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

“Well, that’s
great then,” Grace said, her eyes filling with tears.

Maggie scooted
over to her on the chair and Grace moved to accommodate her.

“Why are you
here, Grace?” she asked quietly. “What’s going on with you and Win?”

“Nothing good,”
Grace said, brightly, blinking back the tears. “Nothing good.”

Laurent’s nights
out were rare and Maggie hated to begrudge him the few he did take. Besides his
monthly co-op meetings in Aix where all the
vignerons
collaborated and exchanged notes, and his one night a week at
Le Canard
, the local pub in St-Buvard,
he never went out after dark. Those rare times he did, normally he made her a
dish of something that she either reheated or ate cold. Tonight he’d been
distracted, and she found herself rummaging around in Laurent’s other
kingdom—the kitchen. Although Grace insisted she wasn’t hungry and baby
Zou-zou had already demonstrated she would eat anything in any condition at any
time, Maggie still felt the need to rustle up something even if it was just
cheese toast.

“I honestly don’t
bother at home,” Grace said, shifting the chubby toddler on her lap.

“Well, that’s
because you have a cook, isn’t it?” Maggie said from the interior of the
refrigerator.

“Oh, I guess
you’re right. That could be the reason.”

Maggie pulled out
a plate of lamb slices, a tapenade and leftover potato gratin made with the
gnocchi Laurent had served the night before. “I think I can do something with
these.” She put the dish of lamb on the counter and scooped out a piece of cold
gnocchi and handed it to Zou-zou.

“Hungry,
sweetie?” she asked the child, who popped the plump bit of potato and pasta
into her mouth.

“She’s going to
be massive when she’s a teenager,” Grace said. “All she does is eat and those
kinds of habits don’t die easy.”

“Oh, Grace, you
exaggerate,” Maggie said, laughing.

“You won’t think
so when she’s ripping your refrigerator door off its hinges. I kid you not. The
child is a bottomless pit.”

“Laurent will
love cooking for her,” Maggie said. “He hates how I’m always watching my diet
and swears he wouldn’t care if I get fat.”

“Laurent is about
the only man I could honestly believe that about. He really loves you no matter
what. How did you manage
that
?”

“I have no idea.
Oh, look, he’s got great tomatoes still, and this bread he brought home from
Aix.”

“He went shopping
while you were with your friend?”

“You know
Laurent. He wouldn’t pass up their Wednesday Food Market if it was
me
they were arresting for murder.”

“A bit of an
exaggeration.”

“Maybe, but only
a bit. Anyway, it’ll make a fine feast for us. We don’t normally have good
bread unless one of us has been in Aix or Avignon.”

“The village
still hasn’t replaced the bakery?”

“Nope.”

“Ah, well.
Memories are long in this part of France.”

“You can say that
again. Here, take the wine. Just because I’m not drinking doesn’t mean someone else
shouldn’t enjoy it. Oh, she likes the gnocchi, Grace! Didn’t you, little bug?
Is it weird she isn’t talking yet?”

“Hush your mouth,
Maggie Dernier,” Grace said, putting the little girl on her feet and grabbing
the bottle of wine. “The minute they start talking is the minute they start
whining. I’m enjoying the peace while I can.”

They settled back
into the living room and Maggie spread their picnic out on the coffee table,
which Zou-zou attacked with delight, grabbing up a fistful of tapenade and
smearing it across her face in her attempt to get it into her mouth.

“Will that make
her sick, do you think?” Maggie asked, reaching for a napkin for the child.

“I really don’t
know,” Grace said. She broke off a piece of the bread and dipped it into the tapenade.

“Do you want to
talk about it?”

“Not yet, if you
don’t mind.”

“Okay. But that
is why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Grace
looked at her blankly, then away. “I suppose it is. Why else? To process it
all. To say it out loud to my dearest friend and watch the expression on her
face. You know, some cultures don’t believe a thing is a fact until it’s spoken.
That’s strange, don’t you think? That you can keep something from being true
just by not saying it?”

“I think people
do it all the time.”

Grace laughed but
there was no mirth in the sound.

“Does Taylor know
what’s going on?”

Grace shrugged.
“She’s pretty solidly into her own little world. A normal kid couldn’t help but
know. But Taylor? I have no idea.”

Maggie wanted to
ask about Windsor.
Was he distraught? Was
he fed up? Was he the guilty party?
She watched Grace as she pulled an
anchovy out of Zou-zou’s grubby little fist and replaced it with a carrot
spear. She would talk when she was ready.

As if Grace could
read Maggie’s mind, she turned to her. “Tell me about your new best friend. How
did you two meet?”

Maggie tucked a
thin wedge of lamb into the heel of the crusty bread and spread a hefty dollop
of tapenade over the top. “We met at a
fete
that Laurent’s co-op put on. She was there with Jacques, the man who died, and
we were the only two native English-speakers in the room.”

“A natural recipe
for instant friendship.”

“Well, it kind of
is, as you know,” Maggie said pointedly. “She was English, not American, but we
were both with Frenchmen and living in Provence and so we had a baseline of
things in common. The more we talked…you know.”

“The more you
fell madly in love with each other.”

“Well, Grace, we
connected. Above and beyond the obvious things we have in common, we really
enjoyed the time we spent together. I’m sorry you haven’t made any friends in
Indiana, but it’s worse for me since, unlike you, I don’t have a whole effing
country of my own people to fall back on. It’s pretty lonely over here and
friendships mean more.”

“Wow. Big speech,
darling. And you’re right. It’s hard for me to complain about being friendless
when I have drive-through banking and round doorknobs.”

“Okay, Grace, I
am not going to apologize for making friends. And if you were any kind of a
real
friend, you’d be glad I had someone
to turn to after you left.”

“Well, I’m sorry
to be such a disappointment to you, Maggie,” Grace said. “But even all the wonders
of living back home again couldn’t fill the hole left by the dissolution of our
friendship.”

“Now you’re being
dramatic. We Skype practically every day.”

“Which is not the
same as being together and solving mysteries like Lucy and Ethel the way we
used to and getting into all kinds of trouble. In fact, I officially hate
Skype.”

Maggie laughed.
“Grace, you’re such a ninny. How can you possibly think there is a replacement
for you in my life?”

“This Julia
character certainly seems like she fits the bill.”

“You are so
unabashedly self-absorbed, it floors me. The poor woman is under arrest for
murder!”

“You don’t have
to apologize for preferring one person over another, Maggie,” Grace said,
grabbing Zou-zou’s hand before she reached the TV remote control.
 

“It’s not a
competition, Grace.”

“You idiot, that’s
exactly what it is!”

Maggie stared at
Grace with her mouth open. Zou-zou, whose hand Grace was still gripping, began
to squirm away from her mother and make little grunting sounds.

Maggie shook her
head. “I was in a bad way when you left, Grace.”
 

“You’re not going
to blame—”

“Just listen to
me. With all the other stuff going on, mostly Laurent and I doing a nosedive on
the newlywed front, your leaving really kicked the stuffing out of me. I know
it wasn’t your fault, and that Windsor had a chance to make caboodles of money
by selling his software company and then running it for the new owners in Indy.
I get all that and I point no fingers. But it was really bad timing for me. And
when I met Julia, it helped a lot. She was giving and funny and open and always
accessible…”

“All the things
I’m not.”

“I
said
funny.” Maggie smiled at her and
Grace allowed a small one in response.

“She’s not you,
Grace. Never will be. But she’s a dear friend and just as if something like
this happened to you, I want to move earth and heaven to help her.”

Grace looked up.
“Aha!”

“What, aha?”

“I knew it! You
want to clear her name.”

Maggie looked
around the room with exasperation. “We don’t even know for sure that’s necessary,”
she said evasively. “They’ll probably release her in the morning.”

“And if they
don’t?”

“Okay, yes, if
they don’t, I’m not going to sit here and do nothing.”

“Well, then,”
Grace said reaching for her wineglass and holding up to toast Maggie, “I guess
Lucy and Ethel are back in the saddle again after all.”

Chapter
Five

The farmers’ market in downtown Aix on the
Place Richelme
sits under the canopy of dozens of plane trees in
full bloom that line the avenue. It has served as an outdoor food market since
the middle ages. Laurent had left home before dawn so he would have the best
pick of everything the market had to offer: peppers, glossy eggplants,
tomatoes, strawberries that tasted like real strawberries, figs, apricots,
peaches, plums, melons, and red currants like little glossy jewels in their
tiny wooden baskets. The first stall he approached sold goat
cheeses—hundreds of different varieties, little wheels of white that
looked like carefully packaged gifts. He’d gotten home late last night, and
still Maggie and Grace were not in bed. Although he worried about Maggie
getting too tired, he was glad to see it. He didn’t know what Grace’s visit
meant—except that it was more than just a visit—but he was glad to
see her as a distraction to the current
désastre
with
Maggie’s friend, Julia.

Why do these terrible events always seem
to follow Maggie? What were the odds that a murder would occur—if indeed
that’s what this was—the very day Maggie had lunch with the prime
suspect?
Laurent shook his head and paid the goat man for
several packages of good cheese. He moved on to the salami and ham stall, but took
a moment to look around to enjoy his surroundings. At this early hour not every
stall was stocked and ready to go, but beyond the many fruits and vegetables
there were still crate after crate of olives, chocolate, herbs and spices. The
air of the market was redolent with the scent of
herbes des Provence
and lemons.

    
As Laurent
approached a table full of
calissons
,
the popular and ubiquitous iced cookie of ground almonds and preserved melons
that Aix is famous for, and that his pregnant
femme
had a strong partiality for, he noticed someone in the crowd
that he knew. It took him a moment to place him precisely, and when he did he
couldn’t help but wonder if it could really be coincidental that he was running
into the cousin of the murder victim the very next day after the crime.

“Florian,” Laurent called, shifting his bag of cheese to his other arm in
anticipation of the handshake when the man noticed him.

However, when Florrie turned to see who’d called his name, Laurent thought
he did the most amazing thing. Instead of acknowledging an acquaintance—for
they were no more than that—and stretching out his hand in greeting, Florrie
dropped his own bag, slapped both hands to his face and burst into tears. So
stunned was Laurent by this reaction, he hurriedly moved to separate the man from
the crowd by pulling him out of the flow of the quickly building sea of
shoppers and tourists.

“Get control of yourself,” Laurent said, giving Florrie’s arm a firm shake.
“Are you all right?”

Clearly, Florrie was
not
alright
and Laurent cursed the fact that he’d seen him at all this morning.

“I am so sorry, Laurent,” Florrie said, snuffling noisily into his hands
and then his sleeve. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Well, you have had a shock,” Laurent said, eyeing him to make sure he
wasn’t going to start crying again. His eyes were red and deeply bloodshot, as
if he’d been drinking heavily or crying, or both. He was a good-looking man and
favored his dark-haired cousin in that way, with blue eyes and very straight
white teeth. But there the resemblance ended. Jacques had always been razor
sharp in his manner and inclined to cut. Florrie was the soft, affable one.

    
“I am so
sorry to hear about Jacques,” Laurent said, hoping it wouldn’t start him off
again. “It was a shock, I’m sure.”

“I still cannot believe it,” Florrie said, patting his pockets in search of
a handkerchief of some kind. “I just saw him yesterday!”

“And he looked well?” Laurent wasn’t sure why he asked that. He glanced
back at the market. He had been hoping to get a good fish before they were all
gone.

“Well, no, he didn’t. Now that you mention it, he was complaining of not
feeling well. Did you hear they arrested poor Julia? Well, of course you would,
because of Maggie,
non
?”

Laurent nodded solemnly, forcing himself not to look at the line of people
at the fish stall.

“It’s ridiculous to believe
Julia
could hurt Jacques,” Florrie said, finally extricating a badly soiled cloth
from his pocket and mopping his wet face with it. “She must be so distraught. Have
you talked with her?”

“Ah, no,” Laurent said.

“Will they release her soon, do you think?”

“I am sure they will. Would you care to walk with me?” Laurent could see
the fish he wanted from here, a very fat John Dory that would do nicely in the
soup he wanted to make today. He began to edge Florrie in that direction.

“I begged him to take better care of himself,” Florrie said as he trotted
to keep up with Laurent’s long stride. “He smoked. He drank too much. He ate
the wrong things…”

Laurent got in line at the fish stall and relaxed enough to turn his
attention fully to Florrie while he waited.

“Getting back together with Julia would have been the best thing he could
have done,” Florrie said earnestly. “I tell you, if it
was
murder, the police should be looking at his crazy daughter, Michelle.
That girl is
demented
. I have seen
her physically attack Jacques on more than one occasion.”

“Do you know if she saw him that night?”

Florrie blinked at him as if having trouble understanding. Laurent felt
sorry for him. Clearly he wasn’t prepared to have his passionate theories
derailed by facts or evidence.

“It’s possible she did,” Florrie said.

“I’m sure the police will check into her whereabouts during the time of his
death,” Laurent said, then turned to the fishmonger and pointed to the fish he
wanted. When he turned back around with his prize all neatly packaged up,
Florrie was gone.

Maggie tried to concentrate on the beauty of the broad avenue of the
Cours Mirabeau
with its row after row of
ancient fountains and cafes beneath the majestic plane trees that lined the
row. She had forgotten that Laurent was going into Aix this morning, which was
supremely annoying since
she
was
planning on going there, too, and they only had the one car. She hated taking a
taxi in France—
it was literally risking
your life the way those maniacs drove
—but her errand today couldn’t wait.
As she stared out the taxicab window, she tried to see if Laurent’s Renault was
parked somewhere visible, but didn’t really expect to see it. While the traffic
wasn’t bad this time of day, it was not yet eleven, there was still a sizable
crowd of tourists and shoppers clogging the grand avenue.

During the ride, Maggie allowed herself some time to decompress and reflect
on her evening with Grace. It was clear Grace had left Windsor, but whether or
not that was a formal leaving was yet to be determined since Grace wasn’t
talking. What
was
clear was how completely
miserable Grace was.

How could this happen?
Grace and Windsor were the perfect couple.
And they had kids!
Maggie could not imagine what could have occurred in
their lives to cause something like this to happen.

With a supreme effort, Maggie put her friend’s unhappiness out of her mind
to concentrate on her morning. She intended to go to the jail in Aix to see Julia.
Her phone calls to the number Roger had given her had been met with a very
unhelpful recording. It was time for a little face-to-face, she thought grimly.
But first, she would run by Julia’s apartment and pick up a few clothes for her.
If Julia were released this morning as everyone hoped, then it would just be a
wasted half hour. But if this nightmare was going to go on any longer, Julia would
want a fresh change of clothes.

She had the taxi stop outside Julia’s apartment building and instructed the
driver to wait for her. “
Dix minute
,”
she said firmly to the driver and then exited the cab and hurried up the
stairs.

By the time she reached the landing on the second floor, she had to lean
against the close walls and catch her breath. By the time she
reached—much more slowly—the next landing, she had gone from hopefully
wondering if all the noise she was hearing from the floor above her could be
the result of construction of a lift being added to the 1890 apartment building
to flat not caring. As she dragged herself to the final landing just before Julia’s
floor, the noise was clearly more of a destructive nature than constructive,
with loud thuds and the sounds of breaking glass exploding in the narrow
stairwell. Julia’s apartment was one of two on her floor, but only hers had the
sounds of a full-scale demolition coming out into the hallway through the wide
open door.

Bewildered and tentative, Maggie edged her way to the door opening.
Was Julia having scheduled work done? Was
she being broken into?
In the brief space between crashes, Maggie could
hear the sounds of her own labored gasps as she fought for breath after her
climb. The silence startled her, and when she heard the sound of her own
struggling breaths she began to feel afraid. Whoever was in there destroying Julia’s
apartment—for that was clearly what was happening—might not be very
welcoming of an unexpected friend of Julia’s on the threshold.

A loud crash ended the silence and Maggie used the moment to slip through
the front door. Inside she saw a young woman of about twenty-five in the
process of hammering to splinters with a very large axe the beautiful antique
table that had been a birthday gift to Julia from her long-passed father.
Maggie watched in horror as the girl brought the axe down on the table full
force, the table’s tiny hand-placed bits of mosaic shooting out in all
directions like flints of wood from a chipper.

“Stop it!” Maggie screamed. “Stop it this minute!”

The girl whirled on Maggie, the axe gripped tightly in her hands, her eyes
wild with hatred and anger. When Maggie saw her face, she knew the woman had to
be related to Jacques. They shared the same dark hair and brown eyes, the same
olive skin coloring. It was entirely possible that the girl was pretty,
probably was, but it was impossible to believe it with her current expression
of insane urgency. She took a step toward Maggie.

“I am an American,” Maggie said without thinking. “Think twice before you
dare to attack me. Remember…Saddam Hussein,” she added stupidly.

The girl stared at her as if not understanding, although Maggie had spoken
in clear, plain French. Slowly, Maggie could see the energy that the manic fit
had given her begin to fade and the girl lowered the axe to her side, but she
did not drop it.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Are you a friend of the English whore’s?”

Maggie looked around the apartment, so much of it already destroyed. The
girl had obviously been here awhile. Julia’s couch had been chopped into chunks
of expensive fabric and batting. Her beautiful Royal Doulton tea set, the one
she had brought with her from London, was in shards. Two paintings over the
couch, neither expensive, were ripped and had gaping gashes in them. The birdcage
was on its side and Maggie quickly went to see if the little bird still lived.

“I am cleaning up the bastard’s love nest,” Michelle said, finally dropping
the axe to the floor. It hit with a thunk.

Maggie saw the bird huddling in a corner of the cage. She grabbed the
handle of the cage and stood up with it. “I’m leaving now,” she said, shocked
to hear her voice sound strong and unwavering. “I intend to call the police as
soon as I’m in my car. If I were you, I’d figure out what you’re going to say
to them.”

Michelle straightened the hem of her tee shirt over her jeans and surveyed
the damage in the apartment. “I will tell them that
you
did this!” she said defiantly. “It will be your word against
mine.”

Maggie walked to the door holding the birdcage. “Good plan,” she said. “Then
we’ll just see who they believe.” Before she could edge past the girl, Michelle
turned and bolted out of the apartment, running down the stairs. Maggie
listened to the sounds of her heels pounding the steps until they receded into silence
as Michelle disappeared into the street.

Maggie looked at the poor little bird, still shivering in terror, and then
at the ruined apartment. A feeling of incomprehensible sadness came over her as
she closed the door behind her and began her own descent to the street below. Somehow
she no longer felt very optimistic about Julia’s chances for returning home any
time soon.