Murder in Aix (The Maggie Newberry Mystery Series Book 5) (29 page)

“I don’t suppose it matters. There’s no
money to inherit anyway,” Maggie said. “Was Annette’s boyfriend all strung out,
I guess?”

“Her boyfriend?”

“You don’t have to be coy, Roger. We
figured out that Annette was boffing someone in the police department.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking
about.”

“Okay, have it your way.”

The door from the hallway pushed open and
Laurent entered the room carrying a large grocery bag, his brown hair long and
ruffled around his face. It must be windy outside, Maggie thought with a smile
when she saw him. He and Roger shook hands.

“Handsome boy you got there,” Roger said
to him.

Laurent accepted his congratulations,
then gave Maggie a quick kiss and murmured something to the baby in French
before setting out the food on Maggie’s bedside tray.

Grace peered into the bag. “Ohhh,
religieuse au chocolat
!” she said.
“Laurent where
ever
did you get them
at this hour?” Grace pulled out a large chocolate éclair from its paper
sheathe. “You know your wife’s passions, that’s for sure.”

“Laurent’s a magician,” Maggie said. She
looked up from gazing at her baby’s face, a smile on her lips, and locked eyes
with Roger. The moment was quick and then gone. Roger clapped his hands in a
gesture that heralded he was about to leave.

“Oh, won’t you stay for some
boulette d’Avesnes
?” Grace said, still rifling
through the grocery bag. “I can’t imagine you’ll ever see such a thing in a
hospital
again.”

“No, no,” he said. “I too have a young
one who awaits me at home. I just wanted to say, before we wrap this up,
formally, that I am sorry, Maggie for not working more closely with you on
this.”

“That’s okay, Roger.”

“No, no it really isn’t. Nobody knows
better than I that, at the very least, if you’d had my help, we would’ve solved
this murder much faster, and without your nearly having to have your baby in a
ditch beside the road.”

“Or in the smoking hulk of a car at the
bottom of a cliff,” Grace said under her breath.

“Anyway, I want you to know, and this I
swear to you—next time we will work together.” He glanced at Laurent, who
paused in his unpacking but whose expression was unreadable. “If your husband
approves, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Grace said.

“Shut up, Grace,” Maggie said. “And thank
you, Roger. I look forward to that.”

“Oh, one more thing,” Roger said as he
was leaving. “I arrested Michelle Tatois this morning.”

“You’re kidding. What for?”

“You go on,
Inspecteur
.” Grace said to him, smiling sweetly.
 
“I’ll fill her in on the details. But
thank you for your prompt attention to that.”

Roger nodded to Laurent and then Maggie,
and finally to Grace, where the corner of his smile tweaked noticeably higher,
and then left.

“What details?”

“A little matter of an attempted
poisoning with the idiot girl’s fingerprints all over the milk bottles
and
your doorknobs
and
mailbox and God knows what else.”

“Poisoning? When?”

“Well, I’m not sure when she did it,”
Grace said, “but yesterday Jean-Luc said the milk smelled bad and I found
bleach stains on the counter where he’d spilled it trying to get it into
Zou-zou’s bottle.”

Maggie whistled and the baby instantly screwed
up his face and let out an annoyed whimper. She jostled him to settle him down
again.

“So it looks as if the whole troublesome
Tatois clan is either dead or in jail,” Grace said.

“Or on life support,” Maggie said.

“I think Roger has a point, though.” Grace
said, “You do have a gift for unsettling people, darling.”

“Bedard said that?” Laurent said.

“He did. Would you agree, dearest?”
Maggie said, smiling up at Laurent as he leaned over her.

“
Absolument
.”
He kissed her soundly.

After their picnic supper, Grace left
with the car to go back to
Domaine
St-Buvard
where Danielle and Jean-Luc waited with Zou-zou, and Laurent
settled into an armchair next to the bed with his son in his arms.

“He looks like you,” Maggie said.

“
Non
,
he looks like his beautiful
Maman
.”

“Well, he’s ours and that’s all that
matters. I’m so happy, Laurent.”

“
Et moi, aussi, ch
é
rie
,” he said. “Oh! I pulled your email
messages from your laptop at home.”

“Anything interesting?”

He pulled a folded piece of paper out of
his back pocket and handed it to her. “Your editor apologizes for not getting
back to you. She was having emergency appendix surgery.”

Maggie read the printed email in
amazement, her mouth open. She looked at Laurent, who was totally focused on
his child, and then back at the paper. “I’m going to have it all,” she said.
“I’m really going to have it all.”

 
“
Bien
sûr, ch
é
rie
,” Laurent said, looking up at her with a
smile. “Haven’t I been telling you that all along?”

 
Maggie smiled at him, watching him hold
their son, her heart so full of joy she fought back tears. After a moment, she
said, “But what you haven’t told me yet is how you ended up coming to my rescue
driving Jean-Luc’s car.”

 
“I met Danielle on the road coming back
from Lily’s.”

“You were on foot?”

Laurent shrugged, his concentration on
his son. Maggie watched him pick up the baby’s tiny hand and kiss his fingers.

“How did you know
how to find me?”

“I went to Florrie’s
bar first. Some kids on bicycles said they saw a man and a fat lady get in a
car going south toward the D7.”

“Thanks for that.
So you headed toward Aix?”

“
Oui
. When I got to the curve above Pontès,
I just followed the fireball off the first exit. It was like a beacon leading
me to you,
ma chère
. Always I am
seeing explosions and destruction in your path. It is like the little crumbs of
Hansel and Gretel.”

“Very funny. But
that cliff is a good thirty minutes from Florrie’s bar. How did you get there
in
ten
?”

“I drove very
fast.”

“I can’t believe
how everything turned out,” Maggie said, her eyes filling again.

Laurent looked up
and smiled at her. “
Je sais
.”
 

“And thank you
for working things out with Roger. It’s helpful to have a friend on the police
force. Even if he is terrible at his job.”

“
Oui
. But he is moving ever steadily up
the ladder. Someday he will be
Commissariat
de Police
…as long as you are doing his work for him, of course.” Laurent stood
up and settled the sleeping baby back in his bassinet.

“This is the last
time, Laurent. I promise. Never again.”

 
“Shhh, Maggie,” Laurent said with a wry
grin. He leaned over her and tilted her face toward his to kiss her.
 
“Let us not begin young Jean-Michael’s life
by having him hear his
Maman
tell
outrageous lies to his
Papa
, eh?”

Interested in seeing
what happens next to Maggie?

Check out
Murder
in Nice
, Book 6 in the series!

If you’d like to be notified when each of next books
in this series comes out, sign up here:

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If you are new to
this mystery series, you might want to see how it all began in
Murder
in the South of France
, available free wherever ebooks are sold.

Books 7 & 8 in
the Maggie Mystery series—
Murder à
la Mode
and
Murder
 
in the Latin Quarter
—will
release April and July 2015.

About the Author

Susan Kiernan-Lewis
lives in Ponte Vedra, Florida and writes about Europe, mysteries and romance.
Like many authors, Susan depends on the reviews and word of mouth referrals of
her readers. If you enjoyed
Murder in Aix
, please consider leaving a
review saying so on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com or Goodreads.com.

Check out Susan’s website at susankiernanlewis.com and
feel free to contact her at
[email protected]
.