Little Death by the Sea Page 18

  Dave Kazmaroff remained standing. He tossed his filter into an ashtray on his desk and shook out another cigarette from a pack in his shirt. He did not look up at his partner.

  3

  Gerry peeled back the bread in his sandwich and extracted a few imaginary hairs from his corned beef.

  “Just eat it, Gerry.” Maggie picked up her own sandwich and poised it in front of her face. “Why were you so testy this morning? What is the deal?”

  “You want to know why I’m testy? You want to know? I’ll tell you.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be worried about me. Worry about yourself. I hear the cost of sheep farming is skyrocketing.”

  “Very funny. You and Darla should open up an act together. Preferably one on the road.”

  “What is it, Gerry?”

  “All right, you want to know? And Darla said I should definitely keep my mouth shut—“

  “Well, maybe you should.”

  “...And I’m only saying this because we’re friends.”

  “Just say it.”

  “I want to know how in the hell you can have any kind of meaningful relationship with a guy who can barely handle the basics of asking where the men’s room is.”

  “Excuse me?” Maggie put her sandwich down and frowned at him.

  “Your French boyfriend. His English is so bad, I’m surprised y’all can converse on anything more complex than how much parsley to put in the ragu.”

  “Well, it’s not your worry, is it?”

  “Hey, don’t get pissed, Maggie. I’m just saying, the guy can’t speak English.”

  “I understand him fine.”

  “Oh sure, the language of love. Give me a break. Your French is shit, excuse me. Is there any substance to y’all’s conversations?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Meaning, ‘no’.”

  “Meaning none of your business. Where did all this come from? I could tell you didn’t like him the other night—“

  “That’s not true—“

  “Oh, bullshit, Gerry. You were practically rude to the man.”

  “That’s not true! How can I speak to him? He doesn’t speak English! Have you two had an argument yet?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a fight. Have you two made it to the disagreement stage?”

  “Gerry, not everyone is as stubborn and disagreeable as you are. Some people get along for great periods of time.”

  “Great boring periods of time. And excuse me, Miss Sweetness and Light, but you are not describing yourself. If you haven’t had even a small fight with this guy, Larry—“

  “You know his name.”

  “...then y’all are just playing house. There. I’ve said it.”

  “And you feel good about it.”

  “Yes. Yes, I must say I do. I wouldn’t want to lie to you, Maggie. The fact is, I don’t like him.”

  “No kidding.” Maggie bit into her sandwich and rolled her eyes at him. “I’m a mature human being, Gerry,” she said, her mouth full of turkey and rye. “So take notes: all my friends don’t have to like each other. I’ll live with it. Besides, Darla liked him.”

  “She likes Dan Quayle too.”

  “Look, you don’t like him, fine. Next subject of conversation, if you don’t mind.”

  “Well, I said what I had to say.”

  “That’s clear.”

  “May I have your pickle?”

  “And while we’re being so helpful with one another, may I ask a question about your travel plans?”

  “Shoot.”

  “You’re still moving to New Zealand, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “And nobody in the office knows yet, am I right?”

  “Just you.”

  “ And would you say that your...um...interest in the goings on at the office has, say, slid off a bit?”

  Gerry looked uncomfortable. He reached for the mustard.

  “I suppose that’s possible. After all, I don’t intend to be there much longer.”

  “Sure, I can see that. But, in the meantime, you’ve signed off on all projects in-house?”

  “That’s ridiculous! I’m in meetings all day long.”

  “Wrong. Your body’s in meetings. You are in Bora-Bora or Ruaphehu or some such place. Gerry, we can’t afford to have you off in la-la land while we still have clients.”

  “Well! I like that! It’s my agency, if I have to remind you, Maggie.”

  “Oh, put a sock in it!” Maggie glanced around at the diners surrounding them. A couple of them looked their way. “Aren’t you about to dump your own advertising agency? Aren’t you about to drop-kick it into the great unknown while you go peel kiwis in Dunedin?”

  “Will you stop with the kiwis, already? New Zealand has other exports, you know.”

  “Just stay awake while you’re with us, please. At least until you come to your senses. You’ll hate yourself if, after this phase passes, you’ve lost a client.”

  “It isn’t a phase.”

  “Yeah, okay.” She dumped some ice into her Coke cup and shook her head. “Whatever. Hey, what about Patti-cakes? She decide you’re not quite the man she thought you were?”

  “Seems to have, thank God.” Gerry talked around a mouthful of sandwich. “She’s pissed at me and seems to be sniffing around young Bob, now.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Yeah, he doesn’t know what to make of all the attention, and, under the circumstances, that’s probably good.”

  Maggie laughed.

  “What a place. How can you bear to think of leaving it?”

  “My sanity demands it.” He looked at her strangely, his eyes misting.

  “Oh, Ger, don’t you think this will all work itself out?” Maggie touched his hand with hers.

  “Sure, it will, Maggie. I have every confidence that it will.” He brightened. “Finished? I believe this is your treat?”

  “You asked me to lunch!”

  “Yeah, but that was before I knew you were going to criticize my performance as an adman. I can only redeem myself by sticking you with the check.”

  She nodded. “I can see that.”

  As she stood up, hoisting her purse strap onto her shoulder, she stopped suddenly.

  “Gerry, I forgot to mention Paris.”

  “This sounds like a scene out of Casablanca.”

  “No, really. I’ve got to go overseas next week. Will that be a problem”

  “Not for me. Is it on account of this investigation thing you’re doing?”

  “There are some people I need to talk to over there. I shouldn’t be very long. Four or five days.”

  “Maggie, do what you have to do.” He stood up and handed her the check. “I certainly intend to.”

  Chapter 14

  1

  Gerry straightened the storyboards on the floor and looked at his telephone. His desk was covered with the various materials used to present a pickle campaign to a new client earlier that day. Storyboards, all with green the predominant color, were propped up against the side of his desk. Stacks of carefully collated scripts: print copy separated from outdoor board copy, separated from broadcast continuity, lay adjacent to stacks of paper explaining, in great and expansive detail, media recommendations and account-handling information. An arsenal of radio-spot cassette tapes lay scattered about the base of the telephone.

  There was a time when all this used to get him charged up, Gerry mused. When the experience of a job well done would have hit all his feel-good buttons. The new client had loved the creative presentation, had approved, without reservation, both the media budget and the suggested placements. Under normal circumstances it would be one to re-live over agency lunches, to boast about—without need for hyperbole—to one’s colleagues at all the ad community functions.

  Under normal circumstances.

  He sighed and pushe
d himself out of his chair. Under these circumstances he couldn’t give a flying damn. He opened up his office door and peered down the hallway. Awfully quiet for the afternoon of a great client victory, he thought. On the other hand, did they expect him to bring out the champagne every time they won a significant account? At least Maggie had to take back that business about his mind not being on the clients. Today’s success story certainly threw that theory in the crapper.

  Gerry wandered down to Maggie’s closed door and stood there, frowning. The traffic manager, Dierdre, was passing in the hallway.

  “What’s the deal with Maggie?” he asked.

  “Private phone call, I guess.” Dierdre said. “Should I buzz her to be at the condom meeting?”

  “Stop calling it that, would you? It’s a prophylactics client, for God’s sake. You make it sound like we’re practicing safe sex in the conference room. No, don’t bother her.”

  Dierdre walked away and Gerry lingered for a moment outside Maggie’s door. He spotted Patti and Pokey making their way to the conference room for the meeting and ducked into the supply room to avoid a confrontation. It was easier to deal with her under the protection of a meeting in progress, he’d decided.

  Jenny poked her head into the room.

  “They’re looking for you, Gerry,” she said sweetly, the light never reaching her eyes.

  “Oh, good. Just checking to make sure we’ve got enough paper. Great. We do! On my way.” He handed her a paper stack and hurried down the hall for the meeting.

  2

  The oily little fishbone of a man glared at Gerard from across the café table. All along the Rue de la Clingancourt, shopkeepers were opening their doors and beginning the morning ritual of hosing down the patch of sidewalk in front of their stores. The Sacre Coeur was just visible in the distance, its bone-white onion dome dotting the horizon like a bright exclamation point. Gerard thought of his grandmother when he saw the cathedral, that ferocious old crow who, every Sunday, would drag him and his brother—unprotesting but unwilling—up the hundreds of steps to mass. He could still feel the pinched grip of the withered old hand clamped on his small-boy’s wrist. He did not remember Grandmère with love.

  His eyes shifted away from the church and back to his companion. It was too early to order a drink, even in Paris, and Gerard would very much have liked to have had something. He eyed the filthy bundle of flesh and clothes across from him.

  “It’s all I have,” he said in French. “It’s all I could get.”

  “That’s not my problem,” the other man, a foreigner, rasped in much poorer French. “It’s not enough.”

  Gerard raked a hand through his thinning, reddish hair.

  “Take it as an installment,” he said. “I’ll get more.”

  “Soon,” the little man wheezed. “Get it soon, Monsieur Gerard. Your credit with my boss is...am I saying this right? My French is not good.” He smiled obscenely, his tongue darting out to moisten his little beak-like lips. “Your credit is very soft. You are understanding?”

  Gerard stared at the nasty creature. Perhaps he should suggest that the filthy crapaud use some of the money to have his lungs checked, or his teeth cleaned, or, peut-être, some newer rags? He scraped his chair back and stood up slowly.

  “Je comprends,” he said.

  3

  The skirt of Maggie’s stiff cotton sundress spread out in a fan against the lawn. She drew her bare legs up under her and sipped from one of the frosty glasses of lemonade Becka had just armed everyone with. Laurent stood a few yards away, in khaki trousers and a black polo shirt, holding Nicole’s pony. The child, her jodphurred legs sticking out awkwardly, sat woodenly atop the Welsh pony. Laurent chattered to her in French and Maggie enjoyed hearing his fluency for a change.

  She hated to admit that Gerry might be right. It was possible that the language difficulties did serve as an impasse to a deeper understanding between them. She didn’t doubt the passion or the love, but from time to time, she yearned for a more complicated exchange.

  Yesterday, in a rare visit to their local videotape rental shop, Maggie had been appalled to see Laurent head—not for the foreign films as she had expected—but to the horror/sci-fi aisle of the store. They had argued about it.

  “I can’t watch this stuff,” she’d said, her face twisted into her most unattractive grimace.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s garbage. It’s stupid.”

  “Ahhh.”

  “’Ahhh’? What does ‘ahhhh’ mean? I mean, come on, Laurent...blood and guts pouring out of a deadman’s eyeballs? Give me a break. It’s gross and meaningless.”

  “D’accord,” he’d agreed, placing his gruesome choices on the counter to be checked out.

  In the end, they’d compromised, if not happily. Maggie promised not to make retching noises or cover her eyes too much during his video and Laurent resolved not to sigh too heavily or yawn during the British drawing room mystery that she had selected. After all, she consoled herself on the drive home from the store, it could’ve been a lot worse. It could have been a Jerry Lewis movie.

  As she listened to him now, talking fluently to her little damaged niece, she made a silent vow to take a French grammar class at the local community college. Soon.

  She turned to her mother who was seated on a white wrought iron bench next to her.

  “Do you think she enjoys that?” Maggie asked.

  Elspeth shaded her eyes against the sun and smiled at Laurent.

  “Watch her left foot, Laurent. She looks like she’s a little lopsided.”

  Laurent waved a finger in Elspeth’s direction to indicate he had it under control. He trotted up and down the lawn next to the pony. Nicole clung to the saddle like a tenacious but somnolent jellyfish. Her little face was screwed into a squinting mask of concentration, or did Maggie imagine that? As the child bobbed along, it was hard to tell whether she was deliberately trying to stay on or was simply hanging on by instinct.

  “Laurent mentioned to your father the other night that you are planning a trip overseas.” Elspeth took a long sip of her lemonade and then patted her lips with a lace-trimmed cotton handkerchief.

  “He did?” Maggie was surprised. Laurent hadn’t mentioned another meeting or conversation with her father.

  “It’s not true?”

  “Well, yes, it’s true.” Were Laurent and her dad becoming buddies or something? “I was going to tell you.”

  “He said you were going because of Elise.”

  Maggie cleared her throat and winced into the sun, trying to keep her eyes on the pony and its charge.

  “Well, sort of.”

  Elspeth turned and looked at her daughter. She wasn’t smiling.

  “Maggie.”

  Maggie sighed. “Look, I don’t know how to explain to you why I feel I need to go. I just feel it, that’s all.”

  “He said you think you may find her killer over there.”

  “I’ve got a letter that Elise was writing before she died and I want to talk to the woman she intended it for. I know it may seem feeble, but I think it’s worth a trip.”

  “Will you need any help with money?”

  Maggie looked at her mother’s profile. It was implacable, a little too smooth, a little hard.

  “No, thanks, Mom. I’m fine,” she said.

  Elspeth stood up, setting her lemonade glass down on the bench, and applauded the approaching twosome with a wide smile.

  “Très bien, Laurent! Nicole!” she called. “Our own little National Velvet.” She touched Maggie’s head lightly. “I love you, Maggie,” she said. “Possibly more than anything on this earth.” She turned on her heel and walked back into the house.

  Astonished by her mother’s words, Maggie stared after Elspeth’s retreating back. Her drink glass was dripping blotches of condensation all over her freshly-pressed frock.

  “You are getting wet, Maggie,” Laurent called to her. He picked Nicole up and deposited her on the ground
next to her pony and led the beast to where Maggie was sitting. He tucked the reins under the pommel and let the pony graze while he flopped down next to her. Very slowly, as if she’d just regained the use of her legs, Nicole moved to where Laurent was seated and lowered herself to a spot beside him.

  “She seems to like you,” Maggie remarked, indicating Nicole.

  “Ahh, mais oui!” Laurent patted the little girl’s hand. “We are very fond of each other, n’est-ce pas, mon petite chou?”

  “What else did the detective tell you?” Laurent asked, smiling at Nicole.

  Maggie flicked away the droplets of water that had pooled in fat beads on her dress.

  “I did more telling than he did,” she said, squinting in Nicole’s direction. “He hadn’t done much work on the case at all. It’s sort of appalling when you think about it. That someone can die a violent death and the police only go through the motions of finding out why.”

  Maggie combed her fingers through her hair. It spilled down onto her shoulders in a shiny sheet of black silk.

  Laurent pulled out some grass and sprinkled them on Nicole’s lap. She looked at him somberly.

  “And so you told the detective everything you know?” Laurent asked.

  “Pretty much. I told him about Alfie and about Gerard being here at the time of the...at the time.”

  Laurent nodded without looking at her.

  “And he either didn’t believe me or thought it was no big deal. It’s so hard to understand...what more do they want? I mean, I practically have a video tape of Gerard killing Elise, and the police do nothing.” She looked guiltily at Nicole and then lowered her voice. “They don’t even want to talk to him again.”

  “But Gerard is not in Atlanta, is he?”

  Maggie looked at him with a startled expression on her face.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Mon Dieu! You have been telling me, n’est-ce pas? You said, Gerard, he leaves Atlanta the day you went to his hotel?”

  “Yeah, okay, that’s right. I guess I did.” She shook her skirt free of remnant grass blades. “But it doesn’t matter. If the subject is murder, they can question him anywhere on earth if they want to. But they’re not interested. What it comes down to is this: Burton doesn’t give a flip who killed Elise unless it can put his name in the paper. That’s the way I read it.”