Murder à la Carte (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series)

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  “Are you allowed to visit him?”

  Babette stared at Laurent as if he’d begun spouting Latin. “Visit him?” she repeated as if in a daze. “No, we don’t visit him.” She looked down at her hands. “My uncle Eduard is giving us money,” she said. She looked up at Laurent sharply. “More money than my father earned when he was here! Funny, huh?” She laughed abruptly. “It’s actually better now without him.” The sound of her laughter was harsh and ugly in the little sickroom.

  “Well, I’ll call again, yes?” Laurent reached out a hand to touch the couch, but only wagged his fingers vaguely in its direction. He turned toward the door.

  “Laurent?” Babette called out, her voice filled with pain and desperation.

  Laurent turned around, but stayed in the doorway. With his mission completed, he wanted now only to be on his way to his dinner at Le Canard Café.

  “Yes, Babette?”

  “I love you.”

  Laurent looked at the girl, drawn up and small on the couch, the old sofa pillows―once new and tasseled―now stained and faded, the dingy duvet held in crumpled mountains between her blue-jeaned knees. She bit a bloodless lip and watched his eyes.

  “Take care of yourself, chérie,” he said, before turning and walking away.

  6

  “So, it was just for a visit? Roger’s arrival at St-Buvard?”

  Elspeth sat across from Maggie in the little Parisian café, sipping her coffee. A small fruit tart, glossy with glaze, sat on its doily and china saucer between them.

  “Well, no, Mother.” Maggie shook her head. “He asked Laurent to do a job with him.”

  Elspeth Newberry’s eyebrows arched, but she said nothing.

  “I mean, it wasn’t a visit like normal people have visits, you know? Roger’s a crook, a con artist. Those kinds of people never rest.”

  “What did Laurent say to him?”

  “That’s just it, he didn’t say anything to him. That I know of.”

  “He didn’t accept.”

  “Well, he didn’t not accept. I got the distinct impression he wanted to think about it.”

  “Maggie―”

  “No, now, listen, Mother, Roger can be very compelling, you know. He waved an attractive deal in front of Laurent sung to the strains of remember-how-much-fun-we-had-in-old-days-ol’-chap and Laurent is seriously considering it.”

  “Did he tell you that, darling?”

  “Oh, Mother,” Maggie said with impatience. “He’s not going to tell me, is he? He knows I’d have a sh...a fit.”

  “And Roger is gone now?”

  Maggie nodded and pushed the tart towards her mother. “Laurent says so,” she said.

  The café was quiet and deserted. Nicole and Poppa were napping back at the hotel and Maggie’s train was due to leave in a few hours.

  “Surely, you believe him, Margaret?”

  Maggie looked at her mother and allowed her eyes to water.

  Elspeth touched Maggie’s hand. “It’s hard, I know how hard it is. But I really do think one of your problems is that you’re not busy enough.”

  “Mother, I’m constantly doing stuff.”

  “I’m sure you are, dear, but I’m not talking about having lunches and buying bread rolls and walking little Petit-Four around the vineyards. You used to have a very hectic schedule in Atlanta...”

  “Well, yeah, I was working, wasn’t I? I had places to go, people to see. I’ll be that way again when I’m home.”

  “You need to be working now, darling.” Elspeth smiled and rearranged the gold silk scarf at her throat. Her hands were immaculately manicured and Maggie wondered where her mother had had them done. Her own nails were blunt, unvarnished and short.

  “Doing what? And don’t tell me to help Laurent in his grape fields, I’m not into it.”

  “What are you into, darling?”

  “Mother, that’s not fair, I’d work if I could. There’s nothing for me to do in St-Buvard.”

  “I think there is.”

  “Really? Well, I’d like to know what.”

  “Have you been getting much writing done? I thought you were going to try to write a book while you were abroad.”

  Maggie put her head down on her arms on the table.

  “Margaret, darling, lift your head, please, we’re in a public restaurant.”

  “Mother, you’re right,” Maggie said, a sour look on her face as she raised it from the table. “I haven’t done any writing.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I just haven’t. I guess because it’s easier to take the dog for a walk or slice up aubergines or sweep beetles off the terrace than it is to figure out character developments and plot swings. I don’t know.”

  “May I make a suggestion?”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “Maggie, I’d appreciate your not taking the name of the Lord in vain.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I have an idea of something for you to write about.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Mother.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t think of it yourself. You’re right down there living in one of the most beautiful spots in the world―”

  “I have no interest in writing a travel article, Mother. I’m not the kind of writer who―”

  “And you are living in the very house where a fascinating murder occurred.”

  “Do a crime novel about Connor’s death? Are you serious?”

  Elspeth was quiet for a moment, looking at her impatient only daughter. She took a sip from her coffee. “I was thinking of the Fitzpatrick murders, dear,” she said. “Everyone finds the story engrossing, even forty years later, and it did happen right on your doorstep, as it were. I think it would make a marvelous book. I’d certainly read it. I’m sure a lot of people would.”

  Maggie blinked at her mother. “It is a good story,” she said, hesitantly.

  “Well, it’s a sort of mystery, isn’t it?” Elspeth asked. “Danielle Marceau said there was some question as to Patrick Alexandre’s guilt.”

  “Question?” Maggie frowned. “No, there’s no question, Mother. The man confessed.”

  “Yes, but Danielle said the village refused to believe it,” her mother persisted.

  “Even in the face of his confession?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Well, you know, Gaston Lasalle is the grandson of the gypsy they hung.” Maggie turned her gaze out the café window as she began to envision all the characters in the drama. She felt a pulse of excitement. It was the recognition of a challenge, and with it the high she hadn’t felt since she had faced down a particularly difficult client during a presentation of the agency’s Kiddi-Rompers account last spring.

  “And Jean-Luc is the killer’s brother,” Maggie said, her eyes watching the Parisian rain delicately spatter the befogged café window and the Rue de Rivoli beyond. “There might be something here. I could ask some questions. I mean, the research would be easy enough to do.”

  “You mean, to prove that Alexandre was innocent?”

  Maggie wrinkled up her nose. “Mother, Patrick Alexandre confessed. He wasn’t innocent. He was having an affair with the woman. Besides, that’s so obvious, innocent man dies for crime he didn’t commit, blah, blah, blah. No, my hook would be different.”

  Maggie leaned forward across the table toward her mother. “This is great,” she said. “I’ll tell the story of how a World War II resistance hero―beloved by all―came to be possessed by love and passion―to the point where he would commit the one crime that no one is able to believe he could commit.” She nodded her head. “It’s great stuff. Graham Greene kind of stuff. Complex, psychological characterizing, you know?”

  Maggie dug in her purse for a notebook and a pen.

  “I just want to jot down a couple of ideas while I’m thinking about them,” she said. “Want to order another tart?” She flipped to a blank page and began scribbling in her notebook, while Elspeth sipped her coffee and
smiled.

  Chapter Thirteen

  1

  Rope after golden rope of fresh roasted garlic hung from the temporary market rafters. Looking like a French Christkindlesmarkt for food, the market at Châteaurenard―the biggest in Europe―was a stunning array of every kind of fresh fruit and vegetable. Thousands of shiny aubergines, their glossy bulbs of blue and purple-black stacked in rows, sat next to piles of dirt-encrusted potatoes and pyramids of olives in colors Maggie had never imagined olives could come in orange, blue, purple, and yellow.

  There were mountains of peppers―their colors as vivid as brightly waxed fruit. The perfume from the various spices and herbs was intoxicating. One truckful of rosemary parked at the end of a long row of bananas was so intensely fragrant that nothing else could be smelled within an entire city block.

  Grace hefted a flat round of goat cheese in her hand and smiled at the squat, grinning woman in her spotlessly white apron manning the cheese booth.

  “I forget,” she said to Maggie, who was peering at the impressive presentation of cheese wheels. “Are we supposed to bargain or just give them what they ask for?”

  “Laurent always bargains,” Maggie said, shifting her string bag bulging with vegetables and fruit to her other hand and shaking cramps out of her fingers. “Can we grab lunch, please? I’m starving and the groceries are breaking my arm.”

  Grace decided to pay the marked price for the cheese.

  “You come here a lot?” she asked Maggie, with a hint of respect in her voice, as the two turned to leave the colorful vegetable market.

  “Laurent likes to come,” Maggie said. “I’ve gone with him a couple of times. It’s sort of overwhelming.”

  “I’ll say.” Grace tucked the cheese into her string bag.

  Seeing her sole purchase, Maggie was reminded that the woman had a cook who did the family’s food shopping.

  “This must be quite an excursion for you,” she said to Grace. “Running errands and all.”

  “I run plenty of errands, thank you. Let’s try this place.” She pointed out the uninviting façade of a small restaurant not far from where her Mercedes was parked. “It looks good, doesn’t it?”

  The two entered the restaurant and were seated. Two sweet, overweight, afghan hounds roamed amiably from table to table politely begging for food.

  “So you went to none of the fashion boutiques while you were in Paris?” Grace asked as they shook out their napkins and awaited the first course of a light lunch.

  “Grace, I was only there a weekend.”

  “You can’t shop in a whole weekend?” Grace sipped the light red table wine, then nodded her approval to the waiter, who proceeded to fill Maggie’s glass as well.

  “Why do they always ask you if the wine’s okay?” Maggie asked, picking up her glass, and making them both laugh.

  “No, seriously, Maggie. Did you enjoy your visit?”

  Maggie spread a thin smear of tapenade across a crusty bread roll. “Yeah, it was great. Turns out...” she nibbled a small piece of her bread. “...it was a good idea to go without Laurent after all.”

  “Gave you some time to think.”

  “And it gave me a chance to talk to my folks. I never have a chance to be alone with my dad, for example, because he and Laurent are such good chums. Try this stuff, Grace, it is to die for.” Maggie pushed the pâté toward her friend. “And don’t tell me it’s made from baby sparrow’s liver or something, okay? I don’t want to know.”

  “Better not, darling,” Grace took another sip of her wine. “Still a trifle queasy these days, you know.”

  “How are you feeling? Morning sickness?”

  “No, no, just taking it easy. Slowing down on the snails and garlic just a bit.”

  “God, snails make me nauseated even without being pregnant.” Maggie said, retrieving the tapenade. “Should you be drinking?” she asked.

  “My doctor says a little wine now and then shouldn’t hurt.”

  French doctors, Maggie thought, but said nothing.

  The waiter brought small china plates of sizzling, golden-brown mussel fritters and slabs of cinnamon toast topped with hot eggplant slices and goat cheese.

  “I always wonder where they find these beautiful little plates, don’t you?” Grace said. She touched a delicate rosebud on the rim of her eggplant plate. Maggie’s serving dish was sprinkled with painted violets. “Probably thousands of years old and handed down from the family.”

  “Or picked up at the flea market for a nickel a dish.”

  “How romantic you are, darling.” Grace offered up a piece of her cheese toast but Maggie shook her head.

  “I hate goat cheese,” Maggie said.

  “Too bad.” Grace laughed. “Provence is practically built on the stuff.”

  “I know, Laurent takes it as a definite character flaw in me.”

  “How are you two doing?”

  Maggie frowned. “Not brilliant. Did I tell you Roger Bentley made him a job offer?”

  Grace nodded, her mouth full of eggplant. “Which he declined,” she said, muffled.

  “Well, I guess he did. He’s not talking.” Maggie took another long sip of wine. “Anyway, I was all wracked up about this idea that he might not want to leave next year―”

  “Oh, Maggie, it would be super if we could always stay neighbors!”

  “Yes, yes, I’d like that too, Grace, only...” Maggie picked up one of the fritters and lightly blew on it.

  “Only not if it means staying in France.”

  Maggie deposited the fritter back onto its plate and wiped the grease from her fingers. “I’m trying to work it all out in my mind, Grace.” She looked up at her friend. “Didn’t you go through all kinds of angst when you decided to live abroad?”

  “‘Angst’?” Grace screwed up her face. “You must be kidding.”

  “No, really...”

  “Maybe we don’t have as much back home to miss as you do.”

  Maggie looked at her and cocked her head in surprise.

  “Really?”

  “We’re not particularly close to our parents―neither Windsor’s nor mine. I’m not sure what I’d be eager to return to...” She looked out the small restaurant window in thought and then turned back to Maggie. “Perhaps drive-through banking? I really got used to that.”

  “I’m serious, Grace, you don’t miss the U.S.?”

  “Not really. You’re surprised, I guess. We don’t strike you as the romantic expatriate types, do we, Windsor and me?”

  “It’s not that...”

  “I’m not sure why we’re here, really. I know it made my hairdresser jealous as hell to think I was moving to the South of France to live in a castle.” She finished off the rest of her eggplant toast. “Not a very noble reason for emigrating, is it?”

  Grace’s presentation of herself as shallow and facile didn’t jibe with the portrait of the woman Maggie had come to know.

  “And Windsor?” Maggie asked. “He wanted to come?”

  “It was really Windsor’s idea,” Grace said. “Perhaps I will try one of those fried things.” Maggie handed the plate of fritters to her. “I mean, if any of us has any real romance in their souls, it’d be Win. When he sold the rights to his software, he suggested our living abroad.” She took a bite of the fritter. “I think the Hemingway allure had something to do with it, you know? Expatriates abroad, blah blah blah. This is quite good, Maggie.” She helped herself to another fritter. “And of course all those books had just come out by that Brit who moved here...what’s his name?”

  “I don’t know, the English guy who lives over in the Luberon?”

  “Yes, him. Windsor was very impressed.”

  “Seems sort of an odd reason to pick up and move...” Maggie said, retrieving one of the fritters. Had the Van Sants actually immigrated on impulse to a country where they didn’t speak the language? It seemed unbelievable to Maggie that someone would make important decisions like that.

  “Pe
ople,” Grace said, smiling up at the hovering waiter― one large dish in each of his hands. “Aren’t we the strangest amalgamation of motives and misspent dreams?”

  2

  Laurent replaced the phone receiver gently and then walked to the front door of the mas. He pulled on his jacket, shoved a knit cap low on his head to cover his ears, and left the house. He whistled for the dog, Otto, who came bounding up to meet him at the door. The remaining dog seemed much less playful after the death of its mate. That suited Laurent.

  Grace had picked Maggie up that morning in her Mercedes so the Renault was parked in the drive. He debated taking it but decided against it. The walk would be good for him, he thought, and perhaps even serve to temper his confrontation with Jean-Luc. He liked the old man, felt sorry for him at times, and had appreciated his help and advice in the beginning. It was for these reasons he’d put off the visit, the conversation, that he knew had to take place.

  He tugged at his knit cap in an attempt to warm up his ears, and then shoved his ungloved hands deep into his pockets. Otto trotted at his side, looking up at him occasionally as if expecting an order to be delivered. Jean-Luc had given him the dogs, Laurent reminded himself. At first, it had been impossible for him to believe that Jean-Luc could be involved in killing one of them just to make a point. Laurent glanced at Otto. He knew now that he’d underestimated how desperate the man had been.

  Drastically underestimated.

  3

  Maggie regarded what was left of her lunch. She really hadn’t thought she’d ordered baby squid stuffed with pine nuts. In fact, she was reasonably sure she’d ordered the sea bass with fennel. But, in any case, squid with nuts was what was presented to her with much flourish and pride. And squid was what she’d eaten.

  “It was surprisingly good,” she said to Grace.

  “Aren’t you ashamed of making such a fuss now?”

  “Really? Do you think they knew I was disappointed?”

  “Maybe not.” Grace lit up a Gitane and took a quick drag from it. Maggie watched the smoke being snatched into Grace’s mouth, and again she found herself wondering what kind of advice Grace’s doctor was giving her. “Maybe the chef always bursts into tears after bringing the food to the table.”