Murder à la Carte (Maggie Newberry 02] Read online

  The afternoon was cold and wet, the sky a wash of bleakest slate-gray, as Maggie made ham and cheese sandwiches with fresh, fragrant slices of Madame Renoir’s excellent bread and aîoli, the area’s rich garlic spread. She heard Laurent and Jean-Luc’s heavy boots on the old wooden stairs as they ascended to the kitchen from the cave. Maggie wiped her hands against her jeans and checked her makeup.

  “Oh, chérie,” Laurent said, his eyes brightening when he saw her. “We will come to the table like civilized men, hein?” His dark blue pullover strained against his broad chest as he ran a hand through his hair.

  Jean-Luc removed his rag cap and nodded at Maggie. He smiled his ruined smile and tucked his big, farmer’s hands under his armpits as if sorry he’d brought them along.

  “Bonjour, Madame,” he said.

  “Finished for the day?” Maggie asked hopefully as Laurent pulled a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from the cupboard above her head.

  “Mais, non, Madame!” Jean-Luc said, clucking his tongue as if Maggie had made a bad joke. “There is much to making a good wine, yes? Only the best grapes are employed.”

  Maggie carried the plate of sandwiches to the table while Laurent brought the bottle and three glasses.

  “You are hand-sorting through a hundred bushels of grapes?” She thumped the sandwiches down on the table and looked at Laurent with incredulity.

  He shook his head. “No, but mon oncle has planted several different varieties, n’est-ce pas?”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “Non, non, not bad,” Jean-Luc said, seating himself at the table. “It will make for a wine formidable!” He kissed two of his fingers. “Grenache et Cinsault et―-”

  “Grenache?” Maggie accepted a glass of wine from Laurent. “You mean like that pink stuff you won’t allow in the house back home?”

  “C’est différent, Maggie, “ Laurent said, a smile edging his full lips.

  “God, don’t tell me you’re going to embarrass me to my friends back home.” She affected an imaginary conversation, “Oh, the wine we make? I guess you could say it’s sort of a French Mad-Dog 20-20.”

  “‘Mad Dog’?” Jean-Luc looked up questioning to Laurent who shook his head at the older man.

  “Ce ne fait rien,” Laurent said to him. “L’humour américain.”

  “I understood that!” Maggie gave Laurent a playful jab.

  “The Grenache we make will be totalement différent,” Laurent said as he reached for a sandwich.

  “Well, why’s it taking so long? You’ve got crushers and stuff, right? Just squeeze all the juice out―”

  “And we will have le bon jus de raisin,” Laurent said, matter-of-factly.

  “Grape juice,” Maggie said.

  “Very good, chérie!” Laurent patted her hand.

  “The juice, she is squeezed.” Jean-Luc pressed his hands together, crumbs clinging to his mustache. “This is already done.”

  Maggie nibbled at her own sandwich and smiled politely at Jean-Luc. “And now?” she asked. “Now that the juice, she is squeezed?”

  “Maggie.” Laurent’s voice was low and admonishing. She didn’t look at him.

  “It must be fermented, bien sûr,” the older man said, as if every one must surely know this.

  “Will we or won’t we have our own wine to serve when my parents get here?” Maggie asked Laurent.

  “Bien sûr,” he responded. “We still have to acquire more bottles, eh?” He looked at Jean-Luc, who nodded solemnly. “The heavy, dark ones,” he explained to Maggie. “They are the best. And more wooden wine racks, although Bernard said he would make some at a reasonable price for us. And we don’t have enough corks. The cork is very important, tu sais. Did you know that Jean-Luc has wine in his cave over a hundred years old? Wine of his father. These sandwiches are really very good, Maggie. Ainsi,” he said, “we have some ready to drink for Thanksgiving, yes. And some that are, even now, maturing in the vats below.”

  “Those are the best ones, right?” Maggie asked.

  “We shall see,” Laurent said, pouring himself another glass of the Cabernet. “Peut-être.“

  “What about your own wine, Jean-Luc?” Maggie asked, pushing the platter of sandwiches toward him when she saw he’d easily finished the two on his plate. “Are they all finished?”

  “Ahh, Madame,” Jean-Luc said, eagerly accepting two more sandwiches. “I am with the cave co-op, n’est-ce pas? The wine is being made now.”

  “What, exactly, is this co-op?” Maggie leaned back in her chair with her wine glass. “Like, all the grapes from everyone are all bunged into a big vat together? And whatever wine is made, is everybody’s wine?”

  “Exactement.” Jean-Luc chewed happily.

  “Wow, so, it really is sort of special that you make your own wine.” Maggie directed this to Laurent.

  “I have been trying to tell you this,” Laurent said. “Fini, Jean-Luc?” he asked, as he stood up.

  “Laurent, you can see that he’s not.”

  Jean-Luc stood up with Laurent, his mouth bulging with one sandwich, the other clutched in a weathered, red hand.

  “C’est magnifique, Madame. Merci,” Jean-Luc said in a muffled voice.

  “You’re welcome, Jean-Luc,” Maggie said with a sigh. “Je vous en prie. “

  “Très bien, Madame!” Jean-Luc said enthusiastically at hearing her French. Then, he and Laurent headed for the kitchen and the basement door.

  “You are going out, chérie?” Laurent called over his shoulder to her.

  Maggie followed them out of the dining room, aware that her lover had not waited for her answer. When the narrow kitchen door leading to the basement and its collection of fermenting liquids and calmly maturing wine had slammed solemnly shut behind them, she gathered up the empty glasses and dishes onto a tray and carried it back to the kitchen.

  “It’s not that I’m bored, exactly, that’s not it at all,” Maggie said into the phone receiver as she pulled a wool afghan closer around her. The fire in the massive living room fireplace was still alive, but barely. From where she sat on the couch, she could see the wind slapping the bare branches of the apple tree outside against the French doors. “I mean, my folks will be here in two days and I haven’t even begun cleaning the place. And I still haven’t got a confirmation on the turkey―”

  “You sure I can’t do anything to help? I’m really good at this sort of thing, Maggie. Organizing and buying things.” Grace laughed merrily on the other end of the line.

  “No, I know you’re busy right now, Grace, besides―”

  “I’m not that busy, darling! Really. Let me―”

  “I mean, he’s down there in the dark fiddling with his grapes and foamy vats and stuff like some bloody mole― coming up only to eat sandwiches and I’m running all over a thirteenth century village trying to find cranberry sauce!”

  Grace laughed. “Listen, Maggie, I absolutely insist you stop being Madame Must-Do-It-All-Herself and let me pick you up and take you to Aix today. We’ll find a turkey, we’ll find cranberry relish, we’ll have a tall glass of something wicked, and we’ll leave the moles in the basement to their grape-squishing. Yeah?”

  “You’re a peach, Grace.”

  “Yeah. C’est moi. Une pêche. Pick you up in an hour.”

  2

  The girl arched her back, the swell of her tummy protruding, not unattractively, it seemed to Connor, as he stood by the window and watched her. Babette was completely nude and appeared to be unashamed of it―even in contrast to the fact that Connor was fully clothed. It was cold and wet outside but the renovated and luxurious farmhouse was cozy and snug. For as much time as he spent out of his clothes, Connor thought with a smile, central heating was imperative.

  He continued to watch Babette as she stretched. Her breasts were heavy against her thin rib cage, the veins prominent and blue like rivers on a road map. Her hair hung reddish-gold to her waist. She pushed it over her shoulder to expose even more of her breasts
.

  Connor sighed. She wouldn’t age well, he feared. Already, the harsh lines of frowning marked her lovely face. That pert nose will grow too, he decided, no matter how many years she keeps it upturned in that haughty glower of hers. Why do I always pick mean-spirited women? he wondered, as he directed his gaze back to the mound of unshapen clay on his stand.

  “Dépêche-toi,” Babette said, her brows knitted together in a fierce look of petulance. She rubbed the sides of her arms as if she were chilled.

  “I can’t hurry, my love,” Connor said, poking tentatively at the three-foot form of clay. “This sort of thing takes time.” He smiled at her almost fondly. “You understood that concept well enough an hour ago.”

  “Don’t be dirty,” Babette said, jumping up from the rumpled bed and grabbing her robe.

  “Oh, Babette, what are you...?” He watched with disappointment as she tied her robe firmly around her.

  “I will go,” she said as she picked up her shoes and skirt from the inlaid tile floor.

  “Why?” Connor dropped his hands to his side in exasperation. “Because I don’t want to spend all day lolling around in bed?”

  “You are a pig,” she said, roughly pulling on her dark stockings. “My father says he will cut your heart out and bake it for his casse-croûte! “

  “I guess that means you’ve broken the happy news.” Connor tossed down his sculpting implements and walked over to her. He tried to take her hands in his but she pushed him away.

  “Why won’t you let me help you?” he asked. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “And how could it be?” She looked up at him and he caught a fleeting, painful flash of a little girl looking back at him. Nineteen years old going on twelve, he thought to himself.

  She recovered quickly.

  “I will kill the baby, and then you and I will continue to make love. But my father will live with this shame for always. Toujours.

  “You didn’t have to tell him, you know.” Connor ran a hand through his hair. “We could’ve taken care of this,” he pointed at her stomach. “And gone on like nothing―”

  “And your whore, Lydie?” The girl jumped up and pulled her heavy sweater on over her head. “And the little school girl, Denise? I have seen you with her near l’école des filles. She is not even sixteen years old.”

  Connor licked his lips. “You knew about Lydie before you came today,” he reminded her. “It didn’t seem to stand much in your way an hour ago―”

  “Don’t forget petite Denise,” Babette said with a sneer.

  “Look, what do you want from me? Huh? Money?” He jumped up and strode to the desk tucked under the eaves in his small bedroom. He snatched up his wallet and pulled out a five hundred franc note. “Is this enough? More?” He wagged the note in the air.

  Babette stared at him for a moment, then smoothed out the creases in her snug, turquoise-colored skirt. She approached him, her eyes constantly on his own, and carefully took the money from his hand. She tucked the note into the wrist of her pullover.

  “It’s a start, mon cher, “ she said, her lips curling away from her small, already yellowing teeth. “From now on, when you want Babette, you must pay.”

  Connor almost felt like laughing. And shall the price go up, my sweet? he felt like asking, when there is soon more of you to love? The girl must be loony!

  Instead, he kept his expression under control.

  “I understand, Babette,” he said, quietly.

  She turned abruptly away from him and left the room, not bothering to shut the door behind her. Connor listened as he heard her leave through the front door and wondered if she’d taken anything on her way out.

  He’d been a fool to think he could continue to see the girl under the circumstances. But he’d so wanted to try sculpting that body. It was at the perfect stage of its ripeness, not quite showing but not quite normal. A state halfway between the virginal girl and the maternal woman.

  He looked at the barely touched form of clay. What a shame, he thought. He had had such high hopes for this particular piece.

  3

  Madame Renoir dusted the flour from her hands and suppressed a gasp of delight when she saw the two American women coming toward her shop. She had just been about to close up―that useless Babette had not even shown up for work today―when she saw Madame Van Sant and Madame Dernier get out of the handsome black automobile in front of the Dulcie’s charcuterie. To her exquisite pleasure, the two women bypassed the butcher shop and headed straight for her own boulangerie.

  Quickly, she scurried to the back of the shop, past the ovens and the large, mixing tables coated with flour, small clouds of the white dust still hovering gently above the floor, to the back room where she kept her milk crates, gumboots and brooms. Shifting her large body sideways to enter the small room, and listening for the sound of the bell at the front door, she reached into one of the large crates crammed up against the wall and the back door. She picked out two of the fattest, biggest puppies, clutching them to her ample bosom, and squeezed once more back through the narrow opening. As she walked through the back preparation room, the heat of the now-cooling ovens still warming the room, she could hear the tell-tale tinkle that heralded her customers’ arrival.

  “Madame Renoir?” Grace called as she opened the door of the little shop. “God,” she said to Maggie, “I gain weight just smelling the stuff in this place, you know?”

  They had finished most of their shopping in Aix―a twenty-five pound frozen turkey sat wrapped and strapped in the back seat shoulder harness of Grace’s Mercedes as testimony―and had decided to pick up their bread and Maggie’s pumpkin pie order at Madame Renoir’s.

  “Unfortunately,” Maggie said, eyeing the delectables in the bakery display case, “I practically live here.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No, really. Laurent and I both love fresh bread for dinner every night...”

  “And you mean to tell me you don’t stock up on a few eclairs and custard-tarts while you’re about it?”

  “Bonjour, Mesdames!” Both Grace and Maggie jumped, startled by Madame Renoir’s sudden entrance. She was red-faced and caked in white, and holding to the front of her broad, pale blue smocked tablier a squirming pair of poodle puppies.

  “Pour vous, Madame!” the woman chortled shrilly as she pushed one of the wriggling dogs into Maggie’s arms. “Et aussi pour vous, Madame. Pour votre petite fille, oui?” She shoved the other puppy into Grace’s hands, who held it as if it might explode at any moment.

  Maggie shifted the bundle of lapping tongue and curly fur in her arms and murmured her thanks to Madame Renoir, while staring in laughing surprise at Grace, who, up until this moment, Maggie could not have imagined looking awkward or uncomfortable in any situation.

  “Merci, Madame. Mais, pourquoi?” Maggie asked, peering into the puppy’s sleepy face. She quickly checked the sex of the dog―a female―and decided, on the spot, that a year’s quarantine, or whatever the United States required for re-entry with an animal, could be suffered. It suddenly occurred to her that a pet was precisely what she needed during her year in France.

  “Pourquoi?” The baker grinned idiotically at both women, beaming as broadly as if she had produced the pups from her own litter. “Parce que, je veux vous donner un cadeau! Simplement!” Because I want to give you a gift, that’s all.

  Grace smiled generously at the woman and said to Maggie through her smile: “I can’t keep this thing. Windsor will shit.”

  “Madame?” Madame Renoir looked encouragingly at Grace as if she still needed some last, minor commitment from the American to accept the dog.

  Grace held up her puppy―a very active male―and smiled too widely. “Merci beaucoup, Madame. Ma fille sera très contente, très heureuse!”My daughter will be thrilled. She glanced at Maggie. “Taylor will have it skinned and eaten before dinnertime tomorrow, you watch.”

  The puppy wrapped his needle-sharp teeth around a glitt
ering button on Grace’s double-breasted knit top. She attempted to pull the dog away from her buttons.

  “Ouch! You little monster! It bit me!” Grace looked at Maggie’s own docile puppy and she began to laugh. “God, this figures,” she said. “You get perfect-puppy there and I get the hound from hell. There’s no justice. How did this happen to us? Didn’t we just come in here for some bread?”

  “I told you,” Maggie said, watching the big blinking eyes of her puppy, “I come here a lot. It’s probably some sort of archaic bonding thing between proprietor and customer that she does with all her prized customers and you just happened to be here when the gift-giving portion of the rite happened.”

  “I’m riddled with luck.”

  “How do you say, ‘again’? I want to thank her again.”

  “You know I’m going to make you take this little rotter too as soon as we’re outside the shop.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Grace. I’ll tell Taylor and you’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “God, you wouldn’t.”

  “Merci, Madame,” Maggie said, giving her puppy a little shake to indicate why she was thanking the woman. “Merci, encore.”

  “I don’t think that’s right,” Grace said, now holding her animal with both hands away from her Chanel country skirt.

  “She gets the idea.”

  Madame Renoir waved her hands at Maggie as if to signify that the giving of the puppy was nothing.

  “Votre tian de dourge sucrée est prête,” she sang out to Maggie. Your sweet pies are ready for you. She pulled out a large tray from under the counter and set it gently on the surface between them. On the tray sat two dozen small ramekins of what looked like orange pudding with caramelized topping drizzled over each.

  “My God, they look wonderful,” Grace said, still struggling with her dog for ownership of her buttons. “They smell even better. What are they?”

  Maggie looked a little closer, aware that Madame Renoir was watching her with some trepidation.