us to do. Couldn’t we have waited in Monte Carlo? Or Antibes? I mean, it’s pretty, but there’s not even a decent table to sit at.”
Laurent smiled. “We won’t need a table. Come, bring your wine.” He turned and scooped up a small backpack and moved out into the garden. Maggie followed him.
“Laurent?”
“Oui?” He took out a small tablecloth and spread it carefully, ceremoniously, across the weeds, buttercups and violets.
“Did you know my sister?” It had occurred to her on more than one occasion that Laurent might have been the friend who took Nicole from Elise for Gerard and, if not, then perhaps one of Elise’s ex-boyfriends?
He began to unpack the small canvas bag of picnic supplies. “Non, Maggie, I met your sister only once. I am sorry.” He took out a large jar of mushrooms swimming in olive oil, two long baguettes, fresh pears, strawberries, a small wheel each of Gouda and Edam cheeses, and a roasted chicken pricked with toothpicks of baby onions.
“So you’re just doing all this to help out Roger?”
“He is a friend.” He looked up at her again and smiled. “But perhaps I am doing all this for someone other than Roger.”
Maggie started to feel that unsettled feeling in her stomach she sometimes felt when Laurent looked at her in a certain way. His eyes were so probing she knew he had probably already figured out exactly how she looked in her bra and panties—if not less. Just the thought made her blush, and work to change the subject.
“But Roger told you about Elise?”
“He said she was a girl who had trouble.”
“That’s true.” Maggie sat down next to Laurent and picked up a pear. It felt fat and juicy in her hand. “When did you buy all this stuff? I never saw you do it.”
“Ahhh, we French, we are clever, non?”
“Roger never really knew her either.” She put a hand on Laurent’s sleeve and he seemed to freeze under her touch. “But you’ve heard stuff. You heard about her, didn’t you, Laurent?”
He sighed and finished emptying his knapsack: napkins, forks, another bottle of wine. “What you hear in a town like Cannes is...” He shrugged.
“Look, Laurent, I know my sister did drugs. I don’t think you can tell me anything that is going to surprise me. But if you know anything about her...”
Laurent turned without speaking and put a large hand on top of Maggie’s slim one. When he did, she felt an electric shock build in her chest and begin to hum down her arm to where it connected with his. His eyes were dark and unreadable. “You would not be shocked,” he said, “mais non, and in my country, to have the bèbè with no father is...not so terrible.” He shrugged.
“Please, tell me what you’ve heard.”
“Nothing very bad. Perhaps she smoked cannabis and she was toujours a part of the folie á deux, you understand? Always she was choosing the wrong man.”
Maggie moved her hand from his and picked up the jar of mushrooms. She watched them bob and float in their oily mire. “I imagine you’re right about the men she chose. She was an artist. Did you know that? She came to Paris six years ago.” Maggie put down the mushrooms and stared out to the Mediterranean.
“You were close with her, yes?” Laurent tore off a piece of bread, dipped it in a saucer of olive oil and offered it to her. She took it absently.
“When we were kids. After we got older, we weren’t. She dressed odd and hung around weirdoes and she wasn’t interested in college or anything.” She looked at Laurent and suddenly wondered what it would be like to kiss those full lips. She turned away.
“Nothing like me. I always knew what I wanted to do. I liked college and I liked outfits that, you know, matched. She scared me a little, and that’s funny because that just now occurred to me. And if you knew her, you’d think I was crazy because she was totally unintimidating. Sweet and maybe a little goofy, but not formidable at all.
“Anyway, she came over here to go to school. Our folks said they thought it would be good for her. Or maybe she was just this major embarrassment to them back home and it was easier if she did her aimless mayhem from a few thousand miles away. That’s an awful thing to say.” She looked at Laurent and found him watching her intently. “I loved her.”
“Bien sûr.”
“And I still can’t believe she wanted the life she wanted.”
“It was not a life you would have chosen.”
“Smoking and shooting dope?”
Laurent made no response.
“And having babies out of wedlock? Maybe y’all do that sort of thing over here and it’s no big deal, but it’s a definite faux pas where I come from.”
“Perhaps that is why your sister came to France, non? It is, for her, a world that understands her better.”
“I just couldn’t believe she could live the childhood we both had—going to the beach and the mountains, with our own ponies and private schools and stuff—and after all that she could say, ‘Naaahhh, not for me.’”
Laurent poured her a glass of wine.
“At first, she wrote home, but soon she stopped going to classes and then she stopped writing or calling. Turns out she’d gotten pregnant, had the child, and never mentioned it to us. Never called to tell us. Can you
believe that?”
“Your mother and father were angry?”
“They were worried. But I have to admit, I don’t know why more wasn’t done.” Maggie pushed her thick, dark hair from her eyes. “I hate myself for thinking they didn’t go looking for her because they were afraid they might have found her. Like maybe she’d want to come home and be the crazy artist in their neighborhood and around their country club and stuff.” She looked into Laurent’s eyes, her own misting. “Why am I thinking that? My parents adored Elise. They did.”
“But they did not look for her?”
“It was about three years ago and I was all caught up in my job and stuff. I mean, I knew it was all going on, but I was super busy at the office. I’m in advertising.”
“Ahhh.” He nodded and smiled politely and Maggie found herself feeling stupid again.
“It’s a really great job. I write the words, you see, for the ads. You know? Television commercials and stuff?”
Laurent nodded while he unscrewed a jar of fragrant tapenade and rummaged in the basket for a knife with which to spread the olive mixture.
“Anyway, it’s a great job,” Maggie repeated, her eyes watching the blue horizon of the Mediterranean as it merged with the blue southern sky. “Very fast-paced and exciting. You meet a lot of interesting people, too. Plus, it gives me a creative outlet. I think that’s important.”
Laurent lit a cigarette and exhaled a puff of blue smoke between them.
“I’ve wanted to be a copywriter ever since I saw the early Heineken ads...you remember the ones?”
“I don’t watch much television,” Laurent said.
“They were print ads.”
From across the courtyard and down the vineyard-studded hills, she noticed a colorful, flapping line of laundered clothes starkly visible against the landscape of browns and muted greens. The clothesline bucked and twisted in the bright sky like the gay signal flags she’d seen on the yachts moored in the harbor at Monte Carlo.
Maggie brushed a dusting of pollen from her cotton dress and Laurent reached over and took her hand in his. She looked at him, her heart pounding with the thrill of what she knew was coming as the big Frenchman leaned over and kissed her gently on the mouth. She felt the coarseness of his rough face against her cheek.
Slowly, she moved toward him, folding herself against his broad chest, smelling the soap and sunshine in his blue cotton pullover. A moment passed and he lifted her chin with his fingers and looked into her eyes. He kissed her again. His tongue pushed gently past her lips into her mouth and his arms tightened around her.
Maggie was vaguely aware of the Mediterranean sun caressing her bare arms and legs, and of her cotton sundress pulled high across her thighs. She could smell the redolent mixture of olives and lemons and sun-sweetened grass and roses. And when she felt him kiss her, she felt nothing else about Elise or Nicole or Atlanta, or her own fears of failure.
Murder in the South of France, Book 1 of the Maggie Newberry Mysteries Page 3