Little Death by the Sea (17 page)

“Okay.” She waited.

“Didn’t see a thing. That’s what he told the
police.”

“But he was there that day? I mean, he was
seen there the afternoon of—“

“I have no idea.”

“Look,” Maggie had about had her limit of
exasperating old cusses who wouldn’t cooperate. “You’re his boss.
Don’t you keep some sort of schedule of the stuff that gets
delivered? You know, Mrs. Brown’s order blah blah blah sent out
3:l5? Stuff like that?”

“I don’t know a Mrs. Brown.”

“It was just an example.”

“I don’t keep records, Miss...”

“Newberry.”

“Miss Newberry, when someone calls in an
order I just put it together and then ring it up and have Alfie
take it to the address. I don’t have to write it down.”

“His name’s Alfie?”

“That’s right.” He looked less smug now.
Obviously he hadn’t intended to name his boy for her.

“And you don’t think I need to see him.”

“I don’t think it would do Alfie any
good.”

“Is he, what? A teenager?”

“Alfie? No.” The man looked at Maggie
uncertainly as if he couldn’t trust her to be putting him on. “He’s
in his late thirties, I’d say. If there’s nothing else I can help
you with, Miss Newberry, I’d better get back to my pharmacy.”

“Right.”

He smiled briefly, automatically, then turned
and disappeared behind a towering stack of what looked like blue
Milk of Magnesia bottles.

Maggie stood for another moment in the middle
of the aisle, smelling all the conflicting fragrances and odors and
then left the shop. She hesitated in front of it, not sure of what
to do next. The sun had burned off the briefly pleasant morning and
was now relentlessly attacking anything and everything that cowered
below. She pushed up the sleeves to her thin sweat shirt and was
sorry she wasn’t wearing her sunglasses.

Squinting down the sidewalk, she saw the
lumbering gait of a nice looking man with a vacant look in his
pleasant eyes coming toward her and the grocery shop.

Alfie.

4

She settled down on the cool stone bench
under the large sycamores in front of her apartment building. The
bench, coated with moss and graffiti, was used primarily for
Maggie’s elderly neighbors to rest themselves as they made their
laborious pilgrimages from pharmacy to lonely apartment room.
Maggie had never noticed the pretty stone bench before.

Alfie had thick brown hair which crept into
his green eyes, although a nervous hand tried repeatedly to prevent
it from doing so. He smiled uncertainly at Maggie, pleased with her
attention, obviously distrustful of it.

“Just a few questions, that’s all. If that’s
okay.” Maggie smiled and motioned for Alfie to sit next to her. She
offered him one of the two cans of Cokes she’d pulled out of the
machine in front of the grocery store.

Alfie continued to hover near her and the
bench but refused to alight.

Maggie placed one of the Cokes on the bench
next to her, keeping a wary eye on the store façade. So far, its
proprietor was still busy whipping up medicinal concoctions behind
his pharmaceutical counter. Maggie had little doubt that once he
became aware of it, he would attempt to put an end to her interview
with his delivery boy.

“What’s the name of the old guy you work
for?” That’s it, she thought. Get him to commiserate about the old
workhorse and he’ll feel like we’re on the same side.

“Mister Duffy?” Alfie squinted hard at the
question.

“Yeah, Mr. Duffy. You like him?”

Alfie nodded vigorously. Whatever light she
thought she saw behind his eyes was quickly becoming
extinguished.

“ Mister Duffy pays me money. He’s
great.”

“Yeah, that’s good.” So, I can forget that
ploy. “Well, listen, Alfie, I live here, you know?” She waved to
the apartment building looming up behind her in a backdrop of
granite and slate-stone. “You deliver here sometimes, right?”

Alfie nodded again as he reached out and took
the can of Coke she’d placed for him on the bench.

“I deliver the groceries that Mr. Duffy gives
me.”

“Okay, that’s great.” Oh, man, this is
impossible. Even if he did see something, how would he make sense
of it? How would she? And how could she trust his observation?
Might as well cut to the chase, she reasoned. She didn’t have time
to develop a relationship with him just to get a few questions
answered. “So, listen, Alfie, were you delivering groceries in my
building the day the girl was killed?”

He reacted violently, as if he’d been
electrically shocked.

“I didn’t see nobody! I told ‘em--!”

He’d raised his voice and Maggie darted a
nervous look at the store front. All she needed was for ol’ man
Duffy to come charging out here.

“Okay, okay, Alfie, that’s fine! No problem.
Okay? Calm down. It’s just that, she was my sister, you know? And I
wondered if anybody saw anything that might help me find out who
hurt her.”

He stared at her. Maybe it was the sibling
connection...Did Alfie have a sister? Or the fact that she wasn’t
accusing him nor was she keeping it a mystery why she was asking
him questions. Whatever the reason, he seemed to calm down, even to
be looking at her a little less distrustfully.

“Do you have a sister, Alfie?”

He shook his head a little.

“I have my mom,” he said.

“Yeah. Mom’s are good.” Maggie got up from
the bench. “Keep the Coke.” He had begun to hand it back to her.
She patted him lightly on the shoulder of his thin jacket.
Incredible, in all this heat. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I didn’t see nothing.”

“I know you didn’t, Alfie. That’s okay. It
doesn’t matter.” As she turned away from him she caught the image
of Mr. Duffy standing in the front window watching them.

5

“You are ready to eat,
cherie
?”

Maggie smiled to herself as she rummaged in
the bottom of her clothes closet. She loved the ‘
cherie’
bit.

“In a minute!” she called. She raised herself
onto her knees and arched her back. The cops had been through every
inch of her apartment with a flea-comb, and although not the
tidiest of people, they hadn’t ransacked the place either. The
chance of finding a clue behind a team of thorough experts was
pretty slim, but then, she couldn’t think of anything else to do.
She tossed a woolen sweater onto a heap on the floor of her bedroom
that she had mentally marked “winter stuff”. She wasn’t sure why
she should bother packing it away now, after all, chilly weather
was only a mere four months away. On the other hand, she wanted to
make room for Laurent and his lean wardrobe. This was a chance to
pry open a part of her life and slip him into it, to let him know
she was willing to share her underwear drawer with him. (Well,
certainly he couldn’t take it as a lack of love if she arranged it
so they both had their own separate underwear drawers.)

“It is getting cold, Maggie!” There was an
extra sharpness to his voice and Maggie noted that few things could
flap the man except where it involved his stomach and the making,
presenting and consuming of food.

“Coming! Coming!” She hopped up and raked the
multiple dust buffaloes from her knees. In an instant, she saw the
cardigan. Wedged under a pair of spectator pumps that she hadn’t
worn in years, it was a thin cashmere gray cardigan and Elise had
been wearing it the night she dropped back into Maggie’s life.

Quickly, she scooped up the sweater and met
Laurent in the dining room. He was already seated.

“I’m sorry, Laurent, but I think I’ve found
something. It’s Elise’s sweater.” She tossed the sweater down next
to her and sat in her chair. “MMM-mm!
Qu’est-ce
que-c’est?”

The aroma of garlic and sizzling peppers
wafted delicately through the apartment.

“Peppers and a little...how can you
say...?”

“I have no idea.” Maggie settled into her
chair, marveling over the steaming and colorful plateful of peppers
and thin slices of rosy lamb cutlets. “God, Laurent, maybe you
should be a chef somewhere? This is wonderful!”

“Pfut! In France,
tout le monde
they
cook
comme ça
. Everyone cooks.”

“Yeah, but it’s rarer over here. I’m serious,
would that be something you’d want to do?”

“
Peut-etre
.” he said dismissively,
tucking into his own meal.

Maggie couldn’t always fill in all the blanks
about Laurent. She watched him now, enjoying his own cooking, his
eyes flitting up from time to time to smile at her but
concentrating, for the most part, on his meal. He was intense and
passionate in bed, but remarkably phlegmatic otherwise. She was
even aware that sometimes his words of sympathy or commiseration
about Elise sounded rehearsed to her, almost false. It was, of
course, his inability to express himself in English with any real
depth or focus, she told herself. Still, it needled away at her in
some part of her mind that resisted glossing, like an artist’s
hesitation to accept pretty pictures painted on stressed,
twice-used canvasses. She hadn’t even examined too closely why she
felt she had loved him so quickly, why she felt she needed to be
with him, wanted him. It was as if thinking about it might reveal
something to her that would make her continue to love him when she
knew she shouldn’t at all.

“So what did you do all day?” She took a
savoring mouthful and even closed her eyes to enjoy it more
fully.

“I arranged my socks and shirts and cut and
cleaned the peppers...and oh, I talked with your papa and when you
are working tomorrow, I will go with him to his club.”

“Really?” Maggie stopped chewing.

“Is it a surprise to you?”

“Well, Dad never brings my friends to his
club. I mean, I don’t think he’s even brought Brownie. He must’ve
really taken to you.”

“Taken to...?”

“Never mind. That’s great.” Maggie looked at
Laurent strangely. What in him had resonated with her father?

“And who did you talk with today besides our
neighbors?”

Smiling inwardly at the “our neighbors”
reference, Maggie pushed a red pepper with her fork. The butter
made a trail across her plate.

“I talked to the delivery guy, you know, the
one that that guy Bill said he saw? And he didn’t know anything, or
maybe he did but I couldn’t really get through to him, I don’t
think. He’s...not retarded, exactly, but a little...”

“He is your killer, you are thinking?”

“No, no. He’s just some poor guy who might
have been here at the time.” She shrugged. “But, at any rate, he
wasn’t much help. And then I went around to talk to the night
watchman but he was asleep, because, of course, he works nights,
and his wife wouldn’t let me wake him to ask him questions. So, I
thought—“

“We will go and talk with him together.”

“Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.” Behind him,
she could still see the wreath of blue cigarette smoke from his
Gitanes
enveloping the bouquet of daisies and carnations
he’d brought home.

“You know, I’m convinced Gerard did it.” She
spoke quietly, not looking up from her plate.

“Perhaps he did.”

“The cops don’t think so.” She looked at him.
“Or else why haven’t they made an arrest?”

Laurent cleared his throat.

“Well, maybe they think—“

“I’ll tell you, though, he had the motive and
the opportunity, you know? This wasn’t random. Gerard knew where
she was. He must’ve changed his mind about letting her go and then,
when she wouldn’t go with him, they fought and he killed her. It
makes so much sense to me. I don’t see why the cops don’t arrest
him.”

“Oh! You have the parcel for you!” Laurent
replaced his napkin and stood up. He looked around the living room
without moving.

“I got the mail, there was nothing—“ she
said, frowning.

“Not the mail. When you said the police, I am
remembering—“

“The cops brought something?” Maggie stood up
too and wandered into the living room.

“Ah
! Voila
!” Laurent moved directly to
the small box sitting underneath a carton of cigarettes on the
coffee table. He handed it to her.

Maggie took the package in her hands. Her
name, but not her address was hand-printed on the outside. It was
tied with twine which pulled apart when she tugged at it.

“Is important?”

Maggie pulled the paper off to reveal a small
packet of stationary. A note, folded over, was jammed in between
the pages. She opened it with the fingers of one hand, aware that
Laurent was reading over her shoulder:

This should be the last of it. Only prints on
it belong to your sister.

Sorry there isn’t any more at this time.

Detective John B. Burton

Maggie opened the stationary pad to the first
page.

“It’s a letter,” she murmured. “Elise was
writing someone named ‘Michele’.” She flipped a few pages. “It’s
not finished.”

“
Est-ce que tu la connais?”

“Huh?”

“Do you know this ‘Michele’?”

She shook her head.

“It’s written in French, though.” She handed
the pad to him. “What’s she say?”

Laurent scanned the tiny, controlled hand on
the page. The writing looked cramped and pent up as if Elise knew
she had a lot to say and only a small space or time to say it.

“She says—“

“Don’t paraphrase it, Laurent, I need to know
word for word what she says to this ‘Michele.’” Maggie tugged at
Laurent’s shirt and directed him back to the table.

“”Maggee, the dinner will be cold,” Laurent
protested, although allowing himself to be maneuvered to his
seat.

“It’ll just take a second. Come on, it’s
short. What does she say?”

Laurent sighed and squinted at the
letter.

“Dear Michelle,” he read aloud. “I have been
missing you very much and hope that this letter finds you well and
happy. I am with my sister now and I believe she will take good
care of me. I wish you could meet her, Michelle. She is very...”
Laurent looked up at Maggie. “I am not knowing this word in
English.” He shrugged.