Murder à la Carte (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series)

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Next to him sat his superior, Chief Detective Michel Bedard. Bedard was short and handsome, with a stub of a nose and a square jaw. He was also capable, friendly, and more than a little ruthless.

  Bedard spoke to Eduard. “You did not like Monsieur MacKenzie?” He picked up his squat marc glass and held it to his lips, but did not drink. He watched the other man carefully for his reaction to the blunt question.

  Eduard licked his lips and looked at the young sergeant and then at the chief detective. It had been a bit of bad luck to run into them here. He’d sweated out the full day waiting for them to come, restlessly pacing his own vineyards, keeping vigil on his long terraced front porch, drumming his fingers near the telephone. And just when he could take the suspense no longer and had bolted for an evening drink in the village, they had pounced on him.

  “We had differences,” Eduard admitted, wondering how much of the truth he needed to tell to have the lies believed too.

  Bedard waved a stubby hand at the café.

  “They said you had a contretemps here in the café with Monsieur MacKenzie...not...?” He looked at his confederate who frowned back at him in concentration. “...what? Three weeks ago?” He turned back to Marceau. “What did you argue about, Monsieur Marceau?”

  Marceau resisted looking around the café. Who had told them, he wondered? Friends? People he drank with regularly? The owners of the café, whom he had known since he was a boy?

  “Monsieur Marceau?” the detective prompted politely.

  “I...we fought about...some land,” Marceau said finally.

  “Land?” This from the scrawny little sergeant whose eyes glittered with the glasses of marc he’d already drunk down.

  “Yes, that is what the argument was about.” Eduard lit another cigarette, although noticing he still had one burning in the small blue triangle ashtray on the table.

  “Perhaps you could be more specific,” said Bedard. The detective’s face seemed to harden, like a claymation representation of impatience.

  Eduard swallowed and looked up at the long arms of the sycamore tree that canopied their table, its branches bare and black against the gray November sky. It made him feel slightly claustrophobic.

  “I...there is some land available that we both...wanted.”

  Bedard frowned. “Why not simply make your separate offers to the owner?” he asked. “This makes no sense.”

  “The owner will not sell.”

  “Then why not argue with the owner?” The younger detective leaned forward into the table. “That doesn’t explain why you argued with Monsieur MacKenzie.”

  “Monsieur MacKenzie...” Eduard felt helpless, pathetic. How, possibly to explain to these men the truth without hopelessly incriminating himself? “...He was a man with whom it is easy to argue,” he finished lamely.

  Both detectives looked at him.

  “It’s true,” Marceau continued. “We argued about land. People may tell you I hated him.” He waved his hand toward the village. “And I can’t defend myself against that. He wanted only ruin for St-Buvard. He wanted to take the land and...change it forever.”

  “Monsieur MacKenzie had a lot of money,” Bedard offered mildly.

  “He could easily have outbid me for the land, it is true,” Eduard admitted.

  “And what land is this we are talking about?” Bedard asked.

  Eduard sighed and poured himself another glass of marc. “It is Domaine St-Buvard,” he said tiredly. “Laurent Dernier’s property.”

  The eyebrows of the younger detective shot up in a mock portrayal of incomprehension. “But Dernier says he is going to sell his property.”

  Eduard nearly sneered at them. “Yes,” he said, instead. “He does say that.”

  The waiter came to the table with a plate of sautéed mushrooms, still sizzling in Madeira and olive oil. This was accompanied by a half baguette of bread, a large dish of pâté, and a substantial crock of goat cheese. Within minutes he returned with a bottle of Gigondas, decanted it and poured two glasses. The men were silent until the waiter left.

  “When was the last time you saw Monsieur MacKenzie?” Bedard asked.

  Eduard watched the two policemen begin their dinner.

  “Last night, at Dernier’s dégustation.”

  “You were a dinner guest of Monsieur Dernier’s prior to the degustation?”

  “I was. With my wife.”

  “Did you speak with Monsieur MacKenzie at the dégustation?”

  “I did not.”

  “Not at any point?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  “Did you see Laurent Dernier talking with him?”

  Eduard looked hard at the detective. “Of course,” he said. “At several points in the evening.”

  “Did they argue?”

  Eduard suddenly saw an opening that he hadn’t believed possible. He blinked and looked upward as if the opportunity had fallen to him as a gift from the heavens.

  “Perhaps, now that you mention it...” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing of any consequence, I think,” he said. “But if I’m remembering correctly, there may have been sharp words between Dernier and MacKenzie in the kitchen. I’d forgotten that until just this moment.”

  Much to Eduard’s growing sense of relief, the sergeant flipped open a small cahier and began to write.

  “You heard nothing of the meaning of the discussion?” Bedard asked.

  “No,” Eduard said with some confidence. “Just the tone of the words.”

  “Harsh?” Bedard asked.

  “I would say, so, yes.”

  Bedard nodded and then scooped up a forkful of the greasy champignons. He chewed for a moment, his eyes never leaving Marceaus’ smoking, lying face.

  “Délicieux,” he said, pushing the plate toward Eduard. “Have you had them before? Perhaps you know their name?” He gestured for Eduard to pick up a fork. “Trumpets of Death,” he said.

  Eduard hesitated, his cigarette burning low between his fingers.

  “Do not worry, Monsieur,” Bedard said. “They are quite safe.” He took another large bite and watched Eduard as the sweat dribbled off the man’s neck, spattering down his clean white shirtfront.

  5

  Her mouth was agape, the little rosebud lips were pursed gently as though the lips had frozen in the midst of blowing a kiss, although that hardly seemed likely with Taylor. The child’s mass of golden hair spread out on her pillow. Grace watched the thick cluster of dark lashes quiver against her daughter’s baby-cream soft cheeks.

  How did we create that? Grace wondered as she stood watching the child from the doorway, a shaft of diffused light spilling onto the sleeping girl from the window. How did we make those perfect eyes, that delicious little bow of a mouth? That remarkable musical ability? Windsor and I, together, did this thing.

  As she stood there, watching her child, a terrible and painful thought occurred to her. What if? The feeling swam around her head and pounded into her ears. What if the only time she really loved her daughter was when the child was not conscious?

  Grace watched the small form and forced herself to remember Taylor this evening when she’d come home from school. She forced herself to remember the sour, scrunched up little face, the tiny, o-shaped no-no-no-no-no’s pouring out of the perfect bow mouth, the four-year-old’s body stiff with defiance. She forced herself to remember it and to remember it with love and forgiveness.

  She walked slowly back to her own bedroom. Instantly, the puppy, Mignon, crawled out from under the bed and attacked her slippered feet. She didn’t even care. For the most part, the poor thing stayed huddled under the bed to avoid Taylor, who―in the end―had won the who-can-be-meanest contest between them. The enmity had tempered the dog, not the child. Grace leaned down and scooped up the animal, which immediately quieted in her arms. She laid it on its back, its four feet pressed against her breasts, its little pink tongue lolling pleasurably out of the side of its mouth. It bl
inked, then yawned.

  The fight hadn’t been her fault, for God’s sake. She looked at the perfectly made bed and wondered when the cleaning girl from the village had come and gone.

  Windsor had tired of the long day of being sympathetic to Grace and had, finally come out with the extraordinary statement that he wasn’t really devastated with the elimination of Connor. Grace had been astounded. He’d tried to cover up with all sorts of noises about “poor Maggie and Laurent” and how inconvenient the police were making it on all of them, but she knew he’d shed no tears over Connor’s death. Indeed, he’d seemed quite calculating in his minimal attempts to relieve Grace’s grief.

  “You were his friend!” she had said, so shocked at his denial of grief that she’d nearly dropped her fork in her lap during dinner.

  “Not really,” he’d said, maddeningly matter-of-factly. “He was really more your friend. Connor liked women.”

  “You don’t care that he’s dead? You don’t care that he’s been murdered?” She had honestly felt a sort of horror when she had looked at Windsor’s face. It was the face of someone she decided she really didn’t know very well.

  “Of course, it’s awful he was murdered. And I’m sorry he’s dead, okay?”

  “But just so long as he’s out of the picture, right?”

  “Grace, I hate to see you taking this so hard. In fact...” He’d wiped his mouth deliberately with his napkin as if he were leading up to some exceptional statement. “In fact,” he’d repeated, “I’m not sure I know what to make of your taking it so hard. We knew the man less than a year―”

  “What are you trying to say, Windsor?” A burgeoning fear had destroyed the remainder of her appetite.

  “I’m saying nothing, okay, Grace?” He frowned at her and she could tell it was the prelude to a serious agitation. “It’s just that enough’s enough. He’s dead, we’re sorry, but let’s get over it, shall we?”

  “We just found out about it this morning!” she railed at him and his ignorance and his refusal to allow her her moment.

  “So, let’s get over it!”

  In the end, too many harsh words were said and he’d left the house. Grace smoothed the fur back from the drowsing puppy’s face and then nuzzled its neck with her cheek. It smelled sweet, not doggy-like at all, she thought with surprise. She kissed it on the head, and thought of her friend, Connor, and what in the world he would have made of all this today. What would he have thought of Windsor’s reaction? Would he have expected it? Laughed it off?

  Grace looked out the bedroom window into the deep inky darkness of the night, not a light to be seen to break up the blue-black horizon. Her breasts tingled and ached as the dog pressed against them. And how would Connor laugh to see her cradling a dog in her arms like some twisted Madonna―her husband stomping around in the night, her daughter wheezing in her bed through her feverish dreams of torture and transgression.

  Oh, how he would laugh.

  Chapter Nine

  1

  Jean-Luc spread the thick saddle soap across the leather harness and absentmindedly rubbed it in as he stared out across his vineyards. The others used tractors now to go between the rows, harvesting, pruning, planting. His land was not so big, his work not so much that he needed a motor. His mare would do for him awhile yet. He worked the yellow foaming soap into the crevices of the harness with his thumbs, kneading and digging into it.

  Jean-Luc had not married, he had no children. There were some in the village who were not aware of his occasional trips to Marseille and would say he was un pédé. He was glad to let them say what they would. He had never cared, nor did he care now for the wagging tongues of village idiots. His solitary life had suited him well. No responsibilities, no time owed to any but himself. And when he died, his land would go to the state. His only living relative was his middle-aged niece who would have no use for it.

  His eyes followed the gently undulating rows of vines as they clung to his little hill. He thought of the years of work he and his family before him had put into this ground so that it would someday belong to a stranger. Perhaps, even, to a foreigner. A lifetime of working the vines, coaxing the grapes, praying for weather when he’d never even prayed for his mother’s life. Or his brother’s.

  Jean-Luc picked up a small square of cotton cloth and began buffing and polishing the leather. He remembered his father telling of the time at the end of the last century when the phylloxera insect had ravaged all the vineyards throughout France and Europe, resulting in the near-destruction of their centuries-old livelihood. He looked out across his land to where he could easily see the Dernier farmhouse, a thin curl of smoke seeping from its one chimney. And then, his father had said, a curious thing had happened. American vinestocks had been grafted onto the older European stocks. Resistant to pestilence, the American vines saved French wine, saved, in fact, the whole European wine industry. Jean-Luc’s hands were still for a moment as he gazed toward Domaine St-Buvard. The fragile, but higher quality French vines had been made invulnerable by the brash and sturdy American vine.

  He shook his head slowly, his hands steadily working the leather again, his eyes never leaving the wisps of blue-gray smoke as they emerged from his neighbor’s chimney, and escaped into the Provençal sky.

  2

  “They are finished with us for now.” Laurent pulled on his heavy Blackwatch jacket. He brushed his long hair from his face and scanned the living room as if searching for something. Maggie sat, curled up on the couch with Petit-Four nestled at her feet. It had been nearly four days since the murder. Four days of handing over their house, their private lives, to the probing, persistent Aix-en-Provence police. Maggie’s parents and niece had left the day before for a month’s visit in Paris with friends. Maggie had felt proud of herself for trading in her flannel nightgown for sweat clothes this morning. She’d been tempted not to get up at all.

  “Will he come back?” she asked.

  “He?” Laurent scooped up a packet of cigarettes from on top of the bookcase in the living room and stuffed them into his jacket side pocket.

  “The killer.”

  Laurent was standing with his hand on the handle of the French doors. Maggie could see the two frisky hounds just outside the door jumping higher and higher in anticipation of their daily morning walk. Laurent sighed and gave Maggie a look of disapproval as if seeing her outfit for the first time.

  “Why would he come back?” he asked, frowning.

  “They always come back,” she said. “They always return to the scene of the crime.”

  Laurent opened the door and petted the rambunctious dogs. He turned back to Maggie. “You will get the lamb at the charcuterie? Oui?” He smiled sympathetically at her and then blew her a kiss. “Not to worry, chérie,” he said as he stepped outside. “He will not come back.”

  Maggie watched his broad back as he headed off to the vineyard with that lumbering-yet-light walk of his, the dogs leaping and cavorting at his side. She watched him for a moment, the black and forest green of his jacket blending into the landscape, and imagined that his talent for stealth had served him well in his former life.

  She pulled Petit-Four up into her lap to better fondle its curly head and let the sadness and loneliness wash over her. She missed her mother, she missed Grace, she missed Connor. She looked out the wide living room window where the main sweep of the vineyard was visible and watched Laurent become smaller and smaller. She even missed Laurent. He’d been more than a little distant lately. And, as cool as Laurent normally was, one tended to notice small variances.

  Maggie stood up, depositing the poodle back onto the couch and padded into the kitchen. She poured a cup of coffee for herself, although Laurent had made it so strong it was as likely to cause epileptic seizures as wake her up. She poured a good measure of cream into the cup to soften the blow. Out the little kitchen window over the sink, she could see Danielle Marceau walking up the gravel pathway in the front of the house.

  I’m no
t up for this, Maggie thought wearily, as she smiled and waved to her neighbor through the window. She set her coffee cup down on the dining room table and went to open the door. Danielle’s hair looked like it had just sprung from a beauty salon’s wig room, her nails were lacquered pink to offset the lavender knit pantsuit she was wearing under a simple, off-white wool cape.

  Maggie began to feel even more of a shambles than before. Danielle must’ve started working on herself sometime last night, Maggie thought in amazement as she invited her neighbor in.

  “Entrez-vous, Danielle,” Maggie said, hoping she sounded cheerful and welcoming. “Veuillez, entrer.”

  The older woman stepped gingerly over the threshold. In her hands, she held a small wicker basket containing a glass casserole dish.

  “Couscous,” Danielle said, gesturing shyly with the casserole dish.

  “Oh, Danielle, merci, merci. C’est très gentil!” Maggie took the casserole dish and led the way inside to the living room. “Je vous en prie, asseyez-vous, please sit down.” Maggie motioned for Danielle to sit. Danielle Marceau unbuttoned her cape and draped it across the back of the chair. She looked around the room as if expecting to see corpses fall out of the closets.

  Maggie put the aromatic couscous in the kitchen, knowing Laurent would consider it a welcome addition to tonight’s lamb dinner. Quickly, she filled another cup with Laurent’s killer coffee, poured cream in a pitcher and placed these, the sugar bowl and a small plate of cookies on a large tray.

  “How is Eduard?” Maggie called from the kitchen, noticing that she was actually starting to feel the tiniest bit better.

  Danielle was still examining the walls for bloodstains as Maggie entered the room with the tray.

  “Oh, fine,” Danielle said, breathily. “He is very good, merci, Maggie.”