Murder in Nice

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  Laurent shrugged. “I believe he’s found other living arrangements.”

  Grace stood in front of Laurent. “I’m not sure how familiar you are with the direct approach.”

  A corner of his mouth twitched in a near-smile. “I am married to Maggie, no?”

  “Good point. So, what’s going on, Laurent? What’s going on with Ben and what’s going on with the vineyard? Spill, darling. I’m not leaving until you do.”

  “And if your taxi comes?”

  “It will wait. What. Is. Going. On?”

  Laurent sighed. “I may be making a change of plans.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Where is the young man? Asleep, yes?”

  “Jemmy? Yes, he’s been in bed for hours. Quit stalling.” Grace sat down in front of Laurent and crossed her arms to appear resolute.

  “I have thrown Maggie’s brother out.”

  “Bravo. About time. Next?”

  “It’s possible I broke his nose in the process.”

  Grace clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle the involuntary and very unladylike guffaw that threatened to erupt. “Oh, dear lord. Well done, darling Laurent. But what do you mean ‘change of plans?’”

  Laurent didn’t answer immediately, looking around the room as if trying to memorize certain furnishings. Grace had the sickening, unmistakable feeling that he was saying goodbye.

  “You’re scaring me, Laurent,” she said softly.

  “I believe I am in the process of securing Maggie and Jemmy’s future,” he said. “I feel confident that I am, but tonight a few obstacles were introduced.”

  “Obstacles how?”

  “Maggie’s brother works for the corporation that has bought out the village co-op.” When Grace looked confused, he said, “Not just our co-op. They have contracted controlling operational shares in co-ops all over France and Spain and Italy.”

  “Okay.” Grace adopted her best I’m listening and trying to be patient face.

  “Jean-Luc and I are the only ones in St-Buvard who did not sell the rights to our wine production. Jean-Luc, because I asked him not to.”

  “What do you mean, sell the rights?”

  “The right to work it as my own vineyard.”

  “So if you contract with them you’d still produce wine but the corporation would be in control?”

  “Oui,” Laurent said. “There would be no Domaine St-Buvard label. I would have no control over how the wine was produced or marketed.” He stood and walked to the French doors. “Like the others, I was offered a long-term contract with the American conglomerate to lease out pieces of my vineyard to negociants.”

  “That sounds horrible. Can you just not sign?”

  “Yes, but I do not own the machinery necessary to crush and process my own grapes. That was the co-op’s. Without them…” He lifted his shoulders in a heavy Gallic shrug and then turned back to Grace. “Just this week I found an investor who would work with me and Jean-Luc and a few others to form our own crush operation. It would be hard work, to be sure, and the money…well, we would be poor for a very long time. But I would own my own wine.”

  “I know there’s more to this story,” Grace said, “because you still don’t look happy.”

  “Maggie’s brother is in trouble back in America. His company is pressuring him to have me sign the contract.”

  “And so I guess he’s pressuring you, right?”

  Laurent laughed hollowly. “You could say that.”

  Grace sat quietly and watched Laurent as he reached for a cigarette. She knew he rarely smoked, and never in the house. She waited until he’d expelled the first long draught of smoke.

  “I thought you were having an affair,” she said.

  Laurent snorted. “And I thought I was hallucinating the day I saw you riding a bicycle in the village.”

  “You saw me? Why didn’t you say something?”

  He shrugged. “You were so happy to be on your secret spy mission. I had no heart to spoil your fun.”

  “The woman was one of your investors, I guess?”

  “Oui.”

  “I’m sorry, Laurent. I’m an idiot. I guess I see cheating spouses everywhere these days.”

  “Windsor did not cheat. You left him.”

  “I know.” Grace let the words echo quietly in the air between them. She saw Laurent retreat to his own thoughts again. “Is the thing Ben is trying to pressure you with…your past?” His eyes glittered in the near dark as he glanced at her. She was almost sure she registered a benign amusement in them.

  “Oui,” he said dryly.

  “Does he have anything?” she asked quietly.

  “I don’t know. Peut-être.”

  “Oh, Laurent. Sign the contract. That bastard! I hope you did break his nose. Do you think he’ll really try to use what he has against you? He wouldn’t dare. Maggie would never speak to him again.”

  “She doesn’t really speak to him now.”

  “His parents will disown him if he does this.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Laurent said, rubbing a hand through his hair. “He says he is attempting to avoid prison himself.”

  Hearing Laurent use the word prison so casually made Grace’s fingertips tingle unpleasantly. Would Laurent really go to prison? Dear God! Maggie would come unglued.

  “What did Ben do to have a possible prison sentence hanging over his head?”

  “I do not know the details.”

  “Laurent, sign the damn contract.”

  He didn’t answer, just brought the cigarette to his lips and stared out the door at his vineyard.

  “Screw the vineyard, Laurent,” Grace said heatedly. “Maggie doesn’t care about that if it means she loses you.”

  “I care that the vineyard is safe for Jean-Michael,” Laurent said, using Jemmy’s full name. “I will not bequeath to him a gîte…a bed and breakfast, when I die.”

  “I’m probably the last person to give advice on happy, non-dysfunctional families,” Grace said, standing and grabbing Laurent by the arm to get his attention, “but I’m almost positive Jemmy would rather have his papa with him now than a profitable vineyard when he’s fifty.”

  Laurent grunted but didn’t answer. The tip of his cigarette glowed in the gloom of the room. Just when Grace thought he was about to say something, she heard the muffled sound of her taxi’s horn outside in the drive.

  “Time to go,” Laurent said, opening the French doors and flicking his cigarette onto the terrace. “I’ll get your bag.”

  *****

  The darkness was the worst.

  Almost.

  Maggie forced herself not to move. The pain vibrated down her arm and her first instinct was to try to shift position to relieve it. She took in a long breath, her eyes closed, and carefully, slowly, moved her left leg and then her right. Thank God she didn’t seem to have broken anything. She opened her eyes, but she may as well not have bothered. There was no moonlit window down here. There was no flashlight, feeble beam or not.

  Her breath came to her ears in jagged rasps and Maggie fought to accept the fact she could not orient herself by sight. The terror was like another person in the room: malevolent, focused, and always there.

  Very slowly, Maggie tried to sit up and then gasped as pain shot through her left hand like a careening thunderbolt. She stopped moving and gingerly touched her left wrist with her hand. It was already swelling up.

  A wave of hopelessness crashed down on her shoulders. How far had she fallen? Where was she now? A horrible thought that she was in the crypt slithered quick as a snake into her head. Olivier had said it was beneath the cloister. She began to shake, the cold bone-deep now as if she’d walked into a freezer. She shook harder, involuntarily, and at first it helped so she gave herself over to it. But within seconds it started to feel more like convulsions and she tried to resist the sensation, her teeth chattering loudly in her ears.

  Is this retribution? Is God punishing me for trying to
escape from my own child?

  Her wrist was throbbing now. She was sure she’d broken it. Sitting up among a pile of boards and rock that had fallen from the floor above, she used her other hand to feel behind her. Was she anywhere near a wall? Was she sitting in the middle of a room?

  When the tears came, she was almost grateful for their warmth against her cheeks. Reaching out a little bit further, she touched what felt like the base of a cement statue or obelisk.

  Or sarcophagus.

  She snatched her hand away and held it with her injured wrist to her breast. She bent her head. Dear Lord, if I ever get out of here I promise things will be different. I swear they will. An image came to her of Laurent’s face asking about the cut on her forehead: a picture of him smiling tolerantly—knowingly?—at her while she told the truth, but not the whole truth. And how many times had she done that—lied by omission but refused to call it that?

  She had gotten so use to believing that Laurent had secrets and that he would lie to her that, until this moment, it hadn’t dawned on her that she lied to him too.

  What is the matter with me? I’m telling lies to the person I love most in the world. I’m sitting in a medieval crypt with a broken wrist preparing to freeze to death and everything I’ve done, every action I’ve taken, every effort I’ve made, has pushed me inevitably to this moment.

  I made this happen. I made every bit of this happen.

  When the tears came, Maggie knew they weren’t totally for herself. They were also for the two people in her life, her husband and child, who had the serious misfortune to care for her when she didn’t have the sense not to throw her life the hell away—and for what?

  For Annie?

  Isn’t that why I lied to Laurent? Because that’s not believable even to me, and it certainly wouldn’t pass his bullshit detector. It wasn’t for Annie she realized as she leaned back against the cement block. It was for me, because of what a crap job I felt I was doing at home.

  I swear, God, I swear to you with my life if you give me a chance for a redo, I’ll never again create an excuse to keep me from the people I love. I’ll stand firm to try to be the person they think I am. I’ll try to be deserving of their love.

  She bowed her head and wept beyond care or hope of relief, her sobs echoing softly in the dungeon until it sounded as if a chorus of mourners, as if the dead themselves, had awakened to join in her grief.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there. She must have fallen asleep, which was a surprise in itself, but when she awoke, Maggie felt a little better, a little stronger. She touched her wrist and found it was hot and tender and extremely puffy. She stretched out her legs, groaning as she did since she was still sitting on boards and rocks that had fallen with her. Although she couldn’t see for sure, she thought she felt a long gash in her calf through her jeans. The blood felt sticky inside her pant leg.

  She pulled her legs back up under her and gripped her left arm tightly to her chest, hoping to stabilize the wrist enough to assuage the constant pain radiating down her arm. When she did, she realized she’d had a dream. Whether she’d been out for fifteen minutes or an hour—and she didn’t think it was much longer than an hour—she had experienced a full-blown dream that had taken her a long way away from this cold, evil place. She’d dreamt it was Christmas morning and she was sitting at the top of the stairs in her pajamas with her brother and her sister. In the dream, she remembered the joy and anticipation she’d felt, and the camaraderie with her two older siblings. She could even smell the cinnamon and pine in the air. Somehow there was bacon, too. Her mother must have already been downstairs getting a jump on Christmas breakfast.

  She blinked back tears, thinking of Elise gone and dead now these last five years. Murdered by someone who was insane enough to think she was really killing Maggie. Although for all intents and purposes, poor Elise and her addictions had died many years before.

  But it was the memory of Ben that was the sharpest. Maggie remembered how as children he was always in charge. As the eldest and the only son, that was hardly surprising. And Maggie had worshipped him. She’d forgotten that. In many ways, Ben was her first crush.

  Whoever that boy was all those years ago, he had morphed into someone Maggie had never gotten to know. And the man he became—as foreign as a changeling left by the fairies—was not just someone who didn’t share her interests or tax bracket. Maggie, and her parents, too, had refused to see it for way too long now.

  I don’t know what Olivier’s role is in all this, she thought, her shivering faltering and giving away to a static apathy as her core body temperature continued to drop, but it wasn’t his baby.

  Haven’t I always known in my gut that it was Ben’s?

  Ben lied about being with Lanie. Not just on the tour, but knowing her in high school, too. Why would he do that unless he was hiding a bigger, more horrific secret? And Ben was the only one besides Olivier without an alibi. Haley said she’d taken a pill and gone to bed early that night with a headache.

  If the baby was Ben’s, Maggie realized, it was the final, damning piece of evidence that finally triggered the up-to-now missing motive. In her heart, she’d always believed the identity of the murderer hinged on the paternity of Lanie’s unborn baby.

  Ben’s baby.

  It was all so clear now. As if pain and fear had sharpened her vision, and the panoply of images showed Ben’s true colors in living, breathing high-definition.

  If Lanie threatened to go public with the pregnancy, it wasn’t just Ben’s marriage on the line. It was Ben’s whole way of life in Atlanta—his country club, his parish, his circle of friends, his job.

  All the pieces finally came together and the picture was ruthlessly clear: Lanie was pregnant with Ben’s child. Lanie was a blackmailer. And Ben is a ruthless bastard. For anyone with eyes to see, there was no other way around it.

  Ben was Lanie’s murderer.

  Nineteen

  In the dream, she was still cold, which was annoying. Strangely, Ben was there, too, all in black, the features of his face hard to distinguish from the ghouls and trolls carved in the stone columns that lined the main hall.

  Was she dreaming? Maggie shook her head and felt the sharp pinch of a rock pressing into her thigh.

  “I thought the guy said you’d freeze to death down here if you hung around.”

  Maggie watched the dark form that may or may not be Ben move around the room.

  “Ben?” The sound of her voice, ragged and hoarse, was terrifying. It was not her voice. It was not any Earthly sound.

  “Since you know you’re going to die if you just lay there,” the voice said, “why are you just laying there?” A peevish matter-of-factness entered his voice.

  Were spirits supposed to be sarcastic?

  “I’m cold…and I’m tired,” she whimpered.

  “You were always whiny, even as a kid.”

  Maggie hauled herself to a crouching position, ignoring the broken board she’d been sitting on. She pulled a rock out from under her.

  “Are you dead?” she asked. “Am I dead?”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Maggot,” the voice said. “Someone’s waiting for you. So please move your ass.”

  Maggie shook her head and the sensation of dizziness made her reach out for support. Her hand struck the rough wall in front of her. It was wet.

  Someone’s waiting for you.

  A tremor of dread laced through her chest.

  Jemmy. I can’t not come back to Jemmy.

  She tucked her injured hand, throbbing with pain, to her chest and turned her head to stare into the darkness but the form was gone.

  “Ben?”

  Her voice lilted in the room until its echo faded softly away.

  I’m not cold any more, she realized suddenly. That’s probably not a good thing.

  She bent her head and closed her eyes. She couldn’t see anything anyway. What was it she was hearing? She blocked out all thoughts, pushing the pain in her wrist t
o the back recesses of her mind, and concentrated on listening.

  It was the sound of water, either moving or lapping or dripping. She felt a sudden, irresistible compulsion.

  Go to the water.

  She sat perfectly still, one hand on the wall. Her legs wouldn’t obey her. The thought of rising from her knees seemed insurmountably impossible. She was so tired. She was cemented to the floor.

  Maggot. The voice had called her by Ben’s pet name for her as a child. She opened her eyes.

  Someone’s waiting for you.

  She brought Jemmy’s face to mind, and when she did he was laughing. He was always laughing. He was the picture of Laurent as a baby, she knew, with his thick brown hair tousled around his cherubic face, his deep set brown eyes squeezed into merriment. That is, if Laurent had been loved as a child. If Laurent’s mother had cuddled him and kissed him and read to him at night.

  Maggie groaned loudly as she clawed her way from her knees to her feet, leaning heavily against the wall, feeling the slime of whatever coated it against her hand and face. She had been so focused on the wall that when she turned from it, she was surprised to see she was no longer in total darkness. Her eyes adjusted and the terror of seeing her surroundings was replaced with a thought that bulldozed all other fears.

  I need to get back to my baby.

  She could see now that the walls were not smooth stone but stacked, both on the floor and the sides. She looked up to try to see the hole she’d made when she’d fallen but the ceiling dissolved into blackness and there was only a hint of moonlight from the upstairs room.

  She heard a light rustling sound and her stomach twisted. Of course there were probably snakes and spiders down here, she thought, fighting down a building panic. But if that was the case, then there was a way out and in, too. She turned her head to where she thought she heard the sound and, fighting every natural instinct she had, went toward it.

  At first she slid along the wall using it for support, but within a few steps she realized she was steady—and that she needed to hurry. With her good hand on the wall, she moved into the darkness until it opened up and let her see the next few steps in front of her. She saw she was in a passageway, not a room. Narrow and curving, and leading somewhere. She inched through the hall, stopping twice to rest but too afraid to sit down again for fear she’d never get back up.