Murder in Nice

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  Maggie and Olivier watched Dee-Dee leave the restaurant and then turned to look at each other.

  “But she has food coming,” Olivier said, his mouth open in surprise as he turned in obvious disbelief to watch Dee-Dee’s retreating back.

  *****

  Ben rummaged in the drawer of the kitchen looking for something to stir his drink with. Ever since Laurent caught him going through his office, Ben felt uncomfortable even doing perfectly innocent activities. He found an iced tea spoon and picked up his vodka tonic and moved into the dining room. It was damn rude that now both Maggie and Laurent were out doing more important things than attending to their guests, but he had to admit it was easier on the nerves with Laurent away.

  Would he really throw him out? He sipped his drink and walked to the set of French doors that looked out onto the garden and the vineyards in the distance. Fortunately, Laurent had been called away before he could enforce his threat.

  Something caught Ben’s eye outside and he took a step closer. He was sure that Haley and Grace had taken the kids out for the day. A muffled squeal pierced through the doors and he saw Maggie’s little boy crawl into view on the terrace stones. So. The women must be here after all, he thought.

  The child was good-looking. Brown hair, dark brown eyes. He supposed he looked like Dernier somewhat but he also had strong Newberry lines—the nose, the shape of the head, the quick, alert glances. Ben drank down the entire glass of vodka as he watched the baby. A woman’s voice, light and musical, caught the child’s attention and Ben watched Jem turn his head and grin at the unseen source.

  Would the child have looked like him? Ben realized it was the first time he’d thought of it since he’d arrived at Maggie’s. On the train trip from Nice, it seemed he could think of nothing else. That stupid, stupid bitch Lanie. She deserved what she got—with bells on. But when it was all said and done—regardless of how tidily things ended up—the fact was she had taken something of his when she went. He gripped his glass before remembering it was empty.

  When you start doing insane, self-destructive things, he wondered bitterly, do they just keep getting easier to do?

  Haley stepped into view and scooped up the baby in her arms, prompting more delighted squealing from the child. Ben knew it was irrational, but the picture of her cuddling Maggie’s child hit him as wrong and somehow unfair.

  He must have made a movement because Haley turned toward him and shaded her eyes to see inside the French doors. The happy look melted from her face the minute she saw it was him. He opened the door.

  “Where’s Grace?” he asked.

  Haley turned to call to the little girl, whom up until then Ben hadn’t noticed. She was a pretty little thing but shy. She always hid whenever he came into the room. “Come, Zouzou,” Haley said. She held out her hand and the child clasped it, never taking her eyes off Ben.

  “She had to go into town,” Haley said.

  “Of course she did. And so here’s Nanny Haley just ready to be of service. You’re not their servant, Haley. You’re letting them take advantage of you.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Oh, good. Will you be cleaning the house later, too?”

  Jem turned his head to look at him, and Ben was struck by how intelligent the little fellow looked. Almost as if he could understand their conversation.

  “Don’t be sarcastic in front of the children,” Haley said. “It’s upsetting to them.”

  “You mean it’s upsetting to you. They have no idea what I’m saying. Do you, sweetheart?” he said to Zouzou. The child instantly puckered up and began to cry.

  “What the hell is the matter with her?” he said, startled.

  “You are the matter with her,” Haley said, her face flushed with anger. “Go back in the house.” She hesitated. “Please.”

  The feeling of the papers he’d extracted from her suitcase felt like they were burning in his inside jacket pocket.

  What would Haley think when he used the documents against Laurent? She pulled the children away from the house, as if protecting them from him.

  Well, she’ll just have to get over it, he thought with annoyance as he watched her lead them toward the small lawn that lay just before the vineyards. Everything he was doing, he was doing for the two of them.

  As he watched her walk away, her back to him, he felt his fingers grow cold and his heart harden.

  She’d either see that, or she wouldn’t.

  *****

  The joy of it all was beyond imagining. Dee-Dee glanced at her reflection in a shop window as she scurried past. She couldn’t help but smile at what she saw: a beautiful girl, her hair twisted into a careless but elegant chignon, walking straight, boobs leading the way. She hurried her pace.

  Could this day be any better?

  She glanced at her smartphone. She’d plugged in the directions as she walked. He had texted to meet him at one o’clock. That meant she had less then five minutes to walk to where the phone was telling her was a fifteen-minute route by foot. She held onto the shoulder strap of her purse and began to jog down the pedestrian cobblestone street, praying her heels wouldn’t catch on the uneven pavers.

  Her phone chimed and she looked down to see what the incoming text read.

 

  Dee-Dee squinted up at the street sign in front of her. Rue du Refuge. The map on her phone didn’t show the road he mentioned. She peered down the alley at the intersection. It was lined with Arlesienne townhouses, old but brightly painted. One had a shutter hanging by its hinge. The phone map was telling her to go down this alley. Would she come across Rue de Clair if she did?

  She texted him back and plunged down the narrow residential street.

  Where was he leading her? A park? A café? A hotel room?

  The townhouse facades were made of uneven stonework topped with rust-orange tile roofs. Several had window boxes with blood-red geraniums bulging out of their containers. The narrow street was uphill and steep. It was barely wide enough for a car to get through, which didn’t matter, she reminded herself. This was a strictly pedestrian only section of Arles.

  Dee-Dee’s legs began to ache and she felt perspiration trickle down her back and underarms and she cursed the fact she would show up bedraggled and damp when she finally arrived at the rendezvous.

  Why all the secrecy? Why can’t he just invite me to his room? A bottle of Champagne chilled…

  The thought of the possibly waiting bottle of cold Champagne buoyed her enough to trudge on. Today was her finest hour. The look on Desiree’s face! The pure joy on Bob’s. Dee-Dee nearly ran up the hill, her face flushed with effort and pleasure. At the top, she looked around and felt her mood falter. The street ended in a dead-end, with a large and very ancient house directly in front of her.

  Screw these cryptic text messages, she thought in frustration. Just as she pulled her phone out to call him, she noticed the sign. It was small and tacked unceremoniously on a gate just to the left of the big house. Dee-Dee approached it. The sign was handwritten and read, Rue de Clair. A thrill of satisfaction ran through her.

  She moved across the cracked stone walkway that led to the front door of the house in order to get to the gate. It was wooden and looked medieval. She was relieved to see there wasn’t a lock on it, and when she grabbed the handle it easily creaked opened. She looked over her shoulder at the street behind her and then entered the garden.

  Am I to use this garden as a cut-through, she thought with confusion, or is Bob waiting for me here with a picnic lunch and a bottle of rosé? Damn his need to surprise her, she thought with grim bemusement as she closed the gate behind her. Four steps into the interior she realized the area was less a garden than it was a small pasture. Wild roses grew entwined with rusted barbwire along the perimeter of the fenced yard. There was a small shade tree of some kind in the middle of the yard, the whole of which appe
ared slightly smaller than an American football field. And nowhere did she see Bob lounging on a blanket with a picnic basket. What she did see, directly opposite from where she stood, was another gate. She sighed. So it is a cut-through, not a destination. She adjusted her purse strap on her shoulder and moved toward the gate, glancing up at the back windows of the house to see if anyone was at home. A burgeoning and sudden aroma of manure wafted to her the minute she started to cross the field. She looked at the ground to make sure she wasn’t about to step in anything and felt her irritation return.

  This is ridiculous! Does he really think I’d enjoy this asinine game? She saw her shoes—sixty dollars from Macy’s!—were already muddy and she cursed the fact she was indeed going to show up for the assignation reeking of cow shit, if not wearing it.

  The movement caught her eye before she was midway to the far gate. Dee-Dee’s first thought was that she had interrupted a gardener at work and would now need to come up with some explanation—in very bad French—as to why she was trespassing. That thought died in her mind the minute she turned her head.

  The animal stared at her, its eyes glittering and focused on her even from twenty yards away. The smell riffled off it in undulating putrid waves and made Dee-Dee’s stomach lurch with nausea. Easily seven feet in height and weighing over a ton, the bull’s coat was rough and black, its tiny pig-eyes watching her with unmistakable malevolence. Black spots formed and popped in her vision as Dee-Dee stumbled and then stared in stunned disbelief as the beast lowered its head of dagger-like horns.

  A scream fought to escape her throat, but only a whimper slipped out as she wet the ground in a gush and watched in disbelieving horror as the monster charged.

  Fifteen

  Well, this is certainly an odd ending to the whole trial-by-tour-guide thing, Maggie thought as she paid the taxi driver outside the Centre Hospitalier d’Arles. She looked at her phone and hurried into the main entrance of the emergency room. She’d put two calls in to Laurent saying she might be late but had gotten no response.

  Two hours after Dee-Dee mysteriously slipped away from lunch, she, Olivier, and the Andersons returned to the hotel to pack their bags. An hour after that, as she stood with Desiree and Randall outside the hotel loading up the car for the final presentation, Maggie received an urgent phone call from Olivier asking her to say nothing to the others and meet him at the emergency room in Arles.

  Dee-Dee had been attacked.

  Brimming with questions and astonishment that Dee-Dee had been hurt, as well as the fact that Olivier wanted it kept quiet, Maggie hurried through the double doors of the hospital emergency ward. The interior of the emergency room looked much like any she’d ever been in back home. The smell of idoform mixed with ammonia was nearly overpowering. The entrance emptied onto a large waiting room ringed by several triage desks. Maggie walked up to the nearest one, but before she could get the woman’s attention behind the counter she saw Olivier waving to her from across the room.

  “Maggie! Over here!”

  She walked quickly to Olivier, who stood outside a treatment room separated from the waiting room by a long vinyl curtain.

  “What happened?” she asked, looking past him to get a glimpse through the gap where the curtain ends didn’t quite meet. She saw a figure lying on a bed.

  “Dee-Dee was gored by a bull,” Olivier said. Maggie thought he looked breathless, as if he’d just rushed in from somewhere, but assumed the adrenaline of the situation was reason enough for his condition.

  “She left lunch to go to a bullfight?”

  “Non. She got a text from Randall telling her to meet him. She took a shortcut through a pasture with a very angry bull in it. She called me as soon as they finished stitching her up.”

  “That’s terrible. How badly is she hurt?”

  “She was gored, Maggie!”

  “Will she recover?”

  Olivier frowned at her in impatience. “Don’t you see what this means?”

  Maggie took a step toward the curtain.

  “It means Randall tried to kill her,” he said loudly.

  Maggie stopped, one hand on the curtain and frowned. “How do you figure that? Sounds like a freak accident. Have you called Randall yet?”

  “No, he damn well hasn’t!”

  Maggie turned to see Bob Randall knocking chairs over in his urgency to reach them from across the waiting room. Thankfully, there were few people in the room. “Dee-Dee just called to tell me what happened,” he said as he reached them, his teeth bared and fists clenched.

  Maggie turned back to Olivier. “Can we see her? Is she in there?”

  “She does not want to see him,” Olivier said, blocking Randall from entering the curtained room.

  “Yes, I do!” Dee-Dee shouted from behind the curtain. “Send him in.”

  Reluctantly, Olivier stepped aside and turned and pulled back the curtain. Dee-Dee lay propped up on the treatment table, her left leg bandaged and elevated, spatters of blood streaking the eyelet chemise Maggie remembered her wearing at lunch. Her face was white under the jagged streaks of mascara and eyeliner that smudged her cheeks.

  “Dear God, Dee-Dee,” Randall cried, going to her. “What the hell happened?”

  “You bastard! You tried to kill me!”

  Randall looked at her with his mouth open. “What in the hell are you talking about? I would never—”

  “I have the texts to prove it! You lured me to that pasture hoping the bull would make your job easier.”

  Randall gaped at her and then turned to look at Olivier and Maggie before turning back to Dee-Dee. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Olivier picked up the cell phone next to Dee-Dee’s bed. “Dee-Dee received a series of texts from you instructing her to meet you by way of the bull’s pasture.”

  “But that’s impossible.” Randall reached for the phone but Olivier pulled it back.

  “Sorry,” Olivier said. “The police said not to touch the phone until they arrived.”

  “The police?” Randall sputtered.

  “Yes, the police, you bastard,” Dee-Dee said. “I called them as soon as the doctor finished stitching up my leg. I’ll see your whole program in flames. You’ll be lucky to do the local weather at your affiliate PBS station when I’m done suing you.”

  “Why in the world would I try to…it doesn’t make sense!”

  Randall’s face registered a realization that apparently made the accusation make sense. “I didn’t send those texts,” he said weakly.

  “You think someone else used your phone to send them?” Maggie asked him.

  Randall rubbed his hand across his face and didn’t answer.

  “And here I had done such a magnificent job at the Amphitheater,” Dee-Dee said, her voice dissolving into tears. “I gave my best presentation ever.”

  Olivier patted her shoulder and spoke softly to her. “Perhaps that is why you were sent the texts. Because you were so good.”

  “Let’s don’t jump to any conclusions,” Randall said. “If the police really are coming—”

  “Oh, count on it. They are!”

  “Well, let’s have them sort it out then.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and began scrolling through his texts.

  “The texts are there, aren’t they?” Dee-Dee said, sniffing. She reached up and put a hand over Olivier’s where it rested on her shoulder.

  Randall let out a sigh. “I just don’t understand this.”

  Maggie turned to Olivier. “You think Desiree sent the texts from Randall’s phone?”

  “Who else?” Olivier said. “Randall doesn’t have any reason to hurt Dee-Dee. All he had to do was just not choose her.”

  “Exactly!” Randall said and then to Dee-Dee, “Not that I was going to not choose you, darling. Your presentation at the Amphitheater was inspired. In fact, if not for…” He waved a hand to encompass Dee-Dee’s bandaged leg, prompting a howl of anguish from Dee-Dee that made both Randall and Maggie
take a startled step backward.

  “So she wins! The bitch wins!” Dee-Dee cried.

  “Non, Dee-Dee,” Olivier said, patting her again and looking fiercely at Randall. “The police will have something to say about that.”

  *****

  An hour later, Maggie and Olivier sat in the waiting room while Dee-Dee’s drugs kicked in and the police questioned Randall in a separate room. Maggie tried to think if the attack on Dee-Dee could have anything to do with Lanie’s murder. So far it just looked like professional jealousy…taken to a psychotic extent.

  “If Desiree did this,” she asked, “will the police be able to tell?”

  Olivier shrugged. “Probably not unless she confesses.”

  “That’s not likely, is it?”

  Olivier ran a hand over his face. It occurred to Maggie that between helping Janet home from dinner when she’d overindulged and assuaging Dee-Dee’s nearly constant hysteria, Olivier had stepped in to being the caretaker of the group. Had he always had that role, even when Lanie was alive?

  “Perhaps when she sees her lover shackled and dragged off to prison,” he said, “she will step forward.”

  “Sounds a little too human for Desiree. On the other hand, if Randall is indicted for this, can Desiree hope to win the co-anchor spot? She’ll have blown the whole point of the attack.”

  “I don’t think she thought this out very well,” Olivier said.

  “Plus, if Randall’s found guilty, can you imagine the social media bloodbath? It’ll be the death of his show, just like Dee-Dee said. ‘Popular travel guru found guilty of attack with a deadly bull.’”

  Olivier stood up. “I need coffee. Can I bring you one?”

  Maggie shook her head and pulled out her phone. “No, thanks,” she said as he turned and left the waiting room. She couldn’t believe she still hadn’t heard back from Laurent. He wasn’t normally good at communicating by text message, but he usually got back to her in some way.

  Did his mysterious phone call yesterday have something to do with the problem with the vineyard?