Race to World's End (Rowan and Ella Book 3) (35 page)

 
Homicide detective.

Three

“They
think she was murdered,” Maggie said to Grace on the phone that evening after
she and Annie had checked into the Soho—Annie had begged her to stay with
her. After her afternoon, Annie promptly took two sleeping pills and went to
bed. Maggie spoke on the phone from the balcony, the door open in case Annie
needed her.

“You’re kidding. Why?”

“I don’t know but I intend to
find out.”

“Does Lanie’s mother know
yet?”

“No. She’s so upset about it
all that she hasn’t really asked any questions about how Lanie died. Just the
fact that she did is occupying all her mental abilities at the moment.”

“I can imagine.”

“I know. Me too. It’s awful,
Grace. Just terrible to think of one of our own little dears…”

“I know, dearest, so shut up.
I don’t want to think of it.”

“But the point is, the cops
are looking at this as a homicide. If Annie asks them, they’ll have to give her
answers.”

“Because that strategy has
worked out so well for us in the past.”

“Problem is, I don’t think
she wants to ask too many questions.”

“Well, she probably would if
she was told the truth about how Lanie died, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. But I’m not sure she
can take much more. And telling her that her daughter is not only dead but was
murdered definitely qualifies as
much
more
.”

The sound of the hair dryer
falling to the carpeted floor made Maggie whirl around to see Annie standing
not four feet from her, her eyes wide with horror, mouth open.

“Oh, shit,” Maggie said into
the phone.

*****

The café faced the
Quai des Etats-Unis
and the brilliant
blue of the sea beyond. Only in Nice did the café chairs face the street rather
than the table, Maggie noted as she poured her bottled water into a glass. It
was the dinner hour but neither she nor Annie had done anything but pick at
their meals—omelets with
pommes
frites
and the omnipresent bowls of citrus olives.

“I didn’t know how to tell
you,” Maggie said. “I thought you’d had enough for one day.”

Annie looked like she’d aged
twenty years since Maggie had seen her last. She wasn’t sure part of that
hadn’t happened just since she picked her up at the airport today. After her
unsuccessful attempt at napping, Annie had agreed to go out with Maggie to talk
about what the new information meant.

“You think Lanie was
murdered.”

“It’s the only obvious
explanation as to why her case is being handled by a homicide detective,”
Maggie admitted. “You haven’t talked to anyone about how she died?”

Annie looked around the
street helplessly, as if expecting to find someone to answer the question for
her. She looked at her hands in her lap. “No. I heard all that mattered. I
came.”

“I understand,” Maggie said.
“Of course. But now that you know it was not an accident…” She waited until she
thought Annie could handle the rest of her sentence before proceeding. “You’ll
want to talk to Inspecteur Massar about what he knows.”

“Of course. Although…” Annie
looked up and squinted in the direction of the Mediterranean. “It won’t bring
her back.”

“No,” Maggie said slowly.
“That’s true.”

“Will you go with me?”

“Of course.”

“Will you call him for me and
ask him to see me?”

“First thing tomorrow.”

“Will it make a difference in
my being able to…take her home, do you know?”

Maggie leaned across the table
and took Annie’s hand and squeezed it.

“Let’s take it one step at a
time, Annie. Okay?”

Annie nodded bravely, her
eyes straying once more to the impossibly beautiful, intensely blue sea that
seemed to fill the horizon.

That night, Maggie was
relieved to see that Annie was exhausted enough to finally sleep. Once she was
sure Annie was asleep, Maggie slipped into the hallway of the hotel. She’d
gotten Ben’s room number from the concierge when she’d checked in. His room
faced the front of the hotel, one flight up.

Maggie took the elevator and
quickly found his room. She knocked and heard all conversation in the room
cease when she did. Light footsteps moved to the door and it opened just a
crack. Maggie recognized her sister-in-law, Haley, peering out at her.

“Maggie!” The door jerked
fully open and Haley stepped into the hall, her arms instantly around Maggie.
“We wondered if we’d see you tonight. Come in, come in.”

Her brother’s wife was a
statuesque blonde. Even at thirty-six, Maggie still saw the bouncy cheerleader
in Haley. The athletic thighs that had bounded to the tops of human pyramids
now regularly lunged across the clay courts of Atlanta’s ALTA tennis
tournaments.

“Hey, Haley,” Maggie said. “I
just wanted to touch base with you. I haven’t had a chance before now.”

Over Haley’s shoulder, Maggie
saw her brother lounging on the couch in the inner room. He didn’t bother
getting up or removing his legs from the coffee table. She saw an open wine
bottle on the table.

“How is Lanie’s mother?”
Haley asked, her hand still on Maggie’s arm. “She must be devastated.”

“She is, yeah. She finally
went to sleep.” Maggie stepped into the living area of the room and her brother
lifted a glass to her as she entered. She wondered for a moment if he might be
drunk.

“
Bonsoir
, little sis,” Ben said. “Welcome to Nice. The shittiest
city in paradise.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Haley
said. “We’re all just so shaken up about this.”

“Did you know she was
murdered?” Maggie said to her brother. She hadn’t seen him in over two years and
was surprised to see that he’d aged. In her mind, he always remained the same:
tall, athletic, thick brown hair and riveting blue eyes. Handsome, of course.
All the Newberry men were good-looking in that bland, Anglo-Saxon way. Now that
she really looked at Ben, his mouth seemed to have taken on a permanent twist
to it. Like a sneer that just stayed.

“Who said it was murder?” Ben
said, slurring his words and putting to rest any doubt Maggie had about his
condition.

“I found out today that the
city’s homicide department is handling her death.”

“Well, there you are. My
sister, the supersleuth. Dad would be proud,” Ben said sarcastically.

“We’re all so upset,” Haley
said. “The police talked to us, not that I had anything to say. I’d taken a
sleeping pill and gone to bed early with one of my headaches.”

“Yeah, thanks bunches by the
way for the iron-clad alibi, Haley,” Ben said. “Good to know you can be counted
on to be unconscious when it counts.”

“They don’t suspect you,
Ben,” Haley said, her voice tinged with the slightest of plaintive whines.

“Okay, well, anyway, I just
wanted to check in,” Maggie said, turning away. “And to tell you guys to go on
to Domaine St-Buvard without me. I’ll follow along tomorrow or the next day.”

“You’re staying in Nice?”
Haley asked. “Whatever for?”

“God, don’t encourage her,
Haley,” Ben said from the couch. “Will what’s-his-name pick us up? I know how
the French are when it comes to time. I’m not waiting in a circa World War II train
station for him to finally remember what time it is.”

“Ben, stop it,” Haley said.
“You’re embarrassing me.”

“What else is new,” Ben said
in a low voice as Maggie slipped out into the hallway.

“I am so sorry, Maggie,”
Haley said. “He has been under unbelievable strain lately for a couple of
different reasons. Please don’t listen to him.”

“Don’t worry, Haley,” Maggie
said, leaning in to kiss her sister-in-law’s cheek. “I never have.”

*****

The next morning, Annie
insisted on meeting the rest of the tour group at breakfast.

“These were Lanie’s
colleagues,” she said as Maggie locked their hotel room door. “And her
boyfriend, Olivier. He was on the tour too. Oh, he must be devastated.”

“Lanie was traveling with her
boyfriend?”

“Well, they didn’t room
together, but they were definitely an item. He’s the videographer on the tour.
Olivier Tatois. I met him briefly last winter when he came to Atlanta with
Lanie.”

They took the elevator
downstairs to the hotel breakfast room. Maggie wasn’t at all sure what to
expect, but she could tell Annie was eager to meet these people.

When
you’ve lost everything
,
even the faintest wisps of the person you
lost counted for something,
Maggie thought sadly
.
Perhaps Annie was hoping to get a little piece of her daughter
back in the memories and joint affection of these people. The minute they
walked into the room, Maggie sensed that was not going to be possible.

She recognized Bob Randall
immediately. His travel show was syndicated, and had been for several years. He
was considered the ultimate authority in European travel-on-a-budget for the
average American. His affable downhome style translated well in his television
series, and while he’d been doing it for at least a decade Maggie was surprised
to see he didn’t look a day older than when he’d first started.

A tall man, Randall broke
away from the group gathered around a large round table and strode to where
Maggie and Annie stood hesitating in the café entrance.

“Mrs. Morrison,” he said, his
hand outstretched to take Annie’s. “I am so sorry to meet you under these
circumstances. Every one of us here loved Lanie dearly.”

Annie’s eyes fill with tears.
“Thank you, Mr. Randall,” she said hoarsely.

“Please call me Bob, and come
meet the others on our tour.” He tucked Annie’s arm in his and pulled her away
from Maggie toward the table. Maggie followed. She noticed her brother and
Haley remained seated. Haley smiled wanly at her but Ben scowled into his
coffee and did not look up.

“Everyone, this is Lanie’s
mother…”

“Annie,” Annie said softly as
she nodded at the two couples and two single women at the table.

“Annie,” Randall said. “Move
over, Anderson,” he said to the distinguished looking man seated next to a
hatchet-faced woman in her mid-fifties with a brand new face-lift. “Annie, this
is Jim and Janet Anderson. They were playing the part of the tourists for our
little experiment. And there’s Ben and Haley Newberry across there. You may
have already met them.” Maggie noticed Ben still didn’t look up.

“To my left is Mademoiselle
Desiree Badeaux, and to her left, Miss Dee-Dee Bell, both of whom worked with
your daughter on this tour.”

“
Competed
, he means,” Dee-Dee said as she smiled at Annie. She
looked a little plain to Maggie, even dumpy. “We were all going after the same
prize. I really admired your daughter, Mrs. Morrison. She was a total
ballbuster, but I mean that in the nicest way.”

Maggie noticed Annie’s look
of confusion as she turned from Dee-Dee to the French woman next to her that
Randall had introduced as Mademoiselle Desiree Badeaux, although Maggie did
think it had been many years since the woman could honestly claim
that
title.

“Madame,” Desiree said,
nodding curtly at Annie. Pencil thin and wearing a bone-hugging knit dress,
Desiree clearly cared very much about her appearance. Maggie guessed she was
mid- forties. Her dark hair was bobbed and offset high cheekbones and full
lips.

“We are all just so upset at
what happened to our darling Lanie,” Randall said. “My mind is still blown. I
cannot adjust to what happened.” He grinned as if this were an endearing trait
they should all enjoy knowing. Maggie winced. Celebrities were a special case
unto themselves, she thought.

He pulled a chair out for
Annie and Maggie slipped into a free one next to Haley.

“Thank you all,” Annie said
as Randall poured her a cup of coffee from a pot on the table. “I wanted to
meet you because you were all important to Lanie.” She looked around the table,
her eyes resting on Maggie as her touchstone.

“I was hoping to see Olivier
this morning,” she said, an attempt at a smile trembling on her lips.

“Oh, my gosh, didn’t you
hear?” Dee-Dee stopped in the middle of applying lip gloss. “He’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?” Annie
looked at Maggie as if she might possibly know.

“They arrested him, I heard,”
Dee-Dee said, snapping her purse shut loudly. “He found the body, you know.”

What
an ass you are
, Maggie
couldn’t help think.

“Arrested Olivier?” Annie
looked around the table, bewildered. “But Olivier
loved
Lanie. That’s impossible.”

“Well, you know the French,”
Dee-Dee said with a grimace. “
Cherchez la
femme
. Or in this case, I guess it would be
l’homme
. Anyway, they wouldn’t have taken him away if they didn’t
know something we don’t know.”