Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) (20 page)

Maggie roused
herself from the remnant of the nap she had just enjoyed on the couch and went
to greet them. “Oh, it’s a long and painful story,” she said, “that I’ll tell
you over dinner. Have a nice sleep-over, you two?”

Grace bounced
Zou-zou on her hip. “Oh, we did, didn’t we, lambkin?
Grand-mère
Danielle showed us how to make
gnocchi
and we made a big mess!”

Zou-zou giggled
and then squirmed to be put down. Grace held onto her even tighter. “Oh, no you
don’t,” she said. “We’ve got a date upstairs in Nap City.”

“Nooooooo,
Maman
!” Zou-zou shrieked, trying even
harder to break from Grace’s embrace.

“Sorry, puddin,’”
Grace said, heading for the stairs. “It’s a law in the bible of Keeping Mama
Sane that cannot be broken. Catch you later, darling,” she said to Maggie as
she climbed the stairs.

Maggie turned to
Jean-Luc, who stood silently in the hallway. It was unusual for him to come into
the house when Maggie was here. Now seeing him stand there, she felt a little
guilty about that. Years ago she had reason not to trust Jean-Luc, but she had
to admit he had redeemed himself many times since then. Plus, he was very dear
to Laurent—practically an honorary, beloved uncle if Laurent went in for
that sort of sentimental thing, which Maggie wasn’t at all sure he didn’t. But
he was also the newlywed husband of Danielle, who
was
beloved, no doubt about it. There had been many occasions when
Maggie (not to mention Laurent) had scolded herself for not reaching out more
to Jean-Luc. As a result, the man tended to hold back when she was around.

“Would you care
for a drink of something, Jean-Luc?” Maggie came into the kitchen and smiled at
him. Besides, it had occurred to her that nothing would garner her more
redeemable points with Laurent than being sweet to Jean-Luc.

Clearly startled
by the offer, Jean-Luc dragged his farmer’s cap from his head and held it
twisted in is dark, gnarled fingers. He cleared his throat and then nodded.

Maggie pointed to
the barstool by the counter and went to get the jug of
pastis
that Laurent kept chilled in the fridge. She wasn’t sure
whether Jean-Luc drank it straight as so many of the old village grey beards
did, or cut with water. She poured water into a pitcher and set it in front of
him with the anise liqueur. She sat opposite him on a bar stool, taking a good
two tries to get settled onto it. He watched her as he poured the water into
his glass.

“You and Danielle
are having fun with your little American granddaughter, huh?”

He looked at her
with confusion.

“Zou-zou,” Maggie
clarified.

“Ahhhh!” His
whole face brightened and Maggie realized that it wasn’t just Danielle who was
enjoying the foster grandparent role. Neither of them had children before they
married each other and it was way too late for that now. They were clearly loving
being partners in spoiling little Z.

“She is
merveilleuse
!” he said. “So smart, that
one. I am teaching her to count.”

“Oh, that’s
good,” Maggie said. “You know, Jean-Luc, I was wondering if you had heard
anything this year about the
Mistral
Promis
?”

The words weren’t
out of her mouth before she saw the light die in his eyes and the wall slam
back down between them.

Whoa! What is all that about?

“I understand
they are not doing it this year,” he said carefully, appearing to seriously
study his drink glass.

“Oh? Is that
because everyone and his brother lost so much last year?”

Jean-Luc didn’t
answer but Maggie thought she detected a slight shrug.

“Did everyone bet
that day?”

Jean-Luc gave a
grunt and, still looking only at his glass, said, “Everyone who had testicles.”

“Did you lose
much?” Maggie tried to sound sympathetic, but with Jean-Luc refusing to look at
her, it was hard.

“I don’t have
much so it wasn’t so bad.”

“How about
Laurent?”

She thought she
saw the slightest of smiles edge on his lips. “You’ll have to ask him.”

Deciding to
abandon that approach, Maggie hopped up to see if there were any fried plantains
in the breadbox. Laurent made them with salt and garlic. She found a container
of them and slid them onto a plate, which she brought back to the counter with
a jar of pickles and a dish of tapenade.

“Can’t drink on
an empty stomach,” she said cheerfully.

“It was a sure
thing,” Jean-Luc said, eyeing the tapenade. Laurent was famous for his
tapenade.

She handed him a
spreading knife. “Except that it wasn’t. Yves Briande told me that Jacques
Tatois lost everything that day.”

Jean-Luc snorted
in contempt. “The man was a fool.” Maggie wondered briefly how Danielle was
doing with her don’t-talk-ill-of-the-dead philosophy with Jean-Luc.

He spread a huge
dollop of tapenade on a plantain. “The surprise wasn’t Jacques but his cousin
Florrie.”

“How so?”

Maggie watched
Jean-Luc push the plantain into his mouth and hopped up to get a napkin. Or a
mop.

“Up until then
nobody knew Florrie had that kind of money.”

“Florrie’s rich?”

“Well, at least
he was before the
Mistral Promis
.”

“I guess you
could say that about a lot of people.”

Jean-Luc finally
looked at Maggie. And smiled. “That’s true,” he said.

*
                          
*
                                 
*

Roger had been
careful not to choose the same table at
Le
Canard
where he and Maggie had once met. He sat at the table furthest from
the square and remembered that day two years ago. She had been wearing a
sundress of some kind, her legs tan and shapely. He remembered the sight of her
approaching the table, her hips swinging slightly as she walked. He would have
known her to be an American just by the way she walked, he mused. Not that
French women weren’t the sexiest most provocative creatures on the face of the
earth, of course. But Maggie walked with confidence, almost…swagger. He used to
tease her that she was his image of the female John Wayne. As he recalled, she
wasn’t at all offended by the comparison.

Winter was nearly
here and the pale yellow leaves were stripped from the linden trees that hemmed
the square of the little café. The proprietor had obviously swept up all
evidence from the terrace that there had ever been a bright canopy of leaves
protecting the outdoor patio. Roger saw that the plant pots sat dark and naked,
awaiting spring’s inspiration.

He had pulled
Dernier’s file, of course, years ago. When he first began to work with
Maggie—and had begun to have feelings for her—he had studied the
kind of man she had chosen. It didn’t surprise him to know that she could be
attracted to both the criminal and the cop. She was, after all, a complex,
colorful woman. Unpredictable, indefinable. He had to admit, too, that his few
run-ins with Dernier had been unsettling. For a
goniff
, he was surprisingly sure of himself. Roger assumed that was
due to his size. Big men were used to looking down. They were used to being
taken seriously. They were used to being unafraid.

    
Roger lit a cigarette
and watched the opening of the café for Dernier’s entrance. It occurred to him
that he hadn’t thought the situation out totally, so that when Dernier asked to
meet he could only bluffly agree, as if he had every confidence in the outcome.

Was the man here to assault him?
Surely Maggie had told him of their
liaison two years ago? While in the end, Maggie had chosen to remain with
Dernier, she had been torn, of that much Roger was convinced. It was, in fact, sometimes
the only thing that kept him sane.

“Bedard.”

Roger was jerked
out of his memories by the shadow of the man himself, concomitant with the recognition
that Dernier hadn’t bothered to address him by his title, or even in a
questioning manner. Immediately, Roger felt on a back foot. He blushed to
further realize that he had to force himself not to stand when Dernier
appeared. He grunted, not looking at him, and nodded to a chair. “Dernier,” he
said.

Dernier seated
himself and a waiter immediately placed a drink in front of him. Roger cursed
the wisdom of agreeing to meet on Dernier’s home turf. He had the advantage in
all things, it seemed. A drink was placed in front of Roger and he looked at
Dernier in surprise. Dernier was holding his drink up as if to toast.

“To Maggie,” he
said, throwing the contents back in one gulp.

Roger felt an
instant rush of kinship with the man that he couldn’t help. Like a wasp drawn
into a spider’s web, he felt himself being pulled into a warm confederation:
the men who love Maggie Newberry.
He
returned the gesture and drank his down.

Roger had
expected Dernier, if not to punch him in the nose, then at least to ask how
they might sort this out as civilized men. Clearly, that was not the route
Dernier chose to take. He wasn’t the kind of man who reacted to how someone
else
saw the world. He was the kind of
man who had his own ideas about how things would be. Roger decided to sit back
and get as comfortable as he could.

“What do you want?”
Dernier asked him straight out.

Roger waited
until the waiter had replenished their drinks before answering. He had already
decided he wouldn’t play games with Dernier. The man was a con artist. There
was no ruse or gambit he hadn’t seen or played a hundred times. That was his
milieu
and Roger wouldn’t be so stupid
as to attempt to enter into it with him.

“She is
complicating my investigation,” Roger said flatly. “I need her to stop talking
to people. Keep her at home, can’t you?” He had been planning that last line to
be a little more damaging than it finally came out. He noticed with mounting
frustration that Dernier appeared not to have even heard it.

To assume that
,
he reminded himself
, would be folly.

“She is a
pregnant woman ready to deliver her first child at any moment,” Dernier said
dismissively. “How much trouble can she be causing you?”

So he wants to play it that way?

“Perhaps you
don’t know your wife as well as I do,” Roger said, sipping his drink and never
taking his eyes off Dernier.

To his credit,
the man laughed. “I doubt that,” he said, belying his laugh. “Do you
know
what it is you want?”

A man of few words.
He expected that. Experienced hustlers typically did way more thinking than
talking. He would have to proceed with caution.

Before he could
speak, Dernier added, “Besides my wife.”

Roger spilled his
drink on the table, but before he could wipe it up the waiter appeared from
nowhere and attended it. Roger now had the unmistakable and vastly
uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched—and not just by Dernier.

So there it was,
out in the open. Perhaps, in the end, it was best this way. Roger actually felt
a release of tension in his shoulders. This time, he got the glass to his lips
without spilling it before speaking. “Your wife and I have a history.”
 

“Not an important
one. Except perhaps in your own mind.”

“She kissed me.”

“I heard it was
the other way around, and that she rebuffed you.”

Roger stared at
Dernier.
So she had told him
. He knew
his face was as readable to the con man as a child’s primer. He realized he had
been counting on Maggie keeping the kiss from her husband.

“I’m going to
help us to come to an understanding,” Dernier said, nodding at the waiter, who
quickly brought over two menus. Dernier glanced at the menu and then looked at
Roger. “She’s mine,” he said. “She’ll always be mine.”

Roger stared at
him as if hypnotized, pulled into his magnetic orbit.

“But there may be
a way for you to stay in her life.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Not by stealing
her dog or ticketing her car.”

Roger felt the
blush inflame his neck and face. To have his childish actions outlined so
baldly made him wish he could deny them with any credibility. Acknowledging
that was impossible only deepened his shame.
This is what comes from living alone
.
There’s no one to point out to you when you’re making a total and
complete ass of yourself
.

“As it happens,”
Dernier said, “I know something that you would do well to know, too.”

Roger cleared his
throat and found it difficult to look at him. “What is that?” he asked,
stubbing out the cigarette he had forgotten to smoke.

“I know that you
and I are going to be friends, Bedard. What do you think of that, eh?”

Roger snapped his
head up to look at Dernier to see that the man was absolutely sincere, his face
open and amused at the apparent ludicrousness of the situation. Before Roger
knew what he was doing, he was genuinely smiling back at him.