Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) (13 page)

It had to be him.

He punched his
door code into the keypad on the front door panel and jerked the heavy double
wooden doors open as if he’d prefer to rip them off their hinges in the
process. He disappeared into the building, the doors slowly, almost reluctantly
closing behind him.

Dear God, Julia,
Maggie thought in bewilderment as she watched the doors close.
Do I know you at all?

*
                    
*
                         
*

Julia sat on a bare
mattress on the floor of her cell at the detention center in the
Palais de Justice
. She stared at the
chipped paint on the wall opposite her. Another woman sat next to her on the
mattress, her shoulders shaking with her silent sobs. She was Muslim judging by
her robe, but it was torn and stained. If the woman spoke French it wasn’t a
dialect that Julia had ever heard before. They had brought her in last night.
She had wept most of the time since then.

Julia estimated
that her cell measured less than twenty feet by twenty, yet she shared it with
five other women, including the sobbing Muslim. The floor was filthy, and while
there was a sink in the cell, it didn’t function. Neither did two of the four showers
in the communal bathroom. The orange jumpsuit she wore had clearly not been
laundered since the last inmate had used it.

Two weeks. Two
interminable weeks, broken only by a daily hour long visit from her lawyer, a
man who sat opposite her in the visitor’s room and wrote notes, and rarely
spoke. Julia was convinced he worked on someone else’s case while he was with
her. She had stopped asking him questions after the first week.

One thing she
didn’t need to ask anymore, which had become very clear to Julia, was the fact
that she was going to die in this festering hellhole and all the people who
cared about her were powerless to do a damn thing about it. She thought of
Mathieu and the rising sounds of her weeping companion triggered a sudden urge
to cry, too.
Stupid, stupid man. What was
he thinking? Did he think attempting to destroy the State’s proof would make
her look less guilty?
She reflected on her conversation with Maggie and was
engulfed in an irrepressible resurgent wave of anger. She clutched the fabric
of her orange jumpsuit, kneading it until both knees were wrinkled and dirty.
Does she not realize he’s all I have left?
Would she have me lose him, too?

An invasive odor
of defecation filled the little cell and the other women groaned. Julia
breathed through her mouth and edged away from the woman on the mattress,
although she had no reason to believe the smell was coming from her. In the two
weeks she had been held in this place, she had done her best to remember how
much worse it could be and to be grateful for how less bad it was. She thought
of her great aunt, who had died in a German concentration camp during the war after
having been captured and tortured.

The story was
that Sybil Patrick had volunteered to travel behind enemy lines delivering
messages between the French Underground and British Intelligence. Intrepid and
beautiful, she was killed, or died of disease, her family never knew which,
before she was twenty-four years old—six months before the war ended.
Although Julia never knew her aunt, she had nonetheless trotted out her story
at parties and dined off her relentless, timeless heroism for as many years as
Julia had been an adult. And it was thoughts of Sybil that kept her sane now.
When Julia thought of how her kinswoman must have died, brutally hurt and
alone, and then compared it to the simple benign neglect of an antiquated,
underfunded French prison system, she forced herself to believe her trial was
small.

Down the hall and
through the bars, Julia could hear the sounds of someone being beaten. The soft
thuds of fists against flesh and the muted grunts of the victim filled the
hallway as the entire cell wing fell silent to listen. Julia dug her nails into
the palms of her hands and found herself wondering how Sybil had kept herself
sane those last brutal weeks of her life. Or if she simply hadn’t bothered.

*
                          
*
                                 
*
                                 
*

Jacques’s accountant must be doing well
, Maggie thought. His offices were ensconced
comfortably at the top of an old—but not
too
old—mixed-use office building on the edge of the oldest section
of Aix. Grateful for the smoothly functioning elevator, Maggie took a moment to
enjoy the view from the sixth floor. From her vantage point in Yves Briande’s
waiting room, she could see the
Cours
—majestically
shaded by two perfect rows of stately plane trees—as it dissected the
town. She watched the tourists and the shoppers meander up and down the famous
boulevard, looking like colorful ants on a mission.

She was the only
one in the waiting room, and for that she was grateful. It was still a struggle
to speak French—even conversational French, where the other party might
be prone to lapse into colloquialism or the difficult to understand dialect of
the region. While she had learned through tapes and Laurent—who spoke
Parisian French—it was the unmanicured
patois
of St-Buvard’s shopkeepers who had largely taught her the bulk
of what she knew of the language.

“Madame Dernier?”

Maggie shook
herself out of her thoughts and stood to greet Yves Briande, Jacques’s
accountant and the man who had every reason to want him dead. If ever she was
grasping at straws, she thought as she stuck her hand out to shake his, this
was it.

“Yes, thank you,
Monsieur Briande for seeing me. I’m afraid I probably need to make clear that I
am not here for advice on my finances and I know it must have felt like that when
I set up the appointment.

Briande, a squat,
florid man with stark white hair that he kept combed in a slick swath across
his crown and forehead, frowned but motioned for her to take a seat in the
waiting room. Maggie was relieved he wasn’t throwing her out.

“What is it I may
help you with, Madame?” he asked politely. He sat and steepled his hands
together, resting them on his knee.

“I heard that you
were the accountant for Jacques Tatois and I was hoping I might discuss your
dealings with him.”

Maggie had decided
on the walk over that revealing she was a friend of the accused who was looking
to find out more about his accountant’s motive for killing Jacques was probably
not her best opening gambit.

“I see.”

Maggie had to
admit that Briande didn’t look like the kind of hothead who would nurse a
grievance for months and then set up an innocent woman to take the fall while
he took his revenge. Besides, as Laurent had pointed out with some impatience
earlier in the week, typically acts of revenge demand the emotional
satisfaction of watching your enemy die. Poisoning Jacques was as passive an
act of murder as there was. He died alone, even the exact time of his demise undetermined.
If you hated someone, what kind of
satisfaction was there in that?

“I’m not sure if
you know that this is still an open investigation, Monsieur Briande?”

“I was under the
impression that the police had settled on a suspect.”

“Yes, that’s
true, but until she is convicted, the case remains open.”

“I have to say I
was amazed to hear that Madame Patrick had killed him,” Briande said, smoothing
his comb-over with large, fat fingers.

Maggie forced
herself not to respond to his words. If he found out she was friends with Julia,
he would certainly refuse to talk with her.

“I guess everyone
was. The police are investigating whether or not there was a financial benefit
to the murder,” she lied.

Briande frowned.
“Financial? That would surprise me. Jacques was broke.”

“Well, maybe the
killer…Madame Patrick…wasn’t aware of that. It could be the reason she…you
know…”

Briande laughed.
“I am sure Madame Patrick—who had a personal relationship with
Jacques—had many other reasons why she might want him dead. As would
anyone who knew him very well. But ignorance of his financial situation wasn’t
likely.”

“Oh, yes? And why
is that?” Maggie smiled encouragingly at him. She was trying so hard to get him
to reference Jacques’s public accusation against him. She had to admit, he was
smooth. If he
was
the killer, he
didn’t seem a bit concerned that anyone was probing about this very damning
incident—
a powerful motive if there
ever was one.

“Like so many
people last fall, Monsieur Tatois—how is it you Americans so delightfully
put it?—lost his shirt on the
Mistral
Promis
. I, myself, bet and lost, but unlike Monsieur Tatois, I know
restraint and did not wager more than I could afford to lose.”

Annoyed that the
conversation was going down a road other than the one she had planned, Maggie
reminded herself how much gold she had often uncovered when interviews took on
a life of their own and rerouted her expectations.

“The
Mistral Promis
?” she prompted.

“Ahhh! How can it
be that you have not heard of it?” Briande shook his head and clapped his knees
with both hands in as close an approximation of delight as Maggie had ever seen
in a grown man. “Well, as I am sure you must know, a Frenchman will bet on
anything. And in winegrowing country, the bookmakers here enjoy a long and
profitable history of climate betting.”

“People bet on
when the weather will turn or when is the best time to harvest?”

“Yes, certainly
there are always bets like that, but the
Mistral
Promis
was very special. Created by bookmakers in Marseille, it made its
way to Aix last year for the first time and was received with much enthusiasm.”

“So what exactly
is the
Mistral Promis
?”

“It was an
attempt to guess the exact date the Mistral would come to Provence in last
year’s harvest.”

“And when was
it?”

Briande shrugged.
“I don’t remember. It was, however, much later than anyone had any memory of it
ever happening before.”

“So everyone in
town bet and everyone lost.”

“C’est ça.” That’s right.

“And Jacques bet
all his money and lost it all.”

“I am sure I
break no client privilege by confirming that to you.”

“Were you his
accountant at the time of his death?”

A look passed
over his face. “No, but I was his accountant at the time he lost all his money
and surely that is more pertinent?”

“And you’re
saying it was this wide-spread betting phenomenon that was responsible for
Jacques losing all his money.”

“It was on the
news. On the television. There was virtually no one who escaped—
many
people were ruined that day. I am,
in fact, reliably informed that your own husband bet significantly on the
Mistral Promis
. His losses must have
been considerable.
Tu sais
?”

Maggie’s hand
flew to her mouth to stifle her gasp before she could stop it.

Laurent? Gambling?

“I see this is
news to you, Madame,” Briande said, a coy smile on his lips. “We men must not
tell our wives every little thing,
n’est
pas
?”

“You know my
husband?” Maggie was astonished to hear her voice sounded normal. Her heart was
racing and she had a nearly uncontrollable urge to call Laurent straightaway to
find out if this was true.

If it was, it meant he had lied to her. Lied by way of
omission. The time-honored road to dishonesty practiced by
…a niggling image of herself attempting
to re-define the connotation of a stranger in order to circumvent her promise
to Laurent came uncomfortably to mind.

“We are not
acquaintances in that way,” Briande was saying. “I have met him upon occasion,
but there is no one in St-Buvard—or indeed in Aix-en-Provence—who
does not know the
vigneron
criminel
and his
Americaine
wife.”

If Maggie hadn’t
already been sitting, she would certainly need to now.
Did Laurent know this? Did he know they were infamous in the region?
Did he know his criminal past was widely spoken of
?

In any event, the
interview was over. Maggie struggled to her feet. She felt a trickle of
perspiration inch its way down her back and, autumn or not, she felt overly
warm and breathless. She shook hands with Briande, noting his amusement at her discomfiture.
 
She had come with the intention of
putting him on a list of possible suspects that might edge Julia out of pole
position.

She left with a
very big bone to pick with her husband.

Chapter
Twelve

Annette watched
the pickers stroll down the long winding rows of the vineyard. It was well past
lunchtime but they were obviously breaking for a meal in one of the clearings
at the north perimeter of the old stonewall that enclosed the vineyard. It had
not surprised her to discover that the American woman owned a large
mas
in Provence. It was practically a
cliché—the English and the Americans swooping in to buy great tracts of
land in order to impress their friends; living in quaint stone houses that had
stood, some of them, for hundreds of years. Bragging rights.
To have that kind of money!
She watched
the large man move among the workers. At first she thought he was the foreman,
normally an owner didn’t need to get so dirty, but she could see by the way
they deferred to him—all of them—that it must be his vineyard.

She knew who he
was—who they both were.
Wealthy
outsiders
.
Here to pretend to be a
kind of people that they were not. Playing a game for their own amusement.
The size of the estate was considerable. To play such a game of this magnitude,
they must be rich indeed. And the rich always commanded the tune and the dance.
Her thoughts flitted briefly to Michelle.
Would
money really solve her problems? Could money possibly make her less angry at
the world?

She lit a
cigarette and tossed her lighter on the car seat next to her. However rich or
powerful these people were, they would not be allowed to interfere with what
had been put into motion. She heard the crunch of gravel from a long distance
away and turned her focus away from the fields and to the end of the estate’s
driveway where she would be able to clearly see the American as she approached.
In her rear view mirror, she could see the big man in the field was standing
with his hands on his hips, looking in her direction. She smiled. As well he
might. He saw a strange car in his driveway. He would be wondering.

As the American’s
car came into view, Annette threw her cigarette out of the window and stepped
out of the car. She would need to be quick. The master of the house was indeed curious,
and with a very pregnant wife likely overly protective too. She kept the keys
firmly in her hand as she waited for the car to come to a stop next to hers.
The American was out of the car almost before it was completely stopped. She
was younger than Annette had thought, and prettier.

It didn’t matter.

“Madame Dernier?”
she said, her voice imperious and cold.

The American came
around the car to face her without their vehicles between them. Annette
couldn’t help but notice that she glanced to the fields where her husband must
still be watching.

“And you are?”

The American’s French sounded like crows fighting over a
chicken bone. It was physically painful to hear her speak.
Annette held up her hand. “I know enough
English to spare both of us any more discomfort with your attempts to speak
French. I will be brief. I am Annette Tatois, the wife of the man your English
friend murdered.”

The American made
a most unpleasant—almost comical—face and said, “You mean ex-wife,
I think.”

The effrontery! Michelle was at least right about one thing.
This cochon would ruin everything if given the chance.
Annette forced herself to ignore the
comment.

    
“I must insist that you
stay away from my daughter and my aunt, Lily Tatois. If you refuse, I will have
no recourse but to have you arrested.”

The woman made a
very unladylike sound. “On what charges? You can’t have me arrested for
speaking to people.”

“No?”
How was it the cochon was so bold?
She
looked ready to deliver her
vache
at
any moment, yet she faced Annette as confidently as if she had just stepped
down from a Paris catwalk. “I have friends in the police.” She noticed that
Madame Dernier’s eyes had caught a movement over Annette’s shoulder.
The husband must be approaching
.

Annette turned
and slipped into the driver’s seat of her car and jammed the keys into the
ignition. From this direction she could see confirmation of what she had
suspected. Dernier was striding toward the house and would reach them within
seconds. Annette started the car up with a roar, making the American jump. As
she turned to back the car up the long drive, she spoke loudly out of the open
driver’s side window.

“If you do not
care for yourself, Madame,” she said. “Perhaps you will care for your friend.
As bad as you think it is for her right now, I promise you, I can make it much,
much worse for her.”

Just as he
reached them, Annette sped backward down the drive, enjoying the sight of
gravel from her tires spraying the two figures as she did.

The night had not
begun well at all.

When Grace walked
to Danielle and Jean-Luc’s farmhouse next door—nearly a mile from
Domaine St-Buvard
—to retrieve
Zou-zou, she had been invited to spend the night. It was clear to any and all
who could see that the child had become attached to Danielle and no doubt had
begged to stay. Grace, probably thinking Maggie and Laurent could use some
alone time
, accepted the invitation.

Now Maggie sat
alone in her dining room, fuming, with nothing to distract her from the
showdown she had every intention of having with Laurent as soon as he returned
from the field. The pickers were staying later and later each day. Often they
worked long into the evening, as it was cooler and more pleasant to work at
night. Laurent had set up outdoor lighting along the outer perimeter of the
vineyard.

When he finally
came into the kitchen, well past ten o’clock, his face sunburned and his
shoulders sloping from his long day, she was ready for him. Before he even had
a chance to throw down the cloth that he had used to wipe the grime of the day
from his face, she confronted him.

“Can you talk to
me about the
Mistral Promis
?”
 

“
Comment
?” He frowned. The
confusion—if there was any—didn’t last long. She could see the work
going on behind his eyes as he quickly assessed the situation. “What do you
wish to know?” he responded drily before turning to the sink to wash his hands.

“It’s true, then?
You gambled on the weather? You wagered a lot of money guessing on when the
mistral would come through last year?”

Laurent took his
time to dry his hands and reach for a clean wineglass before answering. “
Oui
. So?”

“Did you lose
much?”

He poured his
wine and held it up to the light to examine its color. He looked at her over
the rim as he drank. “Why are you asking me this?” he asked, regarding her coolly.

“You don’t think
this is information that might be important for me to know?”

Maddingly, he
shrugged. “If it was, I would have told you.”

“You don’t think
losing whatever princely sum you lost,
gambling
,
involved me?”

“I think I just
answered that. Maggie, I am tired. It has been a long day.”

A needle of guilt
touched her. Whenever
she
was late
getting home he always had a hot meal ready for her. Always. She glanced at the
cold oven, still spotless from his ministrations this morning. “Are you
hungry?”
 

He smiled at her.
“
Non, ch
é
rie
.
I ate in the field.”

“Can I ask you
how much we lost?”

Laurent sighed
heavily. “Has your lifestyle changed? Did we not still fly to Atlanta this
year? Are we not still doing renovations in the house for the baby’s room?”

Feeling like her
concerns were being batted away like an annoying fly, Maggie fought down the
frustration that was building in her chest. “It’s not the gambling as much as the
fact that you kept it a secret. I heard today that this
Mistral Promis
was a huge deal and that practically everybody in
Provence was ruined by it.”

“That is
obviously an exaggeration.”

“I heard that it
wiped out the fortunes of many men. Is
that
an exaggeration?”

“From whom did
you hear this?”

Maggie hesitated.
She stared at him as if she hadn’t understood his question.

“Maggie?”

“It doesn’t
matter from whom,” she said. “The point is you kept a secret from me. You
understand the concept of lying by omission?”

“I more than
anyone,” he said.

“What is that
supposed to mean?” But her indignant tone was softened by her untimely realization
of her many attempts in the past to circumvent Laurent by not telling him the
whole truth. The look on Laurent’s face plainly showed he was thinking the same
thing. “Okay, fine,” she said instead. “But it’s still upsetting. To be told by
a total stranger something so significant about my husband—and I knew
nothing about it.”

“Again, who was
this total stranger?” Laurent looked a lot less playful now and Maggie realized
the showdown had taken a nauseating U-turn.

Crap
.
If she said
no one
—which was
her first and strongest inclination—she would be caught in a bald-faced
lie and there it was. She pulled up a kitchen chair and sank into it. Maybe the
baby was stealing blood from her brain or something. She used to be a whole lot
faster than this.

“I met with Yves Briande
today.”
 

Laurent raised an
eyebrow.

“Jacques’s accountant,”
she said.

“The one Jean-Luc
told me about,” he said. His brows knit together and she could see he was not
pleased. “Doesn’t he qualify as a stranger? And did we not agree you would not
approach strangers related to this case?”

The argument she
had assuaged herself with earlier—that Briande was a professional
services provider and therefore somehow not to be considered a stranger in the
sense that Laurent had meant—sounded ludicrous to her now as she stood
before her slowly smoldering spouse.

“I’m sorry,
Laurent,” she said meekly. “I met him in his office in broad daylight and I
just didn’t think you meant
stranger
in that way.”

    
“It appears that next
time I will have to carefully define my words,” he said, his eyes narrowing.

“No. I’m sorry,
Laurent. I knew what you meant. I just had to see for myself if he wasn’t a
better candidate for Jacques’s killer. I don’t have an excuse for going back on
my word.”

Laurent set his
wineglass down on the counter and reached out for her, drawing her slowly to
him. She felt like she could melt into him, so strong and capable was he. He
made her feel like he could take care of everything. It occurred to her that
their child would get that very same feeling from these arms and the thought
made her smile. He tilted her head back and kissed her mouth and then pushed
her hair from her face.

“So we have both
had our indiscretions with the truth, yes?” he said.

“Yes,” Maggie
said, enjoying how easy it was to lose herself in the depths of his dark brown
eyes, the curve of his full lips, so close to her face.

“And going
forward,” he whispered, kissing her neck and moving his hand down her back to
cup her bottom, “we will be better to always tell the truth, the whole truth.”

“And nothing but
the truth,” she said, smiling into his neck and loving the smell of him mixed
with sun and sweat and somehow even lemons.

“
Bon
,” he said, kissing her deeply.

An hour later,
they lay in bed together with the remnants of a lovers’ picnic on the bed with
them. It hadn’t occurred to Maggie until they had an evening without Grace in
the house that her presence had been somewhat oppressive. Living with a
depressed person, Maggie thought, doesn’t do much for the rest of the
household. She felt guilty for being so grateful for the respite, but she
couldn’t deny that she and Laurent needed this connection—now more than
ever.

“How long do you
think we have before these lazy nights of love and food are behind us?”

Laurent looked at
her and frowned. “Why would that be?”

“When the baby
comes, Laurent. We won’t have the energy for anything like this until he goes
off to college.”

“
Vraiment
?” Laurent looked around the bed
with its covering of saucers of cheese and tapenade, aioli and crusty bread.

“Grace says
forget
ever having a moment to yourself
after the baby comes.”

Laurent shrugged
and removed a small saucer of olives to the bedside table. It pleased Maggie
that he didn’t seem to care how the baby might disrupt their lives. He was so
affable (about most things anyway), it was hard to imagine a little thing like
a crying baby derailing his schedule
or
his usual good mood.