Little Death by the Sea Read online

  “Tant pis, Maggee.” Too bad.

  “Yeah, tant pis, all right.” She stood up and gave her dress a shake. “Come on, let’s take Nicole inside. I’m starving and it’s mostly your fault.”

  “Comment?”

  “Your cooking. It’s stretched my stomach. I used to eat like a bird. Now, if I don’t get multiple course meals on a regular basis, I feel like I’m on a starvation diet. Thanks a heap, Laurent. I hope you like your women hefty.”

  Laurent hopped up easily for someone of his height and bulk. He caught her by the waist and swung her effortlessly into the air and back down again. He kept her pinned lightly in his arms.

  “Not too bad,” he said judiciously.

  She smiled and gave him a hug. She felt her irritation with him dissolve.

  Nicole sat quietly between them, staring at the torn grass bits scattered across the lawn and her bright blue dress.

  4

  Burton sat in his Honda and watched the front of the little cottage on St. Juniper’s Street. He’d watched the man, Alfie, go in about six o’clock, his arms full of groceries, and the woman leave about eight. She returned a half an hour later with a smaller grocery bag. Wine?

  Every minute of the investigation was precious now. In a desperate moment, he’d called the Newberry woman and admitted that the suspect they had held in custody for her sister’s murder—the dope peddler—turned out to have been uninvolved. But it would have been no great loss to the world if the scum had gone down for it. Might as well be him, for lack of anyone else. But now, something Maggie had said yesterday on the phone made him think again about the retard. They’d not interviewed the mother. If they had, they would have discovered that she was protective and maybe treacherous. The Newberry girl had uncovered it. And it was as good a lead as any to follow in a case that sprouted damn few. With the heat he’d been taking lately from the Chief, he couldn’t afford to screw up another one.

  Jack shifted uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. He hated stake-outs, hated waiting for something to happen and half the time you weren’t even sure what it was when you saw it. He’d already spilled the remnants of cold 7-ll coffee on his pants. Gluey miniature doughnuts sat in their own sugar and grease on a cardboard strip on his dashboard. He’d eaten ten of the dozen in the packet.

  Alfie had opportunity. He practically lived next door to the murder victim. His motive? What kind of motive does any maniac ever have? Maybe Alfie doesn’t have such a good relationship with Mama. Burton leaned over and drew out a stale pack of Winstons from the glove box. He shook one loose into his mouth and took a long drag on it, unlighted. Alfie was certainly capable, physically, of the stranglings.

  Burton tapped his finger against the dashboard and waited. He didn’t have enough evidence to have the boy picked up and he didn’t have the time to wait for him to slip up. His only real chance seemed to be in bringing the kid in for questioning and maybe beating a confession out of him. Or hassling the mother. Surely, she knew what was going on, else why so venomous when questioned by the Newberry woman? He took another smokeless drag on his cigarette. Maybe that was the key. Pick up the mother. Most people can’t lie worth shit. Tell her the boy’ll never do any hard time, he’ll be sent to a hospital or something. Maybe push the fact that she’ll have an opportunity to resume a normal life without him. Without guilt. That could just be the magic button. No more having to take care of him until she’s too old and worn out to have some kind of life of her own. Burton tapped the steering wheel with his cigarette.

  His cellular phone blinked at him to pick up. He hesitated. Chances are it was Kazmaroff and he was the last s.o.b he wanted to deal with right now. Reluctantly, he lifted the receiver off its base.

  “Burton,” he said.

  “Jack, it’s Dave,” the voice crackled. “Guess who just turned himself in down at HQ?”

  5

  Maggie dipped her crust of bread into the trail of olive oil on her plate. Thirteen grams of go-straight-to-your-hips fat, she thought as she popped the savory, sodden morsel into her mouth. She tried to remember the last time she had gone to an aerobics class or jogged around the block.

  They had had Sunday dinner at her parents’ house. This was a “light supper” that Laurent had thrown together to keep them from starving until Monday breakfast. Tiny sardines fried in batter, miniature onions swimming in some kind of spicy tomato sauce, raw carrots, artichoke hearts, radishes and, of course, the ubiquitous saucers of oil-drenched peppers and bread. And since no meal was worth eating without du vin, there was a steadily-breathing bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape to wash it all down with. Maggie wondered how long it would be before she started craving a cigarette and spending her mornings hanging around cafés, doing nothing but drinking espresso and watching the world go by.

  The wine was heavy but good. Maggie took a long sip from her glass and wondered if there would be much talk at the office tomorrow if she showed up wearing a mu-mu.

  “It’s all delicious,” she said, smiling over at Laurent. They had taken their feast and spread it out on the coffee table in the living room. He sat, an over-sized linen napkin tucked into his shirt collar, across from her. Tall tapers sputtered and dripped amidst their banquet setting.

  “There is no cooking,” he protested, refusing to accept the compliment for pulling things out of a refrigerator.

  “Doesn’t make it any less tasty.” She popped a final viscous artichoke into her mouth and wondered if he’d notice if she stopped eating. “Can I go over my notes with you?”

  He nodded mutely, a slight shimmer of oil lining his full lips. He reached for his wine glass.

  “Okay. I’ve got a witness—Alfie—who can place Gerard at the scene and at the time of the murder. Gerard has motive and opportunity.”

  “The police say—“

  “Yes, yes, he was in his hotel room. But listen, I’d just given the bastard five thousand dollars. I’m convinced he could buy all the alibi he wanted to with that kind of money, regardless of what the police think. I just need to prove it.”

  “C’est diffiçile.”

  “Anyway, okay, that’s Gerard and he’s my number one suspect so far. Next is Alfie. Although not as a real strong contender at this point. He also was here at the time of the murder. And maybe, according to his delightful mother, maybe he had motive too. I don’t know. So that’s Alfie and Gerard.”

  “And the drug dealer?”

  “The cops have let him go.”

  “Ahhhh.”

  “Yeah, so there’s nothing there.”

  “I wish you to not talk with him.”

  Maggie looked at Laurent and sighed.

  “Laurent, I need to talk to—“

  “D’accord. Then I will be with you. He is a criminale, Maggie!” Laurent looked quite disturbed. He stopped eating for a moment.

  “Okay, fine. We’ll do that together. Anyway, I think what I’m coming down to is that I believe in my heart of hearts that Gerard killed Elise and now I need to make the police see that too. That means building a case against him. If Elise was such good friends with this Madame Zouk character, then Zouk should know Gerard, don’t you think? I think that’s where I start.”

  A sick look began to come over Laurent.

  “I do not want you talking with Dubois,” he said flatly.

  “Laurent—“

  “I do not want you talking with Dubois! Je ne le permettrai pas! I forbid it! He is a character dangereux! If he is killing Elise, then he can hurt you aussi!”

  “Then, what if I just talk to Zouk?”

  Laurent eyed her carefully.

  “You will go all the way to Paris and not talk with Gerard Dubois?”

  “If you absolutely insist.”

  “I do. J’insiste, Maggee. He is a bad man. Très mauvais.”

  “Okay, I won’t approach him. I’ll gather my information in Paris and build my case without talking with him. Okay, Laurent.”

  He seemed to relax a little.
>
  “In any event, I’ll start with Madame Zouk. Maybe she can help me prove that Gerard had a motive to kill Elise. If I can do that, and then bring Alfie in to place Gerard here at the time of the murder, I might just have a case.”

  The phone rang.

  “I hate phone calls at night,” she said, pulling away from their circle of food and candles. “I’m always afraid of bad news.”

  She picked up the receiver gingerly.

  “Hello? Oh, hey, how are you?” She glanced over at Laurent and his eyebrows shot up. Qui?

  “You’re kidding.” Maggie sat down abruptly on the arm of the couch. “When?” Her hand went to her mouth and she gnawed a cuticle. There was a long pause, then: “Okay, yeah, I will. Thanks a lot for calling. No, I know you will and I appreciate it. Thanks, Detective. Okay, bye.” She hung up the phone.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Maggie turned slowly and walked back to their coffee table picnic.

  “It was Detective Burton,” she said as she lowered herself back into her seat at the table. “He says they’ve got Elise’s killer.”

  “Zut! Mon Dieu!” Laurent squeezed Maggie’s knee. “That is wonderful, is it not? Maggie?”

  “Huh?” She looked up at him, her mind a confusing tangle of thoughts and feelings.

  “They caught him?” he pressed.

  “No, he walked in and gave himself up. This afternoon.”

  “Who is it? Maggeee,” he asked impatiently pouring her another glass of the heady red wine. “Who is it?”

  She shook the cobwebs and the spiders out of her mind. “It’s nobody we know. Just some guy. Some faceless whacko out there who’s done it before. Nobody we know.”

  “Detective Burton, he was happy?”

  Maggie looked at Laurent and wondered what had made him think of such a thing.

  “Naturally.”

  Laurent resumed his meal.

  Maggie frowned at the phone. Bull-shit, she thought. No way the guy they got is connected to Elise. I don’t believe it.

  “Laurent?” she asked, suddenly.

  “Mmmm—mm?” He looked up and smiled. A question mark hovered in his eyes.

  “Do you have any ideas about our future together?” Maggie was surprised as the words came out of her mouth. She had not expected them. She had not suspected they were hiding in her head.

  Laurent finished chewing and removed his napkin from his shirt collar. He placed it down on the coffee table and scanned their finished repast.

  “I am hoping we would get married someday,” he said, finally. His eyes locked hers. “This is surprising you.”

  It occurred to Maggie that Laurent, who always seemed to know what to say, when to get excited, when to let something pass, was a little uncomfortable.

  “You think I am wanting my American green card from this?”

  She looked at him with surprise.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

  “Perhaps I will get the job as the French chef at Burger King?”

  “Why are you saying this? What did--?””

  “Mais non! Maggie must do it all her own way, yes? Must go to her gym and work at her job and eat with her ex-boyfriends because she is always so independent? Living with her French lover is one more impressive item on her dossier but not to be taken too seriously!”

  Very vaguely aware that his English seemed to have improved somewhat, Maggie was too angry to do anything but sputter: “What are you talking about? Are you talking about Brownie? You never said it bothered---“

  Laurent made a grunt of disgust.

  “I am not jealous of your little Brownie,” he said. “Always you are misunderstanding me. I am talking about Maggie. About Maggie not changing, about Maggie not making room for Laurent in her life.” He waved away her attempts to speak with an impatient hand. “Do not tell me you cleaned out a drawer for me, I am not talking about bureau drawers! I am talking about your life!”

  Maggie wrapped her arms around herself and stared stonily at him.

  “I see,” she said, stiffly. “I had no idea you—“

  “Bien sûr!” he exploded. “This is the probleme! You have no idea, pas de tout! You think you can go on and being the single girl, n’est-ce pas? Ach! You are so Americaine...”

  “Well, excuse me for being so American, I’ll try in future to be a little more Libyan...or would my being a tad more French be good?” She began picking up dishes. “That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? Maggie being some simple-minded French girl who’ll spend hours plucking her eyebrows and starving herself bony while whipping up heavy creamed sauces for her big Frenchman...”

  “You could not possibly be French,” Laurent said with disdain.

  “I hate you.”

  “D’accord,” Laurent said. “As you Americans say, I can live with that.”

  “Great,” Maggie said, whirling around and stomping toward the bedroom. “Why don’t you live with cleaning up this mess in the kitchen while you’re at it?”

  “That would be different than usual?” he called after her. The door slammed between them.

  Later, as Laurent lay snoring against her, Maggie watched the moon through her window as it tore loose from behind the diaphanous shreds of spooky cloud. She touched his sleeping face next to her. The fight had been stupid but necessary. When he had finally tapped on the bedroom door and entered the room, she could see from the frown on his face that his making this first move was as far as he was going to go with the reconciliation. Relieved to have at least been offered an olive branch—if somewhat withered and hesitant—Maggie had reached out to him.

  She looked at the alarm clock on her night stand; it was a little after two a.m. This wasn’t the first night Laurent had fallen asleep peacefully and quickly after three or four cups of strong Brazilian coffee, while Maggie fidgeted and tossed after her one meager and milky café au lait.

  She eased away from the sleeping form of her lover and got out of bed. Making sure not to wake him (though she didn’t think anything short of another charge up the Bastille could), she gathered up a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and closed the bedroom door behind her.

  She set up her small portable typewriter on the dining room table, poured herself a glass of milk and rummaged in the cabinets until she found a few Oreo cookies. Rationalizing that she needed the sugar to go with the milk which she needed to make her sleepy, she set up her snack by her typewriter then pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt over her filmy silk chemise.

  “What is it?” Laurent’s sleepy voice came to her from the bedroom.

  Maggie walked to the bedroom door. “Nothing, go back to sleep,” she whispered, then turned and settled down at the typewriter to work on her notes from her conference with Detective Burton.

  Several minutes later, Laurent appeared in the doorway, dressed, his hair mussed and full about his face, his eyes squinting against the light in the dining room.

  “Oh, Laurent, go back to bed,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I am not sleeping good when you are gone,” he said, holding a huge hand up to contain a yawn.

  “I’m sorry.” She hoped he wasn’t going to try to make them something to eat.

  “I will go for cigarettes,” he said, nodding to himself and tapping his tee-shirt pocket as if to show that they were not where they should be.

  “Tonight?” She stopped flipping through her notes. “Jesus, Laurent, it’s past two in the morning.”

  He shrugged, now more fully awake, and tucked his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans.

  “There’s an Amoco station open on the corner, down Peachtree,” she said, turning back to her typewriter.

  “I will be back,” he said, kissing her quickly before disappearing out the door. Maggie tried to sense if there was any vestiges left over from their fight. She could feel none from him. No hangover, no recriminations.

  It was a cool night, unusual for late August. Maggie got up to open
the dining room window that looked out over the back parking lot and adjacent woods. Aside from the reputational splendor of living at the Parthenon, Maggie had been drawn to this apartment building because it felt like a little bit of country in the heart of the city. It, and a few residential houses in the neighborhood, shared a fair-sized tract of woods. The stand of trees were thick and forbidding, protected by some stubborn dowager who’d owned the property for generations and refused to sell to developers. Peachtree Creek flowed through the elfin forest and Maggie had seen raccoons and foxes in it. Once, after she moved to her apartment, she had indulged in a nature hike in the woods. Although, it was true, she had felt for a few moments like she were somewhere on the Appalachian Trail, she’d also twisted an ankle and hadn’t found time to revisit the woods in over four years.

  Tonight, the moon cast an eerie incandescence over the wooded patch. Blackened tree limbs were elongated by shadows and stretched out in all directions like skinny witches’ arms beckoning wickedly toward her. She shivered and enjoyed the comfort of her little lighted nook in the darkness.

  She flipped open the notebook she’d begun keeping on her investigation, then tucked a clean piece of paper in the electric typewriter. She typed out the date and entered the information she had been given about the man who had turned himself in tonight. She munched on a cookie and stared at the notes in her notebook.

  Suddenly, she heard a noise from outside her window. She took a breath and held it. Her blood pounded in her ears and she craned her neck to look out the window towards the woods. The wind seemed to have risen. She could hear it moaning in the trees. And then the sound again. Like a dog in pain. Maggie stood up and went to the window. She heard it again.

  Why is a man never here when something happens? While she was debating whether or not to wait for Laurent to return before she did something, Maggie heard the cry again.

  Quickly, she pulled on her sneakers and stuck her keys and a small flashlight from the kitchen drawer in the pocket of her jeans. She closed the apartment door behind her and the hall lights, triggered by her movement, blinked on. Maggie ran down the hall and pulled open the heavy outside door at the end of the corridor.