Murder in Nice (17 page)

*****

Grace laid out the tablecloth on the grass
and set down the picnic basket. Her morning bike ride had pretty
thoroughly depleted any desire to do much of anything for the rest
of the day. After a long, cool shower and a vow never to get on a
bicycle again, Haley’s suggestion of a picnic seemed to perfectly
fit Grace’s energy level.

She shielded her eyes against the sun,
though the spot they’d chosen was mostly shaded. A large Cypress
tree spread its limbs overhead allowing the stark sun to peer
through in speckles and flashes. The distraction did little to keep
her from focusing on the fact Laurent might very well be having an
affair.

“
Just put him down on the
cloth,” she said to Haley, who knelt next to her with the baby in
her arms. “He can’t walk yet, thank God, so that’s one less thing
to worry about.”

Haley gave the infant a quick hug and set
him down on his tummy. Instantly, he grabbed at the cloth and
army-crawled to the edge where the grass was.

“
Not that you can totally
ignore him,” Grace said, laughing as Haley pulled him away from the
grass.

“
Mama!” Zouzou said,
running over to the women and tumbling down onto the cloth.
“
J’ai faim
! Really,
really
faim
!”

“
I think it’s precious that
your little one speaks French,” Haley said.

“
Well, it’s really sort of
Franglais. I have the only four-year old who is fractured in two
languages. Her English is as misguided as her French.”

“
I think it’s
charming.”

“
I hope her teachers share
your opinion when she starts school next month.”

“
Is there a school in
St-Buvard?”

Grace opened the wicker basket and pulled
out a banana. Zouzou grabbed it and bounded away.

“
Don’t go beyond the
boundaries,” Grace called to her.

“
Boundaries?”

“
Oncle
Laurent walked the perimeter of where she’s allowed to go,
which is basically not out of my sight. Zouzou likes rules. Laurent
always knows how to handle her.”

“
Is he good with
children?”

“
Laurent?” Grace looked at
Haley with surprise. “Laurent is good with everyone.” As soon as
she said the words, she flinched.
Too good,
maybe?

Haley pulled Jemmy back onto the cloth and
then turned him over on his back and tickled him until he
giggled.

“
But to answer your
question,” Grace said, “yes, there is a kind of school in the
village. I’m not sure Maggie and Laurent won’t allow Jemmy to go
there at least for a few years. It’s Catholic, of course. And it’s
close by.”

“
But not for your little
girl?”

Grace pulled out a plate of
deviled eggs and pulled the clear wrap from the top. Laurent had
made the eggs earlier that morning using
aioli
instead of mayonnaise. Grace
considered it a major strength of character that she hadn’t eaten
them all before the picnic.

“
I don’t intend to live
with Maggie and Laurent forever,” she said. “In fact, I was looking
at apartments in Aix last week. There’s a wonderful
école maternelle
there.”

“
The tour group spent an
afternoon in Aix last week,” Haley said, her voice serious now. “On
our way to Nice. It was beautiful.”

“
Yes, it is. And so are
these
gougères
.
Where Laurent gets the time to get his vineyard ready for
harvest
and
make
gougères
I have no idea. The man’s a marvel.”

“
Is that why Maggie found
an excuse to leave yesterday? Because she’s married to such a
wonderful man?”

Grace turned to look at
her. “Maggie and Laurent are very happy.”
Am I trying to convince myself?

“
If you say so.”

Grace looked out at the horizon of the
vineyard until she spotted Zouzou’s form skipping through the
vines. She had awakened this morning to the sounds of sobbing that,
irrationally, she thought must be Zouzou’s until she burst into the
little girl’s bedroom to find the child sleeping. It was when Grace
returned to her own bedroom that she heard the harsh male
whispering coming from Haley and Ben’s bedroom and realized the
crying sounds had come from there.

“
Maggie is on the coast,”
Grace said carefully, setting out a large bowl of olives, “because
she made a promise to a friend and, take it from me, I know what
those promises mean to her.”

“
But Maggie barely knows
Annie,” Haley said, frowning. “Is it possible she’s finding
motherhood harder than she thought it would be?” Haley ran a gentle
hand over Jemmy’s head as he swiveled it around to regard
her.

“
I heard you crying this
morning,” Grace said quietly, her eyes still watching her daughter
in the field.

Haley sucked in a quick breath. “It’s not
what you think.”

Grace looked at her. “I’m not an idiot,
Haley. Ben’s hurting you.” She held up a hand as if to stop any
protest on Haley’s part. “Even if he’s not physically hitting you,
although I wouldn’t put it past him. If Laurent hears him do it,
Ben will walk with a limp for the rest of his life, brother-in-law
or not.”

Haley pulled Jemmy up onto her lap and
hugged him close. Grace saw she was fighting tears.

“
I always thought if we
could just have children, everything would be fine. Ben would calm
down and not be so angry all the time. But I just can’t make it
happen.” A single tear trickled down her cheek and she rubbed it
away.

“
I’m so sorry, Haley,”
Grace said, reaching out to take Haley’s hand in hers. “And I know
you don’t want to hear this, but trying to fix an unhappy marriage
by adding kids to the mix is always
and
without exception
a bad idea.”

“
I know,” Haley said,
kissing Jem. “But at least I’d have the kids, you know? It wouldn’t
matter then what Ben did.”

“
I’m almost positive it
doesn’t work like that,” Grace said sadly.

*****

Maggie sat in her hotel room. The window
faced the sea, and while the interior was rudimentary and bare with
linens that had certainly seen the last world war, the view was
incomparable. She watched it now, the intense blue of the
Mediterranean, speckled with the copious white sails of the rich
and idle.

The others in the tour had already walked to
the little seaside restaurant they’d scouted out earlier in the day
and Maggie was edgy from the combination of anticipating what she
knew was going to be a difficult phone call and a nearly constant
state of hunger.

“
Hi, sweetie,” she said as
soon as Laurent picked up. “Everything okay there?”

“
What have you been
drinking?”

“
That is so rude, Laurent.
Why would you say that?”

“
Because you sound like
you’re cranked up on a six-pack of Red Bull and it is seven o’clock
at night.”

“
I
am
a little tense, Laurent, if you
want to know. I’m sure you think this is a vacation for me but it’s
a gigantic pain and most of these people are horrible. It is
not
a pleasant experience
at any level.”

“
So I am assured you will
be home tomorrow as you promised.”

He was not going to make this easy for
her.

“
Look,” she said, “it turns
out I have to take the train to Nice in the morning. I forgot
something and want to check to see if it’s at the
hotel.”

“
They have phones in that
part of Nice.”

“
I
did
call and the concierge said he
couldn’t give me that information over the phone.”

“
If you are stalling,
Maggie…”

Surprised, Maggie sucked in
a quick breath. Laurent never called her by her first name; he
always called her
chérie
.

“
I said I’d be home by
lunch time and I will.”

“
By way of
Nice.”

“
Yes, but so what? That
doesn’t affect my deadline.”

A moment of tension passed
between them. She had tried to circumvent him about the reason she
was going to Nice and he’d called her on it. Usually she suspected
he
knew
when she
was playing fast and easy with the truth—but he’d never
said
anything
before.

Everything was different these days.

Besides, she
had
forgotten something in
Nice and it
was
at
the hotel. And she
had
called and been told a telephone interview wouldn’t be
possible. She was sure, however, that these sorts of details would
not assuage Laurent.

“
Is everything okay there?”
she asked suddenly.

“
Non
,” he said. “You are not here.”

“
I mean besides that. Is
everything okay with the harvest?”

“
Of course.”

“
It’s just that you’re
acting strangely lately.”

“
Impossible
.”

Maggie had to suppress a
grin. “Well, not
very
impossible if
I’ve
noticed it.”

“
Everything is fine. Just
come home and be a hostess to your guests.”

“
Laurent, please let me
finish what I started out to do.”

“
Lunchtime.”

“
Yes, dearest. And I must
say, after all this fuss I’ll expect nothing short of a six-course
meal to explain your absolutely panic to have me back home. Is my
brother being a pain?”

“
Oui
, but he’s not bothering anyone but his wife.”

“
Poor Haley. Have you
talked to her at all?”

Laurent snorted and again
Maggie was surprised she knew what the sound meant without words.
Translation:
Why would I talk to your
brother’s wife?

“
She and Grace went into
the village,” he said. “For tonight’s bread.”

Due to an unfortunate
series of murders early in their tenure at St-Buvard, the
village
boulangerie
had been shuttered, although it was unthinkable for any
self-respecting French village not to have a bakery and a daily
supply of fresh bread. Since that time, most of the people living
in St-Buvard had depended on the bi-weekly arrival of the traveling
bread truck. Laurent usually just drove to Aix.

“
I’m glad Grace is there,”
Maggie said.

“
Especially since you are
not.”

“
Okay, Laurent, I get it.
You’re annoyed. I owe you.”

“
You do. But I will settle
for seeing you at the Arles train station at precisely thirteen
hundred hours.”

Damn. Was he looking at a
train schedule?
She wouldn’t put it past
him.

“
I’ll be there,” she said
sweetly.

*****

The walk from the restaurant back to her
hotel was only ten-minutes, but it was all uphill. As usual, Maggie
had eaten more than she’d planned to and now she was uncomfortable
and seriously annoyed with herself.

Like everywhere in France
during the summer, it was still light out at ten o’clock at night.
Maggie heard the voices of the others in the tour group as they
headed in the opposite direction of the hotel—toward town—for
drinks.
How they could eat and drink as
much as they did was the big mystery,
Maggie thought as she picked her way across the cobblestone
street.

“
Hello there, Maggie, hold
up!”

She turned to see Bob Randall trotting over
to her. Behind him, Desiree waited on the curb. Even from the
twenty yards that separated them, Maggie could feel the woman’s
irritation barreling down the road toward her.

“
Hey, Bob,” Maggie said
when he reached her. “You not going with the others?”

He looked a little winded from trying to
catch up, but she knew the florid face and panting could just as
easily be the result of the two bottles of wine he appeared to
consume single-handedly at dinner. She noticed purple splotches
down the front of his shirt.

“
Oh, I am. I just wanted to
make sure you got back to the hotel safe and sound. You sure I
can’t convince you to stay out a little longer?”

Maggie smiled and turned to resume her walk.
“Positive. I’m beat.”

“
You’re leaving us in the
morning?”

“
I am. I’m going briefly
back to Nice and then from there, home.”

“
I hate that you’re going
to miss the rest of the tour.”

Maggie stole a glance at him. He hadn’t
spent much time talking with her since she’d joined the group two
days ago so this attention was a surprise. “I enjoyed it,” she
said. “Although you’ll have your hands full deciding between
Desiree and Dee-Dee.”