Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) (24 page)

Well, at least it looks like dating won’t be a problem
, she thought with a sinking heart as she
wound her way through the tables to the street in front of the café.
 

*
              
*
                     
*
                     
*

If there were
another way to do it, by God, he would have done it. How things had gotten so
far down this path, he would never know. But now that he’d started, he knew he
couldn’t stop until it was finished.

He parked his car
down an adjacent alley to the café. Because it was Sunday, it had been
difficult to follow them without looking like theirs were the only two cars on
the highway. But also because it was Sunday, there was no one to see him sitting
now in the car, waiting, watching.

Dernier’s wife
went across the street to the jail and the other one—the beautiful
one—walked into the café, clearly waiting for her friend to finish her
errand. That meant he had time. Probably more than enough, but in the event
that he was, once again, fatally wrong about that, he wiped the sweat from his
palms and grabbed the ice pick out of the glove compartment. He hesitated just
a moment to pray—for everyone’s sake—that he would not be seen, and
left the car.

Chapter
Twenty

Danielle smoothed
the covers back over the withered hands. They were pale, but that was not
surprising. Lily had never been one for the outdoors, for walks or gardening.
Her hands, for as old as she was, still looked younger than Danielle’s after
sixty-five years of an active life under the Provencal sun.

“Are you the only
one?”

Danielle was
mildly startled by Lily’s voice. Lily had been asleep, soundly, she was sure of
it. But now she regarded her with an alert, cool gaze.

“The only one,
what
, my friend?” Danielle asked,
settling down on the bed next to her.

“Here to watch me
die.”

“Don’t say that.
You’re not dying today.”

“You
are
the only one.” Lily turned her face
away and Danielle stood to pull the curtains back from the long window in the
room. The early morning fog had burned off, leaving a crystal clear autumn day.
The kind of day that made you glad to be
alive
, Danielle thought.

“The others will
be coming, soon,” Danielle said. “It’s still early.”

“Not for me,”
Lily said, looking out the window at the brilliant blue sky.

“Can I get you
something? Are you thirsty?”

Lily turned her
gaze back to Danielle. “We were never close. Why is it you are here when my
family is not?”

“I was always
sorry our friendship…faded. And then, when life intervened, I married. It
became too difficult to have the time for other things.”

“I heard about Eduard,”
Lily said. Danielle turned her head sharply to her. “Oh, yes. You didn’t think
I knew? You married badly, Danielle.”

“The first time,
yes.”

“And I never married
at all.”

“We each made our
choices.” Danielle watched Lily carefully, wondering if the woman was fading
into dementia at the end.

“You remember
Bernard, of course?”

Danielle stared
at her uncomprehending when an image of a boy, a handsome young boy with very
black hair and the bluest snapping eyes, came roaring back into her memory.

Bernard.

“You remember
him, don’t you?”

Danielle had been
in love with him. How could she have forgotten? She was so young, not even
sixteen, but they had kissed in the washhouse. Her first kiss. As she sat by
Lily’s bedside, she remembered the relentless, impenetrable quiet of the thirteenth
century stone house, the coldness and the dampness of the interior wilting her
dress, her hair. And she remembered the boy who put his warm lips to hers and
made her feel alive for the first time in her life.

And very nearly
the last.

“I do,” she
whispered, seeing him in her mind—laughing, always laughing.

“He’s a butcher
in Dijon now. And fat.”

Danielle brought
her attention back to her friend.

“He was my
first,” Lily said. She laughed bitterly. “My only. I know you never knew that.
You only knew when he stopped speaking to you at school.”

Danielle’s skin
tingled. The memory of the nausea of the rejection came rushing back to her as
she sat on Lily’s bed—sixty-six years old, the bulk of her life behind
her, her youth, her beauty, what there had been of it—and she was filled
with an uncomfortable, unusual feeling spreading to the tips of her fingers.

Rage.

“You took him for
yourself,” Danielle said, her words stilted and blunt as she fought to quell
the sensation of anger building in her chest.

“I
gave
him myself,” Lily said, watching
her intently. “You gave him kisses. Would you have done more?”

Danielle couldn’t
respond. She didn’t know.
I was only
fifteen…

“Yes, I took
him.” Lily looked back out the window as if she were seeing the boy, herself.
The handsome future butcher from Dijon with the laughing blue eyes and the
shiny black hair. “And so we both lost him.”

They sat quietly
together, lost in their memories of their first love, and when their eyes
finally met, full of all the sadness of lost opportunities and lost youth,
Danielle realized she wasn’t angry at all. She reached out and took Lily’s
pale, cold hand and held it in her warm one.

“I am virtually a
vegetarian,” she said, a smile forming on her lips as she watched Lily’s
startled face slowly form into a mute, gasping series of heaving laughter.

*
              
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*

Maggie struggled
into the car seat and waited for Grace to start the car.

“Buckle up,
darling,” Grace said as she backed out of the tight parallel parking spot a
block from the café.

“I can’t,” Maggie
said. “I’m too fat.”

“That’s not true,
dearest, and I won’t get on the highway until you do.”

Maggie groaned
and pulled the strap across and under her belly. “I am so ready for this to be
over,” she said, squirming uncomfortably in the seat.

“I know,” Grace
said, taking the entrance ramp onto the D7.

“I don’t remember
you looking like this,” Maggie said, eyeing her suspiciously. “In fact, I don’t
remember you looking any different when you were pregnant with Z than you do
right now.”

“I was, of
course, gargantuan. You were just so self-absorbed you never noticed.”

“Oh, funny.
Thanks. I just think some people can carry it off with style, and other people just
look like they’re always searching for the nearest all-you-can-eat buffet.”

“You do not look
fat, Maggie. You look pregnant.”

“Oh, quit trying
to mollify me. And you know what the worst of it is? Laurent and I had
just
figured out how to be happy
together, you know?”

Grace gave her a
side glance.

“I mean, just
when I stopped whining about being homesick and having nothing to do, we really
came through the fire out onto the other side. And now this!” She gestured to
her stomach. “What in the hell is
this
going to do to us?”

“Well, it’s a
little late to be thinking about that now.” Grace said, smiling.

“I totally do not
want anything to torpedo what we’ve got together,” Maggie said, staring
morosely out the car window at the brown and yellow landscape of the passing
scenery.

“What makes you
think it won’t enhance it?”

“Okay, now I
know
you’re mollifying me. Everyone says
having kids makes marriage harder. And I have only recently figured out how to
be happily married.”

“There’s more to
it than that. Kids may add more stress to your relationship with Laurent,
that’s true.”

“That’s what I’m
saying.”

“But they also
bring a whole lot more love and joy into your life as a couple.”

“How does that
fit with the first thing you said?”

“I don’t know,
darling, but it does. You just have to trust me on this. You and Laurent are
fine now and you’ll be fine after the little blighter is born.”

“How about better
than fine?”

“Don’t push it.
The most you can hope for is that it doesn’t screw things up. Hoping for it to
make your marriage better
is
crazy.
You’re not hoping to make things better with this baby?”

Maggie shook her
head. “No, I can’t imagine being happier with Laurent than I am. That’s why…”
she rubbed her stomach, “…as excited as I usually am about meeting this little
fellow, I find myself fretting that he’ll somehow hurt what I have with his
daddy.”

“I know very few
things for absolutely certainty, darling,” Grace said, putting on her
sunglasses against the bright autumn day. “In fact, me less than most. But I am
completely confidant in saying, knowing your man the way I do, that
that
will not happen.”

“A part of me
knows that,” Maggie admitted. “I’ve never met anyone on this planet that I
trust more than Laurent. How did I ever get so lucky that he could love me
back?”

“I’m sure I have
no idea. But speaking of how you were able to save your marriage by shaking off
such nonessential worries like homesickness and not having a job to occupy your
mind, any word from your editor?”

Maggie grimaced.

“She hasn’t
returned your emails?”

“No.”

“Still think everything
is okay because you have a contract?”

Maggie sighed. “I
read the contract last night.”

“In a rare moment
of panicked insecurity?”

“Yeah. And it
seems that by missing the deadline, I’ve already voided the contract.”

“Oh, Maggie!”

“I know. I cannot
believe how stupid I am. I can’t believe I screwed this up.”

“Darling, do you
know
why
? I mean, I’m sure book
contracts are very difficult to acquire, aren’t they?”

“Oh, don’t talk
about it, Grace! It just makes me sick!”

“No, come on,
now. You’re a big girl.
Why
did you
sabotage yourself like this? Especially after you just got through telling me
that it was partly the book writing that kept you and Laurent together.”

“Yeah, when you
put it that way, I really sound self-destructive.”

“Quit the
negative self-talk and
tell
me what is
going on with you. And thank you, by the way. I like to be reminded that I’m
not the only basket case in this friendship.”

“You’re welcome.
I’m pretty sure you can always count on me for that,” Maggie said bitterly as
she picked at the hem on her tunic. “I just freaked when I saw all the
corrections that she wanted. It just…overwhelmed me. And then I started to
think that maybe I shouldn’t be doing this, you know? That maybe the editor was
right.”

“What do you mean
the editor was right
? They
bought
your book. They bought
two
future books from you. She wasn’t
setting you up to fail, Maggie! She was helping you get published.”

“Don’t you think
I see that now?
Now,
when she’s not
taking my phone calls anymore?
Now,
when my contract is voided and my name is shit in the world of New York
publishing?”

“All right,
sweetie. I guess learning the lesson is what’s important. At least someone
liked your writing well enough to buy it.”

“Yeah, now all I
have to do is have lightning strike twice in the same place and not throw it
away with both hands when it does.”

Grace looked over
at her friend and smiled sadly. “Something like that.”

“Your phone’s
vibrating,” Maggie said distractedly.

“Do you mind
getting it, darling? I’ve got my hands full just figuring out the exit to
St-Buvard.”

“That’s not for
ages yet,” Maggie said, as she punched on the phone.

“Hello? Oh, hey,
Danielle. Everything okay?”

Grace frowned and
glanced at Maggie questioningly. Maggie held up a finger to her while she
listened on the phone.

“Okay, let me ask
her,” she said. “Danielle says Jean-Luc says that Zou-zou is getting hungry and
does she take her bottle warm or chilled?”

Grace snorted and
Maggie couldn’t help but notice that she even did that adorably. “Tell her to
tell him that it doesn’t matter. I’m usually lucky to get the carton all the
way out of the fridge before she’s guzzling it down. Tell him not to bother
heating it.”

“Did you hear
that, Danielle?” Maggie said.

In all his years,
never would Jean-Luc have imagined he would some day be in the position he now
found himself in. Contorted, on the floor, his rump high in the air with a
squealing two-year old bouncing on his back, her little heels digging into his
ribs, Jean-Luc had to admit he had never been happier.

His friends down
at
Le Canard
would think he had lost
his mind. A bachelor well into his sixties before he finally married, Jean-Luc
had never known or expected the experience of fatherhood. He had long accepted
that there would be no children to whom he might pass on what little wisdom he
had, so the thought that the joys and pleasure of being a
grandfather
might yet lie in store for him had never occurred to
him.

He gathered his
giggling jockey up into his arms and gave her a wet kiss on her forehead.
“Snack, Zou-zou?” he said. “Or read a book?”

“Snack! Snack!
Snack!” the little girl sang, wrapping her chubby arms around his neck.

“I agree,” he
said. “I have already called
Grandmama
Danielle this morning to ask how Mademoiselle likes her milk. Milk is a good
snack for Zou-zou, yes?”

Zou-zou began
counting her fingers and singing as Jean-Luc carried her into the Dernier
kitchen—a marvel of gleaming stainless steel, burnished hardwood and
gleaming copper pots hanging from an overhead rack the size of a small Peugeot.