The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  "Adieu, Roger."

  Laurent hung up the phone slowly and then rubbed a large hand across his face as if to erase his very features. Ahhh, Maggee, he thought sadly.

  4

  "No, Michele," Maggie said, cradling the telephone against her cheek while she threw another sweater into her suitcase. "Gerard denied killing Elise. I'm not surprised and I'm not sure I care any more. I mean, if he did kill her, what am I supposed to do about it? Make a citizen's arrest, or something? There's no damn evidence or the Atlanta cops would've nabbed him. He's, like, this mega-loser....so blitzed on dope he probably couldn't crack an egg let alone devise a foreign murder. I mean, this whole trip was nuts."

  The French woman murmured softly on the other end.

  “Do not give up, Maggie,” she said.

  "I am giving up," Maggie said. "Besides, after what I've learned about Elise and...and Laurent, I'm afraid I just don't have the energy or...passion, if you will...to try to prove Gerard's guilt. I guess that makes me a pretty lame excuse for a sister, but that's the way it is."

  "Perhaps Gerard did not strangle the life out of her on that night, cherie," Zouk said. "But he has killed your sister as surely as if he held the sash that tightened around her throat. He put an end to her art. He put an end to her family. He put an end to her friends and time took care of the rest. Elise was alive with her friends. She could not live without her art. She was an artiste!"

  "You don't get it, Michele," Maggie said, tossing her cosmetic bag into her suitcase and snapping it shut. "I don't care any more. Okay? Elise lived her life the way she had to and if she crapped all over her family as a result of it...well, what's new about that?"

  "I hope you will write me, Maggie, as your sister did," Michele said quietly.

  "I will.”

  "And also to tell me when you find Elise's killer."

  Maggie sighed. "I’ll write you, Michele. Michele?"

  "Yes, cherie?"

  "What do you think of Gerard's brother, Laurent?"

  "Cherie, I do not know the man very well. Only that he makes his living as le voleur...the con-man. But what is it mattering now? Oh, you must get to the bottom of this Laurent fellow, absolutement! There are too many questions, eh? But if it is love...” The knowing smile was as evident to Maggie as if she’d been in the same room with her.

  Truly, the French are not like the rest of us, Maggie thought with a touch of admiration in her heart for her new friend. She said farewell and wished she could believe the same philosophy.

  5

  It was still early evening but Maggie didn't begrudge the taxi ride. After all, Montmartre was not necessarily a safe place to be at any time. She paid the driver and stepped out onto Rue Caulaincourt. She walked quickly and with purpose. The Moulin Rouge windmill sliced through the thick night air, beckoning the streetlife inside in a slow, insidious, come-hither gesture. People bumped into her as she walked, she held her purse tightly to her stomach, hurrying faster now to find the little alleyway.

  When she found it again, it yawned before her, dark and unwelcoming. Maggie took a breath and turned into the cobblestone avenue that led to Elise's old apartment.

  She'd said good-bye to Michele and had felt a genuine sense of loss. The woman had cared about Elise. She seemed to care about Maggie too. Maggie was starting to recognize just how rare that feeling could be.

  The shuttered windows stared down at her like jack-o-lantern eyes from the apartments that lined the little street. She glanced up at the landlady's window. Like the others, it was closed to the world. No sign of light or life behind it.

  Maggie slowed her pace as she passed beneath Elise's window and looked up. Nothing. She turned the corner at the end of the alley and stopped. There it was. Montmartre Cemetery.

  From where Maggie stood, she could see oversized granite urns and what looked like miniature Washington monuments punctuating the row after row of plain stones--which looked like a field of gray surfboards jammed into the ground. The wind picked up as she stared at the semi-darkened graveyard. Little, luminescent stubs of white crosses jutted out from the hard ground. Stone angels and fierce cherubs guarded long-dead babies under ghostly great trees, their leaves having long dropped onto the patient graves and markers.

  Maggie crossed the street and entered the cemetery through the arched gateway which led to a stone trellis and a pergola, as gay as a garden wedding.

  The eerie obelisks and weathered tombstones, washed in the light of dusk, shot irregular shadows in every direction, like spirits leaping out in confusion and panic. Maybe this wasn't such a hot idea, Maggie thought.

  She moved between the headstones, careful not to trample the flowers that attentive mourners had placed next to the graves, and took a seat on one of the many wrought iron benches, its scroll work was intricate and lovely. She thought for a moment of the ancient artisan commissioned to create these graveyard thrones. She wondered what his thoughts had been as he worked.

  The cemetery did not frighten her, although it did give her a vague sense of unease. Lost or earth-bound souls were not much of a consideration for Maggie. Never had been, she mused, as she thought of her father telling her and Elise ghost stories when they were girls. Elise seemed to want to believe in witches and spirits and supernatural things. Elise had paid close attention to her father's stories, jumping in the appropriate spots, eyes widening in exquisite fright to his delight. Maggie hadn't seen the point. If someone was dead, he was dead. She'd thought so then. She thought so now. Elise had always told her she had no imagination.

  Maggie turned to find the window of Elise's apartment, the window where her sister had painted her watercolors, written her letters. Gone forever, Maggie thought. Elise gone, her little girl gone. And here she was, Maggie, sitting directly in the scene Elise had painted maybe a hundred times. Maggie touched a nearby headstone and felt its hard smoothness. It was marble, and icy-cold, but looked like old chalk, crumbling and dirty.

  Why had she come here? To say good-bye to Elise? Why not the Elise who had lived in the Latin Quarter? At least that was an Elise she might have understood.

  Maggie's eyes filled and she opened her purse to search for a tissue. And, of course, the Latin Quarter Elise was an Elise who hadn't felt at all understood. She was an Elise who'd packaged herself in such a way as to be accepted by her family--but who had compromised herself to do it. This was the real Elise, Maggie realized, the one who had lived in Montmartre and taken drugs and brutal lovers. Wild and free and too different to be honestly loved by her family, this Elise had painted. And died. For, surely, Michele was right: Elise had died here long before she ever went to Atlanta.

  Maggie pulled out of her purse the glittering goldtone scarf ring Brownie had given to her at Nicole's birthday party. She thought of that little girl and her heart squeezed. What is Nicole's real name? she wondered. Who is she? Maggie sat on the hard little bench, her lap full of the contents of her purse, and felt a light breeze touch her skin. It was getting late.

  Shaking herself, she began to put everything back into her purse. Plenty of time for all of those questions, she told herself. Her time in Paris was through. She'd done what she had come to do. And more, she thought, as a picture of Laurent came to mind. She held the little scarf ring in her hand for a moment and thought of Brownie. Poor Brownie wanted to help so much. He wanted to be a part of her world so very much.

  Suddenly, looking at the little gold-painted scarf ring, Maggie felt a realization so swift, so undeniable, that she nearly gasped when it hit her. She held the scarf ring tightly in her fingers and stared at it.

  She knew who Elise's murderer was.

  Chapter 21

  1

  Darla stared at the map propped up against her coffee cup. Gerry had drawn loopy black lines on the map of Auckland City to indicate areas where they might live in, where he would work, where Haley might attend school. Darla touched a spot on the map. Kohimarama.. She traced the line across Hobson Bay. One Tree Hill.
Onehunga. Te Papapa. Her finger came to a stop at Manukau Harbor.

  "Finding everything all right?" Gerry dried his hands on a dishtowel and leaned over the back of his wife's chair. He smelled of soap and coffee beans.

  Darla withdrew her finger and placed her hands in her lap.

  "See, this is Waitemata Harbor." He jabbed at an expanse of blue that divided the city of Auckland. "If I take the Bates' job, I'll be able to see the water from my office. They've got a regatta every Wednesday in full view. That's what the headhunter said. Pretty neat, eh?"

  Darla sighed loudly.

  "Or maybe you don't think so." Gerry tossed the kitchen towel down onto the table and pulled his jacket from the back of one of the kitchen chairs.

  Darla lifted up a corner of the map and felt under it for her cooling coffee. Gerry pulled on his suit jacket, jerking the cuffs down and pushing the front together, although not buttoning it.

  "If we get a place in Remuera, for example, there's a good school for Haley there."

  "Your headhunter said so." Darla spoke softly as she brought the coffee cup to her lips.

  "Interesting name, Remuera. Maori, I suppose. Wonder what it means, don't you?" Gerry adjusted his tie, jutting his chin out like a startled turkey stretching at a sudden sound.

  "When will you be back?" Darla picked up the map and began to fold it. Gerry watched the precise movements which demonstrated an unusual deliberateness for his wife--usually so fast and slap-dash.

  He shrugged and peered around the corner of the kitchen into the living room as if searching for something.

  "Tomorrow afternoon," he said. "I'll get there around eight or so, I guess. Meet with Bryant for dinner...God, it's going to be a late night."

  "You think he'll buy you out of Selby's?" The map crinkled noisily in her fingers. He thought it was taking her a long time to get it all folded up.

  "We shall see," he said breezily. "Seen my briefcase?"

  She said nothing. Holding the map tightly in her hand, she sat and looked vacantly at the kitchen wall opposite her.

  "Should be back, everything wrapped up, by tomorrow afternoon," he repeated, "I'll call you, of course."

  "Going to wrap up everything before Maggie's had a say?"

  Gerry stopped hunting for his briefcase and looked at his wife. He needed to get this over and done with, he thought. The sooner moved, the sooner adjusted.

  "She knows I'm talking to a guy."

  "She know you intend to sign on the dotted line?"

  "I'm not sure I do intend to."

  She turned in her chair and looked at him. He thought she looked frightened. I'm doing this for you, Darla!

  "Okay, I do intend to," he said. "But it can't be helped. Maggie knows that. She knows how important this is to me. I wouldn't sell her down the river." He pulled up a chair and sat down next to his wife. "If this guy isn't right for Selby's, I won't sell. You believe that, don't you?"

  She stared into his eyes, then dropped the map onto the table and put her hand up to his freshly-shaved cheek.

  "I love you, Gerry," she said, beginning to cry.

  He put his arms around her.

  "Believe in me, Darla," he said. "Believe I'm doing what's best for all of us."

  She buried her face into his suit jacket.

  2

  The taxi driver gave Maggie an impatient toot on his horn. Maggie turned to glare at him from where she stood outside the hotel in a telephone booth. I'm so sick of these people! She gripped the telephone receiver a little tighter.

  "Une moment!" she shouted, forcing a feigned smile in his direction. Her bag was sitting in the backseat of the taxi and she wasn't totally convinced he wouldn't take off with it just to show the impertinent American that he could not be kept waiting. Weren't we on the same side during the war? she wondered. Didn't we help liberate bloody Paris?

  "Sorry, M'am," the voice crackled over the telephone wire to her. "Detective Burton isn't answering his page either."

  Maggie shifted the phone receiver to her other ear.

  "I've got to talk to him." She closed her eyes in agony. "I have got to speak to the detective."

  "You'll have to leave a message." The impersonal drone of the sergeant's voice served to increase her agitation.

  "A message? God, what kind of..." She took a deep breath and looked briefly in the direction of the angry taxi driver. "Look, tell Detective Burton or Detective Kazmaroff that Margaret Newberry called again, okay?" She paused until she was sure the man was writing this all down. "Tell him, please, that I know who killed my sister. And Dierdre Potts, too. Tell him that. And...and to page me at the Paris airport, okay? I'll be there in about thirty minutes and for about an hour once I'm there. Charles DeGaulle airport in Paris. Okay?"

  I must be mad to think that redneck cop is going to call the airport in Paris, France, she thought, pushing a hand through her hair. She heard the sound of the taxi driver's door slamming shut and she turned back to the phone.

  "Look, just give him my message and have him call me, please." She hung up on the sergeant's assurances that he would give Burton her message. She hurried down the stone steps of the Hotel L'Etoile Verte and greeted the indignant taxi driver.

  "Sorry! Sorry!" she sang breathlessly as she tugged open the passenger door of his taxi. "Je me regret! Je m'excuse!"

  The man grunted and returned to his side of the car. He poked viciously at his watch as if to indicate that he would be charging Maggie for the extra time spent waiting for her.

  Maggie climbed into the back seat and tossed her purse to the far side in an exhausted gesture. She had tried last night and most of this morning to reach either Jack Burton or Dave Kazmaroff to tell them of her discovery. The police department had refused, understandably, to give out their home phone numbers, and the pair had been unavailable for the last twenty hours or so.

  Maggie told the driver to take her to Charles DeGaulle Airport and then sank into the stained and lumpy backseat.

  3

  She drummed her fingers on the Delta Airlines countertop, unaware of the annoyed look the pretty flight clerk was giving her.

  "Here's your passport, Mademoiselle," the clerk said to her, handing back her American passport. "We hope you have enjoyed your stay in Paris?"

  Maggie looked at her uncomprehendingly. "Huh?"

  "Your flight leaves Gate Five, please. Thank you," the clerk said, looking beyond her to the person next in line.

  "Oh, okay, thanks." Maggie gathered up her carry-on bag and stuffed her passport and ticket into the side pocket of her purse. She moved out of line, her ears straining to catch the sound of her name being paged over the public address system.

  Charles DeGaulle was chaos. Drug-sniffing German shepherd dogs roamed aggressively at the ends of taut leashes held by uniformed officials, signs insisted from every doorway that passengers should not leave their bags unattended for a single moment, crying children seemed to be everywhere--either attached to sour-faced mothers or roaming pitifully alone, presumably in search of sour-faced mothers.

  Maggie pushed through the crowd and tried to remember the excitement and anticipation she had felt just a few days ago when she had landed here from Atlanta. Then, the airport had seemed abuzz with hope and promise, a traveler's way station of rare adventure about to happen. This morning, she saw the filth on the floors and the distrust in her fellow traveler's eyes. It made her shiver all the way through her double-quilted bomber jacket.

  She took a place at the back of the line that wrapped around the Information Desk and checked her watch. She had a full hour before take-off, and still no word from Atlanta. She hoisted her carry-on bag to her other shoulder and tried to take mental refuge in the stillness of the queue from the roiling, noisy crowd moving and milling around her

  Why wasn't he paging her? Was her message not forceful enough? My God! I said I've discovered the identity of the killer, is that not strong enough? Maggie eyed the woman manning the information booth and hoped
she spoke English. Should she have left a message actually naming the killer? Was it safe to do that? She looked at her watch again. It was late afternoon back home. Where had the detectives been all day? Will I need to prove that what I say is true? She had an uncomfortable image of Burton crumpling up her message and tossing it away. "Not that Newberry woman again! Why doesn't she give it a rest? 'Found the killer', she says! Brother!"

  Maggie looked around the rotund German hausfrau standing stolidly in front of her in line to the pinch-faced woman behind the booth. The woman didn't look to Maggie to be particularly helpful. Suddenly, she felt a permeating weariness creep over her. She was so sick of trying to make people give her information or help her. A garbled message in French came over the public address system, and Maggie strained to catch some semblance of her name being mentioned. In frustration and relief, she finally approached the counter.

  "My name is Margaret Newberry," she said breathlessly. "I am expecting a page."

  "Your question?" The woman looked at her coldly.

  This is it! I'm going to kill a human being in an international airport!

  "What part did you not understand, Madame?" Maggie said testily. "The pronunciation of my name? Mar-gar-et New-berry. Comprenez?"

  "There have been no pages for you."

  "Thank you. You've been a dear." Maggie scowled at the woman, enjoying the perverse pleasure of finally not having to force a sociability she was long-past being able to feel. She turned away from the counter, frustrated and defeated. She walked toward the long corridor that led to her departure gate.

  Maggie turned quickly to the wall of telephones that lined the tiled boulevard within Charles DeGaulle Airport. She deposited her bag against the wall and jammed a franc coin into the machine. She had been crazy to withhold the name of the killer in her messages to Burton and Kazmaroff. She had been so sure that Burton would doubt her word that she had held off naming the murderer until she could do it on the phone to him herself--outlining her detailed evidence, sketching out her argument. But, apparently, not having the name to work with only seemed to ensure that Burton disregarded her messages. She had to tell him what she knew and pray he would take it from there.