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

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  She glanced at the kitchen wall clock and was surprised that it was as late as it was. Laurent was off at his weekly meeting with the other vintners in the area to discuss the processing of the recent grape harvest. Maggie knew that business had probably concluded by this time and the men were likely all just drinking and relaxing. She didn’t begrudge Laurent that. She smiled to think of him and wondered if he ever really did relax? Partly due to his criminal past and partly because of just who he was intrinsically, Laurent never seemed to let his guard down. Or just the opposite: he did seem to let it down.

  He just never did.

  “I don’t know, Z. Why don’t we ask Aunt Maggie?”

  Maggie looked up to see Grace standing in front of her with Zou-zou in her arms. Grace’s face was flushed pink from her exuberant play with the toddler and the thought occurred to Maggie that Grace would have no trouble attracting another husband. Maggie always knew Grace was stunningly beautiful. Her classic good looks were as much a part of Grace’s personality—and the reason for most things she did—as anything else about her. But the agony of her recent depression had obscured that fact for a bit. Now Maggie could see that when the time came and Grace was fully back to being herself, when she was over all of this as much as she ever would be, she would be as beautiful and magnetic as ever.

  It was a shock to realize that one could survive something so devastating as the loss of one’s marriage and the happy cohesion of the family you created, and outwardly—at least eventually—there would be few if any changes at all. The light in Grace’s eyes when she looked at her daughter told Maggie that. Ha! she thought. Do not tell me children don’t help.

  “Ask me what?”

  “When dinner is ready. It’s not for me, mind you, but Z is not used to going more than fifteen minutes before Oncle Laurent pops something tasty in her mouth.”

  “Yeah, I know the syndrome. It’s why Tante Maggie is a full pants size larger than last year.”

  “One pants size?”

  “Now why is it I thought I missed you? Help me remember.” Maggie smiled as she handed Grace Z’s plate. “Y’all go on in. I’ll bring our plates.”

  After an exhausting meal of mopping up the child, the dining room table and the floor—with help from the ever vigilant Petit-Four—Grace went upstairs to give Zou-zou her bath and put her to bed. Maggie stacked the dishes in the sink, intending to deal with them later and went to feed the dog, who, not surprisingly, was too full from the baby’s dinner droppings to care.

  With another quick glance at the kitchen clock, Maggie sat on the living room couch, pulled out her phone and punched in the number she had found on the Internet earlier that day. With any luck, Laurent would be gone for another hour or more. As she waited for the line to connect, she could hear Grace upstairs singing over the sound of Zou-zou’s bathwater.

  It’s all going to be fine. Grace is going to be fine.

  “Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line was cool, clipped and American.

  Maggie figured it must be the wife. “Uh, yes, my name is Maggie Dernier.” It’s always good to identify yourself right off the bat when calling women whose husbands are known to be big fat cheats. “I was hoping to speak with a David Armstrong?” Along those same lines, it was also always good to try to make it appear as if you don’t know the husband personally since wives who have been cheated on are typically a little sensitive about strange women calling to talk to their husbands.

  Clearly she needn’t have worried. Without responding to her, the woman yelled away from her phone, “David! It’s for you.” Maggie heard the phone being set down with a clunk. She waited.

  “Hello?” A reluctant, almost sullen, but definitely American voice.

  “David Armstrong?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “My name is Maggie Newberry. I am a friend of Julia Patrick, who is a suspect in the murder of Jacques Tatois.” Might as well just come out with it.

  “Okay.” He was obviously waiting for more. He was curious. Maggie thought that was a good sign. People who killed people in cold blood like Jacques was killed tend to like to see the media releases on their handiwork. If this guy were the murderer, he would be interested in seeing how much of the case Maggie had put together.

  “I’m calling you because I had a conversation with Michelle Tatois, who is the victim’s daughter.”

  “I know who she is.”

  Maggie detected that he had dropped his voice a level. The wife must still be nearby. “She said you might be able to help me in reconstructing the events of Jacques’s last hours.” Okay that was a stretch, but Maggie had hoped the conversation would have taken on a life of its own by now instead of her being forced to drive every inch of it. This David guy was cool and he was giving her nothing to sink her teeth into.

  “Why in the world would she say that? I didn’t even know the guy.”

  “That’s not what Michelle says.” Maggie willed herself not to say more. She bit her lip to let the statement do its magic without her talking it into meaninglessness.

  It worked.

  “Yeah, okay,” he growled. Maggie could hear an agitation in his voice that made her think he was walking with the phone—moving somewhere away from the ears of his nearby wife. “I had a run-in with the bastard and I’m sure Michelle told you all about that, too.”

  Shit! So Michelle was telling the truth? What run-in?

  “I’d love to hear your side of it,” Maggie said, holding her breath.

  “The only side that matters is the one where that turd attacked my wife at last year’s company Bastille Day picnic and then went about as if nothing had happened.”

  Maggie’s mind raced. Last Bastille Day Jacques and Julia had still been together.

  “Michelle thinks you decided to provide your own brand of American justice by killing her father.”

  “She doesn’t think that.”

  “I assure you, she does. She says she has proof.” That last part was a lie, but Maggie hoped it might trigger a slip up, or even a confession. Crazier things had happened.

  “Well, then she planted it or made it up. Michelle’s pissed because we…” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “We broke up last week. Shoulda done it a month ago but the sex was decent and my wife is still shook up from what happened to her.”

  Maggie felt her skin crawl. This low-life went looking for sex outside his marriage because his sexually-assaulted wife wasn’t providing it?

  “What did happen to her?” Maggie asked. “I was told the attack was unsuccessful.” It was amazing the things people would tell you if you just probed a little with stuff you were absolutely just making up off the top of your head.

  “Michelle didn’t tell you? Never mind. She probably lied about that, too. Her father was drunk and ran into my wife in the garden after the picnic was dying down.”

  “Your wife was alone?”

  “Well, I was there but she…we were having problems and she was upset…about something. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. He caught her alone and took advantage of her.’

  “He raped her?”

  “He was in the process of it when they were interrupted.”

  “You’re sure it was rape?”

  “Now I know you were talking to Michelle. Yes, it was attempted rape. My wife even filed a complaint with the American consulate the next week.”

  “Why so long?”

  “I don’t know. I guess all the crying and thoughts of suicide in the meantime took up too much of her time to get around to it.”

  Feeling like she was starting to lose his cooperation, Maggie hurried to the question she really needed to know. “Can I ask you if the police questioned you in Monsieur Tatois’s death? Michelle said you talked freely in your office about wanting to quote kill the bastard. End quote.” Which is really rich considering you’re a cheating wad of pond scum, Maggie thought as she waited for his answer.

  “They only needed to ask one question. And w
hen I answered that they checked it out and haven’t called back since.”

  “Can I ask what the question was?”

  “You say you’re a friend of Julia Patrick’s?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Let me just say that if there was anyone Michelle hated more than Julia Patrick, it was her father. She could talk for hours about how much she detested him. Why aren’t the police looking at her as a suspect?”

  Maggie ignored the question. “Any idea why she hated her father so much?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I suppose the fact that he screwed her best friend in high school might have been a major reason.”

  Holy shit.

  “While she and Michelle were both in high school. But, personally? I think it was the relentless hate campaign waged by Michelle’s mother against Jacques. Pretty hard to have a decent opinion of dear old dad when your mother is telling you on a daily basis what a bastard he is.”

  Maggie realized he was talking about himself now. Between his infidelities and his wife’s trauma, things were probably pretty shaky on the marital home front. She wondered if he had kids.

  “Can you tell me what the question was the police asked you that made them drop you from their list of suspects?”

  “Because that’s exactly where you’d like to place me, huh? Never mind. I’d probably be doing the same thing if I had a pal in trouble. Sure, I’ll tell you, although I can’t imagine it’ll help you. They asked me where I was during the time of the murder. And I did them one better. My wife and I were back in the States for the two weeks prior to and during the time Jacques was killed. It was pretty easy to confirm. Anyway, sorry I couldn’t help you out.” His voice was light and indicated he was not at all sorry.

  “Well,” Maggie said. “Thanks for talking to me.”

  “Yeah, sure. Good luck with your friend.”

  Maggie disconnected and sat on the couch for a moment staring into space. The world was full of some seriously screwed up and unhappy people. She put a hand on her large belly and was instantly rewarded with a solid kick from a little foot.

  She turned to watch Grace come down the stairs, a faint smile still on her face.

  “Baby all tucked in?” Maggie asked, scooting over on the couch to make room for Grace.

  “Did you notice at dinner how much she’s starting to talk?”

  “I did.”

  “I hate that Win is missing it,” Grace said. “But I suppose that’s the future for both of us.”

  “Grace…”

  “Never mind, darling. Distract me. I heard you on the phone. More people calling to piss you off or was this constructive in some way?”

  “I called David Armstrong. He’s Michelle’s ex-lover and he was heard threatening to kill Jacques last year.”

  “My goodness, that’s helpful.”

  “Not so much. He has an alibi for the critical time.”

  “Well, pooh. Do you want to bounce a theory or two off me? I know I haven’t been very helpful in other ways but I’m happy to listen.”

  Maggie tucked her feet up under her and then groaned and pulled them back out. “It’s impossible to get comfortable,” she said.

  “I remember this stage very well. It’ll be over before you know it. No, I take that back. It seems like it will never end.” She leaned over and squeezed Maggie’s hand. “But of course it does. No woman ever carried a child to her sixtieth birthday. This time next month, you will have joined the ranks of mamas everywhere.”

  “Grace, do you worry about Windsor badmouthing you to the girls?”

  Grace frowned and Maggie watched her seem to physically retreat at the question.

  “Of course not. You know Win. He’s as honorable as they come.”

  “I only mention it because the guy I was just talking to said that one of the reasons Michelle hates her father is because Annette made it a full-time job to blacken his name every chance she got.”

  “Yes, well, I’m sure Jacques helped with that, too.”

  “I know. But still.” Maggie visibly shook herself out of the morose reflection and tossed her cellphone onto the coffee table. “Okay,” she said. “So I’ve got two guys—David Armstrong and Yves Briande—who publicly threatened Jacques. But he was such a weasel that’s probably not significant. Both of them have good alibis.” Maggie looked at Grace as if for guidance. “I should probably cross both of them off my list, but I’ve had suspects in the past with so-called good alibies and they ended up being the murderer.”

  “You have not.”

  “Okay, but I’ve heard of it happening before.”

  “Is there more wine?” Grace got up and walked to the kitchen. “Let’s assume for our purposes,” she said, “that alibis actually mean something. What if you were to eliminate suspects on the basis of no opportunity—just to make things easier.”

  “Okay, fine. Then on my no-alibi list I’ve got Florrie, Mathieu, Annette, Julia and who knows whom else. It’s very possible the killer is someone I don’t even know yet. I mean, before last week I didn’t know Mathieu existed.”

  “Annette doesn’t have an alibi?” Grace returned to the living room with her glass and resettled on the couch.

  “She supposedly does but no one can tell me what it is.”

  “Michelle?”

  “Iron-clad.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Yeah, I know. But patricide is pretty serious stuff, even for a nutcase like Michelle.”

  “Well, add the fact that she’s crazy to her being French, too.”

  “Yeah, I’m still not seeing it. Her alibi is too good. She was at a defensive driving class at the time.”

  “I’m shocked to learn France even has such a thing. But also, I didn’t realize the police were able to narrow down the parameter on when he could’ve been poisoned. I thought I heard Laurent say that agaricus mushrooms can poison you immediately or they can take awhile to work.”

  “They did take awhile. The police are saying they took however long it was for Jacques to say goodnight, drive to his own flat and collapse.”

  “Looks like they’re pretty serious about making your friend Julia fit the crime time line.”

  “Yeah, looks like.”

  “Your editor stop harassing you?”

  “What?”

  “Your editor. Has she stopped calling you? I don’t remember you having to dodge her calls this week.”

  Maggie sighed. “Yeah, she’s stopped. Worse than that. When I had a moment yesterday to call her back, I had to leave a voice mail.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, except my emails are going unanswered, too.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “I mean, we have a contract so I’m not really worried.”

  “Maybe that’s what she was saying all those weeks that you weren’t answering her calls and emails.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I really hope I haven’t screwed this up. It’s just that there was no way I was going to get those edits done in time.”

  “You could have just told her. Asked for an extension.”

  “I should have,” Maggie said, feeling weary. “I just didn’t want to deal with it, you know? I felt overwhelmed by it. And the publisher had made such a big deal about how much they loved my work that when it came back all bleeding and ripped to shreds, I think I lost confidence.”

  “You didn’t expect your work to be edited?” Grace frowned. “I thought that was the whole point of a having a publisher.”

  “Yeah, but I almost didn’t recognize the book after they got through editing it.”

  “You need to write her back, apologize and request as professionally as possible for a time extension.”

  “I know. That’s what Laurent said, too.”

  “So do it. And whatever happens, happens.”

  “Great philosophy,” Maggie said sarcastically as she stood and gathered up her phone.

  “Actually, it is,” Grace said with a laugh
. “And nobody’s more surprised about it than I am.”

  They should have done this right from the start.

  Even in the beginning, their relationship had always been about shopping. Why hadn’t Maggie remembered that? It hadn’t taken thirty minutes into a full day of shopping in the boutiques and clothing stores of Aix before Maggie remembered what it felt like to have a best girlfriend. The shorthand between the two of them, the inane comments and the giggles, the comfortable roles they’d both adopted years ago—Grace as the fashion mentor and Maggie as the hopelessly inept but willing pupil.

  It worked wonderfully for both of them.

  Talk about retail therapy, Maggie thought as she glanced at the bags and packages at her feet. She sat with Grace in a very upscale brasserie at the end of a perfect lunch of wine-poached salmon with black truffles.

  “I’m in heaven,” Maggie said, rubbing her stomach contentedly, the remnants of a chocolate gâteau on the table in front of her.

  “I know,” Grace said, sipping her coffee. She had already reapplied her lipstick after having eschewed dessert. Maggie couldn’t help but notice how much more relaxed Grace was these last two days. A shopping trip in Aix appeared to be pretty much the topper on Grace’s emotional rehabilitation. It wasn’t going to fix everything, Maggie knew that. Her love for clothes and jewelry aside, Grace was the least shallow person Maggie knew. But it was a baby step in the right direction.

  “I guess I didn’t feel good about doing stuff like this while Julia was still in jail,” Maggie said thoughtfully. “It didn’t feel right when I know she’s suffering.”

  “I can see that,” Grace said. “But you know the two have nothing to do with each other.”

  “Well, intellectually I know that,” Maggie said. “But I can’t help how I feel.”

  “Well, you know that’s not true,” Grace said, signaling the waiter for the check. “Did I tell you that I called Windsor last night?”

  Maggie pushed her dessert plate to the side and sat up straight. “Really? How did that go?”

  Grace sighed. “It had its ups and downs. But for the most part, it was good.”