Little Death by the Sea Read online

  “I’ve got a job interview, if you must know,” she said, her mouth pressed together in a punishing line, her hands folded across her colorful chest.

  He nearly smiled. She was so obviously baiting him. A perverse part of him—the part of him that was almost free—felt the impulse to drop to both knees and scream, “God, no, Patti! You can’t leave! Please, won’t you change your mind?” And all for the twisted pleasure of seeing the look on her face. As it was, he bit back the smile and merely shrugged.

  “Okay. You don’t need to be there.”

  “I’ve decided to leave the company, Gerry,” she said, taking a step forward.

  “So have I, as a matter of fact,” he said.

  Her mouth fell open and, for the first time, he could see small blemishes around the bottom part of her face. Her surprise was real and unchecked.

  “What?” she sputtered.

  “I’m leaving. That’s what the announcement is. To say I’ve decided to leave.”

  “Because of me?”

  The suggestion was so absurd that Gerry nearly laughed in her face. Instead, he paused as if considering it and then shook his head.

  “No, Patti,” he said. “I am not leaving because of you. I am leaving...” He turned and waved a hand at the scene outside his window. “...because of everything.” He liked the sound of that. Maybe he’d use it in his speech to the others. “I wish you luck, though. I don’t think you’ve been happy here and it’s probably a good idea you’re looking elsewhere.”

  It was true. The freedom he felt by cutting his ties—even by breaking the news to just one person—was profound. He felt energized, yet relaxed, capable of talking honestly about anything. Maybe Janis Joplin was right: freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose.

  He felt great.

  “I see,” she said. She stood facing him in her ridiculous dress, her arms pressed in a Joan-of-Arc fold across her chest, her eyes burning with some indecipherable passion. “Well, that’s it, then,” she said.

  “I wish you luck, Patti.” He felt more in control than he ever had before. He watched her shoulders sag beneath her dress, her head sink into her shoulders. A sad smile crept onto her face.

  “Thanks, Gerry,” she said in a voice softer and more sincere than he’d ever heard from her. She held out her hand to him. “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she said.

  “Just a little peace,” he said. “And I will.”

  She moved toward the door. “Take care of yourself.”

  “You too,” he said happily, buoyed with his factory-fresh, hither-to-untried ability to handle any situation. He smiled at her until she closed the door behind her. Then he turned for one last look out the window, patted down his suit pockets again, and went out to tell the rest of the world.

  4

  “Well, it’s sort of complicated,” Kazmaroff said, shaking his head at Laurent’s proffered coffee pot. He turned to face Maggie. “We’ve got a confession, and a believable one at that—“

  “Why did this Donnell-guy kill Elise?” Maggie asked. She sat on the couch, next to Laurent, a chipped mug of tea in her hands. Opposite them, in mismatched tub chairs, sat Kazmaroff, in his cool chinos and Vuarnet sunglasses, and Burton, precision-pressed and held together like a rubber band around a bundle of nerves.

  “He just did,” Burton said, a tinge of harshness to his voice as if to belie all doubt and argument from any corner. He wiped his hands on the knees of his Sansabelt slacks and examined his nails. They were yellow and chewed.

  Maggie saw Kazmaroff give Burton an annoyed look and she wondered who to believe. Did Kazmaroff not think they had Elise’s killer in custody? She didn’t feel she could ask him with Burton present.

  Burton rubbed his hands together and made a squeaking popping sound with them.

  “Miss Newberry,” he said. “Even a psycho thinks he’s got a reason to kill, you know? I mean, it may be a nuts reason, but it makes sense to him.”

  “I think what Miss Newberry wants to know, Jack, is, does this mean that the guy who killed her sister—did he do it because he had a specific reason against her sister?”

  “I understood the question, Dave.” Maggie was surprised to hear the bite in the detective’s voice. It had always been clear that their partnership was not heaven-sent but the relationship had obviously deteriorated with the investigation. “If you’re suggesting this guy had to have a reason to kill your sister, I would have to say ‘probably not’. There was no reason.” he flipped open his notebook and looked at a page of notes.

  Maggie felt tired all of a sudden. She wanted to go take a nap. For the rest of the week. She felt a chilling nimbus of loneliness envelope her as the detectives subtly retracted any help or support.

  “So, what do you think?” Laurent’s voice boomed out impatiently, causing Maggie to look at him with surprise.

  “Er, what do you mean?” Dave asked uncertainly.

  “Maggie’s sister is killed and two months later Maggie is attacked and it means nothing?”

  “It’s quite possible...” Burton reached for his notebook again.

  “Pfut!” Laurent rolled his eyes. “And it is the coincidence? Eh?”

  Burton shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his eyes still on his notebook. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything—“

  “Why doesn’t it mean anything?” Maggie asked, beginning to show her impatience.

  “Look,” Dave Kazmaroff leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He gave her a look that suggested he would now tell her some inside dope. Maggie began to see why his partner couldn’t stand him.

  “There’s a lot of crime in this city,” he said, smiling warmly at her. “Coincidence that your sister would be murdered one month and you mugged the next? Maybe, but absolutely believable. What’s less believable is that they’re connected in some way. If that’s what you’re saying?” He addressed this last comment to Laurent and ran a hand through his hair.

  Now it was Burton’s turn to look irritated with Kazmaroff. He stood up and carefully picked up the note on the coffee table that Maggie had shown them earlier. He dropped it into a little zip-lock plastic bag and sealed it firmly with his thumb and forefinger.

  “We don’t know exactly what’s going on at the moment, Miss Newberry. We think we got our killer—I know we got him—but we haven’t had time to make some of the other pieces fit.”

  Yeah, like my sister, Maggie thought.

  “I’ll take this downtown and see what the lab guys can make of it. Dave and I’ll have a look-see at the woods on our way out and we’ll give you a call later on. Might not be today.”

  She nodded and wagged a hand to indicate she didn’t much expect it would be.

  “Meanwhile, I wouldn’t take any more midnight walks in the woods. Even without psychotic killers on the loose, Buckhead isn’t as safe as it used to be. That drug dealer—the guy we originally held as a suspect for your sister’s killing?--he still roams loose around here. You just can’t afford to play Anne of Green Gables in a big city like this, Miss Newberry. Okay?”

  She nodded politely at him wondering if they could arrest her if she asked Laurent to throw them out on their shiny polyester keisters.

  “I think your attack was probably an isolated incident,” he continued, as both cops moved to the door. “But we’ll run down a few leads and see where it takes us.” He smiled at her and she smiled back.

  When she closed the door behind them, Laurent went out onto the small stone balcony that faced Peachtree Road to light up one of his foul-smelling Gitanes. Maggie ran a comb through her hair. She looked awful, she decided, as she stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Her face was too pale and a tiny vein under her right eye, normally imperceptible, was now vivid against her white skin—an unmistakable sign of weariness and stress. After splashing cool water on her face, she gave her cheeks a quick rub with a rough towel to bring back some color. She still looked awful.

  Laurent appear
ed in the hallway. She could smell the scent of tobacco on him as it clung to his clothes and hair.

  She eased past Laurent in the hallway. She went to the dining room and opened a chest of drawers. Laurent followed her. He leaned against the dining room table, his arms crossed in front of his chest, and watched her.

  Maggie pulled out a large photo album and placed it on the table. She began flipping the pages.

  “They are trying to tell me that Elise died for no reason. She was just some random face, some incidental body that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just...bad luck.” She stopped flipping the pages. She froze for a moment, then tugged out a color snapshot from the plastic pages.

  “You are leaving?” Laurent asked quietly.

  She tucked the photo in her jacket pocket and picked up her purse.

  “I’m going to ask Alfie one last question,” she said. “What are you going to do?” She noticed his cigarette pack was in his top shirt pocket, which usually meant that he was going out.

  “I did not know you would want to be going out so soon..”

  “Laurent,” she said impatiently, “what is it? You know you don’t have to ask my permission if you want to go somewhere.” She moved to the front door. Laurent remained in the doorway of the kitchen.

  “I had an engagement with your father pour dejeuner—“ Lunch.

  “My Dad? You’re having lunch with my Dad?” Maggie stopped looking for the small tape recorder and note pad she’d stashed in the bookcase. Was Laurent looking for a father figure? She really didn’t know much about his family. Was his own father still living? She touched him on the arm.

  “Look, Laurent,” she said. “I’m glad you and my Dad are getting along so well.” She turned away, resuming the search for her tape recorder. “I’m just surprised is all. He never spent much time with any of my friends before.”

  He leaned down to kiss her.

  “You will be careful if you go out, eh?” he said, holding her chin in his hand. “Faites attention?”

  “Yes, yes. Je promis. I’ll be careful. Listen, don’t tell him what happened last night, okay? He’d freak and there’s no sense in it. Oh, and tell Dad not to tell you any stuff about my teenage years or anything.”

  “Pfut!” he turned to walk to the door. “We have covered all that many weeks ago.” He turned to give her a last smile and left.

  Giving up on the tape recorder, Maggie tucked a pad and pencil into her purse. Next, she went into the kitchen and put together a ham and cheese sandwich using a slightly runny Camembert instead of Swiss slices since that was all the fromage Laurent had purchased. She poured herself another glass of juice and took her lunch onto the balcony overlooking busy Peachtree Road.

  It struck her as bizarre that here she was eating a ham sandwich, with Laurent off to keep a lunch engagement, and just last night she’d been knocked unconscious into a ditch. She touched the knot on the back of her head. Maggie tried to see the attack in elementary terms. Had she—as the cops seemed to think—merely interrupted a dog abuser during his moment of gleeful torture? Or had someone been watching her through her apartment window and used the dog to lure her outside? Was the attack meant for her? More importantly, was it connected to Elise’s death? She drew the photograph out of her pocket and stared at it. In it, the photographer had caught Elise looking tired, unsmiling. Maggie tried to remember when it was taken. After a tennis game? But, then, Elise wasn’t dressed for that kind of sport, Maggie noted. And when she showed this picture to Alfie this afternoon at his mother’s house, how was it that Maggie now knew, beyond a doubt, that Alfie would say he’d never seen her before? Was it because there was someone else who had frightened him that day? Someone no one had a picture of?

  Maggie felt a light sweat develop on her forehead as, for her, things just got a lot less random.

  Chapter 16

  1

  “How do you expect to pay for this, may I ask?” Gerry shuffled through the Paris brochures stacked on Maggie’s desk.

  Maggie, uncomfortable in a now too-snug knit dress, gathered up her maps and travel brochures and placed them in the bottom of her briefcase. She closed the top of the case firmly.

  She felt tired from a late night of conversation and lovemaking with Laurent the evening before. He had gotten home early and they had spent much of the time going over the results of her visit with Alfie and his mother. As she had predicted, Elise had not been the one who had ridiculed Alfie in the hall that day. Alfie had never laid eyes on the person in Maggie’s photograph. The person he described was someone so bizarre as to be a cross between something out of a sci-fi movie and a demented person’s wild imagination.

  ‘She had a big, big face and awful, big teeth! She wanted to eat me up! She was red and green, like a big Christmas tree! And mad at me and wanting to eat me!’

  Maggie left wondering if the poor guy had even been in the apartment building that day. She felt defeated and stymied.

  “I’ve charged it to my MasterCard,” she said to Gerry.

  “The same card, I believe, on which you put that lovely and very expensive frock you wore to the Addies banquet a few months back?” Gerry leaned up against the windowsill to the right of her desk. He wore jeans and a light cotton sweater. Maggie noticed he wore colorful leather moccasins too instead of his usual wingtips. “The same card upon which you blew two hundred smackeroos last spring for that ungodly kitchen appliance you said would make your life complete?”

  “The very one.”

  “Don’t those people require payment periodically?”

  “I’ll worry about it when I get back. I don’t have the cash and I need to do this.”

  “I see. The old worry-about-it-later-credit plan. Yes, I think Darla subscribes to that too. Can’t say it works very well for her, though.”

  “Aren’t you dressed a little casually today, Herr Boss? I mean, I didn’t miss an interoffice memo, did I? This isn’t the afternoon we all have to go out and do the lawn in front of the building or something, is it?”

  “Ahh, Maggie.” Gerry smiled and folded his arms. “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. I’m going to miss that keen, snappish wit. That biting—some might say, corrosive—repartee. You’ll have to write me a lot.”

  “Why are you being so hateful?”

  “What are you talking about?” The smile was replaced by a puzzled frown. “I’m not being hateful.”

  “Talking about knowing each other from now on only in letters? That’s not hateful?” Maggie tossed a file folder across her desk. It skidded and fell on the floor, flopping open and spilling its contents on the carpet.

  “I’m only happy because I know I’m going on to a better place for me. That’s all—“

  “You sound like you’re going to start transchanneling any minute now.”

  “You know what I mean.” Gerry shifted uncomfortably on the windowsill. “Being here isn’t good for me. You should be glad that I was able to figure it out. Otherwise, I’d just go on being miserable, making everyone around me miserable. I’m not happy to leave you, Maggie, you old boob, but I am happy about starting a new life someplace better.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Maggie covered her eyes and felt a leaden weariness descend upon her.

  “And you’ll come visit us down there—“

  “Are you kidding?” Maggie uncovered her eyes and stared at him. “It’s over ten thousand miles away from here. It costs thirteen hundred dollars just to get there—“

  “You’ll stay with us. There won’t be any hotel costs.”

  “It takes twenty hours flying time, not to mention the time difference.” Maggie began ticking the calculations off on her fingers. “Say, I leave on a Tuesday. Two days of travel later, I arrive in Auckland on Monday! What happened to those other two days?”

  “You probably need to take this vacation to Paris more than I thought.”

  “And returning? Going northeast across the date line? Let’s say I leave on a Friday—�
�

  “I really do get the point, Maggie.”

  “I’m so very glad. Hey, listen, gar , go to Kiwi-Land if you have to. Knock yourself out. She’ll be right, mate. No worries. Do what you have to do.”

  “That’s really what it comes down to, don’t you see?”

  “Oh, don’t explain this to me, Gerry.”

  “I’m not doing this to drive you crazy or to break Darla’s heart. I’m doing this because I have to. I have to! Doesn’t anything move you? I’m dying here. How can I make it clearer to you?”

  “Well, go then.” Maggie bent over to scrape up the contents of her spilled folder.

  “You’ll visit me?”

  “Of course.” She tried to smile but gave it up. “Laurent will come too.”

  “Naturally. You know, Darla has a hissy fit if I even mention New Zealand, and we’re scheduled to board the airplane in less than six weeks.”

  “You are?” Maggie gaped at him in astonishment.

  “Yes. What? Did you think this was just bullshit? Maggie, I am moving, emigrating with my family to Auckland, New Zealand. I am getting residency, a work permit down there and leaving the good ol’ U.S. of A. Okay?” Gerry tossed a paper clip at her waste paper basket. “And Darla is a mess about it. Very nonsupportive if you want to know. And it would be nice, I’m just saying it would be nice if there was one person on the planet besides my travel agent with which I could discuss my plans. My dreams, as it were.”

  “Six weeks. Man, that’s so soon. What are you going to do down there for work?”

  He grinned broadly, his eyes alive and happy for the first time in a year.

  2

  Elspeth Newberry picked up the newspaper, careful not to get newsprint on her fingers, and placed it at her husband’s breakfast place. The headline shouted up at her: Man Confesses to Buckhead Murder.

  “Good morning, my dear.” John Newberry turned from the breakfast buffet in their dining room, his Belleek plate sparsely adorned with a scrambled egg and a melon slice. “I didn’t know you were up.” He kissed her absently on the cheek as he set his plate down.