The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  She made a face and took a step away from him.

  "Whatza matter?" He leaned toward her in a threatening sway, as if he might topple over onto her at any moment. "You are in Paris to see Gerard, eh?" He licked his lips and grinned obscenely. "Gerard is here."

  Maggie was visited by a vision of awful similarity: Laurent standing in her mother's garden at Brymsley, his hands open in a disarming gesture, his eyes full of love and relief to see her. Laurent is here.

  She pulled her eyes away from the tottering, malodorent wretch blocking the lift doorway and stooped to pick up her purse.

  She was aware that her new knowledge of Laurent had temporarily blotted out her desire to talk to Gerard. She had actually been planning to leave France without speaking to him at all. In light of Laurent's betrayal, whatever Gerard might have to tell her had seemed somehow inconsequential. In any event, deep in her heart she knew that Gerard was still the key. He'd always been the pivot around which all the pain and confusion had spun. Deep down, she knew the true reason she'd balked at seeking him out was because she was simply afraid to learn any more--about Elise...and about Laurent.

  "I won't talk with you here," she said grimly. "Outside." She jerked her head to indicate that he was to follow her into the lobby. There, under the nose of the night concierge, they would talk.

  "You are afraid, little peony?" Gerard leered at her and wiped his oily fingers on his pant legs, but he followed her. "You are afraid of Gerard, non?" He snuffled a sort of grunting laugh that put shivers down Maggie's spine. That her sister could have loved this!

  She sat on a long, uncomfortable, settee in the small lobby. It was well lighted and, although late, she felt safe from him there. He heaved himself next to her on the sofa.

  "Madame Zouk told me where to find you," he said, his foul breath blasting into her face.

  "I don't believe you."

  "You don't? How are you thinking I am finding you, eh? The bitch told me where you were!" He smiled widely at her, displaying yellow and gray teeth.

  She looked at him coldly and willed herself to appear more in control than she felt. "Did you kill my sister?"

  He shoved his face closer to hers but she did not retreat. His pupils were the size of pin pricks.

  "You are a pig," he said menacingly. "Your family is a family of pigs."

  "Did you kill--"

  "I did not kill her. I told the police I did not kill her."

  "Did you kill Nicole?" Maggie swallowed hard. Might as well get all the tough ones out of the way up front.

  "You can ask me such a thing? Your own family has stolen my--"

  "Cut the crap, Gerard." Her hands tingled with her loathing. "I know the real Nicole is dead. Did you kill her?"

  He softened, his eyes still locked with hers. Then, his shoulders slumped forward and Maggie had an awful moment when she thought he was going to weep.

  "I did not kill her," he repeated, his eyes, half-lidded as if sleepy. Maggie took a deep breath and willed herself not to blink.

  Gerard pulled out a crushed pack of Gitanes and stuffed a bent cigarette into his mouth. She waited while he lit the tip with a match. He dropped the used match at his feet and looked at her smugly.

  "I was drunk." He shrugged and smiled. "Very drunk? Peut-etre. She fell off the boat sometime in the night, perhaps."

  Maggie wanted to put her fist through his stinking, decrepit face, wanted to claw his features from their very bones until his smirk lived only under her fingernails. She waited, her heart pounding in her chest.

  "After we left her mother." He blew a smoke ring at Maggie. "Elise was a very bad maman, eh? Nicole and I lived on a little boat. Un petit bateau?" He smiled at her again and took a puff from his ciGertte. "One night, she is falling over the side." He made a graceful, slow gesture with his hands to indicate the soft fall of Nicole over the side of the little boat. "Pshhht!" he assimilated the sound of a small weight spilling into the stagnate water. "In the morning we are finding her little body." He smoked harshly on the filter. "It was very sad," he said, smiling ruefully at her.

  "Did...did Elise know?" Maggie began to feel cold and distanced from the lobby at the L'Etoile Verte, as if what she were hearing were from a television show, something unreal and unrelated to her. Her mind fought to stop the image of the little four-year old girl sinking to her death in the night-dark Mediterranean Sea with no one to know or care.

  He made an abrupt gesture as if waving away a fly.

  "Pfut! I did not tell her." He looked directly at Maggie. "She did not ask."

  Didn't ask about the well-being of her own daughter?

  "You came to see Elise in my apartment the afternoon she was killed."

  Gerard nodded almost gently.

  "I wanted to screw her," he said.

  "Why should I believe you did not kill her?" Maggie said. "You were there. Witnesses saw you there."

  "Mademoiselle," he said sarcastically, his tongue flicking out over his cigarette filter like a snake's. "Gerard was there. Gerard did not kill Elise." He sighed. "I went to Elise's door." He held Maggie's gaze.

  "How...how did you know where I lived?" she asked.

  "I am following you when you bring her home, yes?"

  Maggie felt her skin crawl.

  "She is very sick when I see her," he continued, drawing hard on his Gitane. "She will not come away with Gerard. The pig! She is fou...and very noisy. I am telling her to shut up! Shut up!"

  Maggie's mind swelled with disgust for the man who sat next to her on the sofa in the elegantly shabby lobby of L'Etoile Verte.

  "I am taking, for me, the things ma femme should be giving me."

  Maggie snapped back to attention.

  "What things should she be giving to you?"

  Grinning, Gerard dug into his pocket and pulled out a wax-paper packet no bigger than a deck of cards. He placed it on the sofa between them.

  Maggie looked at the packet, then reached out to pick it up.

  He grabbed her wrist and held it firmly.

  "You are paying, Gerard, n'est-ce pas, Mademoiselle?"

  "I am not paying for what I have not seen," she spoke calmly, forcing her dinner to stay in her stomach.

  He released her.

  "Regarde," he said.

  Gingerly, she picked up the little packet as if it were full of incubated rattlesnake eggs and opened it.

  Elise's gold charm bracelet. A pony, a little artist's easel, a piano, a miniature book. Both girls had been given charm bracelets when they turned ten years old. Maggie had lost hers on a Girl Scout camping expedition the following year. Their mother had added to Elise's bracelet over the years...up until the time Elise had moved away. Now, Elise's gold-braided bracelet made a soft tinkling sound in Maggie's hands, every spare loop filled with a tiny, bobbing gold charm except for the space left by the little Scottie dog that had been found in Maggie's apartment the night Elise died.

  She looked back up at Gerard.

  "You took this bracelet from Elise in my apartment?"

  He nodded.

  Maggie looked back at the bracelet in her hand. How was it possible that Elise had kept the bracelet? Through crack houses, prostitute wharves and slums? All these years? And something so bourgeoise? So hated a reminder of her boring, civilized southern past?

  She looked at Gerard, her fingers closing loosely around the packet of charms. "Why did you take it from her?" she asked quietly.

  He smiled wickedly. "Because it was important to her, yes? She is always loving her beautiful bracelet...it is from when she was a little girl, no?" He looked at Maggie eagerly as if expecting her to agree with him.

  "How much?" she asked dully.

  "One thousand francs." He grinned broadly and she noticed his yellow stubs of teeth.

  She tossed the charms back into his lap. They fell between them on the sofa.

  "Keep them," she said.

  "Eight hundred francs!"

  "I don't want them."

&nbs
p; "You are a pig!" Gerard looked at her with a stunned expression on his face. "I cannot take less than eight hundred francs!"

  "And you are une idiot. I don't want the damn thing. What else have you got to sell?"

  "Mademoiselle." His face turned into a wheedling mask of pathos and need. He placed the bracelet almost lovingly on Maggie's knee. "Gerard is needing money tonight."

  "Not my problem." Maggie forced herself not to look at the charms. "Gerard is..." he groped for the words. "Gerard is needing money tonight," he repeated.

  "Did you hit my sister that day?"

  "I...no, I did not hit--"

  "Liar!"

  "Gerard is not lying!"

  Maggie stood up abruptly, causing the charms to tumble to the rug in a muffled jangle.

  "You hurt my sister, threatened her, beat her...and now expect me to give you money? Is that how the French do things?"

  "I did not hit her!"

  Whatever drugs he'd done prior to coming to her hotel were obviously on the verge of kicking in. Gerard sat transfixed, staring up at Maggie as she stood over him.

  "Gerard might get hurt if he doesn't get money?" she sat back down. She glanced over at the hotel desk to double-check the lack of interest they were generating with the night manager. He continued to stand, hunched over the counter, reading a magazine and drinking a Coca-Cola. He acted incurious about anything except, perhaps, his own misery at having to work tonight.

  "Oui, mademoiselle," Gerard said, scooting himself a little closer to Maggie. "It could mean my life."

  "Do you have anything else to tell me?" she asked softly.

  "To...to tell you?" Gerard looked at her, hopefully, his pitted and ravaged face blinked a kind of peace like a neon light. That would be the drugs, Maggie thought as she watched him. "Your sister, she is making me hit her. She is very bad to Gerard. She is hurting my ears! Screaming!"

  "You said she was sick that afternoon."

  "Yes, sick. She is not getting her...how to say it?"

  "Her fix? Her drugs? Is that it? Elise was strung out?"

  Gerard smiled sweetly. He cocked his head at Maggie almost shyly.

  "I am thinking so, yes," he said.

  "So, you did hit her a little bit," Maggie offered.

  "Just a little bit, perhaps."

  He closed his eyes softly, the smile still on his lips and seemed to go into a sort of trance. Maggie watched him sleep for a moment. Then, her eyes caught a glimpse of the bracelet at his feet. Carefully, she bent down and picked it up and slipped it into her purse.

  Gerard's eyes fluttered open. He grunted and looked drowsily at Maggie.

  "You need to go now," she said to him.

  "Eh?" He snorted and looked around the lobby without seeming to focus.

  "You need to go, Gerard. I've called the gendarmes to come for you. They are coming to put you in jail to rot for a hundred years where no one will know but me where you are or what happened to you."

  He looked at her in confusion.

  "Les gendarmes...?" He struggled unsteadily to his feet and took a few hesitant steps toward the door. The night clerk turned, briefly, from his magazine to watch Gerard.

  "You are giving me my money," he said loudly.

  "No, scumbag," Maggie said, standing up too. "I'm giving you a five minute headstart on the police. Comprenez-vous?"

  He cursed her loudly but continued to move in the direction of the lobby exit.

  "Gerard will hurt you!" he shrieked.

  The desk clerk, now looking bulkier and younger than Maggie had originally thought, moved from behind the desk counter to approach Gerard. He spread his hands out in a questioning gesture.

  "Qu'est-ce qui le prend?" he said to Maggie. What's his problem?

  Ignoring him, Maggie spoke directly to Gerard:

  "Gerard will hurt no one," she said.

  For a moment, she thought he would attack her, but, in the end, he was probably too far gone for that kind of energetic performance. He screamed another round of French curses at her and then allowed himself to be crowded out of the lobby in a shuffling dance of pushes and threats by the stout night concierge.

  When he had gone, the clerk gave Maggie a sour look and spoke roughly to her in a language she was, finally, glad she'd never bothered to learn. She smiled contritely until he turned away and back to his magazine. The clock over his shoulder showed that it was nearly two in the morning.

  Maggie shouldered her purse and walked to the elevator. Now, she thought gravely, she could leave. She had seen what she had to see, she had talked to the devil himself and found out what she needed to know. The elevator doors opened for her and, stepping inside, she thought of the other little girl, Nicole, who had died without her maman on a warm summer's night in the South of France. Pushing the number of her room floor, Maggie closed her mind to the image. She would put her grief away into a little box and push it to the back of her mind to be brought out later--later when she was stronger, when she was less tired. Much later.

  2

  "I guess all this sort of puts the final nail in your plans to bail out of Dodge City, huh?" Maggie chewed on a croissant and leaned against the interior of the phone booth. The morning sun was bright in her eyes. She blinked and wished she’d brought a cup of hot coffee with her. Or had broken down and made all her phone calls from her room -- and hang the cost.

  "The movers come in two weeks," Gerry said. "And I'm meeting a guy in Savannah tomorrow morning who's interested in buying my share of the business. Don't worry," he said quickly. "You'll be brought in on all that if it comes together. And..." he took a long breath as if overwhelmed with the speed of things himself."... we land in Auckland the week after that. Haley is thrilled, really excited."

  Yeah, I'll just bet, Maggie thought, watching some French workmen construct a makeshift awning over a shop across the street from her phone booth. She took another bite of her croissant and noticed the oil the bun was leaving on her fingers.

  "And Darla?" she said through her mouthful.

  "Darla might not be excited about it, but she's committed to going. This has really gotten to her too, Mags. When we got the contract on the house here? That sort of pushed her over the edge, I think. Then it really started to feel real for her."

  "How was the memorial service for Dierdre?" Maggie said, switching the subject. "I felt bad about not being there."

  "It was nice. I read some stuff. A poem by Houseman. Her brother talked about her, you know, gave the eulogy."

  "I wished I'd been there."

  "You were missed. It was really sad. Everybody cried through it."

  "But nice."

  "Yeah, well, you know."

  There was a pause.

  "Got a job, yet, down there?" she asked.

  "Got a bunch of interviews and they're as good as got. New Zealand's economy has been in bad shape for awhile now, but their advertising community is pretty healthy. Plus, they respect outsiders, probably more than they should. They put Yanks and the Brits in all their top spots."

  "So, you're expecting to do well on the job-market scene."

  "I am," he said briskly.

  "Gerry, I am not indicting you for moving to New Zealand, so I would appreciate it if you would take that defensive tone out of your voice when you talk to me. Is that possible?"

  "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry. But, I mean, I have to have a certain mind-set to pull this thing off, you know? I can't relax or the whole thing will fall apart, and no, Darla is not leading cheers from the sidelines about all this. She's going to New Zealand with the same attitude that the penal colonists went to Van Dieman's Island, okay?”

  "And you still believe--"

  "With my whole heart."

  Maggie sighed. One of the French workmen reminded her of Laurent. He stood on the bottom rung of the ladder and yanked on a long rope pulley. She watched the gray striped awning flap open over the metal scaffolding.

  "Well, that's important," she said.

&
nbsp; "Glad you think so."

  "Don't start with me, Gerry. Or, at least, don't start with me until I'm back home and not paying $10.50 a minute for the pleasure."

  She felt his smile, begrudging but real, from across the miles.

  "Yeah, okay, Mags," he said. "Can do…since you put it that way."

  Minutes later, after she had given Gerry a bare-bones rundown of her time in Paris and then assured him she would be back in the office by Thursday, she was dialing Detective John Burton' office number.

  He picked up the phone himself.

  "Burton, here," he snapped into the phone.

  "Detective Burton? This is Margaret Newberry."

  "Yes, Miss Newberry." His voice mellowed noticeably.

  "I'm calling you from Paris where I've been doing some investigating of my own...?" She rushed on before the inevitable lecture and suggestion she contact Victim's Families Anonymous could begin. "And I've talked with Gerard Dubois."

  There was a slight hesitation on the line. Then,

  "I see," he said. "Maybe you'd better tell me about it."

  3

  "Non, non, merci, Roger, I am happy you called me."

  Laurent switched the telephone to his other ear. He stood in Maggie's small galley kitchen, leaning against the stove, regarding the red plastic wall clock opposite him. He wore a pair of faded bluejeans and trainers with a stark-white cotton T-shirt.

  "Well, I thought you'd want to know, old chap. Bit of a surprise for me, I can tell you...running into the girl like that."

  "Mmm-mm, yes, I can see that," Laurent said, thoughtfully. He stretched out an arm and examined the hairs on it. His T-shirt strained across his chest as he took in a long breath.

  "Not sure what you'll want to do about it," Roger continued on the other line. "She's dead keen to get to the bottom of this Nicole business, I can tell you. I'm afraid you're in for it, squire."

  Laurent sighed into the phone.

  "Well, thank you for calling, Roger. I will handle it from here," he said.

  "I know you will, old darling. Listen, I'm to Cap D'Antibes next month. I don't suppose you'd be...?"

  "Ach, non, Roger." A thin smile found its way to Laurent's lips. "Not this time, mon ami."

  "Ahhh, well. Never hurts to ask. Take care of yourself, Laurent. Cheers."