Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) (16 page)

“So you think my
girlfriend is a model? She is beautiful, isn’t she?”

“I’m worried
about you, Roger. Seriously. You used to be somewhat normal. What you’re doing
is wrong and you know it.”

“I’m sorry if you
thought that our acquaintance would afford you privileges that I don’t feel
comfortable offering you, Madame,” he said smoothly. “Your husband must pay the
price for his crimes like anyone else. It would be an unspeakable breach of my
position for me to interfere. I hope you understand.”

“Oh, trust me, I
do,” Maggie said and broke the connection before she could add anything that
might not help Laurent get released as soon as possible. “
Dickhead
,” she said, accelerating.

Forty minutes
later when she reached Aix, she was forced to park two blocks away. Cursing the
fact that it was now well after five and full into the Aix rush hour with
people racing about doing their marketing for dinner, Maggie hurried to the
imposing police station, dodging shoppers and office workers on the broken and
uneven sidewalk. When she turned the corner to the station she ran up the steps
of the building and found Laurent sitting out front in one of the rusting café
chairs.

“Laurent! Did
they just release you? Are all the charges dropped? What
were
the charges? Why didn’t you call me when they let you go?”

Laurent stood up
and patted his shirt pocket. He shrugged. “I must have left it in my other
shirt.”

She shook her
head and grinned. She knew he hated public displays of affection—and that
was probably especially true in front of the police station—so she
resisted the urge to throw her arms around him. But seeing him free with no
harm done from the experience filled her with immense relief. She felt the
clenched tension that had fueled her drive to the city drain from her
shoulders. “So they just drove you to Aix and let you go?”

“Pretty much.”
Laurent took her arm and guided her down the steps to the street as if she
hadn’t just vaulted up them with the agility of a non-pregnant teenager. “The so-called
complaint vanished by the time they brought me in.”

“Who complained
about you?”

“No one,” he
said. “Or if there was someone, he recanted before the charge could be formally
made.”

“This is Roger’s
doing
,”
Maggie said
.
“It’s harassment, pure and simple.”

“Peut-être.” Maybe.

 
When they reached the street, Laurent
stopped and held her at arms’ length for a moment. He frowned.
“While I am happy to see you under any
circumstances,
ch
é
rie
,” he said, “do you want to explain why
it looks as if you have been combat-crawling through the vineyard in your best
dress?”

“This is not my
best dress, Laurent. It’s just the only one left that still fits at this stage
of the game.”

The look he gave
her was easy to translate.

“Okay, look, I
had a little hike in the forest where Julia goes for her mushrooms. That’s
all.”

He continued to
look expectantly at her.

“And I might’ve
slipped in the mud at one point. Not a biggie. I didn’t even fall all the way
down.”

He looked at the
side of her dress which was caked in brown mud from hip to hem.

“Okay, I did fall
a little bit but the mud was soft, Laurent. And even though I bruise really
easy these days, I didn’t fall hard enough to do that.”

He reached out
and touched her jaw and frowned. “Then how is it you have a bruise on your
chin?”

“My chin?” As
Maggie’s fingers flew to her face, she could feel the tenderness where
Mathieu’s hand had gripped her. Her mind raced, and just when she was settling
on the inevitability of telling Laurent the whole painful truth, she saw that
he was no longer looking at her. Instead, he was staring, with an expression as
close to shock as she had ever seen on him, over her shoulder at the parking
lot. She turned to follow his gaze to where their car sat—exactly where
she’d parked it—with the front windshield a demented spider’s web of
cracks and blood coating the grill and front bumper.

“Holy shit,” she
said in a low whisper.

Laurent strode to
the car and walked around it without speaking. He plucked a note from the
battered windshield wipers and read it before handing it to her.

“For a moment,”
he said looking at the damaged car, “I was afraid you had driven to my rescue
with a little too much enthusiasm.”
 

The note read: “
Since you care for the wellbeing of animals
so much, you will be glad to know only chickens were murdered for this message.
Next time the joke will be on you
.”

“Is she crazy?”
Maggie held the note up. “This is a written confession that she’s vandalized
our car.
And
she’s threatening me.”

Laurent gave her
a weary look. “
Qui
?”

“Michelle,”
Maggie said. She cleared her throat and looked away. “I might have mentioned to
her in passing how much I like animals.”

“
Vraiment
, Maggie?”

Maggie pretended
to concentrate on the note in her hand.

“
Bon
,” he said. “Get in. Be careful of
the broken glass on the seat.”

*
              
*
                     
*

In the end it had
taken very little.

Julia was
surprised at
how
little was required.
For weeks she watched the others barter and trade for protection, for pleasure,
for relief. At first, it had felt impossible—insurmountable—the amount
of wealth needed to assuage the daily fear. But then, Julia had been thinking
in terms of food, of warmth, of a respite from the pain and the humiliation.
When it came right down to it, the thing she really needed—and had needed
right from the start although she didn’t know it then—was very cheaply
had. She didn’t need to ask Maggie to give her money or slip her cartons of
cigarettes. She didn’t need to determine which guard could be bribed to be
kind. She didn’t need to attach herself to any group of women in
particular—the terrifying or the more terrifying.

In the end, it
was a simple act of friendship, honestly given, that made her ultimate
deliverance possible.
Who would have
thought?
When she finally came to the point where she knew what she wanted,
what she needed
, it was really only
valuable to the buyer. For Julia, it had cost nothing. Less than nothing.
 
A
shiv for a kiss
.
Poetic, really. And
such a chaste kiss
. On the cheek but freely given with care and sympathy
and human feeling. There could be no doubt of that from either party.
And really, when you thought about it, what could
be more valuable in this place of horror than that?

Julia smiled
bitterly, the knife tucked carefully into the front of her jumpsuit, its sharpened
edge against her skin a promise of rescue and peace. She huddled on her damp
mattress shoved up against the wall of her cell and waited.

Who could have imagined that all it would take was a simple act
of kindness?

Chapter
Fourteen

The cobblestone
square in front of
Le Canard
, the
village café in St-Buvard, was littered with crisp, brightly colored leaves. As
a brisk autumn breeze picked them up and tossed them into an intricate vortex
of activity, Grace couldn’t help but think it an animated metaphor for her own
life. The thought made her smile.
So
inane
. And if her life was a convoluted crazy-quilt of events and
happenings as volatile and random as the wind, then surely she could absolve
herself of the very real part she had taken to create the disturbance?

“You’re smiling.
What’s up?”

Grace turned to
look at Maggie. They sat with Danielle Alexandre in slowly deteriorating wicker
chairs on the café’s terrace, their food market purchases in string bags at
their feet, cooling cups of
espressos
on the table.

“Nothing,” she
said. “Just thinking about my life.”

“Glad that makes
you smile,” Maggie said.

Grace looked back
at the dancing leaves in the square. “Why not?”
 

“Your color has
come back,” Danielle said.

That made Grace
smile even more. It was such a maternal thing to say. Grace decided she loved
the older woman for it.

“Yeah,” Maggie
said, “you blondes can’t afford to lose any color. You’ll have to wear
chartreuse, and I know how that would kill you.”

“I must be
feeling better,” Grace said, “if you’re teasing me again.” She picked up her
demitasse
and brought it to her lips.
She had to admit, she felt better. Lately there were a few hours in the day
when she actually didn’t feel like shit. And today, not but a few moments ago,
she had felt a ghost of a memory of what happiness felt like. It was gone
quickly, but it had been there. A memory of sunny days and wine and laughter
with good friends. It was hard to have that memory without thinking of Win,
too. She wondered if she would ever be able to think of sunny days and wine
without thinking of him.
       

And wanting to cry.

“Okay, now you’re
starting to lose it again,” Maggie said, watching her over her coffee cup.

“Take me out from
under the microscope, darling,” Grace said, allowing an edge to come through in
her voice. “I am what I am. And please, no Popeye references.” She turned to
Danielle. “How is Lily Tatois doing? I heard she was ill.”

Danielle hunched
in her thin coat and Grace wondered if she and Jean-Luc were having money
problems. The coat was old and unattractive, but perhaps that was just
Danielle’s lack of taste showing. It did look like it was a label at least.
Just not one from this decade.

“She is not doing
well, I’m afraid. I hate to say that the death of her nephew has been the
occasion for us to renew our acquaintance with each other, but that’s the
truth. And now that she is dying, she is open to resuming our friendship.”

“Were you close
before?” Maggie asked.

Danielle
shrugged. “We were school girls together but not from the same class. Lily was
beautiful and confident and rich. I wasn’t.”

“But she wants to
be friends now?” Grace said as she redirected her gaze across the courtyard to
a van laboriously unloading heavy pipes on the sidewalk.

“I don’t fault
her for that,” Danielle said. “It breaks my heart to see her like this.”

“So is she really
going downhill? I thought the doctor gave her three months.”

“I’m afraid
recent events have worn on her.”

“Yeah, I’ll say,”
Maggie said. “Just having Michelle as a member of my family would wear on me,
big time.”

Grace noticed
that Danielle seemed to give Maggie a disapproving look and it amused her to
see it. In any case, it didn’t seem to bother Maggie, which surprised Grace not
one bit.

“How are you coming
on the case?” Grace asked her.

Maggie’s face
brightened. “Well, not great,” she said cheerfully. “I have more suspects than
I know what to do with and none of them are of interest to the police, which of
course is not a shock, but still.” She turned to Danielle. “Have you ever heard
of anyone in town by the name of Mathieu Benoit? He’s truly a dangerous
character. I would tell you, Danielle, of how I know that to be true from
personal experience but I know how you hate to keep secrets from Jean-Luc, who
then hates to keep secrets from Laurent…”

Danielle put her
coffee cup down with a clatter. “If you are doing
anything
to endanger yourself or that little baby, Maggie
Dernier—”

“I’m not! Jeez,
Danielle, take a chill pill.”

“Maggie is
teaching me American idiom.”

“God, Danielle, I
didn’t know you had a sarcastic bone in your body until just this moment,”
Grace said, laughing. “I’m glad to see it.”
 

Maggie put her
hands up as if to defend herself. “I just need to know if you know this guy,
Mathieu. Jean-Luc said you know everyone in town, including Avignon, Aix and
half of Marseilles.”

“Mathieu Benoit
is the son of a friend of a cousin of mine,” Danielle said primly. Grace could
tell Danielle didn’t always know how to react to Maggie. Frankly, Grace thought
that that was part of Maggie’s charm.
 

“And?” Maggie
prompted. “Star student at his high school? Rap sheet a mile long? Come on,
Danielle. He looks like he’s already a headliner with Interpol. What’s the
gossip?”

“I don’t listen
to gossip, Maggie,” Danielle said, “but Mathieu, I believe, has in fact been a
disappointment to his family.”

“This is like
pulling teeth from a chicken.”

Grace patted
Danielle’s hand. “She said
chicken,
Danielle
,
because chicken notoriously do not
have teeth.”

“I am aware of
Maggie’s legendary impatience,” Danielle said. “But I will not say more than
what I know.”

“Yeah, that’s
fine,” Maggie said. “So if I were to tell you that I’m meeting Mathieu tonight
behind the old abandoned
boulangerie
,
just him and me—”

“You wouldn’t
dare!”

“Okay, so spill
it. What’s his story?”

“I never said he
was innocent.” Danielle looked at Maggie with real aggravation.
Yep,
Grace thought with an inner smile.
That’s our Maggie. She can make a saint
cuss.

“He is a
hothead,” Danielle said. “And very jealous. In fact…I believe he is prone to
violence.”

“Wow, when it
rains it pours,” Maggie said, nodding her head at Danielle’s admissions. “Let
it all out, Danielle. Could he have killed Jacques?”

“Do you mean is
he capable of it?” Danielle’s face relaxed and Grace saw the faintest hint of a
smile coming through. “Aren’t we all?”

“Some more so
than others,” Grace said. “What’s your theory, Maggie?”

Maggie scooted up
to the table as much as her expanded stomach would allow and Grace could see a
pink flush of excitement on her face.

“Okay, here’s how
I see it. Julia and Mathieu met in their apartment building. Julia’s lonely and
she’s had a bad experience with her last guy, Jacques, so she’s vulnerable.”

“I thought you
said Mathieu was this big hulking brute with tattoos and piercings and a buzzed
head.”

“That’s right.”
    

“Well, then were
you not totally flabbergasted to learn that your dear friend Julia chose
someone like that?” Grace felt herself relaxing. The tension was draining out
of her shoulders, her face, her arms.

“Well, sure,”
Maggie said, frowning. “I mean I would’ve been shocked to hear that Babette the
village tramp was dating him, okay? He’s an ape. But like I said, she was
vulnerable. May I continue?”

Grace lifted one
shoulder in a shrug.

“So I figure they
get together, and after a few bottles of wine she tells Mathieu the whole story
of how Jacques was such a rotter—and then puts the cherry on the cake
with the fact that he hit her—
and
that he’s trying to get back together with her—”

“
Vraiment
?” Danielle looked unconvinced.
“Monsieur Tatois was attempting a reconciliation?”

“Yes,” Maggie
said, “and it’s kind of a secret. I mean, as far as I know only Julia, Mathieu,
Jacques and the murderer knew that. And I think that’s significant, don’t you?”

Grace watched as
Maggie regained her enthusiasm at Danielle’s interest. “And you, of course,
darling.”

“Of course.”

“And Laurent?
Because that would make it you, Laurent, Julia, Jacques, Mathieu, and the
murderer. And of course myself and Danielle.”

“
Anyway
,” Maggie said, ignoring Grace,
“so Mathieu—a known hothead—hears that Jacques is coming to dinner
and he figures a genius way to off him is to switch the mushrooms in the omelet
that Julia is preparing—”

“Whoa, wait a
minute,” Grace said. “How would he be able to do that? How would he know how to
acquire poisonous mushrooms in the first place?”

“It just so
happens,” Maggie said, “that I have proof that Mathieu accompanied Julia on her
foraging trips in the woods to find fresh mushrooms. He knew exactly where to
go to find poisonous mushrooms.”

“Because,
presumably, Julia pointed them out to him? The poisonous ones?”

“Well, she’s the
expert.”

“You admit that?”

“Look, I never
said she didn’t know good mushrooms from bad. Of course she does. She forages.
How else would she make sure she didn’t pick poisonous mushrooms?”

Or make sure that she did,
Grace thought.
 
“And
you also admit that Tatois died eating the mushrooms she put in his omelet.”

“That
Mathieu
put in his omelet.”

“Okay,
whoever
put them there…you admit that he
died from the omelet he ate at her house.”

“What’s your
point here, Grace? Are you being deliberately obtuse? I
get
that the whole world thinks
Julia
poisoned Jacques. My theory turns on the same facts but points to a different
person. Mathieu. He had motive. He had opportunity.”

“His motive was
jealousy?” Danielle asked.

“That’s right.”

“What do you mean
you have proof that he went foraging with her?”

Maggie hesitated
a moment and smoothed her long tunic over the mound of her belly. Grace could
see the baby kicking from across the table.

“That’s not
important,” Maggie said. “The point is, he knew where to get the mushrooms.”

“So your
contention is that he’ll let Julia swing for a murder
he
committed? Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? He gets rid
of his rival, but loses his girlfriend in the process?” Grace felt her handbag
vibrate and reached in to look at her cellphone.

“I’m working out
the details,” Maggie said. “Obviously I don’t have access to all the
information I need to fill in the blanks.”

“Obviously.
Maggie, is your phone turned off? Because I’ve got two phone calls here from
Laurent and I don’t think he’s trying to get a hold of
me
.”

Maggie pulled her
phone out of her bag and frowned at the screen. “Yeah, he’s called me, too. I
wonder what’s up.” Suddenly her phone vibrated in her hand. She stared at the
screen for a moment. “I don’t recognize the number,” she said and then,
shrugging, accepted the call. “Hello?”

Within seconds,
Grace watched the color drain from Maggie’s face. Danielle must have seen it
too for she reached for Maggie at the same time that Grace did.

“Sweetie, what is
it?” Grace asked.
Was it Win? Taylor? Was
Zou-zou hurt?

Grace saw
Danielle’s grip tighten on Maggie’s wrist but Maggie’s face remained stunned
and unaffected by her friend. In mounting panic, Grace watched as tears filled
Maggie’s eyes.

“Maggie, for
God’s sake, what is it?” Grace said sharply, her hand over her mouth.

Maggie dropped
the phone on the table with a clatter, then grabbed it up and pushed the off
button. She tossed it back down and looked at it as if it were radioactive.

“
Qu’est-ce qu’il y a
?” Danielle
whispered.
What is it?

Maggie visibly
brought herself under control, even reached out to pat Danielle’s hand. “It’s
Julia,” she said, her voice hoarse as if she’d been screaming. “She tried to
kill herself last night.”

“Dear God,” Grace
said in thanks to prayer that her family was safe, and then felt a wave of
guilt at Maggie’s stricken face.

“Was that Roger?”
she asked.

Maggie gave a
disgusted laugh. “No. No, that was Annette Tatois calling to tell me in person
the kind of power she has to ruin my world.”