Little Death by the Sea Read online

  Little Death by the Sea

  Title Page

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  PART II

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter 14

  Part III

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  LITTLE DEATH BY THE SEA

  Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  Copyright 2011 by San Marco Press. All rights reserved.

  Published by San Marco Press at Smashwords

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  PART I

  A Sea-Change

  Chapter 1

  1

  Maggie nodded at the waiter and touched the rim of her bottle of Coca. She turned to stare out at the Mediterranean, her head pounding, her stomach lurching with worry and anticipation. If he didn’t come, she wasn’t sure what to do next, whom to contact or, God knows, how to. Her French was pathetic and she was aware of a certain amount of impatience from most of the people she’d tried to communicate with thus far: the concierge, the chambermaid (who’d brought a portable television set to her room instead of the extra bath towels she’d hoped she’d asked for), the waiter. And this was Cannes, for heaven’s sake. What happened when she was forced into the villages among people who were less accustomed to foreigners and their bad French? Her eye caught the waiter’s again and she smiled. Promptly, he turned his back to take another’s order. With a groan, her smile dissolved.

  She wore a pair of black linen slacks with a gray silk shell top. Her dark hair cascaded down her back in a straight curtain. She had an almost elfin face, heart-shaped and perfect. Her mouth was small but sensuous and her large, green eyes missed very little. She had an unconscious beauty. It was the first thing people saw when they met her, but not the first thing they thought of when they described her. Her dramatic, dark looks were punctuated by the intelligent brow, the intense eyes. Yet her manner was relaxed and secure: the product of a happy childhood, and a privileged one.

  From her seat in the Carlton Hotel patio, she could see the Promenade de la Croisette, its grand Royal palms lining the broad boulevard like Titans shading the procession of a monarch. The air smelled rich and sweet, yet light too. If her current situation and reason for being there had been different, Maggie knew the afternoon would’ve been magical. As it was, she felt woozy, like she’d been catapulted into a guest-starring role in somebody else’s dream.

  “Have you been waiting long?” He appeared from behind her and was suddenly seated next to her, breathless yet cool in all this heat. The accent was English, crisp, and Oxbridge.

  “Snarl-up in Nice, sorry,” he said brightly. “You’re Miss Newberry, right?”

  Maggie nodded, a prick of relief coloring her face.

  He was tall, he was dark, he was an absolute stranger to her. He was going to help her find her sister’s missing child.

  “I thought so. Easy to spot from your father’s description,” he said pleasantly.

  “I’m so glad to meet you. I wasn’t sure...is...is your French any good?” she asked, still clutching her empty soft drink bottle.

  “Is anybody’s? I mean, unless one’s born here?”

  He half-stood in order to flag down the waiter.

  “Hey, you! Ass-hole!”

  Maggie swallowed an ice cube and began choking. The waiter quietly retreated into the café. The man sat back down and gave Maggie a perfunctory clap on the back.

  “Want to go someplace else?” he asked. “The Carlton seems a little crowded today.”

  Maggie coughed painfully. “You are Mr. Bentley, aren’t you? I don’t even know that and I’ve traveled all this way and I...”

  “Yes, yes, Roger Bentley, sorry. Look, old girl, I really can help, you know.”

  Maggie nodded, suddenly miserable and unsure.

  “Let’s just go,” she said, groping for her purse.

  2 “How did you know my sister?”

  She hunched toward him across the little café table situated in front of the Splendide Hotel. She could smell orange blossoms as she watched the Mediterranean Sea stretched out dramatically before them.

  “I didn’t, in fact. Isn’t this a much better place? I should’ve suggested it in the beginning.”

  “You didn’t know my sister?”

  Maggie watched the man closely. His manner seemed careless to her, condescending. She found herself wanting very much to trust him, to believe him. Perhaps even in spite of the facts. He was, after all, all she had.

  “Not really. Met her once or twice. See? It’s got a view every bit as nice as the Carlton’s.” He waved a hand at the vista from their table. Snowy whitecaps peaked periodically on the azure sea as they watched. “Even better if you take into consideration—“

  “What do you mean, you didn’t know my sister?”

  “Well, I didn’t know her, did I? Doesn’t mean I can’t help.”

  “How can you help? You haven’t even met the child’s mother. The girl was taken while she was with Elise. You said you knew about it. You knew who took her. You...”

  “I do know. Look, I’m sorry if you thought I could give you some information on your sister, I just didn’t know her.” He took a short sip from his tea cup. “Oh, enough to say hello, or something, in the street, but even then—“

  “How do you think you can help me? I flew here from Atlanta, you know, this morning, because you led my parents to believe that you knew what had happened and could help me find my niece. I’m not in the habit of flying all the way to effin’ France on vague meanings. You said—“

  “I must say, I think it’s incredible how you Americans are always running on about what a big bloody event it is if you have to take a transatlantic flight for any reason. You’d think you were personally sailing across the ocean in the Santa Maria or something. Most civilized people of the world think nothing of jaunting off to Jo-berg or Auckland or some such place, would do it in a tick, but the Americans have to act like it’s this great bloody journey. Escapes me how the lot of you have come so far, I must say.”

  Bentley sugared his teacup heavily and picked up the pretty china teapot from the table. He posed it over Maggie’s cup first and looked at her inquiringly. She looked back at him, dumbfounded.

  “Look...” He poured her tea anyway and then his own. “I meant what I said. No, I didn’t know your sister. Yes, I think I can help you find the little girl. That’s what your father said on the phone you wanted. I mean, if you want information on your sister, I’m sure you can get that sort of thing from one of her boyfriends...I can get you some names, if you’d like.”

  Maggie pushed her teacup away and gripped the handle of her purse.

  “The point is, Mr. Bentley,” she said, “that I do not see how you think you can help me if you didn’t kn
ow my sister. What was the extent of your involvement in this? Getting the tag number of the car that snatched Nicole?”

  “No, Miss Newberry. Driving the car that snatched Nicole.”

  3

  Maggie turned slightly on the bed to catch her image in the hotel room mirror. She appeared fagged and withered in her blue cotton pantsuit—too hot and somehow contrived for the French seashore. Her hand looked frail in the reflection as it held the large white telephone receiver to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Mother? It’s me,” Maggie said, turning away from the mirror and speaking into the receiver.

  “Darling! Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, I think so. I met the guy Dad talked to and he’s very nice and I think he’s going to help us find Nicole.”

  “Maggie, are you sure he’s all right? This all seems so...”

  “No, really, Mother, I know he can help. He’s very nice. Not to worry, okay?”

  “Does he...did he know anything about Elise?”

  Maggie could hear the hope in her mother’s voice. “I...he said he doesn’t know her, Mom,” she said.

  “I see.”

  “But he thinks he knows where Nicole is,” she hurried on. “And he can help us get her.”

  Maggie thought back to the phone call her father had received from Roger Bentley just four days earlier. Roger had told him that he was in possession of information that could help them locate Elise’s missing daughter, Nicole.

  “Maggie, just promise you’re being careful?” her mother said into her ear.

  “Mother, please don’t worry. Everything is fine. This guy, Bentley, thinks I’ll have Nicole by tomorrow evening. I’m planning on being on the last flight out of Nice to Atlanta either tomorrow night or first thing the next morning. But, I’ll call you first, to confirm.”

  “With...the little girl.”

  “Yes, Mom, of course. With Nicole.”

  “Is...is the child’s father there?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t think so. I think Gerard left the area and left Nicole with some friends, or something. It’s all sort of hazy, that part. I drove by Elise’s old apartment, Mom. It was very pretty. It was sort of tucked away off this little cobblestone walkway and there were big pots of geraniums and things all over the place. You would’ve loved it. It was really sort of beautiful. I took a picture of it.”

  Maggie didn’t know why she was telling her mother this. Maybe she wanted to let her know that she had made contact with a part of Elise’s life that they’d always been denied before. Surely her mother had to be curious as to where her daughter had lived, the market Elise must have visited for her fresh vegetables and fruit, the little Catholic church at the end of the cobblestone cul-de-sac that she might even have visited from time to time.

  Maggie heard an unsteadiness in her mother’s voice and didn’t know whether to be glad for it or guilty for having caused it.

  “I’m glad, dear.”

  “I’m going to police headquarters tomorrow...to see...you know.. if they know anything more about Elise.”

  “Your father’s people are working on that from this end too. But, of course, anything you can find...well, that would be very good.”

  “I know, Mom, I know. I just wanted you to ....I just wish, in a way, that you could be here too. And you could see that it’s not a slum or anything...she really lived in a nice little apartment.” Maggie felt the limpness of her words.

  “Please be careful, darling.”

  “I will, Mom.” Maggie glanced into the mirror again. “Kiss Dad for me. And don’t worry, okay?”

  Maggie disconnected and held the phone to her ear for another moment. Then she dialed the hotel operator and asked for another transatlantic line.

  I wish I believed half of what I just told you, Mother, she thought. She rubbed her tired eyes and resisted the urge to look back into the mirror to confirm the haggish image, testimony to her tiresome journey.

  “Selby & Parker”.

  “Hi, Dierdre, it’s Maggie, is Gerry there?”

  “Hey, Maggie! How’s Paris?”

  “It’s Nice, not Paris.”

  “Yeah, wow. Here’s Gerry.”

  “Maggie! Is Nice nice?”

  “Hey, Ger, no, I’m pooped. I don’t relate well to last-minute jaunts across the Big Blue. But this guy says he can help me find my sister’s daughter. I think he can.”

  “I understand. Don’t worry about it. There’s nothing going on here.”

  “It’ll just be a few days. I’m planning on being back in Atlanta day after tomorrow—“

  “Will you stop it? There’s no push this week, okay? Take care of your business.”

  “Okay, thanks, Gerry.” She paused and looked into the mirror. “Wednesday, latest.”

  Maggie hung up the phone, stood, and straightened her rumpled jacket in the full-length mirror. She ran her hands through her dark hair and tried to fluff it into some semblance of a casual, tousled look. As a result, she looked like she’d been dragged down a staircase by her roots.

  Her eyes were a pale blue, set in a heart shaped face, lips full, the chin strong and resolute. It was a pretty face, Maggie knew, but not exceptionally so. Elise had been the great beauty of the family.

  At thirty-four, Maggie had never been married and was mildly embarrassed by the fact. She worked out three times a week at an all-women’s gym near her apartment in Atlanta, indulged in a facial at least once a month at Macy’s and had the dead ends trimmed off her razor straight, black hair every six weeks without fail. Now, sitting here in a foreign hotel waiting and wondering if she could really trust her new companion, Maggie found herself in a situation she couldn’t control by picking up the phone or rearranging her schedule. She felt out of kilter with her body, her diet, and in the simplest attempts to communicate the most basic requests.

  She looked at her image in the hotel room mirror and saw a fleeting hologram of her sister Elise’s face form and dissolve. Maggie fought the feeling of melancholia that accompanied it. She tucked her purse under her arm and hurried downstairs and out of the lobby of the Gray d’Albion Hotel.

  One of five seafood restaurants studding the Rue Felix-Faire, Petite Bouche was tiny, frill-less, staffed with the prerequisite surly waiters and absolutely crammed with Mediterranean charm. She and Roger had chosen the little café, because it was so close to Maggie’s hotel.

  He sat where she had left him thirty minutes before, a second wine bottle being opened as she approached.

  “Everything all right?” He half-stood as she neared.

  “I guess so.” She sat down and pushed her dinner plate away. “My Mother doesn’t know what to make of all this.” She waved her hand at the dining room. “Me, here in Cannes, I mean. You.” She looked directly at him.

  “I should think not.” Roger reseated himself and poured Maggie a glass of wine. “Not the usual thing at all.”

  Maggie stared at their dining table as if she’d never seen it before, and hadn’t spent an unanticipated two and a half hours having dinner at it. A blue chipped crock of goose paté, a platter of half-eaten pommes frites, mushrooms Provençal, the ubiquitous Evian bottles (four of them), and the remains of two platefuls of veal and pasta. She looked at Roger. Do people not talk much about gluttony these days, she wondered? Her eye fell upon the pretty white saucers with the little primroses painted on them, each looking like an original, not part of a set. She pressed a finger to the crumbs, only a scattering of evidence to tell of the sticky-sweet strawberry tarts they’d both had.

  “So, tell me again how you know all you know.” Maggie accepted the wine glass. “How you came to be driving the getaway car, how you know Nicole’s father...and where is the slimy bastard now?”

  “The ‘slimy bastard’ is no longer on the Cote D’Azure, I’m told.” Roger took a savoring sip of his wine and Maggie half-expected him to smack his lips in satisfaction. “He’d taken the child about five or six months ago�
�”

  “I know. Elise called me to say Gerard had kidnapped Nicole.”

  “Yes, quite. I’m really not sure to what purpose. Perhaps they’d had a quarrel? At any rate, a friend of mine asked me to help him. It seems his...cousin, Gerard Dubois, desperately wanted his child. He said the mother was a real wretch—I’m just repeating what he said, you understand...”

  “It’s okay,” Maggie said, feeling a wave of exhaustion. “Please, go on.”

  “Well, he said that the mother was a drug addict. I was asked to give assistance in snatching the child so that it might live with its more responsible parent.”

  “Gerard.”

  “Right-e-ho.” Roger squinted into the crowd as if expecting to see someone he knew, then played with the stem of his wineglass. “In any case,” he continued, “my participation in the ‘kidnapping’, as you call it, amounted to driving a car to an address—“

  “My sister’s apartment here in Cannes.”

  “As it turned out, yes. I waited in the car with the motor running. My friend came out of the apartment with the child in his arms. He deposited l’enfant in the car and I departed.” He shrugged and took a sip of his wine.

  “Gerard didn’t get in too?”

  “Ah, no. He remained behind. But the cousin...my friend...was in the car with me and he calmed the child during our ride.”

  “Where did you take her?”

  “To an apartment near here, actually. A woman was waiting for us...a jolly nice woman, it seemed to me. And she took the girl. That’s it.”

  “Were you paid?”

  “I was helping a friend.”

  “I see. Will you take me to this address?”

  “If you like, Miss Newberry, but I must tell you that the child is no longer there.”

  “How do you know?”

  Bentley sighed and motioned to the garçon hovering in the wings of the café.

  “I know, Miss Newberry, because I just do.” He turned and spoke briefly to the waiter, his French clumsy and abrupt. The man disappeared. “Look, she’s not there but I believe I know where to find her and isn’t that the whole point?”