Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) (12 page)

There was silence
on the line and for a moment, Maggie wasn’t sure the call hadn’t failed.

“What are you saying,
Maggie?” Julia asked quietly. “Are you suggesting that
Mathieu
killed Jacques, or that
I
did it and my lover is trying to cover for me?”

“Did he know
Jacques was trying to get back together with you?”

“Of course. I
showed him the notes.”

“And the police
have those notes now?”

“I assume.”

“Did he know
Jacques was coming to dinner that night?” Maggie was sure she already knew the
answer to this.

There was another
brief silence on the line, and then, “If you do anything to implicate Mathieu,”
Julia said, her voice cold and flat, “in some misguided attempt to free me, I
promise you I will never speak to you again. He had nothing to do with Jacques’s
death. Nothing.”

“How do you know
that?”

“We’re done,
Maggie.” The line went dead in her ear, and when Maggie pulled her head back to
look at the screen she saw that the hand holding the phone was shaking.

In the space of
the very brief conversation, something repulsive and finite had happened to her
conviction and to her faith in her friend. Maybe it had been building on the
drive over from St-Buvard, ever since she got the phone call from Roger that
morning. Ever since she realized that her good friend had kept a serious boyfriend
a secret for God knows how long. When Maggie pulled the phone from her ear
after Julia hung up on her, her stomach was roiling with nausea.

That fact was, it didn’t make sense for Mathieu to break
into the lab to destroy samples—if that is what he was trying to
do—in order to protect himself. The only reason would be to try to help
Julia. And why does he believe those samples are so damning to Julia’s case?

The answer to
that came unbidden and immediately to Maggie as she sat in the stifling confines
of her compact car:
Because they really
are proof of her guilt.

Chapter
Eleven

“
Maman!
Can you talk?” Michelle sat in
the window seat in her apartment and stared out onto the residential street. It
was early and only school children and their parents and
au pairs
were moving about. Michelle couldn’t help but notice how
the little wretches all looked like chimps dressed in human clothes. The way
they ran and skipped and thumped on one another reminded her of the last time
she had been dragged to the zoo as a child. She wondered why no one else but
her seemed to see it. One boy actually stopped and vigorously scratched his
crotch, and she half expected to see him begin to pick lice out of one of the
other boys’ hair.

“Yes, of course,
my sweet. Is everything all right?”

Michelle turned
from the revolting street scene to the interior of her apartment and began to
chew on a nail. She hadn’t slept last night. She wasn’t sure she had slept the
night before either. “No,
Maman
.
Everything is not
all right
. Are you mad?
That woman who came to Papa’s service at Lily’s? You know the one? The one who
made Lily force me to leave?”

“Yes, of course,
ch
é
rie
.
The pregnant American.”

“Well, she came
to see me.”

“What?”

Michelle took
satisfaction at the level of agitation in her mother’s voice.

“What did she
want?”
 

“She tried to
tell me she had money for me. She said she wasn’t really the whore’s friend.”

“Well, she lied
to you, Michelle. My…friend says that she is very definitely connected to the
murdering whore. Closely connected.”

“I know,
Maman
. When I thought about it later, I
realized how she tricked me. And I will ensure that she is never able to do
that to anyone else again.”

“Michelle, do not
do anything. Promise me.”

“Didn’t you hear
me? The bitch tricked me! She came into my apartment and lied to me. She will
not walk away from that!”

“Please,
ch
é
rie
,
let me handle it. I have friends. I can hurt her. I
will
hurt her. You do not want to endanger yourself.”

“How can I not?
Even the lying bitch knew how desperately I am in need of money. Even she could
see. How is it that my own mother is so blind? I don’t have the money for this
semester. I don’t have last month’s rent!”

“Oh, Michelle,
what of the money I gave you last week? I know it wasn’t much…”

“It was worse
than nothing! Enough for a meal out, that’s all. Why do you torment me like
this? If you cannot help your only child, please just say so.”

“Michelle, you
know I have no money myself
—
”

“But you can get
it! And now that goddam Florrie will inherit what should have been mine! Can
you not go to him and shame him into sharing it with me? He is like a thief in
the night to swoop in and steal my inheritance. Is he so stupid, that he
doesn’t realize the crime he has committed against me?”

“I will talk to
him, my love. I will ask him to see reason. You are his cousin.”

“It is revolting.
That old woman has always hated me.”

“That is not
true, Michelle. She is just old and ill.”

“Well, then, can
we not argue that she is mentally incompetent? To give all her money to that
fat weasel—and he has so much!”

“He has been
managing her estate for years, Michelle. The courts will not see it as bizarre
for her to make him her beneficiary.”

“Why are you
saying this?!” Michelle stood and looked wildly around her room, as if trying
to find something to break or throw. “Is it possible you don’t care that the
fat wretch is taking money that should be mine? Where am I to go when I cannot
pay my rent? Will you tell me that?”

“We will somehow
get the money for your—”

“Bah! You are as
weak as Papa always said you were. I don’t want a few euros here and there. I
want the fortune that should be mine!”

“I know,
Michelle. I know, but—”

Michelle couldn’t
hear any more of her mother’s pathetic mewing on the other line. She had been a
fool to call her.
She never helped.
Never!
She threw the cellphone across the room and felt the thrill and
satisfaction of hearing it smash into the useless antique wall mirror that her
grandmother had given her.

Annette quietly
disconnected and sat on the bed in a rumple of sheets and blankets holding the
cellphone in both hands. She took a long breath and tried to visualize in what
manner her daughter had terminated the conversation. She hoped it wasn’t into
the television screen like last time.
 

“She doesn’t know?”

Annette turned to
the man in her bed. He had been smoking and listening as she spoke to her
daughter. She replaced the cellphone on the nightstand. “I thought it best at
this point.”

“You are probably
right. Although she hated him almost as much as you did. She would probably not
even care, my love.”

“I’m not worried
about that. He was a pig and Michelle is better off without him.”

“C’est ça.”

“I’m only afraid
she won’t understand why I kept it from her. She’ll think I don’t trust her.”

“And why are you
keeping it from her?”

“Maybe I just
want something for myself. Just once I want it to be about me and what
I
need. Can you understand that?”

He chuckled and
drew her closer to him on the bed. “If not I, then who?” he murmured, pulling
the drawstring that held her
peignoir
gathered in a scrunch at her throat. His eyes glittered as the thin top
collapsed into a silken puddle in her lap exposing her breasts.

Annette slipped under
the sheets next to him, but her eyes stared unseeing out the window over her
lover’s shoulder. “I’m afraid I must admit to not liking my daughter very much.”
 
 

The
three tractors inched slowly down the winding routes of the hillsides, each one
loaded with crates of the grapes of
Domaine
St-Buvard
and bound for the presses at the co-op. Laurent would have liked
to have begun picking at least a week earlier but had held off at the request
of his local federation of vintners. The quality of the wine from the region
was a reflect on them all. Although it had taken years to learn the lesson,
Laurent knew the value of working together as a team—even if the results
were often less than could be done independently. He watched the army of young
people moving, hunched over, through the rows of vines. Their youth was the
only thing that would prevent permanent damage to their postures, he mused.
Unless they came back year after year, harvest after harvest as so many would.
But labour in the grape fields was not work for any but the young. Exhausting,
bent over, tedious work—usually in the punishing heat of late
summer—and long days to match the longer periods of light.

This
was his fifth harvest. The first had been poor due to lack of experience on his
part, and as the result of ground that had not been cultivated in decades. The
second year, all three fields had burned to the ground a week before they were
due to be harvested. And then came the recovery years. Last year had been good,
but the rains had bleached the sweetness from the grapes. And, of course, there
had been the
Mistral
. This year
promised to be better. Laurent smiled to himself. The life of a
vigneron
.
Always thinking to the next harvest, the next season of wines.

His
phone vibrated in his pocket and he grimaced in annoyance. He preferred to
leave it at home so that he couldn’t be reached. There were very few things
more important than the harvest right now. Maggie at eight and a half months
pregnant was one of them.

“Allo,
ch
é
rie
?”

“Laurent,
do you know anybody by the name of Mathieu Benoit?”

Laurent
squinted at the horizon, watching one of the temporary workers stop to drink
from his water bottle. “Is that the name of Julia’s boyfriend?”

“It
is. Can you ask around to see if anybody knows him?”

“
Oui
. Did you talk to Julia?”

“Oh,
Laurent, she hung up on me!”

“Incroyable.”

“Okay,
I know you meant that as sarcasm, but it really upset me.”

“Did
you accuse her boyfriend of killing her other boyfriend?”

“Not
really.” There was a pause on the line. “Maybe.”

 
Laurent watched the temporary worker pop
a handful of grapes in his mouth and pretend to be strangling on the taste. He
could hear the laughter of the other workers from here. He frowned.
“Is Grace with you?”

“She said she
wanted to take a nap.”

Laurent grunted.
There was too much napping from people who
needed to be kept busy
. “And are you coming home now?”

“Are you making
lunch?”

“
Non
. I am in the fields until late.”

“Well, don’t
worry about me then. I have one quick errand to run and then I’ll be home to
check on Grace.”

“What errand?”

“Laurent, don’t
worry, okay? It’s just a female thing and I’ll be right home.”

“You will not try
to contact this boyfriend of Julia’s?”

There was the
briefest of hesitations on the line.
Clearly,
that was exactly what she had intended to do.

“Not if you don’t
want me to.” He could hear the frustration in her voice.

“
Bon
,” he said. “Then I will see you
tonight.”

The worker seemed
to have returned to his backbreaking task and Laurent motioned to the head
tractor as it crept its way toward him. He would examine every precious crate
before it went to the presser. He found his heart lightening with each foot
that the tractor advanced.

Well, that was annoying.

It wasn’t that
she had planned to interview Mathieu Benoit this afternoon (although she had
thought about it), but she certainly intended to find out a lot more about him
before calling it a day.

Was there anyone in Aix who might know of him?
As she walked to the outdoor café facing
Julia’s apartment building, it occurred to her that she could talk with Julia’s
neighbors without danger of breaking her agreement with Laurent.
What constitutes a stranger anyway?
She
had probably said hello in the narrow hallway and landings to every person who
lived in Julia’s building at least once. If they saw her and recognized she was
a friend of Julia’s, surely that meant they weren’t really strangers? She took
a seat at one of the tables which gave a clear view of Julia’s building and
ordered an iced coffee.

Sometimes
sleuthing was just a matter of sitting and waiting. She had learned that a long
time ago.
You had to talk and talk to
people until you just happened to talk to just the right person—the one
person who knew something or who had seen something—and you have no idea
who that person is. Not really
. While it was true Laurent had said don’t
talk to people, he didn’t say
don’t watch
people
. And that, Maggie knew, was half the battle.

As she sipped her
coffee she watched everyone who came into the little café, or the apartment
building across the street. She watched the waiter (who was watching her) and
the young mother with the carriage, and the two students who argued furiously
with each other but were clearly lovers. She watched the old man who looked
grumpy and miserable, probably because he’d been coming to this café for years
and now he couldn’t smoke in it and it was crammed full of tourists and
students.

Maggie shifted
her weight in her chair but it was no use. She wasn’t going to find a position
that was comfortable. She might as well give up on trying until after the baby
was born. Just when she was about to ask for the bill and head to her
appointment, she saw him. In truth, she didn’t know
what
she was looking at for at least the first thirty seconds of
seeing him, only that, of everyone on the street, he was the most visually
arresting.

And not in a good way.

At least six foot
two—unusually tall for a Frenchman. He had a shining, bald head,
 
long handlebar mustache, and both
shoulders—bared in his sleeveless leather vest—were covered in dark
tattoos. It couldn’t be anyone else. Maggie watched in openmouthed wonder as
the man strode down the sidewalk to the front door of the apartment building.
He looked mad. He looked beyond mad. Maggie could practically see him foaming
at the mouth from where she sat forty yards away.