Murder in Nice (2 page)

Grace laughed and snapped the monitor off.
“I take your point, darling.” She gently tweaked Jem’s plump cheek.
“How’s this little one? Did he sleep at all?”

Maggie sat down at the outdoor table Laurent
had just left. “No, and it’s driving me crazy. Why won’t he
sleep?”

Grace sat down. “Well, I’ve heard the smart
ones don’t.”

“
Are you
serious?”

“
Just what I’ve
read.”

Maggie looked into Jem’s bright blue eyes.
When he saw he had her attention, his toothless grin widened and
drool crept down the corner of his mouth.

“
Plenty of time to be an
overachiever,” she said to him. “Take the opportunity of a nap when
it’s offered.”

“
Good luck with that,”
Grace said, leaning back into the cane chair, a tired smile on her
lips.

Maggie knew Grace was working hard to keep
her spirits up and her mood bright. The divorce from Windsor was
finalized the week before, and although Grace was the one who had
pushed for it, it had been a long, hard spring while she coped with
what the breakup truly meant for her and her little family of four.
When Maggie and Laurent offered refuge for her and Zouzou at their
home in Provence, Grace had gratefully accepted.

“
How’s the business
coming?” Maggie asked. Grace was attempting to create an online
children’s clothing boutique using Provençal and Parisian
wares.

“
Oh, it’s a long way from
coming. I guess I thought I’d just spend my days shopping for
adorable clothes for Zouzou and Jemmy, clue in the rest of the
world through Facebook or something, take my middle-man cut, and go
back to having a life.”

“
And it’s not like
that?”

“
I don’t know what it’s
like, dearest,” Grace said wearily. “I’ve never had to work before
and I don’t think I like it.”

“
A startup is the most work
of all,” Maggie said.

“
Thanks, precious. You
always know just what to say.”

“
Oh, here comes Laurent
with the wine.”

“
Case in point,” Grace said
with a smile.

Laurent set down a tray of filled wine
glasses and a bowl of olives.

“
One of yours, Laurent?”
Grace asked as she took the wine glass he handed her.

“
Non
,” he said. “Better.”

“
No way,” Maggie said,
sipping from her glass. “Mmm-mm, but whoever made it, it’s
good.”

“
Lunch in ten minutes,”
Laurent said before leaving them again.

“
He is a man of few words,
your papa,” Grace said to the baby.

“
That’s for sure.” Maggie
let the dry fruitiness of the rosé fill her nostrils before taking
the next sip. Laurent was trying to fine-tune her palate when it
came to wine. She began coughing, the light tickle of the aroma
overwhelming her.

“
You okay, sweetie? Choke
on an olive pit?”

“
Very funny,” Maggie said,
her eyes watering as she gained control of the coughing.

“
Well, how about
your
business?” Grace
asked. “Selling any books?”

Maggie shrugged and reached for one of the
olives from the stoneware dish filled with olive oil. This one had
a tiny ceramic cicada perched on the rim of it. “I think I sold
one. No, make that two. I sold two last week.”

“
That many?”

“
Well, I won’t find out for
sure until quarterly royalties come in, but my agent has told me
not to get my hopes up.”

“
Is that because you
haven’t earned out your advance yet?”

“
What advance? No, it’s
because I haven’t sold any books yet.”

“
Well, that’s
disappointing.”

“
Tell me about
it.”

“
Are you not promoting it
enough?”

“
I don’t know, Grace, I was
thinking of changing my name to rhyme with Rowling, but Laurent
thinks it sounds desperate.”

Grace laughed. “What does your publicist
say?”

“
Oh, dear, dear Grace,”
Maggie said, shaking her head. “She says the same thing Santa and
the tooth fairy say:
if only I existed I
could really do things
.”

“
You don’t have a
publicist?”

“
It may surprise you to
know that Stephen King and I are not one and the same.”

“
For that you may be
thankful,” Grace said.

“
Nobody has a publicist
unless they’re a well-known author, or unless they hire one
themselves.”

“
Well, why not hire
one?”

Maggie scooted her chair closer to the table
and looked over Grace’s shoulder at the door to the house. “Can I
ask you to do something for me, Grace?”

“
Why do I get the idea
this
something
has
to do with not letting Laurent know?”

“
Because I don’t want
Laurent to know.”

Grace sighed. “Keeping secrets from Laurent
never ends well. When will you learn that?”

“
I need you to find out
something for me.”

“
Darling, when it comes to
winkling information out of your husband, I would imagine
you
were in the best
position to do that.”

“
You’d think so, but he can
always tell when I’m up to something. He won’t suspect
you.”

“
Thank you for giving me
the opportunity to damage my relationship with the one man besides
my father who is still speaking to me.”

“
I really need your help
with this, Grace.”

“
If you’re worried about
another woman, Maggie, let me stop you right there, because if you
don’t know that darling hunk of a man by now and how crazy he is
about you—”

“
That’s not it.”

“
I should think
not.”

“
I need you to find out…”
Maggie dropped her voice and glanced again toward the house. Grace
leaned in closer to catch her words.

“…
if we are having money
troubles.”

Grace frowned and leaned back in her chair.
“That’s it?”

“
You don’t know the French
if you think that is not a very big deal. And a very private
deal.”

“
Even from you?”

Maggie looked beyond the terrace in the
direction of their vineyard. A platoon of olive and fig trees lined
a pebbled path from the terrace leading to the fields. From there,
the truffle oaks, thyme bushes and cypresses created a virtual
park, framing the forty hectares of grape fields and emphatically
demarcating the property.

The vineyard was cut into four quadrants by
two narrow dirt roads. The larger of the two—often used for
tractors—sliced down the center of the vineyard past an ancient
shed with an abandoned well at its threshold. It was a beautiful
walk, Maggie mused, especially at sunset, and she and Laurent often
enjoyed taking it with the dogs before dinner, when the final rays
of sunlight draped the vineyard in a soft glow.

“
Laurent never talks about
money,” Maggie said, turning back to Grace. “I have no idea where
our money comes from or how.”

“
Seriously?”

“
And because of how he made
his money before we met…” Maggie raised her eyebrows to indicate
that Grace should feel free to fill in the blanks.

“
You know he doesn’t do
that sort of thing any more,” Grace said. She was bouncing the
baby, who was becoming more and more agitated, on her
knee.

“
I know it’s in him to cut
corners, grease a palm here and there, take advantage of a
situation. Did I ever tell you he once told me he couldn’t promise
not to lie to me because he might have to sometime?”

“
That’s actually kind of
honest.”

“
Laurent has his pride. I
haven’t brought a single solitary euro into the family coffers
since we moved to France. It’s been all him.”

“
And now you think there’s
a problem with money?”

“
That’s just it. I don’t
know.”

“
And he won’t tell
you?”

“
He brushes aside my
questions, or worse, gets annoyed with me for even
asking.”

“
I see.”

“
I really wish he’d confide
in me, you know? We’re in this together but he’s such a…sexist he
doesn’t see that. Just find out for me, Grace. If there’s a problem
I can always go to my dad for money.”

“
That’s probably the last
thing Laurent would want.”

“
What
is the last thing I would want?” Laurent asked as he joined
them on the patio, a tray of dishes in his hands.

Maggie mouthed the words to
Grace:
hearing like a
bat
. “For Grace to have a piece of chewing
gum before lunch,” she said sweetly.

“
Sacré
bleu
!” Laurent turned to look at Grace with
horror. “You are chewing gum?”

“
No, of course not,
Laurent,” Grace said. “I just asked Maggie if she wanted a stick
for later and she said—”

“
Chewing gum obliterates
the purity of the taste experience,” Maggie said, as if reciting it
from memory. “Oh, warm goat cheese on mesclun! Here, hand me Jem,
Grace. He adores the rosemary balsamic reduction that Laurent
makes.”

“
That looks amazing,
Laurent,” Grace said as Laurent placed a goat cheese cake on a bed
of greens and set it in front of her.

“
It’s nothing,” he said,
but Maggie could tell he was pleased.

“
Laurent,” Maggie said,
spearing a chunk of goat cheese, “I told you about my brother and
his wife coming next weekend, right?”

“
Bien
sûr
.”

“
Your brother is coming to
France?” Grace asked as Laurent refilled her glass of
rosé.

“
He’s actually already
here. Haley talked him into taking this Côte d’Azur tour. You’ve
heard of the Bob Randall show? The travelogue guy who goes around
Europe?”

“
Of course. Your brother’s
traveling with Randall’s tour?”

“
It’s supposed to be a
trial tour of some kind for the television show. Haley and I went
to school with one of the tour guides, Lanie Morrison. Lanie told
Haley they needed a couple of people to play tourists on the trip
so Haley and Ben got to come for next to nothing.”

“
Where are they
now?”

“
I’m not sure. They were
coming down through the Luberon.”

“
They didn’t
stop?”

“
No, they wanted to do the
whole tour and come see us after it was over.”

“
Has Ben ever visited you
and Laurent before?”

“
Nope.”

“
Are you guys not
close?”

“
Not a bit.”

“
Oh. Sorry.”

Maggie waited until Laurent had retreated
back into the house for the next course. “Ben is a big hotshot
lawyer back in Atlanta. Laurent and I have, like, zero in common
with him.”

“
What about his
wife?”

“
Haley’s sweet. I love her
to pieces, but because of Ben I never saw much of her when I lived
in Atlanta.”

“
He’s that bad?”

Maggie shrugged. “Not Lex Luthor evil. Just
kind of a low-grade douche.”

“
Yikes. Your own brother.
So why is he coming to see you now?”

“
I have no idea. My parents
are excited about it because they think this means he’s going to
reach out more to the family, but I think it’s just going to be
awkward as hell. Might be a good time for you to take a little
shopping trip to Paris. Maybe I’ll go with you.”

“
Not on your life. While I
adore how utterly stress-free and serene life at Domaine St-Buvard
is with you and Laurent, frankly I could use the stimulation.”
Grace sipped her wine. “So is your school chum, the tour guide,
coming to visit too?”

“
No. I thought about
inviting her for like a nanosecond, but we’re not really friends
any more.”

“
Some dramatic reason why
not, I hope?”

Maggie laughed. “No, we just drifted apart.
I heard she got married and then divorced, and the one occasion I
saw her in the last ten years she spent most of the time riffing on
how much she hates men.”

“
Well, we have that in
common.”

“
It’s weird, because when
we used to hang out I was actually closer to her mom.”

“
That
is
weird.”

“
She was a very cool mom.
Always laughing and ready to share a secret. Every time I came over
to Lanie’s house, I ended up talking to her mom for hours. And yet
Lanie treated her like she was a hideous bore, and stupid
beside.”

“
Exactly as wee Jemmy will
treat you when his time comes.”

“
Shut up. He never will.
Will you, muffin?” Maggie kissed the baby’s ear and squeezed him
tight. He reached for her with fingers sticky with goat
cheese.