Murder à la Carte (12 page)

“
C’est magnifique, Madame. Merci
,” Jean-Luc said in a muffled voice.

“You’re welcome, Jean-Luc,” Maggie said with a sigh.
“Je vous en prie. “

“Très bien, Madame!”
Jean-Luc said enthusiastically at hearing her French. Then, he and Laurent headed for the kitchen and the basement door.

“You are going out,
chérie?”
Laurent called over his shoulder to her.

Maggie followed them out of the dining room, aware that her lover had not waited for her answer. When the narrow kitchen door leading to the basement and its collection of fermenting liquids and calmly maturing wine had slammed solemnly shut behind them, she gathered up the empty glasses and dishes onto a tray and carried it back to the kitchen.

“It’s not that I’m bored, exactly, that’s not it at all,” Maggie said into the phone receiver as she pulled a wool afghan closer around her. The fire in the massive living room fireplace was still alive, but barely. From where she sat on the couch, she could see the wind slapping the bare branches of the apple tree outside against the French doors. “I mean, my folks will be here in two days and I haven’t even begun cleaning the place. And I still haven’t got a confirmation on the turkey―”

“You sure I can’t do anything to help? I’m really good at this sort of thing, Maggie. Organizing and buying things.” Grace laughed merrily on the other end of the line.

“No, I know you’re busy right now, Grace, besides―”

“I’m not that busy, darling! Really. Let me―”

“I mean, he’s down there in the dark fiddling with his grapes and foamy vats and stuff like some bloody mole― coming up only to eat sandwiches and I’m running all over a thirteenth century village trying to find cranberry sauce!”

Grace laughed. “Listen, Maggie, I absolutely insist you stop being Madame Must-Do-It-All-Herself and let me pick you up and take you to Aix today. We’ll find a turkey, we’ll find cranberry relish, we’ll have a tall glass of something wicked, and we’ll leave the moles in the basement to their grape-squishing. Yeah?”

“You’re a peach, Grace.”

“Yeah.
C’est moi.
Une pêche.
Pick you up in an hour.”

2

The girl arched her back, the swell of her tummy protruding, not unattractively, it seemed to Connor, as he stood by the window and watched her. Babette was completely nude and appeared to be unashamed of it―even in contrast to the fact that Connor was fully clothed. It was cold and wet outside but the renovated and luxurious farmhouse was cozy and snug. For as much time as he spent out of his clothes, Connor thought with a smile, central heating was imperative.

He continued to watch Babette as she stretched. Her breasts were heavy against her thin rib cage, the veins prominent and blue like rivers on a road map. Her hair hung reddish-gold to her waist. She pushed it over her shoulder to expose even more of her breasts.

Connor sighed. She wouldn’t age well, he feared. Already, the harsh lines of frowning marked her lovely face. That pert nose will grow too, he decided, no matter how many years she keeps it upturned in that haughty glower of hers. Why do I always pick mean-spirited women? he wondered, as he directed his gaze back to the mound of unshapen clay on his stand.

“Dépêche-toi,”
Babette said, her brows knitted together in a fierce look of petulance. She rubbed the sides of her arms as if she were chilled. 

“I can’t hurry, my love,” Connor said, poking tentatively at the three-foot form of clay. “This sort of thing takes time.” He smiled at her almost fondly. “You understood that concept well enough an hour ago.”

“Don’t be dirty,” Babette said, jumping up from the rumpled bed and grabbing her robe.

“Oh, Babette, what are you...?” He watched with disappointment as she tied her robe firmly around her.

“I will go,” she said as she picked up her shoes and skirt from the inlaid tile floor.

“Why?” Connor dropped his hands to his side in exasperation. “Because I don’t want to spend all day lolling around in bed?”

“You are a pig,” she said, roughly pulling on her dark stockings. “My father says he will cut your heart out and bake it for his
casse-croûte! “

“I guess that means you’ve broken the happy news.” Connor tossed down his sculpting implements and walked over to her. He tried to take her hands in his but she pushed him away.

“Why won’t you let me help you?” he asked. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“And how could it be?” She looked up at him and he caught a fleeting, painful flash of a little girl looking back at him. Nineteen years old going on twelve, he thought to himself.

She recovered quickly.

“I will kill the baby, and then you and I will continue to make love. But my father will live with this shame for always.
Toujours.

“You didn’t have to tell him, you know.” Connor ran a hand through his hair. “We could’ve taken care of this,” he pointed at her stomach. “And gone on like nothing―”

“And your whore, Lydie?” The girl jumped up and pulled her heavy sweater on over her head. “And the little school girl, Denise? I have seen you with her near
l’école des filles.
She is not even sixteen years old.”

Connor licked his lips. “You knew about Lydie before you came today,” he reminded her. “It didn’t seem to stand much in your way an hour ago―”

“Don’t forget
petite
Denise,” Babette said with a sneer.

“Look, what do you want from me? Huh? Money?” He jumped up and strode to the desk tucked under the eaves in his small bedroom. He snatched up his wallet and pulled out a five hundred franc note. “Is this enough? More?” He wagged the note in the air.

Babette stared at him for a moment, then smoothed out the creases in her snug, turquoise-colored skirt. She approached him, her eyes constantly on his own, and carefully took the money from his hand. She tucked the note into the wrist of her pullover.

“It’s a start,
mon cher, “
she said, her lips curling away from her small, already yellowing teeth. “From now on, when you want Babette, you must pay.”

Connor almost felt like laughing.
And shall the price go up, my sweet?
he felt like asking,
when there is soon more of you to love? The girl must be loony!

Instead, he kept his expression under control.

“I understand, Babette,” he said, quietly.

She turned abruptly away from him and left the room, not bothering to shut the door behind her. Connor listened as he heard her leave through the front door and wondered if she’d taken anything on her way out.

He’d been a fool to think he could continue to see the girl under the circumstances. But he’d so wanted to try sculpting that body. It was at the perfect stage of its ripeness, not quite showing but not quite normal. A state halfway between the virginal girl and the maternal woman.

He looked at the barely touched form of clay. What a shame, he thought. He had had such high hopes for this particular piece.

3

Madame Renoir dusted the flour from her hands and suppressed a gasp of delight when she saw the two American women coming toward her shop. She had just been about to close up―that useless Babette had not even shown up for work today―when she saw Madame Van Sant and Madame Dernier get out of the handsome black automobile in front of the Dulcie’s
charcuterie
. To her exquisite pleasure, the two women bypassed the butcher shop and headed straight for her own
boulangerie
.

Quickly, she scurried to the back of the shop, past the ovens and the large, mixing tables coated with flour, small clouds of the white dust still hovering gently above the floor, to the back room where she kept her milk crates, gumboots and brooms. Shifting her large body sideways to enter the small room, and listening for the sound of the bell at the front door, she reached into one of the large crates crammed up against the wall and the back door. She picked out two of the fattest, biggest puppies, clutching them to her ample bosom, and squeezed once more back through the narrow opening. As she walked through the back preparation room, the heat of the now-cooling ovens still warming the room, she could hear the tell-tale tinkle that heralded her customers’ arrival.

“Madame Renoir?” Grace called as she opened the door of the little shop. “God,” she said to Maggie, “I gain weight just smelling the stuff in this place, you know?”

They had finished most of their shopping in Aix―a twenty-five pound frozen turkey sat wrapped and strapped in the back seat shoulder harness of Grace’s Mercedes as testimony―and had decided to pick up their bread and Maggie’s pumpkin pie order at Madame Renoir’s.

“Unfortunately,” Maggie said, eyeing the delectables in the bakery display case, “I practically live here.”

“You’re kidding?” 

“No, really. Laurent and I both love fresh bread for dinner every night...”

“And you mean to tell me you don’t stock up on a few eclairs and custard-tarts while you’re about it?”

“
Bonjour, Mesdames!”
Both Grace and Maggie jumped, startled by Madame Renoir’s sudden entrance. She was red-faced and caked in white, and holding to the front of her broad, pale blue smocked
tablier
a squirming pair of poodle puppies.

“
Pour vous, Madame!”
the woman chortled shrilly as she pushed one of the wriggling dogs into Maggie’s arms
. “Et aussi pour vous, Madame. Pour votre petite fille, oui?”
She shoved the other puppy into Grace’s hands, who held it as if it might explode at any moment.

Maggie shifted the bundle of lapping tongue and curly fur in her arms and murmured her thanks to Madame Renoir, while staring in laughing surprise at Grace, who, up until this moment, Maggie could not have imagined looking awkward or uncomfortable in any situation.

“Merci, Madame. Mais, pourquoi?”
Maggie asked, peering into the puppy’s sleepy face. She quickly checked the sex of the dog―a female―and decided, on the spot, that a year’s quarantine, or whatever the United States required for re-entry with an animal, could be suffered. It suddenly occurred to her that a pet was precisely what she needed during her year in France.

“
Pourquoi?”
The baker grinned idiotically at both women, beaming as broadly as if she had produced the pups from her own litter
. “Parce que, je veux vous donner un cadeau! Simplement!”
Because I want to give you a gift, that’s all.

Grace smiled generously at the woman and said to Maggie through her smile: “I can’t keep this thing. Windsor will shit.”

“
Madame
?” Madame Renoir looked encouragingly at Grace as if she still needed some last, minor commitment from the American to accept the dog.

Grace held up her puppy―a very active male―and smiled too widely.
“Merci beaucoup, Madame. Ma fille sera très contente, très heureuse!”My daughter will be thrilled
. She glanced at Maggie. “Taylor will have it skinned and eaten before dinnertime tomorrow, you watch.”

The puppy wrapped his needle-sharp teeth around a glittering button on Grace’s double-breasted knit top. She attempted to pull the dog away from her buttons.

“Ouch! You little monster! It bit me!” Grace looked at Maggie’s own docile puppy and she began to laugh. “God, this figures,” she said. “You get perfect-puppy there and I get the hound from hell. There’s no justice. How did this happen to us? Didn’t we just come in here for some bread?”

“I told you,” Maggie said, watching the big blinking eyes of her puppy, “I come here a lot. It’s probably some sort of archaic bonding thing between proprietor and customer that she does with all her prized customers and you just happened to be here when the gift-giving portion of the rite happened.”

“I’m riddled with luck.”

“How do you say, ‘again’? I want to thank her again.”

“You know I’m going to make you take this little rotter too as soon as we’re outside the shop.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Grace. I’ll tell Taylor and you’ll never hear the end of it.”

“God, you wouldn’t.”

“
Merci, Madame,”
Maggie said, giving her puppy a little shake to indicate why she was thanking the woman.
“Merci, encore.”

“I don’t think that’s right,” Grace said, now holding her animal with both hands away from her Chanel country skirt.

“She gets the idea.”

Madame Renoir waved her hands at Maggie as if to signify that the giving of the puppy was nothing. 

“Votre tian de dourge sucrée est prête,
” she sang out to Maggie.
Your sweet pies are ready for you
. She pulled out a large tray from under the counter and set it gently on the surface between them. On the tray sat two dozen small ramekins of what looked like orange pudding with caramelized topping drizzled over each.

“My God, they look wonderful,” Grace said, still struggling with her dog for ownership of her buttons. “They smell even better. What are they?”

Maggie looked a little closer, aware that Madame Renoir was watching her with some trepidation.

“Well, they’re not pumpkin pies,” she said, finally, softening the words with an encouraging smile to Madame Renoir. The baker produced a small silver teaspoon and scooped the center out of one of the
tians
. She held it out to Maggie.

“This isn’t really a
pâtisserie
, Maggie, darling,” Grace said softly. “There are lots of places in Aix. In fact, Aix is famous for its...” Grace watched Maggie as she tasted the spoonful of creamy, sweet pumpkin.

Maggie looked up at Madame Renoir who, having accurately deciphered Maggie’s reaction, was beaming again.

“C’est magnifique,”
Maggie said to the baker.

“
Bon! Bon!”
Madame Renoir began bundling up the puddings in various cardboard boxes while Maggie and Grace selected baguettes for the evening.

“
Où est Babette cet après midi?”
Grace asked absently as she steered the little dog’s muzzle away from her large, gold earrings.