Murder in Nice (4 page)

After giving their details to the officer at
the front desk, Inspecteur Alphonse Massar met them in the lobby.
Maggie was surprised to see he was elderly. In fact, he looked to
be nearing retirement. A tall man with grey hair and a tightly
trimmed, grey pencil mustache, he entered the lobby and bowed
curtly to both women. He had such a strong military bearing about
him that Maggie half expected him to click his boot heels together.
He glanced at her, but without much interest. If Maggie had been
expecting him to reach out to Annie with words of comfort or
solace, she was disappointed. She held Annie’s hand tightly and
stayed close.

This next part was not going to be easy.

They followed Massar down a long hall of
offices. Maggie was surprised to see Massar’s name on one of the
doors. It made sense, she reasoned, for the police to share real
estate with the bodies they collected from the city. It was
certainly tidier and more convenient that way. Something about his
office door bothered her, but she pushed the feeling to the back of
her mind. She needed to be present in every sense of the word for
Annie.

Massar led them into an elevator, which took
them two floors below the main entrance. There, the temperature
dropped significantly. Maggie had the sense that they were
literally entering a catacombs of graves buried deep beneath the
city’s vibrant and pulsing core. Perhaps Annie did too, for her
hand clutched tightly at Maggie’s.

Massar opened a door to a large room, for
which Maggie was grateful. She was already having trouble breathing
just thinking of how far below the surface they were. She didn’t
think she could handle a small room at this point.

A table was set off to the side against the
wall, a draped body on it and a large overhead lamp poised over it.
Massar strode to the table and waited for Maggie and Annie to catch
up to him. He turned on the light and, once they were standing next
to him, jerked back the drape to reveal the corpse. Annie sank to
the floor without a sound and Maggie, momentarily stunned, failed
to move fast enough to catch her. Massar whipped the drape back
over Lanie and knelt next to Annie. Maggie took a step back and
felt her stomach lurch.

In the background of her mind she heard
Massar talking to Annie in French. The words didn’t matter. The
voice was kind. Maggie stared at the draped body and a series of
images burst into her head: Lanie in her cheerleading outfit; Lanie
lip-syncing to a Backstreet Boys song in her mother’s living room;
Lanie drinking her first beer and laughing when most of it ended up
down her shirt front.

And underneath it all was
the niggling memory of what she’d seen on the walk down to this
terrible place—the door with Massar’s name on it and the plaque
under it that read
Enquêteur
Homicides
.

Homicide detective.

Three

“
They think she was murdered,” Maggie said to
Grace on the phone that evening after she and Annie had checked
into the Soho—Annie had begged her to stay with her. After her
afternoon, Annie promptly took two sleeping pills and went to bed.
Maggie spoke on the phone from the balcony, the door open in case
Annie needed her.

“
You’re kidding.
Why?”

“
I don’t know but I intend
to find out.”

“
Does Lanie’s mother know
yet?”

“
No. She’s so upset about
it all that she hasn’t really asked any questions about how Lanie
died. Just the fact that she did is occupying all her mental
abilities at the moment.”

“
I can imagine.”

“
I know. Me too. It’s
awful, Grace. Just terrible to think of one of our own little
dears…”

“
I know, dearest, so shut
up. I don’t want to think of it.”

“
But the point is, the cops
are looking at this as a homicide. If Annie asks them, they’ll have
to give her answers.”

“
Because that strategy has
worked out so well for us in the past.”

“
Problem is, I don’t think
she wants to ask too many questions.”

“
Well, she probably would
if she was told the truth about how Lanie died, don’t you
think?”

“
Maybe. But I’m not sure
she can take much more. And telling her that her daughter is not
only dead but was murdered definitely qualifies as
much more
.”

The sound of the hair dryer falling to the
carpeted floor made Maggie whirl around to see Annie standing not
four feet from her, her eyes wide with horror, mouth open.

“
Oh, shit,” Maggie said
into the phone.

*****

The café faced the
Quai des Etats-Unis
and
the brilliant blue of the sea beyond. Only in Nice did the café
chairs face the street rather than the table, Maggie noted as she
poured her bottled water into a glass. It was the dinner hour but
neither she nor Annie had done anything but pick at their
meals—omelets with
pommes frites
and the omnipresent bowls of citrus
olives.

“
I didn’t know how to tell
you,” Maggie said. “I thought you’d had enough for one
day.”

Annie looked like she’d aged twenty years
since Maggie had seen her last. She wasn’t sure part of that hadn’t
happened just since she picked her up at the airport today. After
her unsuccessful attempt at napping, Annie had agreed to go out
with Maggie to talk about what the new information meant.

“
You think Lanie was
murdered.”

“
It’s the only obvious
explanation as to why her case is being handled by a homicide
detective,” Maggie admitted. “You haven’t talked to anyone about
how she died?”

Annie looked around the street helplessly,
as if expecting to find someone to answer the question for her. She
looked at her hands in her lap. “No. I heard all that mattered. I
came.”

“
I understand,” Maggie
said. “Of course. But now that you know it was not an accident…”
She waited until she thought Annie could handle the rest of her
sentence before proceeding. “You’ll want to talk to Inspecteur
Massar about what he knows.”

“
Of course. Although…”
Annie looked up and squinted in the direction of the Mediterranean.
“It won’t bring her back.”

“
No,” Maggie said slowly.
“That’s true.”

“
Will you go with
me?”

“
Of course.”

“
Will you call him for me
and ask him to see me?”

“
First thing
tomorrow.”

“
Will it make a difference
in my being able to…take her home, do you know?”

Maggie leaned across the table and took
Annie’s hand and squeezed it.

“
Let’s take it one step at
a time, Annie. Okay?”

Annie nodded bravely, her eyes straying once
more to the impossibly beautiful, intensely blue sea that seemed to
fill the horizon.

That night, Maggie was relieved to see that
Annie was exhausted enough to finally sleep. Once she was sure
Annie was asleep, Maggie slipped into the hallway of the hotel.
She’d gotten Ben’s room number from the concierge when she’d
checked in. His room faced the front of the hotel, one flight
up.

Maggie took the elevator and quickly found
his room. She knocked and heard all conversation in the room cease
when she did. Light footsteps moved to the door and it opened just
a crack. Maggie recognized her sister-in-law, Haley, peering out at
her.

“
Maggie!” The door jerked
fully open and Haley stepped into the hall, her arms instantly
around Maggie. “We wondered if we’d see you tonight. Come in, come
in.”

Her brother’s wife was a statuesque blonde.
Even at thirty-six, Maggie still saw the bouncy cheerleader in
Haley. The athletic thighs that had bounded to the tops of human
pyramids now regularly lunged across the clay courts of Atlanta’s
ALTA tennis tournaments.

“
Hey, Haley,” Maggie said.
“I just wanted to touch base with you. I haven’t had a chance
before now.”

Over Haley’s shoulder, Maggie saw her
brother lounging on the couch in the inner room. He didn’t bother
getting up or removing his legs from the coffee table. She saw an
open wine bottle on the table.

“
How is Lanie’s mother?”
Haley asked, her hand still on Maggie’s arm. “She must be
devastated.”

“
She is, yeah. She finally
went to sleep.” Maggie stepped into the living area of the room and
her brother lifted a glass to her as she entered. She wondered for
a moment if he might be drunk.

“
Bonsoir
, little sis,” Ben said. “Welcome to Nice. The shittiest city
in paradise.”

“
Don’t listen to him,”
Haley said. “We’re all just so shaken up about this.”

“
Did you know she was
murdered?” Maggie said to her brother. She hadn’t seen him in over
two years and was surprised to see that he’d aged. In her mind, he
always remained the same: tall, athletic, thick brown hair and
riveting blue eyes. Handsome, of course. All the Newberry men were
good-looking in that bland, Anglo-Saxon way. Now that she really
looked at Ben, his mouth seemed to have taken on a permanent twist
to it. Like a sneer that just stayed.

“
Who said it was murder?”
Ben said, slurring his words and putting to rest any doubt Maggie
had about his condition.

“
I found out today that the
city’s homicide department is handling her death.”

“
Well, there you are. My
sister, the supersleuth. Dad would be proud,” Ben said
sarcastically.

“
We’re all so upset,” Haley
said. “The police talked to us, not that I had anything to say. I’d
taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed early with one of my
headaches.”

“
Yeah, thanks bunches by
the way for the iron-clad alibi, Haley,” Ben said. “Good to know
you can be counted on to be unconscious when it counts.”

“
They don’t suspect you,
Ben,” Haley said, her voice tinged with the slightest of plaintive
whines.

“
Okay, well, anyway, I just
wanted to check in,” Maggie said, turning away. “And to tell you
guys to go on to Domaine St-Buvard without me. I’ll follow along
tomorrow or the next day.”

“
You’re staying in Nice?”
Haley asked. “Whatever for?”

“
God, don’t encourage her,
Haley,” Ben said from the couch. “Will what’s-his-name pick us up?
I know how the French are when it comes to time. I’m not waiting in
a circa World War II train station for him to finally remember what
time it is.”

“
Ben, stop it,” Haley said.
“You’re embarrassing me.”

“
What else is new,” Ben
said in a low voice as Maggie slipped out into the
hallway.

“
I am so sorry, Maggie,”
Haley said. “He has been under unbelievable strain lately for a
couple of different reasons. Please don’t listen to
him.”

“
Don’t worry, Haley,”
Maggie said, leaning in to kiss her sister-in-law’s cheek. “I never
have.”

*****

The next morning, Annie insisted on meeting
the rest of the tour group at breakfast.

“
These were Lanie’s
colleagues,” she said as Maggie locked their hotel room door. “And
her boyfriend, Olivier. He was on the tour too. Oh, he must be
devastated.”

“
Lanie was traveling with
her boyfriend?”

“
Well, they didn’t room
together, but they were definitely an item. He’s the videographer
on the tour. Olivier Tatois. I met him briefly last winter when he
came to Atlanta with Lanie.”

They took the elevator downstairs to the
hotel breakfast room. Maggie wasn’t at all sure what to expect, but
she could tell Annie was eager to meet these people.

When you’ve lost
everything
,
even
the faintest wisps of the person you lost counted for
something,
Maggie thought
sadly
.
Perhaps
Annie was hoping to get a little piece of her daughter back in the
memories and joint affection of these people. The minute they
walked into the room, Maggie sensed that was not going to be
possible.

She recognized Bob Randall immediately. His
travel show was syndicated, and had been for several years. He was
considered the ultimate authority in European travel-on-a-budget
for the average American. His affable downhome style translated
well in his television series, and while he’d been doing it for at
least a decade Maggie was surprised to see he didn’t look a day
older than when he’d first started.

A tall man, Randall broke away from the
group gathered around a large round table and strode to where
Maggie and Annie stood hesitating in the café entrance.

“
Mrs. Morrison,” he said,
his hand outstretched to take Annie’s. “I am so sorry to meet you
under these circumstances. Every one of us here loved Lanie
dearly.”

Annie’s eyes fill with tears. “Thank you,
Mr. Randall,” she said hoarsely.

“
Please call me Bob, and
come meet the others on our tour.” He tucked Annie’s arm in his and
pulled her away from Maggie toward the table. Maggie followed. She
noticed her brother and Haley remained seated. Haley smiled wanly
at her but Ben scowled into his coffee and did not look
up.