Murder à la Carte (Maggie Newberry 02] Page 15

  “Hold on, I feel a laugh welling up.”

  Maggie looked around the room. She could hear voices in the kitchen. “Where’s Connor?” she asked.

  Grace stood up and massaged her back.

  “He’s left us,” she said.

  “Without saying good-bye?” Again, Maggie strained to hear whose voices were coming from the kitchen. “That pisses me off.”

  “It should, darling.” Grace leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “This charming bad-boy schtick is getting old for all of us. Ready, Winnie-lambkins?”

  Windsor pulled himself slowly to his feet, shuffled over to Maggie and kissed her good-bye, then silently trudged upstairs to collect his daughter.

  “It was a great Thanksgiving, Maggie. Truly.” Grace said as she walked to the foyer to pick up her full-length cashmere coat.

  “I’m glad,” Maggie said absently, positive now that she could pick out Babette’s voice from among those in the kitchen. “I enjoyed it too.”

  “Don’t worry, chérie,” Grace said as she watched her husband and child come down the staircase. “Your father’s in there with them.”

  “It’s sort of annoying,” Maggie admitted.

  “I know, pet. Call me tomorrow?”

  They hugged.

  “Maggie! There you are!” Her father extended a long arm to bring her closer into the group. The kitchen was a disaster, strewn with sauce-encrusted pots, spilled wine and a very unattractive turkey carcass hunched over a plate of congealed gravy and drippings. Maggie glanced down at the cardboard box under the kitchen table and was rewarded with a faint thumping sound.

  Babette lounged casually against the kitchen counter, looking up adoringly at Laurent as he spoke to John Newberry. A large balloon glass of blood-red wine swished jerkily in her small, pale hands.

  As she joined them, she could see that all three of them were drunk.

  “Everyone’s left,” Maggie said, shaking her head at Laurent’s offered glass of wine. “Mother’s in bed.”

  “Is it that late?” John Newberry fumbled for the sleeve hiding the watch on his wrist.

  “Ce n’est pas trop tard,” Laurent said, shrugging. It is not very late. Instantly, Maggie was vexed. His not bothering to speak English―whether from the alcohol or in deference to Babette―seemed to Maggie to be a gesture of uncoupling.

  “It is very ‘trop tard’,” she said pointedly to him. “Does Babette need a ride home? Where are her parents?”

  “They had a fight, I’m afraid,” her father said. “And left about an hour ago.”

  “They just left her here?” Maggie couldn’t imagine that meek wisp of a woman, Paulette Delacort, emitting even a muffled “boo” at her husband, let alone rowing with him to the point of leaving a party without the pregnant teenager with whom they had arrived. “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  Babette said nothing, but Maggie could detect a definite smirk across her blonde, bland face.

  “Well, it’s true, darling,” her father said, laughing. “Laurent, here, offered to give her a lift home―”

  “Oh, yes?” Maggie turned and looked at her lover.

  “Babette did not want to leave with her parents,” Laurent said, trying to sound sober. “And so, she will stay.”

  God, she hated this grammatical tense problem of theirs. “Do you mean, and so she stayed?” Maggie asked, a little shocked to find her hands finding their way to her hips in an akimbo stance strikingly like that of a strident fishwife. “Or and so she will be staying the night?”

  Laurent’s eyes were glazed by the alcohol he’d consumed. “It is late...” he began.

  “And so you’d best get started,” Maggie said.

  “I do not want to be any trouble to you,” Babette said to Laurent.

  “Good,” Maggie said. “Then why don’t you walk home?”

  “Maggie!” Laurent looked at her with surprise. So surprised, in fact, that Maggie was immediately aware of how ridiculous her jealousy must be. “You are being rude to our guest,” he said, frowning.

  He hasn’t a clue that he’s been flirted with all night. She looked at Babette and felt her shoulders relax. So much for your charms and wiles, my dear. The big guy didn’t even notice.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Maggie said to Babette. “I’m really tired and I’m afraid I don’t think either of these two are in much shape to escort you home.”

  Babette looked up at Laurent with startled concern. “But Laurent,” she said in an attempt at an appealing voice. “I was hoping you would take me home. You told my father you would.”

  Laurent nodded and put his wine glass down. “Of course,” he said. “I will get the car keys.” He leaned over and kissed Maggie on the mouth, surprising everyone. “And Maggie will drive.” He looked at John. “Join us, John? We have a sober chauffeur and I have something below that will go very well with our drive.”

  Babette poured her wine into the sink, her hand hesitating as if she were debating whether or not to dash the glass into it as well. She controlled herself and set the long-stemmed wineglass on the counter. She gave Maggie a look of intense hatred.

  Goodness. Quelle poor loser, Maggie thought.

  “I will get my coat,” Babette said, pushing past Maggie to the living room.

  “What is this you have for the ride?” John drained the last of his Grenache. “Is it from your own grapes?”

  “Bien sûr,” Laurent said, smacking his hands together. “It is something very special. For the three of us, yes?” He put a heavy arm around Maggie’s shoulders and drew her to him. “To say good-bye to Thanksgiving Day en Provence, hein?”

  “I’m ready,” Babette said icily from the living room. She stood glaring at the three of them, her coat draping off her like a cape on a slump-shouldered mannequin.

  “Bon.” Laurent said and indicated for John to follow him below.

  “We won’t be a tick, dear,” her father said gaily over his shoulder as they descended into the cellar.

  Ignoring Babette, who continued to stand in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, Maggie filled the sink with hot, sudsy water, and began placing dirty wine glasses into it. She chopped a few pieces of turkey from the carcass and slipped them to Petit-Four, then gathered up an armful of empty bottles and placed them in a wooden crate at the end of the kitchen table. She knew Laurent would use them again.

  Babette moved into the kitchen and touched a small china saucer painted with scattered rosebuds that was sitting on the edge of the counter. The saucer fell to the hard tile floor with a crash. Maggie jumped and whirled around.

  “What is your problem?” she said in exasperation.

  “Je n’ai pas de problème, Madame,” Babette said haughtily. I don’t have a problem. “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”

  “You are a piece of work, you know that?” Maggie picked up the pieces of broken china. She had especially liked that pretty little dish.

  “I have slept with your boyfriend,” the girl said, smiling.

  Although she knew it was a lie, Maggie felt a hard twist in her stomach.

  “Honey,” she said, tossing the broken shards into the trash, “I imagine Laurent is about the only one you haven’t slept with in this town.” She stood up and faced Babette.

  “He is not your husband,” Babette said. “I will tell everyone that you are living without marriage.”

  “Gee, Babette.” Maggie crossed her arms and stared the girl down. “Who do you think they’ll believe? Me? Or the village tart?”

  “Belette!” the girl screamed. “Cochon! Pig!”

  “Be quiet! You’ll wake the house!”

  “Maggie!” Her father spoke as he appeared from behind Babette. His face was white. Laurent was behind him. Maggie knew something was the matter when she saw he had no wine in his hands.

  “What is it?” Maggie asked, searching Laurent’s eyes for a clue.

  Laurent went to the telephone and began dialing.

  “Dad?
What’s the matter?”

  John Newberry shook his head and listened to Laurent speak in rapid French into the receiver.

  “Dad, what is going on?” she asked in bewilderment.

  Babette’s eyes were on Laurent and they grew larger and larger as she listened. Suddenly, she clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp.

  John Newberry put his hand on Maggie’s arm. “Darling,” he said. “It’s terrible....”

  “What? What is terrible? Is something in the basement? Did you find something in the cellar?”

  “Maggie, darling,” he said. “We...we found a body in the basement.”

  Maggie stared at him.“A body? A dead body?” she asked.

  Laurent hung up the phone and reached for her. He kissed her and lifted her chin in order to look into her eyes. She could smell the wine and cigarettes on him.

  “It’s Connor, Maggie,” he said.

  Chapter Eight

  1

  The pot bubbled violently. The combined scents of poached salt cod, boiled lamb, carrots, chickpeas, and stewed cauliflower wafted through the quiet café. Grace rubbed the mascara from her eyes with a shaking hand and sipped her Pernod. She wasn’t a bit hungry, couldn’t imagine trying to eat anything this morning, let alone boiled eggs and fish stew. The bile rose in her throat and she took another, longer sip of her drink to force the nausea back down. This wasn’t just a hangover, she thought miserably, something was really wrong with her. She looked out to the street and allowed the pain and horror of last night’s visit from the police to descend upon her.

  Connor, dead? It wasn’t possible. He was there last night, teasing and being naughty and charming and annoying. It just wasn’t possible that he wasn’t in the world any more.

  The waiter brought a small tray of eggs and aïoli with a large plate of lamb, cod and assorted vegetables. He also brought a plate of six snails nestled in little pools of garlic butter and freckled with parsley. Grace stared at them in horror.

  Has Windsor lost his mind?

  Across the crowded café, she watched him pulling cigarettes out of the rusting machine near the kitchen.

  The police had arrived in the middle of the night, chatted briefly on their doorstep with a groggy Windsor, and then left. When Windsor returned to bed he had been wide awake and after he told her the news, so had she been for the rest of the night.

  It’s no wonder I feel like shit.

  She lit up a cigarette and pushed the plate of escargots away with two fingers. No sleep, too much wine and probably stomach flu contracted from any one of half a dozen people last night. She stared straight ahead at nothing and felt the tears sting her eyes again.

  How could he just leave and not say good-bye?

  “How you doing, sweetheart?” Windsor tossed the packet of Luckies down on the table and then plopped into the chair opposite Grace. “Sorry, it was all they had.”

  She looked up at her husband who, in her estimation, looked about as bad as she felt. Bleary-eyed and pale, his hair uncombed, even his lips were cracked. They’d driven Taylor to school together this morning, not bothering to cover their gloom with robotic niceties to the child. They had driven into Aix in silence save for the occasional, nonsensical singing and babbling of their daughter. Leave it to a tragic, senseless death to bring out the cheer in the girl, Grace thought unfairly, and then admonished herself. Taylor didn’t know, of course, about Uncle Connor’s death.

  “I just can’t believe it,” she said to Windsor, her eyes filling again with tears.

  “I know,” he said, picking up one of the hard-boiled eggs and dipping it into the mayonnaise. “It’s unbelievable. Incredible―”

  “Why did you order all this stuff?” Grace said crossly, stubbing out her cigarette and picking up the new pack from the table. “It’s disgusting.”

  “We need to eat, Grace,” Windsor said reasonably, biting into his egg.

  “When did the police say they wanted to talk with us?” Grace wanted to put her head down on the table and weep with fatigue and hurt.

  “This afternoon. They’re questioning everyone, I guess.”

  “Do they think we had something to do with it?”

  Windsor shook his head and scooped up one of the slippery snails with a pair of silver tongs. “It’s what the police do. They ask questions. Of everybody.”

  “Poor Maggie,” Grace said softly, blowing out a long stream of smoke. “She must be beside herself. I feel bad not calling her this morning.”

  “I’m sure it’s a madhouse at Domaine St-Buvard about now,” Windsor said. “You can call her this afternoon.” He looked up through the shade of a large sycamore tree hovering over their table. There were a large number of dead leaves still on the branches.

  “Poor Maggie,” Grace repeated, laying her head on her folded arms upon the table. “Poor Connor and poor all of us,” she said softly, as she tried to blot out the odors of boiled cod and eggs.

  2

  “Garlic is what keeps the French youthful. A little parsley and there you are! No bad breath. We French never get cancer. Americans? Always cancer. The French? Never liver disease, rarely heart disease. And why do you think that is?”

  Maggie looked at the young police detective sitting in her living room and willed herself to be numb, to feel nothing. She stared blankly at him.

  “Garlic?” Elspeth, seated beside Maggie, ventured the answer.

  “Bien sûr!” L’agent nodded solemnly at Maggie’s mother.

  The police had arrived on the scene a full hour after Laurent had rung them but they made up for their tardiness by refusing to leave once they’d arrived. They roped off the cave and sent photographers, coroner, pathologists, artist and detectives below for several hours. Maggie was surprised that the basement could hold them all. She found herself making turkey and tapenade sandwiches and serving them up with gallons of boiled, black coffee.

  The police questioned each of them separately. During her interview, Maggie tried to concentrate on what the young police officer was saying to her, but all she could think of was Connor’s impish laugh, Connor putting the fear of God into Taylor, Connor enlivening the whole party, the whole evening, just by walking through the front door. She felt her face tighten with the effort of trying not to cry because a white sheet-draped stretcher in the arms of two burly gendarmes was how Connor had left the party. And in case she wasn’t absolutely sure of that, a red-checkered arm had escaped its cover to prove it to her.

  She watched Laurent as he stood on the terrace, smoking and talking to another police officer in yet another series of questions and more questions. Maggie was sure the questions were the same: Why was Connor late to the party? What sort of mood was he in? To whom did he talk? Were you good friends of his? And most importantly: when was the last time you saw him?

  Her father sat in a chair across the room from her, his face grim and unrevealing, his eyes watching his wife and daughter with concern. Nicole, bored and cross, sat on the floor with Petit-Four curled up in her lap.

  “And so, you see,” the arrogant young officer continued, “our herb, sage, will cure diabetes, our lavender the stomach cramps...” He gripped his thin flap of a stomach as if to demonstrate this and rolled his eyes at them. “And our savory? You have tasted it, Monsieur? You will not have trouble with impotence if you eat much savory in Provence! We French are a healthy people―”

  “May I...offer you...a drink?...un pastis?” John asked the detective.

  The detective looked momentarily surprised. He glanced briefly at his superior outside with Laurent and then smiled at John. “Je veux bien,” he said, nodding sternly as if to show that just because he would have a little drink, they were not to think he was a pushover.

  John rose to fetch the drink when Petit-Four barked sharply, its ears standing up at attention and pointing in the direction of the front door.

  There was a loud, heavy banging at the door which set the little dog off all the more. Maggie saw Laurent to
ss down his cigarette and make motions to leave the terrace to answer the front door himself.

  The young cop hopped up and held up his hand to Maggie who had also gotten up to answer the door. “I will see it is who,” he said firmly.

  “This is getting ridiculous,” Maggie said to her mother as the skinny officer strode to the front door, nearly tripping over the dog. Immediately, she could hear Madame Renoir jabbering away at the man in her excited, high-pitched voice. Maggie hurried to the door.

  “Who is this woman?” the cop said, his hands on his hips.

  Maggie ignored him and addressed Madame Renoir.

  “Madame Renoir...” she began.

  “Babette is telling the town,” the woman said. She was wearing the same outfit she had on last night. The same outfit, in fact, that Maggie had always seen her in. Maggie had an image of a whole closet full of black wool uniforms―each identical to the other―that Madame simply rotated after each washing. There was a determined set to the baker’s face.

  The policeman turned to Elspeth. “Is this a service woman of some kind? There can be no cleaning of the murder site. It is absolutely forbidden.”

  Elspeth sighed in exasperation from where she sat in the living room and looked at her husband, who now stood next to her with a tray of glasses and a small bottle of pastis.

  “I have come to help,” Madame Renoir said to Maggie.

  Maggie had to admit that it was a sort of balm to see the old girl. Her sweet face helped soften the ugliness of the morning. “I...there’s really nothing―” Maggie said.

  “La petite fille?” Madame Renoir said peering shyly into the house. “The little girl is in the way?”

  Instantly, Nicole was at the front door, the squirming puppy in her arms.

  “Oh! You like la petite chien, hein?” The woman smiled at Nicole, who looked up at Maggie.

  “She’s the one gave us Petit-Four, right, Aunt Maggie?”

  “Madame Dernier...Maggie...” Madame Renoir became grim and serious once more. “I am not to be a trouble to you. If the girl wants to come with Madame Renoir for l’après midi, then Monsieur may bring her back to you ce soir.”