The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Maybe I’m pregnant already, Maggie thought happily as she assembled a cheese sandwich, drizzling aioli on both slices of bread. Taking a quick bite, she pulled open the refrigerator door to find the milk when she heard a rustling sound that seemed to come from between the refrigerator and the counter. What does Laurent keep in here? she thought, amused. He’s like a packrat with his kitchen a nest of found treasures and culinary bijoux. She put her hand in the crevice and pulled out a small, heavy package. Don’t tell me he’s taken to hiding my Christmas presents already!

  The first thing she saw as she peeled back the heavy brown paper was the black stubby nose of a Glock semi-automatic.

  Chapter Twelve

  1

  “What next? Cocoa Puffs?”

  Maggie threw Grace an unamused look and continued to pour the grits onto Marie’s plate.

  “Marie specifically asked for a sample of Southern breakfast fare,” Maggie replied defensively. “I’m not holding grits up as the height of breakfast cuisine--”

  “Just Southern food in general, huh?” Grace grinned at Marie. “A word to the wise, darling, don’t get caught hungry south of the Mason- Dixie if you’re ever traveling in the States.”

  Maggie set the pot of grits down on the table with a thud.

  “Are you kidding?” she said. “Southern food is fantastic! It’s nourishing...”

  “High in fat...”

  “Totally delicious...”

  “Cooked to mush...”

  Marie laughed and put a hand out to touch both of her American friends.

  “Arrête! Arrête!” she said, laughing. “I will not be able to eat!”

  Grace grinned at her.

  “That’s the point, chérie. Honestly, you’ll thank me.”

  “Non, non, now I want to eat these grits of Maggie’s. It is a little like polenta, oui?”

  “A little, I guess,” Maggie said, sliding a couple of fried eggs onto her plate. “Just black coffee for you, I suppose, Gracie?”

  “Hell, no,” Grace said. “I need to get used to American food again. Load me up!”

  They all laughed.

  Maggie retreated to the kitchen with the empty skillet. She glanced out the kitchen window at the bird feeder that Laurent had put up earlier that morning. He had left before Grace and Marie arrived to go to the market over in Château Renard. He had some ideas for a chapter in the book that revolved around the idea of creating a meal only after one has visited the day’s market to see what was fresh. It wasn’t a new idea, necessarily, but he promised he had a few twists to give it an interesting angle. So early in the morning for more promises, Maggie had caught herself thinking as she kissed him good-bye.

  After agonizing consideration that had taken nearly the remainder of her night, Maggie had decided not to mention the gun to Laurent. The fact was that, for whatever reason, he had not gotten rid of it--and he had solemnly promised to do it. And although this put into doubt much of his promises of the night before, she hesitated to call him on it. Things had been so wonderful for that one perfect night, that she could not bring herself to go head-to-head with the reality of the situation--and their relationship--just yet. She needed to dream, and to believe, just a little bit longer. And hope that holding her tongue would either renown to her faith in him --even when things didn’t look so good--or it would help make her that much stronger for the difficult time that might be ahead of her.

  “It is so good to laugh again,” Marie said.

  “So good to hear you laugh,” Grace said, touching Marie on the hand.

  “How’s René?” Maggie asked as she placed toast and bacon on Grace’s plate. “I guess he’s pretty discouraged.”

  Marie shook her head.

  “My René is usually so cynical, you know?” she said. “But for some reason, qui sait? he has decided to have faith that the stupid police will get it right in the end. After all, as he says, he didn’t kill Brigitte. They can’t convict him if he’s innocent, eh?”

  Marie smiled sadly at the other two, her tone belying her own faith.

  “We’ll get it straight for them, Marie,” Maggie said. “We’ll get him out, I promise.”

  “She will too,” Grace said between forkfuls. “This is really delicious, Maggie. You ought to do short-order.”

  “It’s practically the extent of my abilities in the kitchen,” Maggie said, seating herself. “I do a great American breakfast.”

  “It’s really quite good,” Marie agreed. “I bet August would love it.”

  Maggie flashed a quick look at Grace.

  “Speaking of August...” she said.

  Marie put down her fork.

  “He is many things, is August,” Marie said. “I have known him for so long. Known him to be capable of many surprises.”

  “But not murder?” Maggie prompted, as she seasoned her scrambled eggs.

  “Before we indict all the members of my family,” Marie said, pushing away from the table and standing. “I have something for you that might start pointing the finger in other directions, eh?” She picked up her purse from the couch and extracted a small, blue notebook from it. She placed it next to Maggie’s plate. “Brigitte’s gardening diary,” she said. “She left it, accidentally, at my house. Open it to the day...to the day she died.”

  Maggie picked the diary up carefully and flipped to the last week in July. Her eyes widened.

  “Interesting, non?” Marie said, re-seating herself.

  “What?” Grace asked. “What does it say, Maggie?”

  “Why does Brigitte have dinner engagements written in a garden diary?” Maggie asked.

  “Dinner?” Grace asked. “Does it say she’s rendezvousing with August that day?”

  “No,” Maggie said, handing the diary to Grace. “It says she’s meeting Madeleine for lunch that day.”

  Grace looked at the diary entry and frowned.

  “Is that bad?” she asked.

  “Non,” Marie answered for Maggie. “Unless you have carefully avoided mentioning the fact, even after your luncheon partner shows up dead.”

  2

  The pickers clotted the hillside like somnolent ants. Maggie had spent a good deal of the afternoon preparing lemonade, cold tea and beer and sandwiches for them and watching their progress from the back garden. The bushels of grapes were lined up on the front drive and stacked on the front terrace, awaiting the trucks from Cortier & Fils to arrive. They would be processed through the Co-op, a goodly amount of bottles sold for Domaine St-Buvard through the Co-op and a significant amount delivered back to Domaine St-Buvard for Laurent’s cave.

  Maggie picked up her laptop and settled on the couch with it. From here she could still see the workers, bent to their backbreaking task in the hot autumn sun, laboring in the field. The largest worker of all was Laurent. Maggie could see him walking up and down the rows of vines, directing, sampling, hefting a large basket to his shoulder, clapping encouragement on the strong backs of his workers.

  Hadn’t there been a small domestic crisis immediately after his promise to dispose of the handgun? Maggie tried hard to remember. Didn’t one of the dogs come in with an injured snout or bloody paw or something, temporarily siderailing Laurent’s promise? And perhaps, in the distracting flurry of tending to the hurt dog, Laurent had just tucked the gun away until he could deal with it and then....what? Had just forgotten he hadn’t taken care of it? Maggie opened a new document on her computer and keyed in the list of ingredients for ricotta and herb-stuffed ravioli Laurent had dictated to her earlier that afternoon. She made a notation to ask him if they should suggest types of wines for these recipes. Another worker came to the door asking for water and Maggie got up to get it for him. He said he’d worked through lunch, so Maggie also handed him a couple of the egg and pepper sandwiches that she and Laurent had prepared the night before. Muttering his thanks, he returned to his work. Maggie got herself a Coke and stood in the doorway watching the pickers move steadily toward the eastern q
uadrant of the field. They’d been picking steadily for three days now. Laurent thought they might finish today.

  Quietly, she set down the Coke and picked up the phone. She dialed the number quickly and it was picked up immediately, as if the person had been waiting for her call.

  “Allo?”

  “Madeleine?”

  “Maggie, hello!” Madeleine said. “I’m so happy to hear from you.”

  “I’ve been so busy, what with the harvest and all,” Maggie said. “I was hoping to reconnect with you, maybe over lunch? Say, tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow is gorgeous for seeing you!” Madeleine said, laughing. “We must get this friendship off the ground, as you Americans say, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Absolutely. How about at the hospital? I’ve got to be in the area anyway...”

  “In Nîmes?”

  “Yeah, I haven’t seen Pijou yet and I told Marie I’d stop in. Plus, I have something of Yves’ I’ve been meaning to return.”

  Maggie felt the tenor of the conversation become instantly chilled.

  “Ah, oui? Something of Yves’?”

  “Nothing important. So, what do you say? Noon? Straight up?”

  “Straight up is good with me, Maggie,” Madeleine said, no warmth in her voice now. “The only way I’d have it.”

  “Great, see you tomorrow.”

  “Absolument.”

  Maggie hung up the phone and turned off her laptop. She sat and watched the laboring workers strip the hard, coiling vines of Laurent’s small vineyard of their ripe, lush fruit.

  3

  The next morning was cold. The first really chilly day of the season and Laurent announced at breakfast that he took it to be a good omen that the harvest had been completed just before the first breath of cold weather. Ignoring a temptation to ask him when he had started believing in omens, Maggie found herself grateful the harvest was behind them for another year. The invasion of grape-pickers, always poor and often in ill-health, made her uncomfortable. It made her feel too much like the privileged landowner; her Southern heritage came with a price of guilt for what her forefathers had once done to another group of poor, but hard, workers.

  “We celebrate tonight, eh?” Laurent said over a breakfast of café au lait, French bread, jam, American bacon and Special-K cereal.

  “By ‘we’, I guess you don’t mean Maggie-and-Laurent,” Maggie said good-naturedly.

  “You will come, surely?” Laurent said. “It is our triumph together, n’est-ce pas? Our accomplishment?”

  Maggie pulled on a light coat and tied a silk scarf around her hair.

  “Would you be totally devastated if I begged off? I mean, no-one’s happier than I am about the grapes being all picked and I’m sure it’ll be a great wine and all, but if you’re going to stay out half the night with Jean-Luc and the guys--”

  “It will be mostly men,” Laurent admitted.

  “Yeah, see, I think I’d like to take a long bath and then curl up in front of the TV with one of those videos you don’t really like...you know?”

  Laurent got up from the table and kissed her.

  “We will celebrate later...together,” he said.

  She laughed.

  “That’s a date,” she said. “but probably not later tonight!”

  He grinned.

  4

  An hour and a half later, Maggie was in Nîmes. She parked her car in the hospital parking lot and walked directly to the outdoor bistro across the street. Madeleine was already there at a table, waiting for her.

  “Bonjour, Maggie!”

  The two women greeted each other with a kiss.

  At her throat she wore a gold necklace with a tiny cluster of diamond chips swinging from a slim, gold tether.

  “You are a little late,” Madeleine said, lighting a cigarette.

  “Yeah, sorry,” Maggie signaled to the waiter. “Have you looked at the menu?”

  “I have decided I am not so very hungry,” Madeleine said.

  The waiter approached the table.

  “Oui, Madame?”

  “Deux cafés,” she said. The waiter departed.

  Maggie turned back to Madeleine. “I got a date-book diary of Brigitte’s that says she had lunch with you the day she died.”

  Madeleine’s expression did not change. She blew a shaky circle of smoke into the air between them.

  “I had no lunch plans with Brigitte for that day.”

  “Kind of weird she’d have you down in her book, then, isn’t it? Something like this could be considered down-right admissible, you know.”

  “‘Admissible?’” Madeleine smiled sweetly.

  “As in, acceptable as evidence in a court of law. I’m telling you this diary information might be damning for you.”

  “It means nothing, Maggie.” Madeleine stubbed out her cigarette and smiled at the waiter who set down two coffee cups. “I am not responsible for what Brigitte has written in her diary. It does not mean it is the truth. It does not mean she did not make a mistake. Perhaps she meant the Tuesday before?”

  “She had a dentist appointment the Tuesday before.”

  “Ahh, well.” Madeleine shrugged. The women drank their coffee. The cold air ensured they were the only ones on the terrace. Even the waiter had donned a thick sweater to bring them their coffees. Maggie watched the dried leaves of the bordering sycamore trees scamper across the slate tile of the terrace.

  “And so, have you decided I have killed our friend, Brigitte? Too bad. I had hoped we could be friends.”

  “I had hoped that too,” Maggie said. “But friends don’t lie to each other.”

  “Au contraire, chérie,” Madeleine said, pulling out a Clarins tube and reapplying her lipstick. She looked sadly at Maggie. “That’s all the very best ones do.”

  5

  An hour later, Maggie found herself walking the hospital corridors, frustrated and impatient. It had been a long way to come for nothing, she thought. Madeleine insisted she had not met Brigitte that day, had instead, been more interested in why Maggie wanted to see Yves Genet than clearing her own name. Maggie felt the weight of disappointment too, because she had hoped that the interview with Madeleine would have answered her questions about the woman--enough to believe she could still value her as a friend. One thing Maggie did know from her hour with Madeleine was that Madame ** knew more than she was saying. And Maggie was sure that the information that she possessed was as unpleasant as it would be enlightening.

  Maggie stopped at the nurses’ station on the third floor and asked if Docteur Genet was on the floor. She received an indifferent shrug from the nurse. Frustrated and now, annoyed, Maggie walked the length of the nursing floor, peeking in patients’ rooms, trying to catch a glimpse of a white coat. Her mission was straightforward enough. Genet had had no qualms about mentioning August to her last time she was here and she intended to ask him directly if he had set August up on a fake-rendezvous with Brigitte. If so, why? If not, why would August lie about it? It might yield her little to nothing, but Maggie had discovered that some of the littlest things--and what often appeared to be a monumental waste of time--often delivered a nugget of information that was pure gold. And since it was obvious the police couldn’t be bothered ferreting out the gold dust in this case, Maggie was only too happy to ask the questions, look in the drawers, sniff around behind the cupboards. If questioned herself as to her purpose on the floor, she was fully prepared to act the dunce-tourist in search of a friend hurt in a car accident.

  As she turned at the solarium at the end of the hall, she spotted the door to the linen closet where Yves had endured her questions the week before. Perhaps she might be interrupting something? she thought pleasantly as she rapped loudly on the door. There was no answer and when she tried the knob the door swung open.

  She closed it quietly behind her. Even though Yves had used this room as a sexual meeting place on the day of Brigitte’s death, Maggie was sure Bedard’s men had not carefully examined the room.
Still, not really knowing what she was looking for, Maggie went to the shelves with the stacks of stiffly pressed sheets and slid her fingers under them and lifted them, one by one. She placed her hands between the stacks...again, looking for what? she wasn’t sure. She turned her attention to the examination table. It had a hard plastic cover, easy to wipe down, with connecting hooks for the long rolls of paper that would cover the top for each new patient examined. Maggie knelt and looked under the table. Instantly, she saw it. A gold earring with a cluster of diamond chips. An earring, identical in setting to the necklace that she had seen around Madeleine’s neck at lunch today.

  So, she thought, as she straightened back up. Ol’ Madeleine is still boffin’ Yves--which would explain her unrest in my trying to track him down and maybe even her discomfiture with me, period. Not very pretty behavior, chérie, coming from Brigitte’s best friend. For a brief moment, Maggie felt a wave of panic that was unattached to anything she could see or feel. In that wave, she also felt a concomitant, unsettling, desire to talk to Bedard. Shaking off the feeling, she tucked the earring into her slacks pocket, and resumed her search. She jerked open the medicine cabinet door, found it empty, and went back to lifting the stacks of linens to see if anything had been wedged under them or between them.

  At one point, she heard a group of nurses coming down the hall and stop right outside the linen room door. They appeared to be in good spirits, probably just back from lunch, Maggie thought. They soon dispersed and she was left to finish her work. She wanted to get home before Laurent left for his evening. She had an idea to give him a little incentive that might dissuade him from being out too very late tonight.