Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) (15 page)

Her breathing was
coming a little hard and she cursed the fact that Laurent was probably right; the
late pregnancy was slowing her down and she should be resting more. The heat of
the early fall day was dissipated by the canopy of leaves that had yet to fall
and Maggie was grateful for the shade. Stepping through the thick bushes off
the trail—and praying they weren’t riddled with poison ivy—she
spotted a clump of mushrooms at the base of a withered banyan tree. Pulling the
printout from her pocket, she edged closer to the grouping. She knelt down next
to the mushrooms and tried to compare what she saw on the ground with what was
in the picture. They looked identical. But they also looked very much like the
mushrooms that she and Laurent bought from the market in Aix each Saturday.
Hell, they looked like the mushrooms she
used to buy from her local Kroger back in Atlanta.
She sank to one knee in
the damp dirt, unable to balance easily at her new heavier weight.

“Crap.” She
pulled herself up using the side of the tree by grabbing a low hanging branch,
which promptly broke off in her grasp nearly sending her over backward. She
caught herself in time and leaned against the tree, taking a moment to regroup.
Could Julia possibly have made a mistake?
They look so much like the poisoned mushrooms in the picture. Could she have
accidentally
fed Jacques the wrong
mushrooms? She shook her head. But Julia ate the omelet, too.

She said.

Maggie hated the
kernel of doubt that seemed to be interfering with every theory she developed
lately.
Could Julia have done it? Could
she have planned it?
Reminding herself that she hadn’t known her all that
long, Maggie stooped again to look at the mushrooms and, although not sure why,
snapped a photo of them. As soon as she stood up she heard somewhere close by
the sound a dry stick makes when a heavy foot treads on it. Whirling around to
see who or what was approaching, Maggie was struck full in the face by a hard,
wide hand that grabbed her harshly, covering her nose and mouth.

Chapter
Thirteen

Maggie fought for
breath as she clawed at the hand over her face. At first she could only smell
and feel what was happening to her. Her sight seemed to have failed as she
grappled with her assailant. Even at eight months pregnant, she felt light and
inconsequential in the punishing grasp of the much larger man. She struggled to
free herself from his tightening grip. At the exact moment she knew she was
losing the fight for breath, he took his hands from her face. He held her at
arms’ length from him. She stumbled against him, gasping, her knees weak and
doing nothing to support her weight. He held her in her standing position, his
arms shaking with either exertion or anger.

When she had
gotten her breath back enough to register her surroundings again, she saw that
it was
him
.

Mathieu.

He looked even
more terrifying close up. His bottom lip was punctured by several hooks and
piercings. His lips were pulled back in a grimace in what looked like barely-controlled
revulsion. For one mad moment, Maggie thought he intended to bite her.

“What are you
doing here?” he growled in guttural French. She could barely understand him,
the languorous weight of the difficult
patois
of the region stretching out his syllables, distorting the words she should
have known so well. He shook her and repeated his question.

“I’m here for
Julia,” she said, her voice rasping in fear even to her own ears.

A mixture of
distrust and guilt seemed to cross his face, but maybe she imagined that. If he
killed Jacques—and he certainly looked like he could have—he would
have no problem killing her, too.
Was he
trying to protect Julia? Or was he using her to cover his own tracks?

“M-many people
know I am here today,” she said, trying to hear her own words over the pounding
of her heart in her ears. “If…if you hurt me…”

Abruptly, he let
go of her and she fell to her knees on the damp ground, her cellphone, which
had been clutched in her hand, falling into the mushrooms at the base of the
tree. She looked up at him, her fear evolving to a strange numbness.
 
Was
she going to die here…in the peaceful forest…in Julia’s special place?
Maggie
looked past him into the verdant dark interior and felt a strange peace come
over her which blocked out the vision of the towering form of the angry man.

Suddenly Mathieu threw
something in the bushes and ran toward the parking lot. Maggie didn’t turn to
watch him go. She could hear the sounds of breaking branches and crushed
brushes that heralded his departure. Depleted, physically and emotionally, she
sank against the tree and waited to get her strength back, her glance falling
on the little burlap bag floating atop the bushes beside her.

It took Maggie
nearly a quarter of an hour to make her way back to the parked car. She could
see that all the cars in the parking lot were gone now. She wondered who the
other people had been and if they had witnessed the assault. If so, they
certainly hadn’t done anything to help. She picked her way gingerly to the car
from the trail. She had only been about five minutes into the forest, but from
where she lay after Mathieu grabbed her, it had felt like much more. Her dress
was ruined, streaked with mud, and she’d scratched one leg, which bled, when
she fell into the bushes, but otherwise no real harm done. The baby was kicking
merrily along, she noticed as she slid into the driver’s seat of her car, so
clearly he hadn’t been negatively impacted by her adventure.

But she knew it
had been a close all. From the comfort and safety of her car, she tried to
imagine what Laurent would do or say if he knew that she had been physically
attacked in the woods today. Suffice to say, he could never know. Today
Laurent’s worst fears had nearly been realized. She had taken a chance and she
had suffered the consequence of it. She pulled down the visor to examine her
face in the mirror.
What if Julia really
was guilty? What if she and that thug had committed murder? And here I am going
around jeopardizing my life—and the life of my baby—for someone who
doesn’t deserve it?

That thought stopped
her because of course it wasn’t a matter of
deserving,
and she, of all people, should know that. She wasn’t doing all this to free
Julia because her friend had somehow proven herself worthy. She was doing it
because she believed she knew Julia well enough to know she wasn’t capable of
this crime.

She smiled into
the mirror, ignoring the dirt.
Julia
didn’t kill Jacques
. Not like this. Not by planning it, finding the
mushrooms, preparing them, inviting him over and feeding them to him. No way.
Maybe in the middle of a terrible argument with a quickly grabbed up steak
knife to the heart…but that was not how Jacques died.
And this way, the way he did die, well, there was no way Julia Patrick
could have done that.
Maggie knew it as well as she knew anything. And had
always known it.

Feeling more at
peace than she had in days, she started the car. She assumed she had plenty of
time to bathe and change clothes before Laurent was home from his long day in
the vineyard, but she would feel better when she was cleaned up. She glanced
briefly at the burlap bag in the passenger’s seat next to her. Inside were a
variety of different kinds of mushrooms—none of which looked anything
like the deadly ones in Maggie’s Internet photo. If Mathieu had been in the
forest foraging for mushrooms—as it now appeared he was—he was
either very bad at telling the deadly ones from the good ones, or he didn’t currently
have anybody else he wanted to kill.

*
                          
*
                                 
*
                                 
*

He stared at his
hands until they stopped shaking. In the past, he had trained himself to
control the shaking, even willed himself to lower the numbers when the corpsman
strapped on the blood pressure cuff. It could be done. He had done it
. If you were disciplined. If you knew your
own strengths, you could conquer your own weaknesses.
He dropped his hands
and slumped against the steering wheel, resting his head on his arms.

 
How
close had he come to hurting that woman?

It had all
happened too fast. One minute he was alone and the next she was
there—there where she shouldn’t be.
Damn!
He had just wanted to stop her from being there, to make her leave, but he
could see how frightened she was. And
he
had done that. Attacking the woman in the forest today…that made three major
lapses in a week. Allowing himself to be caught at the laboratory was
particularly galling.
And then, of
course, the other. With Julia.
He cringed to think of it. To think of her.
He had to face it now. There was no good in pretending otherwise.

He was no longer
in control at all.

And he knew
better than anyone what hell that promised.

Desperate to use
the bathroom, Maggie was dismayed to see that the driveway of
Domaine St-Buvard
appeared to be
blocked. Upon closer inspection, her dismay turned to nausea and a churning
stomach when she saw that the vehicles blocking the drive were police cars.

While it had been
years since she had any real worries about Laurent’s criminal past, she was
sickened to realize as she drove slowly up the driveway that in some ways they
had always been right below the surface. Seeing the police now at her house—two
cars with four police officers standing in the driveway—she knew without
knowing that they were here for Laurent.

She parked her
car on the grassy side of the driveway and hurried toward the grouping. One of
the men was smoking. He watched her approach with a frown, as if annoyed to
have to deal with her. Maggie could see that the few pickers who still remained
to do the last little bit of work had stopped and were watching the proceedings
with apparent fascination. She saw Laurent as soon as she rounded the curved
bend in the driveway. It was hard not to. He was the tallest of the five men
and he stood among them, his back ramrod straight, his thick dark hair tousled
and flying about his face. His hands handcuffed behind his back.

“Laurent!” she
cried out as she trotted toward him. He turned toward her and his look wasn’t one
of welcome or relief.
He probably hoped
to be gone before I returned,
she thought helplessly.

She confronted
the smoking cop, the first one she came to. “What is the meaning of this?”

He took a long
drag on his cigarette and eyed her from head to toe. “Your name, Madame?” he
said in the thick accent of the region.

Bumpkin!
Maggie thought with frustration, turning from him to where the other police
were putting Laurent into the back of one of the cruisers.

“Can someone tell
me what’s going on? Laurent, where are they taking you?” Maggie knew she
sounded close to tears and she hated that. It was hard enough on him without
his having to soothe her, too.

“
Cela ne fait rien, ch
é
rie
,”
he said.
It’s nothing
. “Go inside. I
will call you later.”

“Laurent, no,”
Maggie said. “Are you under arrest?” She turned to the two policemen who were
sliding into the front seat of the cruiser. “What are the charges?” she asked
them.

“Go inside,
ch
é
rie
,”
Laurent repeated, his face creased with dirt from a day in the fields, his
voice pinched with tension.

Maggie watched as
the two cars backed out of the drive and disappeared. She turned and bolted for
the house.

Grace was sitting
on the couch in the living room with Petit-Four on her lap. She looked like she
had just awakened although it was well after four in the afternoon.

“There’s a lot of
noise going on outside,” Grace said without looking up at Maggie. “It woke me
up.”

Maggie ignored
her and raced upstairs to the bathroom where, after using the toilet, she
quickly washed her face of any telltale dirt of her encounter in the forest and
hurried downstairs.

“Where’s Z?”
Maggie asked as she fumbled for her cellphone and her car keys in her purse.

Grace shrugged.
“With Danielle, I imagine.”
 

Maggie hesitated.
“Are you going to be okay? I have to go to Aix.”

Grace leaned down
and hugged the little dog. “Petit-Four and I will be fine, won’t we, pet?”

Afraid that Grace
was either losing her mind or on drugs or both, but knowing she didn’t have
time to deal with it in any case, Maggie turned and, for the second time that
day, fled the house.

Once in the
Renault, Maggie adjusted her seatbelt across her belly and slammed the car into
reverse. She backed up the driveway. It would take thirty minutes to get to the
A8 and another thirty to reach Aix. She put on her earphones and punched in
Roger’s number. She didn’t expect him to answer—he’d stop taking her
calls days ago—and particularly not today, but it didn’t matter. She had
sixty minutes—or however long his voice mail could hold—of venting
that he could listen to at his leisure.

When the recorded
message finished, she ratcheted up the volume and began. “This is a low move
even for you, Roger,” she said, feeling her fury build the moment she started
speaking. “This is harassment in any language. What’s the matter? Was I getting
too close to some important answers? Were you afraid of being shown up by the
pregnant American?
Again
? I thought
better of you, Roger. Seriously. Ask your model girlfriend if she’s impressed
with this kind of behavior. What is it, exactly, that you think you’re—”

“I would stop now
before you find yourself in very big trouble, Madame Dernier.” Roger’s smooth
voice slithered across the connection and Maggie was so surprised that she was
momentarily speechless.

“You…you know
this is harassment, Roger,” she said finally. “You can’t just arrest people
because you’ve got a bur under your saddle.”

“I didn’t. Your
husband was brought in as a result of a complaint made against him by one of
his pickers.”

“That’s a lie,”
Maggie said hotly. “Laurent’s workers love him. To a man.”

“You are
misinformed as to the character of your husband, Madame Dernier,” Roger said
unctuously. Maggie imagined him rubbing his hands together with glee. “Many
wives often are, I am told.”

“What kind of
complaint?”

“Physical abuse.”

“No way. Laurent
would never hit anyone.”

“Even if he were
defending your honor? That’s quite a statement. I’m not sure I could attest to
being so restrained myself under that circumstance.”

“I do not know
what kind of bullshit game you’re playing, Roger, but it is beneath you. This
is the behavior of jealous maniac.”