Murder in the South of France, Book 1 of the Maggie Newberry Mysteries

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Chapter Eight

  Maggie sat in her living room, her hands folded in her lap. The small travel alarm clock she kept perched on a shelf in the living room bookcase blinked out the digitized time: 9:47. Brownie had shown up thirty minutes earlier.

  Elise had been found strangled in the hallway outside Maggie’s apartment.

  Maggie watched the older of the two detectives. He was big, like Laurent, a little stoop-shouldered, and she thought he had a kind face. The other one, in the kitchen talking to Brownie, just looked unhappy.

  “Miss Newberry?” Chief Detective Jack Burton sat down in a tub chair facing her. “I need to ask you a few questions.”

  Maggie looked up and knew her eyes must look like two ragged red holes.

  “Miss Newberry?”

  “Yes?” She could hear the murmur of voices from the kitchen and wondered if they thought Brownie was a suspect.

  “I need to ask you now while everything’s still fresh, and I know it’s hard.”

  Even though it was well over an hour ago, Maggie could still hear the squeaking sound of the gurney as it began its heavy journey across the worn hall carpet to the front door. The coroner had finished his preliminary, on-site inspection. The rest of his invasions of Elise would be done in the privacy of a sterile laboratory.

  “…what time, exactly, would that be?”

  She shook her head, bringing her fist to her mouth.

  “It’s all right, Miss Newberry. I know how hard this is. Take your time.”

  “Could you...could you repeat the question?” she managed.

  “The first time you called your sister. When was that?”

  “Eleven, or so. Maybe a little earlier. I had a late morning meeting.” A million years ago, a late morning meeting where we all sat around laughing and joking.

  “And she was home?”

  “Yes.” Maggie looked up at the detective. “I assumed she was home the other times I called too. I figured she didn’t answer the phone because she was resting. She’d been sick.”

  “You say she hadn’t been in town very long?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And she was staying with you until...?” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “Until...” Maggie searched for an answer.

  “Miss Newberry, the point of my question is to ascertain whether this was going to be a long visit or just a passing through visit.”

  “She was back for good.” It occurred to Maggie that she didn’t know if that was true.

  “And she flew here from France?” Again, the kind face, the gentle voice. Maggie noticed a slight tic in his lip as he spoke.

  “That’s right.” Maggie’s eyes rested on the Macy’s shopping bag still at her feet. Oh, Elise, how could you be gone? We were going to be a family again. She looked into his eyes and found herself thinking: He’s seen this sort of thing a thousand times before. Seen someone, just like me, feel and act just like this. A thousand times over.

  “When you came home tonight did you notice anything different or strange at any time? In the parking lot? Walking up to your door? Inside your apartment?”

  Maggie shook her head as he spoke. “No. What am I going to tell my mother and father?”

  Burton grimaced in an expression of sympathy. “I’m sorry, Miss Newberry.”

  Maggie smoothed her damp palms against the cotton fabric of her skirt.

  “The coroner will give his report after the autopsy. There’ll be an inquest. Probably next week. Once all the evidence is in.”

  “Can you please…tell me what happened?”

  Burton sighed as if he’d prefer not to and then relented.

  “Neighbors reported hearing raised voices in the hallway at roughly lunchtime.” He shrugged. “It appears she…your sister…answered the door and engaged in the altercation.”

  Maggie looked at him, bewildered. Was he saying Elise answered the door and was then strangled on the doorstep?

  Burton signaled to his partner to check on Brownie in the back room. “I’m afraid we’ll need to ask you to vacate your apartment for the next three or four days while we take fiber and hair samples.”

  Maggie turned away from him. She needed to cry very hard for a very long time.

  An hour later, sitting in Brownie’s car as they drove along the immaculate, sycamore-lined road to her parents’ home, Maggie held Brownie’s free hand, her lips pressed together in a grim line. She tried to tell herself that for her parents to have seen Elise in the state she had been in would have been tantamount to a visitation of the horror tale The Monkey’s Paw, where a grief-stricken mother wished her recently dead son back with her again and got her wish only to have something monstrous return to her from the grave.

  That would have been Elise, Maggie told herself. With her ruined face and arms, pocked by blunt, used needles, her clothes and skin smelling of sweat and urine, her hair a matted mess of gnarly dreadlocks.

  Maggie’s vision blurred as she watched the passing neighborhoods, where houses went for nothing less than four million. Mostly a lot more. The top tier of Atlanta real estate.

  Her throat closed, because she knew that even if Elise had been presented to them mad as a hatter, screaming and naked, filthy and profane, her parents still would have wept tears of joy to have her back.

  She looked at Brownie and tried to take strength from his solid grip on her hand. Tried to tap into his stoic front, his resiliency. And all she could think as he drove her closer and closer to her mother and father was: if by some miracle, some fantastic cosmic piece of magic, you got the chance to have five minutes with a departed loved one, just five minutes to say I love you, I miss you...

  And Maggie knew she had cheated them out of that forever.

  Darla Parker picked up the teapot, with its imprint of faded roses, and held it over her husband’s teacup. Her eyes watched him, not her aim, as he sat, face buried in the newspaper. She spilled hot tea onto his sleeve.

  “Damn it, Darla!” Gary snatched his soiled cuff away. “What is your problem this morning?”

  Darla replaced the teapot and sighed. She folded her hands in her lap.

  “First you practically kill me with that stupid whatever it is you left on the stairs—”

  “Vacuum cleaner.”

  “Look, Darla, don’t start with me today, okay? I’ve got this one day in the week to relax and forget the office and I don’t mean to spend it at war with you.” Gary flapped the newspaper out and returned to the article he was reading.

  Darla took a small sip from her own cup and then cleared her throat. Gary threw the newspaper onto the table and covered his face with his hands.

  “God, am I having a nervous breakdown, or what?” His voice sounded strained.

  “Quit your job, sweetheart.”

  He groaned. “Who am I gonna quit to? Myself? I’m the boss, remember?”

  “It’s making you miserable, Gary. It’s bad for all of us. I can see it even if you can’t. Quit the job.”

  “Stop saying that!” Gary stood, picked up the newspaper then slapped it back down on the breakfast table. “I can’t quit the job! Why not just say move to Alaska? Or get a lobotomy? Or become a priest? I can’t! I can’t do it! God! Can nobody hear me?” He was turning to leave the room when the kitchen phone rang. Enjoying the dramatic punctuation of its timing, he snatched it up and barked, “Yes?”

  Darla slowly got up from the table and began to clear the dishes.

  “Hey, Maggie, what’s up? Everything okay?” He turned to catch a glimpse of Darla, but she stood at the sink with her back to him, rinsing cereal bowls and listening.

  Gary heard Maggie’s voice catch and he stiffened. God, now what? “What’s happened?”

  Darla turned to face him.

  “Good God!”

  “Gary, what is it?” Darla was at his side now, tugging on his sleeve. “What’s happened? Is she okay?”

  “Her sister was killed last night in her a
partment building.”

  “Oh, my God.” Darla’s hand flew to her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. She studied Gary’s shocked face, as if she might somehow be able to hear the story just by watching his face.

  “Maggie, how?” Gary asked, his voice tense. Darla could hear the kitchen clock ticking as Gary listened and Darla waited. “That’s terrible. She let him in? God, your poor parents. How are they?”

  Darla watched her husband frown as he listened.

  “Stop it, Maggie. It doesn’t do anybody any good beating yourself up for it. Do you want some company? Do you want me and Darla to come by?”

  Darla nodded vigorously at him.

  “Okay, well, you know we’re here if you need us. I’m so sorry, Maggie. So sorry for you and your parents.” He returned the receiver to its cradle and stood staring out the breakfast room’s large bay window. From it he could see their eight-year old daughter, Haley, playing with some neighbor children.

  “Oh, Gary. Poor Maggie. How awful.”

  Gary tore his gaze away from his daughter and looked at his wife. “Maybe you were right, Darla. Maybe this job isn’t such a good thing.”

  Darla searched his face and tried to smile encouragingly.

  Maggie lay on the guest bed in her parents’ house and stared up at the white ceiling. Tiny, fluorescent stars blinked back in a faint constellation painted on the ceiling. Maggie had never noticed them before.

  She had looked into her parents’ eyes as they tried to understand when she told them of Elise’s murder earlier that day. She held her father’s hand and watched him nod as if she were warning him that the Dow Jones might plummet soon. She watched her mother weep, and, impossibly, nod understandingly as to why Maggie hadn’t called when Elise showed up.

  After all the talking, Maggie had cried. She cried for the daughter who had finally come home, for the impetuous artist, the hopeless romantic, the recalcitrant single mother. But most of all, she cried for the sister she’d known so little.

  The next day, Maggie sat in the gathering room with Nicole. The room was a light and cheery place, which captured the sun’s needles of light and spun them into prisms and rectangles of luminescence.

  Nicole’s face, as usual, gave nothing away. Her eyes, large and implacable, met Maggie’s gaze easily.

  “Grandmère is very unhappy right now,” Maggie said. “And it’s me who’s done it, you see.” Maggie reached over to pat out a wrinkle in Nicole’s cotton corduroy jumper.

  Will she never come out of the warm little burrow in her mind and join the rest of us? Is wherever she is so nice and safe that we will never know her?

  Maggie leaned over and touched Nicole’s baby-soft cheek and thought, for an instant, that her eyes flickered in response.

  Are you all we have left of her now?

  “Darling?”

  Maggie turned to see her mother enter the room and her heart ripped at the sight. Elspeth had obviously had a hard night. Her beautiful face was weary and lined.

  “Did Brownie leave?” Elspeth asked.

  “He had to get back. He said he’ll call later.”

  “I’m sorry I missed him this morning.”

  “Are you going to come in?”

  Elspeth shook her head and tried to smile. “I think I’ll read in my room today, darling, if you don’t mind. Annie will be here shortly to look after Nicole. How are you, ma petite?”

  The girl looked blankly at her grandmother.

  “What are your plans for the day, Margaret?”

  Maggie shrugged. “I might go back to my apartment and pick up a few things. Detective Burton said I could. They’ve got some people there, I guess, to help me. Then, I don’t know.”

  There was a brief silence before Elspeth turned to leave.

  “Mom, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about Elise.”

  “I know, darling. But it doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t know how I can live with myself.”

  “Don’t be silly, Maggie. It’s in the past.” Her mother’s back seemed to stiffen during the exchange, as if her body couldn’t lie as easily as her voice could. “Let’s not talk about it in front of Nicole.”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  “There doesn’t seem much point. I’m off now. Dinner is at six, as usual.”

  “Okay.”

  Maggie watched her mother’s retreating back and felt worse than before Elspeth had come downstairs. She looked back over at Nicole, who was watching Elspeth’s departure.

  “She’s really sad right now, Nicole.”

  The little girl blinked once and looked at Maggie.

  Did Nicole somehow know Maggie had cheated her out of her one last chance to see her mother? Did she, unencumbered by the love that bound Maggie’s parents, feel free to hate her aunt for her stupidity and selfishness? For surely selfishness had been a major part of it, Maggie thought. The notion of presenting Elise to her parents as if she were a beribboned parcel had loomed dominant in Maggie’s daydreams.

  When the doorbell sounded, it was so gentle and musical that, for a moment, Maggie thought it was one of the many house clocks unobtrusively heralding the hour. Elspeth had a passion for clocks of all kinds and collected them to the point where her husband had finally forced her to weed them out of the house. It was true, Maggie thought as she got up from the heavy Queen Anne armchair to answer the door, the house had begun to resemble a large and noisy clockmaker’s shop a few years ago. All the ticking and chiming and onerous hourly and quarter hourly booming had nearly driven her poor father mad, and served as the starting point for hours of family jokes.

  Maggie walked to the end of the sitting room, where two pairs of French doors led out to the garden. Although not the main entrance, the garden portal was the closest to the driveway and so the one most commonly used. Besides, Elspeth said she liked the idea of visitors enjoying her garden as they walked to the door. She thought it much friendlier than the tedious, precision-manicured box hedges and bricked path that led to the front, with its massive columns and imposing porticoes.

  “A little bit of Tara goes a long way,” she liked to tell her daughters. “The point is not to intimidate people.”

  “Just to have more money than them, that’s all,” Elise had quipped in return.

  Elise had never given her mother much quarter.

  Maggie peered through the panel sheers in the door and, seeing nothing, pulled open the doors and stepped outside. The warmth and humidity of the morning struck her. The air conditioning had prompted goosebumps on her arms and legs, but they dissolved upon contact with the moist Southern air.

  She stepped out onto the flagstone patio that curved away from the double doors. A small stone bench sat nearly hidden among a cluster of spirea, forsythia and camellia. Vines of thick, glossy ivy snaked along the ground and up and over the dry stone wall that contained the whole garden. The fragrance from the rose bushes—lurching their way up a rickety trellis—was light and sweet on the heavy Georgia air.

  A blooming bush of American Beauty roses shook slightly in the corner of her vision making her turn, hands still on the door handles, to see a tall man standing next to the bush of blood-red roses.

  It was Laurent.