Murder à la Carte (48 page)
Authors: Susan Kiernan-Lewis
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Cozy, #Culinary, #Women Sleuths, #Teen & Young Adult
This time when Catherine held her breath, she heard it.
Her hand tightened on the leather shoulder bag over her right shoulder and she winced as the strap bit into her thin cotton blouse. The two bottles of
vin de pays
in the bag were heavy.
A muffled, lumbering sound, of something moving unnaturally, almost silently, across the cobblestones, echoed softly in her brain.
Catherine began to run.
* * * * * * * * *
“The first year is always the worst. Don't worry about it. My first year, I thought Windsor was trying to kill me. You know, like
Gaslight?
with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman? He was such a pig.”
“I can't imagine Win being a pig. He's always so sweet,” Maggie said.
“Maybe it was the sight of a woman crying every night that made him pig-like.”
Maggie reached for a small pitcher of cream across the little café table and squinted at Grace in the soft glare of the afternoon sunlight.
“You cried every night?”
Grace nodded. “For practically the full first year. It was awful.”
“Why?”
Grace shrugged and rearranged the assortment of napkins stuck under the chin of the bored thirteen-month old baby on her lap. She looked up at Maggie and grinned. “Isn't she precious? She spits up like this at home too. I don't know why I cried so much. I guess because I thought marriage was going to be like my parents' marriage and the shock was considerable.”
“Your parents have a good marriage?” Maggie frowned. It seemed out of character to think of Grace wanting to emulate stodgy old rich Republicans. She nearly said so.
“Well, traditional, I guess. Daddy's very attentive to Mother, you know? Always touching her shoulder, pouring her wine first, scurrying to the door to make sure she doesn't have to come in contact with the doorknob herself.”
“Sounds like a butler.”
“Exactly. I never told you? Mother married the butler. Jolly nice fellow and he's so tidy.”
“You're kidding me.”
“Yes, as it happens, darling.”
The bright sun dappled through the leaves of the sycamore that shaded their table and the light breeze moved the shadows gently around the table amongst the little cake plates and espresso cups. The baby on Grace's lap reached for the bobbing shadows with chubby fists, cheerfully banging her hands against the dishes when she couldn't capture them.
Maggie had met Grace and baby Zou-zou in Avignon for a day of shopping and café-sitting, something the two women had indulged in many times and on a regular basis before Grace's youngest was born. Since then, the times had been fewer and fewer. Although Grace was certainly rich enough to have attendants and nannies, in fact, had two, one for each of her two daughters, she, nonetheless, spent much of her time with the children, especially the new arrival who was a buoyant counterpoint to the difficult seven-year old with whom she had joined in the family.
Zou-zou's older sister, Taylor, was a musical genius. Gifted at the piano as well as the violin, she was also a hard child to like. Zou-zou, on the other hand, was, right from the beginning, a baby to adore. “She simply never fusses,” Grace had said to Maggie with amazement. “Whether she's being pinched by Taylor, hungry, wet, or cold, she just shines through.”
Grace and her husband Windsor had met Maggie and Laurent two years ago when Grace and Maggie, as the only American ex-patriots for two hundred miles began a strong friendship. Although Grace's French was better than Maggie's and she was too rich to share many of the same problems that Maggie and Laurent had, it was Grace's natural adaptation to any situation and her unfailing ability to reach out to new people that had kept her flourishing in the tiny village of
St-Buvard
tucked away in the south of France.
For Maggie, it had been harder.
“This cookbook idea isn't my idea,” Maggie said, bringing the
demitasse
cup to her lips. “It's just Laurent's way of getting me off his back. I don't know anything about cooking, and he's completely unhelpful about letting me watch him cook. Always saying I'm in the way and getting on his nerves and stuff. A great first year for newlyweds, you know?”
“But you're a writer, Maggie. I thought the whole point was that you didn't have to know anything about cooking--or any subject for that matter--to write about it. Interview people...” Grace nodded at the entranceway of the little bistro in front of which their café table was situated. “Chefs and cooks in the outlying villages. Talk to them, maybe they have wonderful anecdotes to throw into the mix.”
Maggie tugged at one of the baby's hands and tried to engage her eye. She looked up at Grace.
“Somehow, my heart’s not into it,” she said.
“Madame Van Sant!
Bonjour
! How are you?”
Maggie looked up to see a group of three people striding toward their café table. The leader, a small, athletic-looking woman, waved happily at them, then tugged her little entourage forward. She arrived breathless and grinning. Immediately she bent down and exchanged kisses with Grace and then scooped up the baby in her arms.
“
Et voici petite Zou-zou, n'est-ce pas? Ohhh, elle est belle!”
she cooed before turning to include Maggie in her electrifying smile. “And this must be Madame Dernier, yes?” She jostled Zou-zou to her hip and extended a hand to shake Maggie's. “
Enchantez
! Always I am hearing about Maggie this and Maggie that. And you are meeting my husband and my own little girl.” She turned to indicate the handsome, graying man behind her who was kissing Grace, and the cool, pretty young woman who stood quietly observing the entire scene. “René, Pijou,
voici Madame Dernier, une bonne ami de
Grace.”
“Maggie, darling, you've heard me talk about Marie, my art instructor?” Grace touched the back of a free chair at their table. “Please join us, Marie. And so this is Pijou?
Je suis très heureux de faire ta connaisance, Pijou
. Your mother talks of you often.
Souvent
.”
Pijou said nothing but sat in the proffered chair while her father gathered in two other chairs from nearby tables. Marie settled into one of them with the baby on her lap and covered Grace's hand with her own slim, aging one.
“She is exquisite, Grace, your Zou-zou. You must let me paint her. Babies are wonderful to paint, especially such happy babies as this.”
“What are you doing in Avignon?” Maggie asked. She felt a sudden surge of excitement at the group’s intrusion. It was if the newcomers had brought a mysterious and special secret with them.
Marie took on a look of mock horror.
“
Quoi?!
You have not been to the show?” She looked at Grace and shook her head gravely, wagging a finger at her as well. “I thought this was the reason we are seeing you in Avignon.
'Bon
!' I say to René, there is Grace, she has come to the abstract impressionist show just as I have advised my entire class.'“
Grace laughed.
“I'm sorry, Marie. The lure of the sale was just too much. But I found a lovely bargain or two.”
As if Grace needs to hunt for bargains
, Maggie thought with a smile as she finished off the last of her espresso. The waiter came, seemingly annoyed that there would be more work for him and he might have to, presumably, suffer through a larger tip, coldly took their orders and left.
Maggie studied the new arrivals while Grace and Marie chatted easily in French to each other. Marie had once been a great beauty, that was obvious. But she was an expressive woman and years of lively animation had worn grooves in her face that blander women would never wear. As a result, her face, even relaxed, had taken on a look of perpetual tension. Her dark, graying hair was long and wound tidily into a loose, glossy bun that nestled against her neck, just a few delicate tendrils escaping to frame her heart-shaped face. Maggie guessed the woman to be in her mid-fifties and still as charismatic and alluring, for all her early aging, as a cinema star at her height.
Her husband, René, sat quietly, seemingly content, watching his exceptional wife. He was big and handsome and Maggie imagined Laurent might look something like him when he was his age. René, who was probably sixty, was robust and seemed charged with good humor, as if a smile were always tugging at the tips of his long, gray mustache. She wondered if Laurent would ever sit in the company of a group of women and smile adoringly at her while she burbled on to a chum.
And then Pijou, who was too old to be a sullen teenager but was broadcasting just enough ennui at the whole social gathering to be considered at least mildly rude. She was slim and tall in contrast to her stout father and diminutive mother. Pijou was fair; she had a pleasant face, if not quite pretty. She dressed almost in opposition to her mother's artistic, dark, flowing clothes by wearing a very tailored jacket and slacks, her fingers coated with gold rings, her throat with looping gold chains. The look was, surprisingly, not a bit overdone. Her tastes may be different from her mother's but it was clear she'd inherited her sense of style.
Maggie caught Pijou’s eye and was favored with a brief smile, followed by a rolling of her eyes as if to seduce Maggie into joining her in her boredom at the social duty.
“And so you will talk with Jacques,
n'est-ce pas?
” Marie turned toward Maggie, her charm and attention radiating outward to the rest of the table now.
“Jacques?” Maggie asked, looking from Marie to Grace and back again.
“Jacques would be good,” René said solemnly, nodding. “He would be very good.”
“Of course, you must also talk with René,” Grace said taking the baby back from Marie who seemed to relinquish her reluctantly. “René is a marvelous cook. He made dinner for Win and me...when was that, Marie? A month ago?...that was simply incredible. Seriously incredible. I'm still stuffed from it, I made such a
cochon
of myself!”
The idea of beautiful, correct, elegant Grace Van Sant making a pig of herself was too absurd an image to form in Maggie's brain.
“Jacques is a chef?” Maggie asked Marie.
“
Oui
! A wonderful chef, and Grace is right, you must, of course, interview René. He is as good as any of the chefs in all of the south of France. In all of France!”
René chuckled, shook his head modestly and beamed at his wife.
“So there you are, darling,” Grace said airily. 'Two chefs to interview--both of them friendly and not about to rip your tonsils out if you ask a dumb question, not that you would, and so to hell with Laurent.” She turned to Marie as an aside, “who, by the way, is a wonderful cook and very hunky besides.”
Marie touched the sleeve of Maggie's cotton blouse lightly with her hand. “The creative process is so important, Madame Dernier,” she said. “I understand it very well. Sometimes the blank paper, the empty canvas...I know, it is as terrifying as facing nude all your enemies at once, eh? I know. I know.”
Maggie felt a spurt of affection toward Marie.
“It's been really hard to get started,” she admitted.
“
Bien sür
, I know this,” Marie said, nodding. “But to write a cookbook! In France there are few things as noble to do, eh?!” She patted her flat stomach, “Or as satisfying!” Everyone laughed. Tiny Marie hardly looked like a hearty gastronomic.
“I have
une ideé merveilleuse
,” Marie continued as she brought her espresso cup to her lips. “You must come to my studio tomorrow.” She took a quick sip and settled the cup back into its saucer. “Grace,
ma chére,
you will come too, yes? To make your friend more at ease?” Marie turned back to Maggie without waiting for a response from Grace. “You will see my studio and the work I am doing and René will make you an exceptional lunch, okay? Is that good?”
Maggie looked at René who was nodding and then back at Marie.
“And so it is settled, yes?” Marie turned to Grace and clucked her thumb under baby Zou-zou's chin. “Yes?”
Grace laughed a silver bell of a laugh and looked at Maggie who found herself laughing too.
The afternoon was turning out very differently.
To read more of
Murder in Provence, click here
!
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commes les françaises
and stay slim.
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