Murder à la Carte (25 page)

Maggie stepped off the steps to the wine bottles and reached out to grab the first thing it touched.

That was when she heard the noise.

A grating, shuffling noise.

Close.

Releasing the bottle, Maggie whirled around to leap for the stairs when he grabbed her. His arms snaked around her throat and stomach and pulled her back from the light, from the stairs, from safety. In her terror, Maggie could smell a buttery-smooth odor of wine and strong tobacco on the man’s breath. She could feel his face against her own―feel his teeth behind the awful grin.

Chapter Ten

1

Maggie clawed at his face while she tried to scream, but her attacker held her tightly, suffering her impotent scratches without attempting to deflect them. Her left arm was pinioned at her side, her right crumpled uselessly against her chest. She heard someone croak out a gruesome “My God!” and realized that it was her. The large, hurting hands grabbed her blouse at the throat and roughly ripped the material away. Without releasing her, he pushed a callused hand into her bra and grabbed her breast. What felt like another pair of hands fumbled brutishly between her legs, then pulled at the elastic waistline of her sweatpants.

Maggie screamed, then latched onto an ear and bit down. Tears poured down her face, mixing with the blood from the man’s ear, but she didn’t let go. She felt him pushing her onto the floor, felt his hands twitch violently upwards, away from her breasts, to protect his ear.

Suddenly, a light snapped on, seemingly in her head, and her assailant’s face was instantly illuminated.

Gaston Lasalle.

Laurent was shouting hoarsely in French. He grabbed the Frenchman from behind and threw him across the basement. Maggie could hear the sounds of wood splintering as the man hit.

Laurent pulled her to her feet. He touched her face with his hand. His eyes were filled with anger and uncertainty.

“I’m okay, Laurent,” she said clutching at her shredded blouse. “He didn’t hurt me. I’m okay.”

She could feel his arms trembling as he held her. Gently, he pulled away from her and held her by the shoulders.

“Go upstairs, Maggie,” he said.

Maggie could hear groans from Lasalle as he lay on the ground. She watched his shadowy figure lurch to his feet.

“Go upstairs.
Vas y!”
Laurent said to her, giving her a small push in the direction of the stairs. 

Just then, Lasalle swung at Laurent with a full wine bottle that he had hidden behind his back. Laurent caught the bottle with the flat of his large, meaty hand and wrenched it from the gypsy’s grasp. With his other hand he slammed his fist into Lasalle’s face. Maggie thought she could hear the cartilage shattering from where she stood on the foot of the stairs.

As Lasalle folded to his knees Laurent hit him a second time in the solar plexus. The man emitted a strangled
oof
and doubled over. Laurent grabbed him by the hair. 

“Laurent, don’t!” she screamed.

Laurent hesitated, holding the man’s head like something that had sat, piked and dishonored, on London Bridge for a week.

“Maggie, go upstairs,” he said, rasping.

“Don’t kill him! Laurent, please.”

Laurent released the hair and Lasalle collapsed like a rag doll at his feet. “I will not kill him,
chérie,”
he said. “Please, go upstairs and leave me with him.”

Maggie heard Lasalle’s groans and hesitated. Then, she turned and ran up the stairs, biting a neat hole in her lower lip as she ran.

2

Maggie watched Laurent from the living room as he poured water from the kettle into the teapot and then positioned the cozy over the pot. He returned to where she was sitting on the couch, an afghan around her, Petit-Four in her lap, and a roaring fire in the hearth. He took her empty brandy snifter from her hand and set it down on the coffee table in front of them. Then, he wrapped his arms around her and drew her to him. Maggie could smell woodsmoke in his hair from his recent errand to fetch more wood from the side of the house. She nestled closer to him and felt the effects of the brandy coursing through her.

He had returned early, deciding, simply, that he’d rather be home tonight than drinking with the villagers at Le Canard. Petit-Four’s frantic barking had alerted him immediately to trouble from within the house. Maggie had never even heard the dog. She hadn’t seen Lasalle leave the basement after Laurent had finished with him. She assumed that he left the way he had come―through the outside entrance in the garden. She hadn’t asked Laurent for details.

“He was here the night of the
dégustation
,” she said to him now. She wasn’t indicting Laurent. She wanted him to know that there was no more reason for secrecy. Laurent nodded.

“I sort of glossed over my other two run-ins with him,” she confessed, looking into the fire.

“
Je sais,”
he replied, holding her tighter.
I know
.

“Why aren’t we calling the police?” She shifted Petit-Four to Laurent’s lap. “Because they think you’re a suspect in Connor’s death?”

Laurent shook his head and patted the little dog.
“Non, non,”
he said. “The police can do nothing.”

“They can make Gaston leave us alone.”

Laurent pushed a dark lock of hair from Maggie’s eyes. “Lasalle will not come back,” he said.

“Why don’t you think he killed Connor?” she asked, “He was here, he’s an obvious sociopath...”

“I think Gaston had nothing to do with Connor’s death,” Laurent replied. And with that, Laurent explained to a surprised Maggie his theory that Gaston Lasalle was only a tool used by others to encourage Laurent to sell St-Buvard.

Maggie listened in silence, stroking the dog and watching the flames of the fire. After he was finished speaking, and she had had time to process what he had said, she knew she would not feel safe in St-Buvard any longer.

“The pumpkin?” she asked.

“Gaston. I’m sure of it,” he said. “And today? Over twenty good stocks destroyed. Cut at the base. Jean-Luc says it is naughty school children.”

“So you think
Jean-Luc’s
involved?”

“I am not trusting anyone for now.”

“Eduard?”

Laurent shrugged.

Maggie then related what Madame Dulcie had told her in town about Connor and the American museum and Eduard’s vow to kill Connor.

Laurent frowned.

“You think he could have done it?” she asked.

“Je ne sais pas
.
”
I don’t know.

“Laurent, are you saying it’s possible that Jean-Luc or Eduard or maybe the both of them have, like, hired Gaston to harass us?”

“Someone is giving us a message,” Laurent said. “Tonight, I have sent them a message back. They know we will not leave.”

“And why is it, exactly, that we won’t leave?” Maggie touched a small welt on the inside of her arm where one of Gaston’s nails had raked her.

Laurent looked at her closely. “Can you let them run you away?” he asked.

“What if they up the ante?” she asked.

“Comment ça?”

“You know, bring out their big guns, make it even tougher.”

“We are tough, too,” he said, kissing her. “We will survive them.”

Maggie leaned back into the couch as Laurent got up to pour the tea and to bring in some of Madame Renoir’s
fougasse
. For all Laurent’s strong words and refusal to be intimidated, she couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t decided to come home early tonight.

3

Roger Bentley gave the lapels of his Saville Row jacket a brisk tug and stepped out onto the street in front of the George V Hotel. He’d slept later than he’d anticipated, but there was no hurry, his train reservations weren’t for another hour. Nodding pleasantly at the doorman, and then again as he handed over a twenty franc note to the bellhop who piled his hand-tooled Louis Vuitton luggage into the trunk of the waiting cab, Roger settled into the back of the taxi. It was a beautiful morning, the kind of morning he always thought of when he thought of Paris. The streets, damp from last night’s rain, were alive with people. Jewelry shop owners were arranging their treasures in display windows, beautiful women were walking French poodles. The air smelled like a mixture of fresh baked sweet-cakes and a sewer. The job this time had taken less time than he’d anticipated. The pigeon had been willing, if not as tender as she once must have been, and Roger had been able to pluck her, bank the proceeds, and still leave her cooing―with plenty of time to make his escape. Not that the Paris
gendarmes
were a problem, he mused, smiling. They were too cynical, too busy, to listen to one more tourist’s bitter complaints about getting fleeced.

As the cab sped off to Gare de Lyon, Roger removed an
International Herald Tribune
from his leather valise, and checked his watch to calculate his time of arrival in Lyons. If the train was on schedule―and,
bien sûr,
the remarkable TGV was always on time―he would arrive with time for a late lunch and perhaps, he hoped, be fortunate enough to meet someone like the mademoiselle he’d discovered the last time he was in Lyons. Flapping out his newspaper to straighten it, Roger smiled to himself. Out the window, he caught the wolf-eye of a young, homely prostitute standing at the base of an ancient fountain.

Oh,now won’t Dernier be surprised to see me?

4

The early December morning broke clear and beautiful at Domaine St-Buvard. Maggie flung open her bedroom window and let in the cold air and the scent of woodsmoke from the surrounding farms. She looked in the direction of Avignon. The barely visible tops of Eduard Marceaus’ row of dark fig trees seemed to point the way to the city. Looking straight down into her walled garden, Maggie could imagine the elderberries, the glossy, crawling ivy and where the nettles would climb the gray stonewalls in summer. Her mother had told her there might be blackberries as well. At the time, Maggie had thought that, come spring, she’d fill all the
guichets
in the
mas
with blackberry pies. Now, the dark twisting branches looked unpromising, even a little treacherous to her.

She could hear Laurent downstairs preparing breakfast. She hurriedly pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. Petit-Four, obviously knowing the best chances of breakfast scraps were to be found with Laurent, had abandoned Maggie thirty minutes earlier for the kitchen.

“God, it smells great,” she said as she descended the stairs. “What is it?”

Laurent looked at her with surprise. “Is boiled eggs and grits
, n’est-ce pas?”
  

“Grits?” Maggie looked into the pot on the stove. “Where on earth did you get grits?”

Laurent didn’t answer but began a low, tuneless humming that Maggie normally found annoying but this morning found oddly reassuring.

“It’s a beautiful morning,” Maggie said, sitting on a kitchen stool and pouring herself a mug of coffee. Behind her a shiny array of burnished copper pots and pans hung over the four-burner La Cornue stove. The terra-cotta counter tops were clear, although Laurent usually kept every inch of counter space covered with dishes, pots, dishtowels or wine bottles. A large supporting pillar in the center of the room had been papered, over the last two months, with various wine labels from the region and Laurent’s own cellar. Maggie looked around for the small china ewer of thick cream she knew must be there as surely as there were pigeons in Paris.

“What are you going to do today?” she asked.

Laurent pulled two covered eggcups from a pot of boiling water and set them on the counter. He took a sip of his own coffee.

“
Je crois que
...Jean-Luc will come by to look at Otto.” Otto was one of Laurent’s hunting dogs. 

“What’s the matter with him?” Maggie asked, picking up a toasted piece of French bread. She hated all of Jean-Luc’s visits, all his claims on Laurent’s time. She spooned a dollop of strawberry jam onto the roll. She resented the way he seemed to be encouraging Laurent’s vineyard dream.

Laurent waved a hand to indicate that it was nothing, not even worth talking about. “A bruise, I think, perhaps,” he said.

Maggie sighed with exasperation as he turned back around to unscrew the egg
tians
and serve up their breakfast.

“Well, why does Jean-Luc need to come by if it’s only a bruise?” she asked.

Before Laurent could respond, Petit-Four barked sharply and ran to the front door. Maggie hopped down from the stool and nearly collided with Laurent to look out the kitchen window. A black police car sat parked in the drive. Maggie took a quick breath.

You don’t suppose that little rat Gaston pressed charges?
“I don’t like this,” she said.

Laurent went to meet the detectives at the front door. Maggie stayed in the kitchen listening to their solemn greetings in French, and then forced herself to join them in the foyer. 

She looked untrustingly from Bedard to his subordinate. Bedard spoke rapidly to Laurent in French. Maggie slipped her hand into Laurent’s and held it tightly. She squeezed his hand and looked up at him as he turned to her to translate.

“He says Connor’s body...they are finished with it.” Laurent looked back at Bedard, whose face was grim. Maggie wondered whether he practiced that look or whether it came naturally.

“There will be no funeral,” Laurent said. “
Au moins,
not here. The body is flown back to Boston. To MacKenzie’s family.” 

Detective Inspector Bedard spoke again, his hands resting comfortably in his pockets, his jacket mis-buttoned and stained from breakfast or perhaps even dinner last night. Maggie watched his face closely. He sounded more guttural than most of the Frenchmen she had heard, as if somehow his rolling r’s were a sign of great accomplishment or even rank. She hadn’t liked him much before, when he and his gang had set up their operations in her basement. She liked him even less now.