Murder in Nice (14 page)

She’s probably embarrassed,
being called out in the open like that yesterday
.

A loud handclap made Maggie and Dee-Dee turn
their heads to see Randall shaking hands with the boy and turning
toward them. Desiree continued to speak to the new cameraman.

“
We are in business,
people!” Randall said, rubbing his hands together as he approached
the group. “Young Sage here won’t be with us past St. Raphael, but
we’ll use him up before then. Are you ready to see
Fréjus?”

Maggie smiled politely and noticed the
Andersons weren’t bothering with that kind of courtesy.

“
Who’s leading today?”
Dee-Dee asked.

“
Well,” Randall said, “as
young Sage is new to our little group and speaks no English, I
thought it might be less wear and tear on all of us if—”

“
Never mind,” Dee-Dee said
with disgust. “You answered my question.”

As they all walked to the SUV to begin the
day’s tour, Maggie’s phone began to vibrate. A glance at the screen
made her answer it immediately.

“
Hey, Annie,” she said. “Is
everything okay? I’m just about to join the others for the
tour.”

“
Yes, darling, I won’t keep
you. But I wanted to let you know that I found out from that nice
police detective that the main reason they’re holding Olivier is
because of the keycard they found in his wallet.”

Maggie slowed her pace. “What about it?”

“
That’s just it,” Annie
said with a sigh. “Detective Massar sent me an email and that’s all
I could unscramble from it. May I forward it to you?”

“
Sure.”

“
Maggie, are you coming?”
Randall called from the parking lot.

“
Be right there!” Maggie
called back. “I have to go, Annie.”

“
Of course, darling. Just
let me know what he said when you have a moment, okay?”

“
Will do.” As Maggie hung
up, she saw the email struggling to come through on her phone. She
would read it in the SUV.

The tour began with a drive down the center
of Fréjus. Maggie shared a seat in the SUV with Jim and Janet and
looked out the window at the tidy, tree-lined residential sections
of town. Souvenir shops, dress shops and bookstores seemed to line
the people-clogged streets. Maggie was amazed to see so many
tourists and assumed they must be French.

Most people back home would never have heard
of Fréjus. And the fact that it wasn’t near the beach also seemed
to make it a surprising popular stop for visitors.

They sailed past the shops and a beautiful
arch of stone that Maggie could see served as some ancient
entranceway. Beyond it and the tips of the trees, she spied the
spire of the town’s ancient cathedral set off a small, graceful
square and wondered why they weren’t being told anything about
it.

Randall drove with Desiree in the
passenger’s seat while the new videographer, Sage, and Dee-Dee sat
in the cramped rear seat. Sage wasn’t homely, Maggie thought, but
he was awfully young. She wondered if Dee-Dee was thinking about
making a move. A few covert looks in her direction seemed to
confirm that Dee-Dee was trying to decide the same thing.

“
We’re not doing the town,
itself?” Maggie asked.

Randall turned to look at her and instantly
she wished someone else would answer. The roads were narrow and the
stonewalls unforgiving. And, she thought, he drove too fast.

“
Not this trip,” he said.
“Just a taste of the highlights. What do they call it when it’s
food,
chérie
?” He
turned to Desiree and it was all Maggie could do not to cringe when
he used the endearment. He mangled it so bad it sounded like he was
calling her the name of the fruit.

“
Amuse-bouche
,” Desiree said promptly,
not taking her eyes off the road.

Maggie made a point to remind herself that
just because she was starting to seriously dislike someone was no
reason to consider them guilty of a crime.

Although I have been pretty
accurate in the past
. And, she admitted,
wrong as many times, too.

“
I just need to remind
everyone that even
I
have not yet heard Desiree’s presentation,” Randall said over
his shoulder. “Mademoiselle Badeaux—ever the dedicated
professional—only rehearses in the privacy of her hotel room so as
to keep the excitement level cranked to its very highest level. I’m
sure we’ll all appreciate that.”

Desiree turned and smirked at Dee-Dee
sitting behind her in the backseat.

Thirty minutes later, Randall pulled the SUV
over to the side of the road and everyone piled out. Maggie noticed
they were just beyond a large roundabout that headed toward the
main highway. The massively high pillars loomed overhead like
crumbling but majestic giants. Roman aqueducts. They were
impressive, and she couldn’t help but try to imagine the men who
had built them and the villagers in the Middle Ages who had toiled,
lived and died in their shadows.

“
Wow,” Maggie said, her
voice tinged with awe. She stood off to the side of the road—a road
with few cars on it in spite of its direct access to the N7—while
Randall and Desiree and Sage took their places. Sage set up his
tripod in front of the aqueducts, no more than twenty yards beyond
them, and Randall stood in front of the camera waiting
patiently.

The young man adjusted the lavaliere mic on
Randall’s lapel and then stepped back behind the camera before
pointing to Randall.

“
Greetings from Fréjus,”
Randall said into the camera, his smile genuine with delight. “If
you are English-speaking and visiting this relentlessly beautiful
town on the Côte d’Azur, I will know you heard my voice. Why is
that? Because Fréjus is a hidden jewel in the crown of southern
France.”

Then Randall snapped his fingers at Sage.
“And we’ll do a cutaway there,” he said. “Go ahead and get some
B-roll, okay? Desiree? Tell him to shoot the aqueducts and maybe
some of the skyline. I can’t remember your script. Do you mention
Fréjus is mostly inland?”

“
I do not,” Desiree said,
straightening the peplum of her cotton blouse. Maggie saw she had
freshened her lips and foundation while Randall was
performing.

“
Okay, don’t worry about it
then. Rolling?” he asked Sage.

Maggie saw Sage shrug, but as he continued
to look in the viewfinder she thought it was a safe bet he was
still filming.

Desiree plastered on a wide smile that
startled Maggie in its patent falseness and stepped into the
foreground of the shot as Randall stepped out.

“
Bonjour
from Fréjus,” she said and swung her arm out to
take in the view behind her. “A medieval city created by the Romans
in 49 BC, this amazing structure you see behind me, this aqueduct,
was built in the middle of the first century BC and functioned for
a thousand years. Can you imagine? Forty-two kilometers long,
providing the village and the surrounding area with its
water.”

Desiree turned as if to give the structure
an admiring glance.

“
We French have at least a
few things to thank the Italians for, no?” she said
smiling.

“
No, cut!” Randall said,
waving his hands at Sage. “Desiree, no. Why did you say that? Now
we’ll have to do it again.”

Desiree blushed furiously.

“
I thought it would feel
more…organic to refer to the fact that as a Frenchwoman presenting
this amazing town to our listening—”

“
Your
Frenchness
is not the point, Desiree,”
Randall said. “It is not
near
the point. Stick to the damn script. Can you just
do that? Honestly, people…” Randall ran a hand through his thinning
hair and turned to Jim and Janet, who were standing impatiently in
the summer heat.

“
Did that last bit feel
right to you? I mean as tourists? Mrs. Dernier? Please be honest.
Desiree is a professional. You won’t hurt her feelings.”

Maggie’s mouth fell open and for a moment
she forgot she was posing as a tour member. She felt Desiree’s gaze
drill into her. “Uh, it felt okay to me,” she said, shrugging.

“
You see, Desiree?” Randall
said. “Do it again.” He turned to Sage and made a rotating motion
with his finger. “
Encore
?
Encore
that
scene? Tell him, Desiree.”

“
He understands,” Desiree
muttered, taking her place in front of the camera again, her smile
not yet in place and the blush still evident on her
neck.

“
Should I mention the dog
shit visible on her shoe?” Dee-Dee said loudly. “Or will you crop
that in post?”

Desiree looked down at her feet. There was
no dog mess anywhere near her. But when she glared back at the
camera, her eyes darting to Dee-Dee as she spoke, it was clear she
was done for the day. Fuming, she turned and stormed back to the
SUV, which she climbed into, her arms folded in an angry,
protective clench.

“
All right, everyone,”
Randall said wearily. “Take five.”

Maggie watched him get into the car and put
a hand on Desiree’s shoulder. She shrugged it off but her body
didn’t move away from him.

Dee-Dee went over to Sage
as he broke down his camera tripod, her voice high-pitched and
silly as she attempted to engage a non-English speaker in
conversation. The Andersons stood silently, staring up at the
looming aqueducts, neither speaking.
Probably neither seeing, either
,.

Reminding herself of Annie’s email message,
Maggie pulled out her phone and opened the forwarded email. She
scanned its contents quickly. Annie had been right. Massar said the
main piece of evidence against Olivier was the fact he had in his
wallet the keycard used at the time of the murder.

Pretty
damning
, Maggie thought, wondering for the
hundredth time why Annie thought Lanie’s boyfriend was
innocent.

*****

“
You have no idea how
dysfunctional everyone on this trip is,” Maggie said on the phone
that night. “Everyone either hates everyone else or is sleeping
with everyone else. Sometimes both at the same time.”

Grace laughed. “Sounds like great fodder for
your next novel.”

“
I’m done with writing
novels.”

“
Too bad. Laurent said it
kept you busy.”

“
I’ll just bet he did!
Honestly, he doesn’t even try to hide how patronizing he
is.”

“
You should get on her your
knees and thank God for Laurent,” Grace said, still laughing.
“How’s Haley? I didn’t get a chance to talk to her before I
left.”

“
Your sister-in-law is my
personal hero about now. You’re not going to believe this, but
Zouzou fell down the well.”

“
Are you serious? I
told
Laurent that thing
was dangerous!”

“
Well, he’s a believer now.
When it happened, Maggie, I just totally froze. I don’t know why
but the horror of the sound of that scream coming from my baby…I
just sat there. And Haley was up and racing to the well before I
even got to my feet.”

“
Was Zouzou hurt? How did
she get her out?”

“
One little scratch. Haley
just threw the board that was on top of it out of the way and
jumped down. She didn’t even look around for another way. Of
course, Laurent was there by then and he pulled them both up. If I
live to be a hundred, I will owe that woman.”

“
Well, she always was very
athletic. So besides rescuing children from wells, what does she do
all day?”

“
She reads a lot and takes
long walks through the vineyard. She watches Laurent cook and she
babysits.”

“
And Ben?”

“
On his laptop in the
bedroom or on the phone.”

“
I wonder what his deal is.
Haley told me in Nice that he was under a lot of pressure about
something. What about you? How’s the business? Have you heard from
Windsor?”

Grace sighed. “No to Windsor, but I’ve been
meaning to talk to you about something. Frankly, I am not sure of
how to handle it. As far as business, I have a meeting next week
with the owner of a children’s boutique and for once it’s not
someone acting like she’s doing me a big favor. I really like her
clothes, too.”

“
That’s great. Where is
she? Paris?”

“
Yes, but she has a store
in Aix.”

“
Too bad. It’s nice to have
an excuse to spend the weekend in Paris.”

Grace laughed. “That’s what I thought. And
then I reminded myself I’m supposed to be thinking like a
businesswoman.”

“
I hate when that
happens.”

“
But when you have a few
minutes—not now, I understand you’re in a rush—but when you do, I
have something I could use your help with.”

“
Sure. How about when I get
back?”

“
I may need you before
then. Oh, I think I hear Laurent home downstairs. He’s been in such
a bad mood lately.”

“
Tell me about
it.”

“
Oh, stop. Laurent worships
you.”

“
Except when he’s yelling
at me.”