Chapter Twenty-six
Maggie rubbed the sleep from her eyes but remained in bed. She had slept badly. When she’d finally drifted off, she heard the slow, harsh rumble of a Parisian service truck making its early morning delivery.
Laurent was Gerard’s brother.
She felt a dull cramp in her chest as the words formed and images of him unfolded: Laurent lying to her, Laurent being “helpful” during her investigation, Laurent feigning ignorance about Elise and Nicole, Laurent listening patiently with such understanding and support during her frustrating months of questions and tortured bafflement.
Bastard! Liar!
She swung her legs out of bed with no intention of going any farther, but she forced herself to stumble to the tile-cracked bathroom to splash water onto her face. For a minute she wasn’t sure she wasn’t going to throw up into the hand-painted ceramic basin. As she looked in the mirror, she saw the tiny vein under her left eye begin to pulse.
She ran into the bedroom and snatched up her purse, pulling out the picture of Elise and baby Nicole. She held the picture, mouth agape, until she finally sank down on the bed. It had been there all along and she had missed it…or just refused to see it. The birthmark on Nicole’s forehead was faint, but clearly visible. It extended into her hairline. Elise’s daughter had been born with a visible birthmark. An identifying one.
Maggie stared at the picture and thought of the little girl living with Maggie’s parents. She saw Nicole’s face at Elspeth’s dinner table. She saw her mother’s bright and loving face as she bent over the little girl in a conspiring, happy moment. She saw an image of Laurent holding Nicole on his knee and murmuring to her in French. So it’s true, she thought.
She isn’t ours.
Her thoughts returned to Laurent. And he’s known all along. She felt an icy wave of nausea ooze through her when the realization came to her that the real Nicole was almost certainly dead. And that’s something else that Laurent knew, she thought numbly, in blind disbelief.
And has known all along.
She spent the day walking the chilly streets of the Latin Quarter until the sun died and she had succeeded in exhausting her body, if not her mind. Looking up at the famous pointed bronze tower soaring toward the sky from the roof of Notre-Dame, Maggie sat on the cold, stone bench and allowed the agony of the last twenty-four hours to permeate through every molecule of her body. She watched the familiar façade of the cathedral, with its Gallery of Kings, and ached with a memory of her first visit here with her mother and Elise.
She remembered the Cokes and pommes frites they’d lunched on after Mass that Sunday so many years ago. Her mother had indulged her girls, her two bright, happy girls. She remembered Elise, already beautiful at thirteen, smiling coquettishly at the young brutish waiter and sipping her Coke as if it were Drambuie. Even then, Elise had a style and a vision of who she was.
Maggie gazed up at the screaming faces of the gargoyles and hellhags rimming the cathedral. Human, lunatic heads attached to hunching dog’s bodies, wailing souls, shrieking griffins and goblins.
Laurent smiling, presenting Nicole as the long lost relative.
Laurent standing in her mother’s rose garden.
Maggie wrenched herself off the stone bench and stood, wavering, for a moment in the square. She walked quickly away from Notre-Dame, pushing past the lavender sellers and the Nikon-necked tourists, away from the sparrows bathing in the mud puddles and the pigeons staking out the stone saints in the cathedral gardens.
She crossed to the back of the church and headed south on Rue Dante au Double. The street was busy for a Sunday afternoon. Shops were closed on both sides. Banks and bakeries, sandwich shops and boutiques were tightly shuttered up.
She had left dinner abruptly last night, unable even to arrange to meet back up with Michelle to plan their confrontation with Gerard. Last night she just wanted to be alone, and to cry for a very long time.
She felt stronger today. She turned as the Rue Dante jagged westward, and then stopped. This was Elise’s neighborhood, where she lived before Gerard got his hooks into her and moved her to the slum in Montmartre. Students were everywhere. Clean, well scrubbed, if disheveled, young people who scurried and playfully shoved each other on the sidewalks and looked like they had a place to go.
She walked to the intersection where she remembered seeing a sign for the Metro. She was surprised that she seemed to know where to go next. It was almost as if Elise was guiding her. She took the subway—never more aware of the filth and despair in each station platform as she passed. While changing trains in the cavernous, urine-saturated halls of the Chatelet station, a tiny Indian girl, half the age of Nicole, held out her hand and touched Maggie’s skirt.
The child was making an appeal for money, but to Maggie it felt like the curious, investigative nuzzle of a wild animal that doesn’t know enough to be afraid. She saw the child’s parents sitting in dirty, stained sari and pajamas, a cardboard cigar box in front of them, filled with euros. She gave the girl fifty American dollars and smiled at her, as if it were the gift of a benevolent, spoiling auntie, not pity money for food begged from a total stranger.
She surfaced on Boulevard des Capucines and the Opera House soared into view.
To her left was the Café de la Paix, her destination. Its bright, striped awning stretched the full length of the block. She hurried toward it. Perhaps now all her pain could finally come together in one seamless ache. Perhaps now, here, where it all started, where Elise met Gerard and began the whole series of events that would hurt so many people, Maggie would be able to get the perspective she craved.
She stood at the door of the café and peered in, amazed at the number of people crammed into the overflowing outdoor seating area that eddied and bulged into the street. Her chances of getting a table without a reservation at the famous Café de la Paix were about as good as making partner at one of the larger law firms back in Atlanta—without a college degree.
The waiters, in starched white shirts and black bowties, scurried past her, balancing huge silver trays over their heads. The constant movement and noise was spellbinding.
And then she saw him.
In the massive, confusing jumble of smoking, drinking, masticating humanity, she saw the one person she expected least to see and, had she thought of it, should have counted on seeing.
Roger Bentley sat alone at a corner table, protected from the hubbub and cacophony by two barely visible earphones. He was engrossed in a hardback book and was drinking wine. His food had not yet arrived.
Maggie was moving toward him before she had time to realize what she was doing. She stood in front of his table, her hands clenched at her side, her mouth open to try to speak. Her frustration and anger rendered her painfully mute.
Bentley looked up and a smile spread across his face. He stood, placing the book on the chair beside him.
“Well, I say! Maggie Newberry. In Paris! What a surprise!”
“That girl isn’t Nicole,” Maggie finally managed to get out. She stared him in the eyes, eyes that danced and feinted, cajoled and convinced.
“Fine, just fine, and you?” Bentley looked behind her. “You’re dining with friends? Alone?” He gestured to the empty chair at his table. “Join me. Well, I’ll be switched. Maggie Newberry, in Paris.”
Maggie placed her hands on his table. “Roger, I...” She didn’t know what to say. He looked at her with confidence, even pleasure. Her anger began to evolve into confusion.
“Please, dear girl, sit down. You look all in. Been shopping? Have some wine.” He reseated himself and waited until she sat down across from him. “Such a nice surprise, I must say. Garçon!” He waved over one of the speeding waiters and asked for another wineglass and a menu. “So, old girl, what brings you to Paris?”
Maggie took a deep breath. “That girl isn’t Nicole,” she repeated.
Bentley sighed and removed his earplugs. Maggie heard the faint strains of some sort
of classical music before he turned it off. He paused for just a moment, then said sadly, “Ah, no. I’m afraid not.”
The waiter brought the glass and menu, but Bentley waved the menu away. “The mademoiselle will have an omelet also.” He turned to Maggie. “They’re jolly good here. Like nothing you’ve ever tasted.” The waiter departed and Bentley poured her glass.
Just like old times, Maggie thought in bewilderment. “Where is Nicole?” she asked bravely.
“That is hard to say.” Bentley flapped his napkin out onto his lap.
“Is she alive?”
“I don’t believe so, no.”
“I see.” Maggie felt her hands begin to tremble and she pushed them into her lap under the table.
“You must see it from my position, Maggie.”
“You flimflammed me!” she cried, and then looked around at the other diners, who had turned their heads in their direction. She really didn’t feel like making a scene in one of the world’s most famous restaurants. “It was all a set-up,” she said more softly. “Did you kill Nicole?”
“You must be joking! Are you serious? Maggie, really! I cannot imagine you would even—”
“Roger, I haven’t got the energy for this bullshit of yours. I really don’t. Maybe the gendarmes will have more patience for it, but I’m not up to it.”
“Jolly well put. Yes, well. All right, from the top.” He ran a hand through his dark-blond hair and massaged his jutting chin. He looked at her as if he were about to drastically cut the selling price on a set of china they were haggling over. “We took advantage, shall we say, of an existing situation. I knew the child had died—”
“You knew the murderer?”
“I’m not sure there really was a murderer, my dear. I believe the child died...naturally.”
“I thought natural causes involved old age, Roger.” Maggie felt warm. Her cheeks were flushed.
“I’m just telling you what I know, pet. The girl was dead. Maybe an accident, I don’t know. What I did know was that her mother’s family had money and they had never laid eyes on the girl.”
“How did you know Elise hadn’t sent us a photograph of Nicole?”
“Honestly, Maggie, you must think I just took up the business or something. I’m not a total git, you know. It was known to me that Elise was disinherited.”
“That’s not true!” But Maggie knew it was.
“In any event, the child was not bandied about in snapshots to doting grandparents. Am I wrong?”
Maggie didn’t answer him.
“It was quite the ready-made scam, if I may say so. Something an artist dreams of. Rich family, dead main players...nothing but for a chap like me to step in and make it all happy and right.”
“Is that what you think you did?”
“You were happy. Your parents, I take it, were happy?”
“And the little girl? Is she happy?”
“My dear woman! The child, who is an orphan by the way, was rescued from a ghetto of incest and poverty. Am I to believe that my taking her away from that and dropping her into the lap of one of the wealthiest families in Atlanta, Georgia, was doing a disservice to the little mite?”
“My God.” The tight feeling returned to the pit of her stomach. “She’s been molested?”
“That was my understanding. Do you think I didn’t enjoy the idea that her life—in one stroke—was going to change for the better?”
“She needs psychiatric help, Roger. She’s in bad shape.”
“No, my darling, she’s in very good shape now. She’s in your hands, isn’t she?”
“You think you played God. You think you actually did a good turn?”
“I must say, I do. Your parents needed someone to help assuage their guilt over their daughter’s disappearance and subsequent death—”
“What do you know about what my parents need?”
“You’d be surprised the things I have to know in my business. And little ‘Nicole’ needed people to love and care for her. And not just anybody. As you pointed out, she needs special care now.”
Maggie shook her head. “And Laurent? Where does he fit in to all this?”
Roger shrugged and took a sip of his wine. “He was my partner, that’s all. A good chap, Laurent. He knew Elise and Gerard—”
“Don’t lie to me, Roger! I know Laurent is Gerard’s brother.”
“You’re not going to let me finish a full sentence, are you?” He smiled at her. Maggie glared at him. “All right, so of course he knew them. Anyway, that’s the connection. Laurent knew about the girl and Elise’s family having money.”
“Laurent knew so much,” Maggie said bitterly.
“Hmmm? Well, he’s quite a capable chap, if you know what I mean. And very likable.”
“For a criminal.” She watched the sea of faces at the surrounding tables, faces laughing, smoking, pouting, shoving huge amounts of rich food into moving, chewing mouths.
“Great fun to work with too,” Roger continued. “Good sense of humor. Haven’t you found that? Aren’t you two—as the French so politely put it—folie à deux? Involved? I thought you were. Laurent gave me the impression that you were.”
“He did?”
“He most certainly did. It’s not true?”
“I don’t know what’s true. Nicole’s dead, Elise is dead. And Laurent is a very mysterious equation to me. He lied to me.”
“Dear girl. That’s the nature of his business. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t care for you, or love you, come to that.”
“How very strange you people are.”
“By ‘you people,’ I take it you mean non-Americans?”
“He could lie to me, cheat me, intend to continue lying and cheating me—and still love me?”
“Sounds jolly rude when you put it like that. But I dare say he’s not interested in cheating you again. As for the lying, well, once you start, it’s bloody difficult to pack it up if you see what I mean. He can’t very well come clean on Nicole, now can he? I’m sure he doesn’t relish living a lie the rest of his life with regard to her.”
“But he could do it.”
“Maggie, life isn’t perfect. Or haven’t you come to that yet?”
“I could have you arrested.”
“Well, that’s very nice, I must say.”
“You cheated my family out of thirty thousand euros.”
“I’m not going to give it back, if that’s where this is leading.”
“I don’t know what to make of you, Roger. I sort of like you, but you’re a definite felon.”
“You Americans and your backward charm. Look, Maggie, I’ve been honest with you, haven’t I? Why not go back to Atlanta, go back to Laurent, and pick up the reins again? Let Nicole go on being Nicole and enjoy the fact that you and your family are doing your best for one of the world’s downtrodden.” He shrugged again. “I really don’t see what else is to be done.”
“Why did you bring me to Cannes to identify that body?”
“I was told it needed to be identified as Elise Newberry and I was paid to contact the family in order to make that happen. I don’t know beyond that.”
“Was it your idea to find and give us Nicole?”
Bentley shrugged. “My job is to see opportunities where others see utilitarian necessity or fate.”
“You’re good at your job.”
“Thank you. So does your family know yet about Nicole?”
“We didn’t have her tested.”
“No? Well, I’m not surprised. I could see from the start you were not the sort to love a child and then toss her to social services when she turned out not to be blood related.”
“Shut up, Roger.” Maggie turned away and looked once more at the frenetic crowd. This is where Elise sat, she thought. This is where Elise felt at home and happy. This is where Elise met Gerard.
She took a sip of her wine, aware that he was watching her closely. Still holding her glass, she looked at him with resignat
ion. “A good year, I suppose?” she asked wearily.
“Of course, my dear,” he said, reaching for his own wineglass. “Wouldn’t expect anything less from ol’ Roger, would you?”
She noticed that his eyes seemed to twinkle with real pleasure.
Her meal, which Bentley paid for, was a simple egg omelet with a healthy serving of the ever-present pommes frites. The omelet—fluffy, light, with barely a hint of the cheese, green pepper or ham that had gone into it—was, without doubt, the most exquisite thing Maggie had ever tasted.
Later, when she happened to see the bill the waiter planted in front of Bentley, she began to understand where her father’s money went during Elise’s first year in Paris. Her omelet had cost nearly ninety-five dollars.
After she left the restaurant, Maggie walked down the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Remorse had not been Bentley’s tendency. He made no apologies for his behavior or his profession. On top of that, he behaved as if he genuinely liked her. She wondered if that was compatible with the kind of person he was or the business he was in.
She wondered the same of Laurent.
And so this was Laurent’s work too. She had been afraid to ask Roger—in case he told her the truth—exactly how far he and Laurent were willing to go in their chosen profession. Where did murder fit in? Blackmail? Kidnapping?
She still didn’t have the stomach to call Michelle. If it meant she didn’t speak to Gerard before she left town, well, she wasn’t sure she cared anymore.
In any event, tonight was not a night for negotiating grimy Metro stations with their late night clientele graduating from panhandling to a more forceful rendition of acquiring a stranger’s money. She watched the golden glow of the Eiffel Tower twinkling in the distance from the back seat of a taxi. She wished she could see it without the veil of gloom wrapped around her.
In spite of the wine at dinner, she was sober and dispirited as she paid the taxi driver and ascended the entry steps to Hotel de L’Etoile Verte. The middle-aged man who handed her key at the desk seemed weary and world-soured.
“You have messages,” he said, pulling out two pieces of paper with her room key.
She felt a sharp pang. Laurent had called. She had deliberately turned off her phone so as not to spend the day looking at his texts and missed calls. She trudged to the hall elevator, shoving Laurent’s message into her purse. The second communication was from Michelle, asking Maggie to call her.
Not much of an investigative trip, really, Maggie thought as she punched the up arrow button for the elevator. I found out everything except what I was looking to find. She knew her parents must be wondering why she hadn’t called them. She could almost feel Laurent’s message in her purse vibrating insistently. She would have to talk to him eventually.
But God, not yet.
She was about to push the elevator button again when the doors jerked open. She stepped aside to let the occupant out, and when they didn’t exit she looked up to see the sole occupant staring menacingly at her from the elevator’s interior.
Gerard Dubois.
Murder in the South of France, Book 1 of the Maggie Newberry Mysteries Page 36