Little Death by the Sea (16 page)

Laurent frowned and looked unconvinced.

“Did you tell the police about Gerard?”

“Well, yes, but I didn’t get the impression
they were really listening. They did take down his name and
stuff.”

“They will question him.”

“I suppose so.”

“
Absolutement
. But I think, perhaps,
they will think his reason to kill her is a little...”

“Weak?”

“
Oui. Façile
. Not good for killing, I
think.”

“I think you’re wrong, Laurent. You, of all
people, ought to know about crimes of passion.”

“
Moi
?” He sounded startled.

“Well, yes, being French and all.”

“Ahhh,
oui
, of course.”

“I mean, Gerard had a child by Elise. He’d
lived with her for nearly seven years. She was beautiful and she
rejected him by coming here to her family. I mean, he’s disgusting
and all, but he probably thought his pride was being attacked or
something. Did I tell you how he just opened up the car door and
dumped her out onto the concrete? Yeah, Gerard is definitely my
number one suspect.”

“You must not speak with him.”

“Laurent, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I am
serieux
, Maggee. If he is a
murderer, I cannot have you with him.
Ce n’est pas possible! Je
suis serieux,
Maggee!”

“Oh, settle down. Honestly,” Maggie felt a
little annoyed and flattered by Laurent’s protestations. “If I talk
with him at all, you’ll be there. Okay?”

He looked unhappy with the compromise.

“I probably can’t even find him, you know?
And besides, he may be my number one suspect, but I’m not stopping
there. I’m going to talk to everyone I can think of who might know
what happened that afternoon in my apartment.”

“The police,
certainment
, have—“

“Yes, yes, I know, they’ve talked with
everyone already. Maybe they missed something. I keep telling you,
Laurent, the police aren’t going to give this case the care they
might because they have bigger fish to fry,
comprenez
?”

“
Bien sûr
.” He looked over at her and
smiled slyly. Hopelessly entangled and looking extremely
uncomfortable, he gave a sigh and eased his head back against the
hammock pillow. “And so we will fry the little fishes together,
n’est-ce pas
? And together, we will find the truth.”

Maggie leaned back into her own hammock. The
truth, she thought. Of why Elise died and of the dangerous someone
who had been in her apartment that day.

Chapter 10

1

Laurent placed the bag of groceries on
Maggie’s butcher block table. The bag was straining with gleaming
bulbs of eggplant, peppers and tomatoes. He rubbed his hands
together lightly and pulled from the bag a small tin flask of olive
oil, a long baton of French bread and a bunch of green grapes.

Maggie watched him bemusedly from the doorway
of the kitchen.

“Where did you get all that stuff?” she
asked.

He turned to look at her, as if caught by
surprise.

“Oh, Maggee, there you are!”

“Here I have been all morning, Laurent. It’s
you who’s been out doing God knows what. What is all that stuff
there?” She smiled at him.

Laurent wagged a finger at her and shook his
head. He continued to unpack his groceries.

“You are eating the frozen dinners all the
time, non? “ He waved in the general direction of Maggie’s freezer
as if to imply that even owning a freezer was somehow a shameful
thing.

“Not all the time.” Maggie peered around him
at the groceries. “I eat Cheerios in the morning sometimes.”

“
Mon Dieu
,” Laurent muttered. He held
up a white block of cheese wrapped tightly in plastic wrap.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“
Fromage de chevre
,” he said.

“Goat cheese.”

“Very good,
cherie
.”

“I hate goat cheese.”

“Mix it with your Cheerios. It’s good for
you.”

“Cheese isn’t good for you,” she said moving
into the kitchen. She wrapped her arms around his middle. “Cheese
is bad for you. The whole world knows this but the French. Fact is,
we’ve been keeping it from you.”

Laurent tossed the cheese onto the counter
and turned to face Maggie.

“You and the whole world?” he said, smiling
down at her.

“We’re very close.” She raised up on her toes
and kissed him then laid her head against his broad chest and felt
the strength and security of his arms around her.

The police had allowed her to return to her
apartment and she and Laurent were in the shy, but definite, throes
of moving in together.

“Your asparagus is wilting,” she said
teasingly.

“Not possible,” he said, giving her a last
squeeze before releasing her and turning back to his bag of
deli-goodies.

He piled all the vegetables in an impressive
heap on the table in the tiny kitchen and spoke to her over his
shoulder.

“I am making dinner for
nous deux
. Us
two. You are going out now?”

“I won’t be long,” Maggie replied, leaning
against the doorjamb, watching him. “I’m going to talk to some of
the people in the apartment complex about what they saw the night
Elise was killed. And don’t tell me the police have already done
that because you’ve already told me that and I’m still doing it,
right?”

“
Bien sûr
.” Laurent begin rinsing the
vegetables, the water sputtering over them and most of the kitchen
counter too.

“Look, I’ll be back for lunch, okay?” Maggie
continued to stand in the doorway, wearing a loose sweatshirt and
jeans and sneakers. For some reason, she wanted his blessing.

He turned and looked at her.

“You must do it,” he said simply and
shrugged.

An hour later, she was back in the apartment.
Laurent seemed involved in his omelet-flipping and
onion-parboiling.

“You are not being gone very long,
cherie
?” he said, cheerfully.

“Nobody saw anything ” she said.

Laurent slid the golden crescent of fluffed
egg onto a stoneware dish, sprinkled on a few sautéed peppers as
garnish and set it down in front of her at the kitchen table. He
put his hand against her cheek.

“Do you want me to come too?” he asked
gallantly. “I will tell them: ‘you better answer her questions! Or
Laurent can be very
mechant
...very nasty.”

Maggie smiled and took his hand in hers.

“Come sit down with me. I don’t want to eat
alone,” she said.

“
Jamais, ma petite
,” he said, giving
her hand a squeeze and moving back to the kitchen to get his coffee
cup and a basket of croissants.

He took another platter of eggs from the
warming oven and joined her at the table.

“Tell me,” he said, pouring cream into his
coffee.

Maggie picked up her fork. The eggs were
beautiful, light and fluffy and she suddenly realized that she was
hungry. “They were....I don’t know, why were they so cross? I
wasn’t selling anything. It wasn’t
their
sister who was
murdered.”

“Maggee.” Laurent looked sympathetically at
her and shook his big head.

“I shouldn’t assume people want to help, I
guess. I mean, I thought they’d think it was a waste of time and
maybe boring, but the two people I talked to this morning...well,
not so much the guy, but the woman definitely was rude to me.” She
took a bite of her eggs. “Laurent, am I going to get terribly fat
living with you? Because I can’t afford a whole new wardrobe.”

As Laurent smiled at her, there was a knock
at the door.

“That’s funny,” Maggie said into her mouthful
of eggs. “People have to buzz you from outside. They can’t get
inside to knock on your door.” She threw down her napkin and
started to get up. “Usually.”

Laurent was ahead of her. He went to the
front door and swung it open.

“
Oui?”

The man in the hall seemed startled to see
Laurent. It was the man from the last apartment that Maggie had
visited.

“I...I wanted...is Maggie here?” He peered
nervously into the apartment. Maggie jumped up and hurried to the
door.

“Yes, I’m here. It’s Bill, right?”

“Yeah, listen...” He looked up at Laurent as
if he definitely didn’t trust saying what he had to say in front of
this huge tank of a man. “...uh, I’m going out now, but I
remembered something that, if it matters—“

“What? You heard something?”

“Well, I completely forgot about it until
just now. I mean, there was so much excitement and everything the
night of the...you know...and the cops were asking all their
questions, so it just went outta my head. Now, I’m not positive,
you know?”

Maggie nodded eagerly.

“You want to come in?”

He shook his head.

“Naw, we’re going out, just leaving.” He
looked down the hall as if someone was standing at his doorway
waiting for him. “But I remembered I saw this guy in the hallway
that afternoon. Well, I’m pretty sure it was that afternoon. Might
possibly have been the afternoon before, you know?”

My God, Maggie thought. Had he seen the
murderer?

“I mean, he just does deliveries, you know?
So, I thought, no big deal and I don’t want to get anybody into
trouble, okay?”

“What do you mean, deliveries?”

“From the grocer next door, you know?
Sometimes he’ll send his boy out to deliver stuff, only he’s not
really a boy, more like...” and he tapped his head as if to
indicate the person might be brain-damaged or perhaps mentally
unstable.

“I see.” Maggie was already thinking of her
next step.

“Well, thank you very much,” Laurent said,
about to close the door on the man.

“Yes, thank you,” Maggie said hurriedly.
“Thanks for taking the time.”

“No big deal, bye.” He turned on his heel and
was gone.

Laurent ushered Maggie back to their cooling
eggs.

“It is a good clue, yes?”

They reseated themselves and Laurent tucked
into his omelet with enthusiasm.

Maggie toyed with hers.

“Yeah, it’s great. Maybe.”

It was possible, she thought. Just possible.
She took a deep breath.

3

The shop around the corner from Maggie’s
apartment building served as grocery and pharmacy for the whole
building. It was a harmonious hodgepodge of sewing notions, eyecups
and prophylactics, with creaking wooden display bins filled with
plump fruits and vegetables. The shop also distributed for a fairly
nice Buckhead bakery. Although the grocery was not more than five
minutes walking distance from Maggie’s own apartment, she’d only
been in the place three times in the four years she’d lived at The
Parthenon. It was so much easier just to swing into the parking lot
of Winn-Dixie on her way home from work. Driving past the little
neighborhood grocery, she’d always gotten the impression that just
the elderly residents of the area shopped there. She’d seen them
trudging along the sidewalk in front of the place, their wire and
wicker baskets and, occasionally, their walkers, banging against
their knees.

Maggie pushed open the shop door, hearing, as
she did, the off-kilter tinkle of the bell that announced another
customer. To her right seemed to be the drug store portion of the
shop, complete with an abbreviated soda bar counter and a large,
inflated mortar and pestle which hung over three peeling leather
stools.

To the left was the grocery section of the
market, certainly the main force behind the little store’s revenue.
In addition to the colorful bins out front, there were two rows of
tinned and boxed goods. The place smelled of Ivory soap and soft
fruit. Maggie was surprised at how complete and chock-a-bloc the
store was and wondered how in the world it managed to survive in a
neighborhood where all the real money hopped in BMWs and shopped
for their Wheaties in strip shopping centers. Surely, the
old-timers she saw doddering about the neighborhood, loyal or not,
weren’t enough to keep this place afloat?

“Can I help you, Miss?”

The proprietor came from behind the soda
counter, wiping his hands on a towel that he’d tied in front of his
slacks. He smiled industriously at her. His sparse gray hair capped
a wise old head, it seemed to Maggie. His eyes didn’t smile so much
as they drilled. They were drilling now.

“I’m Maggie Newberry? I live next door and
wondered if I could ask you a few questions?”

“If I can help, I’ll sure try!” he said
happily. Too happily. He clapped his hands together and then rested
them on his hips. There was no one else in the store.

“You have a delivery boy?”

“Why?” He cocked his head at her like a bird
watching a caterpillar.

“Well, because I think he may...he may have
seen something that happened in my apartment building and I’d like
to talk with him about it.”

“Says who?”

Was she mistaken or was he becoming a lot
less cheerful?

“Says someone who saw him there.”

“Well, why not just ask the someone who saw
him there what they saw?”

“Look, will you help me find the guy, or not?
I just want to ask him a few questions.”

“Boy’s slow. Wouldn’t harm a fly.”

“I’m not assuming he would. I just want to
talk to him.”

The old fellow rubbed his hands across his
eyes and then scratched the back of his neck.

“The police have already talked to him. This
wouldn’t be about that, again, would it?”

“It was my sister that was killed.”

“Ahhh.” He nodded his head, holding his chin
in one fist and propping the fist-holding arm by the elbow with his
other hand. It was an interesting contortion.

“And I was wondering if I could ask him what
it was he saw.”

“Well, he saw nothing.”