The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4 Page 22

  "Oh, Laurent, are you sure?" Maggie couldn't help grinning. This gift of Laurent's really was a disastrous idea. "I think we should warn my mother first," she repeated. She was finding herself interested, even eager, in an impish way, to see her mother's reaction to Laurent's surprise.

  "Your father is the man of the house, is he not? He is the Papa?"

  "Yes, yes, all that. But the Maman will freak, all the same."

  "Pfut!" Laurent waved away her comment with his hand and gave Nicole a quick kiss on the top of her head.

  "Une moment, cherie," he said to the child. "Oncle Laurent will be right back with a wonderful birthday present!" With that, he turned and exited the room. Nicole let out a long sigh that surprised Maggie.

  "Hard day, huh?" she said with a smile, reaching for the child's small, cool hand.

  Elspeth returned with Maggie's father in tow, a large drink in each of his hands.

  "Hello again, Daughter," John Newberry said jovially. "Refresh that drink for you?"

  "John," Elspeth said firmly, her eyebrows arched. She was all-business tonight, Maggie noticed. This was clearly to be another family occasion whipped into shape, marched out in front of the video cameras and Kodaks and made to form into a proper memory of the moment. Like the rest of the family, Maggie's father had long ago learned not to resist Elspeth's determination to manufacture life as it should be--life as it damned well would be. He just drank a little more.

  Elspeth looked at Maggie. "Where's Laurent?" she asked.

  "He had to go get something. Well, our birthday present for Nicole, actually," Maggie said cheerfully.

  "Ahhh, yes!" Her father set down one of the glasses and took a healthy sip from the other. "The famous birthday present. Meanwhile, tell us about your upcoming trip."

  "Well..." Maggie hesitated briefly. She crossed her ankles and straightened out the neckline of her knit dress, it was a deep blue and, she knew, offset her dark hair nicely. "Laurent takes me to the airport tomorrow morning," she said. "I'm supposed to be gone about a week, I guess. But if I find anything, I might stay longer."

  "And Gerry doesn't mind, dear?" Her mother moved an errant, silver fork on the dinner table to its proper place next to a plate.

  "Not really. He's so wrapped up in his own plans to bolt the country that he really can't be bothered. I mean, I think he's sympathetic and all..." She shook her head. "but my not being here is way down his list of priorities."

  "What's wrong with him?" her father asked.

  "He's going through a bad stage, Dad. He's worried to death about his family's safety with all the crime in town. This thing with Elise was actually the trigger."

  "I can certainly understand that," Elspeth said.

  "--and taking over the company was more... I don't know ...stressful...than he thought it would be."

  "And he's moving out of the country as a result?" Her father sounded incredulous.

  Maggie nodded. "New Zealand," she said. "In late November. About six weeks from now."

  "How does his wife feel about all this? What's her name?" Elspeth settled into the chair abandoned by Laurent. She took the girl's hand in her own and held it on her knee.

  "Her name's Darla. Not great. How would you feel? I mean, Darla's not the one coming unglued. She doesn't want to leave."

  "Poor man. I don't suppose he'd consider some kind of therapy?" Her father looked genuinely concerned and Maggie felt a sudden rush of love for him.

  "He thinks this is therapy, Dad," she said. "He thinks it's the epitome of mental health to be doing this."

  "Poor lad." He shook his head.

  Suddenly, Maggie's mother gave a small shriek and jumped up, dropping Nicole's hand. Maggie, sitting on the other side of Nicole, jumped up too, although she didn't know why. Her first thought was, bizarrely, that her mother had seen a snake curled up under the child's chair.

  "What is it? What is it?" Maggie moved away from Nicole, totally bewildered. "What's happening?"

  "Nicole!" Elspeth took Nicole by her thin shoulders and forced the child to look at her. Only then did Maggie see the puddle of yellow pooling under Nicole's antique wicker chair.

  "Oh, dear," Maggie said, looking at her father with dismay.

  "Nicole, honey, are you all right---?" her mother asked.

  Suddenly, Nicole jumped up and wrestled free of Elspeth's grip.

  "Laissez-moi tranquille! Laissez-moi tranquille!" she shrieked, running from the room. Her voice, bleating and frantic, echoed through the house, room by room, until they heard the distant slamming of her bedroom door.

  Elspeth sat, twisted around in her chair facing Nicole's exit route, her hands still in the air and her delicate mouth open in a caricature of astonishment.

  Maggie gaped at her mother and then her father and then at the little puddle of urine on the imported Moroccan tile beneath the child's chair.

  She looked up in time to see Laurent walk through the doorway, the squirming little terrier puppy in his arms--its front paws bandaged and a worried glint still in its large dark eyes.

  "Qu'est-ce qui se passe?" his brow puckered in confusion. What's happening?

  "Well," John Newberry said, picking up the other drink from the table and bringing it to his lips. "I believe we just had a breakthrough."

  Maggie turned to face Laurent in the car as it sped through Buckhead.

  "Peeing on the floor and running away screaming 'leave me alone!' during your own birthday party? That's progress?" she asked.

  Her mother had been joyous after the initial shock of Nicole's behavior. So much so, in fact, that the arrival of Laurent with the scruffy little dog seemed to have gotten lost on her usual list of things-to-obsess-and-be-unhappy-about. She had sliced off a large piece of birthday cake, tucked a gaily packaged gift under her arm, and had disappeared upstairs to spend the rest of the evening with Nicole. And although she later admitted that Nicole hadn't uttered another word, it was clear that Elspeth felt encouraged by the incident. She even instructed that the puppy be put in a box with a warm blanket and a bowl of food in the kitchen until Nicole was ready to receive him. Maggie was thunderstruck.

  She, Laurent and her father had retired to the library to eat cake and drink Wild Turkey for the rest of the evening.

  Hey!" She said suddenly, giving his shoulder a shake. "Pull into Selby's for a sec, would you?"

  "Eh?" Laurent began to turn down the street where the advertising agency was located.

  "I forgot, I need that little portable tape recorder Gerry said I could borrow for the trip. It'll just take a second, okay?"

  "Of course." Laurent sighed and rubbed his eyes. After this was all over, she'd make it up to him, she promised herself. She'd swamp him with attention the way she was sure most real French girlfriends do.

  Laurent pulled the Mitsubishi into the office building parking lot and stopped in front of the large double doors. He unbuckled his seatbelt. But she was already out of the car door. "No, darling, pas de necessaire. Don't even turn off the engine. I won't be a minute."

  Maggie dashed for the heavy outside door and used her key to get inside. She stood in front of the lobby elevators, now looming like wicked maws in the vacant lobby and glanced through the side panels of the building's entrance to see Laurent waiting patiently in the car. She punched the Up button and the lift came almost immediately. Holding her keys in a manner that, according to an article she'd read in the newspaper's Sunday Supplement, would enable her to seriously wound or disable any would-be attackers, Maggie stepped off the elevator and onto her office floor. She looked behind her and to the sides, then slid the key into the lock of the agency's front door. She was surprised when it opened easily. It hadn't been locked. She slipped inside, closing the door behind her. Had Jenny forgotten to lock up tonight? Who'd been the last one out?

  The darkened receptionist counter looked sinister to her with its disorderly assortment of telephones, snaking wires, and magazines. Maggie scurried by, cursing herself for the forg
etfulness that had prompted this mission in the first place. She ran past the art director's cubicles and down the hall to her own office. Couldn't this have waited until morning? she wondered, her irritation with herself competing with her edginess.

  She found the light switch and was immediately assaulted with a bedlam of sensations, as if there were a terrible odor in the room that was released with the flick of the switch. She stared into the office, her hand still wavering near the wall. Her desk, quite messy at the best of times, was on its side, its drawers hanging open, reams of paper and open file folders erupting from them like great winged birds frozen in flight. Her desk chair was across the room, upside down. The filing cabinet, although right side up, had its contents scattered everywhere in a white, snowstorm of paper and manila envelopes.

  Maggie felt her stomach lurch violently and she thought for a minute that she might be sick on top of the paper mess. She felt a strange creeping sensation on the back of her neck. One part of her thought she should look for the recorder while another, more controlling, part of her wanted to flee--by the window, if necessary. She thought about calling Gerry. Then, more sensibly, thought about calling the police.

  Instead, she turned and ran.

  Sprinting down the darkened hall, clutching the office key in front of her like a protective talisman, Maggie cut through the conference room to the receptionist's alcove that led to the outside foyer and stumbled over what felt like an oversized bag of laundry. She fell, tumbling face-first into the receptionist's desk, flinging her arms out in an attempt to catch her fall.

  As she scrambled to her feet, cursing Jenny for leaving her gym bag in the middle of the hall, she felt the hard resistance of the “bag.” And then its warmth. Not wanting to know, she turned to look at it.

  It was Dierdre. She lay, staring blankly at Maggie, like an overly-large Madame Alexander doll, her brown curls framing her calm face, her limbs poking senselessly from her torso, which was propped woodenly up against the desk in an affected pose.

  Maggie began to scream.

  Chapter 17

  1

  Maggie got up from the bed, leaving Laurent sleeping peacefully, and padded into the kitchen. As she pulled the refrigerator door open and peered inside, the interior light sliced a wedge out of the darkness.

  It was three o'clock in the morning. The police had allowed them to leave the office building at just before one a.m.

  She pulled out a carton of two-percent milk, grateful she'd been able to convince Laurent to stop buying whole milk. She poured a stream of Hershey's chocolate syrup into a glass, added the milk, stirred vigorously, and took her drink into the living room.

  Punching the buttons on the television remote control, she ran through her viewing choices: a sixties movie about a bunch of hippies intent on overthrowing the United States government, a cooking show with the Galloping Gourmet, a Spanish vocabulary lesson presented by a woman with a very strong Southern accent, and an old Bonanza episode she'd seen at least half a dozen times. Muting the volume for Laurent's sake, she settled on Bonanza and sank back into the couch with her chocolate milk.

  Gerry had come in to the office for questioning just before midnight. Maggie could still see his face, serious and nodding, shocked but not surprised. She thought he looked like one of those converts from some fanatical religious sect who is unable to conceal his pleasure when evidence of man's sins is displayed so prominently. He feels vindicated now, Maggie thought, as she raised the volume on Little Joe just a tad.

  Poor Dierdre. Poor little girl. So happy to be a part of the advertising world, to be a part of its wit and glitter and hard work and excesses. She had obviously surprised the vandal when she stopped by the office to do something. Maggie closed her eyes to blot out the sight of the perky traffic manager propped up against the back of the receptionist's desk like some large, broken mannequin.

  Kazmaroff and Burton had not been able to disguise their surprise at finding Maggie connected to yet another violent death. They probably think it's a simple burglary gone awry, she thought, flipping off the television set. She could still hear Detective Burton' niggling question: "What do you suppose he was looking for, Miss Newberry? In your office, Miss Newberry?" Jesus! Did he think she was withholding clues or evidence or something? How was she supposed to know why her office was trashed? One thing seemed sure, anyway, Maggie reasoned miserably, it couldn't be Gerard this time. The man's been in France for nearly five months. She thought of Gerry's strained, unhappy face. He looked old, she thought. When did that happen?

  She gazed at the television set and then away from it at the front door, which faced the couch.

  This is where Elise sat, Maggie thought. And where, she wondered, had the killer been? Burton and Kazmaroff had said the front door showed no signs of a forced entry. So, the killer had a key? Had he come in while Elise was sleeping? Had he been hiding inside the apartment somewhere? Maggie's eyes lingered on the door to the front hall closet.

  Maggie closed her eyes tightly and imagined Elise, strung out and needy. She'd come home. She'd screwed her life up and everyone knew it. Her parents knew it, her once adoring big sister knew it. Maybe even her little daughter knew it. And so she was sitting here wanting a fix so bad that nothing else mattered. Not her family, not Nicole, not tomorrow.

  And then the closet door had creaked softly and swung open.

  Maggie's eyes flew open and she stared at the closed door of the closet. She felt suddenly cold. Reminding herself that she needed to try to get a few hours sleep before her trip tomorrow morning, she stood up slowly and stretched, hoping the action would incline her toward drowsiness.

  Whatever Elise was feeling or thinking that afternoon, now three months ago, Maggie sensed it wasn't going to help her now in trying to find her killer. Instead, thoughts of it only tended to fill her with an immobilizing sadness and futility. She picked up her empty milk glass, deposited it in the sink and returned to bed.

  In a few hours, she told herself, the real heart of her quest would begin. Tomorrow would be the start of the revelations. If she found out nothing in Paris as to who killed her sister, she would at least find out more about the kind of person her sister had become. She would at least discover who it was who had died in her Buckhead living room six months ago and left so many people so injured.

  2

  The stand-up café counter at the Charles DeGaulle Airport held a dazzling array of pastries and breads. The confections were displayed in staggered tiers to tempt weary travelers as they trudged to and from their international connections. Maggie leaned against a stone pillar, munching a croissant and drinking strong coffee. Noticing that every other person she saw seemed to be puffing away on cigarettes as they moved about their business made her think that perhaps Paris truly was a place out of pace with the rest of the world. Untidy things like emphysema and clogged arteries and destroyed ozone layers must not exist over here, she mused, taking another bite of her flaky, rich roll. And she was glad. A Paris that shrugged indifferently to a concerned, fastidious other-world was the sophisticated Paris every romantic traveler expected to see.

  This was only Maggie's second visit to Paris. The first, when she was thirteen years old, had been on a shopping trip with her mother and sister. Paris had enchanted her then and, even now she was expectant about her return to the City of Light.

  Dumping the remnants of her breakfast in a rubbish bin, Maggie hoisted the strap of her carry-on bag to her shoulder and dove into the bustle of pedestrians moving frenetically within the large airport. She planned to change her currency first, then buy a metro ticket to La gar du Nord. Although she was tempted to take a taxi to her hotel, Maggie reminded herself that she was on a budget.

  Dierdre's death seemed to have caused a bigger stir among Fulton County's finest than Elise's, and why this should be, Maggie wasn't sure. She didn't know much about Dierdre. She knew she'd graduated two years ago from the University of Georgia with a major in advertising. She knew tha
t Dierdre had loved her job at Selby & Parker. What she didn't know was why she was dead.

  The events of the last twenty-four hours and the burgeoning symptoms of jet lag combined to give Maggie a glassy-eyed look and a slightly hysterical feeling. Although she had bought an open-ended ticket to Paris and could leave whenever her business was completed, she knew she couldn't stay long. And now she wished very much that Laurent had come with her after all. As she went through the motions of buying her metro ticket and then boarding the train, she was overwhelmed by how much everything reminded her of him. Together with her thrill of being in Paris again, she felt a wistful longing for him.

  The train ride to La gar du Nord took her past forty minutes of seedy Paris suburbs and nondescript office parks. She stared out the train window and wondered if Elise had known anyone in these dirty tenements, these bland and impoverished apartments of concrete. It was amazing to her that such ugliness could ring what some would say is the most architecturally blessed city in the world.

  Once at the train station, tired and unwilling to decipher the bus schedule that would take her the rest of the way to her hotel, Maggie found a taxi and handed the driver the address of her hotel on the Left Bank. The driver, a large, malodorous woman lolling on a seat cover made of rolling wooden beads, seemed irritated either with Maggie's lack of bags or, perhaps, her destination. At any rate, she snorted continually throughout the long drive to the Hotel d'Etoile Verte on Rue Tournon and refused to look at Maggie when they arrived. Maggie tipped generously and left the taxi with relief.

  It's just the long trip, she told herself as she trudged up the few short steps to the concierge's desk in the hotel. She checked in and took the single, rattling elevator to the third floor.

  Maggie opened the hotel door onto a small, clean room with a double bed shoved up against one wall, a large armoire facing the door, a small w.c. and a bathtub. There were even little chalk and plaster busts of cherubs and various goddesses scattered about the room. Over the bed hung a huge, gilt-framed oil painting of Napoleon crossing a treacherous sea--on his way to exile in St. Helene, she wondered? The painting dominated the room. But best of all was the set of French windows that opened outwards onto a Paris roof with Paris pigeons and a melancholy view of more Paris roofs. Espying the impressive dome of Le Pantheon from her window, Maggie felt another thrill. The pigeons cooed amiably and pecked at each other and the roof.