Murder in the South of France: Book 1 of the Maggie Newberry Mysteries (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series)

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  The taxi took another sharp swerve and Connor groped for a handle to secure himself. He needn’t have bothered. Within a microsecond of the two-wheeled turn, the driver had slammed to a stop and was now twisted around to face his passenger. “Deux cent euro,” the driver said, his throat rattling with the phlegm caused by too many Gauloises.

  Connor peeled off the notes and handed them over. These French are clever, he decided, as he slammed the taxi door and glanced up at the gaily welcoming restaurant façade of Le Vacarres. They know you wouldn’t pay two hundred euros for a measly taxi ride...but for your life? For the chance to cheat death and live to enjoy another meal? Perhaps father children? Plant a vegetable garden? Write a book? Ahh! This was worth two hundred euros.

  He saw his man immediately on the eastern portion of the elegant café, not hidden, but hardly front and center either. He could see he’d already ordered a large Pernod. No local pastis for him, Connor thought as he picked his way toward the table. Connor had been curious when Monsieur had called last night to arrange the meeting. After all, they’d not even been on nodding terms after their last...discussion. He called to mind, briefly, the accusations, the insinuations. Yes, he thought as he approached the table, squinting against the late morning sun, today’s meeting would prove to be very interesting.

  The older man turned as Connor reached him and pulled out the other chair for himself. Neither man offered to shake hands. The seated man looked at Connor grimly, his face set in a visage of determination and controlled hatred.

  Connor seated himself.

  “Good afternoon, Monsieur Marceau,” he said, almost tauntingly.

  Maggie eased herself into the driver’s seat of the car, her head aching slightly from the effects of nearly five cups of coffee. Grace had left their coffee-into-lunch rendez-vous to do some shopping in Aix. Funny, she doesn’t talk about her daughter very much, Maggie thought as she started up the little car. Thank goodness. Few things were more excruciatingly boring to Maggie than hearing in minute detail the cutenesses wrought by other people’s children.

  She thought of her niece, Nicole. With her picture-perfect politeness, Nicole was the quintessential French girl. Her little-girl English was still tinged with charming spots of French, her eyes were bright and lively. She was always ready to jump up and fetch you another cup of this, to shut the window, answer the door, evacuate her yapping terrier from a social group.

  Where had she learned all that? Maggie wondered. Where had she learned to be a perfect child? So French, so pleasingly ingratiating that not even American TV could destroy her sense of style and spirit. Nicole had been an abused child before she came to live with Maggie’s parents. But she was making a remarkable comeback at seven years of age.

  Maggie drove to the edge of the village, its narrow streets lapping up onto the curbs with the dust of the streets. There was a light violet stain to all the narrow roads of St-Buvard these days, the residue of the grapes that currently obsessed the village, from the landowners to the pickers to the negociateurs to the tradespeople to the eventual drinkers.

  She had to shop for the evening meal to which Laurent had―without consulting her―invited the Marceaus. It was annoying. Not only was she relegated to the position of fetcher and carrier of the groceries (Laurent would prepare the meal), but she would have to sit through what she was sure was going to be an endless documentary this evening, narrated by Eduard and Laurent, on grapes: the growing of, the picking of, the crushing of, the eventual drinking of. Danielle seemed an unlikely candidate for introducing any other topic into the mix, or for doing anything, for that matter, except nodding vigorously at the wine-facts of her husband.

  Maggie parked the car in front of the boulangerie. It was going to be a long evening.

  Madame Renoir sang a happy greeting to her from behind the counter when Maggie entered the little shop. The shop owner’s ruddy cheeks were spanked white with flour and Maggie could just imagine the gesture that produced the marks: two chubby hands flying to even chubbier cheeks with a Mon Dieu! over some burnt cupcakes or a too-runny icing.

  Maggie bonjour-ed back and took in a deep breath of the wonderful, yeasty smells emanating from the ovens behind the woman.

  “Comme ça va, Madame?" the stout baker asked, her eyebrows shooting up like two inverted commas. She held a huge tray of bread loaves in her hands as she spoke, and Maggie guessed that a good deal of the baker’s apparent blubber must be pure muscle.

  “Bien, bien," Maggie answered, hoping the woman wouldn’t decide to launch into a long conversation without a translator handy. Maggie didn’t see the infamous Babette in the shop today. “Je voudrais du pain," Maggie said, pointing to one of the large baguettes in the display case. Better make it two, she thought. We can eat what’s left over for breakfast. “Deux pains," she said, holding up two fingers. "S’il vous plaît."

  The baker put down her tray of bread loaves and began to chatter in French. Maggie held her hands up in a gesture of incomprehension and continued to point to the long, flour-dusted torpedoes of bread.

  “She wants you to tell her ahead of time when you will be coming for your bread.”

  Maggie turned to see Babette standing quietly behind her, a dustpan in one hand. The girl wore a flat, disinterested look and stared directly into Maggie’s eyes. Her coarse blonde hair was plaited in dozens of swinging braids, her face was dramatically made up with blue eyeshadow. Mascara clotted her lashes but whether by design or as the result of having been slept in the night before, Maggie couldn’t tell.

  Madame Renoir spoke to Babette and raised the volume on her babbling. The girl snarled something back at her and then turned to Maggie as if the ordeal of living was being made compoundedly more difficult by each moment that passed.

  “You tell her,” Babette said wearily, “and she holds it back for you. These are extras.” She jerked her head at the bread loaves that Madame Renoir was now stuffing into a bag for Maggie. “You were lucky today. Most people reserve. Comprenez-vous?"

  Maggie nodded, grateful for the girl’s English, if not her attitude. She thanked her but didn’t really want to invite further conversation. She found herself embarrassed by what she knew about the girl. Embarrassed to be Connor’s countrywoman.

  To Maggie’s dismay, the girl leaned against the glass pastry display counter and continued. “I am seeing your husband,” she said, glancing down at Maggie’s dark, straight skirt and dark hose. “He comes for brioche. You do not bake brioche for him at home?”

  Maggie took the bread from Madame Renoir and dug out the correct change from her purse.

  “Not yet, anyway,” she said pleasantly.

  “Your husband is a very handsome man,” Babette continued. “Rich, too, I am thinking.”

  Maggie nearly laughed in the girl’s face. Is she trying to make me jealous? “Well, thanks, anyway, Mademoiselle, for all your help,” she said as she paid Madame Renoir.

  "Il n’y’a pas de quoi."

  Before she could leave, Madame Renoir spoke rapidly to Babette who then turned to Maggie.

  “Madame is making many special gâteaux tomorrow,” she said in a bored voice. “Will she reserve one for you?”

  Maggie nodded at Madame Renoir. "Oui, merci," Maggie said. “Deux, peut-être?"

  The little baker beamed broadly and jerked her head down in a single, affirming movement.

  Maggie gave a farewell nod to the decidedly snotty Babette, now standing with arms crossed in front of her chest and leaning against the counter.

  “Au revoir, Mademoiselle,” Maggie said.

  "Et vous, aussi, Madame,” Babette said. “Or should I also say Mademoiselle?”

  Maggie turned and walked briskly back to the car. She shifted the long, awkward loaves in her arms, her head bent down intently. Before she reached her waiting car, Maggie collided with the running form of Gaston Lasalle.

  The air knocked out of her in an agonizing whoosh that she heard even as she made it, Maggie sat gasping
and holding her scratched knee on the cracked and dirty curb in front of the village post office. Gaston had only stumbled when he hit her. Now he stood over her uncertainly, clenching and unclenching his hands. His dark hair was wild about his face in startled layers, like a black dogwood tree, Maggie thought in her daze.

  “Stupid girl!” she heard him say in French. Instead of rushing off, he remained standing near her as she slowly regained her breath.

  Maggie looked around for her bag of bread. The smell of urine and things rotting came flooding up to her from the gutter. To her surprise, Gaston suddenly reached down and grabbed her under the arms. In one swift jerk, he pulled her to her feet, cupping her left breast firmly in his hand. Maggie staggered away from him and fell against the fender of her car. Her eyes darted wildly to the streets for any passersby. The post office was closed. The streets of St-Buvard were vacant.

  “Stupid girl,” the young Frenchman said again, his eyes flashing over her in a way that made Maggie want to be sick all over his dirty leather boots.

  “Get away from me,” she croaked hoarsely, catapulting herself off the car with her hands and away from him. She stopped to pick up her undamaged bread, and watched him over her shoulder as he began walking away.

  Quickly, Maggie got into her car. Her hand was shaking as she turned the key in the ignition box. Before she pulled away from the curb, she leaned over and slammed down the lock on the passenger side door. As she did, she caught sight of Babette standing in the doorway of the boulangerie.

  Babette was smiling.

  Chapter Four

  “No! I hate you! I won’t! No! No!” The child pulled herself to her full height of just over three feet and flung the opened medicine bottle at Windsor who, for some reason unknown to Grace, dodged it instead of catching it. Grace stood behind him and watched in dismay as the bottle fell to the floor and the murky pink liquid seeped into the original coral Isfahan rug beneath their feet.

  “You’re really good with kids, Win. Anyone ever tell you that before?”

  “Shut up!” he yelled, turning towards her. “Just shut the eff up.”

  “How wonderful.” Grace lit another cigarette―her third this morning―and it wasn’t yet eight. “He doesn’t swear around children,” she said to no one in particular. “He just alphabets them.”

  Windsor pushed past her to stand in front of Taylor who was oozing snot down the front of her face and wiping what she could on her clean, pressed school uniform.

  “Taylor, stop that!” he barked, knowing she would ignore him.

  The child began to sob, a whiny, aggressive sort of sobbing that tended to enrage its listeners rather than solicit their sympathy. “I don’t want it,” she sobbed, still clutching and smearing at her short little blue tablier.

  “Darling, it’s all right,” Grace said softly to the child.

  “Mommy, I don’t want the medicine.”

  “Yes, yes, Taylor. You don’t have to have it.”

  Windsor whirled on Grace. “What?” he exploded. “And what child care book is that out of?”

  “Look, Windsor, she―”

  “Is that the chapter that says wait until they’ve gone completely haywire before you give in because anything less and you won’t be respected by them? Thanks a lot, Grace...”

  “How can we give her medicine now? First, she’s a total mess―”

  “We can’t now because her mother has validated her insistence that she not have it. After all this,” Windsor waved both arms angrily around the room. “You caved in, Grace.”

  “I did, Windsor, I admit it.” Grace eyed her child with resignation and took another long drag off her cigarette. “Can we clean up the pink goo now?”

  “Touch that bottle and I’ll break your arm,” Windsor said, his body tensed toward her.

  Grace looked at him in frank astonishment. "What?" she said.

  “Mommy, I don’t want to go to school today. I want to stay home with you, Mommy.”

  Taylor edged away from her father and closer to her mother. Taylor’s long, golden mass of curls tumbled into her eyes and down her shoulders. Even at four years of age, the child was intensely vain about her hair, and could be found staring at her image in the mirror for hours, fluffing and tossing and winking at herself. Grace didn’t stop her― although she knew Windsor would have―because they were practically the only times the child wasn’t sneering or whining.

  “Taylor made the mess,” Windsor said, straightening his back and pointing a shaking finger at his first-born. “Taylor will clean it up.”

  “She’s four years―”

  “She can lick, can’t she?”

  “Honestly, Windsor, you’ve come unstrung.” Grace stabbed out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray and marched into the kitchen to get a sponge.

  “Don’t do this, Grace,” Windsor shouted after her.

  “Mommy,” Taylor whimpered, keeping an eye on her irate father.

  Grace returned to the room with a handful of paper towels and a soapy sponge. She looked straight at Windsor.

  “This rug is over ten thousand dollars,” she said to Windsor as she clapped the sponge into little Taylor’s unwilling hand. “But if making a point to a four-year old is more important than saving―”

  “It is,” Windsor said firmly, crossing his arms.

  “This is going to be more trouble than it’s worth, I promise you.” Grace knelt down and smiled at Taylor. “Go on, Taylor, darling. We clean up the messes we make―”

  “No! I don’t want to!” And with that the child pushed past her parents, ran through the globbing pink medicine and fled upstairs. Grace and Windsor could hear the loud bang of the child’s bedroom door slamming shut.

  Grace looked at the little sneaker tracks of pink that now ran the full length of the rug and onto the parquet flooring beyond it.

  “Well,” Grace said, slowly standing from her crouched position. “I’d say that went about as well as could be expected.”

  “The child’s totally out of control, Grace,” Windsor said.

  “I know.”

  “All the shrinks say there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s intelligent, well-adjusted... “

  “Just incredibly bad-tempered.” Grace looked up at him and smiled wanly.

  Windsor grabbed his hair with his hands and pulled. “God,” he said looking at the pink trail. “She’s such a little shit, you know?”

  They both laughed briefly and Grace walked over and put her arms around him. Instantly, he held her in a tight hug. Then, looking into her eyes, he smiled and touched her chin with his finger.

  “We’re not trying to have a baby to replace Taylor, are we?”

  “Don’t be silly.” Grace nuzzled his neck. “It’s nothing like that. If anything, a baby brother or sister will probably settle her down a bit.”

  “You mean like teach her humility or something? Because I gotta tell you, I quake to imagine Taylor jealous.” He gently kissed his wife’s cheek and brushed his fingers against her perfect skin. “You had the last ultrasound yesterday, right? in Aix? How’d it look?”

  “All systems go. Two follicles ready to pop. One last shot tonight to spur ovulation.”

  “And when are we due to do the dirty deed, as it were?”

  They could hear the slow but insistent howl of their daughter from her bedroom upstairs. Grace pulled away from him and laughed. “God, do we know what we’re doing?”

  “Probably not.”

  A crashing sound came from the room upstairs directly above their heads.

  “Most assuredly not,” Grace said, sighing, as she moved away from her husband and bent to pick up the sponge that Taylor had dropped. Her head swam just a bit and she righted herself by touching the floor with a hand until the moment passed. Windsor began wadding up paper towels to sop up the worst of it.

  “Two follicles, huh?” he said, without looking up.

  She pointed the sponge at him. “Don’t even think about twins,” she sai
d, and this time they didn’t laugh.

  The grapes were nearly all picked now. One more morning should do it, and for that only half the usual pickers would show up. Today’s workers had departed an hour ago. Maggie stood in the late afternoon sun with Laurent and enjoyed the strong aroma of lavender and roasted chestnuts in the air. The paths between the vines were lightly stained with red where the too-ripe grapes had fallen and then been trodden.

  The Provence sky seemed higher and broader to Maggie than the Georgia or Florida skies she was used to. She had the sensation of standing on the edge of the world while the intense blueness of the sky reached down to the horizon.

  “Good harvest?” Maggie held Laurent’s hand as they walked. They’d taken to enjoying early evening walks around their house and the surrounding little wood. But because of the activity in the vineyard up to now, this was their first joint survey of the vines.

  Laurent nodded. “Not bad,” he said. "Pas mal." His eyes were also on the horizon as if calculating how many more hectares of land he might need to have an even bigger, more impressive harvest next year.

  “Hard part ahead, I guess,” she said, following his gaze.

  He looked down at her and smiled. “Best part, chérie,” he said.

  “It means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” She dropped his hand and instead moved closer to him, snuggling under his arm as they walked. “That next year’s harvest is the best.”

  He kissed her on the top of her dark head.

  “But, you know, Laurent, anything can go wrong. If the weather’s bad, or the mistral rips up vines or―”

  “Maggie, Maggie,” Laurent said. “You are not to be worrying.”

  “Because it’s just the experience, right? That’s what’s important. Not the results. Right?” She looked up at him and then out to the stark, blackened vine stakes as they dotted the slowly sloping hillside.