Murder in Nice (19 page)

Laurent’s den was off the kitchen. The door
was closed but Ben had watched the big Frenchman come and go and
knew it was never locked. He walked silently to the room and pushed
the door open. Quickly, he turned on the flashlight on his cell
phone and closed the door behind him. He could feel his heart
racing as he approached the broad oaken desk.

Dernier didn’t have a computer that Ben
could see, or a landline. That meant the contract the conglomerate
sent him was likely filed the old fashioned way. He scanned
Laurent’s desk. There were receipts for handmade barrels and casks
and for a shipment of bottles. Since Dernier didn’t crush his own
grapes, Ben didn’t expect to see evidence of any kind of equipment
purchase. All of that would come to a screeching halt when the
co-op closed for good.

It was obvious Dernier
didn’t have a choice. Not if he wanted to continue to make
wine.
Why was he being so stubborn about
it?

He flipped through a
magazine where Dernier had earmarked an article on something
called
cork taint
.
Whatever the hell that was.

He stood back and surveyed the man’s desk.
He obviously didn’t spend much time in here. Just three days as a
guest in his house told Ben that. Laurent walked his vineyard and
he pressed the flesh in town—when he wasn’t in the kitchen
cooking.

Where the hell could it be?

A thought came to him and he circled the
desk looking for a trash basket. He crouched next to it and shined
his light into it.

The crumpled contract from Ordeur rested on
top.

“
I see it is time for our
little talk.”

Laurent’s voice was so close to where Ben
was kneeling that he jumped and fell backward at the sound. He
scrambled to his feet and shone the flashlight in Laurent’s
direction, but before Ben could think of the lie to explain what he
was doing he realized he still held the contract in his hand.

*****

An hour after she’d showered, packed and
dressed, Maggie was dragging her wheeled bag down a narrow
tree-lined pathway with orchards on one side and a vineyard on the
other. The train station was just under two miles from the hotel.
She hated the sound her luggage made on the uneven pavers of the
path, as if to announce to the world that a lone female was
attempting to cross the city in the dark.

Praying that most felons or hoodlums
wouldn’t be up this early, Maggie lifted the bag off the ground and
used the shoulder strap to deaden the noise.

Even without coffee, her mind was buzzing
with the events of the last several hours. She was still reeling
with the horror of waking up and realizing that someone was in her
room with her.

Should she report Randall? Was it too late
to do that? And then the bigger question: should she tell Laurent?
He had enough on his plate right now just getting the grapes in
from the field without driving to Marseille to kill a national
television personality.

Thinking of Laurent made her think of sweet
little Jemmy and she felt a sudden hard twinge in her stomach when
she brought the baby’s face to mind.

Am I a bad mother? I miss him desperately. I
would love nothing more than to hold him right now.

Maggie pushed open the ancient wooden door
of the tiny Cassis train station and stood in the lighted foyer for
a moment. A sudden sickening feeling sidled into her stomach. To
her left was the ticket seller’s booth, yet unmanned this morning.
To her right was a small café kiosk being set up. She headed for
the café and arranged her bags around a chair.

“
Un café crème, s’il vous
plait
,” she said to the owner, who nodded
and disappeared.

The horrible fact was she was in no hurry to
go home. Laurent wasn’t wrong about that. But it wasn’t because she
was running away from Jem!

The owner brought her coffee and a croissant
on a pretty china plate. Maggie was surprised—and delighted. She
looked up at him before he left. He just shrugged.

Who knows why the French do
what they do?
Maggie thought, picking up
the warm croissant and realizing she was very hungry. Maybe they’re
so in tune with food they can just
see
when someone needs to eat without
being told.

She was alone in the little train station
but could see the encroaching light of the new day peeking into the
large palladium window over the front door.

Did Laurent think she was trying to escape
her motherly duties? Did Grace? She glanced at her cell phone. Five
o’clock was too early to call Grace back. She’d do it on the
train.

Maggie closed her eyes and took a long sip
of the hot, milky coffee and when she did she got a vivid image
forming behind her eyes—a memory of when she and Ben were children.
He was the eldest and only boy of the three children and he had
always taken his role as brotherly protector seriously.

In her mind, Maggie saw Ben sitting between
her and her sister, Elise, at the top of the stairs on Christmas
morning waiting for their parents to get up. He held both their
hands and helped pass the interminable minutes until they could go
downstairs by telling them stories of Santa and his elves.

Maggie had forgotten that moment, when she
had felt so connected to him by their mutual excitement of the
magic of the day and by his palpable love for his sisters.

When had that changed? When
had
Ben
changed?

Two bowls of
café crème
later, Maggie
bought her ticket for the three-hour trip to Nice and boarded the
train. There was nobody in her train compartment so she spread out
her bags, sent a quick text to Laurent, and closed her
eyes.

She awoke to an insistent rapping on her
compartment window and realized she had slept the entire trip.
Flustered, she gathered up her belongings and hurried out into the
brilliantly bright light of Nice at midmorning. She’d meant to call
Grace and sort out what she was going to ask the concierge. She’d
intended to process how Randall could suggest it was Dee-Dee who
killed Lanie.

Weird, unbalanced Dee-Dee. Was she capable
of murder? The image of Dee-Dee throwing her cell phone at the poor
duck came immediately to mind.

Maggie walked briskly down the busy sidewalk
of tourists and shoppers, wondering if she would have enough time
to do everything she needed to do before racing back to the train
station as she’d promised Laurent.

Why is he making everything so hard? Why
can’t I just do what I need to do?

It occurred to her that
Laurent never raced around like a maniac to make sure she wasn’t
left alone at the house or to ensure some casually made promise was
kept. She slowed her steps.
Why am I
stressing? I’m going to do what I need to do. If he loves me, he’ll
respect that.

The Soho Hotel loomed at the end of the
block, the stark blue horizon of the Mediterranean serving as a
dramatic backdrop behind its marble white façade. She marched into
the hotel. The concierge stood at the front desk, empty of waiting
guests, watching her come.

Maggie parked her wheeled bag in front of
her.

“
Bonjour
,” she said. “I called earlier about needing to talk to one of
your maids.”

The man stared at her and didn’t speak.

Maggie took in a covert breath to steady her
patience. She knew she shouldn’t have just blurted that out. The
French like more finesse and preamble. Laurent always said she shot
herself in the foot when she charged in without taking the time to
set the stage.

Laurent always set the stage.

She switched to French and dropped the
ingratiating smile, but kept her voice steady and pleasant. “It is
very quiet for a Friday, no?” she said.

The man’s eyebrows edged
upward. “
Oui
,” he
said. “We are expecting an influx of Germans at any
moment.”

She knew he wouldn’t be amused at any joke
referencing the German occupation of Paris in 1940, but it took all
her self-control to refrain from attempting one.

“
Well, everyone loves the
Côte d’Azur,” she said, reigning hard at her impulse to just get to
the point.

“
Bien sûr.
Does Madame know which maid she needs to speak
with?”

Bingo!

“
She will have been the
maid who cleaned my room during my last stay,” Maggie said. “Room
205.”

He nodded and picked up the phone, spoke
briefly, and then turned back to Maggie. The sheerest of smiles
hinted around his mouth.

“
Bientôt
,” he said, directing her with a glance that indicated Maggie
should wait in the lobby.

She thanked him profusely
and patted herself on the back for behaving contrary to her natural
inclinations.
Maybe I am learning a few
things
.

She didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes
after she sat down, a young, dark-haired woman slipped silently
into the lobby, her eyes probing Maggie’s questioningly.

Maggie stood. “I’m here on behalf of the
American lady whose daughter was killed in the hotel two weeks
ago,” she said in French.

The woman nodded but looked around the lobby
as if uncomfortable to stand there.

“
Shall we go somewhere
else?”

“
Outside?” the woman said,
pointing to a hallway leading away from the front door and the
frenetic
Promenade des Anglais
outside it.

Maggie picked up her bags and followed the
maid down a long, dark hallway, which opened up to an alleyway. In
the alley was a large dumpster and a wooden picnic table shoved up
against a tall, stone wall. Wild bougainvillea poured off the wall
in casual, vibrant drapes of bright purple.

“
My name is Ooli,” the
woman said as she sat at the picnic table and drew out a pack of
cigarettes from her uniform pocket. “Cigarette?”

Rule number
two
, Maggie reminded herself as she nodded
and accepted the cigarette.
Don’t do
anything to make your only source of information pull
back.

Ooli lit Maggie’s cigarette and then her
own. “I told Madame that I had information about the death.”

Maggie nodded. “Madame Morrison doesn’t
speak French. She didn’t understand.”

“
I thought perhaps that was
so. I don’t want to talk to police, you understand?”

Maggie nodded again.

“
First,” Ooli said, holding
up a finger but looking around her as if expecting someone to be
listening to them, “I saw who visited the dead woman’s room that
night.”

Maggie’s excitement
surged.
Had she seen the
murderer?

“
Second, I saw who visited
her room other nights.”

Maggie frowned. “Other nights?”

Ooli nodded and sucked in a long inhalation
of smoke, her dark eyes watching Maggie carefully. A moment passed
between them and Maggie reached into her bag and took out a pad of
paper and a pen. She drew five boxes on the paper and wrote the
room numbers for Dee-Dee, Randall, Desiree and Olivier inside each.
She marked a heavy line around the box that was Lanie’s room. She
showed it to Ooli.

“
You know these rooms?”
Maggie asked.

Ooli smiled nodded.

“
Please, show me,” Maggie
said.

Ooli picked up the pen and drew a line from
the box marked 208 straight to Lanie’s room box. She looked at
Maggie and smiled.

Room 208 was Desiree’s room. Maggie found
herself getting excited. She reached for the pen but Ooli withheld
it. When Maggie looked at her in confusion, the maid drew a sixth
box, wrote the number 210 inside it, and drew a line from it to
Lanie’s box. She put the pen down and pushed the paper back to
Maggie.

Maggie looked at the paper and felt her
fingers grow cold.

Room 210 was Ben’s room.

Twelve

“
You can’t just throw us out! What will you tell
my sister?”

“
Your sister seems less
able to endure you than even I,” Laurent said dryly as he stood
across the desk from Ben. “I’ll call you a cab.”

“
Haley will be mortified to
be thrown out like this.”

“
I am not throwing
her
out.”

“
But that’s not how it
works, is it, sport? You can’t give
me
the heave-ho and expect my wife not
to leave with me.”

Laurent shrugged. “So you
both leave.
Voila
.”

“
I’m telling you that you
will do irreparable damage to your relationship with your American
in-laws if you do this. I don’t know how people are over here, but
family means a lot to Americans. Especially Maggie. You heard her
little dog and pony show at dinner last night.”

“
I don’t think she means
you when she talks of family.”

“
Well, you’d be wrong. You
don’t have to like me, Laurent, but I’m family.”

“
Why are you
here?”

“
I got turned around in the
house when I got up to—”

“
Why are you in Provence?
Why are you at Domaine St-Buvard?” Laurent gestured to the Ordeur
contract now lying on the desk between them.

Ben ran a hand through his hair. Laurent saw
the man weighing his options—and the degrees of the lies he would
tell.