Murder à la Carte (38 page)

“That’s not true!”

“It is true!”

“I hate you, Laurent, I really do.”

“Tell me in French.” He turned away and began chopping up the fish. 

“Who ever heard of making fish stew for Christmas Eve supper?” she said suddenly after a long pause.

He said nothing, but turned and gave the soaking mussels a perfunctory stir with a wooden spoon. He opened the refrigerator and took out the leeks, giving Maggie a sidelong glance at the same time. She was staring at the floor, miserable, tears rimming her eyes.

He was about to drop the leeks in the sink and put his arms around her to tell her it wasn’t important, none of it was important, when she looked up at him and said haughtily:
“Faire le pot au feu de poissons pour le soir de Noël est ridicule.” Making fish stew for Christmas is ridiculous.

Laurent burst out laughing and did take her into his arms. “I love you, Maggie,” he said.

“Speak French, you lout,” she said, but kissed his ear. “Go ahead, make yourself miserable. We have trouble enough communicating, but if that’s what you want....”

“Perhaps we could take it slowly,
hein?”
  He smiled at her. “A little each day,
oui?”
 

She laid her head against his chest. “I’m sorry, Laurent,” she said. “
Je m’excuse
. I know I haven’t been trying to learn. I know I’ve resisted getting into the swing of things.”

“Je ne m’en porte pas plus mal,”
he said, kissing the top of her head.
It hasn’t bothered me too much.

“It’s so hard to hear the person you love and not be able to understand him,” she said.

“How do you think men have felt about women for years, eh?”

“
Très amusant
,” she said, looking up at him. “I’m calm now. Can you tell me what all of that was about with Jean-Luc?”

He ran his hand down the length of her long, dark hair. He loved her hair, loved how it lay in satiny sheets of jet black like an Oriental doll’s hair, how it swung when she moved. He gently pulled her hair back from her face and touched her chin with his thumb.

“Maggie, I want to stay. You must know that.” He watched her eyes fill with fear and resignation. “But,” he continued. “I will not stay if it is not what you want. What I told Jean-Luc is the truth, I will not sell to him or Eduard or anyone else. Domaine St-Buvard is mine now and if I never work another week of its fields, myself, it will be mine to give to my son someday.
Comprends-tu?”

“I understand,” she said, softly.

“I will sublease it to a farmer to work it, to care for it. But I will not sell it.”

“Why is it so important to you?” she asked.

Laurent held her tightly as he looked past her shoulder through the French doors and out to his fields, where row after row of vines were lovingly wired and taped, trimmed and pruned.

“What have I done with my life?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper. “Where have I been and what have I done? Domaine St-Buvard is my castle, my place of rest and my triumph.”

“You mean it’s home.”

“Yes, home,” he said, looking into her sea-blue eyes for a positive response, a mutual understanding. He pointed toward the fields. “I own this, Maggie. This land is mine. Perhaps only another Frenchman would understand how... necessary that feels.”

Maggie stood up on tiptoes and kissed him firmly on the mouth. “I understand it,
chéri,”
she said.  “I just don’t know what to do with it.”

Laurent gave her another quick kiss and then turned away to deal with his leeks. She watched him slice the vegetables, and add the fish head and chopped onions to a heavy skillet of olive oil.

“I talked to Madame Dulcie today,” she said, trying to fight the feeling of hopelessness that had begun in her heart. “Grace didn’t show.”

“Ah, yes,” Laurent turned to look at her and gestured with a paring knife. “She called after you left to say she was feeling ill. I forgot to tell you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Maggie said, as he turned back to his work. “I figured as much. Anyway, Madame Dulcie told me the inside scoop on Patrick Alexandre and the woman he killed. Really interesting stuff. Did you get around to listening to the tape from Madame Lasalle? The gypsy?”

Laurent scattered fennel seeds in the skillet and then reached for the hand tape recorder sitting on a kitchen shelf.

“I was listening to it just before Jean-Luc came over,” he said, snapping on the recorder.
“Ecoutons-le ensemble, okay?”
Let’s listen to it together.
He filled the skillet with water and then covered it. “I still think it was dangerous, Maggie, for you to have gone there alone. The gypsies―”

“Oh, speak French, would you, Laurent?”

Laurent smiled and shook an admonishing finger at her. The voice of Madame Lasalle invaded the pleasant quiet of the kitchen.

“I think this was the part where I was asking her about Gaston―”

Laurent shushed her and listened while lifting the skillet lid to salt the water. He reached up and snapped off the tape recorder.

“She said Gaston was a loving little boy, very helpful to his mother.”

“Really?”

“She said he was always very smart but that he would occasionally have
l’attaque
...seizures.”

“You’re kidding? Gaston’s an epileptic?”

Laurent shrugged and began quartering potatoes with swift movements of his knife.

“It is not so unusual,” he said. “Gypsies.” He leaned over and turned the recorder back on. “Her husband died ten years ago,” he said, chopping potatoes. He listened to the tape. “On the night of the murders, she was sleeping in the family trailer when a young man came from the village to fetch her mother. It was about her father, Ricardo.”

“Ricardo’s the one they hung, right?”

Ignoring her, Laurent listened carefully to the tape. A full minute passed before he spoke again. “He had been making a delivery of anchovy bread to Domaine St-Buvard―something he did quite regularly, it seems―when he heard a lot of noise and screaming...”

The voice on the recording imitated the sounds of gunshots and then shouted:
“Au secours! Au secours!”

“She says her father said he heard calls for help but that he...” Laurent listened in silence for a moment and then shook his head. “
Merde
,” he said.

“What? What
‘merde’?
What happened?”

Laurent turned off the recorder again. “He ran away. Your gypsy woman says her father was afraid of trouble in the form of
les gendarmes
―and so he ran away from the house.”

“Well, what’s so―?”

“He left his delivery load of anchovy bread on the ground when he fled.”

“Merde.”

“Gypsies are not very smart.”

“What else does she say?”

Laurent turned the recorder back on.

“Ricardo was taken to a cabin nearby and held for a few hours after the murders were discovered.” He poised his knife over the potato and waited, listening to the woman’s words on the recorder. Then, he leaned over and switched the recorder off again and continued chopping. “And we know what happened after that.”

“Poor Ricardo,” Maggie said, looking at the recorder. “She told me the truth, then.” She glanced at Laurent. “I wasn’t sure she would. She didn’t have to, you know. She knew I wouldn’t have known the difference.”

“A noble people,” Laurent said dryly as he added the potatoes to the boiling skillet.

“But it’s weird,” Maggie said, “that Ricardo would be delivering bread there, and Jean-Luc, too? Oh! Did I mention that I told the village vicar we’d be stopping by for midnight Mass tonight?”

“I am sure,” Laurent said with a shake of his head, “that no matter how well you speak my language, or I yours, I will never understand your sense of humor.”

3

Windsor dusted imaginary flecks of dandruff from the shoulders of his cashmere jacket. He stood facing the full- length mirror in the downstairs hallway and pushed his chin out of the way of the collar of his turtleneck sweater to better see the effect of the sweater’s burgundy color against the dark gray jacket. He smoothed back the sides of his neatly trimmed hair. Pretty good, he decided. He jerked downward lightly on both lapels of his jacket and flicked an offending dog hair off his sweater front. He could hear the sounds of Grace’s last- minute touches upstairs. She padded lightly from bed to dresser to bathroom on the creaking ancient floorboards overhead. 

He wished he could feel differently about things. He wished he could feel the way he had a mere six weeks ago― before Connor died, before all of this mess happened. The reflection in the mirror began to sag just a little. Then, an evening out―especially Christmas Eve―would’ve involved the prospect of laughter and good company. Then, whether it was the result of being the husband of the beautiful and witty Grace Van Sant (it had never occurred to him that Laurent or Connor or Jean-Luc, for that matter, didn’t desire her madly) or whether as a result of some witticism he would inevitably deliver during the course of the night, the preparations for the evening would have been filled with anticipation and excitement. He stared dismally at his reflection in the mirror. 

He turned away from the mirror and walked into the expansive parlor. It was six o’clock and the outside light was long gone. Somebody―perhaps the new nanny?―had pulled the heavy drapes closed, and the room looked serious, a little somber even, as if one might expect to find a coffin propped up and on display in some corner. Windsor moved to a small mahogany bar and made himself a strong gin and tonic. Now he could hear Grace on the staircase. She was actually humming as she descended. He took a long sip from his drink and waited for her to appear in the doorway.

“Win?” Grace entered the parlor and glanced left and then right searching for him.

She looked sensational, he had to admit. Her hair was draped casually around her shoulders, without her trademark curls, giving her a sleeker, more mysterious air. Her forehead was high and proud, her cheekbones a model’s envy. Her eyes were rimmed in charcoal-gray mascara and she wore a turquoise blue sweater set in cashmere over dark gray slacks. The diamond bracelet he had given her two anniversaries ago sparkled brilliantly on her wrist.

“Over here,” he said, quietly. He took another sip of his drink and watched her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her tone friendly. “Are you about ready to go?”

“Just waiting on you.”

“Well, I’m ready.”

He finished his drink and left the empty glass on the bar for someone else to deal with.

“I don’t want a late night,” he said, knowing he wanted to upset her, to take the happy flush from her cheeks, the brightness from her eyes.

“What’s a late night?” She frowned at him as she put on her earrings―long dangling affairs studded with diamonds like a cluster of stars. “You mean after two a.m.?”

“I mean, I don’t want to be out late. Tomorrow’s Christmas Day, in case you’ve forgotten, and I want to be conscious when Taylor opens her presents.”

“God, Win, I imagine some of the
dead
in St-Buvard Cemetery will become suddenly conscious when Taylor opens her presents. I really wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” he said as he moved toward the couch where he had tossed his overcoat. “But I care that she has a good Christmas.”

“Oh, I see,” Grace smiled prettily, careful not to stain her teeth with her lipstick. “And I don’t, I guess?”

“Let’s go,” he said evenly, pulling on his coat and scooping up his fur-lined leather gloves. He smacked the gloves together for emphasis.

“Are you sure?” Grace asked. “Perhaps we’d better stay home and watch her while she sleeps to make sure those sugarplum fairies do their job, you know?”

“You’re a great mother, Grace.”

“Kiss my ass, you bastard.”

He’d done it. She was furious. Her makeup was pulled in opposite directions with her scowl and the pretty flush she’d come downstairs with was now an unattractive rouge.

“Tell me, exactly, how one Christmas Eve out with friends makes me a bad mother?” She was pulling at the rings on her fingers in frustration and anger. “And while you’re at it, let’s hear what a great father
you
are, huh, Windsor? Such a loving daddy to make sure Taylor has only the best people taking care of her and loving her since he never has time to spend with her.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Ask Taylor if it’s a lie.”

“You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel now, Grace.”

“No, dear, you must be referring to my wedding day.”

“Classy all the way. Wonder what our friends would think if they could see how classy you really are?”

“I don’t imagine anyone would have too much style left at this stage of the game, Windsor.” She turned and walked to the hall closet. He followed her.

“We’re talking fitness as a mother here,” he said.

“You already pushed that button,” she shot back as she pulled on a vivid blue cape lined in red velvet. She studied her appearance in the hall mirror and pulled some strands of hair out of her collar. She turned to glare at him. “Are you saying you don’t want to go to Maggie and Laurent’s tonight? Is that what you’re saying?”

Windsor shoved his hands in his pockets. “I just don’t want a late night,” he said stubbornly.

“Fine.” Grace snatched up her evening bag from the marble-top foyer table and marched to the front door. “We’ll take two cars.”

4

Laurent had finally produced the fir tree. At a little over nine feet, it stood large and majestic against the long wall that opened up into the garden. He’d dragged it in earlier that afternoon, stamping the cold from his leather athletic shoes and presenting it to Maggie as proudly as if he’d planted the seed for it himself. It was a magnificent tree, she had to admit, its boughs stretched out like hungry fingers. Maggie had dressed it simply, sparingly, with one row of tiny white lights and just a few glass ornaments she’d found in Paris and Aix. The resulting look was regal and dignified. The tree was so big it actually fit their bowling-alley sized living room.
Now that the tree is here,
Maggie thought happily,
it’s finally Christmas.