Murder à la Carte (34 page)

“I can’t believe you’re still smoking,” Maggie said.

 Grace gave her a baleful look and exhaled a stream of blue smoke out the window of the car.

“Darling, I am not getting out of this car. Now, I think it’s best that we all accept that and the sooner the better.”

Maggie sighed. “Well, anyway,” she said. “I told Laurent I thought Gaston killed Connor.”

“Really?” Grace followed Maggie’s glance out the window and into the disheveled little graveyard. Withered stalks of milkweed and creeping thistles poked up in thick clumps between most of the graves. Maggie imagined the little plot of ground was probably covered with buttercups and poppies in the height of summer.

“You think that’s odd?” Maggie asked.

“What was his motive?”

“His motive? Revenge.” Maggie unsnapped her seatbelt and turned to face Grace in the car. 

Grace looked unconvinced.

“Revenge against the hanging of his grandfather,” Maggie reiterated.

“So, why kill Connor?” Grace dropped her cigarette out the Mercedes window. “Connor wasn’t anywhere near St-Buvard when Gaston’s grandfather was getting his neck elongated.”

“It’s symbolic, don’t you see? Gaston saw Connor as the embodiment of all foreigners and foreigners are what got his grandfather killed.”

“Gaston doesn’t really strike me as a symbolic kind of guy, Maggie.”

“Besides,” Maggie continued. “Gaston is violent and bloody-minded. He’s capable of it and he had the opportunity.”

“Hmmm.” Grace traced a long, lacquered fingernail against the inside of the windshield. “Little weak on motive, though,” she said, and then turned to Maggie. “So the long and the short of it is that you told Laurent you’d prove to him that Gaston did it?”

“Thereby freeing Bernard,” Maggie said.

“And making the world a better place in general,” Grace agreed.

“Something like that.”

“So we’re looking into Connor’s murder as well as the Fitzpatrick murders?” Grace nodded her head as she spoke. “I believe that one needs to check out all the violent deaths that are committed in one’s living room. I’m sure Martha Stewart would agree; it’s much tidier this way.”

“I thought you’d think so. Now, are you sure you’re not going to see these gravestones? They might be able to tell us something.”

“I’ll let them tell
you
something, darling. And you can pass it on to me.”

2

Paulette poured the coffee into Laurent’s mug and then settled back into her chair. Today he had called first so she’d had time to brush and tie back her hair and put on a clean house dress. She had surprised herself that she cared enough to bother. And the realization gave her some hope.

Now the big Frenchman sat opposite her, drinking coffee, and talking about Bernard and grocery prices and Paulette’s health. A couple of visits before, when Laurent continued to come in spite of Babette’s absence from the house, Paulette realized that the man was coming to see her, not her daughter. She steeled herself against the bad thoughts that had lately begun to creep into her head, thoughts that asked how her life might have been different, if she had married someone like Laurent Dernier instead of Bernard Delacore. She steeled herself too, against the thoughts that, had she married Laurent, she would have transformed him from the strong, compassionate man he was into the man that Bernard had become―wild, drunk, angry, impotent.

“What now?” Laurent asked her. “Will you stay in St-Buvard?”

Paulette looked down at her coffee. Her mother had given her these china cups years ago and they had not a chip or a scratch to show they’d ever been used in the last twenty-five years.

“Where else would I go?” she asked him.

Laurent shrugged. “They will be moving Bernard,” he said. “To just outside Lyons.”

Ah, so that was it, she thought. The man is thinking of conjugal visits, of frequent support sessions with his wife and daughter. He was thinking that this was not the end after all, that it could all be glued back together in some sort of makeshift fashion. She looked back at her coffee.

“Perhaps we shall move,” she agreed. “To be near him.”

“You must stay hopeful, Paulette.”

She detected a certain unease entering into their conversations. This always happened sooner or later. Laurent’s eventual eagerness to leave was always telegraphed through his manner and his voice a good half an hour before he would be able to convince his feet to move. She couldn’t blame him. She’d leave too, if she could.

“If it’s a matter of money....” he said.

She smiled, the effort of it weighing like sixty-pound sacks of grain on each corner of her mouth. “Eduard is helping us.”

What more was there to say? Eduard was helping them. Had helped them. She looked at Laurent with surprise, then realized that the look of disgust on his face was, of course, not meant for her.

3

Maggie accelerated rapidly, narrowly missing a rabbit inspecting some morsel of greenery in the road. Grace had dropped Maggie off in town where her car was parked in the village and then taken her queasy, pregnant self home to a hot bath and tea, having had quite enough sleuthing for one day, thank you. Maggie couldn’t blame her.

The canopy of tall sycamores lined the ancient road that Maggie took toward Nîmes. In her opinion, the countryside was far less impressive in winter. The ruddy scrubbiness of the bushes and sparse trees, the variegated, haphazard fields of dormant lavender and grapes of September and October had given way to barren, flat lands, colorless and dull. Only the side roads that sought out the older villages were at all picturesque or enticing. It seemed impossible to Maggie that Van Gogh could have chosen this grim, unembellished part of the world in which to await inspiration. 

Madame Dulcie had mentioned that Gaston’s family came from Veneoux. The village, over two hundred kilometers from St-Buvard, was really too far to drive comfortably in an afternoon, but, she had little else to do with her afternoon. Laurent had made it clear he would be busy well into the evening with his public
degustations
. The signs of
On Vend du Vin Ici
had stayed up. Laurent would sell his wine right from their front doorstep...like a grown-up Kool-aid stand, Maggie thought with an involuntary smile. She turned off the quaint, tree-lined road onto the A7. 

Shaking thoughts of Laurent and his energies toward his budding winery out of her mind, Maggie concentrated on what she might find in Veneoux. Grace had been astounded that she intended to go at all.

“You’re going to have a conversation with Gaston Lasalle’s mother?” she’d asked. Her small, delicate mouth, always so carefully painted, had fallen open in surprise.

“I thought it was as good a place as any to start.”

“Maggie, you’ve been screwing your hair curlers in too tight at night.”

“I take it you don’t want to come with me.”

“Just promise me you won’t use the toilet there. Or you’ll be writing a completely different kind of book.”

Was she nuts to do this? To talk to the woman who had spawned such nastiness? What was she hoping to find out, really? That Gaston had ranted against foreigners as a child? That he’d harbored a burning, lifelong ambition to avenge his grandfather’s humiliating death? For that matter, Gaston’s mother had certainly been old enough to know what was going on when they hung her father. Perhaps she was even angrier than Gaston? How would she react to Maggie’s probing?

Maggie glanced at the position of the sun and cursed herself for not taking into account the short winter days in Provence. It was only three o’clock but she knew the light would be waning by the time she reached Gaston’s family village and would be gone completely before she could begin her way back home. A small tug of satisfaction as she thought of Laurent’s worry made her forge ahead.

Veneoux was a charming, hilltop village of narrow, winding roads that barely afforded two small cars room to pass. The familiar orange tiled roofs were in varying degrees of disrepair, and the façades of all the homes were the same sandy bland color that Maggie had grown accustomed to seeing all over Provence. The afternoon sun was disappearing behind the village church steeple as Maggie drove into the town, its streets deserted and forbidding. In her rearview mirror, she caught a glimpse of the stone-white sign announcing the boundary of Veneoux. An angry red slash crossed through the name as if to blot it out, renounce it. Maggie concentrated on the road ahead, hoping the sign wasn’t an omen.

Madame Dulcie had insisted that Gaston’s people could be found where all gypsies in Provence could be found― living in compact trailers and minibuses on the outskirts of town or under the largest bridge.

“Follow the trail of garbage,” the butcher’s wife had said in disgust.

Maggie drove slowly past the tidy village church of Veneoux and down the narrow main street. It was five o’clock. Two sets of bright blue shutters slammed shut as she drove by, and a scowling man with an oversized mustache watched her as he carried a small table and two chairs inside his shop. The
boulangerie
looked closed, the hotel, as if it had been bombed in the last war.

Suddenly, Maggie wished that her interview was over and that she was on her way back to her own living room. Her language skills were embarrassingly bad. She had brought a set of index cards on which she’d written excerpts from phrase books and dictionaries in order to help in framing her questions. She reached in her purse and felt for the small, hand-held tape recorder that she hoped Gaston’s mother would allow her to use.

The last few town houses drifted away to reveal decaying barns and scraggly gardens that looked like they had been abandoned long ago. Unusual, Maggie thought, for the typically, garden-mad French. And there, just outside town, she found the circle of caravans. Four trailers and two Mercedes Benz sedans served as the backdrops for the seven or eight children playing noisily in the dying afternoon sunlight. Maggie parked on a grassy verge, locked the car and walked toward the group of children. She held her stack of homemade cue cards in one hand and a small sack of centime coins in the other.

The children spotted her immediately. One girl, about eight years old and fiercely cross-eyed, leaped toward her and began tugging at her jacket. The child was soon joined by the rest, each dirty, dull-eyed and chattering, each pulling at Maggie and holding out a grimy palm.

“
Un moment!”
Maggie said, uselessly, hating the feeling of so many gripping tentacles on her arms and clothing. She flung the handful of coins into the dirt. The children abandoned her to scramble after the money, pushing and kicking each other in the process. Knowing they’d be back and that she had no more tricks up her
chemise
, Maggie looked frantically around the yard and at the darkened trailers.

Were there no grownups, she wondered
? Who drove these cars?
A noise came from one of the trailers. The children were quickly back and pulling at her again.

Maggie spoke over the din:
“Où est Madame Lasalle? Où habite Madame Lasalle?” Where is Madame Lasalle?

The children began singing,
“Où habite Madame Lasalle!”
  in imitation of her bad accent, and Maggie looked at the trailer that had shown some sign of life. Surely, the ruckus these children were creating would interest one of their parents?

“Je suis Madame Lasalle.”
A voice came across the small dirt clearing from one of the trailers behind Maggie. The voice was reedy and thin, like the woman herself, who stood smiling broadly at Maggie from the step of her trailer. Tall and covered in bangles and jangling gold-tone bracelets, Madame Lasalle was an imposing hag in full gypsy dress.  Maggie could see the hand-painted lettering on the side of the trailer
: Diseuse de bonne aventure―Madame Zen.
Watching Maggie read the advertisement, the gypsy grinned and waved to it. “
Donc, je suis Madame Zen, n’est-ce pas?”
She laughed and came down the steps toward Maggie. The children disappeared as quickly as smoke in front of a fan
. “Voulez-vous me dire la bonne aventure?”
Do you want your fortune told?
She pointed to Maggie’s hand as if to indicate she would tell her her fortune right here and now.

Maggie glanced at one of her cue cards and spoke in an even voice to the advancing gypsy.

“Puis-je poser des questions, Madame?” May I ask you some questions?

The woman stopped in front of Maggie and crossed her arms. Not counting the less than pristine turban she wore over her orange and gray hair, she stood at least a foot taller than Maggie
.

“Ne parlez-vous pas français, Madame?”
the gypsy asked Maggie.
You don’t speak French?
Her voice was softer now. Her eyes seemed to be trying to judge Maggie while giving nothing away.

“
Non, Madame, je m’excuse.”
  Maggie repeated her first question. Would the woman answer some questions for her?

Madame Lasalle smiled, her eyes large and dark. Maggie guessed Gaston’s mother’s age to be closer to fifty-five than the eighty she looked. The pungent smell of woodsmoke filled the clearing. The gypsy tugged her colorful red and green shawl tightly around her. It had grown quickly colder. Suddenly, she gestured for Maggie to come into her trailer, pausing only briefly to ask if she would be paid for the answers she gave.

“
Bien sûr,”
Maggie replied, her heart beating in doubletime.

This was madness
.

She was asking questions she only really knew how to ask because she’d marked the foreign words out phonetically on her cards. She was receiving answers that could just as easily be ingredients to a paella recipe as true responses to her questions. The gypsy knew Maggie didn’t know her language. And Maggie knew she was dealing with a professional liar.
Madness.

The trailer was cramped and jammed with every kind of colored glass and trinket Maggie had ever seen and passed up in junk shops, garage sales, or dump heaps. The tiny space jingled with the glittering bits of rubbish the woman had made into her home. She offered Maggie a cup of herb tea in a surprisingly clean cup and, afraid to refuse, Maggie drank the sweet brew with visions of leprosy and oral herpes swarming in her mind.