Murder in Nice (25 page)

The joy of it all was
beyond imagining.
Dee-Dee glanced at her
reflection in a shop window as she scurried past. She couldn’t help
but smile at what she saw: a beautiful girl, her hair twisted into
a careless but elegant chignon, walking straight, boobs leading the
way. She hurried her pace.

Could this day be any better?

She glanced at her
smartphone. She’d plugged in the directions as she walked.
He had texted to meet him at one
o’clock
. That meant she had less then five
minutes to walk to where the phone was telling her was a
fifteen-minute route by foot. She held onto the shoulder strap of
her purse and began to jog down the pedestrian cobblestone street,
praying her heels wouldn’t catch on the uneven pavers.

Her phone chimed and she looked down to see
what the incoming text read.

Cut across rue de clair, near the cemetery. It’s a
shortcut.>

Dee-Dee squinted up at the
street sign in front of her.
Rue du
Refuge
. The map on her phone didn’t show
the road he mentioned. She peered down the alley at the
intersection. It was lined with Arlesienne townhouses, old but
brightly painted. One had a shutter hanging by its hinge. The phone
map was telling her to go down this alley. Would she come
across
Rue de Clair
if she did?

She texted him back
<
Be there soon
> and plunged down the narrow residential
street.

Where was he leading her? A park? A café? A
hotel room?

The townhouse facades were made of uneven
stonework topped with rust-orange tile roofs. Several had window
boxes with blood-red geraniums bulging out of their containers. The
narrow street was uphill and steep. It was barely wide enough for a
car to get through, which didn’t matter, she reminded herself. This
was a strictly pedestrian only section of Arles.

Dee-Dee’s legs began to ache and she felt
perspiration trickle down her back and underarms and she cursed the
fact she would show up bedraggled and damp when she finally arrived
at the rendezvous.

Why all the secrecy? Why can’t he just
invite me to his room? A bottle of Champagne chilled…

The thought of the possibly
waiting bottle of cold Champagne buoyed her enough to trudge on.
Today was her finest hour.
The look on
Desiree’s face! The pure joy on Bob’s.
Dee-Dee nearly ran up the hill, her face flushed with effort
and pleasure. At the top, she looked around and felt her mood
falter. The street ended in a dead-end, with a large and very
ancient house directly in front of her.

Screw these cryptic text
messages
, she thought in frustration. Just
as she pulled her phone out to call him, she noticed the sign. It
was small and tacked unceremoniously on a gate just to the left of
the big house. Dee-Dee approached it. The sign was handwritten and
read,
Rue de Clair
.
A thrill of satisfaction ran through her.

She moved across the cracked stone walkway
that led to the front door of the house in order to get to the
gate. It was wooden and looked medieval. She was relieved to see
there wasn’t a lock on it, and when she grabbed the handle it
easily creaked opened. She looked over her shoulder at the street
behind her and then entered the garden.

Am I to use this garden as
a cut-through
, she thought with
confusion,
or is Bob waiting for me here
with a picnic lunch and a bottle of rosé?
Damn his need to surprise her, she thought with grim
bemusement as she closed the gate behind her. Four steps into the
interior she realized the area was less a garden than it was a
small pasture. Wild roses grew entwined with rusted barbwire along
the perimeter of the fenced yard. There was a small shade tree of
some kind in the middle of the yard, the whole of which appeared
slightly smaller than an American football field. And nowhere did
she see Bob lounging on a blanket with a picnic basket. What she
did see, directly opposite from where she stood, was another gate.
She sighed. S
o it is a cut-through, not a
destination
. She adjusted her purse strap
on her shoulder and moved toward the gate, glancing up at the back
windows of the house to see if anyone was at home. A burgeoning and
sudden aroma of manure wafted to her the minute she started to
cross the field. She looked at the ground to make sure she wasn’t
about to step in anything and felt her irritation
return.

This is ridiculous! Does he
really think I’d enjoy this asinine game?
She saw her shoes—sixty dollars from Macy’s!—were already
muddy and she cursed the fact she was indeed going to show up for
the assignation reeking of cow shit, if not wearing it.

The movement caught her eye before she was
midway to the far gate. Dee-Dee’s first thought was that she had
interrupted a gardener at work and would now need to come up with
some explanation—in very bad French—as to why she was trespassing.
That thought died in her mind the minute she turned her head.

The animal stared at her, its eyes
glittering and focused on her even from twenty yards away. The
smell riffled off it in undulating putrid waves and made Dee-Dee’s
stomach lurch with nausea. Easily seven feet in height and weighing
over a ton, the bull’s coat was rough and black, its tiny pig-eyes
watching her with unmistakable malevolence. Black spots formed and
popped in her vision as Dee-Dee stumbled and then stared in stunned
disbelief as the beast lowered its head of dagger-like horns.

A scream fought to escape her throat, but
only a whimper slipped out as she wet the ground in a gush and
watched in disbelieving horror as the monster charged.

Fifteen

Well, this is certainly an odd ending to the whole
trial-by-tour-guide thing
, Maggie thought
as she paid the taxi driver outside the
Centre Hospitalier d’Arles
. She looked
at her phone and hurried into the main entrance of the emergency
room. She’d put two calls in to Laurent saying she might be late
but had gotten no response.

Two hours after Dee-Dee mysteriously slipped
away from lunch, she, Olivier, and the Andersons returned to the
hotel to pack their bags. An hour after that, as she stood with
Desiree and Randall outside the hotel loading up the car for the
final presentation, Maggie received an urgent phone call from
Olivier asking her to say nothing to the others and meet him at the
emergency room in Arles.

Dee-Dee had been
attacked
.

Brimming with questions and astonishment
that Dee-Dee had been hurt, as well as the fact that Olivier wanted
it kept quiet, Maggie hurried through the double doors of the
hospital emergency ward. The interior of the emergency room looked
much like any she’d ever been in back home. The smell of idoform
mixed with ammonia was nearly overpowering. The entrance emptied
onto a large waiting room ringed by several triage desks. Maggie
walked up to the nearest one, but before she could get the woman’s
attention behind the counter she saw Olivier waving to her from
across the room.

“
Maggie! Over
here!”

She walked quickly to Olivier, who stood
outside a treatment room separated from the waiting room by a long
vinyl curtain.

“
What happened?” she asked,
looking past him to get a glimpse through the gap where the curtain
ends didn’t quite meet. She saw a figure lying on a bed.

“
Dee-Dee was gored by a
bull,” Olivier said. Maggie thought he looked breathless, as if
he’d just rushed in from somewhere, but assumed the adrenaline of
the situation was reason enough for his condition.

“
She left lunch to go to a
bullfight?”

“
Non
. She got a text from Randall telling her to meet him. She
took a shortcut through a pasture with a very angry bull in it. She
called me as soon as they finished stitching her up.”

“
That’s terrible. How badly
is she hurt?”

“
She was
gored
, Maggie!”

“
Will she
recover?”

Olivier frowned at her in impatience. “Don’t
you see what this means?”

Maggie took a step toward the curtain.

“
It means Randall tried to
kill her,” he said loudly.

Maggie stopped, one hand on the curtain and
frowned. “How do you figure that? Sounds like a freak accident.
Have you called Randall yet?”

“
No, he damn well
hasn’t!”

Maggie turned to see Bob Randall knocking
chairs over in his urgency to reach them from across the waiting
room. Thankfully, there were few people in the room. “Dee-Dee just
called to tell me what happened,” he said as he reached them, his
teeth bared and fists clenched.

Maggie turned back to Olivier. “Can we see
her? Is she in there?”

“
She does not want to see
him,” Olivier said, blocking Randall from entering the curtained
room.

“
Yes, I do!” Dee-Dee
shouted from behind the curtain. “Send him in.”

Reluctantly, Olivier stepped aside and
turned and pulled back the curtain. Dee-Dee lay propped up on the
treatment table, her left leg bandaged and elevated, spatters of
blood streaking the eyelet chemise Maggie remembered her wearing at
lunch. Her face was white under the jagged streaks of mascara and
eyeliner that smudged her cheeks.

“
Dear God, Dee-Dee,”
Randall cried, going to her. “What the hell happened?”

“
You bastard! You tried to
kill me!”

Randall looked at her with his mouth open.
“What in the hell are you talking about? I would never—”

“
I have the texts to prove
it! You lured me to that pasture hoping the bull would make your
job easier.”

Randall gaped at her and then turned to look
at Olivier and Maggie before turning back to Dee-Dee. “I have no
idea what you’re talking about.”

Olivier picked up the cell phone next to
Dee-Dee’s bed. “Dee-Dee received a series of texts from you
instructing her to meet you by way of the bull’s pasture.”

“
But that’s impossible.”
Randall reached for the phone but Olivier pulled it
back.

“
Sorry,” Olivier said. “The
police said not to touch the phone until they arrived.”

“
The police?” Randall
sputtered.

“
Yes, the police, you
bastard,” Dee-Dee said. “I called them as soon as the doctor
finished stitching up my leg. I’ll see your whole program in
flames. You’ll be lucky to do the local weather at your affiliate
PBS station when I’m done suing you.”

“
Why in the world would I
try to…it doesn’t make sense!”

Randall’s face registered a realization that
apparently made the accusation make sense. “I didn’t send those
texts,” he said weakly.

“
You think someone
else
used your phone to
send them?” Maggie asked him.

Randall rubbed his hand across his face and
didn’t answer.

“
And here I had done such a
magnificent job at the Amphitheater,” Dee-Dee said, her voice
dissolving into tears. “I gave my best presentation
ever
.”

Olivier patted her shoulder
and spoke softly to her. “Perhaps that is
why
you were sent the texts. Because
you were so good.”

“
Let’s don’t jump to any
conclusions,” Randall said. “If the police really are
coming—”

“
Oh, count on it. They
are!”

“
Well, let’s have them sort
it out then.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and began
scrolling through his texts.

“
The texts are there,
aren’t they?” Dee-Dee said, sniffing. She reached up and put a hand
over Olivier’s where it rested on her shoulder.

Randall let out a sigh. “I just don’t
understand this.”

Maggie turned to Olivier. “You think Desiree
sent the texts from Randall’s phone?”

“
Who else?” Olivier said.
“Randall doesn’t have any reason to hurt Dee-Dee. All he had to do
was just not choose her.”

“
Exactly!” Randall said and
then to Dee-Dee, “Not that I was going to
not
choose you, darling. Your
presentation at the Amphitheater was inspired. In fact, if not
for…” He waved a hand to encompass Dee-Dee’s bandaged leg,
prompting a howl of anguish from Dee-Dee that made both Randall and
Maggie take a startled step backward.

“
So she wins! The bitch
wins!” Dee-Dee cried.

“
Non
, Dee-Dee,” Olivier said, patting her again and looking
fiercely at Randall. “The police will have something to say about
that.”

*****

An hour later, Maggie and Olivier sat in the
waiting room while Dee-Dee’s drugs kicked in and the police
questioned Randall in a separate room. Maggie tried to think if the
attack on Dee-Dee could have anything to do with Lanie’s murder. So
far it just looked like professional jealousy…taken to a psychotic
extent.

“
If Desiree did this,” she
asked, “will the police be able to tell?”

Olivier shrugged. “Probably not unless she
confesses.”

“
That’s not likely, is
it?”