The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  “No, but I really only knew Stan from Paris. His California cronies never came with him. Maybe Jeremy knows him. He’s from California.”

  “Yeah, anyway, I tried his name as the password and it worked.”

  “Very clever detective work, Madame Dernier.”

  “Thank you. Problem is there is nothing of any value that I can see on the laptop.”

  “Did you check his photos?”

  “Funny you should mention that. I’m in the process now.”

  “Need a break? I’m in the neighborhood.”

  Maggie laughed. “You’re always in the neighborhood,” she said. “Do you ever work?”

  “I’ll have you know I got my two thousand word quota in for the day,” he said, primly. “Now I get to screw off.”

  “You write two thousand words a day? I’m impressed.”

  “You don’t do that much?”

  “Hey, give me a break. My laptop is sitting in a French gendarme’s evidence room and probably will be forever.”

  “Good point. Why don’t you just use Stan’s now that you know the password?”

  “You know? I think I will.”

  “So? Come play with me? I can be there in twenty minutes. Ten if I don’t stop to put on my pants.”

  “As tempting as that is,” Maggie said, laughing, “I’m going to pass. Besides, unlike yourself, I don’t have any word count done today and now, thanks to you, I have a way to do it.”

  “Well, far be it from me to get between a writer and her word count,” Ted said. “Catch you later.”

  Maggie poured herself a cup of tea and settled back down with the laptop. She counted eight folders on the desktop and opened each one up. In the last folder, she found another folder entitled “Last W&T.” She clicked it open to find a pdf file of Stan’s will. Since she already knew everything went to the mysterious John Newton, Maggie didn’t get too excited with her discovery. She idly flipped through the pages to confirm that this was, in fact, her uncle’s latest will. The date indicated it had been drawn up five years earlier so perhaps it wasn’t the most recent version, she reasoned. She quickly scanned the document until she came to the point where she should have seen Mr. Newton’s name. Instead, she saw the beneficiary to all of Stan Newberry’s earthly possessions was one Diane Zimmerman.

  “Alright, darling, let’s see if we can do this detective shit from long-distance. What do you have?”

  Maggie adjusted the computer screen so she could see Grace better. “I have four solid suspects but I haven’t ruled out anyone,” she said.

  “Okay, so in other words you haven’t made much progress.”

  “Well, I know I didn’t kill him,” Maggie said. “Although I’m not too sure about you.”

  “Oh, it’s great that you can joke about it now,” Grace said. “Okay, first off, this Bijou character is highly suspicious.”

  “Based on what?”

  “Based on the fact that she’s a size zero and pigs down profiteroles and champagne twenty-four seven so I want her to spend the rest of her life in prison.”

  “That is so not helpful, Grace. Next?”

  “Who are your suspects?”

  “Jeremy, because he’s been lying from the get-go. Because he’s Stan’s ex-lover and was in the process of being dumped by Stan. And because I have every reason to believe he tried to run me down with his car.”

  “Okay, that’s good. Is he your number one suspect?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Number two?”

  “This guy named Denny who was Stan’s rival.”

  “He’s the guy who broke into your apartment? And by the way, I cannot believe that he’s still walking around after breaking and entering! What kind of justice are the French practicing over there?”

  “I don’t know. Anyway, he’s in cahoots with Jeremy so it might be that one killed Stan and it’s to the benefit of the other to aid and cover up. For some reason.”

  “I see. And the rest of your lovely crew?”

  “There’s Bijou, who is kind of mysterious but not an obvious suspect, although she was sleeping with Denny who is definitely a suspect. And then there’s Diane. I found a will on Stan’s computer leaving everything to her. That is about as serious a motive as there is.”

  “But didn’t you say he gave all his money to someone else?”

  “Yes, so there was obviously a later will but what if Diane didn’t know that? It’s a motive.”

  “Okay. What about your boyfriend?”

  “If you’re referring to Ted, he’s not a suspect.”

  “I notice you didn’t say he wasn’t your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not that, either.”

  “Well, why isn’t he a suspect, pray tell?”

  “Well, first, he wasn’t even at the party during the time Stan was killed. He’d left over an hour earlier with some model. And second, I cannot tell you how helpful he’s been to me.”

  “Which is exactly what the murderer would be in order to throw you off the track.”

  “He loved Stan.”

  “They all did except for the Australian dirt bag. So nothing else helpful on Stan’s computer?”

  “Not really. I even reread his blog posts for the last year. He was acid-tongued but this is the world of fashion. They’re all pretty bitchy. Him not more so than anyone else.”

  “And no incriminating photos?”

  “A lot of naked people,” Maggie admitted. “But this is fashion—not to mention Paris. They don’t consider nakedness something to be ashamed of.”

  “And his emails?”

  “They’re taking a little longer to slog through. He knew a lot of people.”

  A long wail emanated from the background on Grace’s end and she sighed.

  “I feel my reprieve is coming to an end,” she said.

  “Is that Zou-zou? Isn’t she a little old for naps?”

  “Bite your tongue,” Grace said. “I take any break from the little dears I can get. If she’s twelve and still taking naps, I’ll thank God for it.”

  “Maybe you could enroll her in college by then and be rid of her altogether.”

  “Oh, just you wait, Aunt Maggie. Your time is coming. I for one can’t wait to be on the front row to watch Maggie Dernier in the ever classic role of Perfect Mommy. Really. I can’t wait.”

  “Yeah, well, you may have to.”

  “Really? Why? Something up with Laurent?”

  Another wail—this one more insistent—made Grace turn her head away for a moment.

  “You go, Grace,” Maggie said. “We’ll catch up later. You’ve been a big help.”

  “Get your confessions, darling,” Grace said. “Screw the evidence and the clues. You’ll never finish collecting that stuff. Get the confession.”

  “I’m on it, sweetie,” Maggie said. “Go rescue your baby from Nap Hell.”

  Maggie snapped off the monitor and picked up her legal pad. She looked at what she had written and frowned. She knew Grace was right. Clues and circumstantial evidence might be helpful back home but here the police would need an admission of guilt before they acted. She looked at her poodle who was watching her as if she might speak at any moment.

  “I need to start making some people uncomfortable,” Maggie said to her. “Laurent was right. There’s no easy way to do this.”

  The fact that she had no answers and didn’t know what was going on wasn’t important, she realized. Making people think that she did have the answers was the fastest way to flush the guilty party from the underbrush.

  It was also, she knew, the most dangerous.

  After an early dinner, Maggie locked up the apartment, loaded her bookbag with Stan’s laptop in case she found a comfortable café where she could spend the afternoon, and emerged onto the street ready for a long walk to clear her head. It was cold but not unusual for early November. She found herself wondering as she walked what Thanksgiving would look like this year. Would she be back in St-Buvard? Did L
aurent want her to be? She jammed her hands deep into the pockets of her wool jacket and turned onto the Quai Saint Michel. The wind from the river punished her as soon as she turned but she always found the view of the church in the river so refreshing and exciting that it was worth the pain.

  Ahead, she saw the mighty twin spires of Notre Dame looming and beckoning. The cathedral was like a huge magnet, she found herself thinking. Ever since she was a child, when she came to Paris on shopping trips with her mother and sister, she found the cathedral personally attracting her. Even more than the Eiffel Tower, it spoke to her soul somehow. If she ever thought she could be persuaded to believe in reincarnation, she would have to believe she once lived in Paris in the shadow of Notre Dame Cathedral.

  As she quickened her pace in an attempt to warm herself, Maggie felt her cellphone vibrate in her coat pocket. She pulled it out and squinted at the screen. It was an international call from the States.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Maggie Dernier?” A very New York female voice mangled the pronunciation of her last name but seemed friendly enough.

  “It is. Who is this?”

  “This is Sheila Danvers,” the woman said. “I’m an agent with Sloan and Danvers Literary Agency in New York. You’re a friend of Ted Gilbert’s? I believe?”

  “Oh! Yes. How are you?” Why in the world was Ted’s literary agent calling her?

  “I’m very well, thank you, ever since I read the first three chapters of your manuscript Fashionably Dead, I’ve been dying to get the rest.”

  Maggie stopped walking. “You have my book? How?”

  “From Ted. You didn’t know he sent me your manuscript? Oh, that Ted is a naughty boy. But I hope you’ll forgive him, Maggie, since I’m prepared to offer you a contract with my agency based on the first three chapters of your book and I have to tell you that absolutely never happens with a work of fiction.”

  “You want to represent me?” Maggie turned to face the Seine and watched as the sun glinted off the cold green surface. She was going to have an agent!

  “Yes, I do. And I also want the rest of the book as soon as possible. I think it will do very nicely at a couple of different houses I know of and I hope you have more in your back pocket because they are going to want a three-book deal on this little darling. Maggie? You still there?”

  I have an agent! I’m going to have a publisher! Maggie held out her arms wide to the river and the magnificent cathedral in the middle of it to encompass her joy and amazement.

  “Maggie?”

  She put the phone back to her ear. “Yes, I’m here,” she said, breathlessly. “I’m flabbergasted. But I’m here.”

  Twenty minutes later, she was sitting in her favorite café overlooking the Boulevard St-Germain des Prés, still vibrating with joy over what happened to her. Oh, she would have to strangle that Ted! She laughed and noticed a few sour looks from nearby French women trying to enjoy a quiet moment in the café.

  Maggie looked around the café and watched the patrons as they ate. Food was so important to the French, she marveled as she watched them eat and drink as if performing some exquisitely pleasurable, revered ritual. And then it occurred to her: she would throw a dinner party. She would invite everyone she suspected a la Ellery Queen. She would gather them all together in a warm and disarming evening of fellowship and then she would confront the killer. Flushed with her decision and the seemingly perfect resolution to her up-to-now stalled investigation, Maggie ordered another plate of pommes frites and another cup of hot spiced wine. Without giving it much more thought, she rang Bijou’s number and left her a message inviting her to come to Stan’s apartment tomorrow evening for dinner. She was about to call Diane when another thought occurred to her.

  Oh, my God! Laurent! He will flip when he hears about the literary agent. She jabbed in Laurent’s number and reached for her mulled wine. The fragrance of the wine’s cinnamon and oranges seemed to fill her senses as the luscious Côte de Rhône infused her with warmth. She felt pampered and invincible. He can go ahead and not answer, she thought happily. I’ll leave him the most glorious message that he will have to respond to. He will be so thrilled to—

  “Yes? Hello?”

  Maggie stopped and for a moment, she didn’t know what to say. A woman had answered Laurent’s cellphone. A woman with an English accent.

  “Is…is Laurent there?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure where he’s gotten to this morning. Can I give him a message?”

  Her heart and her joy deflating like a balloon with the air let out of it, Maggie said, “No, thanks.” She disconnected and stared at the cellphone in her hand. Her body felt suddenly very heavy and her shoulders sagged within her coat as a feeling of dread began to emanate slowly though her chest.

  Bijou walked over to the couch and sat down next to Jeremy. She leaned over and took his hand. He often could not stand her touch, she knew, and it was probably for this reason she often felt compelled to touch him. She waited for him to flinch or pull away. He did neither.

  “I tried to get her to come out,” she said softly.

  Jeremy grunted and shifted on the couch but still did not extricate his hand.

  “It’s not my fault she wouldn’t come.”

  “Denny was furious,” he said. “I promised him you wouldn’t let us down. He could have gone to jail!”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “No. No, you never did,” Jeremy said, finally snatching his hand away and looking at her as if he only just realized how close she was to him. “And now we’re all screwed. Thanks to you.”

  “You are angry,” Bijou said, shrugging and examining her flawlessly manicured nails. “But I am not the author of this disaster. If anything, you and Denny have made matters worse.”

  “Which would not have happened if you had just gotten her out of the apartment as I’d asked you to.” Jeremy jumped up from the couch and began to pace.

  Bijou smiled. In a way, wasn’t this exactly what she had been hoping for? Jeremy calm and controlled was not the man she knew. He was not the man she could so easily manipulate. Her intention in asking Jeremy to come by her flat today had been to pump him for information about Denny. The bastard was screening her calls and Bijou found it virtually inconceivable that it was because he was so soon tired of her. It must have something to do with Stan’s death. She knew Denny and Jeremy were up to something and while it would be impossible to find out what from the intractable Denny Davenport, with the easily excitable Mr. Jeremy, there could be nothing easier.

  “Can I offer you a drink, Jeremy?” she asked sweetly, rising to head to the kitchen.

  “No, I don’t want a fucking drink,” Jeremy snarled.

  As Bijou walked to the kitchen, she noticed her cellphone on the dining room table was blinking, indicating there was a voice message. Thinking it might be Denny after all, she hurriedly checked her recent calls to discover the call was from Maggie.

  “Jeremy,” she said to him as she held up her phone. “Speak of the devil.”

  He stopped pacing and approached her, his eyes on her phone.

  “It’s her?”

  Bijou tucked the phone under her chin and listened to the voice mail. She watched Jeremy waiting impatiently for her to finish and she wouldn’t waste his anxiety by giving him the news quickly.

  “You are not going to believe this,” she said.

  “What? What did she say?”

  Bijou could actually see that the poor man was nervous! He looked about to explode as he waited for her to tell him what the phone conversation was about.

  “She’s having a dinner party,” Bijou said, placing the cellphone back down on the counter. “You said no to the drink?”

  “Am I invited?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, his eyes widened and he clapped a hand to his chest. He fished out his cellphone from his top pocket and read the tiny screen. “She just invited me,” he murmured.

  “Well, there, see?” Bi
jou said. “And you thought she didn’t like you.”

  “She doesn’t like me,” he said. “I’m sure she thinks I killed Stan.”

  Bijou stopped in her turn toward the kitchen to look at him.

  “Why would she think that?” she asked.

  “For heaven’s sakes, Bijou, don’t you listen? Everyone knows that Stan whispered the name of his killer to her seconds before he died.”

  “And you believe your name was the last word on his lips?” Bijou felt very cold all of a sudden. She put out a hand to steady herself against one of the dining room chairs.

  “It is entirely possible that it was,” Jeremy said. “I told you, we fought just before he went upstairs. I was definitely on his mind in his last moments…” Jeremy pulled out a handkerchief and turned away from her as if overcome with emotion.

  “So if she heard Stan say your name—”

  “She would believe he was announcing his killer when really he was probably just …regretful.”

  How had she ever suffered this worm? How had she ever endured him? How had Stan? Bijou forced down the bile that Jeremy’s words generated in her throat and turned back to the kitchen. If he didn’t need a drink of something, she definitely did.

  It might mean something. It might mean nothing. If Laurent did not call her back it either meant the woman did not deliver her message or that she did deliver it and it didn’t matter to Laurent. How could this be happening?

  Maggie sat in the café for a full hour, her earlier happiness over the agent gone.

  Fine. If that’s the way it is, then so be it. No holds barred, Laurent. Go live your life as I will mine.

  The words felt hollow and she couldn’t gather the emotion to fully feel them but it wouldn’t stop her from acting on them. If he has moved on, then so would she. Looks like this is your lucky day, Ted, she thought as she gathered her purse and left a euro on the café table. From now on, since she clearly no longer owed Laurent further consideration for his feelings, she would do things based on her own assessment—not hampered by having to keep some lame promise to someone who didn’t care anyway. She checked her GPS on her cellphone and reoriented herself from where she currently was and where she remembered seeing Denny’s flat in the fourth arrondissement.