Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) (18 page)

“Yes, well, I’m
sure Jacques helped with that, too.”

“I know. But
still.” Maggie visibly shook herself out of the morose reflection and tossed
her cellphone onto the coffee table. “Okay,” she said. “So I’ve got two
guys—David Armstrong and Yves Briande—who publicly threatened
Jacques. But he was such a weasel that’s probably not significant. Both of them
have good alibis.” Maggie looked at Grace as if for guidance. “I should
probably cross both of them off my list, but I’ve had suspects in the past with
so-called good alibies and they ended up being the murderer.”

“You have not.”

“Okay, but I’ve
heard of it happening before.”

“Is there more
wine?” Grace got up and walked to the kitchen. “Let’s assume for our purposes,”
she said, “that alibis actually mean something. What if you were to eliminate
suspects on the basis of no opportunity—just to make things easier.”

“Okay, fine. Then
on my no-alibi list I’ve got Florrie, Mathieu, Annette, Julia and who knows whom
else. It’s very possible the killer is someone I don’t even know yet. I mean,
before last week I didn’t know Mathieu existed.”

“Annette doesn’t
have an alibi?” Grace returned to the living room with her glass and resettled
on the couch.

“She supposedly
does but no one can tell me what it is.”

“Michelle?”

“Iron-clad.”

“Too bad.”

“Yeah, I know.
But patricide is pretty serious stuff, even for a nutcase like Michelle.”

“Well, add the
fact that she’s crazy to her being French, too.”

“Yeah, I’m still
not seeing it. Her alibi is too good. She was at a defensive driving class at
the time.”

“I’m shocked to
learn France even has such a thing. But also, I didn’t realize the police were
able to narrow down the parameter on when he could’ve been poisoned. I thought
I heard Laurent say that
agaricus
mushrooms can poison you immediately or they can take awhile to work.”

“They
did
take awhile. The police are saying
they took however long it was for Jacques to say goodnight, drive to his own
flat and collapse.”

“Looks like
they’re pretty serious about making your friend Julia fit the crime time line.”

“Yeah, looks
like.”

“Your editor stop
harassing you?”

“What?”

“Your editor. Has
she stopped calling you? I don’t remember you having to dodge her calls this
week.”

Maggie sighed.
“Yeah, she’s stopped. Worse than that. When I had a moment yesterday to call
her back, I had to leave a voice mail.”

“What’s wrong
with that?”

“Nothing, except
my emails are going unanswered, too.”

“That’s not
good.”

“I mean, we have
a contract so I’m not really worried.”

“Maybe that’s
what
she
was saying all those weeks
that you weren’t answering
her
calls and
emails.”

“Yeah, maybe. I
really hope I haven’t screwed this up. It’s just that there was no way I was
going to get those edits done in time.”

“You could have
just told her. Asked for an extension.”

“I should have,”
Maggie said, feeling weary. “I just didn’t want to deal with it, you know? I
felt overwhelmed by it. And the publisher had made such a big deal about how
much they loved my work that when it came back all bleeding and ripped to
shreds, I think I lost confidence.”

“You didn’t
expect your work to be edited?” Grace frowned. “I thought that was the whole
point of a having a publisher.”

“Yeah, but I
almost didn’t recognize the book after they got through
editing
it.”

“You need to
write her back, apologize and request as professionally as possible for a time
extension.”

“I know. That’s
what Laurent said, too.”

“So do it. And
whatever happens, happens.”

“Great philosophy,”
Maggie said sarcastically as she stood and gathered up her phone.

“Actually, it
is,” Grace said with a laugh. “And nobody’s more surprised about it than I am.”

They should have done this right from the start.

Even in the
beginning, their relationship had always been about shopping. Why hadn’t Maggie
remembered that? It hadn’t taken thirty minutes into a full day of shopping in
the boutiques and clothing stores of Aix before Maggie remembered what it felt
like to have a best girlfriend. The shorthand between the two of them, the
inane comments and the giggles, the comfortable roles they’d both adopted years
ago—Grace as the fashion mentor and Maggie as the hopelessly inept but
willing pupil.

It worked
wonderfully for both of them.

Talk about retail therapy,
Maggie thought as she glanced at the bags and packages at
her feet. She sat with Grace in a very upscale
brasserie
at the end of a perfect lunch of wine-poached salmon with
black truffles.

“I’m in heaven,” Maggie
said, rubbing her stomach contentedly, the remnants of a chocolate
gâteau
on the table in front of her.

“I know,” Grace
said, sipping her coffee. She had already reapplied her lipstick after having
eschewed dessert. Maggie couldn’t help but notice how much more relaxed Grace was
these last two days. A shopping trip in Aix appeared to be pretty much the
topper on Grace’s emotional rehabilitation. It wasn’t going to fix everything, Maggie
knew that. Her love for clothes and jewelry aside, Grace was the least shallow
person Maggie knew. But it was a baby step in the right direction.

“I guess I didn’t
feel good about doing stuff like this while Julia was still in jail,” Maggie
said thoughtfully. “It didn’t feel right when I know she’s suffering.”

“I can see that,”
Grace said. “But you know the two have nothing to do with each other.”

“Well,
intellectually I know that,” Maggie said. “But I can’t help how I feel.”

“Well, you know that’s
not true,” Grace said, signaling the waiter for the check. “Did I tell you that
I called Windsor last night?”

Maggie pushed her
dessert plate to the side and sat up straight. “Really? How did that go?”

Grace sighed. “It
had its ups and downs. But for the most part, it was good.”

“I’m glad.”

“This is really
hard on him, too. Even with a girlfriend to dry his tears.”

“Of course.”

“I should’ve done
it days ago. He said Laurent called him last week.”

“Really?” Maggie
frowned. Laurent hadn’t mentioned it to her.

“He was able to
give a good report on Zou-zou which, of course, Win was starved to hear. He
loves her so much.”

Maggie thought
she could see a glimmer of tears in Grace’s eyes but it was gone before she
could be sure.

“But mostly it
seems he let Win know that there are no divided camps over what we’re doing.
The Derniers, he said, aren’t taking sides. They are loving and supporting the
badly screwed up Van Sants equally.”

“But probably not
those exact words,” Maggie said, smiling.

Grace replaced
her credit card and snapped her wallet shut. “Ready, darling? I promised
Danielle I’d be back to collect Z before supper.”

“We can pick her
up on the way home,” Maggie said, collecting her purchases from the floor next
to her chair. Knowing that Win had spoken to both Grace and Laurent made Maggie
feel, irrationally, that they were all one big loving group again. It may not
fix things or bring Grace and Windsor back together, but at least they weren’t
pretending they had never been friends in the first place.

As she stepped
out of the restaurant, the bright sunshine in the fall day made Maggie blink.
She shivered inside her light jacket against the brisk breeze. Autumn was
definitely here.

Would Julia be free by Thanksgiving? By Christmas?

Because of
Maggie’s size—she was eight months and two weeks now—she was
grateful to be able to hand the car keys over to Grace. It amazed her how she had
gone from comfortably driving without a problem to not at all in just a few
days.

Maggie settled
into the passenger seat of her Renault as they drove out of the city and
allowed herself to enjoy her surroundings.
Aix
was so much more visual
than the other
cities in Provence
. Maybe that was due to all the majestic
fountains—one on each corner of the city it felt like—but it was
also the way Aix-en-Provence seemed to be able to blend the old and the quaint buildings
with the new and the streamlined architecture. Somehow it worked. Maggie always
thought that if she and Laurent ever moved in from the country, she would want
to live in Aix. The thought made her smile because the very idea of Laurent
leaving his vineyard—and his sometimes leaky but definitely beloved one
hundred year old
mas
in the
country—was hard to imagine.

“You okay over
there?” Grace asked. Maggie noticed that Grace was squinting through her
sunglasses and it occurred to her that Grace might need glasses. The thought of
them all getting older, day by day, brought a shadow into the sunny pleasant
day.

“I’ll be better
when this little bugger is in a car seat in the backseat,” Maggie said, rubbing
her tummy.

“Yes, well, be
careful what you wish for,” Grace said. “Next thing you know he’ll be walking,
and then asking to borrow the car. I turn here, right?”

Maggie directed
her out of the city and onto the D7n, the highway that dissects that part of
Provence, separating Aix from Avignon and Arles. She fell asleep on the drive
back, awakening only with the press of the newest Dernier-to-be on her bladder.
She looked around and saw they were still a good thirty minutes from home.

“I need to make a
pit stop,” she said, rubbing her eyes. Pregnancy naps were so hard to wake up
from. They were like a functioning coma that you could lapse into at any moment
of the day. Once when she was standing in line with Laurent at the
boulangerie
in Arles, he swore she nodded
off.

“We’re not really
close to anything,” Grace said, looking over at her as if trying to gauge just
how desperate she was.

“There’s a place off
the road up here,” Maggie said. “It’s actually a pretty decent little
restaurant. In fact, Florrie Tatois owns it.”

“You’re kidding.
Really?”

“Well, not really
a restaurant. More like a bar with not bad food.”

“No, I meant out
here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Yeah, you have
to know it’s here. You can’t see it from the highway. Laurent goes there now
and then. I think his vintner buddies meet there sometimes. There’s the turn
off. Don’t miss it, Grace.”

“Got it, darling.
No worries. The sparkling toilet facilities of a dilapidated French country bar
in the middle of nowhere await you. Oh! I see it. Looks abandoned.”

“That’s the
décor. Just park.”

Grace pulled into
the parking area next to an older model Citroen. Maggie was out the door and
walking into the bar before Grace had her seatbelt off. She glanced around the
main dining area and saw two men at the bar, neither of them Florrie, and
nobody behind the counter. A couple sat in the dining room, but they appeared
to be drinking more than eating. Maggie hurried down the narrow hall to the
toilets. She could hear Grace coming in the front door as she did.

Like most French
toilets in the country, the facilities at Florrie’s place, while cleaner than
she had any right to expect, were old and dark. Maggie always thought these
sorts of places boasted the original plumbing and that made her feel a little
nervous, like she was about to fall into a deep dark hole of human waste, and
probably undiscovered corpses.

She quickly
relieved herself and decided to skip the hand washing exercise. There didn’t
seem to be any soap or paper towels in any event. A quick look into the
ancient, wavy mirror confirmed what she had already guessed; she had better
deliver this baby pronto if she didn’t want to be drafted into a traveling
carnival as the circus fat lady.

Amusing herself
with silly thoughts, Maggie wasn’t watching where she was going as she pushed
the door open into the hallway.

“Ready for a few
more tricks, bitch?”

The woman stood
directly in front of her, wearing a short skirt and a shorter top that showed a
wide expanse of her bare midriff. Maggie couldn’t see the expression on her
face in the darkened hallway, but she had no trouble recognizing Michelle
standing between her and the door to the dining room at the end of the hall.
She also had no difficulty in making out the heavy cricket bat that Michelle held
tightly in both hands.

Chapter
Sixteen

There was no way Michelle wasn’t full-on crazy.
 
That was the first thought that ran through Maggie’s head, and it was
one that gave her a whole lot less comfort than if she hadn’t thought anything
at all. She licked her lips and wondered what she could say that wouldn’t
trigger Michelle to strike.

“You came to my
apartment and lied to me,” Michelle hissed. “You think I’m stupid? You think
I’m crazy?” Maggie could see Michelle was actually spraying foam from her lips
as she talked. An inane thought floated into Maggie’s head that Michelle was
literally foaming at the mouth.

“How did you find
me?” she asked, hoping that engaging the insane woman was at least a possible
way to forestall the attack.

“I followed you.
You think that’s hard? You really must think I’m stupid, don’t you?” Michelle
swung the bat hard and slammed it into the wall in the narrow hall.

Maggie screamed.

“I watched you
and your friend buy everything in Aix and then eat a three-course lunch before getting
in your car to go home to your country estate. I know how rich you are. Americans
think they can buy their way through the world.”

Maggie’s brain
couldn’t decipher all of Michelle’s rant. The contorted French and the rage
made that impossible. Obviously Michelle had been watching her and Grace in
their shopping today and followed her here. If Maggie hadn’t slept all the way
from Aix she
might
have noticed someone
behind them, but probably not. It hadn’t occurred to her to be afraid or
careful. It hadn’t occurred to her that someone was watching her, that someone
wanted to hurt her.

 
But by the way Michelle was edging up
closer for the kill shot, it was clear that the next swing would be into
Maggie’s body. As she got closer, Maggie could see Michelle’s eyes were wild
and unfocused and Maggie realized she was probably on some kind of
medication—or off it. Grace appeared from behind Michelle and promptly did
the only sensible thing anyone could do in the situation.
     

She started screaming.

Michelle jumped
at the sound but didn’t turn around. She didn’t need to. She was the one with
the weapon.

“Look, Michelle,”
Maggie said, “I don’t think you’re stupid, so I know you know how this goes. As
much as you want to hurt me, you do this and you’ll hurt yourself far worse.”

“Shut up!”
Michelle roared. She raised the bat over her head, as if smashing Maggie’s body
was no longer enough. “Nothing hurts more than this! Nothing!”

Maggie could hear
Grace’s screams bouncing off the narrow walls, but she couldn’t wait any
longer. Knowing she would trigger the attack but not knowing what else she
could do, Maggie turned back toward the toilet and darted inside, pulling the
heavy door behind her. She fumbled at the doorknob but there was no lock. The
impact of the bat hitting the door sent painful vibrating shock waves up the
arm that was still holding the door handle. Maggie threw her body against the
door to keep it shut but she knew, even as large as she was, that Michelle was
younger and stronger.

And she was
crazy.

The second crash
as the bat hit the door made her ears ring and her shoulders lurch away with
the impact. The floor of the toilet was wet, and when she jerked she slipped.
Grabbing desperately for the sink to keep from falling, Maggie heard the door
opening behind her and Michelle’s insane crow of victory. Looking wildly around
the room for anything that could be used as a weapon, Maggie waited for the
blow she knew was coming.

But it never
came.

She turned around
to see Michelle standing in the doorway facing her, arms by her sides, the bat
falling to the ground. At first, Maggie thought Michelle was having some kind
of fit. Maggie scrambled to grab the bat and held it in front of her with both hands
like a sword. It was then that she realized she had been screaming the whole
time.

With a convulsive
jerk, Michelle, who was howling threats and profanity at the person holding her,
disappeared from the opening of the toilet and Maggie saw that she was tightly
in the grip of her cousin, Florrie, who was wrestling her down the hall. Grace
entered the bathroom and Maggie dropped the bat as Grace drew her into a tight
embrace. They both stood quietly, their hearts pounding in their ears, their
breaths coming in ragged pants.

Finally Grace
pulled away and looked into Maggie’s eyes. “You okay?”

“I need a drink,
”Maggie said, her voice shaky.

“Is that wise?”

“Water will do.”

They left the
toilet arm-in-arm and slowly walked down the hall to the dining room, which had
been vacated by the few patrons who had been there. Florrie stood next to
Michelle. She was unrestrained but he was still near enough to grab her again
if he had to. They both turned to Grace and Maggie as they entered.

“You bitch!”
Michelle said. “This isn’t the end.”

“Be quiet, Michelle,”
Florrie said with what looked like exasperation to Maggie. She noticed he had
deep scratch marks down his face. He had obviously paid a price for coming to
her aid.

“Don’t you tell
me to be quiet, you
putain
,” Michelle
said, whirling back to face Florrie. “I am not surprised that you take her
side. You are not a man but a worm to steal my money from me.”

Grace approached
the bar and pulled a glass from the shelf under the counter. She watched the
two without speaking as she filled the glass with water and returned to Maggie.

“What are you
talking about?” Florrie said. “What money do you think I’ve stolen from you?”

“My inheritance!
Aunt Lily intended that money to go to my father. To
me
!”

“And you think
that money goes to me now?” Florrie shook his head as if unable to encompass
how mad that idea was.

That stopped Michelle.
She glanced at Maggie as if tempted to pick up a chair and go after her, but
the thought that Florrie was possibly
not
the heir after all was apparently too great. “You lie,” she said, her eyes
searching his face in an attempt to determine whether he was or not.

“I’m not next in
line, Michelle,” Florrie said, his voice a warning growl. “I am not Lily’s
heir.”

“Everyone knows
you are. If not you, then who?”

Florrie turned
toward the bar and reached for a bottle of
pastis
.

“It
is
you!” Michelle said, her voice
becoming shrill.

“It isn’t.” The
voice that answered wasn’t Florrie’s. All four people in the bar turned to face
the source, and saw that Annette had entered unnoticed through the front door.
She stood now, her purse over her arm, a ridiculous bouquet of flowers in her
hand. Maggie thought she had aged ten years since she last saw her.

“
Maman
! What are you doing here?”
Michelle frowned and looked from Florrie to her mother and back again. She
appeared to have totally forgotten that Maggie and Grace were even there. “Why
are you here?”

“I am here
because I had an appointment with your cousin. It’s you who shouldn’t be here.”
Annette glanced in the direction of Maggie. “What has happened?”

Michelle clenched
her fists and stared at Maggie with loathing. “I saw them in town,” she said.
“I followed them here.”

“I told you I
would deal with her,” Annette said quietly. “What happened, Florrie?”

Florrie poured
his glass and drank it before clapping the glass to the counter. “Michelle
tried to kill Madame Dernier,” he said. “With a bat.”

“Dear God,” Annette
said and looked at Michelle. “What is wrong with you?”

“Me? What about
him?” She pointed to Florrie and Maggie could see her other hand open and close
spasmodically into a fist in her agitation. “You said yourself he has stolen
the inheritance of an orphan!”

Florrie looked at
Annette. “What is this she keeps saying about my stealing her inheritance? Is
it possible she doesn’t know?”

Annette glanced
at Maggie. “We will not have this discussion in front of strangers.”

“Oh, hell, no,”
Maggie said. “I’m not leaving.”

Grace pulled
Maggie gently by the shoulders toward the door. “Come on, Lucy,” she said under
breath. “Before you start competing with Michelle for who’s craziest.”

“Do
what
in front of strangers?” Michelle
asked, taking two steps toward her mother. “What do you and Florrie know that I
do not?”

“Tell her, Annette,”
Florrie said. “Tell her the truth.”

“I was going to
tell you,” Annette said in a soothing voice. Maggie could see the girl was
getting even more flustered. She licked her lips continually and stared at her
mother.

“Tell me what?”

“
I
am Lily’s heir,” Annette said. “It was
unexpected…for all of us,” she said hurriedly as she watched Michelle’s face
contort into incomprehension.

“I’ll say,”
Florrie said with disgust. “I have attended Lily’s affairs for nearly ten
years. I have visited her every Sunday for the last five…”

“What are you
saying?” Michelle glanced at Florrie, as if reluctant to let him go in her
stream of comfortable vitriol, and then at her mother. Maggie could see the
wheels moving in her brain as she tried to figure out if this was a good thing
or a bad thing. Since Annette was not an old woman, the time when
Michelle
would inherit from her—if
there was anything left by then—would be many years hence. Michelle
seemed to come to the same conclusion at about the same time.

“You lied to me!”
she snarled at her mother. “You said you were broke and you couldn’t help me.”

“I
am
broke,” her mother said. “Your Aunt Lily
still lives.”

“Not for much
longer. You’ll be rich by the weekend!”

“Michelle, please
stop yourself from saying these vile things.”

“Vile? It is
you
who is vile! You disgust me!” She
ran up to her mother and slapped the flowers out of her hands to the floor.
“Did
he
give you these?” she shouted.
“Is he wooing the new heiress? Is that why he’s wearing a new shirt?” She
turned to look at Florrie who, Maggie had to admit, was beginning to look
decidedly guilty.
Was Florrie with Annette?

“
Mon chou
,” Annette said pleadingly to
her.

“Oh, stop,
Maman
,” Michelle said pushing past her
to the door. “Marry him or drop dead. I don’t care which!” She stormed out the
door, followed by the piercing squeal of a car’s engine as it roared to life, then
slowly diminished as she sped away.

Annette turned to
Maggie, her face a mask of composure, her lip pulled back in a sneer. “I would
not think of reporting this so-called attack to the police if I were you,” she
said.

“Oh, really?”
Maggie said, her breath coming in sharp pants.

“Come on, Lucy,”
Grace said. “Time to go.”

“I would listen
to your friend, Madame,” Annette said, stepping around the tangle of broken
stems underfoot. “If you know what’s good for your
other
friend.” She turned her back on Maggie as if the conversation
were over. Maggie hesitated for only a moment before grabbing Grace’s arm and
staggering to the door. Once out, she leaned heavily against the bumper of the
Renault, her hand on her stomach.

“Sweetie, are you
okay?” Grace came around to touch her shoulder.

“You know what? I
don’t think I am.”

“Shit, darling,
you’re not allowed to go into labor on my watch. Laurent and I made a pact.”

“Sorry, Grace. I
think you’re up.” Maggie’s face twisted into a grimace of pain as she waited
the contraction out.

“Holy crap,
Maggie, are you serious? Get in the car! Get in the car!”

An hour later,
Maggie sat in a wheelchair in the hospital in Aix waiting for Laurent to come
and take her home. Grace sat next to her flipping through a waiting room
magazine.

“You know, I’ve
forgotten almost all the French I ever knew,” Grace said idly. “Trust me, all
it takes is one year in Indiana to erase any and all vestige of a foreign language
from your mind.”

“I think it has
more to do with your mind than it does Indiana,” Maggie said. “Have you even
heard of Braxton-Hicks?”

“Of course,
darling. Everyone’s heard of it. Well, mostly just pregnant people, I guess.”

“Well, how can
you tell it apart from the real thing? Are you sure it’s too late to catch
Laurent? I hate for him to come all the way to Aix for nothing.”

“It’s not for
nothing, darling. He’s your husband. It’s what husbands of pregnant women do.”

“Yeah, I guess.
Listen, Grace, speaking of that, I hope I don’t need to tell you that this afternoon
is not the kind of thing we share with Laurent, right? I mean, it’s bad enough
that I spent way more than I told him I would at that one shoe store, but being
attacked by a maniac with a baseball bat…well, you know how Laurent is.”