Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) (28 page)

Chapter
Twenty-Five

Maggie twisted to
look through the back window to see Florrie, his face straining purple with
exertion, as he heaved his body against the back end of the car. She whirled
around to the gearshift to see it had been put into neutral. The car made
another lurch forward and Maggie screamed as she saw the ground disappear in
front of the car hood and felt the vehicle fall into a dramatic slant forward
as if falling into a ditch, slamming her against the dashboard. She thought she
could actually hear Florrie grunting with effort as the car’s nose dropped
steeply, its front tires spinning free and revealing nothing but sky and
encroaching darkness before her.

She grappled
frantically for the car door but it was locked. She fumbled for the auto lock
on the handle but it wasn’t there. She couldn’t help turning again to look at
Florrie, whose only focus appeared to be pushing as if his life depended on it.
She saw a glimpse of satisfaction cross his features as he gave a loud
expulsion and heaved against the car. Maggie screamed, and for one mad moment
had a memory of her first roller coaster ride where she was suspended high
above a theme park only to drop in a blinding squeal to the next death-defying
peak.

She watched as if
in slow-motion as the front of the car teetered precariously over the lip of
the canyon before, with a final push from behind, it tipped head-down and fell.

The jolt as the
car snagged on the sapling that stalled the car’s descent sent Maggie slamming
into the windshield. Terrified that her weight would help send the car over the
edge, she scrambled to the backseat, where she could see the top of the small
tree sag from view as the weight of the car crushed it into submission.
Maggie’s face was only a couple feet from Florrie’s—red with frustration
and consuming intensity—as he labored in his final deadly assault to push
the car over the edge.

As the pain of a
contraction tore through her, leaving her legs and belly an amorphous ball of
indefinable agony, Maggie’s hand hit the console between the two front seats
and her fingers found the auto-lock. She wrenched the back door open just as
the car launched from its temporary landing pad into the air on its final
descent into the cavernous and rocky bottom below.

Maggie watched
the ground rush by her and under her as she jumped from the moving car, the
grass and gravel and dirt running by as she hit the ground shoulder first and
then she rolled and rolled. When she finally stopped, she was on her back,
halfway down the ditch and just before the sharpest drop off. She lay still for
a moment, the air still full of the echo of the sound of the car as it crashed
to earth, a mechanical cacophony of crushed metal and rock.

She lay and
listened to the noises ebb away in the air, and in her mind. Her ankle hurt.
Her shoulder was on fire. She lifted her hands to her face and looked at them.
Her knuckles were bloody and raw. She touched a tentative finger to her
forehead and winced. Blood trickled down her arm from her face where she had
smacked into the windshield.

She was afraid to
move. Afraid he would see. If she lay perfectly still, he would assume she had
gone down with the car and he would leave.

Wouldn’t he?

She lay unmoving
in the dirt, watching the light leach from the sky as darkness crept in and she
was thankful for that. She held her breath to listen and that was when she
heard the footsteps. Tentative, searching, furtive. Not a normal walking pace,
but hesitant and disturbed. They were coming from just above where she lay and
they were climbing down.

Toward her.

And then she felt
the next one beginning to build. It started deep inside her core and quickly
emanated out to touch every part of her with its grinding, relentless fury. She
waited as it built and built inside her until the pain was her whole world and
nothing—not cliffs or homicidal maniacs or giving birth alone in the
dark—existed anywhere. Only the pain. She grabbed fistfuls of grass with
both hands and let out a long and ragged groan of hopeless hurt.
 

As the
contraction ebbed, she was showered with a spray of dirt and rock as he jumped
down next to her, landing nearly on top of her. She felt him grab her by the
shoulders and she knew she had gone as far as she could go.

She had let them
all down. The little one who wouldn’t be born, Laurent who had begged her to
stop, Grace and Julia who she had failed in every way a friend can. And, of
course, herself. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to retreat back into
that other world. The world of pain. The world of Only One Thing.

Harsh hands
reached her, digging into her arms with hurtful urgency.

Roger sat on the
edge of the bed listening to the voice mail. He was dressed and out the door
before Dernier’s message had finished.

And it was a
short message.

“Roger? Where are
you going? What about the ball?” His girlfriend chased after him into the
hallway, her dress half on, her shoes in her hand, her mouth open.

“Take a taxi,” he
shouted over his shoulder as he ran down the stairwell to the parking garage.
He punched in the phone number that showed on his phone as belonging to
Danielle Alexandre. A woman answered on the first ring.

“Allo?”

“I’m looking for
Laurent Dernier,” Roger said as he jumped in his car and slammed it into
reverse, still holding his phone to his ear.

“He has my cell
phone,” the woman said and quickly gave him the number. He hung up and punched it
in.
Should he head toward St-Buvard? The
Aix Hospital?

“Bedard?” Dernier
picked up immediately.

“Yes, it’s me.
Where is she? Where are you?”

“I’ve just left
Tatois’s bar outside Lignane. She’s not there. I’m on the D7 about thirty
minutes from Aix. Where are you?”

“I’m just pulling
onto the D7 out of the city. I’m thirty minutes from Lignane.”

“Merde.”

“How long has he
had her?”

“Over two hours.”

“Merde.”

Later, Maggie
would say it was like being roused from a waking nightmare by an archangel who
descended upon her in glory with the muffled sounds of fireworks shooting off
behind his bald head.
 

 
“Madame?”

She opened her eyes
to see the darkened, hulking form of Sasquatch, his shiny head and tattoos
gleaming in the dusk, leaning over her and peering into her face.

Mathieu
.

“Can you stand?” Mathieu
said, looking her over for any wounds. “Can you walk?”

 
“I need help,” she croaked. “Hospital.
Get me to the hospital.”

“Are you out here
alone? Did your car just go over the cliff?”

He pulled her to
her feet. She cried out when she put weight on her ankle, so he held her up
against him. As the next contraction took hold of her, Maggie didn’t care if he
flung her out over the cliff after the car. Her body stiffened as it railed
though her. She threw back her head and screamed until it was over and she was
left sobbing in exhaustion. When she could—and before the next monster
contraction could sneak up on her—she opened her eyes to look at her savior.

“I’m sorry,” she
said. “I thought you were the bad guy. I’m sorry.”

“I confessed!”
Mathieu said, hoisting her arm over his as he fought to climb the steep incline
with her at his side. “I went to the police and I told them that
I
killed the bastard. They sent me
away. Said I was crazy.”

“The police know
nothing about true love.”

Mathieu looked at
her with confusion. “
Comment
?”

“Never mind. Look,
he’s around here someplace. Keep your eyes open. Before I forget or the next contraction
drives me insane, I’ve got a message for you from Julia.”

“
C’est vrai
? What is it?” He stopped
climbing and stared at her.

Maggie started to
laugh and hoped very much she wasn’t getting hysterical. Mathieu must have been
thinking the same thing because he was frowning now.

“She loves
you…and she…oh, I can’t remember the rest. And it doesn’t matter. She’ll be
able to tell you herself now.”

“Because she’ll
be free, yes?”

Maggie screamed
and clutched his arm, barely registering the wince on his face as she fought
the contraction. “Holy shit! That hurts,” she said when it began to fade. “Yes,”
she said, closing her eyes and falling into the bliss of the temporary relief
from pain. “Yes, she’ll be free. And if you and I somehow live through this
night, won’t that be a great day?”

“Why would we not
live?” Mathieu frowned in confusion.

“I guess it’s
just me that feels like I’m dying. Forget I said that.”

“You are simply
having the baby, Madame.
C’est tout.”

“Remind me to
kill you when I’m feeling better,” Maggie said. “Dear God! Are we not there
yet? Where in the blue blazes hell did you park your effing car? Are you some
kind of
outdoor
freak? Where is the
goddam car!?”

“I am sorry! I
parked it at a distance to encourage more walking when I’m—”

“Stop talking!
Shut up with the mindless, endless talking! Dear Lord, how does Julia put up
with your constant, ceaseless yammering?”

“I haven’t said
but two—”

Maggie screamed
and clutched him and realized that he had stopped walking, frozen still until her
pain subsided. She sagged against him, exhausted. Once they were on flat
ground, he put his arm under her legs and hoisted her gently into his arms. She
groaned.

“If you
were
the murderer,” she said, her eyes
closed, “that would come in very handy right now because I really want to die.
Please. Kill me now.”

At her words,
Maggie felt Mathieu come to an abrupt stop
.
“Noooooo! Why are you stopping? For the love of God, what now?”
When she opened her eyes, she saw the
reason he had stopped.

Unless it was the
best dream she had ever imagined, she saw the wondrous sight of Laurent coming
straight at her at a dead run. She could see the car behind him, the driver’s
side door still open to suggest that he had bolted from a car that was not completely
stopped twenty yards in front of them. She could also see Roger coming from around
the side of another car with his firearm pointed directly at Mathieu’s chest.

Oh, shit,
Maggie
thought with irritation, her thrill at seeing Laurent tempered by the
possibility that she was going to get shot before she could deliver the baby. Laurent
reached them, whereupon Mathieu promptly handed her off to him and put his
hands behind his head. Laurent knelt with her in his arms.

“Laurent, thank
God you’re here,” she gasped into his sweater, smelling the wonderfully
familiar scent of lemons and
anise
and Laurent, himself. “It was
Florrie
,
Laurent! Florrie killed Jacques—”

“
Ensuite, mon amour
,” Laurent said. His
hands were even bigger than Mathieu’s and Maggie could feel them moving up and
down her back, her legs, and her arms checking her for damage as he held her in
his arms on one knee. “
Est-ce que tu es
bien
?”

“No, I’m
not
all right, Laurent! I’ve never been
more not all right in my—” While she didn’t scream, the picture of agony
searing across her face must have delivered the message better than words ever
could. Laurent was on his feet with her in his arms. She could tell they were
moving, that Laurent was walking fast, his long strides covering the distance
quickly, and she said a prayer of thanks he hadn’t decided to jog with her
bouncing in his arms. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Roger and Mathieu
trotting alongside them with nobody holding anybody at gunpoint.

Oh, good
,
she thought on the verge of hysteria.
Everyone’s friends now
.

“Laurent,” she
said, panting in anticipation of the next contraction that she could feel
coming.

“Oui, ma chère?”

“Promise me I’m
not going to deliver this baby on the side of the road.”

“
Jamais
, Maggie.
Je te le promets,
”
 
he said.
Never. I promise.

Chapter
Twenty-Six

Ten fingers, ten
toes. One adorable button nose, a set of already inquisitive blue eyes and a
head full of dark hair. Jean-Michael Dernier lay nestled in his mother’s arms
and Maggie could not stop looking at him.

“He really is the
most amazingly gorgeous baby in the world,” Maggie murmured to Grace, who stood
next to her hospital bed the morning after young Jean-Michael was born.

“That’s not
typically the sort of thing you say to someone who also has children,” Grace
said, tweaking the baby’s fat little cheek. “But in this case you may just be
right. We need to get him straightaway into baby modeling.”

“Laurent would
never allow it.”

“I know, darling.
It’s a joke. You don’t want to share this little angel with the world just
yet.”

After a hectic
nick-of-time and very noisy entrance into the hospital yesterday evening
featuring a full police escort and a frantic like-she’d-never-seen-him-before
Frenchman rushing in with her in his arms, young Jean-Michael decided to slow
his entrance into the world by some ten hours. Now, exhausted and filled with
joy and wonderment, Maggie watched her precious bundle and found it hard to
believe that the two of them had been joined together for nine months—and
already a whole of adventure.

Laurent waited
until Grace arrived before going off in search of a “proper lunch” for “
ma femme
.” Maggie couldn’t help but grin
as she watched him kiss the baby for the hundredth time, then her, and then
Grace before heading out the door. She could hear him greeting
people—probably total strangers—outside the room as he made his way
down the hall.

Her husband was a
happy man.

“You doing okay?”
Grace asked her as she gently picked up the baby in her arms. “Oh, my God, he
is so tiny!” she said without waiting for an answer. “I’m not used to babies
not weighing a ton. Oh, I love this stage! He smells so heavenly. Well done,
darling. Laurent is over the moon.”

Maggie watched
her friend holding her son in her arms and swaying and rocking with him and she
said, “Grace, can you forgive me for not supporting you during this whole
separation thing? I know I acted like I was the first woman on earth to give
birth.”

Grace snorted. “Forget
it, darling. You had a horse in the race. I understand perfectly. I would’ve
felt the same way.” She hesitated for a moment. “Believe me I
wanted
to make it work.”

“I know you did,”
Maggie said, gazing at her baby’s sleeping face as Grace settled him back in
her arms. “But now what? What will you do?”

“I have no idea.
Windsor is up for the idea of possibly trying again, but I don’t think we need
to put the kids through that. He says that Leeza is an absolute horse-whisperer
with Taylor. Of course, he
would
say
that. But maybe he’s right. God knows anyone would be a better mother to her
than me.”

“That’s not true,
Grace.”

 
“Well, true or not, I’m happy to have
someone else come into her life who might help her. Even if it is my husband’s
girlfriend.”

“I can’t believe
I’m hearing those words come out of your mouth.”

“You and me both.”

“I hope you know
you’re welcome to stay at
Domaine
St-Buvard
as long as you want. We have plenty of room.”

“Thank you,
darling. Laurent’s already offered and we’ll probably take you up on it. At
least for a little bit. Then we’ll need to start over, just the two of us.”

“Taylor will stay
with Windsor?”

“Oh, yes, I think
so. For now anyway.”

“I’m just so
sorry not to have been there for you, Grace.”

“Darling, you
were, though! In your own Maggie-like way, you helped me to clarify my
feelings. What good is hearing
poor Grace
when what I really needed was perspective? Which you gave me.”

“How in the
world?”

“When I first got
here I was hurt over Win having a girlfriend—and that wasn’t the real
problem at all! If you’d mollycoddled me, I would’ve let myself see
Win
as the villain instead of stepping
up. You made me see how truly awful it all was, letting down the girls and
everything. And
that
helped me see,
eventually, that in spite of how bad it was, leaving was still the right thing
to do.”

An hour later,
Laurent still hadn’t returned and Maggie had dozed off. Grace sat next to the
bassinet in the room with her hand touching the little fellow’s blanket. Maggie
woke up and smiled at the two of them. Before she could speak, there was a
tentative tap at the door, and when it pushed open Julia and Mathieu stood in
the opening.

“Julia!” she cried.
“You’re here!”

Julia entered,
looking first to Maggie and then to Grace and then back at Maggie. She was
wearing jeans and a cashmere pullover. Her hair looked wet, as if she’d just
stepped from the shower. Her damp grey and brown curls wobbled against her
forehead as she nodded and smiled shyly. “They released me last night,” she
said. “On my own reconnaissance or whatever it is. It’s not official yet but it
will be. I’m free.”

“Good Lord, who
is this fine piece of work?” Grace said to the hulking Mathieu, who looked to
Maggie as if he’d also had a shower since she saw him last. His piercings and
tats were even more noticeable in the glaring hospital light.

“Oh, Jules, this
is Grace,” Maggie said, “my best friend. You’ve heard me talk of her? Grace, this
is Julia and her Mathieu, my guardian angel.”

“I’ve heard so
much about you,” Grace said, extending her hand to Julia and then Mathieu. “But
I believe the person you really came here to see is now receiving.” She stepped
out of the way to reveal the bassinet with its just-waking contents.

“Oh, Maggie, he’s
gorgeous!” Julia said going over to the baby bed. “He looks just like Laurent!”

“Good thing,”
Grace said, sotto voce.

“Shut up, Grace.”

“I cannot believe
how you did all this
and
had a baby
too.”

“It was nothing.”
Maggie scooted up to a sitting position in her bed, wincing slightly. “Roger
released you?”

“In person, last
night. Sorry I didn’t come over straightaway.” She looked adoringly up at
Mathieu who was returning the gaze. “I heard you were otherwise engaged and I
was, too.”

“I’m just glad
it’s all over,” Maggie said. She laughed and nodded toward the bassinet. “
All
of it. Can you bring him to me,
Grace?”

Grace bundled up
the baby, unable to take her eyes off his face. “He is going to keep you and
Laurent hopping. I can tell.”

“Laurent’s
already thinking of what duties he can assign him in the vineyard,” Maggie
said, holding her arms out for him. When Grace placed the baby in her arms, she
turned back to Julia and Mathieu. “I wanted to tell you, Mathieu, that I’m so sorry
I yelled at you yesterday.”

“Pas du tout.”

“No, you were a
total prince and I was awful to you. If it weren’t for you…what were you doing
out there, anyway?”

He shrugged.
“Looking for mushrooms.”

“God, Julia, you
guys really are two peas in a pod, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, we are. Maggie,
thank you.” Julia approached the bed and reached out to touch Maggie’s hand.
 
“You didn’t give up on me. And I’m sorry
I made it so difficult.”

“I don’t think I
really did anything,” Maggie said. “Just made everyone’s lives miserable.”

“As per usual,”
Grace said with a smile.

“It was your relentlessness, in the end,
that moved the boulder,” Roger said as he walked through the door. He went to
Julia and held out his hand. “
Je suis
desol
é
e
,” he said. “Again, please forgive my
error.”

Julia shook his hand and then hurriedly retreated
back to Mathieu, where she wrapped her hands around his arm. She turned to
Maggie. “I’ll be by when you and the little sausage are home, okay?”

“Yeah, that’ll be good. Bring Mushroom
Boy with you. I seriously owe him one.”

“
Ciao
,”
Mathieu said, lighting up the room with the first smile Maggie had ever seen
him give.

When they left, Roger came over to Maggie
and peered into the blankets of the newest Dernier. “So,” he said. “A boy.”

“Yep.”

“Good job.”

“I’m pretty sure that part was out of my
hands.”

“Your husband must be very proud.”

“Yeah, he’s decided to keep me a little
longer.”

“I will never understand your sense of
humor.”

“I know.”

“Do you two want to be alone?

“Knock it off, Grace. You’ve met
Inspecteur
Bedard, haven’t you?”

“Years ago,” Grace said, holding out her
hand. “I had forgotten how positively dishy he was. Oops, did I say that out loud?”

Roger stared at Grace with his mouth agape
and Maggie burst out laughing.

“Go easy on him, Grace,” she said. “He’s
easily confused.”

Roger cleared his throat and turned his
attention back to Maggie, giving Grace one more curious look. “Do you want to
talk of shopping?”

“Okay, I’m almost positive you mean talk
shop, and hell yes, I do. What have you got?”

Roger crossed his arms against his chest.
“Well, first of all, we found Florian Tatois.”

“You did? How far did he get? Did you get
him on that steamer out of Marseilles I told you about? Has he formally
confessed?”

“He did not get very far at all.”

“It’s been twelve hours! I could
walk
to Marseilles in twelve hours!”

“We had an all points bulletin out on
him, as you know, but when we went to process the crime scene at the crash
site…”

“Oh, God.”

“…we found him pinned beneath the
wreckage.”

Maggie chewed her bottom lip and watched
Roger’s face. She looked down on the cherubic face of her little son and the
tension in her brow relaxed. “How did that happen, do you think?” she asked
quietly.

“Well, clearly, he got himself caught on the
tractor hitch on the back of the car.” Roger shrugged.

“Is he alive?” Maggie asked.

“Somewhat.”

“I love the French,” she said to Grace.
She turned back to Roger. “So, no confession.”

“No. But it doesn’t matter. As you saw,
Madame Patrick goes free and there are no other suspects. His confession to you
fits the facts of the case.”

“How is it you think
I
solved this case? I was clueless until the murderer was
sharpening his butcher knife over me.”

“It’s just as I said. Your relentless
probing unsettled everyone, most particularly the murderer. Even with a suspect
in police custody he didn’t feel comfortable. It is one of your great gifts,
Maggie. The ability to badger people into doing crazy things.”

“Aw, you old flatterer,” Maggie said.

“But not far wrong,” Grace said.

“I forgot you were still here, Grace.”

“And you said yourself,” Roger continued,
“that when you saw my text that Annette had been murdered you knew immediately the
killer must be Florian Tatois.”

“Sure.”

Roger shrugged. “I did not make that immediate
connection, you see.”

“That’s because
you
weren’t working the whole inheritance angle like I was. Once
you focus on that, it’s obvious.”

“That’s just the point. I should have
been working
all
the angles.”

“Yeah, but I had a motive, Roger. I was
trying to prove my friend innocent.”

“I too have a motive, Maggie, although I
can understand why you might not realize it. I am supposed to be trying to get
the actual perpetrator of the crime.”

Maggie shifted the soft, small weight of
her little lad in her arms and folded back his blanket to better see his face.

“How did it go down with Annette?” she
asked quietly.

“Are you sure you want to hear it?
Today?”

“I’d just as soon hear it and then never
have to hear any of it ever again.”

Roger sighed. “She was strangled in her
apartment. The forensic evidence, I’m sure, will confirm the confession Tatois
made to you.”

“And she died immediately?”

Roger frowned. “Of course. Why do you
ask?”

“It’s just that Florrie hoped Lily would hang
on longer than she did. If her designated heir died
before
her…”

“Oh, I see what you mean. I do not know
who inherits now. It won’t be Michelle through Annette—since Annette died
first—unless Michelle is Lily’s third choice beneficiary.”