Murder in Nice

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  Maggie slammed the door shut, knowing she only had seconds before Haley would be up and wrenching at the doorknob. Even if Maggie had two working arms, Haley—a tennis player—was much stronger. Maggie grabbed the latch, her fingers slick with sweat and her injured wrist screaming in pain. She slid the latch shut just as she felt the door jar under her hands.

  “You bitch! Open this door! I’ll kill you, Maggie! Open it!”

  Maggie backed away, watching the door vibrate and jump with every blow from inside, then turned and ran up the stairs. She fell once on the smooth, slippery stairs and instinctively put out her injured hand to catch her fall. The pain shot up her arm and she cried out, then jerked the sling off and threw it down. The screaming and pounding on the door behind her was growing louder.

  Dear God, don’t let her have hurt him. Please God, kill me now but please don’t let her have hurt him.

  The door to Jemmy’s bedroom was shut but not locked and Maggie flung it open and ran inside. It was dark, but moonlight peeked in through his curtains providing a shaft of light that dimly lit the room. Downstairs, she heard the distinct sounds of wood splintering as Haley battered at the door with her shoulder or whatever she was finding in the basement.

  Maggie ran to Jemmy’s crib, fighting to keep her sobs of terror from overtaking her, trying to think of where she would go, how she would get him and Zouzou out and away. She jerked back the covers.

  The crib was empty.

  Twenty-two

  Maggie flung the covers out of the crib, her mind was racing, refusing to accept what her eyes were seeing.

  The baby monitor was off to hide the fact that there was no baby upstairs. She looked around the room in building hysteria, knowing he wasn’t there.

  This can’t be happening. He has to be here. He has to be.

  A half empty bottle of Maggie’s allergy medicine, diphenhydramine, sat on the nightstand. Her skin crawled as she turned and ran out the door and down the hall toward Zouzou’s room. As she ran, she realized she wasn’t hearing any noises from downstairs.

  Maggie tore open the bedroom door and froze.

  Haley straightened up over the small bed with Zouzou in her arms…and an eight-inch chef’s knife pressed to the baby’s neck.

  Maggie’s heart pounded. Zouzou was still half-asleep, providing no resistance, thank God. Maggie scanned the room in case…

  “He’s not here,” Haley said calmly.

  “Where is he? What have you done with him?” Maggie’s voice sounded strong and menacing. Not at all how she felt.

  “Let’s just say he’s safe…for now.”

  “What did you do with him?” Maggie took a step toward her and Haley pressed the knife against Zouzou, pinching the child until she whimpered and tried to shake her head and move away from the knife.

  “You don’t need to know that,” Haley said, shifting the weight of the child in her arms, but keeping the knife to the child’s throat. “All you need to know is that he’ll die if I don’t get back to him soon.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “You really don’t know? God, I knew you were clueless in high school.”

  “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Haley—”

  “I’m righting a few wrongs here, Maggie, okay? A few life wrongs. A few universe wrongs. You think you can break the law and then enjoy a charmed life after that? Is that fair?”

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “Your husband. He’s a felon and thanks to me, he’s going to jail. And you? God, where do I start? You don’t deserve Jemmy. Until your little performance today I was half convinced you’d let me just take him, but okay, so you want the world to think you’re a loving mother. Whatever. It won’t do you any good. You know that, right?”

  “I know you’re going to let Ben go to prison for what you did.”

  Haley made a snorting sound of derision. “Ben is going to prison one way or the other.”

  “Is this payback for how he’s hurt you?”

  Haley grinned. “I love that. Everyone thinks he hits me. That’s hysterical.”

  “You…your black eye when you came last week…”

  “I got that wrestling with Lanie before I bashed her brains in. Ben’s never raised a hand to me. God, you don’t know him at all do you?”

  Maggie’s mind raced, but all she could see in her mind’s eye was Jemmy sleeping…somewhere in the dark.

  “Why did he confess?”

  “I don’t know. He loves me? Go into the hallway, Maggie. I’d like to get this over with. As I said, Jemmy doesn’t have unlimited time where he is and I need to get to him soon.”

  “Please, Haley. For the love of God, you acted like you cared for him. I’m begging you—”

  “I do care for him,” Haley said fiercely. Zouzou, now fully awake, squealed in Haley’s arms. The knife had made a bloody line on the baby’s throat. “More than you do. I’m ten times the mother you are. In fact, if you really want to help him, you’ll do what’s necessary to keep him alive.”

  “Anything. Tell me.” Maggie watched Zouzou arch her back; her whines were full-blown cries now.

  Haley pointed to the top of the stairs. “Stand over there. And do not think about charging me. I will kill Zouzou and you’ll never, and I mean never, find Jemmy and then he’ll die too. Is that what you want?”

  Maggie backed away, her hands up, and walked slowly to the top of the stairs. The bottle of diphenhydramine had to mean Haley drugged Jem to keep him quiet. Calling for him would be futile.

  “You’re not afraid Zouzou will tell everyone you cut her with a knife?”

  “Nobody believes children. I’ll say she was upset and got it all wrong. Stop right there,” Haley said as Maggie went to the top of the stairs. “Okay, so here’s how this next part goes. I can personally name three people who will swear that you habitually leave laundry baskets at the top of the stairs just waiting to be tripped over. Believe me, it will not be a surprise to anyone who knows you.”

  “You’re going to push me down the stairs?”

  “I’m hoping I won’t have to touch you. See, there’s only one way for you to save Jemmy and that’s by killing yourself, Maggie. You should be glad you have such a wonderful way to prove how much you love him.”

  Maggie could hardly hear Haley over Zouzou’s screams. She watched the child wriggle to get away from the knife but Haley held her firmly, her eyes glued to Maggie’s face.

  “You’ll have the accident that nobody will be surprised happened, and with Laurent in prison, I’ll end up with Jemmy.” She laughed. “Think of it; I’ll have everything you have. And believe me, I’ll do a better job with it than you ever could.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t want to steal my husband. You’re going after everything else I have.”

  “The last thing I want is another husband. I’ll settle for your house, your life, your child and your best friend—oh yeah, and your parents. With you, Ben and Elise gone, I’m looking pretty good. A far cry from where we were in high school, huh, when you weren’t interested in being pals.”

  “What are you talking about? You were popular.”

  “I was lonely. Turn around. I hear forensics these days are pretty good about being able to tell which way you were facing when you fell, even in a backwater like France I imagine. I don’t want them saying you were pushed.”

  Maggie turned to face the foyer, her arms by her side. The stairs were slick and steep. She stared down them, her mind whirling in frantic circles. An unbidden flash of memory came to her of Ben, her and Elise sitting at the top of the stairs on Christmas morning. She could hear her brother and sister whispering and laughing. She could smell the pine needles of the Christmas tree in the living room below.

  “Oh,” Haley said, “I forgot the clothes basket. It’s right there off to your right, but I need your fingerprints on it, Maggie, especially since I haven’t seen you touch the basket in a few days. So if you w
ould kindly do the honors.”

  Maggie turned to see the laundry basket a couple feet from her. “You want me to…”

  “You know what I want you to do,” Haley said, impatiently. “May I remind you it is not very comfortable where Jemmy is and the longer you wait—stop it!” Haley shook Zouzou, who was in the process of throwing a full-blown tantrum, the knife slipping out of position for the few seconds Haley needed to reposition the squirming child.

  A few seconds were all Maggie needed.

  She hurled herself at Haley, grabbing for the knife and pushing Zouzou away at the same time. The child shrieked and fell from Haley’s grasp but Maggie didn’t have time to see if she was hurt.

  “Cut me,” Maggie panted as she grappled with Haley’s knife hand, “and nobody will believe it was an accident. Bitch.”

  Maggie fought to push past the pain of her injured wrist. An image of Jemmy crying, afraid, came roaring into her head and the outrage it triggered blazed through Maggie like wildfire. How dare you hurt my child!

  She gave one last surge of strength and wrenched the knife out of Haley’s hands. Haley stared at her empty hand and then at Maggie with astonishment.

  “Where is he?” Maggie screamed, holding the knife as if ready to bring it down on Haley.

  “Go ahead and kill me!” Haley yelled, her face twisted into a visage of pain and grief. “He’ll die without me!” Haley turned and bolted for the stairs.

  “Don’t you do it!” Maggie yelled, grabbing Haley’s arm. But Maggie’s uninjured hand was holding the knife, and Haley easily twisted free.

  The front door flung open, crashing with a loud bang against the foyer wall. Laurent filled the doorway and Maggie watched him look toward the living room before seeing movement at the top of the stairs.

  He charged for the stairs just as Haley launched into the air. Maggie watched in horror as she plummeted, arms windmilling desperately as if she’d changed her mind, as if to stop her terrible plunge. She fell in slow motion, graceful and macabre, her scream aborted harshly when she hit the ancient tiles of the lower steps with a sickening thud that reverberated through the bare halls of the house.

  “Haley, no!” Ben screamed, pushing past Laurent. Haley lay halfway down, her legs twisted behind her on the higher steps.

  Laurent looked up at Maggie on the upper landing and she saw his face flush with relief. Ben pulled Haley’s broken body into his arms, making soft, guttural noises. Sounds Maggie never heard her brother make before.

  “Laurent,” Maggie said urgently, “she’s taken Jemmy and put him somewhere.” She knelt next to Zouzou, who was curled up on the floor, her thumb in her mouth but finally silent.

  “Call an ambulance!” Ben screamed at them. “For the love of God.”

  Laurent bounded up the steps, touching Maggie on the shoulder to confirm she was all in one piece and then scooped up Zouzou. Maggie watched the child wrap her arms around his neck and bury her face in his chest. He looked at Maggie. She had never seen such fear in his eyes before, and for a moment it robbed her of her strength before she felt the beginnings of an unholy fury descend upon her.

  “She said it’s some place where he can’t stay for long,” Maggie said as she hurried down the steps and crouched near Ben. She ignored her brother’s anguished face and focused on Haley. Ben had pulled her around so that her head and shoulders rested against his chest, but the blood where she had lain was pooled and thick. Maggie saw that Haley was unconscious.

  Just as well. She wouldn’t tell me anyway.

  Maggie picked up Haley’s hands. They were bloody from the wine bottle shard she’d held in the kitchen, and from Zouzou’s scratches. She looked at Haley’s fingernails. Polished, with bits of skin under them.

  Likely mine, Maggie thought, standing and looking at the body, forcing herself to take her time, not to rush, to think. She was aware of Laurent behind her on the stairs. He was breathing hard, his body radiating an energy that seemed to vibrate in the air around him but she couldn’t look at him. She needed to focus on what Haley could tell her.

  She knelt down again and touched Haley’s knee. A bloody, white bone pierced free of the linen slacks she wore.

  “Leave her alone! Don’t touch her!” Ben snarled, trying to push Maggie away. “Somebody call an ambulance!”

  “I was asleep for two hours,” Maggie said. “And when I awoke, Haley was heating up dinner in the kitchen.” She reran the scene in her mind, trying to block out Ben’s words, Zouzou’s renewed whimpering, and the ever-present temptation to break down at the thought of never seeing her child again.

  Maggie fast-forwarded to the moment when she knew Haley was Lanie’s killer. She saw the broken bits of green wine bottle and the wet mess surrounding it on the kitchen floor. Not just purple as it should have been in Laurent’s spotless kitchen, but dark brown. Among the spilled wine were bits of mud. Maggie grabbed one of Haley’s feet, ignoring Ben’s protests.

  The tread of the shoe had a thin layer of mud on it.

  “She took him outside,” Maggie said, standing up. “She drugged him so he wouldn’t cry, and took him outside.”

  “The well,” Laurent said, turning and rocketing out of the room through the French doors. Maggie ran behind him, stopping only long enough to snatch up the flashlight they kept by the door for when she let Petit Four out.

  As soon as she ran through the door, Maggie saw it was raining. Hard. She directed the beam of light in front of Laurent. He still carried Zouzou in his arms, his long legs pulling farther and farther ahead of her.

  Maggie saw the well come into view at the edge of the vineyard, a ghostly dark stump in the gloom of night.

  How long ago had she put him there? Three hours ago? The well would fill up after every rainfall. Did Haley know that? Is that why she said he only had a short time until he died?

  Laurent was at the well now. She watched him set Zouzou on the ground and begin to pry the boards off the top. She ran to him, breathless and drenched from the rain.

  “Jemmy! Jemmy!” she screamed as she picked up Zouzou, the child shivering in the rain even though the night was warm.

  She stepped back as Laurent threw boards behind him until he had a big enough hole to peer into.

  “Jean-Michael!” he called, his voice frantic with fear.

  Maggie pulled him away from the hatch and shoved Zouzou into his arms. “I can fit through the opening,” she said, shining the flashlight down into the dark well. The bottom wasn’t visible but she could hear water falling on water. It was filling up. She handed Laurent the flashlight and he boosted her to the lip of the well. His hand squeezed her upper arm, as if he might change his mind and pull her back, but she didn’t wait. She stuck her feet against the slick sides of the aged cistern, her hands resting on the rim, and shot down, her feet and hands sliding down the sides.

  “Light, Laurent!” she called, but the interior was illuminated before she finished speaking.

  Would that madwoman really have put a baby in here? She fell the final ten feet to the bottom, her hands serving only to check her descent. When her feet touched the floor, the water was up to her knees. An icy fear raced up her spine. If he was in the well…. She forced herself not to finish the thought, instead dropping to her knees to feel the rough floor of the well with shaking hands.

  “He’s not here!” she yelled up to Laurent. The rain sluiced down her face, plastering her hair to her head and neck. She bowed her head and screamed a long howl of despair and frustration.

  The long minutes ticked by as she waited for Laurent to come back with a rope. She closed her eyes to the dark and the cold—it was freezing fifteen feet into the ground—and prayed.

  When Laurent finally returned and threw the rope down to her, she secured it around her waist and let him haul her up, using her feet along the sides of the wall to try to walk her way up. Once out, she lay panting at the foot of the well while he wrapped a towel around her shoulders.

  As soon as he t
ouched her, she began to cry, her strength seeping out of her. Her shoulders shook convulsively with her sobs as he gathered her into his arms and held her tightly. She knew he wanted to go, to look, to do anything but sit here when Jem was in danger somewhere. She forced herself to push Laurent away.

  Plenty of time later to grieve if it comes to that, she thought bitterly.

  “We are not finished yet,” he said in her ear as he helped her to her feet.

  “Oncle Laurent,” Zouzou whimpered, wrapping her arms around his leg. “Zouzou’s cold. I don’t like this game.”

  Laurent lifted her up and spoke to her in French, all the while his eyes searching the vineyard, the gardens, even the roof of the house.

  Jemmy could be anywhere.

  “Aunt Haley said we can’t play the game in the rain,” Zouzou sniffled. “And I’m hungry. I want my cocoa.”

  “What game?” Maggie said, snapping her head in Zouzou’s direction. “What game of Aunt Haley’s?”

  “She only does it with Jemmy,” Zouzou said. “She says I’m too big.”

  “Where, mon chou?” Laurent asked her. “Where do they play the game?”

  “Tu sait,” Zouzou said. “In the swing in the orchard. The bough? I know the song real good but she says I’m too big.”

  “Bring her!” Maggie called over her shoulder as she dropped the towel and sprinted for the orchard. Laurent had built a swing for Zouzou there, but just possibly…

  The orchard looked eerie and unwelcoming in the dark and the rain. Maggie never came here. The apples were sour and the trees themselves only good for making fragrant kindling in the fireplace on winter evenings. She knew where Laurent had hung the swing. It was the prettiest part of the orchard, affording a view back down the hill of the house and the first quadrant of the vineyard. Maggie found the swing and stopped. She turned back to Laurent and Zouzou.

  “Where do they play the game, Zouzou?”

  The little girl pointed past Maggie to a pair of apple trees, off the path and far back from where anyone might take a pleasant after-dinner stroll. Maggie ran to the trees and flashed her light at them. The rain was coming down harder now and it served as a greater impasse to clear vision than even the night did. She saw nothing.