Murder in Nice (28 page)

Laurent said nothing. A photograph of him at
a counter of a jewelry store was evidence of nothing. He couldn’t
help notice, though, that Ben’s envelope was thick.

“
A good likeness, don’t you
think?” Ben said. “I have two others taken seven years ago at two
different jewelry stores on the Côte d’Azur.”

Ben pulled out the photographs, surveillance
camera screen grabs, each showing Laurent in a jewelry store
talking with a different man behind the counter. Ben unfolded a
text document that was obviously a fax.

“
I’ve got testimony from
two of the marks in the photos—that’s what you call them, isn’t it?
Marks?”

Laurent looked at Ben, a slight smile on his
lips. “This will not work.”

“
Oh, no? Well, I have
written testimony from a Monsieur Denis Blanc—you probably didn’t
bother to remember the names of the people you scammed—but Monsieur
Blanc remembers you well. He’s in prison, you know, doing time for
criminal money laundering. A very bitter man, I assure
you.”

Laurent waited for the rest. Three photos
and the ranting of a convicted felon didn’t concern him. Yet.

“
He said you posed as an
attorney in order to collect a phony debt from a corporate client
of yours. Ring any bells?”

When Laurent didn’t
respond, Ben continued pulling sheets out of the envelope. “So when
Monsieur Blanc deposited the cheques you sent him, fake, of
course—and yes, before you say anything, I know he’s a greedy
bastard and likely deserved what he got—he was arrested. My little
online research did enlighten me that most marks usually fall for a
conman’s tricks because of their greed or outright larceny. Doesn’t
change the fact Monsieur Blanc went to jail and
you
walked away with a half a million
euros.”

Laurent put the car into gear. “You have
been busy,” he said, turning the car around and pointing it back
toward Domaine St-Buvard. The contract on the dashboard fluttered
to the floor.

“
Well, in all honesty,” Ben
said, picking up the contract, “I can’t take full credit for
finding all this. But, yes, it was hours of research. I have more,
too. I have documented evidence of rip deals you did up and down
the French Riviera: exact dates, testimony from your marks,
photographs. You name it.”

Laurent didn’t know what the bastard had,
how damning it was, or if any of it might stand up in a court of
law. He did know that if it came to a trial—even if it didn’t put
him in prison—it would ruin everything he had built at Domaine
St-Buvard.

“
And all of this just for a
signature from me?” he said dryly.

“
See, I knew you were
smart. Yes, exactly. Sign the contract and I won’t go to Interpol
with these.
Don’t
sign it and you’ll lose the vineyard, the house, your freedom,
probably your marriage.” Ben fumbled on the floor for the pen and
held it up. “I have a recording of a telephone conversation between
you and a Roger Bentley—he is a confederate of yours, I
believe—that I can guarantee a jury will see for exactly what it
is: two con men at work.”

Laurent drove slowly, his head aching from
the long day, Ben’s voice droning in his ear. He was tempted to
roll down the window for some night air but wasn’t sure he wouldn’t
vomit as soon as he did. What control he had needed to stay firmly
in place.

“
You
will
go to prison, Laurent,” Ben said.
“It’s that simple. Sign the contract, if for no other reason, then
for Jemmy’s sake—”

Laurent slammed on the brakes, and was
startled because he hadn’t realized he was about to. The car sat in
the middle of the road, the engine humming, the half moon
illuminating the trees that bordered the road like jagged black
spears pointing skyward. Laurent looked at his hands as they
gripped the steering wheel.

Ben cleared his throat.
“Look, my parents may know
theoretically
about your criminal
past, but it’s a little different seeing it in vivid color. Imagine
sitting at the family Thanksgiving table in Atlanta across from
John and Elspeth Newberry after they’ve heard the audio of you
posing as a businessman to sell worthless shares to unsuspecting
victims. Oh, but what am I saying? It will only be Maggie sitting
there. Because you, my criminal friend, will be in prison. For
many, many Thanksgiving Days to come.”

Laurent turned to look at him, his face
impassive.

“
Don’t blame
me
for this,” Ben said, a
line of perspiration popping out on his forehead. “You brought this
on yourself. There
is
an easy way out.”

“
Thanks for reminding me,”
Laurent said as he leaned across Ben and jerked open the passenger
side door. “Get out.”

“
Are you serious? We’re at
least two miles from—”

Laurent grabbed Ben by his shirtfront and
slammed his face into the dashboard. Ben screamed and grabbed his
face as blood gushed between his fingers.

“
You broke my
nose!”

With a hard shove, Laurent toppled Ben out
of the car and onto the road.

Too bad we don’t have a
recording of that
, Laurent thought as he
put the car into gear, not bothering to look in the rearview mirror
but hearing the creature’s howls as he drove away.

One thing was certain: the day had suddenly
and definitely turned to shit.

Seventeen

If it wasn’t so creepy, it
would be truly beautiful
, Maggie thought as
she stared up at the towering stone structure of the forbidding
Benedictine monastery.
L'Abbaye des
Martyrs
perched like an ominous hulk over
the D17, a scant ten miles from Arles but visible the minute they
broke free of the city limits.

“
He saved the best for
her,” Olivier said in disgust. He and Maggie stood in the dirt car
park at the base of the steep walkway that would take them to the
abbey. The others had already walked up to the structure but Maggie
stayed behind to help Olivier carry his video equipment. He’d
arrived by taxi minutes after the group had arrived at the
scene.

“
I really don’t think he
knew Desiree would try to hurt Dee-Dee,” Maggie said, her eyes
going from the tops of the darkened towers across the multiple and
variable pitched roofs. For some reason, the word
wicked
formed in her mind
and she shivered. “Are you really going to have enough light to
shoot? It’s nearly dark.”

“
I’ll set up lights
inside,” he said, hoisting the heavy tripod onto his shoulder. “The
acoustics are amazing in there.
Dee-Dee
earned this part of the
tour.
She
should be
giving the last presentation. You won’t need your purse. We’ll be
done in twenty minutes. Can you grab the camera bag?”

Maggie shouldered Olivier’s camera bag and
began the long walk up the drive. “Is it deserted?”

He shrugged and squinted up at the facade of
the looming stone castle. “They talk about turning it into a museum
or something,” he said, joining her on the gravel walkway. “But for
now, it’s just a ruin. It sits on a huge rock that rises out of a
former lagoon.”

“
Not getting any less
creepy. How old is it?”

“
900 AD?”

Maggie looked at the stark architecture and
tried to imagine anyone living here, as the monks must have done
for centuries. She tried to imagine anyone feeling warmth or joy
within its hostile, cold walls—from life or God Himself.

A sound up ahead made her look up in time to
see Randall and Jim coming back down the path supporting Janet
between them. She and Olivier stepped off the path to let them
pass.

“
What happened?” Maggie
asked.

“
She’s drunk,” Randall said
in disgust. “Gonna let her sleep it off in the car.”

“
I don’t see why I have to
come,” Jim grumbled. A closer look showed he wasn’t really helping
to support Janet. His hands were shoved in his pockets. Maggie
watched them disappear at the bottom of the path and turn toward
the car, now swallowed up by the night.

“
Ever hear of the
book
Ten Little Indians
?” Maggie said as she turned back to Olivier.

“
No. What’s it
about?”

She trudged up the path. “It’s about a group
of people who disappear one by one.”

Desiree was visible at the top of hill
smoking a cigarette. “Bob said to go ahead and set up,” she said as
Olivier and Maggie walked by. They didn’t respond. At the base of
the abbey was a small courtyard that led to an opening on top of a
series of wide stone steps.

“
Kind of anticlimactic,”
Maggie commented.

“
Wait ’til you see
inside.”

“
I take it you’ve been here
before.”

She saw him nod in the half-gloom.

“
Once. With
Lanie.”

They mounted the steps, then turned to see
if they could see Randall and Jim returning. Maggie assumed Janet
must be causing some kind of trouble because they still hadn’t
returned. She saw a halo of blue smoke curl around Desiree’s head,
then turned to see that Olivier was holding open the massive wooden
door.

Inside, the quiet enveloped them and Maggie
was struck by a feeling of unearthly holiness. But the feeling
didn’t bring with it any sense of peace. Her shoes were rubber
soled and made no sounds on the slate floor. The entranceway opened
up onto the grand hall—dark, austere, dangerous, unwelcoming.
Graceful repetitive arches telescoped within each other in a series
of symmetrical doorways that led them onward.

Olivier walked forward and Maggie hurried to
stay with him. She had to force herself not to grab on to his
sleeve. There was a feeling of death and hopelessness here that
engulfed her and made simple breathing difficult.

“
Wait for me, please.” Her
voice sounded calm and reassuring in her ears and she decided that
more talking might help chase the ghosts back to their tombs.
Olivier set the tripod down and began loosening the bolts to extend
each leg. There was a moon tonight and it gave some light to the
room through the high, small windows.

She cleared her throat. “Can we put the
lights on? I’m not loving the whole creeping around in the dark
thing.”

Olivier laughed, but he reached in the
camera bag and pulled out a heavy flashlight with a large clip on
it. He attached it to the base of the tripod. “This is probably not
the time to tell you about the crypt beneath where we are
standing.”

“
Very funny,
Olivier.”

“
I am not joking. They’re
graves of centuries of monks, of starving peasants and villagers
slaughtered by the plague, and of course, all the Protestants
tortured and murdered here. They sleep now beneath these
stones.”

“
Where are we in the
abbey?” Maggie asked, looking around, her flesh crawling and
goose-bumping.

“
This is the cloister,” he
said. “It’s where the monks prayed. Built in the eleventh century,
I think.”

“
Where
are
Bob and Desiree?” Maggie asked,
feeling her heart begin to speed up. The light was almost worse
than the darkness, she decided. It accentuated the pockmarks in the
ancient stone walls and revealed how high up those walls went,
disappearing into the darkness of the ceiling with only a few
streaks of moonlight dappling the dark. She tried to hear if anyone
was coming. Nothing.

“
May I ask you something?”
Olivier said.

“
Sure.” Maggie rubbed her
arms through her thin cardigan. It was summer in Provence and she
wasn’t dressed for icy caverns or stone dungeons.

“
I know you are trying to
find justice for Lanie, but after all the time we have spent
together I still do not know who
you
think killed her.”

“
Oh, I have my
theories.”

Olivier snapped the video camera onto the
tripod and tightened the screws. “Any you might share with me?”

“
Well, for starters I’ve
always believed the paternity of Lanie’s baby was the key to who
killed her.”

“
Really?” Olivier took
Maggie by the shoulders and gently moved her in front of the
camera. “May I check the white balance on you?”

“
Sure,” Maggie said. “I
mean, I can’t help but think that her pregnancy was the catalyst.
Without it the murder feels too random.”

Olivier didn’t speak.

“
Did you and Lanie talk
about it?” Maggie asked. “The baby?”

“
I did not know she was
pregnant.”

“
Oh.”
Of course that makes perfect sense, especially if Lanie knew
the baby wasn’t his
.

“
But if I had known,”
Olivier said, “nothing would have given me more joy.”

Maggie nodded. She decided it wasn’t worth
mentioning that Lanie probably wouldn’t have kept the baby. She
surely stood no chance at the co-anchor slot with a child.

Olivier looked at Maggie through the
viewfinder and she found herself feeling uncomfortable. Was he
acting a little strange tonight?

“
I’ve been meaning to ask
you,” Maggie said. “The keycard the cops found in your wallet.
Massar says it’s their main piece of evidence against
you.”