Maggie looked around her. It was a pest-hole. One room of very dark wood and no furniture save a large and ugly armoire. The sounds of the little creatures living behind the walls were loud and constant. On one dirty, bleak wall, someone had painted a group of gilt-framed silhouettes. A man, a baby, a woman. Maggie felt a catch in her throat as she looked at Elise's whimsy, her family. She imagined her sister painting them. Her back to the south window, waiting for the sun to create the shadow, waiting for the light to come to her. Against the wall was a small iron sink, rusted black and filthy from the years. Unwillingly, Maggie intercepted another barrage of images. This time of Elise bathing Baby Nicole in the sink. Of Elise washing her long mane of pale curls in that sink.
Madame jerked open the last of the windows and a different kind of light filled the room. Bright and lifting, this light came from the window that faced away from the alley, away from the heart of Montmartre. Maggie walked to the window and looked out. The grim, stately stone markers of Montmartre Cemetery spread out below her, its few large trees shading the dead, the celebrated and the wretched. Elise would have sat at this window in order to see the cemetery and to write Michele and she would have used this light by which to paint. Maggie felt a tremendous sadness and wished there were a place where she could sit down for a moment. To think that Elise had been living for three years in this slum and her Atlanta family had never had a clue.
"Two hundred francs, Mademoiselle." The woman stood in front of Maggie, her arms again pressed rigidly across her bony chest. "You are understanding?"
Maggie leaned gently against one of the window sills, her head whirling in the close heat of the apartment. She nodded at the woman. Understood. Two hundred francs to rent. She apologized for wasting the woman’s time and left the little apartment.
3
He placed the newspaper on the kitchen table, knowing she was watching him from her position at the sink. He reached for his cooling coffee, refusing to look at her for the moment.
"Any good headlines?" Darla asked quietly, her voice casual to cloak the fear she'd begun to feel these days.
"Still complaining about the traffic on the perimeter loop," Gerry said, taking a long sip of coffee.
"You'd think they'd be bored with that." Darla carried her coffee to the table and sat down with him. "They've only had the perimeter for twenty-seven years now."
Gerry noted the distancing pronoun "they" instead of the more familiar "we" and felt a small satisfaction. She was coming around. She was already starting to say good-bye to this place. She would be ready to leave when it was time.
Darla cleared her throat. "Anything about Dierdre in the paper?"
Gerry shook his head. "Guess they got tired of it," he said. "There's so much happening these days, you can't expect one little ol' murder to occupy more than a day or two of media time." He flipped the paper deliberately to the back to read the "Far Side" cartoon.
"Gerry." She spoke his name and touched his hand and he was forced to look at her. Her face was soft and sad. He hated to think he had contributed to that look but he couldn't weaken now. He couldn't ease up on her when they were so close.
"What?" he said flatly.
"What do the police think? I mean, why do they think poor Dierdre--"
"Darla, I honestly don't know, okay? Is there any more coffee in the pot?"
"But they think it's the same guy, right? I mean, the guy who killed Maggie's sister? Isn't that right?"
"Look, Darla, you obviously seem to know more about it than I do so why are you--"
"No, why are you acting like this?" Her face dissolved into an expression of frustration and despair. "I feel like I'm all alone in this, Ger," she whispered, reaching for his hand again.
Gerry put the paper down and tried to show her a face of firmness and pity. He wished he didn't have to act, but he was afraid to let his guard down. He knew that if he were honest with her, she'd back out. She'd start rationalizing why it all happened. She'd find a toe-hold in it all and then the battle to stay would continue. No, he couldn't let her backslide now.
"I guess when it comes to dying, we're all alone," he said.
"Gerry!" She spilled her coffee in the saucer and he noticed that her hand was shaking. "Is that all you can muster for poor Dierdre? That we're all alone when it's our turn to die?"
"I'm sorry," Gerry said, pushing his own coffee away. "I didn't realize it was my reaction to Dierdre's death we were talking about. I thought we were talking about how alone you felt in dealing with it."
Tears rolled down her cheeks and he physically steeled himself against the table to avoid comforting her. Didn't she know he was doing this for her and Haley? That emigrating was the only way he knew to save them?
"It could've been us, Darla," he said. "It could've been Haley, just as easily."
"What are you talking about?" She was crying now, but he knew she knew what he was talking about. She was afraid too.
4
"You are not going to see Gerard?"
Maggie caught her reflection in her hotel room mirror and frowned.
"I said I wouldn't, Laurent," she said.
"You promised, cherie."
His voice sounded strong yet sweet. If he weren't in the process of irritating her, Maggie would have smiled just to hear his dear insistence, his loving, low rumble of a voice, all guttural r's and sliding z's. So excitingly French, she thought, and wondered, not for the first time, how much of her attraction for him had to do with his foreignness.
"Yes, yes, yes. Honestly, Laurent, give up the grip on this, would you? Je suis bored with it, okay? I won't talk to him. Enough already. Finis. Done."
"Et Madame Zouk," he continued. "You trust her?"
"Yes, of course. What's not to trust? I mean, she was Elise's friend. She's not the enemy or anything. In fact, she's being a big help."
"I miss you. I do not understand what is this stuff you cannot know here in Atlanta."
"Have the cops come out with a line on Dierdre's killing yet?" Maggie ran a hand through her tangled hair and tried to remember the last time she'd washed it. Atlanta?
"Nothing."
"Figures."
“Maggie, will you be long in Paris?"
She heard the exasperation that had been hovering in his tone for the full conversation. "I miss you too, sweetheart," she said, looking again at her reflection in the mirror that hung opposite her bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the phone onto her knees. She knew this call was costing a fortune.
"Then why not come home?"
"I am coming home. Just as soon as I talk to a few more people."
"Who know nothing." His voice came across the transatlantic line without emotion or energy. In fact, it occurred to Maggie that his whole attitude since she'd arrived in Paris had been pretty unsupportive. It was clear that Laurent was beginning to lose patience with Maggie's search for Elise's killer. She turned away from her own reflection.
"Who probably know nothing," she agreed. They were both silent for a long moment. "I'll call tomorrow," she said, finally. "And be home probably the day after that. I love you, Laurent."
"Et moi aussi," he said, almost sullenly.
After they'd hung up Maggie sat holding the phone for a few more minutes. Slowly, she stood up, replaced the phone on the nightstand next to her bed and went into the bathroom to splash cool water on her face. It was only seven in the evening and she didn't feel like staying in her room, but she had no place she could think of to go. She tidied up her make-up and pulled a comb through her black hair. Mindlessly, she tied it back in a single ponytail with a dark blue ribbon and stared at herself in the mirror.
She wore a black cotton turtleneck and a long, pleated navy skirt. Very French, she had thought when she had packed them. Now, she just shook her head. She had circles under her eyes and the lipstick she'd brought made her look too corporate in spite of her dramatic outfit. Naturally, Elise could've pulled it off, she thought with a sad smile
. Elise could've pulled off looking sultry and exotic in clown shoes.
Maggie sat down at the writing table crowded into one corner of her room and shook out a few postcards from a tissue-thin paper sack. She addressed one of the cards to Brownie and one to her parents. She wrote cheery, generic sentences on them, stamped the cards and placed them into her handbag for posting the next day. She wanted to call her mother to talk about Elise and to talk about herself and Paris, but decided against it. She'd be home in a few days. Plenty of time to tell her everything then.
She picked up a blank postcard and thought of her office back in Atlanta. She thought of Pokey and Patti and Bob and Jenny and Gerry and the rest of them and how they must have reacted to the news of Dierdre. She imagined the look on each of their faces when they realized that little Dierdsie wouldn't be showing up for traffic meeting any more. She pushed the postcard away, with its familiar image of Notre-Dame, and thought, sadly, how far away she felt tonight from the people she cared about. I should be with them. I should be sharing their grief in the office. My God, Gerry is probably having a full-blown, living-color nervous breakdown about now. I was mad to think he would take it okay. She looked again at the postcard and let the full weight of her melancholy envelop her.
When the ringing of the phone interrupted her satisfyingly sad mood, she jumped and then snatched it up hoping it was Laurent again.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Maggie? It's Michele. I'm downstairs."
Michele?
"Michele Zouk," the voice said. "I'm here to take you to dinner. You don't have plans, do you, cherie?"
The restaurant was a short walk down the street from Maggie's hotel. It featured polished wooden floors, deeply recessed paneling and moldings, offset by the dramatic Brunschwig & Fils wallpaper pattern, ecru lace café curtains and all of it lit by candlelight.
The menu was equal to its setting. It featured a simple, but well-planned French cuisine of roast meats and fish at a fixed-price of only 32f, wine included. Maggie made a mental note to eat there for the rest of her stay in Paris.
Talking herself into believing that the French were kinder to their young cows than the Americans, Maggie ordered the veal with a salad, an eggplant dish of some kind, andcrème brulée. Michele Zouk ordered a Cabernet Sauvignon.
Michele looked wonderful. Her hair fell like a dark curtain to her shoulders, framing the face that even made other Frenchwomen pause and admire her. Surprising Maggie, and overturning one of her fashion theories, Michele wore a one-piece lemon-yellow catsuit. Anyone else in the outfit would look like a big, wingless canary, Maggie thought. Zouk still looked enigmatic.
Maggie was beginning to feel at home with the Frenchwoman.
"I saw Nicole's birth certificate,” Maggie said. “Gerard wouldn't give his name as the father."
Michele cut into her crudité. Like all the French, Maggie noted, food was a serious business with her.
"I think I got an idea of how she lived when I saw where she lived in Montmartre. Michele, it was disgusting. It's hard to believe my sister lived there. I mean, she was always a little, you know, artsy...even a little sloppy, but this place was a real dump. My mother would've wept."
"Monsieur Gerard put your sister through many changes, I'm afraid."
"Yeah, I guess that's just what he did." Maggie toyed with her food for a moment. Zouk had nearly finished her meal. "You know, Michele, I don't know whether or not Gerard really killed my sister--"
"He is absolutely capable of it."
Maggie hesitated, watching the other woman. "Yeah, I believe that," she said finally. "But there has been another murder that the police think is connected with Elise's."
Zouk stopped eating and looked at Maggie. "Oui?"
"It happened the night before I came to Paris. She was a friend of mine." Maggie felt hot tears spring to her eyes and she was surprised. Wasn't Dierdre a friend of hers? It’s true they never went out for drinks together. She hadn't had her over for dinner, nor had she met her boyfriend, Kevin, ever. But she mourned her. She would miss her.
"You knew another victim?" Michele gave Maggie a look of pity and caring. "I am sorry, Maggie. This is very hard on you."
Not half as hard as it is on Dierdre, Maggie thought, concentrating on her plate again. Or Elise.
"Anyway," she said, taking a ragged breath and reaching for her wine. "I'm open to believing that Gerard might not be involved in Elise's death."
"Yes, of course, I see." Michele said. She caught the eye of their waiter and asked him to bring their desserts. "And why are you in Paris, then, Maggie?"
"Funny, that's just what my boyfriend asked me tonight."
"You have a boyfriend in America? He supports your...what are you calling it..?"
"My investigation. Yes, mostly. He's losing steam with it though. He's French too."
"Yes?"
"Yeah, I met him through all this, as a matter of fact. When I came to Cannes to find Nicole, he helped me get her."
"And how did you know him?" Their custards came and Michele ordered coffees for both of them too.
"Well, he was a surprise, really. I met him through another guy, an Englishman, that my father had contact with. Anyway, Laurent was helping this Englishman find my niece."
Michele nodded and spooned into her crème brulée. Maggie noted that Michele ate delicately, almost theatrically, holding the spoon in front of her after each dip into the pudding as if she expected to be photographed for Paris Vogue.
"Gerard has a brother named Laurent," Michele said.
Maggie felt her stomach tighten. What an odd thing for her to say, she thought. "Well, I guess it's a common name, huh?" she said lightly. "Laurent's last name is Dernier, not Dubois." Maggie watched Michele and her reaction came slowly, almost as if a video had been slowed down. Maybe, on some level, Maggie had already known what Michele would say. Why else would she have watched her so closely, waiting for her response? Why wouldn't she just have dug into her own egg custard without another thought to the topic?
"Your boyfriend's name is Laurent Dernier?" Michele was not eating her custard either.
Maggie didn't answer. She watched Zouk's mouth as the words tumbled relentlessly out.
"Oh, cherie, is this possible?" Michele whispered. "That is the name of Gerard's brother."
Chapter Nineteen
1
Maggie rubbed the sleep from her eyes but remained in bed. She had slept badly, finally falling asleep, miserable and exhausted, in the early hours of the morning. As she drifted off, she had heard the slow, snarling rumble of a Parisian delivery truck as it began its early morning route.
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 the child, Nicole. When she thought of his passive, sweetly uncomprehending eyes during her frustrating months of questions and tortured bafflement, she wanted to smash his dear, familiar face with both her fists.
Bastard! Liar!
She swung her legs out of bed with no intention of going any further. Finally, 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.
Suddenly, she ran into the bedroom and snatched up her purse. She pulled out the picture of Elise and Baby Nicole. It had been there all along and Maggie had refused to see it. The birthmark across the baby’s cheek extended into her hair line. Elise’s daughter had been born with a significant birthmark. An identifying one. Maggie stared at the picture and thought of the little girl living with Maggie’s parents. In her mind, she saw Nicole's face as she sat 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 the birth certificate of the child that Elise had given birth to. She saw an image of Laurent holding Nicole on his kn
ee and murmuring to her in French. So it’s true, she thought. She isn’t ours.
Her thoughts returned instantly to Laurent. And he's known all along. He knew that this child was not Nicole, was not her niece. Suddenly, she felt an icy wave of nausea ooze through her when the realization finally hit her that the real Nicole was almost certainly dead. And that's something else that Laurent knew, she thought numbly.
And has known all along.
2
Looking up at the famous pointed bronze tower soaring towards the sky from the roof of Notre-Dame, Maggie leaned against the back of a 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--each of the twenty-eight granite replicas of France's Kings looking much like the other--and ached with a memory of her visit here with her mother and Elise.
She remembered the Coca-Colas 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 saw Elise, beautiful at eleven, her little lips pink and full against her creamy complexion, watched her smile coquettishly at the young brutish waiter and sip her Coke as if it were Drambuie. Even then, Elise had a style and a vision of herself.
Maggie gazed up at the screaming faces of the gargoyles and hellhags rimming Notre-Dame. 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, beneath which, she knew, lurked the Crypte Archeologique. She began walking, quickly, away from Notre-Dame, pushing past the lavender sellers and the Nikon-necked tourists, away from the sparrows bathing in mud puddles and pigeons staking out the stone saints in the cathedral gardens.
The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4 Page 25
