The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  The first thing she had done after unpacking her suitcase was to leave a note on the apartment next door, letting Stan’s neighbor know that she had returned and would take back the cat—at least temporarily—whenever the neighbor liked. She saw a bowl of cat kibble in the darkened hallway and wondered if Stan’s cat had agreed to the temporary custody arrangements or had insisted on making his own.

  Now, as she drank a Diet Coke on the balcony, Maggie allowed herself to feel the mixture of many different sensations. The little apartment was quiet. Made quieter by Petit-Four’s absence, Maggie thought. She had opted to let Danielle care for the little dog while Maggie was in Paris. She already missed her.

  The weariness of her trip was made worse by the emotional upset that her parting with Laurent had been. She had to believe that he would forgive or understand in time—once she had returned and all was well. In the meantime, she thought it probably best to push thoughts of him—and the state of her marriage—to a quiet, infrequently visited corner of her mind so that she could work on the matter she had come to Paris to address. Another reason for her prolonged stay on the balcony was her resistance to be in Stan’s apartment without him. She had promised her father that she would sort and pack Stan’s belongings in preparation for the sale of the flat but it was way too soon to think about all that.

  The other thread of emotion that was tangled up with her sadness and guilt over how she left Laurent was the undiluted delight that she felt at being back in Paris. As she sat and looked at Notre Dame, she remembered visiting it as a young girl with her mother and her sister Elise. She remembered the summer she had spent in Paris between her sophomore and junior year of college. She remembered the café she sat in on the Rue de la Paix when she learned the shocking truth about Laurent and the death of her sister’s only child. She remembered a tumble of weekend jaunts with Grace. The very spirit of the city infused her with a thrill and level of excitement that she knew could never be replicated by any place else or anything else.

  She was in Paris. And whether the memories were good or bad, it was awesome.

  Jean-Luc slammed shut the trunk of his ancient Volvo and turned to see his wife disappear into the house. He smiled as she suddenly turned—as if wanting to catch one more last glimpse of him, too—waved and shut the door between them. For happiness to have come to him at this point in his life was a miracle that Jean-Luc would never stop being grateful for. That Danielle of all people could love him had reawakened his belief in God.

  “Ready, Jean-Luc?”

  Jean-Luc turned his attention to Laurent, sitting in the passenger’s side of his truck like a hulk squeezed into a bumper car. They had made plans to ride to the co-op this morning before Laurent’s wife had decided to piss off to Paris. If either of them had had any sense, they would have changed their plans and gone in separate cars. Jean-Luc settled into the driver’s seat. He wasn’t good at this, he knew. But he loved Laurent like a son. Like the son he would never have. To see the American making him so miserable—it was all Jean-Luc could do not to tip his hand and reveal how much he distrusted her.

  “Is the sorting done?” he asked.

  Laurent grunted with what Jean-Luc deciphered to be an affirmative.

  “Did you call Bernard about the Aix business?”

  “I haven’t forgotten, Jean-Luc.” That was Laurent telling him to get off his back, Jean-Luc thought.

  “Any word from your wife?” he asked. “She arrive safely?”

  “I assume,” Laurent growled.

  “While I have yet to be separated from my own beloved,” Jean-Luc said. “I am sure I would call to confirm that she arrived without stress or mishap.”

  “Maggie has lived on her own in the world long before she married me,” Laurent said, staring out the window at the barren fall landscape. “She is perfectly capable of dealing with any travel inconvenience.”

  “Oh, yes,” Jean-Luc said. “As I’m sure ma belle Danielle is, too. She is not helpless. She has lived a lifetime without Jean-Luc. I was thinking more along the lines of loving support,” he said. “Not as a travel agent would give, but as a husband.”

  “Speak your mind, Jean-Luc,” Laurent said. “I tire of the hedging.”

  “If you didn’t want her to go,” Jean-Luc said, “then you should have made her stay.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Laurent said.

  “And if you allowed her to go—as you obviously did because she left—then this…” Jean-Luc waved a hand to indicate Laurent’s behavior, “…makes no sense.”

  Laurent looked at him as if trying to understand his words.

  “She is shopping in Paris?” Jean-Luc asked. “Women love to shop.”

  “No,” Laurent said. “She is not shopping.”

  “It is another man, then?”

  “So, shopping or a lover, those are her options?”

  Jean-Luc shrugged. “What else?”

  “Maggie doesn’t need to run to someone else,” Laurent said, turning to look back at the forlorn countryside, “She just needs to get away from me.”

  “Is it you or St-Buvard she flees?”

  “What’s the difference? Would Danielle leave you because she didn’t like the town you lived in?”

  “Unimaginable.”

  “Exactement.”

  There didn’t seem much more to say or if there was, Jean-Luc had no idea what it might be. “Bien,” he said.

  It was going to be a long drive.

  Maggie picked up her cell phone just in case she had accidentally set it on mute—although she knew she didn’t—and had missed Laurent’s call. She reasoned if he wasn’t going to kiss her goodbye after weeks, maybe a month’s separation, he probably wasn’t going to call her to see how she was doing. She knew him well enough to know he wasn’t given to idle or staged gestures of affection. And right now, he was mad. Madder than she had ever seen him. And unfortunately, Laurent’s brand of mad was silent and distancing. We could probably use a good old fashioned knock-down drag out fight, she thought with surprise. He was so controlled—due to years of needing to keep himself in check as if his life depended on it—that a serious fight with him was akin to a slow, deadly smolder. Maggie found herself wondering what would be left when the fire finally went out.

  “Allo? Madame Dernier? Allo? Are you there?”

  Maggie got up from her balcony chair—it had gotten too nippy for sitting out there anyway—and hurried to the front door.

  “Oh, Mademoiselle Benoit!” she said. “I was out on the balcony and didn’t hear you. Were you knocking long? You got my note, I see.”

  The woman—no more a Mademoiselle than she was a springer spaniel—winced in what Maggie decided to believe was a smile and edged into the apartment.

  “It is cold in the hallway!” she said, hugging herself. “I have been knocking for several minutes. Please, call me Genevieve.”

  “Please come in,” Maggie said. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

  “Yes, that would be very nice,” the woman said, openly gawking at the interior of Stan’s apartment. “It has been a long time since I was inside Monsieur Newberry’s apartment,” she said. “The last owner was a very good friend of mine who died, unfortunately.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Maggie said as she turned on the electric kettle in the kitchen and took two ceramic mugs from Stan’s cabinets. As she piled sugar cubes, napkins and spoons on a little tray, the woman stood in the kitchen doorway.

  “The cat has found another home, I’m afraid,” she said, watching Maggie dump a small pile of store-bought cookies onto a plate.

  “I figured he might,” Maggie said. “I saw the bowl in the hallway. At least you tried. Thanks.”

  “A man came last week asking after the cat.”

  “Really?” Maggie poured the water over the teabags in each of the mugs and picked up the tray. “Let’s go into the living room,” she said.

  The apartment was extremely small but room enough for one person.
Maggie set the tray down on the tiny coffee table between two armchairs.

  “I wonder who it was,” she said.

  “He wasn’t really interested in the cat, Madame,” the woman said, taking a mug from Maggie and dropping two sugar cubes into it. Maggie handed her a spoon. “He wanted the key that Monsieur Newberry had given me.”

  “I didn’t know you had a key.”

  “Oh, yes.” She pulled the key out of her pocket and laid it down on the coffee table. “Unless you would like me to keep it,” she said.

  “Did you let the man into the apartment?”

  “Never! I could tell he was lying about the cat. He tried to prevent me from closing my door! I had to threaten to call the police.”

  “Interesting,” Maggie said. “If you don’t mind, I think I will hang on to the key, at least for now. Had you ever seen him before, this guy?”

  “Of course, many times.” The woman was looking around the living room with great interest. “He was Monsieur Newberry’s lover. He was often here. But if Monsieur Newberry did not trust him with his own key…Pfutt!” She made a face as if to say: to hell with him.

  Maggie drank her tea and watched her visitor closely. She didn’t look like she was intentionally dissembling. She looked like the typical nosy, busybody neighbor interested in spreading gossip or preening because she believed she had special information. In Maggie’s experience, people like that were usually very useful in an investigation.

  “How long will you be staying?” Genevieve asked, slurping her tea loudly.

  “I’m not really sure,” Maggie said. “Long enough to pack up my uncle’s things.”

  “You will sell the apartment?”

  Maggie stared at her and then looked through the window to the hazy image of the Cathedral barely discernable in the distance. Until this very moment it hadn’t occurred to her that she might not sell it. She looked around the flat. It was small. It was well-located. It was bright. It was perfect. She turned back to her visitor and grinned.

  “Probably,” she said, sipping her tea and feeling for the first time in a long time—at home.

  That night, as she assembled a simple meal of store-bought quiche and a salad in the tiny galley kitchen, Maggie revisited Genevieve’s words. Was it Jeremy who came demanding entrance to Stan’s apartment? She thought there had been something between them and while there had been no overt proclamations to confirm it, she had assumed that both Jeremy and Stan were gay. But why would Jeremy need to get into the apartment?

  She looked around as she set her plate down on the small dining table off the kitchen. Was there something here of value beyond Stan’s TV, stereo and computer? Her eyes fell on the closed laptop on top of the bookcase next to the dining table. Was there something on the computer that Jeremy needed? Or perhaps just didn’t want anyone else to see? She hadn’t opened her uncle’s computer yet. She assumed it was password protected and hadn’t felt up to the endless guessing that would be required on her part to crack it. The police had told her that there were ways to get into a computer after someone’s death and that they would assist her in doing so if she needed that. She chewed her quiche and eyed the laptop. I’m almost positive I do, she thought.

  The day’s light had faded fast and Maggie ate her meal staring out into the inky black void that had been such an extraordinary view all day. She thought about turning on the TV but in her experience, trying to watch French television was even worse than being lonely and bored.

  She tried to gather her thoughts for how she would proceed in determining the truth behind her uncle’s death. It made sense to search his apartment first, she thought, since it was right here. And that included whatever was on his laptop. Then, she would reach out to his friends to see if the week since his death had altered anything in the way that they remembered him or how they appeared to her. It was helpful, in a way, she thought, that Jeremy had decided to stay in Paris a little longer. Especially if the reason he had decided to stay had nothing to do with grieving Stan and everything to do with covering up a crime.

  Reminding herself not to line up her suspects before she had some actual clues to underscore the effort, Maggie picked up her dish to take to the kitchen when her cell rang.

  It was Laurent.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “You are arrived safely, I see,” he responded coldly.

  “Yeah, I did, thanks,” she said, reseating herself and pushing her dinner plate away on the table. “Everything okay there?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Laurent, I am so sorry about all of this,” Maggie said. “But I really need to be here. My father has asked me to pack up Stan’s flat to get it ready to sell—”

  “Non.”

  “Well, yes he did. He wants me to—”

  “At least you can be honest about why you are there,” Laurent said with more heat than Maggie ever remembered hearing from him.

  “I am being honest,” she said.

  “Non. You are not there for that reason. You are there to be investigating like all the times before.”

  “Well, that’s partly—”

  “And you are there to not be here.”

  Maggie let the phrase sit for a moment. To argue with it would be to lie and she owed him more than that.

  “I can’t explain why,” she said. “I’m sorry, Laurent. It’s something wrong with me.”

  “Je sais,” he said. I know.

  “I’m not asking you to change who you are,” Maggie said. “But I need more than what I’ve got in St-Buvard.”

  “More than what you have with me,” he said, flatly.

  “I’m not cut out to be a farmer’s wife!” she blurted.

  “That would mean you are not cut out to be my wife,” Laurent said. “Because I am a farmer.”

  “I would never ask you to give up your vineyard for me.”

  “If you make that the reason you leave me, that is exactly what you are asking.”

  “I’m not leaving you, Laurent! Would you quit calling this a separation? I’d rather be miserable and making quilts in a dirt hut than leave you!”

  “Did you ever think how living with someone who is always miserable and wishing to be somewhere else might feel?”

  “I…” Maggie felt her eyes sting and her throat close up with the effort not to cry.

  “If what I want makes you miserable,” he said, almost reasonably, “I am not truly loving you or caring for you.”

  “Laurent, don’t say that.”

  “D’accord,” he said. “I am glad you went to Paris. It is best for both of us that you are there.”

  “Now you’re just being mean.”

  “Non. I am being honest with what I see and what I feel. Isn’t that always what you are asking of me?”

  “I love you, Laurent,” Maggie whispered, her eyes clotted with unshed tears.

  “Quoi que,” he said. Whatever. And disconnected.

  Chapter Six

  Maggie closed the heavy door to the apartment building and stepped out onto the narrow street that was lined with shops and would, in a few blocks, empty out onto Quai de St Michel. From last night’s noise and the trash she stepped around, she could easily imagine the students, tourists and general bohemians sleeping late this morning. It was nearly November and the wind whistling through the close alley was mean and insistent. Maggie pulled her collar up against it and tucked her head. Coming in yesterday from the train station, she had noticed the boulangerie on the corner. It had been doing a brisk business then—people collecting their batons for le dîner. This morning the shop still looked busy but Maggie was refreshed and ready to begin her day—even if that meant speaking a foreign language to the typically sour counter help. Or maybe that’s just in St-Buvard, she found herself thinking, as she pushed open the beautifully ornate wooden door into the shop and was greeted by a smile and a sing-songy “Bonjour, Madame!”

  “Bonjour,” Maggie said, her own smile involuntarily prompted
by the proprietor’s friendliness and the heavenly aromas of the bakery.

  This is why I love Paris, she found herself thinking as she selected several sweet rolls for her breakfast. Due to an unfortunate series of deadly events, her own village of St-Buvard had not had a bakery for going on three years. A traveling bread truck made the rounds twice a week and was, in fact, one of the primary café topics of disgust and complaint by literally every soul in the village. Was there any place as welcoming and delightful as a Paris bakery? Maggie “au revoired” the chatty bakery counter woman and stepped back out into the crisp morning air. She walked briskly to the courtyard in front of Notre Dame, grateful for the lack of tourists this time of year, and settled on a stone bench to eat her breakfast.

  He came up on her at the exact moment she had a good excess of custard on her bottom lip.

  “Allow me,” he said, handing her a paper napkin with a flourish.

  Maggie took it and squinted up at him.

  “Hey, Ted,” she said. “You stalking me?”

  “Is it stalking because I happen to see you leave a shop I often frequent and followed you to this spot where you obviously need my services?”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much the textbook definition of stalking.”

  “May I join you?”

  Maggie scooted over on the bench. “How did you know I was back?” she asked, dabbing at her lips with the napkin.

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I was surprised to see you this morning. You’re staying at Stan’s?”

  Maggie nodded. “I needed to start clearing out his place,” she said. “To sell.”

  “Need any help?” he asked.

  Maggie wondered, for a moment, if it could’ve been Ted instead of Jeremy who tried to strong arm Genevieve. But no, she said he was Stan’s lover. And Ted was clearly, and totally straight. In spades.