Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5)

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  Mathieu.

  He looked even more terrifying close up. His bottom lip was punctured by several hooks and piercings. His lips were pulled back in a grimace in what looked like barely-controlled revulsion. For one mad moment, Maggie thought he intended to bite her.

  “What are you doing here?” he growled in guttural French. She could barely understand him, the languorous weight of the difficult patois of the region stretching out his syllables, distorting the words she should have known so well. He shook her and repeated his question.

  “I’m here for Julia,” she said, her voice rasping in fear even to her own ears.

  A mixture of distrust and guilt seemed to cross his face, but maybe she imagined that. If he killed Jacques—and he certainly looked like he could have—he would have no problem killing her, too. Was he trying to protect Julia? Or was he using her to cover his own tracks?

  “M-many people know I am here today,” she said, trying to hear her own words over the pounding of her heart in her ears. “If…if you hurt me…”

  Abruptly, he let go of her and she fell to her knees on the damp ground, her cellphone, which had been clutched in her hand, falling into the mushrooms at the base of the tree. She looked up at him, her fear evolving to a strange numbness. Was she going to die here…in the peaceful forest…in Julia’s special place? Maggie looked past him into the verdant dark interior and felt a strange peace come over her which blocked out the vision of the towering form of the angry man.

  Suddenly Mathieu threw something in the bushes and ran toward the parking lot. Maggie didn’t turn to watch him go. She could hear the sounds of breaking branches and crushed brushes that heralded his departure. Depleted, physically and emotionally, she sank against the tree and waited to get her strength back, her glance falling on the little burlap bag floating atop the bushes beside her.

  It took Maggie nearly a quarter of an hour to make her way back to the parked car. She could see that all the cars in the parking lot were gone now. She wondered who the other people had been and if they had witnessed the assault. If so, they certainly hadn’t done anything to help. She picked her way gingerly to the car from the trail. She had only been about five minutes into the forest, but from where she lay after Mathieu grabbed her, it had felt like much more. Her dress was ruined, streaked with mud, and she’d scratched one leg, which bled, when she fell into the bushes, but otherwise no real harm done. The baby was kicking merrily along, she noticed as she slid into the driver’s seat of her car, so clearly he hadn’t been negatively impacted by her adventure.

  But she knew it had been a close all. From the comfort and safety of her car, she tried to imagine what Laurent would do or say if he knew that she had been physically attacked in the woods today. Suffice to say, he could never know. Today Laurent’s worst fears had nearly been realized. She had taken a chance and she had suffered the consequence of it. She pulled down the visor to examine her face in the mirror. What if Julia really was guilty? What if she and that thug had committed murder? And here I am going around jeopardizing my life—and the life of my baby—for someone who doesn’t deserve it?

  That thought stopped her because of course it wasn’t a matter of deserving, and she, of all people, should know that. She wasn’t doing all this to free Julia because her friend had somehow proven herself worthy. She was doing it because she believed she knew Julia well enough to know she wasn’t capable of this crime.

  She smiled into the mirror, ignoring the dirt. Julia didn’t kill Jacques. Not like this. Not by planning it, finding the mushrooms, preparing them, inviting him over and feeding them to him. No way. Maybe in the middle of a terrible argument with a quickly grabbed up steak knife to the heart…but that was not how Jacques died. And this way, the way he did die, well, there was no way Julia Patrick could have done that. Maggie knew it as well as she knew anything. And had always known it.

  Feeling more at peace than she had in days, she started the car. She assumed she had plenty of time to bathe and change clothes before Laurent was home from his long day in the vineyard, but she would feel better when she was cleaned up. She glanced briefly at the burlap bag in the passenger’s seat next to her. Inside were a variety of different kinds of mushrooms—none of which looked anything like the deadly ones in Maggie’s Internet photo. If Mathieu had been in the forest foraging for mushrooms—as it now appeared he was—he was either very bad at telling the deadly ones from the good ones, or he didn’t currently have anybody else he wanted to kill.

  * * * *

  He stared at his hands until they stopped shaking. In the past, he had trained himself to control the shaking, even willed himself to lower the numbers when the corpsman strapped on the blood pressure cuff. It could be done. He had done it. If you were disciplined. If you knew your own strengths, you could conquer your own weaknesses. He dropped his hands and slumped against the steering wheel, resting his head on his arms.

  How close had he come to hurting that woman?

  It had all happened too fast. One minute he was alone and the next she was there—there where she shouldn’t be. Damn! He had just wanted to stop her from being there, to make her leave, but he could see how frightened she was. And he had done that. Attacking the woman in the forest today…that made three major lapses in a week. Allowing himself to be caught at the laboratory was particularly galling. And then, of course, the other. With Julia. He cringed to think of it. To think of her. He had to face it now. There was no good in pretending otherwise.

  He was no longer in control at all.

  And he knew better than anyone what hell that promised.

  Desperate to use the bathroom, Maggie was dismayed to see that the driveway of Domaine St-Buvard appeared to be blocked. Upon closer inspection, her dismay turned to nausea and a churning stomach when she saw that the vehicles blocking the drive were police cars.

  While it had been years since she had any real worries about Laurent’s criminal past, she was sickened to realize as she drove slowly up the driveway that in some ways they had always been right below the surface. Seeing the police now at her house—two cars with four police officers standing in the driveway—she knew without knowing that they were here for Laurent.

  She parked her car on the grassy side of the driveway and hurried toward the grouping. One of the men was smoking. He watched her approach with a frown, as if annoyed to have to deal with her. Maggie could see that the few pickers who still remained to do the last little bit of work had stopped and were watching the proceedings with apparent fascination. She saw Laurent as soon as she rounded the curved bend in the driveway. It was hard not to. He was the tallest of the five men and he stood among them, his back ramrod straight, his thick dark hair tousled and flying about his face. His hands handcuffed behind his back.

  “Laurent!” she cried out as she trotted toward him. He turned toward her and his look wasn’t one of welcome or relief. He probably hoped to be gone before I returned, she thought helplessly.

  She confronted the smoking cop, the first one she came to. “What is the meaning of this?”

  He took a long drag on his cigarette and eyed her from head to toe. “Your name, Madame?” he said in the thick accent of the region.

  Bumpkin! Maggie thought with frustration, turning from him to where the other police were putting Laurent into the back of one of the cruisers.

  “Can someone tell me what’s going on? Laurent, where are they taking you?” Maggie knew she sounded close to tears and she hated that. It was hard enough on him without his having to soothe her, too.

  “Cela ne fait rien, chérie,” he said. It’s nothing. “Go inside. I will call you later.”

  “Laurent, no,” Maggie said. “Are you under arrest?” She turned to the two policemen who were sliding into the front seat of the cruiser. “What are the charges?” she asked them.

  “Go inside, chérie,” Laurent repeated, his face creased with dirt from a day in the fields, his voice pinched with tension.

  Ma
ggie watched as the two cars backed out of the drive and disappeared. She turned and bolted for the house.

  Grace was sitting on the couch in the living room with Petit-Four on her lap. She looked like she had just awakened although it was well after four in the afternoon.

  “There’s a lot of noise going on outside,” Grace said without looking up at Maggie. “It woke me up.”

  Maggie ignored her and raced upstairs to the bathroom where, after using the toilet, she quickly washed her face of any telltale dirt of her encounter in the forest and hurried downstairs.

  “Where’s Z?” Maggie asked as she fumbled for her cellphone and her car keys in her purse.

  Grace shrugged. “With Danielle, I imagine.”

  Maggie hesitated. “Are you going to be okay? I have to go to Aix.”

  Grace leaned down and hugged the little dog. “Petit-Four and I will be fine, won’t we, pet?”

  Afraid that Grace was either losing her mind or on drugs or both, but knowing she didn’t have time to deal with it in any case, Maggie turned and, for the second time that day, fled the house.

  Once in the Renault, Maggie adjusted her seatbelt across her belly and slammed the car into reverse. She backed up the driveway. It would take thirty minutes to get to the A8 and another thirty to reach Aix. She put on her earphones and punched in Roger’s number. She didn’t expect him to answer—he’d stop taking her calls days ago—and particularly not today, but it didn’t matter. She had sixty minutes—or however long his voice mail could hold—of venting that he could listen to at his leisure.

  When the recorded message finished, she ratcheted up the volume and began. “This is a low move even for you, Roger,” she said, feeling her fury build the moment she started speaking. “This is harassment in any language. What’s the matter? Was I getting too close to some important answers? Were you afraid of being shown up by the pregnant American? Again? I thought better of you, Roger. Seriously. Ask your model girlfriend if she’s impressed with this kind of behavior. What is it, exactly, that you think you’re—”

  “I would stop now before you find yourself in very big trouble, Madame Dernier.” Roger’s smooth voice slithered across the connection and Maggie was so surprised that she was momentarily speechless.

  “You…you know this is harassment, Roger,” she said finally. “You can’t just arrest people because you’ve got a bur under your saddle.”

  “I didn’t. Your husband was brought in as a result of a complaint made against him by one of his pickers.”

  “That’s a lie,” Maggie said hotly. “Laurent’s workers love him. To a man.”

  “You are misinformed as to the character of your husband, Madame Dernier,” Roger said unctuously. Maggie imagined him rubbing his hands together with glee. “Many wives often are, I am told.”

  “What kind of complaint?”

  “Physical abuse.”

  “No way. Laurent would never hit anyone.”

  “Even if he were defending your honor? That’s quite a statement. I’m not sure I could attest to being so restrained myself under that circumstance.”

  “I do not know what kind of bullshit game you’re playing, Roger, but it is beneath you. This is the behavior of jealous maniac.”

  “So you think my girlfriend is a model? She is beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “I’m worried about you, Roger. Seriously. You used to be somewhat normal. What you’re doing is wrong and you know it.”

  “I’m sorry if you thought that our acquaintance would afford you privileges that I don’t feel comfortable offering you, Madame,” he said smoothly. “Your husband must pay the price for his crimes like anyone else. It would be an unspeakable breach of my position for me to interfere. I hope you understand.”

  “Oh, trust me, I do,” Maggie said and broke the connection before she could add anything that might not help Laurent get released as soon as possible. “Dickhead,” she said, accelerating.

  Forty minutes later when she reached Aix, she was forced to park two blocks away. Cursing the fact that it was now well after five and full into the Aix rush hour with people racing about doing their marketing for dinner, Maggie hurried to the imposing police station, dodging shoppers and office workers on the broken and uneven sidewalk. When she turned the corner to the station she ran up the steps of the building and found Laurent sitting out front in one of the rusting café chairs.

  “Laurent! Did they just release you? Are all the charges dropped? What were the charges? Why didn’t you call me when they let you go?”

  Laurent stood up and patted his shirt pocket. He shrugged. “I must have left it in my other shirt.”

  She shook her head and grinned. She knew he hated public displays of affection—and that was probably especially true in front of the police station—so she resisted the urge to throw her arms around him. But seeing him free with no harm done from the experience filled her with immense relief. She felt the clenched tension that had fueled her drive to the city drain from her shoulders. “So they just drove you to Aix and let you go?”

  “Pretty much.” Laurent took her arm and guided her down the steps to the street as if she hadn’t just vaulted up them with the agility of a non-pregnant teenager. “The so-called complaint vanished by the time they brought me in.”

  “Who complained about you?”

  “No one,” he said. “Or if there was someone, he recanted before the charge could be formally made.”

  “This is Roger’s doing,” Maggie said. “It’s harassment, pure and simple.”

  “Peut-être.” Maybe.

  When they reached the street, Laurent stopped and held her at arms’ length for a moment. He frowned. “While I am happy to see you under any circumstances, chérie,” he said, “do you want to explain why it looks as if you have been combat-crawling through the vineyard in your best dress?”

  “This is not my best dress, Laurent. It’s just the only one left that still fits at this stage of the game.”

  The look he gave her was easy to translate.

  “Okay, look, I had a little hike in the forest where Julia goes for her mushrooms. That’s all.”

  He continued to look expectantly at her.

  “And I might’ve slipped in the mud at one point. Not a biggie. I didn’t even fall all the way down.”

  He looked at the side of her dress which was caked in brown mud from hip to hem.

  “Okay, I did fall a little bit but the mud was soft, Laurent. And even though I bruise really easy these days, I didn’t fall hard enough to do that.”

  He reached out and touched her jaw and frowned. “Then how is it you have a bruise on your chin?”

  “My chin?” As Maggie’s fingers flew to her face, she could feel the tenderness where Mathieu’s hand had gripped her. Her mind raced, and just when she was settling on the inevitability of telling Laurent the whole painful truth, she saw that he was no longer looking at her. Instead, he was staring, with an expression as close to shock as she had ever seen on him, over her shoulder at the parking lot. She turned to follow his gaze to where their car sat—exactly where she’d parked it—with the front windshield a demented spider’s web of cracks and blood coating the grill and front bumper.

  “Holy shit,” she said in a low whisper.

  Laurent strode to the car and walked around it without speaking. He plucked a note from the battered windshield wipers and read it before handing it to her.

  “For a moment,” he said looking at the damaged car, “I was afraid you had driven to my rescue with a little too much enthusiasm.”

  The note read: “Since you care for the wellbeing of animals so much, you will be glad to know only chickens were murdered for this message. Next time the joke will be on you.”

  “Is she crazy?” Maggie held the note up. “This is a written confession that she’s vandalized our car. And she’s threatening me.”

  Laurent gave her a weary look. “Qui?”

  “Michelle,” Maggie said. She
cleared her throat and looked away. “I might have mentioned to her in passing how much I like animals.”

  “Vraiment, Maggie?”

  Maggie pretended to concentrate on the note in her hand.

  “Bon,” he said. “Get in. Be careful of the broken glass on the seat.”

  * * *

  In the end it had taken very little.

  Julia was surprised at how little was required. For weeks she watched the others barter and trade for protection, for pleasure, for relief. At first, it had felt impossible—insurmountable—the amount of wealth needed to assuage the daily fear. But then, Julia had been thinking in terms of food, of warmth, of a respite from the pain and the humiliation. When it came right down to it, the thing she really needed—and had needed right from the start although she didn’t know it then—was very cheaply had. She didn’t need to ask Maggie to give her money or slip her cartons of cigarettes. She didn’t need to determine which guard could be bribed to be kind. She didn’t need to attach herself to any group of women in particular—the terrifying or the more terrifying.

  In the end, it was a simple act of friendship, honestly given, that made her ultimate deliverance possible. Who would have thought? When she finally came to the point where she knew what she wanted, what she needed, it was really only valuable to the buyer. For Julia, it had cost nothing. Less than nothing. A shiv for a kiss. Poetic, really. And such a chaste kiss. On the cheek but freely given with care and sympathy and human feeling. There could be no doubt of that from either party. And really, when you thought about it, what could be more valuable in this place of horror than that?

  Julia smiled bitterly, the knife tucked carefully into the front of her jumpsuit, its sharpened edge against her skin a promise of rescue and peace. She huddled on her damp mattress shoved up against the wall of her cell and waited.

  Who could have imagined that all it would take was a simple act of kindness?

  Chapter Fourteen