LITTLE DEATH BY THE SEA


Susan Kiernan-Lewis

 
Copyright 2011 by San Marco Press. All rights reserved.

Published by San Marco Press at Smashwords

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PART I
A Sea-Change



Chapter 1
1

Maggie nodded at the waiter and touched the rim of her bottle of Coca. She turned to stare out at the Mediterranean, her head pounding, her stomach lurching with worry and anticipation. If he didn’t come, she wasn’t sure what to do next, whom to contact or, God knows, how to. Her French was pathetic and she was aware of a certain amount of impatience from most of the people she’d tried to communicate with thus far: the concierge, the chambermaid (who’d brought a portable television set to her room instead of the extra bath towels she’d hoped she’d asked for), the waiter. And this was Cannes, for heaven’s sake. What happened when she was forced into the villages among people who were less accustomed to foreigners and their bad French? Her eye caught the waiter’s again and she smiled. Promptly, he turned his back to take another’s order. With a groan, her smile dissolved.
She wore a pair of black linen slacks with a gray silk shell top. Her dark hair cascaded down her back in a straight curtain. She had an almost elfin face, heart-shaped and perfect. Her mouth was small but sensuous and her large, green eyes missed very little. She had an unconscious beauty. It was the first thing people saw when they met her, but not the first thing they thought of when they described her. Her dramatic, dark looks were punctuated by the intelligent brow, the intense eyes. Yet her manner was relaxed and secure: the product of a happy childhood, and a privileged one.
From her seat in the Carlton Hotel patio, she could see the Promenade de la Croisette, its grand Royal palms lining the broad boulevard like Titans shading the procession of a monarch. The air smelled rich and sweet, yet light too. If her current situation and reason for being there had been different, Maggie knew the afternoon would’ve been magical. As it was, she felt woozy, like she’d been catapulted into a guest-starring role in somebody else’s dream.
“Have you been waiting long?” He appeared from behind her and was suddenly seated next to her, breathless yet cool in all this heat. The accent was English, crisp, and Oxbridge.
“Snarl-up in Nice, sorry,” he said brightly.  “You’re Miss Newberry, right?”
Maggie nodded, a prick of relief coloring her face.
He was tall, he was dark, he was an absolute stranger to her. He was going to help her find her sister’s missing child.
“I thought so. Easy to spot from your father’s description,” he said pleasantly.
“I’m so glad to meet you. I wasn’t sure...is...is your French any good?” she asked, still clutching her empty soft drink bottle.
“Is anybody’s? I mean, unless one’s born here?”
He half-stood in order to flag down the waiter.  
“Hey, you! Ass-hole!”
Maggie swallowed an ice cube and began choking. The waiter quietly retreated into the café. The man sat back down and gave Maggie a perfunctory clap on the back.
“Want to go someplace else?” he asked. “The Carlton seems a little crowded today.”
Maggie coughed painfully. “You are  Mr. Bentley, aren’t you? I don’t even know that and I’ve traveled all this way and I...”
“Yes, yes, Roger Bentley, sorry. Look, old girl, I really can help, you know.”
Maggie nodded, suddenly miserable and unsure.
“Let’s just go,” she said, groping for her purse.
2 “How did you know my sister?”
She hunched toward him across the little café table situated in front of the Splendide Hotel. She could smell orange blossoms as she watched the Mediterranean Sea stretched out dramatically before them.
“I didn’t, in fact. Isn’t this a much better place? I should’ve suggested it in the beginning.”
“You didn’t know my sister?”
Maggie watched the man closely. His manner seemed careless to her, condescending. She found herself wanting very much to trust him, to believe him. Perhaps even in spite of the facts. He was, after all, all she had.
“Not really. Met her once or twice. See? It’s got a view every bit as nice as the Carlton’s.” He waved a hand at the vista from their table. Snowy whitecaps peaked periodically on the azure sea as they watched. “Even better if you take into consideration—“
“What do you mean, you didn’t know my sister?”
“Well, I didn’t know her, did I? Doesn’t mean I can’t help.”
“How can you help? You haven’t even met the child’s mother. The girl was taken while she was with Elise. You said you knew about it. You knew who took her. You...”
“I do know. Look, I’m sorry if you thought I could give you some information on your sister, I just didn’t know her.” He took a short sip from his tea cup. “Oh, enough to say hello, or something, in the street, but even then—“
“How do you think you can help me? I flew here from Atlanta, you know, this morning, because you led my parents to believe that you knew what had happened and could help me find my niece. I’m not in the habit of flying all the way to effin’ France on vague meanings. You said—“
“I must say, I think it’s incredible how you Americans are always running on about what a big bloody event it is if you have to take a transatlantic flight for any reason. You’d think you were personally sailing across the ocean in the Santa Maria or something. Most civilized people of the world think nothing of jaunting off to Jo-berg or Auckland or some such place, would do it in a tick, but the Americans have to act like it’s this great bloody journey. Escapes me how the lot of you have come so far, I must say.”
Bentley sugared his teacup heavily and picked up the pretty china teapot from the table. He posed it over Maggie’s cup first and looked at her inquiringly. She looked back at him, dumbfounded.
“Look...” He poured her tea anyway and then his own. “I meant what I said. No, I didn’t know your sister. Yes, I think I can help you find the little girl. That’s what your father said on the phone you wanted. I mean, if you want information on your sister, I’m sure you can get that sort of thing from one of her boyfriends...I can get you some names, if you’d like.”
Maggie pushed her teacup away and gripped the handle of her purse.
“The point is, Mr. Bentley,” she said, “that I do not see how you think you can help me if you didn’t know my sister. What was the extent of your involvement in this? Getting the tag number of the car that snatched Nicole?”
“No, Miss Newberry. Driving the car that snatched Nicole.”
3
Maggie turned slightly on the bed to catch her image in the hotel room mirror. She appeared fagged and withered in her blue cotton pantsuit—too hot and somehow contrived for the French seashore. Her hand looked frail in the reflection as it held the large white telephone receiver to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Mother? It’s me,” Maggie said, turning away from the mirror and speaking into the receiver.
“Darling! Is everything all right?”
“Yes, I think so. I met the guy Dad talked to and he’s very nice and I think he’s going to help us find Nicole.”
“Maggie, are you sure he’s all right? This all seems so...”
“No, really, Mother, I know he can help. He’s very nice. Not to worry, okay?”
“Does he...did he know anything about Elise?”
Maggie could hear the hope in her mother’s voice. “I...he said he doesn’t know her, Mom,” she said.
“I see.”
“But he thinks he knows where Nicole is,” she hurried on. “And he can help us get her.”
Maggie thought back to the phone call her father had received from Roger Bentley just four days earlier. Roger had told him that he was in possession of information that could help them locate Elise’s missing daughter, Nicole. 
“Maggie, just promise you’re being careful?” her mother said into her ear.
“Mother, please don’t worry. Everything is fine. This guy, Bentley, thinks I’ll have Nicole by tomorrow evening. I’m planning on being on the last flight out of Nice to Atlanta either tomorrow night or first thing the next morning. But, I’ll call you first, to confirm.”
“With...the little girl.”
“Yes, Mom, of course. With Nicole.”
“Is...is the child’s father there?”
“I don’t know, I don’t think so. I think Gerard left the area and left Nicole with some friends, or something. It’s all sort of hazy, that part. I drove by Elise’s old apartment, Mom. It was very pretty. It was sort of tucked away off this little cobblestone walkway and there were big pots of geraniums and things all over the place. You would’ve loved it. It was really sort of beautiful. I took a picture of it.”
Maggie didn’t know why she was telling her mother this. Maybe she wanted to let her know that she had made contact with a part of Elise’s life that they’d always been denied before. Surely her mother had to be curious as to where her daughter had lived, the market Elise must have visited for her fresh vegetables and fruit, the little Catholic church at the end of the cobblestone cul-de-sac that she might even have visited from time to time.
Maggie heard an unsteadiness in her mother’s voice and didn’t know whether to be glad for it or guilty for having caused it.
“I’m glad, dear.”
“I’m going to police headquarters tomorrow...to see...you know.. if they know anything more about Elise.”
“Your father’s people are working on that from this end too. But, of course, anything you can find...well, that would be very good.”
“I know, Mom, I know. I just wanted you to ....I just wish, in a way, that you could be here too. And you could see that it’s not a slum or anything...she really lived in a nice little apartment.” Maggie felt the limpness of her words.
“Please be careful, darling.”
“I will, Mom.” Maggie glanced into the mirror again. “Kiss Dad for me. And don’t worry, okay?”
Maggie disconnected and held the phone to her ear for another moment. Then she dialed the hotel operator and asked for another transatlantic line.
I wish I believed half of what I just told you, Mother, she thought. She rubbed her tired eyes and resisted the urge to look back into the mirror to confirm the haggish image, testimony to her tiresome journey.
“Selby & Parker”.
“Hi, Dierdre, it’s Maggie, is Gerry there?”
“Hey, Maggie! How’s Paris?”
“It’s Nice, not Paris.”
“Yeah, wow. Here’s Gerry.”
“Maggie! Is Nice nice?”
“Hey, Ger, no, I’m pooped. I don’t relate well to last-minute jaunts across the Big Blue. But this guy says he can help me find my sister’s daughter. I think he can.”
“I understand. Don’t worry about it. There’s nothing going on here.”
“It’ll just be a few days. I’m planning on being back in Atlanta day after tomorrow—“
“Will you stop it? There’s no push this week, okay? Take care of your business.”
“Okay, thanks, Gerry.” She paused and looked into the mirror. “Wednesday, latest.”
Maggie hung up the phone, stood, and straightened her rumpled jacket in the full-length mirror. She ran her hands through her dark hair and tried to fluff it into some semblance of a casual, tousled look. As a result, she looked like she’d been dragged down a staircase by her roots. 
Her eyes were a pale blue, set in a heart shaped face, lips full, the chin strong and resolute. It was a pretty face, Maggie knew, but not exceptionally so. Elise had been the great beauty of the family.  
At thirty-four, Maggie had never been married and was mildly embarrassed by the fact. She worked out three times a week at an all-women’s gym near her apartment in Atlanta, indulged in a facial at least once a month at Macy’s and had the dead ends trimmed off her razor straight, black hair every six weeks without fail. Now, sitting here in a foreign hotel waiting and wondering if she could really trust her new companion, Maggie found herself in a situation she couldn’t control by picking up the phone or rearranging her schedule. She felt out of kilter with her body, her diet, and in the simplest attempts to communicate the most basic requests. 
She looked at her image in the hotel room mirror and saw a fleeting hologram of her sister Elise’s face form and dissolve. Maggie fought the feeling of melancholia that accompanied it. She tucked her purse under her arm and hurried downstairs and out of the lobby of the Gray d’Albion Hotel. 
 One of five seafood restaurants studding the Rue Felix-Faire, Petite Bouche was tiny, frill-less, staffed with the prerequisite surly waiters  and absolutely crammed with Mediterranean charm. She and Roger had chosen the little café, because it was so close to Maggie’s hotel.
He sat where she had left him thirty minutes before, a second wine bottle being opened as she approached.
“Everything all right?” He half-stood as she neared.
“I guess so.” She sat down and pushed her dinner plate away. “My Mother doesn’t know what to make of all this.” She waved her hand at the dining room. “Me, here in Cannes, I mean. You.” She looked directly at him.
“I should think not.” Roger reseated himself and poured Maggie a glass of wine. “Not the usual thing at all.”
Maggie stared at their dining table as if she’d never seen it before, and hadn’t spent an unanticipated two and a half hours having dinner at it. A blue chipped crock of goose paté, a platter of half-eaten pommes frites, mushrooms Provençal, the ubiquitous Evian bottles (four of them), and the remains of two platefuls of veal and pasta. She looked at Roger. Do people not talk much about gluttony these days, she wondered? Her eye fell upon the pretty white saucers with the little primroses painted on them, each looking like an original, not part of a set. She pressed a finger to the crumbs, only a scattering of evidence to tell of the sticky-sweet strawberry tarts they’d both had.
“So, tell me again how you know all you know.” Maggie accepted the wine glass. “How you came to be driving the getaway car, how you know Nicole’s father...and where is the slimy bastard now?”
“The ‘slimy bastard’ is no longer on the Cote D’Azure, I’m told.” Roger took a savoring sip of his wine and Maggie half-expected him to smack his lips in satisfaction. “He’d taken the child about five or six months ago—”
“I know. Elise called me  to say Gerard had kidnapped Nicole.”
“Yes, quite. I’m really not sure to what purpose. Perhaps they’d had a quarrel? At any rate, a friend of mine asked me to help him. It seems his...cousin, Gerard Dubois, desperately wanted his child. He said the mother was a real wretch—I’m just repeating what he said, you understand...”
“It’s okay,” Maggie said, feeling a wave of exhaustion.  “Please, go on.”
“Well, he said that the mother was a drug addict. I was asked to give assistance in snatching the child so that it might live with its more responsible parent.”
“Gerard.”
“Right-e-ho.” Roger squinted into the crowd as if expecting to see someone he knew, then played with the stem of his wineglass. “In any case,” he continued, “my participation in the ‘kidnapping’, as you call it, amounted to driving a car to an address—“
“My sister’s apartment here in Cannes.”
“As it turned out, yes. I waited in the car with the motor running. My friend came out of the apartment with the child in his arms. He deposited l’enfant in the car and I departed.” He shrugged and took a sip of his wine.
“Gerard didn’t get in too?”
“Ah, no. He remained behind. But the cousin...my friend...was in  the car with me and he calmed the child during our ride.”
“Where did you take her?”
“To an apartment near here, actually.  A woman was waiting for us...a jolly nice woman, it seemed to me. And she took the girl. That’s it.”
“Were you paid?”
“I was helping a friend.”
“I see. Will you take me to this address?”
“If you like, Miss Newberry, but I must tell you that the child is no longer there.”
“How do you know?”
Bentley sighed and motioned to the garçon hovering in the wings of the café. 
“I know, Miss Newberry, because I just do.” He turned and spoke briefly to the waiter, his French clumsy and abrupt. The man disappeared. “Look, she’s not there but I believe I know where to find her and isn’t that the whole point?”
“I’d like to see this place that you took her. Is it a permanent address? I mean, does that woman live there all the time or was it just a temporary thing?”
The waiter returned with another bottle of red wine and two chilled bottles of Evian. He deposited the mineral water, one at each of their elbows, and began to decant the wine. Bentley watched the man intently, as if ready to jump in and do the job himself if necessary. Bentley was handsome, Maggie decided, but his features were sharp, nearly hawk-like, and she wondered if, in spite of his good looks, many women found him attractive.
Finally, the waiter poured the wine and left. Maggie reached out and touched Bentley’s hand as he reached for his glass.
“You said on the phone to my father that Gerard was a very bad man.”
Bentley looked at her sadly.
“I did not know it at the time,” he said.
“But he is bad.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Newberry. The child is, in my opinion, in some danger by remaining with Dubois. He is a drug addict, he beats the girl...”
“He’s had her now for almost six months.”
“Yes. I would say that time is probably critical. Wouldn’t you?” He looked at her kindly.
“She is...” Maggie looked around the restaurant as if expecting to see Gerard and her niece seated nearby. “She is in Cannes?”
“Or nearby. Probably not right in Cannes. Surely you must be aware by now of the cost of one room for one night in this town? I imagine, as Monsieur Dubois didn’t have a pied-a-terre here himself—and probably wouldn’t have been foolish enough to have taken the girl there even if he had—the girl is somewhere in the country, a remote village, probably.”
“And that’s where she’s been all this time?”
“Presumably.”
“And you think you’ll be able to find this place?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“May I ask how?”
“Why don’t we see how things go, shall we? I hate to tip my hand—and by doing so, get your hopes up—if things go awry. Let me try a few avenues, knock on a few doors that I know of, and see where they lead.”
“I’d like to be a part of this door-knocking, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m afraid that would be impossible, Miss Newberry.” Bentley pushed aside their collection of dishes and glasses and drew an ashtray nearer to him. “I would suggest instead that you try to enjoy what the South of France can offer you. Hire a car and see the palace at Monaco tomorrow.” He lit his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of gray-blue smoke into the air above her head. “There are some enchanting little villages along the way, I personally recommend Villefranche—a charming little place, or Juan les Pins, you remember the song? Do a little sight-seeing and let me see what I can uncover. If it turns out we are successful, you will have to leave the country fairly quickly with a person who will possess false identifications, and a forged American passport. It would be best if you were as uninvolved as possible until that time.”
Maggie nodded. Although technically possessing dual citizenship, Nicole would still classify as a kidnap victim if Maggie were caught leaving the country with her.  
“Perhaps you’re right,” she said.
He nodded solemnly.
“I’m absolutely right. Just leave it to me, Miss Newberry. If all goes well, by this time tomorrow night, you will have your niece, her forged papers and two tickets back home to the U.S. Everything neat and tidy. Neat and tidy.”
Maggie stared off into space, across the tables of diners and into the happy nighttime streets of Cannes. Black gypsies, bejangled and braided, waved their wares of bracelets and bells, beaded necklaces and earrings from the street in hopes of attracting attention. Some accompanied their selling with strumming on guitars and soft crooning that caught on the calm Mediterranean breeze and wafted back to Maggie as she sat at her table. The music of the night mingled with the scent of olives and lemons and dusky perfumes that pooled in the open-air café.
4
“Maggie, I need you.”
“Of course, I’ll help. You know I will. Just tell me what you want.”
“I need you here with me.”
“Be reasonable, Elise. I can’t just pick up and go. I’ve got responsibilities here. A job—“
“He’s taken her and I don’t know where she is and it’s been days now. My little girl, my petite, wee chou...”
“Elise, please, pull yourself together. You should call the police. Have you done that yet?”
“I need you here, Maggie. I’m so sorry I haven’t been in touch with you or Mother or Dad in so long. It’s not that I don’t love you or didn’t want to be with you...”
“Elise, listen to me! You must call the police if Gerard has stolen Nicole. They can help, I can’t. Don’t you see that?”
“Ma petite poupee, mon ange, petite Nicki-nicki...”
Maggie sat up in bed, the sounds of her sister’s weeping seemed to ring throughout the hotel room. “Nickie Nickie Nickie Nickie Nickie Nickie Nickie Nickie Nickie...”  
Maggie pulled back the duvet and scrambled out of bed. She flipped on the light in the bathroom and stood, breathless, on the cool tile as she waited for her heart to stop pounding. Oh, Elise, she thought. I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry, so sorry!  She leaned against the bathroom door and closed her eyes. Elise would have been so close now. Just around the corner and down a street. Right there, with geraniums in the window.
Maggie opened her eyes and looked at her reflection in the warped mirror over the bathroom sink. Oh, Elise. Except for the hysterical call from her six months before, they hadn’t heard from her in almost two years. At the age of twenty-nine, Elise had dropped out of sight, with only the briefest, most painful glimpses of her filtering back to them in Georgia:  Elise has dropped out of her art classes. Elise has had a baby. Elise was arrested. Drugs? Prostitution? Assault? The news was always vague and always indicting.
Her parents had been distraught. Embarrassed too? wondered Maggie. Were they awkward about Elise at the Cherokee Country Club? Did everyone know that John and Elspeth Newberry’s eldest daughter was a drugged-out flake with an illegitimate child? 
Maggie rubbed her hands over her eyes and turned out the bathroom light. She went back to the bed, her head throbbing. But Elise had had the last word. Hadn’t she always managed to do that, even when they were kids? Whether it was an undisturbed night’s sleep or an unselfconscious walk across the tennis courts of her parents’ country club, Elise had made sure that things would—undeniably, irretrievably—never be quite the same again.  


Chapter 2
1
Maggie jabbed a sliver of toast into her eggcup. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of an eye-to-eye reaction. If he were going to eliminate her involvement in this important adventure—and she was absolutely aware that he could do it and she would accept it—she could at least let him know she wasn’t happy about it. Heck, for fifteen thousand dollars, he can damn well care how I feel.
“I can’t say how long, exactly, negotiations will take.” Roger looked starched and smart in the late-morning swelter. He flapped his cotton napkin out flat across his lap and smiled across the table at Maggie. He had, again, chosen their meeting place, the sunny and fairly private outdoor dining deck of yet another famous, old Cannes hotel, the Majestic.
“Might be a few days, actually. Need to be prepared to wait. All good things, and all that.” He smiled brightly at her and then reached over to pour his coffee. “But I’m very happy with my plan—“
“Which you feel no need to divulge to me.” Maggie stared at her speared egg-cup, the toast point weakening at the base and beginning to collapse into the murky yellow.  
“No, no, I can’t say that I do. I hope you understand. I feel that I’m protecting you, Maggie.”
Maggie felt a pinch of annoyance at Bentley’s use of her Christian name but shook herself out of it. He was friendly enough and he certainly was doing her—and her whole family—a service that she’d be hard-pressed to find someone else to do. She looked at him quickly, and then back at her plate. In fact, if he hadn’t called her father in the States, her family might not even have gotten this far on the road to finding Elise’s child. Before the phone call, they had had no idea where the child might be. In fact, to assuage that awful helplessness, her parents—and Maggie too—had decided to try to believe that Nicole was happy in France—if not in Elise’s custody, then, with her father. Bentley had put an end to that little fantasy with one phone call. He convinced Maggie’s father that not only had Elise disappeared, dropped out of the world, but that Gerard was a man who would corrupt and eventually destroy the child. He had insisted that he, Roger, could locate the child for them, and, in a single phone call, the Englishman had galvanized the Newberry clan into action. No, if Roger Bentley hadn’t called and offered to help them find and retrieve the girl, Maggie certainly wouldn’t be sitting here in the hotel dining room of the shabby and unmistakably elegant Majestic Hotel in Cannes, France.  
Roger attacked his breakfast with gusto, spreading the delicate French jellies onto his croissants with almost exaggerated hand movements, carving up his sausage and broiled tomatoes as if he didn’t expect to eat this well again for a very long time.
“Allo?  Roger? I am here, yes?”
The voice came from behind Maggie’s chair.
“Laurent! Wonderful! Come, sit down, sit down!” Roger motioned to the empty chair next to Maggie. The man appeared to her right and, without immediately looking up, the impression Maggie got was that it was a very big man.
“Maggie Newberry, this is Laurent Dernier. Laurent, Mademoiselle Newberry. He’s going to help us, you know, with our project. Coffee, Laurent?”
Maggie felt her irritation with Roger ignite again. She did not turn to look at the newcomer but tapped the side of her coffee cup gently with a silver butter knife.
“Look, Mr. Bentley...” she began.
Roger ignored her.
“Been doing a bit of a brain tease on an engineering project in Algeria, Laurent has,” Roger bubbled. “What’s the name of it, old chap? Rather like that Super-Collider thing you Yanks were putting together, I think.” He turned briefly to Maggie. “You know all about that, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for an answer but swiveled back to face the newcomer. “Sit down and tell us about it, Laurent,” he said. “It’s measuring or subdividing molecules or some such thing, isn’t it? Terribly clever, our Laurent,” he confided to Maggie.
“Roger, it was just a consulting job,” Laurent protested, still not seating himself.
“Of course it was! Couldn’t afford the full bill of having you pull on rubber gloves and really going to it, I should say not.” He turned back to Maggie. “Man’s a mathematical genius. Sorbonne, M.I.T, he’s taught everywhere...”
“The price does not change,” she said curtly.
“I say, Maggie, who’s talking about money? Laurent’s here to help us get the job done. The price is the same, of course.”
“You are unhappy about me, yes? Roger, it will not be—“
“No, no, no, Laurent. Mademoiselle Newberry just takes her time warming up to people, don’t you, Maggie?” Roger smiled, but Maggie detected the slightest edge beneath his tone.
“Look, I don’t mean to be rude, really.” She turned briefly to Monsieur Dernier, then turned abruptly back to Roger. “It’s just that the nature of my business is rather delicate...and I would hope that you’d know that the fewer people who know about it, the better. If you say you need this man to get my niece back...well, okay...just understand my position, if you can...”
“I should leave, Roger. She is not comfortable.”
“No, wait.” Maggie turned to look at him fully for the first time.  He was extraordinarily good-looking, she noted. Broad and large, with handsome, big hands. A man’s hands, Maggie thought irrelevantly. His face was calm, with a sweetness to it that almost seemed to belie his size, his eyes were piercing and dark, almost pupil-less. His light brown hair was thick and long, past his shoulders. He was looking at her with a kindness that she had never felt from a total stranger before. It was a look between friends. Good friends.  “I....well, you’re already here...so let’s just go on, okay?” she said, feeling a little flustered.  “Forget it, all right? All right, Roger?”
“Sure, all right.” Roger shrugged and reached for another roll. He winked at Laurent, making sure that Maggie noticed.
“If you are sure, Mademoiselle...”
“Yes, yes. I’m just a little rattled, is all. If you can help, well, then, thanks. I appreciate any help anyone can give me.” Annoyed and shaken by Laurent’s effect on her, Maggie pushed her breakfast plate aside and reached for the champagne bottle. Instantly, Laurent leaned over and took the large flagon from her. She smiled her thanks as he poured the champagne into her orange juice tumbler.
“Right. Let’s map out our day, shall we?” Roger took a swig of his coffee and dropped his napkin onto the table. “First, I will begin with Step One of Plan A. Laurent, you will take Mademoiselle Newberry to Section Two of Plan A at the designated hour.” 
“Hold on, Roger,” Maggie said, frowning. “Why do I have to go someplace special? Why can’t I just hole up in my hotel room and wait for your call?”
“Anyone ever tell you that you have jolly little flair for adventure? It may not be a phone call, that’s why.”
“I don’t understand—“
“Must you understand everything? You Americans—“
“And I’m sick of the ‘you Americans are such whine-bags’ schtick. I want to know...”
“You always want to know! Bloody hell! Can’t you trust someone else to carry out the details without your having to know too?”
“Mademoiselle! Roger! Arretez!  Stop, now, both of you! You are causing a big performance, no?” Laurent leaned over and patted Maggie’s hand in a gesture that was half consoling, half reprimand.  
He wagged a finger at Roger.
“Mon vieux, she is upset, no? Her sister has disappeared and she is....ahh, triste....very sad. The responsibilitie is yours, Roger, n’est-ce pas?”
Roger placed his cup down in its saucer and leaned across the table toward Maggie.
“I’m sorry, Maggie, really,” he said. “I quite forgot myself and the situation. You must excuse me. I know things are very hard on you now...”
Maggie knew she must look as tired as she felt. She nodded gratefully at Laurent and then looked into Roger’s canny green eyes.
“Do what you have to do,” she said.
He smiled at her and then at Laurent.
“Good girl,” he said.
2
The street cleaners crept the early morning streets, wielding their large garden hoses like weapons, rinsing away the rubbish and debris of last night’s party. Maggie watched them from her hotel window. The early morning air was cool, the Mediterranean sun had not yet had the chance to perform its mellow alchemy on the coast. Maggie watched as two bedraggled partygoers picked their way to their hotel across the rough stones of the Rue des Etats Unis. The woman wore a gold lamé gown with a pointy, cone-cupped brassiere over the top of it. Her hair looked like she’d gone swimming at some point in the evening. Her make-up looked it too. Maggie watched the man with her, his bowtie limp but still attached at the throat. He was handsome but not young. She watched them until they disappeared around the corner. On their way back from somebody’s yacht moored in the harbor, no doubt, she thought. Most of Cannes’ parties happened on somebody’s yacht moored in the harbor, or so she’d been told. Or had she read that somewhere?
She’d been in France for almost a week now. Each day Roger either made an appearance at her hotel to assure her that the recovery of Nicole was imminent, or sent messages of similar content via Laurent. Laurent was a constant in her daily routine in Cannes. Escorting her around Cannes and Cap d’Antibes, climbing the hills with her in Monaco which led to the Grimaldi palace,  picking up the tab at frequent café stops, and always listening intently—sympathetically—to her protestations that the search was taking too long.
She wasn’t sure what to think of Laurent. He was kind and, in spite of his bad English, she could tell he was intelligent too. Perhaps too much so. Maggie got the impression that Laurent held many cards he wasn’t showing. Nonetheless,  she felt drawn to him and compelled to trust him. Besides, Laurent obviously had, among his other many talents touted by Roger, a very special way with people.
And whereas the matter of Elise was, more or less, out of their hands—and of course, in many ways always had been—the case of her daughter, Nicole, was not.  Maggie had booked two seats back to Atlanta for tomorrow morning. The thought of returning to Atlanta without the little girl produced a hard knot in the pit of her stomach. Elise’s child, lost somewhere in France, in the custody of her brutish father. 
Maggie clenched her hands. She had to find Nicole. She had to find her and bring her home. 
Downstairs, Laurent was waiting for her.  He stood next to the Gray d’Albion check-in counter, flipping through a Paris Express. She hesitated a moment on the staircase when she saw him. His was a rough handsomeness.  Weathered, been-there. She liked it and she knew she liked him. And she was sorry about that because the timing was wrong, wrong, wrong. 
She enjoyed his attentions to her even as he frustrated her by his refusal to tell her what progress was being made with Nicole.
It was clear that he’d begun to grow on her in a way that was pleasant and slightly worrisome.
He looked up at her as she stood watching him from the top of the stairs and his face brightened. Tossing the magazine onto the counter, he bounded up the stairs to meet her, his bulk looking immediately insubstantial and  light.  
“You have more bags, oui?”  He gathered up her pullman and carry-on bag in one movement and she thought for a moment that he would snatch her up as well.
“No. Just those. I...that’s all.” She felt flustered for no reason that she could pinpoint.  
“Tu avais un bonne nuit, oui?” You had a good night?  
“Yes, thank. So, now where to?” she asked, a little breathlessly.
“Allons y, Mademoiselle.”  He led the way down the stairs. “I have the automobile, this way, so.”  She kept her sights on Laurent’s back as he pushed open the revolving door before her and led her to a waiting yellow Citroen. He opened the trunk and roughly piled her soft luggage into the back, then looked up at her and smiled again.
“It is not far, okay?” he said as he handed her in, then squeezed himself into the driver’s seat. The motor started with a jerk and the car pushed out into the early morning Cannes traffic.  
Maggie turned to watch his profile as he sped through the streets, whirling down alleyways, only to emerge unscathed (as did, miraculously, the pedestrians) on the other side.
“La voiture, il est votre?”
He turned his head to look at her, his eyes wide.
“Comment?” He neatly avoided hitting a woman walking a French poodle by driving the car onto the sidewalk and then returning to the street.
“La voiture, c’est voiture.” She tapped the dashboard of the car. “Il est votre voiture?”
“Ahhhhh, oooohhhh!” He closed his eyes and smiled, nodding his head vigorously. Maggie wished he would keep his eyes on the road. “Mais, oui,  yes, c’est ma voiture. Est-ce que tu l’aime?”
Now, that’s more like it, Maggie thought, pleased with herself. He spoke quickly, beautifully. There was even a glimmer in his eye now that wasn’t there during his labored English attempts. Although, she noted that he’d used the informal “tu”  with her, something she knew that typically isn’t done until you’ve known each other much better.
“Oui,” she said. “C’est très belle.”  She clutched her door handle as they revisited the sidewalk, this time to bypass a little Renault that Laurent obviously felt was going too slowly. “Mais, vous...vous  driv-ez tres fou..”
She edged closer to the window and watched the colored, striped awnings and tents of the city’s marketplace  spin by. Her eye caught a crazy-quilt of color: tulips, asparagus, strawberries, bananas, hanging sausages, live chickens caught by their feet and twisting at the ends of long ropes and all of it flying by in a hectic haze.
“Can we stop for breakfast?” she asked breathlessly. “Est-ce que nous arreton pour le petite dejeuner?” 
“Why you are speaking la Française, Mademoiselle? Laurent’s English is very bad, non?”
“Je parle votre langue  even worse and you know it.” She turned to catch him looking at her curiously, a smile hidden behind his lips. “Breakfast, oui or non?”
“Ah, mais oui!”  He turned the car abruptly into what looked like a brick wall but turned out to be a sort of bricked-up alcove serving as a parking lot. Laurent was out and helping her with her door by the time she had untangled her legs from the straps of her purse where it had been sitting on the floor of the car.
She could still see the gaily colored tents of the early morning market and knew they were on the outskirts of Cannes. Laurent led her to a small café and ordered two coffees for them. They settled themselves at a rickety outdoor table with a view of the street and, surprisingly enough, the Chateau des Abbes de Lerins. Laurent pointed it out to her.
“You see des Isle de Lerins? La?”  He pointed to the islands off the gulf and then turned and pointed to the hill overlooking the water where the castle sat, tall and ominous. “Et la chateau?  Castle, yes?” He lit a cigarette, shaking an unfiltered one from his Mediterranean-blue packet of Gaulouises, offering it first to her. She shook her head. 
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see their waiter leave the café and cross the street to a facing boulangerie where he purchased one croissant from the baker. She watched him return to the café, place the roll on a small dish and then bring it to their table with their coffees.  She noticed that Laurent seemed to be enjoying the morning and whatever part of the air he wasn’t polluting with his cigarette. 
Smiling hugely, he took in a full breath while surveying the view they had of the Gulf of Napoule.
“Are you taking me someplace special?” Maggie took a sip of her coffee.
“Ah, mais oui. Is this not special?” He waved his cigarette in the direction of the Gulf.
“I mean, where we go from here. You know, The Plan.”
“Ah, yes, the plan.”
Do the French say “Ahhh” before every sentence they utter? Maggie wondered. As if even a comment must be savored like a piece of tender lamb all smothered in rosemary. Everything was a smacking together of the lips, a taste, a rolling around in one’s mouth. She didn’t know whether she found it contrived or charming.  
“I am to take you to a place. And then Roger will come with the little girl.”
“Why not to the Gray d’Albion Hotel?” she asked reasonably.
“It would not be, eh...how you...? Appropriate.”
“No, I guess I can see that. A friend’s house, is that where we’re going then?”
“Yes, a house of a friend. You will see, soon. It is not far. Meanwhile, you will see something more of the Cote d’Azure, non?  You will allow Laurent to show you?”
“More sightseeing?”
“Not sightseeing this time. No tourists today.” He paused to take a last drag on his cigarette before grinding it out in the ashtray. “Roger will not come with the little girl for a long time. Ce soir, peut être. A long time. Your coffee is good?” He smiled at her and she felt a definite thrill filter through her, although whether from excitement or a tiny needle of fear, she wasn’t sure.
“So, we’re basically waiting for Roger, as usual. Is that it?”
“Oui, Mademoiselle. We are waiting again aujourdhui.” Laurent finished his coffee and stared out at the Gulf, its startling blueness twinkling in the sunlight. His eyes looked suddenly hooded and careful.
It occurred to Maggie that he might have had other things he’d prefer to have done than shepherding her around the south of France for the last four days.
“Call me Maggie, please,” she said quietly.
He turned to look at her and smiled. 
“Merci,” he said.

4
Maggie stood with her back to the room interior and faced the little garden. A jumble of flowers and weeds, it looked as if it had been untended for years, yet was more beautiful for its neglect. Geraniums exploded in uncontrollable bushes of rich reds and oranges to border all sides of the waist-high stone walls which enveloped the tiny plot. Roses grew wild everywhere in snaking vines along the ground and up a rotted wooden trellis that reached towards the French doors and the patio where Maggie now stood. Over the garden wall, she could see the Mediterranean Sea, just a patch of it but enough to fill her with delight. The air was fragrant with the scent of lemons and roses.
“C’est magnifique, n’est-ce pas?”
Laurent stood to her left, a glass of white wine in each hand, his eyes squinting against the sunlight, his voice light and familiar to her.
“It’s beautiful.” She turned and held her hand out for one of the wine glasses. “You know the people who live here?”
“Maggee, no one lives here!” He gestured at the ruin of the place: the garden a tangle of weeds and garbled, wayward shrubbery, the panes broken out of the French doors. There was a small wooden table in the one-room cottage with two shaky benches propped up against it.  
“But, I don’t get it. A view of the sea, and we’re not that far from Antibes, right? I mean, it didn’t seem like we are. This property must cost a fortune, to just let it rot like this? It’s unbelievable.” She walked out onto the patio with her wine. He followed.
“It is not a good house.” Laurent shook his head and looked around the room. Paint had peeled off in strips to lay in crinkled husks on the floor.  
“I don’t care if it’s the local crack-house, Laurent, the location is everything. I mean, they could tear this place down and build a nice little house on the site, don’t you see? I mean, look at that view!”
“Incredible, non?” Laurent smiled proudly, as if he’d had something to do with the view.
“It really is, and nobody lives here. I wonder if it’s for sale?”
“I do not think so.”
“No, I wouldn’t ‘sink zo’ either,” she said playfully, mimicking his accent. “It’s beautiful. The whole area is. I’d never been to the Riviera before. At least now I know what all the fuss is about. Mind you, the major fuss has to be the prices. I mean, one BLT at the Hotel Splendid cost over thirty bucks! A bottle of Perrier there cost almost ten dollars.” Maggie felt suddenly uncomfortable, as if Laurent’s silence and the quiet beauty of the cottage were working together to unsettle her. “When did you say Roger would be coming with Nicole?” She turned to face him, her back to the panoramic blue view.
“It might be a little while.”
“What is a little while? Hours?”
“Oui, Maggee, hours, yes.”
“I see. And we’re to stay here?”
“This is where Roger—“
“I know, is bringing Nicole. But, I mean, there’s nothing here for us to do. Couldn’t we have waited in Monte Carlo? Or Antibes? I mean, three hours of hanging out here and I’ll be loopy, you know what I mean?”
Laurent smiled.
 “We will not be bored during our wait, I promise you that. You have enjoyed seeing the Cote d’Azure, oui?”
“Yeah, it was great.”
“Et maintenant, you will see a part of France that is not for la touriste, eh? Come, bring your wine.” He turned and scooped up a small backpack and moved out into the garden. Maggie followed him.
“Laurent?”
“Oui?” He took out a small tablecloth and spread it carefully, ceremoniously, across the weeds, the buttercups and the violets.
“Est-ce que vous aviez connu ma soeur?”
He looked up briefly at Maggie as he began to unpack the small canvas bag of picnic supplies.
“Non, Maggee, I met your sister but only once and too briefly. I am sorry.” He took out a large jar of mushrooms swimming in olive oil, two long baguettes, fresh pears, strawberries, a small wheel each of Gouda and Edam cheeses, and a roasted chicken pricked with toothpicks of baby onions.
“You’re doing all this to help out Roger?”
“He is a friend.” He looked up at her again and smiled. “Une ami de coeur.” A friend of the heart.
“He’s told you about Elise?”
“He said she was a girl who had trouble. A lot of trouble.”
“That’s true.” Maggie dropped down quietly onto the tablecloth next to Laurent. She picked up a pear. It felt fat and juicy in her hand. “When did you buy all this stuff? I never saw you do it.”
“Ahhh, the French, we are clever, non?”
“And Roger never really knew her either.” She put her hand on Laurent’s sleeve and he seemed to freeze under her touch. “But you’ve heard stuff. You heard about her, didn’t you, Laurent?”
He sighed and finished emptying his knapsack: napkins, forks, another bottle of wine.
“What you hear in a town like Cannes is...” He shrugged.
“Look, Laurent, don’t try to spare my feelings, okay? I know my sister did drugs and she had this baby, you know?  I mean, I really don’t think you can tell me stuff that is going to surprise me about Elise. So if you know anything about her...”
Laurent turned without speaking and put his large hand on top of her slim one. His eyes were dark and kind and he looked into her face. “You would not be shocked,” he said, “mais non, and in my country, to have the bèbè  with no father is...not so terrible” he shrugged.
“ I want to know about my sister, Laurent. Please, tell me what you’ve heard.”
“I have heard nothing very bad. That perhaps she smoked marijuana and she was toujours a part of the folie á deux, you comprends?  She always was choosing the wrong man, comprends-toi?”
“You’re not telling me what you know.” Maggie moved her hand from his and picked up the jar of mushrooms. She examined them carefully, watching them bob and float in their oily mire. “But I imagine you’re right about the men she chose. She was an artist. Did you know that? She painted? She came to Paris six years ago.” Maggie put down the mushrooms and stared out to the Mediterranean.
“You were close with her, yes?” Laurent tore a piece of bread off and offered it to her. She took it absently.
“Oh, a long time ago, when we were kids, really. When we got older, she began to dress odd and hang around with weirdoes and stuff and she wasn’t interested in college or anything.” She looked at Laurent and suddenly wondered what it would be like to kiss those full lips. She turned away. “Not at all like me. I always knew what I wanted to do. And I liked college and I liked outfits that, you know, matched. We weren’t anything alike. She scared me a little and that’s funny because that just now occurred to me. And if you knew her, you’d think I was crazy because she was totally unintimidating. Sweet and maybe a little goofy, but not a ditz, or anything. And I think she had real talent. Anyway, she came over here to go to school. And our folks thought it would be good for her. I don’t know why they thought that. Maybe she was just this major embarrassment to them back home and it was easier if she did her goofy mayhem from a few thousand miles. That’s an awful thing to say.” She looked at Laurent and found him watching her intently. “I loved her.”
“Bien sûr.”
“And I can’t believe, I still can’t believe that she wanted the kind of life she wanted.”
“It was not a life that you would have chosen.”
“Are you kidding? Smoking and shooting dope?”
Laurent made no response.
“And having babies out of wedlock? Maybe y’all do that sort of thing over here and it’s no big deal, but it’s a definite faux pas where I come from.”
“Perhaps that is why your sister came to France, non? It is, for her, a world that understands her better than your world.”
“I guess that was my main problem with her. I just couldn’t believe that she could live the childhood we both lived—going to the beach and the mountains, with our own ponies and private schools and stuff, and she could say, after all that, she could say ‘nah, it’s not for me.’” 
Laurent poured her a glass of wine and began to open the cheese.
“She just dropped off the face of the world. At first, she wrote a little, but soon she stopped going to classes and then she stopped writing or calling.” Maggie looked at Laurent and erupted with a sudden burst of anger.
“Did you know she’d been pregnant, had the child—Nicole was over a year old—Elise was still calling us from time to time...and she never mentioned that she’d had a baby? Never mentioned she’d gotten pregnant and was now a mother? Can you believe that?”
“Your mother and father, they were very angry?”
“No, no, they were worried. But, I don’t know why more wasn’t done.” Maggie pushed her thick, dark hair from her eyes.  “God, I hate myself for thinking they were afraid they might have found her if they’d gone looking for her and maybe she’d want to come home and be the crazy artist in their neighborhood and around their country club and stuff.” She looked into Laurent’s eyes, her own misting slightly. “Why am I thinking that? My parents adored Elise. Trust me, they did.”
“But they did not look for her?”
“Well, yes, sort of. I don’t really know. It was about three years ago and I was all caught up in my job and stuff, I mean, I knew it was all going on but I was super busy at the office. I’m in advertising.”
“Ahhh, I see.” He nodded and smiled politely and Maggie found herself feeling stupid again.
“It’s a really great job,” she said. “I write the words, you see, for the ads. You know? Television commercials and stuff?”
Laurent nodded while he unscrewed a jar of fragrant tapènade and rummaged in the basket for a knife with which to spread the olive mixture.
“Anyway, it’s a great job,” Maggie repeated, her eyes watching the blue horizon that was the Mediterranean as it merged with the blue southern sky. “Very fast-paced and exciting. You meet a lot of interesting people, too. Plus, it gives me a creative outlet. I think that’s important.”
“Creativity is important,” Laurent finally said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling a puff of blue smoke between them.
“It’s essential,” she said, looking away. “I’ve wanted to be an ad copywriter ever since I saw the first Volkswagen commercials...you remember the ones? ‘Think Small’? Remember?” She turned to watch his reaction.
“I don’t watch much television,” Laurent said.
“It was a magazine ad.”
“Ahhh.”
They were quiet for a moment. From across the courtyard and down the vineyard-studded hills, she noticed a colorful, flapping line of laundered clothes starkly visible against the landscape of browns and muted greens. The clothesline bucked and twisted in the bright sky like the gay signal flags she’d seen on the yachts moored in the harbor at Monte Carlo.
“And now we have no idea of where she is, if she’ll ever even contact us again or if she’s dead.” Maggie brushed a dusting of pollen from her cotton dress. “Maybe my folks thought that this was a stage she was going through and she’d snap out of it, resurface some time and be normal when she finally came home. I’m sure we all thought she’d eventually come home.” Laurent reached over and took her hand in his. She looked at him, her eyes full of tears. She blinked the tears down her cheeks and the burly Frenchman leaned over and kissed her gently on the mouth. She felt the comforting coarseness of his rough face against her cheek. Slowly, she moved toward him, he, simply yielding and making no other move. She folded herself against his broad chest, smelling the soap and sunshine in his blue cotton pullover. A moment passed and then he lifted her chin with his fingers and looked into her wet blue eyes. He kissed her. His tongue pushed gently past her lips into her mouth and his arms tightened around her.
Maggie was vaguely aware of the Mediterranean sun caressing her bare arms and legs, and of her cotton sundress pulled high across her thighs. She could smell the redolent mixture of olives and lemons and sun-sweetened grass and roses. And when she held Laurent and felt him kiss her, she felt nothing else about Elise or Nicole or Atlanta or her own fears of failure.  


Chapter 3
1
“I flung myself down the availing sewer and lay there gasping for what seemed hours but what was, in actuality, only mere moments. Having successfully eluded them, I then crept from the gaping maw of the stinking, pestilence-riddled hole and immediately saw the girl.”
Roger paused briefly and accepted another mug of coffee from Laurent’s thermos.
Maggie sat next to Laurent, a proprietary closeness between them. No awkward “should-we-have-done-that?” aftermath for them. From the warmth and exhilaration of their sweet union late that afternoon until now when they sat quietly near one another, it was clear that a very right thing had developed between them. But now her thoughts and eyes were focused on the wee, crooked comma of a child that sat draped in the cotton tablecloth that had been spread beneath the two lovers only hours earlier. 
Roger had brought her twenty minutes earlier. She was small—smaller at six years than Maggie had imagined she’d be. All the Newberry women were leggy creatures—lanky girls and tall women. All except Maggie who was the recipient of the family’s good-natured teasing for her sole petiteness. Sole, it seemed, until now.
She wanted to gather the huddled, frightened girl into her arms, to hold her and make her feel the love and care that her American family had for her, even though her initial attempts to do just that had been quickly rebuffed by the child. As soon as Maggie saw Nicole, she reached out to touch her, wanting to hug her, to connect with her. Instantly, the girl had recoiled, yet, Maggie detected no recognition of pain or fear in the girl’s large, brown eyes or their flat outward gaze.
 Now, Maggie sat motionless as Roger told his story.
“I’d ditched the blighters, right enough,” Roger said, taking a noisy sip of his hot coffee, “so I just dashed up to the tyke, grabbed her up quick as you please and off we went. Well! They saw us, didn’t they?”
“They did?” Maggie’s attention moved briefly from the girl to Roger. “Was Gerard with them?”
“Eh? Gerard? Absolutely! Yes, he caught sight of me himself. ‘Stop with that child!’ he called out to me. I continued to run. Must’ve run bloody miles, in fact, I’m sure of it. Carrying the girl, there. She’s a lot heavier than she looks, I must say.”
“And did Gerard follow you?”
“Follow me? Dear girl, of course he tried to follow me. I was nipping his nipper, so to speak, wasn’t I? But we dodged into some bushes that were along the way and, well, there you are.”
“Where are we? You jumped into some bushes and he gave up?”
“Maggeee...”
Maggie looked at Laurent who smiled at her admonishingly and touched his finger to his lips. “Let Roger tell it.”
She nodded and looked back at Roger.
“Well, he gave it a mighty search, did our Gerard, all the time cursing frightful things! The mouth on him, I say, we captured her back just in the nick, say what? A few more months of that sort of language and we’d have a right little Femme Nikita on our hands!”
Maggie glanced at the shivering girl-child and could hardly imagine a less likely possibility. Elise’s baby, her own niece, flesh of her flesh.  
“Does she speak English?” she asked suddenly.
“Ahh, no, as it happens, she does not. However, I shouldn’t think that’d take but a tick to remedy. You know how fast youngsters pick things up. She’ll be rattling out American slang before you know it. Cowabunga-duding with the best of ‘em. Wouldn’t you say so, Laurent?”
Laurent didn’t answer but looked at the child.
“Has she eaten?” Maggie smiled at the girl.
“Yes, nabbed her right after tea-time, I did. As for myself, thanks for asking, I am a bit peckish. Wouldn’t have a stray pickle sammie hanging about would you?”
Laurent seemed to  snap himself out of a daze. 
“There is some chicken left,” he said.
“Does she respond to her name?” Maggie asked, kneeling beside the girl and laying a gentle hand on one bony shoulder. It twitched violently beneath her touch.
“Why don’t you call her and see?”
Maggie spoke softly, gently to the child.
“Nicole? Bonjour, Nicole.”  
The child lifted her head and looked at Maggie. The eyes were blank.
“She knows her name.”
“It would appear so.”
Laurent reappeared with the remains of their picnic lunch and offered it to Roger who quickly fell upon it. Maggie cut a small piece of Edam and wedged it into a shred of bread. She presented it to Nicole who simply stared at her. Maggie put the food morsel into the child’s small hand then touched the girl’s forehead with the back of her hand. Again, Maggie’s touch was light and again, the child flinched in response to it. Maggie had an impulse to gather the child up into her arms and hold her tightly, as if by doing so she could make it all right again. For both of them.
 Her niece. Her own sister’s daughter. She could see no strong resemblance to Elise or anyone in the Newberry family, but then she never could see likenesses in people. The child’s hair was dark, unlike Elise’s. Her eyes were wide and dark and fringed with thick lashes. Her full bottom lip quivered slightly. Maggie tried to imagine  Nicole as a part of their family, with a place at the Thanksgiving Day table, her own stocking at the hearth, and knowing her new grandfather’s jokes and feeble puns as well as the rest of them do now. Was it possible that this little collection of bones and tremors would someday be a laughing, happy, integral part of the Newberry clan in Atlanta? Maggie knelt down and carefully pulled the child into her lap. She lay her cheek against the little girl’s hair and closed her eyes. Nicole did not resist her.
2
“You did well, me bucko, quite well. I’m impressed.”
“It is not like that, Roger.”
“Well, whatever it’s like, old boy, I’m, nonetheless, impressed. Although, I must say, to get paid on top of your, shall we say, pleasure of the moment? seems a bit much under the circumstances, don’t you think?”
“I think I am a lucky man, Roger. Give me my half of the money.”
“Yes, yes, well, I suppose it’s just one of the perks of the job. Next time, you go out and get muck up your pant legs and I’ll stay back to comfort the dove, eh what?”
“Whatever you say, Roger. Where did you find the little girl?”
“Right where I said I’d find her. You know the place. Does it matter?”
Laurent shrugged and counted his French francs.
“Don’t trust me, Laurent?”
“Anyone can make the miscalculation, Roger. Do not be offended.” He looked at his friend and smiled. “And I think we have miscalculated how long this business would take place.”
“What are you saying?”
“I think I need to go to America to finish our business.”
“Finish our...? Oh, I see. Well, that’s up to you, of course.” Roger stood up and dropped a few coins onto the table. He reached down and finished off his Campari and soda. “But I’d be careful, old man. They do things quite differently in America. Take it from me.” He clapped the big Frenchman on the shoulder. “Quite bloody differently.”
3
Maggie scanned the crowd at Hartsfield International Airport for her parents. Big John and diminutive, auburn-haired Elspeth, the Southern beauty queen, the Newberry matriarch. 
She glanced down at her charge who huddled by her side. Nicole looked even less like a blood relation this morning, Maggie thought. She was so dark—more like Maggie—while the rest of the Newberrys were fair—but unlike Maggie or her family, Nicole’s features were blunt and full. Her eyes were round as an owl’s and dark, like unfathomable, bottomless pools. Her face was oval and her chestnut brown hair cascaded to her shoulders in an unruly curtain. She was a pretty child, Maggie decided. Perhaps even beautiful.
The child had spoken not a word the whole trip. She’d given no indication that she needed to go to the lavatory, wanted water, was hungry, was fatigued, or even fearful. Nothing. She had sat in her seat, her new, airport-bought outfit making her look like a refugee from Disneyland, and stared out the window of the airplane. Maggie had spoken to her in French and then English. No response.  
Maggie thought she saw a glimpse of her mother’s beautiful hair, tucked—but not quite hidden away—under a long blue silk scarf and she began to usher Nicole in that direction. She saw her father standing next to her mother and she waved.  They looked fretful as their eyes searched the crowd for her. She watched them, her waving hand faltering a bit. In a flash, she realized that they were not really looking for Nicole. She could see the look in their eyes. In a strange, inexplicable way, they thought they would see Elise. Maggie’s hand dropped to her side and she felt sick with the intensity of her parents’ grief and longing. She looked down at Nicole, who stood motionless beside her, her little face set against the crowd, against Maggie. They would not find their Elise here, Maggie thought sadly.
“Maggie! Darling! John, she’s over here.” Maggie looked up quickly and smiled at them. She propelled the child forward and Nicole walked robot-like into the arms of her maternal grandparents.
“Darling, you’re here!” Maggie felt her Mother’s hug, and the light, familiar scent of Chanel No. 5.
“Yes, yes, we’re here,” Maggie said as she watched her mother bend over to greet Nicole. Elspeth touched the child without hesitation, ignoring Nicole’s unfriendly response of jerking her head away to stare down the long airport corridor. Elspeth smiled at the child with true joy and hugged her to her. Maggie could see Nicole stiffen but she did not totally resist the hug.
“Long flight, darling?” Maggie’s father leaned over and quickly gave her a squeeze.
“Not too bad,” Maggie said. “Well, here she is. She doesn’t speak any English.  Nicole? Ceci ton grandmere et grandpere, comprends-toi?  Maggie straightened up and shook her head. She’s been through a lot.”
“Of course she has.” If Elspeth Newberry was less than impressed with her brand-new and only granddaughter, she did not show it.
The child stood quietly among them.  Her eyes, framed by her thick eyelashes, seemed pushed into her wan, elfin face like bits of charcoal in dough.  Her shoulder-length brown hair was limp and dirty.  
“It’s just going to take a little time,” Elspeth Newberry said as she knelt beside the child, the silken hem of her designer dress dusting the airport tile. “And we’ve got lots of that, don’t we, ma petite?”  She touched the girl’s face with her hand and looked into those dark, expressionless eyes. “Yes, we’ve got plenty of time to get to know each another.”
Maggie’s father shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
“Brought Brownie with us,” he said. “He’s out by the car.”
“Brownie?” Maggie looked at her mother.
“He didn’t want to come in, dear.” Maggie’s mother stood up again and shifted her purse to her shoulder. “He thought it should just be the family when we all met.”
Maggie was glad Brownie had come. Her childhood boyfriend, Brownie tended to be the great stabilizer of upsetting or too-exciting family events.
“Where’s your luggage, darling?” John Newberry touched her on the shoulder and looked around as if someone would be delivering the valises to them where they stood.
“They’re at baggage claim. That’s great that Brownie’s here. Did he call you?”
Elspeth took Nicole’s small hand in her own and began to lead the child away.  
“Yes, he did. Brownie’s such a dear.”
“Yeah, Brownie’s okay.” Maggie suddenly realized that she could use some of Brownie’s effortless humor about now. She couldn’t believe the trip was over. Ten days? Had that been all?  Did jet lag make it seem longer? Her heart twisted slightly at the memory of Laurent standing at the Nice Airport departure lounge, his big hands shoved in his pockets, his feet planted solidly in a I-won’t-be-budged stance. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that good-bye was the next step in their relationship? Why had it taken her by surprise the fact that he would, of course, stay and she would go? She shook her head and smiled at her dad who was walking behind Elspeth and Nicole and watching them closely. He’s trying to find something of Elise in her, she thought. 
*****

“You’ll come to see me in Atlanta?”
“Of course.”
“And we’ll write in the meantime?”
“I am not very good at writing in English.”
“I could write you.”
“I have no...how you say? address of permanence with which to give you.”
“Oh.”
“But I will love you from here. If you do not hear from me very soon, you will remember, n’est-ce pas?  Remember Laurent loves you.”
“Je t’aime, aussi, Laurent,” she had said, stunning herself by the sudden knowledge of the truth of it.  And, as she had felt with Elise, she knew in her heart that she would see him again.
“You’ll call me, right? And you’ve got my number in Atlanta. Laurent, this is so hard.”
“Just remember, cherie. Remember that Laurent does not forget you.”
*****

Maggie put her hand into her father’s. He squeezed it.
“You did a fine job, darling.”
“Thanks, Dad. It was a pretty amazing experience.”
 “Did you hear anything about your sister?” His voice dipped to prevent Elspeth from hearing.
“I...well, really, no, Dad. I mean, people knew her and all...”
“Ahhh.”
“The French can be impossible,” Maggie said with no real heat or conviction.
Her dad squeezed her hand again and then released it. He rearranged his grip on the piece of luggage they’d collected from baggage claim.
 Maggie scanned the parking lot for Brownie. The sky was bright and welcoming in the late afternoon. She began to feel weary from the trip.
“What do you think of her?” Her father appeared also to be searching the horizon for Brownie although surely he knew what direction to look in if he’d parked the car, Maggie thought.
“Well,” she said slowly. “She’s been through quite a lot. I don’t know how Gerard treated her and he’s had her for about four months now. If he’s as big a shit..er, jerk, as I think he is, that’s plenty of time to put someone through some real changes. Especially to someone who’s this vulnerable.”
“Do you think she’s your sister’s daughter?”
Maggie opened her mouth to speak and then shut it again. She looked at her father who continued to look as if he hadn’t the slightest clue as to where Brownie and the car might be.
Maggie searched his face and then stole a look at the pair who walked ahead of them. Her mother was still chattering to the girl—mostly in French, but occasionally in English—while Nicole hobbled reluctantly beside her.
“Ah, well, I’m sure she is,” he said in answer to his own question. “Doesn’t look very much like Elise but then, I’m not sure you’d have been taken for my daughter immediately.” His eyes sparkled, but Maggie read the soft doubt behind them. The four trudged through the airport parking lot, the heat of the Southern sun beginning to push Maggie down further into her steps. She watched the little rigid back move ahead of her next to her mother’s graceful one.
4
Maggie straightened the pillow on the bed in her parents’ guest room, then allowed herself to fall into it. It felt wonderful and yielding to sink into the soft bed, her long day behind her. Is there a more satisfying feeling than falling asleep in the bosom of your family home, surrounded by the special things of your childhood, she wondered? She enjoyed this room in her parents’ house even more than her own cozy little apartment on Peachtree Road. It was decorated lovingly with memorabilia from Maggie’s girlhood. A wooden framed portrait of Maggie, age eight, on her pony, Snark, hung on the wall amid many such family snapshots and framed postcards from past holidays. A gilded mirror hung over an antique maple dresser.
The room was done in yellow and white eyelet and smelled of rose potpourri. Maggie loved to sleep in this room, even though it had not been hers as a child. Her own room, downstairs, had been made over into a music room with an upright piano, a guitar, a banjo (her father’s amusement one summer), and a harp that went largely unplayed if not unstrummed.
Good ol’ Brownie, she thought sleepily. He served, as she knew he would, as the distraction they all needed. He’d hugged Maggie hard and pumped little Nicole’s hand, not having the sense the rest of them had to be delicate and wary with her. In any event, he’d caused even less reaction in her than they had, proving, probably, that it didn’t much matter how they behaved with the poor kid as long as they watered her and gave her food. Maggie flushed briefly at her lack of charity and turned to burrow down further into the cool cotton sheets.
“Never been to the South of France myself,” Brownie had prattled happily, a shock of his thick brown hair flipping down into his eyes as he drove them all home from the airport in her dad’s Jaguar. “Wouldn’t mind catching the beach scene, though.” He winked at Maggie in the rear view mirror and she rolled her eyes at him, but lovingly. Brownie was always good to have around. Merry and fun, he was the perfect foil for any even slightly tense occasion. He used to be quite seriously in love with her too, she knew—perhaps he still was just a little—and maybe that was a prerequisite to being merry and fun and always handy when you’re needed.
 He had taken gentle control of the mundane and boring activities no one else wanted to be bothered with: unloading suitcases, greeting servants with jollyness and feeling. Maggie realized in the midst of her gratitude to him that she felt a dull pulse of guilt too. Because she did not care for Brownie in the way he hoped that she someday might. And because, as uplifting as it was to hear his big-man’s laugh and to react to his silly jokes, he only reminded her that he was not the one she loved. 
She’d known him since they were ten and thirteen years old. He’d taken her to almost all her high school prom dances, had always been present in one way or another at Christmas get-togethers and birthday parties, he’d even come along on a few family vacations. Although he was closer in age to Maggie’s older brother, Ben, there was never any mistaking whose friend he was. Brownie had loved Maggie from the beginning.  He took no refuge in the Newberry clan, his own family had money and loved him dearly.  If he had known that his very presence would make her miss another man to the point of physical pain, he would probably have removed himself from the Newberry’s home and never returned.
Maggie turned over and caught a whiff of her mother’s roses, growing in profusion right outside her window. Several had been captured in a crystal Waterford vase on her bedside table. She loved her mother’s garden. Even Elise had counted it the best thing about Brymsley. Everyone called the Newberry house “Brymsley” and no one was quite sure how the name got started. The people who had lived in the place before—almost forty years ago now—their name hadn’t been named “Brymsley” either. 
Maggie watched the sheers on her window puff towards the bed and then go slack as the gentle Georgia night breeze cooled the house. It seemed to waft the lovely rose scents right into the bed with her.
She thought back to the moment earlier that afternoon when they had all pulled into the long drive. She loved that moment the best, always savored the first sighting of the house. Maggie guessed correctly that there would be little visible effect but it was still hard to resist looking at Nicole to see her reaction to the estate. As for herself, she felt the same happiness and belonging that she always did when she came home. Not too large, certainly not by the standards of the neighborhood which showcased the biggest and the best in Atlanta homes, Brymsley was covered in a tangle of magnolias, weeping willows and oak trees that gave the mansion a feeling of intrigue, even masquerade.   
Maggie smelled the bedside roses and closed her eyes. She remembered so many late night, under-the-cover giggles with her sister in this house, teasing and conspiring together as they never did in the daytime. And as sleep began to claim her, Maggie found herself wondering if Elise’s little foreign-born daughter—sleeping now in Elise’s old room—had ever heard her mother laugh.


Chapter 4
1
The parking ticket dispenser stuttered abruptly then stopped without the tongue-like flick proffering the needed ticket to park for the day. The machine simply burped to a halt. Gerry leaned out of his BMW and smacked the machine with his hand. It whirred and spat out several tickets at once. He grabbed one while the orange-striped arm at the entrance barricade lifted to allow his car into the garage. He glanced at the mangled ticket in his hand as he drove through. It was dated a year ago. Great, he thought. And these bloodsuckers will probably try to collect from me when I leave tonight. He smiled pleasantly at the parking garage attendant who was busy ticketing some poor unfortunate who had no doubt overstayed his welcome in one of the “visitors only” slots.
Gerry parked his car, hopped out and wriggled into the coat jacket he’d tossed onto his back seat. It was a fine day. Last night’s pitch to Huffy Tractor Lites had gone very well. He’d been in his best form, anticipating questions, offering suggestions in an “even-if-you-don’t-hire-us-as-your-agency” manner—ingratiating and fluid. He had felt only a little nauseated in retrospect. It used to help that his wife didn’t take his business seriously, even if he had to.  Darla was a light touch in a feverish world, gorgeous, bright, witty, and—odd for this day and age—devoted to him. He knew, in his own defense, however, that the feeling was absolutely mutual. 
Darla had always teased him about the amount of “servicing” his clients required. Lately, her teasing was becoming laced with less humor and more irony.
“You hate being a slimy weasel, Gerry,” she had said this morning before his lips had even touched his coffee cup. “Why do you do it?”
“Oh, that’s nice. Please, let’s bring the children in to hear this, shall we?”
“We only have one child.”
“Thank you for that information, Darla.”
“Gerry, I’m just teasing you, but it really is a nasty business.”
“Darla, do you mind? It’s still what’s putting the curl in your coif, the Oil of Olay on your dermi, you know?”
“Surely, I could afford to get my hair permed if you worked as an accountant or something. In fact, I know a woman whose husband works at the hardware store down here on Edgewood? And she always has great looking hair.”
“I like my job.”
“You don’t like having to make like a vacuum cleaner, do you?”
“Very pretty, Darla. Very nice. And besides, you don’t know anything about it. It’s called ‘value-added,’ and it’s what makes the difference from one ad agency to another. Anybody can whip up an ad and call up the right TV and print people. But it’s service that keeps your clients coming back for more.”
“You used to like your job when you came up with ad ideas and stuff. Now that you own the company, all you do is kiss people’s bottoms and smile in the spots that used to make you yawn.”
“Whatever you say, Darla.”
She’d gotten right up his nose this morning. Why was she pulling all that crap? Did she want him to quit his job? Give up the business?
“I know!” he’d said to her, “I’ll start a new business concept in advertising! I’ll call it the Fuck-You school of client servicing.”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
“It’ll be great! When a client asks if I can get him tickets to a Braves game, I’ll just say: “What do I look like, you grubby-fingered slime-bag? Like your baseball pimp?!?”
“All right, Gerry...”
“And besides, ball-bearing face, what does baseball have to do with your product, anyway, you sleezoid, blood-sucking, filth-ball...?”
“Perhaps there’s a happy medium...”
Gerry entered the elevator and punched the floor button. Didn’t he make a good living? How many thirty-two year old guys owned their own company? Sometimes he didn’t understand Darla. Did she think he was unhappy? He wasn’t unhappy. He was very damn happy.
He marched off the elevator and nodded curtly to the receptionist positioned like a marine in her guard box just inside the foyer of Selby and Parker’s. 
“Maggie in yet?” he called over his shoulder as he thundered down the hall to his office.
“Yes, Gerry,” the receptionist chirped. “She signed in an hour ago.”
Gerry stopped at one of the offices, his briefcase dangling from one hand. He pushed open the door and put his head inside.
“You’re back?”
Maggie turned in her chair and swiveled away from her computer screen. She was wearing a deep, emerald green suit that dramatically accentuated her coal-colored hair pouring off her shoulders. He was surprised to see her looking so pretty. Usually, as fond of her as he was, he neglected to notice her in the physical sense. Today, she seemed to radiate allure. He found it quite unsettling.  She smiled up at him.
“I’m back.”
“You look good. What’s the deal?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’s the deal?’ Oh, I’m getting married at lunch, that must be it.”
“No kidding, you look really good. Did something happen?”
“Will you stop being so offensive? Do you mean, did I have a religious experience or something that’s given me an extra glow? Or, am I pregnant?”
“You met somebody over there.”
“You’re amazing.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?” 
“You’re incredible.”
“So, what, did you... like, meet some frog, boff him, have his child, win over a small village and then think you could just show up for work like I wouldn’t notice or something?” He moved into her office to get a better look at her. “Who is he?”
“He’s a Frenchman.”
“No shit. And I was gonna ask if he was Iranian, but then I’m no good at guessing games. I figured he’d be French, Maggie.”
“He was really something, Ger. Do you want to hear about him?”
“Yes, yes, how about lunch? You can tell all. Just remember, nothing gross or anything that involves describing the swapping of body fluids while I’m trying to eat, okay?”
Maggie rolled her eyes at him.
“Noonish, okay?” Gerry smacked a rolled-up sheath of papers against his thigh. “Meanwhile, let’s do traffic. Would you get Dierdre or Jenny to call the meeting over the PA? I haven’t even had coffee yet.” He hurried on down the corridor to his office while Maggie dialed the front desk to talk with Jenny.
She’d stopped at her apartment on the way to work that morning from her parents’ house to see if Laurent had called. He hadn’t. There had been a couple of hang-ups on her answering machine that she chose to believe were Laurent’s refusals to talk to a machine. She was irritated with herself that she hadn’t insisted he write her in French.  She could always have dragged her College French textbook off the shelf and figured it out. 
In spite of that, she was aware that a part of her was gearing up to forget him, a thought that would’ve been unthinkable at any time yesterday. Today, she let open a small window of possibility that she might never hear from him again.
“Staff traffic meeting in the conference room, please,” the public address system whispered in wall-rattling tones. Their receptionist was new. 
Slowly, Maggie gathered up her work diary and the week’s photocopied schedule of jobs in-house and proceeded into the conference room.
Selby  and Parker, once Selby and Associates, was a friendly little ad shop of ten employees and 1.2 million dollars in billings. None of them were going to retire any time soon on the fees of their clients but they were comfy for the moment. Up until last year, Gerry had been just another copywriter, like Maggie. But the death of their then president, a nefarious, wheeler-dealer Australian by the name of Nigel Barnes, had left a clear path for someone with guts and initiative to take over the helm. So, with the bulk of his life savings and the support of his wife, Darla, Gerry had stepped in to fill the void.
Gerry and Maggie sat down at the small conference room table. Gerry nodded for Jenny to close the door as she left. In addition to Gerry and Maggie in the conference room, there was the agency art director, Bob Mason, the senior art director, Pokey Lane, the media buyer, Dr. Patricia Stump, and the traffic manager, Dierdre Potts. 
Gerry, seated at the head of the table, began the meeting by indicating that he wanted the meeting short, to the point, and everyone back at work racking up those billable hours as soon as possible.
“All right, Dierdre,” he said briskly. “What have we got on schedule for the week?”
2
Gerard Dubois slammed the gear into place and accelerated loudly up the steep incline. So, Elise’s sister has been and gone, has she?  He sped up the rough-stoned pavement that skirted the little village of Mandelieu, narrowly missing an old woman and her flower cart coming down the same road. She’s taken her precious niece and vanished. Skulked off, like the thief she is, thinking she had fooled Gerard Dubois! Thinking she had cheated him of his own daughter. The arrogance of the bitch! To believe that her American dollars could buy her anything she wants.  He would kill that bastard Englishman for his part in this. Shake every centime out of him that he earned in the deal and then cut his stinking English heart out of his breast with his own pen knife.
3
“I’m afraid it’s going to take awhile.” Elspeth Newberry spoke quietly into the phone, as if worried her little granddaughter seated next to her could understand her words. “She’s very unresponsive. Mostly just sits by herself and stares. She doesn’t even seem to want a toy or a stuffed animal to cling to.”
“What did the doctor say?” Maggie shifted the phone receiver to her other ear and absently pushed the shift key to bring the document she was working on back to the screen.
“He said she’s basically fine, a little undernourished—“
“Surely he commented on her mental state.”
“He recommended she be seen by someone.”
“Someone.”
“A psychiatrist.”
“He thinks she’s damaged goods.”
“Maggie, please. She’s been through a rough few...well, her whole life has been rather unfortunate, I’m sure.”
Maggie scrolled down on the letter she had started to Laurent and leaned back in her swivel chair.
“So, if the doctor thinks she would benefit from it, are you going to find someone?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to wait and see what a stable home life and love will do for the child.”
“Could take years.”
“Maggie, you know I don’t believe—“
“I know, Mom. You don’t believe in psychotherapy, but Nicole isn’t some shallow, self-absorbed teenager who’s trying to rebel against her folks, or some bored housewife who needs to have a nervous breakdown to get some attention. She might be seriously ill.”
“She’s only five years old.”
“I don’t know what to say. The doctor recommended—“
“We’re going to keep her with us for awhile.”
“Mom! I’m not saying send her to a loony bin, I’m saying—“:
“Margaret, I know what you’re saying and I  am saying that I am not convinced the child needs to be examined by a psychiatrist just yet. Am I being clear?”
Maggie turned away from her computer and glanced out her office window. The sky was a hard wash of blue-gray with a battalion of puffed-wheat clouds moving quickly across it, their edges heavy with the promise of rain. “How’s she been this morning?” she asked.
“Well, she ate her cereal and she seemed to like that. And she responded briefly to Butter. Now, I thought that was a very good sign.”
Maggie tried to picture the child attempting to play with the Newberry golden retriever. The image wouldn’t gel.
“Responded how?”
“She looked at Butter. Butter bounded through the dining room and Nicole turned her head and watched her for a moment. It’s just going to take a while.”
“Do you get any sense of Elise in her?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Mother, you know what I mean. Does she feel like she’s Elise’s daughter to you?”
“Well, of course she does.”
Yeah, whacked-out and difficult, Maggie thought before she could stop herself.
“Well, anyway, keep me posted, okay? I’m sure you’re right. Bit by bit, day by day she’s bound to start trusting you and coming out more.”
“I’m sure of it. Will you be coming by for dinner tonight, dear?”
“No, I’m seeing Brownie, but maybe tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
“Tomorrow will be fine. Oh! I’m having your father add another security system to the house and we want to talk with you about adding one on your apartment too, Maggie.”
“I don’t need it, Mom.”
“I know you don’t, sweetheart. It’s not for you, it’s for me and your father. We have trouble sleeping knowing you’re in mortal danger.”
Maggie laughed and so did Elspeth.
“Come over tomorrow if you can. And don’t worry about Nicole, Maggie. These things have a way of working out.”
“I know, Mom. Love to Dad and Nicole.”
“I will, darling. Good-bye.”
“Bye.”
Maggie hung up and turned back to her document on the screen. What had Gerard done to her? She sighed and rested her fingers on the keyboard. Come to that, what had Elise done to her?
Between poor Nicole and what was starting to look like a Franco One-Night Stand, Maggie felt the beginnings of a bone-wracking fatigue wash over her.  Would raising a handicapped child in their twilight years serve to assuage the guilt her parents felt about their younger daughter? Would it help them pay enough dues for a good night’s sleep? Maggie rubbed her eyes wearily.
“Ready to talk about Hi-Jinks Kiddee Wear?” Gerry poked his head in her office door, a pair of disposable diapers pulled down over his face.
Maggie smiled and slowly gathered up her notebook.
“Product testing?” she said as she followed him into the conference room.
 

Chapter 5
1
The summer passed in Atlanta in a steamy swelter of wilted magnolias and scorched traffic knots. Polo ponies fainted from the heat in Alpharetta, church picnics never began before sundown, and hundreds of the city’s children found themselves in emergency rooms suffering from dehydration or heat stroke.
The humidity was an amazing eighty percent or more nearly every day, and this without a single drop of rainfall. Roses shriveled up like insect husks draped on a fence, and the Georgia Power electric company became richer still as air conditioning units operated at full bore all over the city.
Darla watched the leotard-clad group of women go through their paces, each with a long, fluorescent thong cleaving their pert rear-ends. Darla tried to imagine doing an aerobic workout with a piece of her clothing clamped uncomfortably in this manner and found herself regarding the women with a whole new respect. The music the women were dancing to in the large gymnasium was loud and the words unintelligible to Darla. Their leader, a trim young woman with hair pulled into a ponytail on the top of her head like Pebbles Flintstone, bounced and kicked and squealed her encouragement to the crowd. Her large breasts were just barely restrained in her scant lycra leotard top. They were the only part of her that jiggled, Darla noted.
“Sorry I’m late. Been waiting long?”
Darla jumped at the sound of Maggie’s voice although she’d been waiting ten minutes and expected her.
“God, you’re edgy.” Maggie and Darla hugged quickly. “I thought suburb living was supposed to be calming.”
“It is,” Darla agreed, hefting her gym bag to her other shoulder. “It’s coming into town I find unnerving.”
“Oh,” Maggie made a face of understanding. “Coming into Buckhead, huh?”
“Gerry just about shit when I told him where I was meeting you.”
“I’m surprised he let you come.” Maggie led the way to a set of empty lockers. She tossed down her duffel bag. “He’s so paranoid about the crime in town these days.”
“We had words about it,” Darla admitted. “Maybe it’d be best for my marriage if you and I agreed to have lunch together someplace in Roswell or Smyrna next time, Maggie.”
Maggie sat down on the bench in front of the lockers and looked up at Darla. “Is that all that’s bothering you, Darl?” she asked.
“It’s nothing,” Darla said. She placed her bag down and began rummaging around inside it, extricating gym clothes, deodorant, aerobic shoes and socks. “I’ll tell you about it sometime when we’re both too bored with talking about everything else first.”
Maggie continued to watch her friend.
“Really?” she said.
Darla stopped digging in her bag and looked at Maggie.
“Really,” she emphasized. “Besides, it’s you I want to hear about. What happened in France? Gerry said you met someone.”
“I did meet someone but it turned out to be nothing.” Maggie pulled off her slacks and folded them loosely before placing them at the bottom of one of the lockers.
“How, nothing? Come on, Maggie, this is Darla, right?”
“Yeah, I know. Well, okay.” Maggie held her lycra biking shorts in one hand and looked at them as if doubting the chances of squeezing into them. “He was one of the guys who helped us get Nicole back. He and I had a thing.” She shrugged. “I fell for him, Darla,” she said, tossing the shorts down and sitting on the little metal bench. “He was so capable and kind. I wish I could tell you. He was soothing to be around but also exciting....and I fell for him. Really hard.”
“And you haven’t heard from him since you got back.”
“It’s been nearly three months.”  
“You really didn’t know him very long.”
“True.”
“Was his English very good?”
“Better than my French.”
“But y’all were able to communicate okay?”
“We managed, I’d say, wouldn’t you, Darla?”
“Oh, dear. Gerry hadn’t mentioned this part. You mean you slept with him?”
“God, Gerry is such a prude. I guess he thought he was protecting my reputation or something by not telling his own wife?”
“You know Gerry.”
“Anyway, yes, I slept with him. It felt right at the time.”
“And now it feels like you got used. I’m sorry, Maggie.”
“Me, too. You know, Darla, I hate to forever destroy the sophisticated image you probably had of me but I haven’t slept with a lot of guys and none that I didn’t know pretty well.”
“So he was special. I can understand that. I don’t think the man who preaches the Baptist service at our church would, but...”
“But this one just hit me hard, you know?” Maggie pulled off her blouse and slipped a T-shirt on. “I mean, where the hell am I going these days? I work ten hours a day, work out in an all-women’s gym—for what, I might ask?--so I can continue to look good in my Macy’s designer dresses to impress clients?” Maggie pulled on her socks and aerobic shoes and began lacing them up. Darla sat down next to her on the bench and put a hand out to calm her.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s okay, Maggie. It’s not all for nothing.”
“I want stuff that I don’t have, Darla,” she said. “Stuff I don’t even see on the horizon, you know? Husband-stuff, children-stuff, sharing my life with organisms other than a cat kind of stuff.” She paused. “I don’t even own a cat.”
“Sweetie, you’re just lonely. It’s not the end of the world.”
“How long were you single before you met Gerry?” Maggie asked.
“Me?”
“Yeah, really. How long were you on your own before—“
“I didn’t get a chance to be on my own. I envy you that, Maggie. I really do. I mean, you know for sure that you can take care of yourself, all by yourself.”
Maggie shook her head and resumed lacing her sneakers.
“It makes a good story, Darla,” she said. “And I appreciate the effort, but you know as well as I do that it takes no great brains or skill to buy your own groceries and get the rent check into the apartment office on time. Living alone is not that tricky. So, failing that,” Maggie stood up. “what other reason can you think of to envy me?”
Darla leaned over and gave Maggie an unexpected hug.
“I love you, Maggie,” she said.
Later that night, Maggie returned to her darkened apartment on Peachtree Road. She flipped on the lights, made herself an iced tea—knowing the caffeine would probably keep her awake but not caring, kicked off her espadrilles and heaved herself onto her couch. Her polo pullover was stained and she felt the weariness of the hot day settle onto her shoulders. The air-conditioner in her apartment hummed loudly, reassuringly. She glanced up at the stark, high-tech wrought-iron clock on the living room wall. A little after seven. She wished she’d stopped in for dinner at Brymsley now. Wished she’d just showered there, changed into something cool and crisp of Elise’s (her sister still had most of her clothes in her old room, although,  it was all in black or checkered gray, hardly cool and crisp attire for a 102-degree Atlanta evening)  and just burrowed deep into the cozy recesses of her family.
Instead, she’d come home to shower and eat alone. She fingered the brief postcard absently. A bill from Macy’s, the electric bill, and a postcard from Cyprus. 
 It was just like she’d told Darla. She’d been stupid and she’d gotten hurt. She looked at the postcard again.
Dear Maggie -Hope this finds you well. Having a bit of a holiday in
 Cyprus...and an adventure too, I must say. How is little Nicole? 
Doing well, I trust? Take care of yourself, then—
Best regards, Roger Bentley.
Maggie caressed the little dog-eared postcard, an artist’s pretty blue and white rendition of the city of Paphos in watercolor on the picture side. Even bloody Roger felt pity enough to drop her a line, she thought.  
The phone rang and she debated whether to let the answering machine handle it. She was in no mood to have to be polite or social. On the other hand, it could be some poor, unsuspecting telemarketing rep and that might prove to be just the thing for her current temper. She picked up the phone before the answering machine engaged.
“Yes?” she snapped into the receiver.
“Mademoiselle Newberry? This is Margaret Newberry?”
Maggie held her breath, then,
“Laurent?”
“Comment?”
“Who...who is this?”
She sat up straight on the couch, the postcard fluttering from her fingers.
“Je m’ap...I am Gerard Dubois. You are knowing me, yes? I am Elise’s boyfriend? Votre...your sister?”
Good God! Gerard. Was he in Atlanta? Maggie stood up slowly, her heart pounding furiously in her chest, the hand holding the phone was immediately clammy.
“What do you think I want, do you think?” The voice was high and nasty. Maggie dully detected a fuzziness to it too, as if alcohol had been the aperitif to the call. “I want my little bèbè that you and your family stealed from Gerard. You are surprised, yes? You are not thinking Gerard would come for his little girl?”
“You can’t prove anything.” Maggie felt the panic creep over her like a painful acid. This cannot be happening, she thought with horror.
“I am not needing to prove anything, Mademoiselle. I have talking to Monsieur Roger Bentley, yes? You are familiar, yes? Monsieur Bentley?” Maggie’s eyes flicked automatically to the postcard on the floor. “He is telling me that you have Nicole. Is true, n’est-ce pas?”
Maggie suddenly understood why he was calling her. This phone call had nothing to do with getting the child back. It had to do only with how much the Newberrys wanted to keep her.
“You want money.”
“And Elise said you were so stuupeeed.”
“Shut-up about my sister, you filth!” Maggie was trembling with rage  and almost didn’t hear the click as the man disconnected the line. “Hello?” Shaken, she dropped the receiver back into its cradle and sat down hard onto the couch.
Oh, God, now what was she going to do? She couldn’t contact him and he was going to try to take Nicole away and she couldn’t even go to the police. (“Exactly how did the child come into the United States, Miss Newberry?”)   She covered her eyes with her hands and hunched over her knees.
The phone rang again and she snatched it up.
“Yes?”
“I will not have you speaking to me like that. You are a pig, comprenez? Pig? That you steal m’enfant. And now, you will give me five thousand American dollars from your rich papa, I do not care...you will give me it ce soir. Immediately! You are understanding me?”
Maggie’s mind raced: her father would still be at the club. Did he have that kind of money lying around? The banks wouldn’t open until nine tomorrow.
“Where?” She watched the hands on her living room clock spasmodically twitch off the seconds across its face. It looked vaguely malevolent to her now.
A high-pitched giggle assaulted her from the other end. Then:
“You will come with the money to the car park at the Lenox Mall, you understand? Les grandes magazins? The shopping stores?”
“How will I--?”
“Park your automobile. Gerard will find you. Perhaps when I find you, I will screw you first, eh? And then you give me the money. Ha! Ha! You will pay Gerard to be screwed!”
Maggie felt perspiration form on her face. The man might be insane, she thought. Could he have somehow gotten into the country with a gun? Could he have gotten one since arriving?
“What time?” she said, her stomach twisting in nausea.  
“Three hours. Exactement.”
Maggie looked at the wrought iron clock again.
“Twelve o’clock,” she said.
 He hung up.
Maggie took a deep breath, then picked up the phone again and dialed the number of her father’s club. Would he have the money? What if he didn’t have it handy? Should she call Brownie? How can our customs and immigration people let such scum into the country? Don’t they have eyes? Does this Gerard-monster look normal? Does he look like some sort of safe, boring French tourist or something? Should she bring a gun? Her dad would have one. God! She thought suddenly: she couldn’t tell her father the full story behind why she needed the money. He’d never let her meet this creep all alone in a darkened mall parking lot.
“Hello? Cherokee Country Club.”
“Yes, could you please see if my father is there tonight? John Newberry?”
“Yes, of course, Mr. Newberry is upstairs. One moment and I’ll connect you.”
“Thanks.” How were they going to make sure Gerard Dubois didn’t bother them again? How were they going to get him out of their lives permanently?
Then, her dad’s strong, gentle voice was on the line.
“Hello, sweetheart? What’s up?”
3
The towers surrounding Lenox Square, the Southeast’s once super-eminent shopping mall, loomed over all avenues leading to the retail complex. Mingling with the massive, full-leafed trees that lined nearly every street in Atlanta were the “me-too” office structures, strange testimony to an architectural confusion the city seemed intent to promote. The combination of trees and towers gave the part of Peachtree Road that led directly to the front of Lenox Square a feeling of secrecy,  as if anything could be hiding behind them, from an upscale book store to a fast food restaurant, to a maniac with a hunger for killing.
Maggie left the lights and late-night traffic of Piedmont Avenue and, turning right, drove slowly down the subdued stretch of Peachtree Road in front of the Financial Center and the Swissotel.
She glanced briefly at her purse in the seat next to her. Five thousand dollars in one hundred dollar bills. Almost like her father had expected to need it handy one day. 
“Are you sure this will be enough to help your friend, Maggie?”
“Yes, Dad. I’ll be able to give you full details later.”
“I understand.”
“It has to do with Elise, Dad,” she’d blurted.
“I understand, Maggie. I trust you that you, personally, are in no danger?”
“Of course not.”
“Very well. Call me when it’s done.”
And he hadn’t wanted any more than that.  
Maggie shivered. A part of her was sorry that he didn’t want to know it all. That he hadn’t demanded the truth. But he really didn’t want to know. He wanted to throw money at it, to trust Maggie that this would be the end of it or, if not the end, then that money would handle it again next time. Did she really believe that about him? She stared at the slightly winding, too-dim road ahead. Elise would have believed it.
Maggie waited at the light and glanced up briefly at the Swissotel which ascended to the west of the shopping complex and wondered if Gerard Dubois was registered there. More likely, he was settled in at one of the pimp-cribs downtown where shootings and drug overdoses were as prevalent as clean towels. Probably more so. 
Sitting at the traffic light, a movement caught her eye, like shifting vapors behind the trees whose unruly branches were so long they reached out and nearly touched her car.  Would Gerard come on foot, she wondered?  She stared into the somber web of trees and thought she could make out the form of someone standing there, watching her. Within seconds the light changed and the half-seen figure dissolved into the deepest shadows until she wasn’t sure she’d seen anything at all.  Slowly, she turned into the nearest parking area of Lenox Square. 
Her eyes darted to the full width of the parking lot as she drove cautiously to the building entrance. There were only a few other cars in the lot, the mall having closed two hours earlier. 
She decided she was too nervous to park very far away from the mall itself. Even as a darkened, abandoned hulk, it seemed to serve as a source of security to her, perhaps from years of mindless, depression-solving shopping junkets there.  She peered closely at the nearest car—about a hundred yards away—as she parked her Mitsubishi. There didn’t appear to be anyone in it, but of course, he could be hiding, crouched down on the floor boards.
A cold wave of fear fluttered over her. Carefully, while scanning the dimmed parking lot, her fingers fumbled for the small leather-encased tube of mace she kept at the end of her key chain. The parking area was almost quiet. Only the faint hum of traffic from Piedmont came filtering down to her in the little cement valley.
Don’t these places have mega security? But there seemed to be no activity, no movement anywhere, as if, when the doors had closed at ten and the last shopper had finally been expelled, the whole shopping arcade had been vacated by managers, restaurant workers, maintenance and clerks as well.
She had tried to call Brownie earlier but there was no answer. Probably on one of those “sexless” dates he insists he has, she thought.  She was sorry now she hadn’t left a message on his machine.  She gripped the steering wheel tightly and felt the knots in her stomach clench and unclench and clench again.
Would this be the end of it? Would he just take the money and fade away? Was Roger okay? What about Laurent? Does Gerard know Laurent too? Her stomach tightened again.
She heard the car before she saw it. Sitting bolt upright, clutching her mace tightly, she held her breath as the car approached. It crept slowly towards her, its headlights turned off. Inside, Maggie could see two people, one head—considerably lower than the driver’s—looked like it belonged to a small child. For one irrational moment she thought: my God, he’s taken Nicole! The dark-colored car pulled up next to her and stopped.
Maggie gaped at the car’s driver. His face was illuminated by one foggy streetlight overhead and Maggie could see, with surprise, that Gerard was handsome. She was stunned that the man who would destroy her sister, torment her niece, and blackmail her entire family—could actually be something other than physically repulsive. Even reminding herself of Ted Bundy’s precedent didn’t change the mixed feelings she now had as she looked at the man.
“Mademoiselle?” His voice broke the silence. High and ugly, it distorted his pleasant face and created a leering visage of wickedness. “Gerard is here, n’est-ce pas?  You have the money?”
Afraid to take her eyes off him, Maggie fumbled for the packet of bills in her purse and tossed it through her window into his hands. Instantly, she started her car and pushed the gear into place, ready to peel out and away from the man.
“Attendez!” he shouted at her and she thought for a moment he was going to get out of his car. The form next to him, huddled in the shadows, hadn’t moved at all.
“You don’t have to count it,” she said breathlessly. “Now, leave us alone, do you understand?” Maggie knew her voice sounded frail and she hated herself for it.
He laughed, a shiny web of spittle forming on his lips.  How could Elise have loved this? Slept with this?  Maggie shivered, the hand on her stick shift still holding her tube of mace.  
“I give you a little something too, eh?” He pushed his face through his driver’s side window, so close that Maggie could smell the wine on his breath. She was suddenly angry to think he had been out having dinner somewhere, enjoying a glass of wine or two, while she’d been scraping up five thousand dollars and worrying her father.
“Never contact us again. Do you understand? We’ll call the police next time.”
He spat at her, a fleck of the spume grazed her cheek as it splattered against her car door. Her foot slipped from the clutch and the car stalled. Before she had time to re-start it again, she saw Gerard lean over the child seated next to him in the car, jerk open the passenger side door and push the form out onto the parking lot tarmac.
“A little something I don’t want anymore. Maybe you will like it now, no? With the compliments of Gerard Dubois!” He slammed the door shut and drove off with a squeal of tires. Maggie watched, shocked and aghast as he drove away, leaving the lumpish bundle of clothes, arms and legs in a heap on the ground. She stared at the body. It twitched slightly and then moaned.
Quickly, Maggie jumped out of the car and ran to the body of the woman on the ground. For now it was clear that it was not a child at all. 
“Hello, can I help you?” Maggie knelt next to the woman and touched her shoulder gently.
The woman moaned and struggled to raise up on one elbow. Maggie could see she’d scraped her arm in her forced exit from Gerard’s car, but her hair hung in tangled sheets of brown snarls, obscuring her face.
“Are you French? Parlez-vous anglais?”  Maggie scanned the darkened parking lot for any sign of another person, perhaps a cruiser? Security?
“I am American.” The woman croaked out the words as if unused to speaking. “Where...where am I?”
In an instant, Maggie grabbed the woman’s arms and pulled them away from her face, the woman weakly resisted her as she did so. Maggie touched the ravaged face, pulling it towards her, her fingers pressing into the woman’s skin. Their eyes met, one pair hunted and cloudy, the other wide and disbelieving.
It was Elise.



PART  II
“Rose-Lipped Maids Are Sleeping...”



Chapter 6
1
Maggie stood quietly in her living room, a bulky cardigan pulled tightly around her. The heat of the Southern night had given way to a chilled moistness—a result more of her spirit (or lack of it) than any actual temperature fluctuation. Twice, she’d nearly picked up the phone to call her parents and twice she’d stopped herself. She rubbed her arms as if to bring a surge of warmth back to them and looked down at her sister sitting on her couch, her feet tucked up under her.
Elise looked like an older version of herself. Like a police rendition of her sister as a hag or a bag lady. At twenty-nine years old, she looked nearer to fifty. Her hair was dry, probably hadn’t even been combed in months. Her face was lined and haggard as if it had formed every possible exaggerated expression of woe and mirth and had no elasticity left. She was thin and her clothes smelled as if she lived in them. But it was her eyes that were the worst. Protruding in their sockets, they looked at Maggie with hunger and despair.
Elise clutched a coffee mug upon which was scrawled: Smart Ass White Girl.  Maggie tried to remember where she’d gotten the ridiculous thing. Elise’s lips were cracked and sharp like a bird’s beak, she drank as if she’d not quite mastered the skill.
“I wish you’d sit down.” Elise’s hands clutched the cup as she brought it to her lips. Maggie wouldn’t have been surprised to see the mug shatter between her fingers.
“Are you in any pain?”
Elise looked up at Maggie and smiled. Her eyes were filled with such angst that Maggie wanted to weep for her. Oh, Elise, what happened to you?
She had bundled her sister into her car and home in a fluster of tears and questions and hugs. Elise had been too weak to do much but simply receive Maggie’s barrage of affection and queries. She had dozed on the short ride back to Maggie’s apartment.
Maggie had prattled and wept and rejoiced as she drove, quickly imagining her parents’ joy, their self-absolution to learn that Elise was back and alive. Even little Nicole would be cured, Maggie felt, when she was reunited with her Maman. And, as she pulled into her apartment driveway, her right hand still holding tightly Elise’s bony, withered one, Maggie knew they would help put her right. Whatever was wrong with her, whatever was hurting her, would be banished and eliminated.
Now, as she sat watching Elise in her small living room, Maggie felt her whole world move into place with a resounding, satisfying “click.” She thought of her parents’ pain this last year, of how far they had come in saying good-bye to the daughter they believed they had failed.
“Elise, Mother and Dad have been so...” Maggie screwed up her face to keep the tears from coming.
“I know, Maggie.” Elise set the mug down on the coffee table as if it were Spode china.   She looked up at Maggie, her face an encyclopedia of suffering as if to say: what is the pain of these rich people compared to drug addiction? The loss of one’s baby?  Degradation? What do you know about pain?
Maggie felt her sister’s indicting gaze and turned away from it.
“I don’t know what all you’ve been through, Elise. But I know what our parents have been through.”
“And none of it was necessary.”
Maggie turned to regard Elise and her sister smiled at her. Maggie sat down slowly on the couch next to her.
“You’re...you’re not in pain right now?” she asked softly.
“I’m a junkie, Maggie. That’s not clear to you?”
The words stabbed at Maggie’s heart. Other people, Elise. God, other people.
Elise laughed and rubbed her hands across her face. She looked around the room, smiling cheerlessly as she did so.
“You’ve got sort of a knack for color, Maggie. I’m surprised, I guess.”
“Elise, I need you to tell me what happened to you.  What happened to you over there? I don’t know anything. You were out of touch for so long. And Gerard. God, explain to me about Gerard. I guess you know Nicole is with us?”
Elise stared at the room.
“Your room at home was always so...orderly and organized. You’d always have everything in its place.” She shrugged sleepily and reached for her empty coffee mug.
“I’ll get some more.” Maggie got up and walked to the kitchen to pour another cup.
“But no style. No color or flair or...life.”
Maggie returned with the steaming mug and handed it to her.
“And your room was a shambles,” Maggie said.
“Full of life.”
“Yeah, teeming with it.” Maggie smiled nervously at her and Elise smiled back. She felt in awe of her sister back from the grave. It occurred to her that so completely had she accepted Elise’s disappearance and probable demise that she had plunged headlong into the process of grieving her, so that she now felt off-balance and inadequate. 
“I loved him,” Elise said. “From the moment I laid eyes on him.” She looked directly into Maggie’s eyes. “I loved him and I needed him.”
Maggie swallowed painfully.
“And all you see is this...miscreant that could dump me out of a car or beat me up, oh yeah, he did that a few times. Nicole, too, for that matter.” She shrugged. “Enough times.” Her eyes returned to their casual inventory of the living room. “She was born with a heroin addiction, you know. Such an awful thing to endure...the sound of a helpless baby screaming, not for food or to be changed...” She looked back at Maggie and smiled weakly, sheepishly. “But because she needs a fix.” She drank her coffee in silence.
Who are you?  Suddenly, Maggie wanted to leave, not to have to hear everything she knew Elise was going to tell her. Not to have to keep it all from her mother—through the happy times, warm times, close moments that she was sure were still ahead of them. To listen to Elise—and she had to listen to her—was to help her keep her awful secrets for the rest of their lives. And to continue to love her through it all.
“She was such a sweet little baby,” Elise said moodily. “I’ll be needing some stuff, soon, Maggie. I’m sorry, darling. You’ll have to help me.”
Maggie didn’t know what to say. Need her to help kick the addiction or need her to help score some drugs? She decided not to push it until the actual moment was upon them.
“Gerard was...he became everything to me. I don’t suppose you can understand that. Oh, especially since you probably think he’s this terrible monster, but even if he were the neatest, sexiest guy in the world, you still wouldn’t understand throwing yourself totally into him, would you? Just devoting yourself.” Elise sounded very satisfied with that phrase. “I was devoted to him. And it felt wonderful, Maggie. Better than any accomplishment. Better than painting something wonderful or feeling like I looked beautiful or better, even, than when Nickie was born. I’d never be able to explain it to you.”
“He was like a drug.”
Elise looked over at her.
“Maybe you do understand. Yes, exactly. Like a drug.”
“And even when the drug turns bad, lets you down, hurts you...”
“Ahh, well.” Elise shrugged and set her coffee mug down again.
“How did you get here? To the States? Why did Gerard bring you with him?”
“I scored the money for the tickets. But you’re right, he didn’t have to bring me. He could’ve taken the money and gone without me. I think he was delivering me back to my family. To your care.”
“Maybe he thought he could humiliate you this way. Or us.”
Elise just smiled.
“How did you score the money?” Visions of Elise wheeling and dealing with nefarious underworld characters for the price of cocaine and smack alongside Mediterranean piers and ports sprang quickly into Maggie’s head.
“I may not look like much to you now, Maggie, I know. You have a memory of what I used to look like, I suppose.”
My God, she sold herself. Maggie nodded to indicate she understood.
“You really don’t want to hear where I’ve been, do you, big sister?”
The tears formed at the rim of Maggie’s lashes.
“Yes, I do, Elise,” she said. But her heart whispered, no.
“When I first met Gerard,” Elise said, burrowing into a little nest of cotton throws and satin pillows that studded Maggie’s plush couch, “I knew he would be my future. I saw him on the Rue de la Paix. Can you believe that? You know,  the café where they say if you sit there long enough you’ll see someone you know? Well, I saw him and I knew him. In my heart.”
Maggie settled back into her own chair.
2
Elise smoothed the creases out of her wool skirt and looked again at the young man who stood watching her from across the crowded outdoor café. She sipped her demitasse and wondered, well? Is he going to come over or not? She knew she looked very French yet with a certain piquancy that only an American living-in-Paris-for-the-first-time can possess. After her art classes were over for the afternoon, she’d taken to spending an hour or so at the Café de la Paix with her sketchpad getting ideas for her next canvas or for class assignments. She knew what sort of picture she presented, with her golden blonde hair tucked under a coal black beret, her sketch pad at the ready, and her intense blue eyes (everyone always said so) scanning the crowds for the next worthy subject.
She’d known from years of drawing that everyone wants to think you will want to draw them. Women pushing baby prams always slowed in front of her as if to say: You want to draw something, Mademoiselle Artiste? Wait till you see me. Or my baby. Elise had loved the thought of selecting and rejecting. It was a game, a transaction of sorts and the whole world was open to playing it with her.
And he was not the first young man to stand watching her, wanting to be noticed by her, to be with her.
When he approached her table, gently tossing down his cigarettes and matches as if to claim possession of it and her, she had kept her smile far away from her eyes.
“You are an artiste, oui?”
He was narrow, almost delicate, with strong, white teeth. The better to eat you, she had thought excitedly. His clothes were shabby but clean. He was a student, like herself. Young, good-looking and in Paris with no job or responsibility to make him boring. They both had the freedom to flirt and make love and dream unachievable dreams of a life together. A life filled with healthy, cherubic babies and the world wanting to buy her paintings and wanting to read his books. Gerard was going to be a great French novelist.
Gerard Dubois. From the moment he saw her sitting there at the famous café—and she never went back again—he had captured her. 
“I am a painter, yes,” she had responded carelessly. 
“Americaine?”
“I live in Paris.” She loved to hear the sound of it. J’habite á Paris.
“In the dormitory, yes?” His eyes loved her, lapped her up, seemed to glory in her.
“Mais, non.”  She began sketching him, afraid her hands would shake too much to make anything but a mess, but not caring as long as it made her look more the fantasy she believed he had already created of her. “Je vis seul.” She looked up from her sketch to find his eyes. “Alone.”
“And you are to become a great artiste, non? Paris is the city for the artiste and for lovers, of course. Gerard, he was born in Paris.”
“How wonderful for you.” And she’d meant it. How extraordinary to claim this city, the City of Light, as the one that gave you life. 
“For an artiste, Paris is the only one, n’est-ce pas?”
“It’s why I’m here.”
“And you must not leave. Not ever.”
She stopped drawing.
“I never will.”
“Toujours, petite Americaine. You will always stay in Paris.” You will always stay with Gerard.
“Toujours.”
From there they had been swallowed up in a spin of activities belonging strictly to lovers. They visited the flea markets on Saturday mornings, fingers intertwined tightly, huddled into their greatcoats against the drizzle of winter days. They claimed quiet, early-afternoon cafés as their special snuggeries, slept late every morning in Elise’s tiny one-bedroom flat on the Left Bank near Notre-Dame, and before the gold had left the autumn skies to reflect the famous green-gray ceiling of Paris in winter, Elise had stopped attending classes at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts and had stopped writing or answering letters from home.
She had found a world, finally, that understood her. A world she had defined but never knew existed. She wore black, as she always had growing up, but now her world encouraged the black to be the limp, thread-bare ebony fabrics that draped off one like graceful spills of Spanish moss from a tree branch. Her new world explained that grime and the absence of care gave her wardrobe the desired patina that all her painstaking fashion planning could not. She learned to let go. She had smoked marijuana in high school, but her new world was too sophisticated to be impressed. The people in her new fraternity used needles. Silver-thin, beautiful spines that pierced her unpocked flesh in an experience that made her high school pot-smoking look sophomoric and ridiculous.
She was an artist and she saw the world differently. Finally, she was living in a world that understood her vision, encouraged and inspired her brilliance. And Gerard applauded louder than anyone. Gerard with the milky-white skin, the doe-brown eyes that spoke love even in the throes of a crack-induced half-coma, even when he was hurting her. Because that was a part of her new society too. To be truly wretched, to be honestly and completely in despair was a feeling of pleasure to Elise that she found nearly unbearable. And she sought this drug, the singular intensity of this high more earnestly than any other. And Gerard, beautiful, sensitive, loving Gerard was the only pusher in town for this particular brand of agony.
She used to believe, long after she stopped painting and all her brushes and canvasses and oils were gone, that if she had never gone to Paris, never met Gerard, she would simply have walked through her life in America, in Atlanta, like some servomechanism or automaton going through the motions of eating, and painting and loving and dreaming...with some essential core inside her faulty or nonoperable.  When she thought of how closely she’d come to living a bored life, a pedestrian life of appointments and movie dates and Sunday dinners, she trembled.
3
“I’m sorry about Mom and Dad.” Elise picked at the cheese sandwich Maggie had placed before her on the coffee table. They’d switched from coffee to decaf, although it was pretty clear nobody was going to be sleeping that night. “I think I thought I was doing them a favor by dropping out. I had this idea that now they could just mourn me and put me out of their lives.” She made a gesture in the air of wrapping up a box. “All the embarrassing questions and stuff, just tidy it up, cry some, and make it go away. Did they not do that?”
Maggie looked at her and licked her lips. They fell apart, Elise. Your little experiment in pain-management for other people just about killed Mother.
“You don’t remember them very well, I guess,” Maggie said.
“Ahh, that must be it. Very good sandwich, little sister. I don’t usually have much of an appetite. Perhaps you’ll change me all around....”
Maggie shook her head.
“I loved you,” she said, letting the tears come. “I was glad you went to Paris but I always thought you’d come back.”
“I know, darling. But coming back wasn’t good for me.”
“And this is? What you are now is better?”
“What am I now? Maggie, it’s not better for you, I know, or Mother...”
“Or Nicole! Ask her how much better it was for her when she was going through withdrawal and couldn’t even ...or now! Ask her now, Elise. The kid’s a basket case. You know she doesn’t even speak? Won’t even talk?”
“She doesn’t speak English, I’m afraid, darling.”
 "She doesn’t speak anything, Elise. Not English, not French, not baby-talk.”
“I don’t believe it. Nicole is a normal child—“
“Normal? She was born a dope addict!”
“She’s not addicted now, Maggie. That was years ago. She’s a normal little girl now. She talks as much as—“
Maggie leaned forward toward her sister. “Elise, I know you love Nicole. But Nicole is not normal. You’ll see for yourself soon. I guess, now that you’re back, things can start to be better for her.”
Elise didn’t answer, her Mona Lisa smile firmly back in place.
“Will we ever understand each other, will we, Elise?”
“I don’t think so, darling. Is it important?”
Maggie cleared away the sandwich dishes and coffee mugs, and carried them into the kitchen on a tray. She caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror as she returned to the living room and was surprised to see how fresh and relaxed she looked.  She didn’t feel that way at all.
“What do you want to do now, Elise?” Maggie sank down on the couch next to her. She carefully picked up her sister’s hand and held it.
“I want, darling, to get myself in order. I want my baby back. I want to see Mother again...and Dad, and hold them and not think that I caused them the misery  I know I did.” Her eyes looked clear and focused, and within seconds the two sisters were in each other’s arms.
“I can’t believe you’re back, I missed you so much.” Maggie put her arms around Elise, smelling the musty rankness of her.
“I know, mon chou, I know, me too.” Elise held her tightly, caressing her hair. They sat that way and rocked for a few minutes before Maggie pulled back slightly.  
“Shall I call Mother and Dad?”
Elise shook her head.
“Why don’t I get myself cleaned up first?” She gestured to her clothes. “I want to present myself to them, you know? Do you understand? Not like this?”
Maggie nodded.
“And Maggie, darling, I’ll need to score some stuff, sweetheart. I’ll need you to help with that.” Then, seeing the expression on Maggie’s face, “Just enough to get through seeing them again, after that, I’m kicking it, okay? I promise. But I can’t see them while I’m going through withdrawal, right?  I don’t want them to see me like this, Maggie, do you understand?”
Maggie didn’t answer.
“I have some for a little bit but I’ll need more soon.” 
Maggie couldn’t imagine where Elise had her little stash. She hadn’t come dumped with a purse or valise or anything. She felt strange knowing there were illegal drugs somewhere in her natty little flat.
“Let’s worry about it later,” Maggie said. “You know I’ll help.”
“Good, thank you, Maggie. And we’ll all of us be ready and fit to make work our brave new world.” She smiled sweetly at her.
“Nicole will be so happy to see you.”
“I expect she’s pretty changed since I saw her last. It’s been nearly a year, you know.”
“Mother’s been working with her.”
“I can’t imagine a better person to be mothering her. Meanwhile, I’m exhausted.” She rubbed her scraped elbow from Gerard’s dumping and laughed lightly. “Body-worn, jet-lagged and ready to sleep. Are you going to work tomorrow?”
Maggie nodded.
“Will you be ready to see Mother and Dad by this weekend, do you think?” Maggie asked.
“That should be fine.” Elise yawned and stood up from the couch. “You really don’t have to give up your bed to me, little sister. The couch would be fine. God knows, I’ve slept on worst.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Maggie said, as she stood up, brushing her lightly trembling hands against her jeans. “I’ll get an extra blanket for you.” Elise shuffled across the floor to the bedroom door and then turned.
“Find me something decent to wear tomorrow and I’ll get my hair hacked off or something...”
“Combed?”
Elise laughed.
“It’s a thought, anyway. “
“I’ll pick up a dress or something tomorrow at the mall, how’s that?”
Elise closed her eyes briefly and smiled.
“That’s wonderful, Maggie. Just perfect.”
Maggie snapped off the living room lamp and went to the hall closet for extra blankets. 
“Oh, Maggie?”
“Yes, Elise?”
“See if you could find something with some color to it, would you? Maybe a pretty pink or something?”
“Sure, Elise.” Maggie stood in the darkness for a moment, her arms still poised over her head, her hands resting on the closet’s top shelf. She heard the gentle click of the bedroom door as it shut.


Chapter 7
1
The headline lay bleakly across the front page: Intruder Robs and Rapes 2nd Victim. Dierdre smoothed the page flat with her hands. When are they going to get this guy, she wondered? She moved her mug of decaffeinated coffee closer to her and started to read the body copy.
“Maggie in yet?” 
She looked up quickly, and nodded to Gerry as he was coming in the front door. “Are you on the front desk today?” he asked. “Where’s Jenny?” 
“Sick, I guess.” Dierdre shrugged and managed a smile for Gerry’s scowl. 
“Again?” He snapped his own daily paper against his thigh. “What’s the deal here? She’s always sick. What’s the point of having a receptionist if she’s never here to receive? Oh, never mind.” He turned on his heel and stomped into the recesses of the office, presumably to wind his way down the corridor to the kitchen where Dierdre had a pot of coffee perking away.
She looked back down at the newspaper article. “An unidentified young woman at the Claymore Apartments was awakened in the middle of the night by an intruder who told her to put a pillowcase over her head...”
“Hey, Dierds, is Gerry in yet?”
Maggie leaned over the receptionist’s desk to sign the agency attendance sheet.
Dierdre nodded, “Uh huh, just got here, he—“
“Where’s Jenny? Man, that girl is hopeless. What is it this time?”
“I don’t know. Just sick.”
“Gerry is in, did you say?” Maggie hurried down the corridor not waiting for a reply.
Dierdre sighed and straightened the paper back out. “...after which she was sexually assaulted by the man, said to be in his early thirties.  Detective Lieutenant John Burton revealed to the press that the woman was made to...”
The phone rang and Dierdre gave another sigh, pushed the paper away and picked up the receiver before it could ring twice.
“Selby & Parkers, good morning,” she said, wondering if this day was going to be as long as it felt.
“Have I got news for you.”
“I hate it when people tell me that. Don’t tell me that.”
Maggie pulled a chair up to Gerry’s desk, and settled her briefcase on the floor.
“Guess what.”
“I don’t like guessing. Just tell me.” 
“Elise is back.”
“What are you talking about? Your sister? What do you mean ‘back’?” 
“I mean, she’s here. In my apartment. Gerry, she came back!”
“Maggie, that’s wonderful!” Gerry stood up and squeezed her by the arms. “But how? How is she—“
“It’s a long story. She was trying to protect my parents by dropping out, I guess because some of the things she was involved in at the time. She thought it was for the best. Can you believe it?”
Gerry shook his head slowly. 
“Sort of unusual, isn’t it?” he asked.
“She had her reasons. But now she’s back and she wants to get back with the family and raise Nicole, and you know...integrate.”
Maggie looked so happy, so beamingly, foolishly happy that Gerry could only sit and smile woodenly at her.
“Man, that’s great, Maggie. Your parents must’ve flipped.”
“I haven’t told them yet.”
“You haven’t?”  
“Gerry, she looks like hell right now.  She looks like a junkie, okay?”
“Sure, Maggie. It’s just that, I don’t know, your parents thinking she’s still vanished off the face of the earth when she’s sitting in your apartment drinking Perrier and making tuna salad sandwiches...it just feels wrong to me.”
“It’s just till the weekend. I’ll call ‘em on Friday and tell them the news and then Elise and I’ll both go over on Saturday. If I were to call them now, they’d be over at my place and, I don’t know, Elise can be sort of funny. I want things to go as well as they possibly can.”
“Look, I’m sure you know what you’re doing. That’s great news that she’s back. Just terrific. How is she at answering phones? We need a new receptionist.” Gerry began shuffling through the papers on his desk.
“Gerry, will you stop thinking of yourself for just five minutes? I’m not finished here. I also met the famous Gerard last night.”
“You’re kidding.”
“That’s how I got Elise. Gerard called and demanded five thousand dollars or else he’d cause trouble with Nicole—“
“He called to blackmail you?” Gerry was incredulous.  
“Well, I guess he did blackmail me, because I got a hold of my Dad and he scraped up the money—“
“You paid some scum-ball blackmail money?” 
“Gerry, he was going to cause a stink about Nicole. I brought her into the country illegally, you know.”
“You did?” Gerry stared at Maggie as if seeing her for the first time.
“I told you all this!”
“You most certainly did not.”
“Well, that confirms that you don’t listen to me. Do you want to hear about Gerard, or not?”
“Speak.”
“So, I handed over the money to him—“
“When?”
“Last night, Gerry. All this happened last night.”
“Late last night?”
“Latish, I guess, around midnight in the parking lot at Lenox Square.”
“I cannot believe you were running around last night...I won’t even let Darla take the garbage out because of all the crime in this town and we live twenty miles away in Marietta!” He tossed a newspaper in her lap. “Read any headline! Read the funny pages! Nothing but murder and rape.”
Maggie scanned the headline.
“You make Darla take out the garbage?”
The media director, Patti Stump, stuck her head in Gerry’s office doorway and smiled at him.
“Are we meeting on Hi-Jinks, Gerry? I’ve got some time this morning.”
Gerry ran a hand through his hair in exasperation.
“Oh, God, I don’t know. I don’t really want to.”
“But we need to.”
“I know, I know. Okay, five minutes in the conference room. Maggie, you need to be a part of this too. That is, if you’re not busy committing any felonies between now and then.”
“What is your problem, Gerry?”
“My problem, Maggie, my problem is...” He looked at Patti, still hovering in the doorway and smiled easily at her. “Why don’t you go on ahead, Patti, and we’ll be right there.” She shrugged and left. “My problem is that I worry about you and you don’t have the sense God gave lettuce.”
“Thank you for that vote of—“
“And quit pissing around. Here I am worried sick about Darla and I have to worry about you too because you haven’t got brains enough to stay inside behind locked doors when the city’s crawling with maniacs and psychos. I swear, I feel like the whole world is squatting right on my shoulders, you know?”
“Gerry, I’m sorry—“
“Don’t be sorry. Be smarter. Please. I worry about everything, you know? I mean, give me a break, Maggie. I would greatly appreciate it.”
“Okay, okay.” She stood up to leave. “Gerry, it’s not all that important you know.” She waved her hand to take in the office. “I mean, it’s not worth having a stroke over.”
“Five minutes. The conference room. And...I am glad your sister’s back.”
She sighed, picked up her briefcase and walked to his doorway. She turned to look at him but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. She thought about calling Darla later. Maybe Darla could give her a better idea of what was going on with him.
She turned and walked down the corridor to her office and, pushing the door open with her hip, was startled to find Patti sitting at her desk.
“Hello, this is a surprise.” Maggie forced a smile. She wanted to oust the woman from her swivel chair and spend her five-minute grace period getting a mug of coffee. That didn’t seem likely now.
“Hey, Maggie, I wondered if you have a minute.”
“The same as you,” Maggie dumped her briefcase on the desk. “Five of them.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Well, I wondered if you might have some time to talk with me about a...situation I’ve got. Maybe you could give me some advice on how to handle it.”
“Really?” Maggie thought the whole morning was beginning to feel very surreal. “Well, sure, what can I do for you, Patti?” She perched on the edge of her desk, hoping it was hint enough to the media director to relinquish Maggie’s chair but not feeling aggressive enough to come right out and ask her to move.
“It’s a guy.” Patti blushed mildly and smiled.
Maggie was surprised. It hadn’t occurred to her that Dr. Stump might have another a softer, less snide side to her.  
“He’s very special and I’m hoping he will become a more permanent fixture in my life.”
 Maggie should have guessed Stump wouldn’t have a normal affair of the heart. It already sounded less like a love affair and more like she was shopping for a towel rack.
“That’s great, Patti. What seems to be the problem?” 
“How do I get him out of neutral gear? I mean, he seems content to keep things as they are. That is unacceptable to me.” She shrugged and smiled again. “I want more from him.”
“Hmmmm.” Maggie shifted uncomfortably on the desk edge. “That’s hard, Patti. I’m not sure you can force someone’s hand, so to speak. How long have you known this guy?”
“About six months. We’ve gotten pretty close.”
“Do you, like, want to marry him? Is that what we’re talking about here?”
“Marriage would be agreeable,” Patti said, smiling almost shyly. “Very agreeable.”
“Well, in that case, I’d just tell him what you want.” Maggie hopped down from the desk corner and began to pick out the materials she would need for the meeting. “I mean, you have rights in this relationship too. Just say: ‘I’m hoping this leads to marriage. That’s what I’m looking for with you.’ And then see how he reacts.”
Patti stood up slowly.
“Right, well, thanks, Maggie,” she said coldly.
“I mean, does that help?” Why did the woman always make her feel so tense?
“What do you think, Maggie? A man who is acting reluctant to forward a stagnant relationship? I’m to torch the whole project by pushing him to the point where he has no alternative but to reject me? What sort of help do you think that qualifies as?”
Maggie reddened and gathered up her notebook and schedules. Why did the cow ask her in the first place?
“Well, look, I’m sorry you don’t like my advice. But that’s what I’d do,” she said defensively.
“Sure you would, Maggie.” The smile had returned to Patti’s lips but it was not a nice one.
2
“I cannot believe you went out last night!”
Maggie pushed her half-eaten lunch away from her on her desk.
“I’ve already been through this, Brownie,” she said.
“Not with me, you haven’t! I could throttle you, Maggie. Do you have any idea—“
“Well, what about you!? Some help you’d have been if I had gotten mugged. I called you at eleven-thirty last night and you weren’t even home yet. On a Tuesday evening!”
“I didn’t go home last night.”
“Oh, really? All night?”
“Goddamn it, Maggie—“
“Oh, well, I’m sure it’s none of my business.”
“Maggie, I’d like to strangle you! Will you just tell me what the hell happened last night?”
“Well, if you’d calm down for a minute, I’d tell you.”
“There was a murder committed yesterday! In your neighborhood. Are you totally insane? Should I talk to your father about the wisdom of letting you have responsibility for yourself? Are you not old enough to have your own apartment?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“No, don’t! Just...look, just tell me what happened, okay?”
“If you’ll shut up for five minutes, I will.”
“I’ll shut up. Talk.”
“Okay. Gerard Dubois called last night around ten o’clock—“
“Oh my God...”
“...and said I had to come up with five thousand dollars immediately or he’d make trouble about Nicole. I couldn’t have him going to the police, Brownie!”
“Are you crazy? He’s probably a convicted felon back in France! He’d no sooner go to the police over here than—“
“Well, then he might call up my mother or something! He could harass us, Brownie. Do you want to hear my story or not?”
“Go on.”
“So I got the money from my Dad.”
“Did you tell your fath—“
“No, no, no, but I think he figured it out what I wanted the money for.”
“Jesus! And he didn’t stop you?”
“Well, maybe he’s just not as good a father as you’d be, Brownie.”
“All right, all right, I’m sorry, go on.”
“So I met Gerard at the parking lot over at Lenox Square...and don’t tell me the woman was murdered right across the road because I already read all about it, now what’s done is done. I gave him the money and he gave me Elise. That’s all.”
“I see. How does Elise look?”
“She looks fine, thanks for asking.”
“Maggie, don’t be a pain in the ass. Forgive me for caring about you. I’d like to come over tonight, or will y’all be at Brymsley?”
“No, we’re not going over until the weekend.” Maggie paused for a moment. “But you can come over tonight if you want.” What was there about competition that made a man seem just that much more interesting?
“I’ll be there at eight.”
“Make it nine, could you? I’m clothes-shopping for Elise after work. And we’ll have already eaten.”
“Fine. Nine, then.”
“Sorry about the squabble.”
“Yeah, me too. Bye.”
Maggie hung up the phone and stared at it. Something, besides the obvious, did not feel right about that phone conversation and she wasn’t sure exactly what.
A layout of the ad she’d written yesterday lay on her desk where the art director, Pokey, had dropped it earlier. It was for a client who owned a plant nursery. Maggie noticed she must have dripped coffee on the edge of the presentation board. The colors blurred in a muddy version of the originals, displaying dark fronds of blue and aqua instead of green, pink terra-cotta pots and yellow blossoms. The colors mingled pleasantly, companionably, quite inoffensively, it seemed to Maggie, and she found herself wondering if the art director would even notice the change. Knowing the volatile Pokey, he would notice to the tune of a very dramatic coronary, probably in a reception room full of waiting clients.
Maggie stood up and stretched, working the knots out of her neck by rolling it from side to side and letting it flop—chin down onto her chest—as she’d done hundreds of times before during the cool-down segment of her gym workouts. She had been trying to get Elspeth to try aerobics for the benefits of stress relief.
She talked with her mother earlier that morning for a report on Nicole’s first time at a local Mother’s Morning Out program. According to Elspeth, it had not gone badly nor well. Nicole, true to form, sat on the sidelines neither observing nor pretending not to observe. Elspeth had stayed the whole morning, which Maggie thought rather defeated the purpose of a Mother’s morning out, and had taken the child home just before lunch. (“I think she made real progress, dear.”) 
It was all Maggie could do not to tell her mother that Nicole’s mother would soon be there to help put things right. But she had promised Elise she would wait. She had, however, begun to wonder if perhaps Gerry weren’t right. It could be an awful shock, just springing Elise on them out of the blue. Perhaps she would talk to Elise tonight about a phone conversation with them first. If Elise would just talk to them on the phone, then they needn’t see her in her present condition until she was ready.  
Satisfied with this plan, Maggie put a call into Elise. She waited for ten rings before hanging up. She had talked with her about two hours ago and knew that Elise was spending most of the day sleeping. That’s fine, she thought, looking at her watch. It was two thirty. She would talk with her this evening. And in the meantime, as much rest as possible was the best remedy for Elise. She imagined her mother’s face animated by rapture at reclaiming her daughter. She saw her father, with tears of unrestrained joy as he embraced his youngest girl. Maggie felt a thrill run through her. How many times in one’s life could you actually anticipate the happiest of all moments to be lived? For, surely, that is what Saturday will be for her unsuspecting mother and father, Maggie thought.

The letter had come to her office. Tissue-thin, nothing more than a wafer of paper. Addressed to her. 
From Laurent. 
Maggie maneuvered her Mitsubishi out of the Lenox Square parking lot, deliberately avoiding the side of the mall where she’d met with Gerard the night before. She inserted a “Traveling Wilbury’s” cassette tape in her tape player and turned the volume down low.
Dierdre had brought in the mail that afternoon, grumpily dumped two industry magazines, a flutter of portfolio postcards, and a  computer software catalog onto her desk, before pulling out the aqua-blue air mail envelope and placing it squarely in front of Maggie. “It’s come. Merry Christmas." 
 Just a few crippled words, which Maggie had memorized. My God! It had been nearly five months! No explanation as to why he hadn’t written earlier, no comment as to the fact that so much time had passed between them, just
“Maggie,
I miss you very much and think of you now. I think, too, that I will see you in a little time. Very soon, ma cherie. Remember Laurent loves you.
Laurent Dernier”
As Maggie drove down Peachtree Street toward her apartment, she leaned over her Macy’s department store purchases to reach for the letter again. “I think, too, that I will see you in a little time.” Did that mean he was coming to Atlanta soon?  The unfortunate English was just choppy enough and she was just insecure enough on the status of things between them, that she wasn’t at all confident that  he was promising to see her soon. Perhaps he was going to suggest she come back to Cannes? She tucked the letter into her handbag in the passenger seat. Why does he say ‘and think of you now’? Is that just bad English, or is he some place special that’s now made him think of being with her? Has he returned to Cannes, perhaps, after a long trip and now he’s reminded of her? She rubbed her eyes tiredly. 
It didn’t matter.  He’d written her. Finally. She might not be a French Fling after all.  
She parked the car in the back parking area of her apartment building and looked up at the darkened structure. Smack in the middle of fashionable, trendy Buckhead, The Parthenon was a throw-back to another era. It was one of the main reasons Maggie loved it so much. A huge, looming edifice, it looked more like a haunted castle or even a mausoleum than a honeycomb of modern apartment units. It was made of rugged, gloomy stonework instead of the  burnished woods and pastel stuccos that  typified the architecture of the neighborhood. Somber and out of step with its surroundings, it had been an area landmark for over eighty years. The Parthenon was that curious mix of something so wrong for its eco-climate and cultural setting that it was perversely viewed as a resounding success. It was “cool” to live at The Parthenon. It was the acceptably weird thing to do. Maggie had felt a small sliver of pride in thinking that Elise would be impressed that she, Maggie, hadn’t picked the typical digs, the eclectic, color-coordinated tastefulness of an upscale apartment complex, but had gone for something so artsy and off-beat. It hadn’t occurred to her that maybe Elise was too sick to care where Maggie had chosen to live.
She raked her parcels together in one hand and hooked her purse strap with the other. The parking lot was dark with only a half dozen cars in it. One inadequate street lamp peered dimly from the corner of Peachtree Road and Wilson Avenue. At least sixty yards from the dark parking area, the lamp only served to throw elongated, murky shadows at Maggie as she got out of her car.
Maggie allowed herself a nervous glance over her shoulder as she locked her car and hurried up the sidewalk to the front of the building.
Why am I always finding myself out after dark? she wondered breathlessly. She marched up the sidewalk, redistributed the weight of her purchases and wished she had remembered to carry her mace can.
She glanced up at her apartment window and was glad to see that the living room light was on. Elise is awake anyway, she thought, and, immediately, was struck by the pleasant anticipation she realized she’d been feeling all day long.  It was a nice feeling.  That she would come home to find Elise, perhaps with a pot of tea ready? She had felt a little apprehensive in shopping for clothing for her sister. In the end, after more than an hour of scouring rack after rack of juniors, misses, and designers’ separates, she’d decided on simple tubular dressing: a knit skirt, a crew-neck top and a turban. Each in a raspberry wine color with navy piping.
Maggie unlocked the front door to the building and shifted her parcels again. The take-out sack of Chinese food was pressed close to her chest and the aroma of steamed dumplings and mu shu pork rose lightly into her nostrils.
As she stepped through the building’s front entrance, Maggie realized how badly she wanted to tell Elise about Laurent. Even if he hadn’t really taught at the Sorbonne and M.I.T., he was still more intelligent than half the gaggle of accountants and lawyers Maggie had dated last year. She wanted to tell Elise how mysterious and sweet and sensual Laurent was. From his heavy, expressive eyebrows to the subtle twitch of his full French lips.  Maggie found herself nearly jogging down the corridor that led to her apartment.
3
“And that kind of frequency looks good to you?” Gerry gazed out his office window into the black pool of nighttime Buckhead. He tossed a pencil in his hand.
“It looks excellent to me, Gerry.” Patti sat opposite Gerry in his office. Her blonde hair was teased into a frizzier version of what Gerry was sure was popular these days. Her make-up was a little toned down today, though, he decided, and she looked, if not pretty, at least, not awful. “This buy will guarantee saturation, practically.”
“Practically.” The voice came from the doorway.
Gerry looked up at Pokey Lane standing in the hall, smirking.
“Ah, Pokey,” Gerry said. “Leaving for the night, are you?”
“What do you mean, ‘practically’?” Patti Stump swung her bony legs into a crossed ankle position, as if aiming them at the art director in the doorway. “What do you know about frequency? Give me a break.”
“Hey, come on, Patti...” Gerry made a calm-down gesture with his hands. It was too late in the day for this shit.
“I know as much as any first-year assistant buyer would know, darlin’. That if you spend a fortune on drive-time and every other kinda prime air time that you can saturate just about anything. ‘Practically,’” he added sarcastically.
“How much are we spending, Patti?” Gerry looked up from his hands.
“I don’t believe this!” Patti shrieked. “I have a budget. Does anybody remember the budget?”
“Yeah, that’s what the client is gonna wanna know.” Pokey shook his head.
“Settle down, Pokey,” Gerry said. “In fact, if that’s all for the day...”
“I don’t know what your problem is, ass-hole,” Patti snarled at Pokey. “But I—”
“Hey! Hey! That’s not necessary, Patti,” Gerry said. “Come on, let’s pack it up for tonight, what do you say?”
“I’ll say we should pack it up, when a little monkey-faced layout artist can tell me how to buy time—”
“I said, that’s enough, Patti!” Gerry wanted to reach over and stuff her red floral scarf down her throat. “So, knock it off, both of you. Pokey, kindly take off, will you?” Pokey shrugged and gestured to Gerry in a catch-ya-later-buddy motion that served to further infuriate Patti in its attempt at male confederacy. She folded her arms onto her chest and glared at the retreating art director.
“Jeez, Patti, don’t let him get to you, will you?” Gerry rubbed his eyes and leaned back into his chair. “It’s really to late to get much more work done, what is it? Eleven o’clock?” Let’s knock off, shall we? I mean, what is it between you two? Are you, like, ex-lovers or something?”
“Don’t be revolting. The man’s an ape.”
“Yeah, well, stranger things have happened in my experience. Anyway, tomorrow, all right?”
“Gerry.” She paused dramatically, slowly getting up from the swivel chair that faced Gerry’s desk. Her face was flushed, unpleasantly so, and her eyes were wide and fixed on Gerry. Her long fingers groped unconsciously at the loose cotton belt that hung from her waist.
He found himself bracing against her words.
“Gerry, I would like to talk with you about something that’s personal.”
“Patti, did you talk to Maggie? You know I have all the women in the office talk with—”
“I know you do, and I did. She was useless.”
“I see. Well, can it wait?” In his present state, he’d probably give her a thirty per cent salary increase just to be able to be in his car and on his way home within the next fifteen minutes.
“I don’t feel it can, no.”
“All right.” He stood up and began packing up his briefcase, hoping this would at least be moving them both in the right direction: out the door.
“There is someone in the office who is making it difficult for me to perform my job.”
“Do you mean Pokey?”
She made a face.
“No. No, I mean difficult in that I find myself distracted as a result of our close working relationship.”
Omigod. Gerry snapped shut his briefcase and looked up at the woman. She was dressed in some awful polyester double knit skirt suit. A tall woman, she, nonetheless, looked like she was swimming in the bulky material and Gerry was struck by how warm she must be in it. “Let’s continue this talk in the elevator, shall we?” He nodded toward the door.
She picked up her own briefcase at the foot of her chair.
“You know, Patti, these things happen all the time.” He knew he sounded idiotic. “But we’re expected to behave professionally in any case, you know?” I mean, we need to transcend our feelings and emotions and get on with getting the job done. I mean, what would the industry be like if we all just sort of behaved according to how we felt at the time? Like, if I hated a particular voice talent but he was the best one for the job, I’d be shooting myself in the foot, right?” I’m blathering, he thought, as he jabbed his finger at the down arrow on the elevator. “So, we all have to, you know, do things and work with people we don’t—”
“Why do you keep inferring that I’m having trouble getting along with someone?” Patti’s brittle voice stabbed at the airspace between them with no air conditioner’s hum to softly blanket its abrasiveness. “I am attracted to someone in our office.  I think they may be attracted to me too.”
“Well? Then, what’s the problem?” Gerry punched the down button again. Damn, stupid elevators! Has the building turned off the damn, stupid electricity or what?
“The problem, as I’m sure you know only too well, Gerry, is that I’ve fallen quite hopelessly in love with you.”
4
The Macy’s shopping bag sat in a collapsed heap next to Maggie’s purse on the floor of her living room. Maggie took a quick breath and expelled it slowly. She had checked the entire apartment, at first calling merrily: ‘Allo! Ma soeur! Ou ête vous?’  and then,  in a panic. Elise was not in the bathroom, the tiny galley kitchen or the bedroom. Maggie had even checked the closets, just in case it turned out her sister had returned to her even madder than when she’d left. No Elise. No note.
Maggie walked into the kitchen. Either Elise had not eaten lunch or she’d washed up expertly after herself, an idea Maggie found difficult to believe. Her mind raced: she had talked with her shortly after eleven a.m. and then had not been able to get through. She tried not to think of Gerard. Tried not to think of the torturing bastard again with his claws into Elise. Frail, pale, sad Elise. Maggie’s hand rested on the phone and her heart pounded up into her throat. It wasn’t possible that Elise could be taken from her again! That she could appear and then disappear without a vestige that she’d ever been here. No record, no memorial.
Maggie pushed the playback button on her answering machine and listened quickly to the handful of messages: two telemarketing reps, her mother, (‘why don’t you and Brownie come to supper on Saturday, darling? Your father wants to cook out.’), and a hang up. Maggie replayed the messages to try to determine when the hang-up had occurred. Her mother must have called after work, or she would have called her at her office. (Why don’t people tell you the bloody time they called?) The telemarketing calls were the last two calls on the tape, which made sense from a marketing stand point: dinner time, the best time to catch people in and with their guards down. The hang-up was the first message. Precise time unknown and not determinable.
In exasperation, Maggie turned away from the machine. What the hell difference did it make anyway? Elise hadn’t left a message on the machine, probably didn’t even know how. Maggie scanned the living room for any signs of a struggle. There were none that she could see. The living room was tidy, each cushion in its place, the smell of Chinese pancakes and plum sauce slowly beginning to mix with the scent of lavender potpourri on the coffee table.
It was while she was standing in her living room, holding her breath, that she could hear the noise. It had certainly been there all along, but she hadn’t picked up on it until she stood still. A rumbling hum of voices was coming from somewhere nearby. She moved to the door, aware of the loud ticking of her living room clock, the muted gurgling of the pipes in the kitchen. She held the door open and listened. Now she could hear the staccato burping of police walkie-talkies, the velvet mumblings of a gathering crowd. It had been there all along, but blanketed in her excitement to see Elise and to tell her about Laurent, or perhaps she had delegated it to the part of her brain that chalked up all inexplicable background noise as television programs seeping through her thin apartment walls. She stood and listened. This was no television program. 
A man appeared in the hallway and walked slowly toward her in the semi-darkness. He seemed to drag his feet painfully as he approached her. Maggie  watched him come, knowing, in the way people do when the unthinkable is unfolding, why he was coming, knowing what he would say.
His name was Bill and he lived down the hall from her. She’d only nodded at him a few times, although she had no reason to believe he wasn’t worth knowing. No reason except he always looked like he was just coming off a bender, or about to begin one. Bill had that washed-out, drugged-out look of too much recreation, not enough fun.
“You’re not gonna believe what’s going on upstairs,” he said to her as he passed her in the doorway. “Two cops are upstairs right now, you know? in the second floor landing.  They got a dead friggin’ body up there, man. Some woman bought it in our building, can you handle it?” He whistled, and continued his shambling walk to his apartment door, not bothering to see her reaction.  
Maggie retreated back into her apartment and closed the door. She staggered to her couch and sank into it, her heart a heavyweight of emotion. She stared out the narrow French doors that led to the small stone balcony overlooking Peachtree Road.  She could see the tips of the lone mimosa tree just outside her apartment, its stubborn, flamboyant blooms unfurled amongst a stand of the ubiquitous Georgia pine, a radiant reminder of nature’s individuality, its irony. 
Her eyes, dry and wide, slowly lowered to look at the Macy’s bag of gladrags, her sister’s triumphant homecoming gown. The bitter melancholia blurred her eyesight until the little fleck of gold caught in the intricate pattern of the coral Isfahan rug beneath her feet nearly jumped out at her.
 Maggie reached down to touch the little glittering droplet. She picked up the gold charm in trembling fingers.



Chapter 8
1

Chief Detective Jack Burton stood in the kitchenette and stared out the little curtained window into the inky night. For some reason, his claustrophobia hadn’t kicked in tonight. The apartment was small, the rooms cramped and over-decorated but he still felt able to breathe. He glanced down at the small plastic bag containing the charm. It was a gold Scotty dog.  
Elise Newberry’s body was found at the bottom of the side stairway leading to the second floor of the apartment building. She had been strangled with a strong cord and stabbed. She’d evidently put up a fight. Had been, Burton surmised, in the process of running for her life when she was cornered on the staircase. It was not a tidy, surprise murder. Elise Newberry had seen her killer coming.
“The guy was pretty sloppy.” Kazmaroff’s form filled the kitchen doorjamb. Burton detected a whiff of male cologne. Dave Kazmaroff had the sort of natural, hazy good looks one would expect to find packed into Ralph Lauren summer clothes: tanned-faced, rugged grins, stark-white polo shirts, khaki slacks. Solidly built and lean, he also had a kind of natural grace to his every movement. 
His partner didn’t come from money, Burton knew. He just looked as if he did. Maybe that was the initial reason Burton hated the man, but he’d gathered a stream of other logical defenses by now to make himself believe that his animosity was not personal. Kazmaroff was too impulsive, too swayed by the flamboyant, too impatient with the tedium of their jobs. He even spoke in headlines, it seemed to Burton.
“Looks like he killed her in the hallway,” Kazmaroff continued. The way I see it, she lets him in, they talk, he makes his move, she bolts and makes it as far as the stairway. Maybe they even struggled a bit in the living room, you know? Any sign she was raped?”
“Keep your voice down, for Chrissake. The sister’s right in the other room.” Burton straightened his shoulders and shoved past his lieutenant. “Let’s get this over with. I’ll ask the questions.”
Maggie sat quietly in her living room, her hands folded in her lap. The small travel alarm clock she kept perched on a shelf in the living room bookcase blinked out the digitized time: 11:47. Brownie had shown up thirty minutes earlier and the police had immediately tucked him away in the bedroom where they were questioning him. Maggie looked up and watched the two police detectives approach. She thought of Laurent. The one detective was big, like Laurent, a little stoop-shouldered, and she thought he had a kind face. Or did he just look tired?
“Miss Newberry?” Burton hovered in front of her. His companion whipped out a battered notebook and sat down in a tub chair facing them. “We need to ask you a few questions.”
Maggie looked up and felt her eyes must look like two ragged, red holes. 
“Miss Newberry?”
“Yes.” Maggie nodded.  She could hear the murmur of voices from her bedroom and wondered if Brownie was being considered a suspect.
“You know I need to ask you these questions now while everything’s still fresh, and I know it’s hard.”
Maggie heard the squeaking sound of the gurney as it began its heavy journey across the worn hall carpet to the front door. The coroner had finished his preliminary, on-site inspection. The rest of his invasions of Elise would be done in the privacy of a sterile laboratory. Maggie braced her back at the sound of the stretcher as it passed her open apartment door.  She refused to look. She could hear the sounds of her neighbors clustered in the hallway. She wanted to run out and chase them all off. She found herself resenting every one of them out there taking a sensationalist peek at her poor, broken sister.
“....what time, exactly, would that be?”
She shook her head, bringing her fist to her mouth.
“It’s all right, Miss Newberry. I know how hard this is. Take your time.”
“Could you...could you repeat the question?” she managed.
“The first time you called your sister. When was that?”
“Eleven, or so. Maybe a little earlier. I had a late morning meeting,” a million years ago, a late morning meeting where we all sat around laughing and joking...
“And she was home?”
“She answered the phone.” Maggie looked up at the detective. “I assumed she was home the other times I called too. She just didn’t answer the phone. She was...resting. She’d been sick.”
“I see. She’d not been in town very long?”
“Just arrived.”
“And she was staying with you until...?” He left the sentence unfinished.
“Until...” Maggie searched for an answer. “Why does it matter why she was staying with me? She was my sister. Is that so weird? Who is she supposed to stay with?”
“Miss Newberry, the point of my question is to ascertain whether this was going to be a long visit or just a passing-through visit.”
“Well, a long visit. She was back to stay...” How was she going to tell her parents?  “But she was just passing through my apartment. I mean, she’d have gotten her own place eventually.”
“Where had she come from?” Again, the kind face, the gentle voice. Maggie noticed a slight tic in his lip as he spoke.
“From France. She’d been living in France for the last several years. She was returning home.”
“And you returned home when, Miss Newberry?”
“Returned home? I live here.” Maggie stared stupidly at the man.
“Yes, yes, I’m sorry. I meant when tonight did you return home?”
“I...I...” She gestured uselessly at the Macy’s shopping bag at her feet, not trusting her voice to respond. Oh, Elise, how could you be gone? We were going to be a family again.
“That’s all right, just take your time.”
She noticed that the man’s partner, or whatever he was, had stopped writing. She found herself thinking: He’s seen this sort of thing a thousand times before. Seen someone, just like me, feel and act just like this. A thousand times over.
She took a deep breath.
“I got back to the apartment a few minutes before nine.”
“Did you notice anything different or strange at any time? In the parking lot, walking up to your door? Once inside your apartment?”
Maggie shook her head as he spoke.
“I noticed nobody was here,” she said miserably. “I played back my messages first, thinking Elise, thinking she...” She looked away.
“That’s all right, Miss Newberry. Anything else?”
“You’re taking my answering machine?”
“We’ll need to examine it, yes. Anything else?”
“No...not...I mean, what am I going to tell my mother and father?”
Burton grimaced in a gesture of sympathy. 
“I’m sorry, Miss Newberry.”
Maggie smoothed her damp palms against the cotton fabric of her skirt.
“The coroner will give his report after the autopsy. There’ll be an inquest, of course. Probably next week. Once all the evidence is in.”
“Is the little charm...is it important?”
“Perhaps.” 
“She used to have a charm bracelet. When we were kids.”
“Yes?” Burton said. “Was she wearing it tonight, do you know?”
“Wearing it?” Maggie looked around the room as if she were suddenly disoriented. “I can’t imagine she even still has it. That was a long time ago.” She looked at him, her face flushed with suppressed agony. “Maybe?”
Burton signaled to his partner to check on Brownie in the back room.  He turned back to Maggie. “We’ll need to ask you to vacate your apartment, I’m afraid, for the next three or four days while we take fiber and hair samples. Where will we be able to reach you?”
Maggie turned away from him. She needed to cry very hard for a very long time.
2
An hour later, sitting in the police cruiser as it rushed along the immaculate, sycamore-lined road to her parents’ home, Maggie held Brownie’s hand tightly, her lips pressed together in a grim line. She tried to tell herself that for her parents to have seen Elise in the state she had been in would have been tantamount to a revisitation of the horror tale The Monkey’s Paw, where a grief-stricken mother wished her recently dead son back with her again and got her wish only to have something awful and repulsive return to her from the grave. That would have been Elise. With her ruined face and arms, pocked by blunt, used needles, her clothes and skin smelling of sweat and urine, her hair a matted mess of gnarly dread locks. This was the thing her mother would’ve swept to her bosom? Would’ve embraced tenderly?... And still kept the look of horror and revulsion from her face throughout? 
Maggie’s vision blurred as she watched the passing neighborhoods. Nothing less than two million dollars. Mostly a lot more. La creme de la creme of Atlanta real estate. And her throat closed and ached because she knew that if Elise had been presented to them mad as a hatter, screaming and naked, filthy and profane, both her parents would have wept tears of gratitude to have her back. 
She looked at Brownie and tried to take strength from his solid grip on her hand. Tried to tap into his stoic front, his resiliency. And all she could think as the police car brought her closer and closer to Brymsley and her mother and father was: if by some miracle, some fantastic cosmic magic, you got the chance to have five minutes with a departed loved one, just five minutes to say how are you? I love you, I miss you…
And Maggie knew she had cheated them out of that forever.
3
Darla Parker picked up the teapot with its imprint of faded roses and held it over her husband’s tea cup. Her eyes watched him, not her aim, as he sat across from her, face buried in the newspaper. She spilled a little hot tea onto his sleeve.
“Damn it, Darla!” Gerry snatched his soiled cuff away and looked at his wife angrily. “What is your problem this morning? Thanks a lot, okay?”
Darla carefully replaced the teapot and sighed. She folded her hands in her lap, her eyes still on her husband.
“I mean, first you practically kill me with that stupid whatever it is you left on the stairs...”
“Vacuum cleaner.”
“Look, Darla, don’t start with me today, okay? I mean it. I’m serious. I’ve got this one day in the week to relax and forget the office and I don’t mean to spend it at war with you, understand?” Gerry flapped the newspaper out straight and returned to the article he was reading.
Darla reached over and took a small sip from her own cup. She replaced the china gently in its saucer and then cleared her throat.
Gerry threw the newspaper down onto the table and covered his face with his hands.
“God, am I having a nervous breakdown, or what?” His voice sounded tired and strained.
“Quit your job, sweetheart.”
“Oh, thank you so much.” He pushed away from the breakfast table and glared at her. “Thanks a million for that bit of advice, Darl.”
“It’s a bad job,” Darla said, reaching for her cup again.
“I own the job, remember? Who am I gonna quit to? Myself? I’m the boss, remember?”
“It’s making you miserable, Gerry. It’s bad for all of us. I can see it if you can’t.”
“Darla, we’re not speaking the same language, okay? I mean, I’m speaking English but you’re obviously not familiar with my particular dialect or something...”
“Quit the job, Gerry.”
“Stop saying that! Stop saying ‘quit the damn job’, will you?” Gerry stood up, scooped up the newspaper and slapped it back down on the breakfast table. “I can’t quit the damn job! Why not just say move to Alaska? Or get a lobotomy? Or become a priest? I can’t! I can’t do it! Jesus! Am I alone in the world? Is nobody listening to me?” He turned to leave the room when the kitchen wall phone rang. Enjoying the dramatic punctuation of its timing, he snatched it up and barked into it:
“Yes?”
 He watched Darla get up slowly from the table and begin to clear the dishes.
“Ger, it’s me.” It was Maggie.
Darla gave Gerry a questioning look which he ignored.
“Hey, ‘me’, what’s up for you? Wanna grab a matinee or something? I could stand to get out of the house for a bit.” He felt angry with himself for trying to hurt Darla, but he also felt angry at Darla. He turned to catch a glimpse of her but she stood at the sink with her back to him, rinsing cereal bowls and listening.
“No, I can’t, Ger. Listen, something’s happened. I....” Gerry could hear Maggie’s voice catch and he instantly stiffened. God, now what?  he thought.
“Maggie, what is it? What’s happened?” He could sense, rather than see, Darla turn and face him.
“It’s...I...the police think Elise was murdered,” Maggie continued. “...in my apartment building last night.”
“Good God!”
“Gerry, what is it?” Darla was at his side now, tugging on his sleeve. “What’s happened to Maggie? Is she okay?”
“Her sister was killed last night in Maggie’s apartment.”
“Oh, my God.” Her hand flew to her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. She watched Gerry’s own shocked face, as if to watch him  closely might reveal the whole gruesome story or, perhaps, even belie it.
“Maggie, where are you?” Gerry asked, his voice tense.
“I’m at home, at Brymsley. Brownie’s with me. The cops took us here last night.”
“Jesus, Maggie, what happened?” Gerry slumped back into his seat and Darla stood near him.
“I...she just...I really don’t know. The police think she let the guy in...”
“She let him in?” Gerry’s eyes flicked over to Darla and she shook her head in horror.
“Yeah, well, the cops didn’t see that the door was hurt or anything so they think he knocked and she just let him in. I don’t know. I guess living in France all those years, she just didn’t have the same natural distrust or suspicions that we do over here about letting people in, you know, locking your car doors and stuff—“
“Maggie, it could’ve been you. He could’ve gotten you.”
“The cops think...look, I can’t talk a whole lot now, my mom and dad are right in the next room, you know?”
“God, your poor parents. How are they?”
“Not great. You can imagine. God, Gerry, if only I’d told them when I first found Elise, you know? I keep thinking—“
“Well, don’t. It doesn’t do anybody any good and your first instincts were probably best anyway.”
“Even when I can hear my Mother in there crying all over again for my sister? I mean, like grieving for her twice in six months?”
“It doesn’t do any good beating yourself up for it, Maggie.”
“That’s what Brownie’s been saying.”
“He’s right. Do you want some company? Do you want me and Darla to come by?”
Darla nodded vigorously at him.
“No, thanks. I think we’ll just burrow in here, you know, just the family. But thanks, Ger, I appreciate the offer. I just wanted you to know.”
“I’m glad you did. I’m so sorry, Maggie. So sorry for you and your parents.”
“I know, Ger,” she whispered in an effort to hide the tears in her voice. “Thanks again. Love to Darla.”
“I will. Bye.”
“Bye.”
He returned the receiver to its cradle and stood staring out the breakfast room’s large bay window. From it he could see their eight year old daughter, Haley, playing with some neighbor children.
“Oh, Gerry, how awful. Poor Maggie.”
Gerry tore his gaze away from his daughter and looked at his wife.
“Maybe you were right, Darla. Maybe this job isn’t such a good thing.”
Darla searched his face and tried to smile encouragingly.
4
That night, Maggie lay on the guest bed in her parent’s house and stared up at the white ceiling. Tiny, fluorescent stars blinked back in a faint constellation painted on the ceiling. Maggie had never noticed them before.
She had talked to Gerry that morning, she had talked twice more with Detective Burton, she had looked into her parents’ eyes as they tried to understand when she told them of Elise’s murder earlier that evening. She had held her father’s hand and watched him nod seriously as if she were warning him that the Dow Jones might plummet soon. She had watched her mother weep again, nod understandingly as to why Maggie hadn’t called when she’d discovered Elise, and slam down a hard, impenetrable wall between them—pushing aside years of love and kisses and shared secrets. 
After all the talking, Maggie had cried. Alone and without hope. She cried for her sister, who had finally come home, for the impetuous artist, the wayward  daughter, the recalcitrant single mother. But most of all, for the sister who’d known her so little but who had, in her way, loved her.  
Maggie stared up at the ceiling dusted with its map of Pegasus and Orion and cried.
The next day, Maggie sat and observed the child who was perched nonchalantly on a dark velvet hassock with long, looping fringe. The little girl’s feet swayed against the soft hanging cords as if they felt good against her bare skin. Her eyes held Maggie’s unflinchingly. Nicole sat in the middle of the Newberry living room, a light and cheery place which captured the sun’s needles of light and spun them into prisms and rectangles of luminescence. Long patches of sun were placed as carefully around the room as if an interior designer had ordered them. Maggie felt almost at peace in this room. She continued to watch the child on the cushion. Almost.
Nicole’s face, as usual, gave nothing away. Her eyes, large and implacable, met Maggie’s gaze easily.
“And so, how has Nicole been?” Maggie’s voice was light, her eyes pinning the girl in relentless scrutiny. “Everyone’s been sort of upset today.”
The child returned her stare.
“Grandmére is very unhappy right now. Comprenez-vous? Trés triste?”  
“And it’s me who’s done it, you see.” Maggie reached over to pat out a wrinkle in Nicole’s cotton corduroy jumper. The child did not move. “Aunt Maggie has made Grandmére and Grandpapa trés triste. I wonder, do you give a shit that Grandmere and Grandpapa are trés triste?” Maggie smiled sadly at the girl who simply continued to swing her small bare feet into the fringe of the ottoman.
Who is this child? Maggie wondered. Will she never come out of the warm little burrow in her mind and join the rest of us? Is where ever she is, so nice and safe that we will never know her? Maggie felt a pressure of added weight settle about her shoulders as she looked into the blank, cold eyes of the girl. She leaned over and touched Nicole’s baby-soft cheek and thought, for an instant, that the eyes flickered in response. Am I angry at you, little one? Maggie was surprised as soon as the thought hit her—was it true? Why?
Maggie removed her hand.
Was it because Maggie loved Elspeth so much that she couldn’t imagine anyone else rejecting what she had to offer as a mother? Or was it because Nicole seemed to be doing exactly what Elise had always done before her? Which was to reject the two people that Maggie had held most dear. And the anger that Maggie had felt at Elise for turning away from them, for hurting them, was revisited on Nicole, who seemed, in her own way, to be doing exactly the same thing.
“Darling?”
Maggie turned from the child to see her mother enter the room and her heart ripped at the sight of her. Elspeth had had a hard night. Her beautiful face was weary and lined. 
“I’m here, Mother. Can I help do something?”
Her mother moved into the room in a way that reminded Maggie of someone gliding up to a dance partner in expectation of a waltz.  Elspeth stood next to the couch, her hands folded calmly on the back of it. She was wearing a blue silk shift with no jewelry. Her hair looked impeccable, as if she’d spent some time with it that morning.
“Has Brownie left already?” Elspeth asked.
“He left after breakfast. He had to get back and do some stuff at his place. He’ll call later, he said.”
“I’m sorry I missed him this morning.”
“Is Dad...where’s Dad?” Maggie’s gaze flicked behind her mother through the door to the hallway as if expecting her father to walk through.
“He’s gone to the club this morning, dear.”
“The club?”
“We deal with things differently, Maggie...”
“Yeah, well, the police will want to talk to him. And you too, Mother.”
“They said they’d call first.”
Boy, that’s sweet of them. Maggie was surprised. She hadn’t realized the police made appointments during an investigation. She thought they just barged into your life and started rifling through your things and asked you personal questions and then accused you of all manner of things you’d never even dreamed of doing before they put their case together and found the bad guy.
“You’ve talked with them recently?” Elspeth asked.
Maggie wasn’t sure her mother really needed to hear all there was to tell.
“Detective Burton of Hom...of Homicide,” she said, looking away. “He wasn’t very specific with me.” She shrugged. “Probably didn’t think he needed to be.”
“I see.”  
“Are you going to come in?” Maggie asked.
Elspeth shook her head and tried to smile.
“I think I’ll read in my room today, darling, if you don’t mind. Annie will be here shortly to look after Nicole. How are you, ma petite?”
The child turned and looked at her grandmother.
“What are your plans for the day, Margaret?”
Maggie shrugged and felt suddenly very tired.
“I don’t know. I might go back to my apartment and pick up a few things. Detective Burton said I could. They’ve got some people there, I guess, to help me. Then, I don’t know.” She turned away and smoothed out the creases in her linen trousers. They belonged to Elspeth. “Probably just come back here. Maybe I’ll read for a while too.”
There was a brief silence before Elspeth turned to leave.
“Mom, I’m so sorry I didn’t call you about Elise.”
“I know, darling. It doesn’t matter.”
“I know it does. I don’t know how I can live with myself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Maggie. There’s nothing to be done for it anyway.” Her mother’s back seemed to stiffen during the exchange as if her body couldn’t lie as easily as her voice could. “Let’s not talk about it in front of Nicole.”
Frustrated, Maggie nearly blurted out that they might as well make sure they were out of earshot of the couch and the Tiffany lamp too. She caught herself and nodded miserably, her eyes once again falling on Nicole Newberry.
“She doesn’t know,” Maggie spoke the question flatly, knowing the answer.
“There doesn’t seem much point,” her mother said. Maggie looked up at her with concern but Elspeth merely smiled wanly and waved away her daughter’s disquiet.
“I’m off now. If you’ll stay with Nicole until Annie comes.”
“Of course.”
“Dinner is at six, as usual.”
“Okay.”
Maggie watched her mother’s retreating back and felt worse than before Elspeth had come downstairs. She looked back over at Nicole who was also watching Elspeth’s departure.
“She’s very sad right now, Nicole.”
The little girl blinked once and looked at Maggie.
Was it a malevolent look? Did she know Maggie cheated her out of her one last chance to see her mother? Did she, unencumbered by the love and duty that bound Maggie’s parents, feel free to hate her aunt for her stupidity and selfishness? For surely selfishness had been a major part of it, Maggie thought. The notion of presenting Elise to her parents as if she were a beribboned parcel had loomed dominant in Maggie’s daydreams. Why had she agreed with Elise that she should hold off her parental homecoming? Not because she’d been afraid of how her parents would receive a bedraggled, bedrugged Elise. But because she had wanted them to believe that she, Maggie, was giving Elise back to them.  And somehow, she felt that Nicole knew it, even if her mother and father did not.
When the doorbell sounded, it was so gentle and musical that, for a moment, Maggie thought it was one of the many house clocks pleasantly, unobtrusively heralding the hour. Elspeth had a passion for clocks of all kinds and collected them to the point where her husband had finally forced her to weed them out of the house. It was true, Maggie thought as she got up from the heavy Queen Anne’s arm chair to answer the door, Brymsley had begun to resemble a large and noisy clockmaker’s shop a few years ago. All the ticking and chiming and onerous hourly and quarter hourly booming had nearly driven her poor father mad.
Maggie walked to the end of the sitting room to where two pairs of French doors led out to the garden. Although not the formal, main entrance to Brymsley, the garden entrance was the closest portal to the driveway and so the one most commonly used. Besides, Elspeth insisted that she liked the idea of visitors enjoying her garden as they walked to the door. She thought it much friendlier than the tedious, precision-manicured box hedges and bricked path that led to the front of the house, with its massive columns and imposing porticoes.
“A little bit of Tara goes a long way,” she liked to tell her daughters. “The point is not to intimidate people.”
“Just to have more money than them, that’s all.”
Elise had never given her mother much quarter.
Maggie peered through the panel sheers in the door and, seeing nothing, she pulled open the doors and stepped outside. Instantly, the warmth and humidity of the morning struck her and made her catch her breath. The air conditioning had given her goose bumps up her arms and legs but dissolved upon contact with the moist Southern air. Maggie stepped out onto the flagstone patio that curved in a crescent away from the French doors and out toward her mother’s garden. Her eyes followed the natural line of the garden which formed a cul de sac of flowering shrubs and borders, a niche of peace and serenity. A small stone bench sat nearly hidden among a cluster of spirea, forsythia and camellia. Vines of thick, glossy English ivy snaked along the ground and up and over the high drystone wall that contained and cozied the whole garden. The fragrance from the nearby rose bushes—aggressively lurching their way up a rickety trellis to the right of the French doors—was light and sweet on the heavy Georgia air, air so oppressive with heat that you could almost see it wafting around you like thick curls of smoke.
Maggie scanned the garden, unconscious of the fact that she was holding her breath. A blooming bush of American Beauty roses shook slightly in the corner of her eye. She turned, her hands still clutching the handles of the French doors, and saw Laurent standing next to the bush of blood-red roses. 
  

Chapter 9
1
 Maggie stood quietly, her breath sucked out of her. He was wearing a blue jersey with his hands tucked in the pockets of his tan cotton trousers.  His eyes smiled at her, tired eyes, sympathetic eyes.
“Zo,” he said, softly. “I am here.”
In a fluid moment, she released the door handles and moved out onto the bricked, terrace steps. Laurent caught her in his arms and lifted her off the ground.  She wrapped her arms around his thick, sunburned neck and lay her cheek against  his chest. For right now, she didn’t care to see his face, examine his eyes, hear his story, or mark his changes. It was enough that he’d finally come.
“Ma petite,” he murmured. He held her very carefully for several moments and then set her down and looked into her eyes. “I know it is very bad for you now, cherie,” he said.  He squeezed her tightly and kissed her on the ear. “Laurent is here. It will be all right now, comprends?  It will be all right now.”
Maggie kept her hands firmly on his arms as if afraid to let him go a second time. He was so looming, she had the odd sensation that he blotted out the morning sun at the same time he brought light into the garden.
“I can’t believe you’re here.” She said. “After six months of no word, no letter. I mean, don’t they have telephones in the south of France anymore?” She felt her heart crumble into his hands as she looked at his handsome face, so longed for, so well remembered, and loved. “It’s such a rich place,” she finished weakly, “I’d assumed those would be the first things they’d get.”
“I told you I would come,” he said, his eyes probing her face, as if to memorize her features.
“Yeah, I guess you did. Look, where are you staying?” Maggie asked, glancing behind her to see if Nicole were still in the living room.  
“I stay with you, mais, bien sûr!” Laurent smiled at her and, involuntarily, she felt her heart expand in her chest in an attempt to encompass her joy. Bien sûr.
“How did you find me? How did you find Brymsley?”
Laurent waved away the question as if it were a droning fly about his head.
“Pfut! Your parents’ address is on the cheque, is it not? A house so big as this is not façile...so easy... to hide? And Laurent knows where to find his cherie. Come, I think I am meeting la mere?”
“Margaret? Is everything all right, darling?”
Maggie turned to see her mother standing in the French doors, Nicole positioned at her side like a miniature sentinel.
“Mother!” Maggie dropped her hands from Laurent’s arms and turned to face her mother. “This is a good friend of mine. I...we met in France. He helped us get Nicole back...he was one of the two....Laurent Dernier, this is my mother, Elspeth Newberry. Mom, this is Laurent.”
Elspeth Newberry stepped forward onto the flagstone pathway and offered Laurent a cool white hand. He shook it briefly in his sunburnt hand and murmured: “Enchantez, Madame. I am in love with your daughter.”
Maggie blushed and touched Laurent lightly on the sleeve as her mother retracted her hand.
“I see,” she said evenly, her eyes darting to Maggie, her smile wavering but still intact.
“You have not been talking about me, Maggee?” Laurent wagged a finger at her and smiled again at Elspeth. “I am not a very good, what is it? Writing of letters?”
“Anyway,” Maggie said lightly, wanting, for some reason, to break up the moment. “Let’s go inside, shall we? Mother?”
“I am so sorry about your daughter, Madame Newberry.  Je me regret, Madame.”
Elspeth’s eyes filled quickly . 
 “Merci, Laurent,” she said, turning away to lead the way back into the house.
Laurent looked at Maggie: ça va?  She nodded and touched his arm again. Ça va,  she thought. And then some.
2
Laurent pushed away the fennel salad, his dish smeared with olive oil and a last crust of bread. Madame Newberry had seen to it that the big Frenchman would not be homesick or hungry his first night at Brymsley. She had had her cook prepare a rabbit smothered in rosemary, followed by mini-crock pots of honey and saffron cremes.
Their unexpected guest had been placed between Maggie and Nicole at the dinner table with Elspeth and John Newberry facing the three of them. Nicole’s mousy brown hair was gathered back in a French braid. Gold velvet ribbons interlaced the plaiting, and she wore a simple chocolate-brown shift. The little white Peter Pan collar displayed her small head like a cabbage on a platter. Maggie could see flecks of gravy on the linen napkin that had been tucked into the child’s collar and found herself marveling that Nicole was as neat as she was. For someone in the throes of autism, she thought curiously, she’s remarkably tidy.
 Maggie wondered, too, what Laurent thought of Nicole. The child sat at the dinner table between them, quiet and seemingly unseeing, her only movements the slow, uncaring ones that carried her spoon from her plate to her mouth. She could be eating dog food, Maggie thought, so little did she seem to care about what she did.
After dinner, the rest of the family had retired to another part of the house, to read or watch TV. Laurent’s meeting with Maggie’s father had been a little more successful than the one with her mother.  John Newberry was jolly and kind, if a little wounded, in general, and had welcomed Laurent wholeheartedly into his home. Maggie wondered, with surprise, if he and her father might even become friends someday?
Having finished her own meal, Maggie had been happy to sit with Laurent and watch him while he sopped up the last flecks of the savory sauce. He looked around for the bottle of Clos des Papes and noticed that they’d finished it during dinner. He shrugged and removed his napkin.
“Becka will bring in coffee in a bit,” Maggie said, as she leaned back into her chair. She had almost gotten her fill of looking at him and reassuring herself that he had, indeed, not forgotten her. Now that he was here, it didn’t occur to her that she might not be emotionally ready for him. He intended to move in with her the day after tomorrow when the cops had finished dusting and scraping her flat for evidence. (How was she ever going to eat omelets and nachos or watch inane sit-coms in the same room a murderer had stood threatening her sister?) 
The relief of having him with her again, the affirmation that she had not misjudged him or her own feelings had, for the moment, obliterated the thought that perhaps she wasn’t quite prepared to have him move in with her.  
“I like your maman and papa  very much. They are good people.”
“I know.”
“They love that little girl, too. Such a sad little girl. Tch-zut!” Laurent sucked his teeth and shook his head.
“I’m not sure she’s really Elise’s.”
“Not Elise’s?” A thin veil seemed to come down between them. Laurent looked tired, guarded. “That is impossible! Of course she is your sister’s daughter. Roger has taken her from—“
“I know, I know, Laurent... I just...sometimes I think...oh, never mind. I’m bats. It’s just so hard to think that I’m really and truly related to her. She’s so...she’s nothing like any of us, you know?”
“You must give her time, Maggee. You are so impatient about everything, I think.” He smiled wearily at her.
“Why did you come, Laurent?” Maggie leaned across the starched white tablecloth towards him. He pulled out a blue packet of Gitanes and lighted one up with a box of matches. He held the smoking match between his fingers and looked at her inquiringly. Distractedly, she got up and walked to the large walnut hutch in the dining room and began rummaging around for an ashtray. “I mean, nobody’s happier about it than I am, but do you have business in town or what?”
Becka, a middle-aged black woman with shiny, dark skin nearly the color of the hutch, entered the room carrying a silver tray with a silver coffee pot and creamer. The sugar bowl was a delicate light blue china with matching cups and saucers.
“Hey, Becka.” Maggie pulled a crystal ashtray from one of the drawers of the hutch and returned to the table.
“Your Mother and Father havin’ their coffee in the livin’ room,” Becka said as she unloaded her tray.
“You are the chef, Madame?” Laurent stood up from his chair.
“Don’t be standin’ up, now. I cooked it if that’s what you mean.” Becka hid a smile.
Laurent kissed the tips of his fingers with a loud smacking noise.
“C’est magnifique!  It was better than anything in Paris or the Cote D’azure, absolutement. Merci beaucoup, Madame.”
Grinning outright, Becka hugged the tray to her breast and backed out of the room.
“Well, I’m glad you liked it. G’night Miss Maggie.”
“Goodnight, Becka. You outdid yourself. It was delish plus.”
The cook exited the dining room with a loud swish of the swinging door.
“Marveillieux, that woman, she—“
“Yes, yes, wait’ll you taste her grits and eggs. Listen, Laurent,” Maggie thumped down the Waterford ashtray in front of him. “...I mean, as you were saying? About being here on business?”
“But I am not here on any business.” Laurent looked at her with surprise. “Except you, ma petite. I am here to be with you. You are my business.”
Maggie felt a flush of pleasure creep up her throat to her face. She scraped some breadcrumbs from the table with her hand and emptied them into Laurent’s ashtray.
“You know,” she said. “I never did get straight what it is you do for a living. I mean, can you afford to just take off time like this?”
Laurent poured her coffee and then his own before answering. He held up the china creamer and she shook her head.
“I have been working for the government, comprends?”  He poured a hefty dollop of cream into his coffee. (Hadn’t these people ever heard of cholesterol?) “Maintenant, I am en vacances, oui?  On vacation? For many weeks.”
“And then you’ll go back to France?”
Laurent looked at Maggie and then touched her chin gently with his thumb and forefinger.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Okay? I am here today.”
Great. One of those live for the moment types, Maggie thought as she pulled away from him and sipped her coffee.
“You have been through very much. To have a sister die...” He shook his head and clucked his tongue.
“I intend to find out who killed Elise.” Maggie was surprised to hear the words coming from her mouth. Up until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that she would do anything but wait to hear from the police.
“Comment?” Laurent set his coffee cup down in its saucer and held her gaze. “The police will find out—“
“No. They won’t. They don’t care.”
“Maggee...it is their job. They will find out qui—“
“Laurent, you don’t understand! The cops are chasing psycho nut cases right and left in this town. There’s one in particular who’s been killing people near and around my own neighborhood...”
“Mon Dieu!”
“That’s right. So one more weirdo to them is just one more weirdo...”
“Merde! Maggee, if I had known...”
“Well, if you’d written me, I’d have told you. This has been a particularly bad summer for crime in Atlanta. I’m sure it’ll affect our rating nationwide...but my point is, the guy who stabbed and strangled Elise—“
“Maggee, Maggee, I think you are too upset right now. I think you need to forget a little bit. All this about stabbing and—“
“I can’t forget.” Maggie’s eyes hardened. “God, Laurent, you want to look at my mother’s face and ask me to forget? I put that look there! If I’d have told them Elise was back...if I’d have just picked up the damn telephone. What was I trying to do? I should have driven Elise straight to Brymsley that night...” Maggie clutched her starched damask napkin with her fists. “Okay, so I didn’t. I’ll take it to my grave regretting it but there’s no reversing it. It’s done. And now I’m trying to tell you that it’s the police who are going to forget. And then everyone will forget and the bastard who killed her will have gotten away with it! And then I’ll never be able to look my mother and father square in the eyes, or myself, or—“
“D’accord, d’accord, all right, then. Je compris.” He patted her hand as it lay on the elegant damask tablecloth. “But first, you will work with the police, eh? You will see what they have?”
“Yes, of course.” Maggie sighed and covered her eyes.
“And Laurent will help, yes?” He reached over and held her hand. “I can be very resourceful, non?”
Maggie looked up him and smiled.
“Thank you.”
The big Frenchman shrugged.
“Ahhh, well.” He leaned over toward her, allowing a quick look over his shoulder first. “But I think our first effort should be to find where we are to be sleeping tonight, oui?” His eyes twinkled and Maggie heard herself laugh for the first time in two days. It had a hollow, flat sound to it.
3
 He flipped the frontispiece over and stared again at the tiny, precise handwriting. To my darlingest Aged Parent for Christmas  1975 from his wiley wabbit, Elise.  John touched the cover of the leather-bound Dickens book and stared straight ahead over his desk. He remained this way, cradling the book in his arms, his face impassive, his eyes dry, his gaze unwavering, for nearly an hour. Finally, he replaced the book on his desk and stood up. He turned off the desk lamp and, not bothering to straighten up all the way, walked with heavy, laborious movements to the door of his study. The house was dark and shrouded with the stillness of the coming dawn.
 Such a wiley, dear spirit.
4
Maggie curled her feet up under her in the hammock and stretched her shoulders. After a heavy picnic lunch á la Becka that had her seriously thinking about fasting for the next week, she and Laurent had spent the bulk of the afternoon napping and reading in Brymsley’s large garden. She watched him trying to get comfortable in the twin hammock that hung alongside her own. He looked like a giant water buffalo trapped in a fisherman’s tuna net.
“Trouble, Laurent?”  
“Non, non,” he said wrestling with the knotted ropes a little less frenetically as if to prove it.
“Look,” she said twisting around to face him. “I need to think out loud about all this stuff, okay?”
“Mais, oui,” he said cheerfully.
They had spent the night wrapped in each other’s arms in Maggie’s bedroom. To have been apart that first night had been unthinkable, even at the risk of embarrassment or disapproval from her parents in the midst of their grief. Laurent had held her, petted her, consoled and loved her until the early hours of the morning. They had slept little and parted discreetly before breakfast.
“Okay, you know what my main question is?”
He shook his head, nearly depositing himself on the manicured lawn beneath them.
“Why Elise? And if I answer that question, I always come up with the same answer.”
“Gerard.”
“That’s right. Gerard. He’s evil enough to have done it and perverse enough to have a motive. After all, now his wife and child were going to be together and, presumably, happy. Don’t you think it fits in with his character profile that that might drive him wild? The notion that they didn’t need him. Were, in fact, going to be better off without him?”
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.”
“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.
“What word? Show me the word.” Maggie jumped up and stood over his shoulder. He pointed to the word.
“I think, peut-etre, it means, ohh, exotique? n’est-ce pas?  Or, different?”
“She thought I was exotic?” Maggie looked out onto Peachtree Street.
“But, she has the good heart and I am glad to see her face, oh, she says ‘her dear face,’ I’m thinking,” Laurent said. “...and I am glad to see her dear face again.” He stopped reading and put the letter down. He touched her. “C’est fini, ma petite,”  he said.
Maggie picked up the letter carefully and returned to her seat. She read the words in French, not understanding them, and felt a tiny prism of awe at Elise’s obvious comfort with them.
“Who is this woman? she asked suddenly, looking up at Laurent. “Who is this Michelle...” She flipped the envelope over and read, “...Zouk? That Elise would write her? Will the police contact her, I wonder?”
Laurent shrugged and replaced his napkin in his lap.
“Perhaps she is an old friend? The address is for Paris, I think?”
Maggie nodded absentmindedly, still holding the letter in front of her. Laurent resumed his meal alone.
All at once, she jumped up and then crouched under the dining room table.
“Laurent!” she shouted. “Take a look at this!”
Within seconds she was kneeling by his side as he sat at the table, the wadded up remains of Elise’s gray sweater clutched in her hands.
“Mageee, please—“
“No, look!” She thrust the filthy cardigan into his lap and peeled back the label at the neck with her fingers. In large silver script, the words Chez Zouk, shouted up at them.
“This Michelle must have a boutique or something,” she said. “Elise bought her clothes from her, don’t you see?”
Laurent touched the label and then looked at Maggie.
“C’est important?” 
“Well, I...” Maggie slumped back onto her heels, pulling the sweater across her knees as she did so. “I think so. I mean, it’s a connection, right?”
Laurent nodded, chewing his lamb slowly and watching her.
“I’ve got an address,” Maggie said quietly, thinking hard. “And I’ve got a name of a friend. Maybe even one that’s not a drug addict or a total loser.” Maggie stroked the soft sweater.
She looked up at Laurent.
“I need to go to Paris,” she said.


Chapter 11
1
“We hope you know that we’re all thinking of you and that we’re so terribly, terribly sorry about your sister.” Gerry spoke softly from the head of the conference room table supported by muted murmurs from the rest of the office workers.
“Thank you,” Maggie said, letting her eyes fill without embarrassment.
“We sent flowers to your parents,” Dierdre said, clearly uncomfortable, looking down at her doodling as she spoke. “Since we didn’t know when the funeral was going to be.”
Maggie cleared her throat and smiled shakily at her co-workers. “It’s going to be a memorial service. Just for...just for family. And thank you again for your caring.”
Dierdre handed Maggie a condolence card, showing a seagull soaring over an ocean wave.
“We all signed it,” she said, still not looking at Maggie.
Maggie felt sorry for Dierdre. It’s hard, she thought, if you’ve never had anybody close to you die, you really don’t have a clue as to how to act.
“Thanks, Dierdre, thanks all. That was kind.”
“Right,” Gerry said, clearing his own throat. “And now on to business.” He gestured to Dierdre to begin reading the traffic sheet.
Relieved to be on safer ground, Dierdre’s voice became perky and confident.
“The EMI brochure needs copy by the end of the week.” She looked up at Maggie, as did Gerry.  Maggie nodded her head.
“I’m already started on it,” she said.
“And the layout...Gerry, I’ve got the layout as due at the same time because of the tight deadline on this. We can’t really wait for the copy to get done before we start on it.”
“Pokey?” Gerry directed his attention to his art director. “Will that be a problem?”
Pokey tossed the schedule down in front of him.
“Not if I have any interest in enjoying my weekend or having a life outside this office, I guess it won’t,” he said stiffly.
“Good.” Gerry nodded back at Dierdre to continue.
Pokey scowled into his hands, not eager to push his complaints but not content with what he’d said either.
“I have a problem.” The voice, reedy yet masculine, was Patti Stump’s. She sat to Gerry’s right, her outfit an outlandish ensemble of blaring reds and oranges, looking as if it had been deliberately designed to offend.
“Yes, Patti?” His voice was tight. He seemed to be concentrating on correcting some typo on the schedule in front of him.
“My problem is the new budget on the Calloway Toys commercial—“
“I haven’t gotten to that yet,” Dierdre started.
“Well, I’ve gotten to it right now,” Patti hissed at her. “Gerry, the new budget cuts the frequency nearly in half. Without the back-to-backs I’d set up—“
“Who’s the a.e. on this?” Gerry looked around the table.
“Uh, that’s Linda,” Dierdre said. “She’s with a client,” 
“All right, we’ll discuss it when she’s back in the office. Next, Dierdre?”
“That’s bullshit, Gerry!” Patti slammed her fountain pen down onto the table. “My new budget is due in Linda’s in-box at two o’clock today. I’ve got television stations I’m having to renege on...I gave people my word! I’m having to lose discounts that I’d already figured into the budget...discounts that the client was counting on—“
“Patti, I’m afraid you’ll just have to redo your schedule with the new moneys.” Gerry turned and stared at her, his face reddening, showing that he wasn’t as comfortable as he wanted to appear. “And bullshit though it may be, it is also the nature of the business.” He looked at Dierdre who looked at Patti. Patti gathered up her schedule and pens  and stormed out of the meeting.
“Shall we continue?” Gerry spoke wearily.
2
“She’s in love with you?” Maggie had to sit down for this one.
“That’s what she said.”
“She told you this?”
“Yes, Maggie, she did. Loudly and without any mistake, please, don’t sit on my desk, thank you.”
“And what are you going to do about it?” Maggie removed herself to the armchair that faced Gerry’s desk.
“Do about it? Oh, you mean about returning her affections?”
“Don’t be an ass, Gerry. Obviously you can’t pretend she didn’t say it. Or...or is that exactly what you intend to do?”
“Why can’t I pretend she didn’t say it?”
“Gerry, you’re her boss!”
“Will you just say what you mean? Am I supposed to fire her? Put her in therapy? Set her up with one of my friends? Sleep with her? Exactly how am I supposed to respond to this crap?” He stood up, running his fingers through his hair. “Darla was amused.”
“Well, with anyone else it might be funny, but  Stump? Let’s face it, Gerry, it’s like having a bad-tempered Minnie Pearl with the hots for you.”
“Nice image, thanks, Maggie. What, precisely, do you recommend I do?”
“I recommend you have a talk with her.” She saw his look of distaste. “Gosh, Gerry, no one ever said owning your own agency was going to be all skittles and beer, you know?”
“I think it would be embarrassing to be thrown out of someone’s office wearing a skirt as short as you’re wearing so I’d watch the general level of condescension, okay? Besides, I think it may be a moot point.”
“How so?”
“I think I may not be the owner of this agency much longer.”
“Oh? Thinking about firing yourself, are you?”
“I’m serious, Maggie. I think I want to leave.”
“Leave? Leave for where? Another shop? Are you kidding? What are you talking about?”
“I don’t want this getting out to anyone, okay? I’m talking to Darla about leaving everything. I mean everything. The agency, the city, the state, the country. Just dropping out. I’m about fed up with everything...everything.”
“Ger—“ Maggie stared at him.
“I mean it. What with murders and maniacs roaming the streets, I’m worried half to death about Haley and Darla and I don’t seem to have much of a handle on what’s going on here and—“
“Gerry, listen.” Maggie stood up and moved back over to his side of the desk. She leaned against it and touched his shoulder. “Don’t you think things are just building up? I mean, when they catch this guy...look, you’re just overwhelmed right now, it’ll all sort itself out.” This was not the time to spring Paris on him, Maggie thought.  
“I don’t think so, Maggie. I really don’t. I think I have to do something to get it sorted out. I’m just not happy.”
“So you’re going to leave the country?”
Gerry scooped up some errant paper clips and tossed them into one of his desk drawers. He smoothed down a legal pad pushing out from a stack of folders.
“Where?” she asked.
Gerry shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about New Zealand. It’s got clean air and no drugs and, like, one murder per decade, and no guns...I think it would be good for Haley.”
“New Zealand?”
“It’s still in the just-talking stage, at this point,” he said, not looking at her.
“Have you ever been to New Zealand?”
“Look, don’t patronize me, okay? You know very well I’ve never been there.”
“Well, I’m just saying—“
“I know what you’re saying, Maggie, and I appreciate it, okay? But I don’t want to talk this one out with you, understand? I just don’t.”
Maggie sighed and moved back to the other side of the desk.
“And the Stump Lady?”
Gerry covered his eyes and moaned.
“Can’t I just let it ride? What possible harm can it do? She’ll lose interest after awhile and I just flat do not want to deal with it.”
He looked up at her and she nodded.
“Okay.” She shrugged. “She’s so daft, she’ll probably be hooked on Pokey by next week. I wouldn’t worry about it, Ger. In fact,” she pushed herself out of the chair and walked to the door of his office. “I wouldn’t worry about anything if you can help it.” She smiled at him and then exited, closing the door behind her.
As she walked to her office, she heard her name being paged over the public address system. Hurrying back to her desk, she snatched up the phone.
“This is Maggie,” she said.
“Don’t tell me, you were going to call as soon the wedding invitations were printed.”
Brownie. Maggie felt a lead ball settle neatly in the pit of her stomach.
“Hey, Brownie,” she said softly. “How’s it going?”
“Going okay, how ‘bout you?”
“Oh, you know...” God, she’d dreaded this phone call. “I’m working through the thing with Elise. You coming to the service? It’s tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I talked with your mom.” 
Oh dear.
“She told me about your boyfriend.”
“Brownie, I....”
“Hey, it’s okay.” He sounded so sweet and normal. “I wished you’d have told me, though. I mean, hearing it from your mom and all...”
“I know, Brownie, I’m sorry. I just didn’t know how to handle it, I guess. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings...”
“Hey, forget it, Maggie. Okay? Don’t worry about it. I just wanted to make sure you were all right and to tell you I’ll see you at the service tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Brownie,” she said.
“Take care of yourself, Newberry.” 
“Yeah, you too,” she said, hanging up.
Maggie sat back in her chair and stared at the wall. Between her conversation with Gerry and the one she’d just finished with Brownie, she could begin to feel like crap very quickly if she allowed it.
She took in a breath and let it out. She wouldn’t allow it.
She checked the time to make sure she could get her copy assignment finished and on Dierdre’s desk before the end of day, then picked up the phone and punched in the number for the Fulton County Police Department.
While she waited to be put through to Jack Burton, she picked up the office condolence card and glanced at the signatures inside. Pokey’s was practically unreadable. Funny, you’d think an art director would be too visual to end up with a turkey-scrawl for a signature, she thought. Patti’s was very precise, almost begrudging, or did Maggie project that? 
“Jack Burton.” The voice on the line was strained.
“Yes, Detective Burton? This is Maggie Newberry,” she said. “You’re investigating the death of my sister, Elise Newberry?”
“Yes, Miss Newberry.”
“I...well, I’m calling to see if there’s any more information on her, you know, her death. If you have anything else you can tell me.”
“Not really, Miss Newberry, we always—“
“Is it possible I might have a copy of your report?”
There was heavy sigh on the line.
“Look, it’s really a lot easier for everyone involved if you just let the police handle this, okay? We’re doing a thorough investigation—“
“I know you are and I appreciate it too, but I was still hoping—”
“We have no suspects at this time. I’m sorry, Miss Newberry. Really. I’d suggest you contact a support group or therapist to help work through this. Relatives of victims of violent crime have a tougher time than those people touched by other kinds of deaths. I can connect you back with the switchboard to be transferred to a department which can give you those numbers, if you’d like.”
“Okay, good. Thanks.” Maggie pulled a brochure with copy points on her current copy assignment out of her desk drawer and set it next to her computer.
“I wish you luck, Miss Newberry. And remember, we’re doing our very best for you.”
“Thanks again, Detective,” she said, flipping on her computer.  “I appreciate it.” 
“Hold while I switch you.” The line went soft as he rang the front switchboard. When she got a new operator, she asked to speak to  David Kazmaroff in Homicide.
3
 Maggie sat in one of the wicker chairs that lined the little office courtyard. It was too hot to sit out there for long, but she was putting off the moment when she had to re-enter the artificially-climated building. She was sure the air conditioning was drying out her skin and helping her ingest chemicals and tobacco smoke from the offices upstairs. She smiled wryly at the thought. She ingested plenty of tobacco smoke right in her own home.
Laurent had packed a small lunch for her: stuffed courgettes and roasted peppers. She carefully peeled the peppers—in glistening red and green strips—off the wax paper in which he’d wrapped them, swirls of golden-green oil dribbled off the paper in testimony to how bad they were for maintaining her size eight trousers. The peppers were exquisite, melting in her mouth with just the essence of their flavor and without the pepper’s usual bite. How does he do that, she wondered?
She’d already called him twice today. Twice to hear his voice and remind herself that he was there, in their apartment, waiting for her. She’d resist calling this afternoon, even though she wanted to discuss with him her conversation with Kazmaroff. It would have to wait until this evening. Laurent would be with her father. At his club. She shook her head. Curiouser and curiouser.
Living with Laurent was a surprise, she decided. It was not as if she’d ever lived with a man before and so possessed some kind of control sample of cohabitation, but she’d had expectations. Concerns. Probably bred from answering too many Does-He-Love-You quizzes in magazines at the hairdressers. Natural foreboding, even. And Laurent had defied them all. He was there for her. He was accommodating, sweet, loving and strong. Did he have any problems of his own? Maggie wasn’t aware of any. Did he disapprove or dislike anything about the way she lived? Not seriously, anyway. Not in a way that wasn’t teasing or playful or flattering to her.  The fact was, she decided, as frenetic and compulsive as she was normally—even without a murder investigation topping her “To Do” list—Maggie found herself needing the balm of Laurent’s soothing, caretaking ways. She hadn’t expected to find such a thing, and now couldn’t imagine living without it.
 She popped the last pepper in her mouth and savored it. He’d also packed a quarter baguette of French bread in her little brown sack. She nibbled off a corner.  
So, she thought, the police think some drug-dealing homeless person came in off the street, came into Maggie’s apartment, came down her hallway and into her apartment. They think Elise’s drug history is connected with this guy—whoever he is—and that it was a drug deal that went wrong. Real wrong for Elise. So there you have it, Maggie thought, wiping the smears of grease from her fingers as she packed up the remnants of her lunch.  
“What about Gerard?” she had asked the detective, not wanting to believe the story about a wandering drug dealer.
“Well, we talked to him,” Kazmaroff had said in a drawling, sleepy voice. “Had a pretty good alibi, though. Really good, in fact. Seems he was having a party in his hotel room with half the call girls in the metro area. Lotta people gonna confirm he was with them. So to speak.”
“He was having a party at four in the afternoon? Because you know, Elise was killed at—“
“Miss Newberry, he has an alibi for the time of the murder.” Kazmaroff had been patient with her.
“Of course,” she’d mumbled, embarrassed, but not willing to let go of the idea. “You think these witnesses are pretty reliable, do you, Mr. Kazmaroff?” she had asked pointedly.
“I think their testimony will stand up in court, yes, Miss Newberry. I’m sorry.”
The heat was becoming unbearable. Maggie removed the scarf from around her throat and smiled wanly at a couple of female layout artists from her office as they approached with their own brown bags and settled into chairs a few feet away from her. She watched them extricate their tuna fish salad sandwiches and little Charles Chips bags from their lunch sacks, and then she stood up and brushed the crumbs off the front of her skirt and went inside.
In her office, on her computer screen, under the headline “Why Opto-Mark Software Will Get Your Company Flying High,” she wrote “Gerard” and “Alfie.” Under “Gerard” she wrote: “motive, no opportunity”. Under “Alfie” she  wrote “no motive, plenty of opportunity.”  She tapped a pencil eraser against her chin and stared at the screen.
Slowly, she turned and picked up the telephone and dialed three numbers.
“Hey, Ger? It’s me. Listen, I need to take the rest of the afternoon off, okay? Yeah, it’s done, I gave it to Dierdre before lunch. And tomorrow’s the memorial service for Elise, okay? Thanks. Yeah, you too.” She switched off her computer and left the office.
4
Forgive me, Laurent, she thought, as she pulled into the parking lot of the Hotel Nikko off Peachtree Road, but it’s got to be now. Kazmaroff had told her  where Gerard Dubois was staying in Atlanta. 
“And that’s okay?” she’d asked, “He can just leave during a murder investigation?”
“He’s not a suspect, Miss Newberry,” Kazmaroff had repeated.
Unbelievable! And if he were ever going to be a suspect, she’d better come up with the evidence very soon. She hurried into the lobby,  noting how close the hotel was to the Lenox Square parking lot where he’d taken her money and given her Elise. Probably just waltzed back over here afterward and had a six-course snack at her father’s expense, she thought angrily.
She marched up to the front desk, asked for Mr. Dubois’ room number and was told that Mr. Dubois had checked out earlier that morning.
Disappointed, she turned away and stood in the middle of the Hotel Nikko lobby. Now what?  Could she catch him at the airport? She tried to calculate how many flights there were daily to Paris out of Atlanta. That is, if he was heading to Paris. Maybe he was going to Nice, instead? Would the carriers even give her a passenger list? She felt overwhelmed by the task. A proper sleuth would probably go to all the trouble, she admonished herself, as she got back into her Mitsubishi and strapped herself in. She gave up and decided to query Delta by phone when she got back to her apartment. What else could she do?
With considerably more exhaustion than she started out with, Maggie drove down tree-lined Peachtree Road, past the old Sears parking lot, noting that everyone she knew still referred to the intersection that way even though there was a towering, glittering office building in place of the Sears parking lot  and had been for some years now. She continued past the Good ‘Ol Days outdoor café whose feebly flapping awning looked wilted and bleak in the punishing heat, past the Parthenon, to St. Juniper’s Street. She pulled into the street and drove to the first phone booth she saw. It was—not surprisingly for this neighborhood—filthy, with the glass panels broken out of its door in jagged gaps.
Although less than a mile from her own apartment building, St. Juniper was abused and kicked around, an older neighborhood made up of small, dilapidated crackerbox houses with blistering paint and stingy-sized garages that had once been proper sheds. Maggie had often seen old people hobble out at the mouth of St. Juniper’s Street to go sit in the dismal little park next to St. Phillips Cathedral, the snooty-grand Episcopal church  directly across the street.
She picked up the hanging phone book and carefully flipped the pages to the ‘W’s. Kazmaroff, bless him, had proven a wealth of useful information. Not only had he told Maggie about Gerard and outlined the police report on Elise’s death, but he’d given her Alfie’s surname. He’d thrown it out in reference to “St. Juniper’s”, obviously not thinking she would take it any further.  She ran her finger down the list of names. “Wexford, Carole.” It was the only Wexford listed on the street.  
Maggie let the book drop from her hands. It swung impotently against the glass on its rusty chain. She looked around the neighborhood.  She thought she remembered seeing a few sleazy-types come out of this neighborhood as she’d driven by from time to time—her idea of what crack addicts and pimps look like these days. Seedy, dirty, looking everywhere at once, going nowhere in particular.
According to Kazmaroff, the police had questioned Alfie at police headquarters. Mother Carole had waited patiently during the interview and then taken Alfie home. No one had interviewed her.
Although hardly as exciting as the prospect of a confrontation with Gerard Dubois, Maggie still felt a nervous anticipation when she climbed back into her car. She expected Carole Wexford to be protective of her handicapped son. Maggie also expected that the mother would have a clearer understanding of what her son had seen that afternoon. 
Or done.
505 St. Juniper’s Street was less than a quarter mile from the telephone booth. An attractive little cottage, obviously appreciated and taken care of, with blue-gray cedar siding and a bright red door, the Wexford place stood out among the neighboring houses like a jewel in a basket of seaweed.  The other homes were ranch-style homes in varying stages of disrepair. Only the Wexford place had any flowers or shrubs—and few enough of them—lining its broken driveway and bordering the street. Maggie drove up the bumpy driveway, slabs of cement heaving away in chunks and craters looking like a scaled-down model of the aftermath of an earthquake. There was no car in the drive.
Maggie made her way up the tiny walkway, crowded by overgrown boxwoods and glossy-green azaleas, and knocked on the door. Her approach had apparently been monitored because the door opened immediately.
“Yes?” The woman was not attractive. She’d obviously tried to make herself up to appear so, but the attempt had not been successful. Her hair, shiny black and worn in dated spikes of jagged shocks, belonged on a much younger woman. Her eyes were framed in varying shades of green and purple eye shadow. Maggie guessed her age at about forty-five or so.
“My name is Maggie Newberry. Are you Mrs. Wexford?”
The woman looked at Maggie and then sighed. When she did, it looked like the whole front of her too-short house dress deflated and sagged inward.
“You can come in,” she said, holding the door wide to allow Maggie to enter.
“Thank you.” Maggie stepped into the house. Too small for a foyer or welcoming hallway, the cottage opened immediately into the living room. Maggie’s first impression was an olfactory one. The house smelled of old, fried food, as though years of cooking had trapped the odors in the very fiber of the wallpaper and the thin, gray-colored carpeting that flooded the place. The effect of the pretty cottage on the outside was not carried through on the inside. The atmosphere was stifling, made worse by the blast of Georgio cologne that Maggie caught as she passed Mrs. Wexford.
“It’s about the girl that was killed, isn’t it?” The woman motioned Maggie to a small seating arrangement of two wingback chairs and an overstuffed sofa immediately ahead of her.  
“Uh, yes,” Maggie said, as she picked out the least stained chair in the room. The house was tidy but not clean. A crusted glob of something perched on the back of one of the chairs. Maggie  sat down as if she were using a strange toilet and didn’t have anything to paper the seat with first. 
“She was my sister.”
Maggie could see the woman more clearly now and it occurred to her that she might have misjudged her age. The lines cupping Mrs. Wexford’s mouth were harsh and indelible. Too many years of pursing lips around a cigarette, Maggie guessed. The face was harder than she’d first thought too. Colder.
“Alfie already talked to the cops.” The woman sat on the sofa. She eyed Maggie warily.
“I know, they told me. I just thought...I wanted to talk with you for a minute.” Maggie tried to keep her eyes from straying around the room. She thought she detected a light, bitter odor of something burning. Like electrical wiring?
The woman leaned back and her hand went out to a pack of cigarettes resting on a scarred oak side table.
“I mean,” Maggie continued, licking her quickly drying lips, “I’m not sure that Alfie...your son, absolutely understood the questions the po...the cops were asking him, you know? I was hoping, maybe, that the two of you discussed, you know, what happened.”
“What happened?” The woman lit her cigarette and tossed the match in the general vicinity of a large plastic ashtray on the side table.  
“Well, I mean, what Alfie saw the day my sister was killed.”
“He already told the cops he didn’t see nothing.”
Maggie felt her weariness return. What was she doing here?
“I know, but I thought, maybe he told you some things he might not have told...I mean, he communicates with you better than with other people, right?”
The woman nodded slowly, her eyes holding Maggie’s gaze. She took a heavy drag off her cigarette.
“So, I just thought that maybe he told you something...even a little something, that maybe he forgot to tell the cops.” This is hopeless.
“Your sister was a goddamn bitch.”
Maggie knew her mouth flew open and she couldn’t help it. She simply gaped at the woman.
“What?” she managed to say.
“Your sister. She was mean to Alfie. Real mean.”
“Are you sure?” What in the world was this woman talking about? Had Alfie spoken to Elise?
“You don’t understand what ‘mean’ is?” Carole took another full drag off her cigarette. “You know, Alfie’s not right in his brain. You know that, right?”
Maggie nodded.
“He had him an accident when he was just four and the doctors all said he was gonna just stay that age forever. Far as I can tell, he has.” She stubbed out her cigarette and looked at Maggie with real bitterness. “I reckon Alfie is going to live with me until I keel over and die. Gonna live right there in the room next to mine as long as I live. I can’t afford no special sanitarium.” She stretched the word out: “san-ee-tor-ee-um.”
“Did Alfie tell you my sister was mean to him?” Maggie knew the police had not questioned Carole Wexford. She knew that what she was hearing was news and she felt herself getting excited.
“He said she made fun of the way he talked. Said she, like, laughed at him, to his face. He might not seem to have much in the way of feelings to you, Miss Whoever, but he’s got as many feelings as you do.”
“It’s hard to believe that my sister—“
“Oh, I’m sure it is,” Carole said in a mocking voice. “But she did, all right. Made him cry if you want to know. Made him cry his goddamn heart out in that room.” She jabbed an unlit cigarette in the direction of what Maggie assumed were the bedrooms.
“What exactly happened? Was he  delivering groceries in the building? Because I never have groceries delivered to my apartment and I can’t imagine my sister doing it. She was sick and had only been in town for—“
“I ain’t sure of the particulars. I know he was there doing his business and she come out into the hall and they talked. And that’s when it happened.”
“I see. And Alfie didn’t tell the cops this?”
“He was too afraid. I told him he didn’t have to tell ‘em and he said he didn’t want to. If you tell ‘em, I’ll deny it and call you a filthy liar.” She pointed her cigarette at Maggie as if for punctuation.
Charming. Maggie gathered up her purse and stood up.
“Well, I’m sorry for all the trouble.” 
The woman said nothing. Her too-red lips gripped the cigarette and puffed out an angry cloud of smoke.
“Anyway, thanks for talking with me.” Realizing that the woman was not going to see her to the door, Maggie let herself out.
5
“Your father changed the time for me to come, ainsi it is tonight and not this afternoon.  I love you, cherie.
Laurent”
Maggie sat on the couch with her feet resting on the coffee table with a chilled glass of Sauvignion Blanc in her hand. Laurent’s note remained stuck to the refrigerator door where he’d placed it. She was disappointed and sorry she hadn’t called him in the afternoon after all. He could have accompanied her on her not very fruitful investigations. As it was, she longed to tell him of her discoveries, to see his thoughtful face as he listened to her theories and revelations. He would help her make sense of what she learned today.
The little apartment smelled of sautéed garlic and onions although the galley kitchen was tidied to a shine with not a pot nor a dribble of olive oil to be seen. She imagined her Frenchman whipping up his—presumably quite involved—lunch several hours earlier and she smiled.  Although it was true that she’d never read in any of the questionnaires or articles in Cosmopolitan magazine that smiling all the time was a sure sign of compatibility, she assumed it was on the right track.
Had Elise been hateful to Alfie? Maggie shifted on the couch, set her wine glass down and then got up to adjust the venetian blinds. It was dark now and she didn’t enjoy the thought of Peachtree Street traffic peeking in her living room window. Maybe Elise had begun withdrawal and had been really testy? Maybe she hadn’t realized that Alfie was mentally handicapped?
She resettled herself back on the couch and took a sip of her wine. And where does all this lead? Did Alfie kill Elise? She tried to imagine the soft, lumbering man-child angry enough to kill somebody. She tried to imagine him chasing Elise down the hallway with a wire outstretched in his chubby fists. She closed her eyes and willed the image away. It was too soon. Too soon to think of Elise’s terror in her last moments alive. Too soon to imagine it all happening. And where was Maggie then? In a late meeting at the office, laughing and joking with Gerry and Dierdre.  
Maggie set her wine down and went over to the stereo system sitting on an old etagere she’d found in a garage sale. She selected a CD of Laurent’s and popped it in. The music was sweet but complicated. It was French. She picked up the CD jewel box and tried to read some of the lyrics printed on the insert. She tossed the cover back down. Impossible. She returned to her chair and her wine.
She wouldn’t be able to say that she and Elise had been close, exactly. Growing up, Elise—although the younger in years—was always the eldest in everything else. People often mistook Elise for Maggie’s older sister because of her knowing, carefully groomed affect, her studied sophistication. They were about the same height too. Or Maybe it was Maggie’s edgy lack of savoir faire that had people reshuffling their ages.
She remembered a time when she was thirteen and Elise was eleven. Elise had already begun her menstrual periods—at about the same time that Maggie had—and was well on her way to developing a singular, projectionable impression of wisdom and careless angst. The family had been on vacation in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and were spending a wet week starting at a soggy beach. Everyone had been disappointed, Maggie remembered. Everyone except Elise, who was rapt with the gloomy romance of it all. One afternoon, while Maggie, her parents and her older brother, Ben were busy playing long bouts of “Scrabble” and “Monopoly”, Elise excused herself to walk to the head cottage in the group of resort bungalows to get a Coke from one of the vending machines.
She was gone for twenty-four hours.
The rainy ennui was replaced by frantic visits to the police station, a thorough community-organized combing of the beach—in a full, torrential downpour, as Maggie recalled—and a good deal of tears.
Maggie took a sip of wine. This evening’s rain had stopped and left fat, glabulous droplets hanging by glittering threads from the small magnolia bush outside her living room window. She could see the branches, black and slick with the raindrops, tremble in what looked like a reasonable effort to dislodge them.
Elise had been discovered about the time the resort was deciding to drag the bottom of the small two-acre lake the families had spent the last seven summers water-skiing on. Maggie’s parents had been so relieved to see Elise alive that any punitive action dissolved immediately from their minds. Elise was allowed to resume her place at the “Scrabble” board as if nothing had happened. In Elise’s mind, Maggie knew, certainly nothing much had. It seemed that her sister had spent the bulk of her escaped time with a teenage boy named Dillon who, along with his very pleasant family of a mother, father and two younger sisters, had been assured by Elise that she was nearly 16 and traveling alone. Without calling her own parents, perhaps without even thinking of them, Elise had spent a day and a night with these friendly folk from Tennessee, eating with them, sleeping on their couch, snuggling with their strapping young son, and enjoying her freedom in a manner and style that had aged Elspeth an easy ten years.
Maggie finished off her wine and glanced at the clock. Ten-thirty. She was glad Laurent was getting to know her dad, but she’d have to ask her father what it was all about.  
When the phone rang, Maggie frowned, assuming it was Laurent calling to say he’d be even later. She picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”  
The voice rasped into her ear like a jar full of wasps.
 “How ‘bout if you’re next on the list, bitch?” 


Chapter Twelve
1
“Do you have to talk about the price of mangos in Auckland?” Darla squirmed in the passenger seat of Gerry’s BMW and rearranged her headband in the car visor mirror. “I mean, let’s just be normal guests for a change, what do you say?”
Gerry smiled over at his wife. She looked good.  She seemed happier, more relaxed. Did he imagine it?
“Maggie knows we’re planning to move to New Zealand, Darla. I’ve been discussing it with her all week.”
“I’m surprised she hasn’t called me yet to suggest some good prices on a semi-private at a good mental hospital.”
“She supports me in this, Darla.” Gerry switched on his turn indicator and pulled into the parking lot at the Parthenon. “Something you would do well to—“
“Oh, stop it! Just shut up, okay? She doesn’t have to live with it. She doesn’t have to wake up to your ‘G’day, mates’ and hear the price of kiwi fruit as it rises and falls in the world market. We are not moving to New Zealand, for crying out loud, and you are making us both look like idiots!”
Maybe he’d rushed that assessment about her happiness. Come to think of it, he thought, she looked bloody tense.
“I won’t mention mangoes,” he said, pulling into a parking spot.
“Thank you.”
“Then maybe Maggie won’t mention her latest obsession.”
“What are you talking about? I thought Laurent was going to be having dinner with us?”
“I’m talking about her other obsession. The one she’s developed about tracking down her sister’s killer. It’s all she talks about anymore.”
“Well, it gives her a sense that she’s doing something. I know she must feel pretty helpless.” Darla pulled down the sun visor and checked her hair.
“I know how she feels.”
“Yeah, well, in that case you could probably suggest  to her that she do something more constructive than tracking down Elise’s killer. Like, say, moving to the Antipodes, instead.”
“Very amusing, Darla. I hope you’re going to be a little less riotous during dinner.”
Maggie removed the candles from the fireplace mantle and placed them on the table. She flattened the heavy cotton napkins out with her hands and placed them to the left of the four forks at each place setting.
“You know, I still can’t get over the lack of interest the police showed in that obscene phone call,” she said. “You know? I mean, if it wasn’t the killer himself—and I don’t know why they don’t think it wasn’t—then it was some kind of real low-life, and all cops did was—“
“Magggee.” Laurent appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, wearing a stiff, white apron. His eyes looked tired and he smiled at her with effort. He held a dripping wooden spoon in one hand.
“I know, I know,” she said sulkily. “No one wants to hear about this stuff.”
“It is not that. But it has been almost one week since the phone call and—“
“Yes, yes, old news, I know. Boring stuff, rehashed, ho-hum. Sorry, sorry.”
“Maggeee, you will stop it now, s’il te plâit.” He shook his big head at her and wagged a finger too. She remembered the first time he had done that, how sweet and sexy and possessive it had seemed to her.  
“I love you, Laurent,” she said.
Caught in a half-turn on his way back into the maw of the steamy kitchen, Laurent stopped and faced her again.
“Je t’aime, aussi, cherie,” he said, a smile creeping across his face.
Maggie moved to him and gave him a tight hug.
“And I’ll stop talking about death for at least the duration of our dinner party with the Parkers. Je promis,” she whispered.
“Merci.” He kissed her softly on both her closed eyes and stroked her cheek with his large hand.
“Your roue is roiling,” she said sweetly.
“Merde.” He released her and returned to his stove to snatch up the bubbling paste from one of the gas burners.
“You know, Gerry’s probably going to be on this Kiwi kick of his. I want you to be patient, okay?”
“I am toujours very patient.” He lifted a ladle of the roue and plunged it into the hot broth in another pot on the stove.
“I know you are, dearest. I count on it, in fact. Oh, there they are now.” A sturdy knock at the door brought Maggie around the dining room table and into the  foyer. She gave her plum-colored tunic a quick pull, smoothed it over her capri pants, and then opened the door.
Darla looked gorgeous as usual. She wore a blue sheath of shimmering satin laced with dancing crystal beads that spun and flew at the ends of their gossamer tethers whenever she moved. Everything the woman wore took on a new dimension of sexiness, it seemed to Maggie—even baggy corduroys and tent dresses---yet Darla always looked as fresh and sweet as if she’d just caught a bus from the Sisters of Mercy convent. Her hair settled about her shoulders in a golden penumbra of loose curls. Her facial features were fine and delicate except for a large full mouth. Crow’s feet were already developing around her eyes—testimony to the intense concentration Darla tended to give even the mundane facets of her life. All in all, it was an intelligent face, Maggie thought. And a beautiful one.
“Darla! Ages!” Maggie squealed. “Long time no!” They kissed and hugged, holding onto each other’s elbows as they pulled back to get a better look.
“You look wonderful, Maggie, and again, I’m so sorry about your sister.”
“Thanks, Darla, thank you. Hey, Ger.”
Gerry wore plain khaki slacks with a black knit polo shirt. Maggie found herself wondering with surprise how he was able to sport the tan that he did working the hours that he did. She’d never really noticed it before.
“Where is he?” Gerry peered around the corner toward the kitchen.
“Oh, God, you’re not going to be a jerk tonight, are you?” Maggie turned to Darla, “He’s not going to be a jerk tonight, is he?”
“Don’t be silly. Gerry? A jerk?” Darla feigned disbelief. “But seriously, Maggie, where is he?”
“Not you too? He’s in the kitchen.” She leaned against the wall and raised her voice: “Laurent! Do you have a breaking point?”
“You mean he hasn’t found that with you yet?” Gerry’s eyes danced.
Maggie rolled her eyes at him.
“Laurent?” she called again.
“Une moment, cherie.”
“Ohhhh, Maggie! You lucky creature! He calls you ‘Cherie’!”
“Oh, you girls are disgusting.” Gerry put his hands in his pockets. “Can I just go in or are you going to make us get our hands stamped first?”
“Yes, yes. Come in. He’s in the kitchen doing tricky things with flour and beef juice and stuff.”
Maggie led the way to the dining room as Laurent was coming out of the kitchen with a bottle of white wine and four glasses in his hands.
Gerry stuck out his hand, realized the impossibility of this, and, instead, shook Laurent’s free elbow.
“Hi, I’m Gerry. I guess you’ve heard a lot about me.”
“Enchantez,” Laurent said, his eyes going quickly to Darla as he put the wine bottle down and reached for her hand. He smiled broadly. “Enchantez, Madame,” he repeated to her.
“Ooooh, me too, thank you. I’m Darla.”  Darla stretched out her hand to receive the glass of wine Laurent was pouring.
Gerry appeared to be less impressed with Laurent than did Darla. He took his wine from Laurent and nodded his acceptance.
“So, Maggie,” he said, turning his back on the Frenchman, “how goes the police investigation?” 
“Not good.” She ignored Laurent’s look of disapproval and ushered their guests into the living room. “Come on in and sit down and I’ll tell you a little about it. Are you just about finished in the kitchen, Laurent?” she called over her shoulder, not waiting for a reply.
They settled themselves in Maggie’s tiny living room with its crazy-quilt collection of colored toss pillows and miniature hanging tapestries. The effect was still somehow clean, even spare, because of the frugality that Maggie had used in the number of wall hangings—and her determination to keep the walls unpainted and stark.
“Okay,” Maggie said. “I’ll be brief because it’s turning into a less-than-welcome subject in the house.”
“Oh?” Darla frowned. “How come?”
“Oh, you know, it’s sort of a depressing topic.”
Laurent entered the room, a glass of wine in his hand, but did not sit down. Instead, he leaned against the archway of the door leading into the living room. Gerry was aware that the man’s decision to stand made him feel a little uncomfortable.
“Maggie becomes unhappy when she is thinking of her sister’s death,” he said, watching Maggie with eyes full of care and protection.
“It depresses me,” Maggie agreed. “But I can’t not do it, you know?” 
Darla nodded sympathetically.
“I mean, I have to find out what happened and the police aren’t doing anything—“
“This is not true,” Laurent protested.
“All right, they’re not doing enough for me.” She shrugged and took a sip of her wine.
“Gerry said you got a bad phone call last week, maybe from the killer?” Darla leaned forward on the couch toward Maggie.
Maggie searched Laurent’s face for any sign of irritation. There was none.  
“Yes, yes, I did. And I was so blown away by it that I didn’t try to keep him on the phone or hear whatever else he had to say. I just hung up on him.”
“What did the cops say?” Gerry watched Laurent retreat into the kitchen.
“Nothing, really. They asked me to describe his voice and what time he called and all, but that’s it.”
“What did he say to you?” Darla asked.
“Well, he, in essence... he told me I was next on his list, or how would I like to be next on his list? Something to that effect. I don’t even remember exactly now. It freaked me out so much at the time.”
“But the police, they say it could be somebody who is simplement pretending.” Laurent stood in the doorway once more. He looked at Darla for confirmation on his word choice. She nodded encouragingly. “Pretending to be the killer of Elise,” he said. “Et maintenant, dinner,” he finished, “she is served,” 
“Oh, yum.” As Darla hopped up, the loose crystal beads of her dress danced wildly all in one movement, like an ocean wave crashing over her body. The beads made a shusshing noise like a beaded curtain in a clairvoyant’s parlor.
“So, it might not have been the killer who called you?” Gerry moved into the dining room with the others.
“Well, it might not have been. That’s true. Elise’s murder did get a fairly extensive write-up in the paper. The cops say that always attracts people to call up and say cheerful things to the surviving family. Sweet, huh? Please, sit, sit.” Maggie indicated the empty chairs at the dining table and they all took their seats. She caught Laurent’s eye as he approached from the kitchen carrying their dinner and he smiled at her. Lovingly, forgivingly.

Gerry pushed his plate away and addressed Maggie.
“Not bad. You’re improving.”
She gave him a warning look.
“I didn’t make it. Laurent did.”
“Oh? My compliments to the chef.” He smiled stiffly at Laurent.
“Don’t be an ass, Gerry,” Darla said, her mouth full of Boeuf en Daube Provençale. “You knew Laurent cooked it. Dee-lish beef casserole, Laurent,” she said to her host.
“Je t’en prie,” Laurent said simply, smiling at Darla.
“And that soup!” Darla scooped up another spoonful of her Boeuf en Daube. “I need the recipe for that, although I’m sure it’s impossibly hard. Can you microwave it? You know, make it up early and then freeze it?”
“’Freeze it?” Laurent asked uncertainly.
“Oh, never mind, keep it a secret from me. It makes it taste better.”
Laurent replenished all the wine glasses and then got up and returned moments later from the kitchen with a tray of sausage, cheeses, salad and thin slices of crespaou, a cold vegetable omelet smothered in tomato sauce and herbs.
“Well, finally,” Gerry said when Laurent set the tray down. “I was wondering when you people were going to finish feeding us.”
Darla gave him an amused look.
“Yes, well...” Maggie laughed. “The French have definitely got the endless-food-thing under control. I told Laurent, I’m going to look like a German hausfrau very soon now. He thinks I’m joking.”
“Speaking of joking...” Darla slid a slice of crespaou onto her plate and helped herself to a thick wedge of Brie. “Has Gerry mentioned his plans to emigrate to the South Pacific?”
“I thought you didn’t want me talking about that.” Gerry touched a piece of cold sausage suspiciously with his fork. There were bits of green and white things poking out of it.
“He said y’all are moving to New Zealand,” Maggie said. “How do you feel about that, Darla?”
Laurent flapped his napkin open and took a sip from his wine glass. His eyes met Maggie’s briefly.
“This is good stuff,” Gerry remarked, pulling the wine bottle to him.
“Chateau Cos D’Estournel l982.” Laurent looked at him with surprise. “You are familiar, oui?”
Gerry shrugged uncomfortably. “I’ve heard of it,” he said.
“I feel hacked off about it, if you want to know,” Darla said to Maggie. “He’s called New Zealand immigration and asked about the school year for Haley and how we can get residency and all that stuff. "
Gerry frowned and took a sip of his wine. “I’m calling around to get things set up and find housing and so forth. Plus, I need to find a job down there.”
“This really just seems so sudden to me,” Maggie said, taking a pear from the basket of fruit that she deposited on the table. “How did you pick New Zealand? Why so far away?”
“Did you know that Auckland is the furthest point on the globe from Atlanta?” Gerry said happily. “Except Perth, I think.”
“And that’s the whole point, I guess?” Maggie looked at Gerry.
“I’m sick of living like this,” he said. “Sick of being afraid for my family and reading about mass slayings at the MacDonald’s restaurants and drug killings in Cabbagetown—“
“We don’t live anywhere near Cabbagetown,” Darla inserted.
“Doesn’t matter. We live in the same city with it.”
“So you thought you’d try your luck in another hemisphere?” Maggie said cutting her pear into small bite-sized chunks. “I don’t know, Gar, it seems so drastic. Don’t you think so, Laurent?”
“I’m thinking it sounds like a bonne idee,” he said, shrugging.
“I thought you liked America,” Maggie stopped cutting up her fruit.
“I like wherever you are, cherie,” he said simply.
“Yeah, well, I’m thinking it sounds like the end of the world,” Darla said, pushing her plate away. “Hurry up and catch this lunatic, okay, Maggie? That way we can all stay in the U.S.”
“It’s not just him—“ Gerry leaned across the table.
“I know, I know,” Darla said. “But it’d be a start. Soon as Elise’s killer  is caught, we’ll all start to relax a little.” 
Maggie looked at Laurent and he covered her hand with his own.
“I didn’t get a chance to ask you how the memorial service was,” Darla said gently.
“It was good. Generic.” Maggie released Laurent’s hand and regarded her friends from across the table. “I mean, no one really knew Elise. She’d been away so long...nearly seven years all together. So the eulogy wasn’t terribly specific.” Maggie cleared her throat.
Laurent reached for the wine bottle. He poised it over Darla’s already full glass.
“Encore du vin?” he asked.
2
The next morning the drizzle continued. The rain offered some relief to the sweltering city by lowering temperatures, but left behind a suffocating mugginess that left Atlantans gasping.
“I keep coming back to Gerard.” Maggie adjusted the telephone receiver against her ear and leaned against the glass wall of the phone booth.
“Perhaps she had a boyfriend?” Laurent asked. “Did you ask? In France, there are many passionate fights between lovers. It is....how you are saying?...not unusual.”
Maggie could hear a pot lid clattering against the oven. Does the man do nothing but prepare food? 
“Yeah, well, we puritanical Americans are a little more self-contained when it comes to l’amour, Laurent,” she responded. “Sorry to disappoint you. Drugs or turf or money... those are all acceptable, American things to kill for, but love just doesn’t cut it as a real popular reason over here.”
“Ah, well.” She could see his usual Gallic shrug and she felt a surge of love for him. He seemed to have an affectionate interest in things American. As long as they didn’t actually jump into his grocery cart or keep him from smoking in restaurants or—heaven forbid—force him to perform any kind of aerobic exercise. Yet he was fascinated with Americans, with their health obsessions, their attention to cars and their neurotic attendance on their children’s whims. He enjoyed watching it all and was careful to remain an observer.
“I was toying with the idea of skipping dinner, my love.” Maggie twisted the telephone cord around her fist and looped the hard rubber ringlets between her knuckles.
“Pour quoi?” She could hear a tinge of hurt being quickly covered.
“I can’t eat so much, Laurent. I’m serious.”
“It is food, simplement.”
“I know, darling, but it is also fattening, artery-clogging food—as scrumptious as it is. I can’t do it on a regular basis.  I just want to grab a carton of yogurt or something tonight. Okay? And I’m going by to talk to the night watchman at our building—“
“I will come with you.”
“Okay, good. That’d be good.” Maggie rubbed her eyes with her free hand and watched the traffic on Piedmont Avenue from the grime-streaked window of the phone booth.  “Anyway, I just want to drop in on my folks to say ‘hi’ and then I’ll be home.”
“Bon.”
“I love you, Laurent.”
“I love you, too, Maggie.”
After she had hung up and dodged the raindrops to get back into her car, it began to occur to Maggie that perhaps Laurent should find some kind of job.
3
Maggie pulled onto the Newberry estate and through the Brymsley gates.
Elspeth opened the front door as Maggie parked. She looked fresh and happy. She wore a soft cotton sundress of blue and purple violets on a white background and a pair of gold sandals on her feet.
“Have you changed your mind about dinner? Your father’s home for a change.”
“No, sorry, Mom, I told Laurent I’d be home.”
“Call him, have him drive over—“
“Mom, we’ll be here tomorrow night, but I can’t tonight.”
“Well, all right,  darling.” Elspeth led them into the house
“How’s she been doing?” Maggie asked.
“Oh, fine. Very good. You’ll have a drink, at least?”
“Sure, I guess. A quick one. Dad’s home, you say?”
While her mother gave drink orders to Becka, Maggie found her father sitting in his study with the evening paper and a gin and tonic.
“Hey, Dad,” she said, giving him a kiss.
“Well, hello, sweetheart.” John Newberry’s face lit up as his paper crumpled into his lap. “Your mother said you couldn’t come to dinner tonight.”
“I can’t, either. I’m just here for a quick visit. Laurent and I’ll be over tomorrow for dinner.”
“I like the man,” her father said. “He’s got some very interesting stories to tell.”
“Oh, really?” Laurent’s story-telling abilities hadn’t really come up much in their relationship. Maggie found herself intrigued.
“Ahh, well, probably not the sort of stories a young man tells his lady love. Quite the scamp in his day, was your Laurent. Reformed by love.” Her father straightened out his newspaper, folding it to a smaller size to make his reading tidier...less conspicuous?
Although not surprised that Laurent had a mysterious past, Maggie was astonished that he might have shared any of it with the father of his lover. Or that her father hadn’t been alarmed by whatever Laurent had divulged. Couldn’t have been anything too dangerous, Maggie decided, as she watched John Newberry’s pleasant face relax into a concentration of reading.  It was true her father seemed fascinated by Laurent. And, for some reason, she found she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea.
“Mind if I use the phone, Dad, in the ante room?” Maggie stood up and held her notepad in front of her.
“Of course, darling, help yourself,” he murmured into his newspaper.
Maggie stepped into the small room used as the business part of her Dad’s study. Here, away from the den with its books and side tables and Steiffel lamps, were the desk and fax machine. There was even a copier machine that her father seemed never to use but had insisted on having. Maggie closed the door separating the two rooms.
Picking up the phone, she quickly gave the operator her overseas calling card code and the number in Paris. After several lengthy clicks, the line rang.
“Allo? Chez Zouk.” A woman’s voice came clear and distinct over the line.
“Oui, est-ce que Madame Zouk?”  Is this Madame Zouk? Maggie asked.
“Comment?” Excuse me?
God, she was afraid of this. Her French was crap. Why didn’t she just have Laurent make the call for her?
“Madame Zouk. Je cherche Madame Zouk. Elle est la?”  I’m looking for Madame Zouk. Is she there?  
“Ahhhh! Madame Zouk, elle n’est pas ici . Elle a vacance en Provence. Comprenez?”
On vacation in the South of France? Maggie let out a long, breath. Her expectations and hopes draining out with the breath. 
“Oui, merci, Madame. Merci beaucoup. Au revoir, madame.” Maggie hung up quickly just as the door opened and Becka entered with a small silver tray. On it was a lone Waterford goblet sparkling with her gin and tonic. A fat green wedge of lime bobbed to the top.
“Oh, thanks, Becka. Could you tell my Mother I’ll be out in a minute? I’ve just got one more phone call to make. Thanks.” The maid nodded and left.
On vacation. That figures. It’s August. All of France is on vacation and probably in Provence too. She took a long sip of her drink and felt immediately revitalized.
Well, that puts off visiting Paris until September, she thought. Just as well. She was still not asking the right questions and she needed to at least have that part down before she put a six hundred-dollar-flight-plus-hotel on her American Express card.
She picked up the phone again and dialed.  
“Brownie? Hey, this is Maggie. Sorry I’ve been out of touch.”
“Maggie? Maggie who?”
“Very funny. I’m really sorry. I’ve been busy, you know, trying to figure out this thing with Elise.”
“Figure out what thing with Elise?”
Maggie took a sip of her drink. He wasn’t going to make this easy.
“Look, Brownie, I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch, so there you are. Now I’ve got a couple of questions I’m hoping you can help me with or you can continue to be a jerk and I won’t even blame you, okay?”
Brownie paused on the other line.
“Shoot,” he said.
“Thanks. First, do you remember seeing anything weird the night you came to my apartment for dinner when Elise was killed?”
“You mean other than all the cops and the people hanging about in the hallway?”
“Please, Brownie.”
“Well, I remember the cops were really kind and sweet to me.”
“Seriously?”
“I could have been the killer as far as they knew, right? But they never checked my pockets or anything. I could’ve had a knife on me, you know. In fact, I did have one.”
“What? A knife?”
“You know the one I always carry? The Swiss Army knife?”
“Well, you don’t need a coroner to tell you Elise wasn’t killed with a little ol’ Swiss Army pen knife.”
“Excuse me, Maggie, but they didn’t even check to see if I had a big, bloody butcher knife. Plus, I even picked up some crap coming into your apartment and they could care less, you know?”
“You picked something up in the hall?”
“Yeah, at first I thought it was garbage, but it was sort of shiny and then I thought it looked valuable so I picked it up.”
“What was it?”
“Who knows? I still don’t know. A kid’s toy, maybe? I thought I’d give it to Nicole.”
“You’ve still got it?”
“You can’t seriously think this is important?”
“It’s one more thing than I had fifteen minutes ago.”
“It’s a piece of junk, a kid’s toy—”
“We don’t have kids in the apartment. It’s a singles complex. When can I see this thing? What’s it look like?”
“It’s gold, looks kinda cheap...I don’t know, like a ring of some kind but not for your finger.”
“Can you drop it by my folks’ house?”
“Your flat off-limits now that your frog boyfriend’s taken up residence?”
“I just thought it’d be more convenient for you. Drop it off at my place if you want.”
“Forget it. Yeah, I’ll drop the thing off at your folks’ place. If you’re not there, I’ll give it to your Mom.”
“Thanks, Brownie.”
Maggie hung up and took a large swig of her drink, nearly draining it. She rattled the ice cubes against the crystal and stared, unseeing, at the large hunt print her dad had mounted over the desk. Very slowly, something seemed to be forming, gelling in her mind. Was it a picture of Elise’s killer?  
Maggie finished the rest of her drink and stood up. Whatever it was, she had to trust that it would develop in time. Her eye fell on a small gilt-framed photograph nearly hidden on her father’s desk. It was a black and white snapshot of twelve-year old Maggie and ten-year old Elise and their dog “Little”, from another summer many years ago. Both girls were tan and smiling, their lithe arms intertwined around each other’s shoulders. Elise wore a jaunty sailor’s cap and behind them both was the boathouse and dock at the family’s lake house.  Maggie carefully picked up the little picture taken so long ago. She had never seen it before. Her father’s happy girls. His two first mates.  Her father had sold the lake house during Maggie’s senior year of high school. By then, she and Elise had long since tired of baiting hooks and playing first mate or reading in the boathouse during an afternoon rain.
Maggie replaced the picture and turned to leave the room, wondering how many times one can continue to lose the same person.


Chapter Thirteen
1
Laurent led the way down the darkened corridor of the basement of the Parthenon. Cobwebs hung in large wattles in the corners, dripping into his face as he and Maggie made their way down the hall. It was hard to believe that someone actually worked down here, actually packed a lunch and hummed himself off to work only to arrive at the creepy bowels of a hundred-year old building.
Maggie slipped her hand into Laurent’s and squeezed it. 
“Allo?” Laurent called as they neared a doorway at the end of the hall, light spilling out onto the cement floor. “Allo? Monsieur?” They stopped in front of the door and peered inside.
“Mr. Danford?” Maggie called softly.
“With you folks in just a minute,” a voice said.
Laurent and Maggie looked at each other and then entered the small broom closet of an office. A metal desk was shoved up against one of the cement walls. A half-sized window hovered over it. From the outside of the building, the window would be eye level with one’s Reeboks, Maggie noted. Little had been done to make the office comfortable or attractive. No plants or pictures on the walls, no rugs across the cold and uneven concrete floor, not even a lamp with a shade to make the night watchman’s station less wretched.
“You’re the girl whose sister was killed last month?” The man finally extricated himself from behind his six-foot filing cabinet and maneuvered around two metal folding chairs to stand in front of Maggie and Laurent. He held out his hand.
Laurent shook it. The man withdrew his hand before Maggie could shake it too.
“Yes, that’s me,” Maggie said. “I was hoping you could—“
“Told the police everything. Didn’t see nothing. I’m on duty at night, you see. Didn’t happen at night, did it?”
He settled himself into a large swivel chair situated in front of the desk. He sort of resembled  Barnie Fife with a touch of mange, Maggie thought. His balding head supported long wisps of hair, witnesses to a losing battle. His eyes were bloodshot and watery and Maggie found herself scanning the office for  liquor bottles.
“No,” Maggie said, turning her eyes back on the skinny little man. “But maybe you’ve seen strange people around at night. You know, shady characters that might be involved?”
Mr. Danford scratched the back of his head with a long, crooked finger.
“Thought the cops said this was a spur of the moment kinda killing.”
“Monsieur, do you know if any peoples come here at night? Bad people?”   
Maggie wondered what the old guy would think of this big bruiser with the French accent.
Danford finished scratching himself and looked up at Laurent.
“Sometimes I seen some weird characters around here. In the winter, mostly. Trying to get in to sleep it off for the night, you know? Someplace warm.”
“And in the summer?” Maggie asked impatiently.
“Well, summertime’s different. People want in for different reasons in the summertime. This here drug dealer the cops was asking me about? He comes by from time to time. I reckon he’s got a customer in the building somewheres, don’t you? Else why would he keep coming by?”
“What’s he look like?” 
“Looks like crap, you want to know. Got this long nasty yellow hair, you know how they wear it these days?” Maggie hadn’t a clue, but she nodded encouragingly. “And clothes all ripped to hell. Big holes in the knees of his trousers and his seat too, sometimes. Can’t be making much money as a drug dealer, that’s what I told Cissy. Cissy’s my wife.”
“I met her the other day,” Maggie said.
“That’s right. She said you come by. Ol’ Cissy makes sure I get my sleep. She won’t wake me if my own mother was to call, the last breaths of life a-squeezing outta her. My Cissy looks out for me.”
“That’s great. So, this drug dealer—“
“I done told the police all of this.”
“I know, Mr. Danford, but if you could just run over it one more time for me. Please.”
The old man shrugged and stretched back in his chair.
“Can’t take too long. Gotta make my rounds pretty soon.”
“Thank you for your time, Monsieur Danford.” Laurent nodded at the man but made no moved to leave.
“This drug dealer,” Maggie said. “Have you ever talked with him?”
“Told him to get his sorry ass outta the building once. That’s talking to him, ain’t it?”
“And he was okay about that? I mean, he left all right?”
“He left.”
“But he came back.”
“I told you, he’s got hisself a customer here. Must have.”
“But you don’t know who.”
“I got my suspicions. And no, it’s nobody I’m gonna tell you about.”
“Do you remember if he was around the night before my sister was killed?” That would have been the night I first brought her home, Maggie thought.
“He was. Shuffling up the goddamn hallway on the third floor. I knowed he was there ‘cause of the way he drags his feet, like he’s drunk or something.”
“And you just threw him out?”
“That’s right. About three a.m. No problem.”
“Okay.” Maggie looked at the man and then, helplessly, at Laurent. Again, she’d run out of questions and didn’t know how to process the answers she was getting to the questions she had asked.
Laurent indicated the doorway with his head and Maggie sighed. Might as well.
“Thank you for your help, Mr. Danford,” Maggie said stiffly. She touched Laurent’s arm and they trudged silently back upstairs to Maggie’s apartment. Laurent unlocked the door and Maggie threw herself down onto the living room couch.
She raised herself up on one arm and watched Laurent who had seated himself in the large tub chair opposite the couch, his long legs stretching out and filling up nearly the entire floor space of the little room.
“Well, I’d say we’re nowhere on this. I can’t buy the theory that this drug pusher is the killer. It’s too pat. I mean, what did he do? go around rapping on doors: ‘I say, is the lady of the house at home and would she be interested in some crack?’ I mean, isn’t it too much of a coincidence that he is a drug dealer and she was a drug addict?”
“You think the police have made up this theory?”
“I think they thought: dead junkie, on-premises drug dealer, let’s put them together and wrap this case up.”
“C’est possible. And your friend? Monsieur Alfie?”
“I’m not sure he’s tied into this at all. They had a little ruckus. Elise was strung out and testy, Alfie probably remembers it worse than it was.” Maggie shrugs. “I can’t see him killing anyone.”
“You do not know him very well,” Laurent reminded her. “Coffee?” He got up and headed toward the kitchen.
“No thanks, it’ll keep me awake.” Maggie pulled herself up to a sitting position and rested her feet on the light oak coffee table in front of the couch. “And he doesn’t strike me as being clever enough to do it and get away with it, you know? I mean, if Alfie killed her, wouldn’t there be all kinds of circumstantial evidence leading right to his door? The cops would’ve picked up on it, surely.”
Laurent poked his head around the corner.
“The police have not questioned the maman. They know nothing about his argument with Elise.”
“Boy, they really did a slack job, don’t you think? I mean, wrapped this sucker up and moved on.” She picked up a magazine and idly flipped through its pages. “I guess they’ve got this drug dealer in custody now but I doubt they get a confession.”
“Why not?” Laurent called from the kitchen. Maggie could hear the kettle begin to boil.
“How can he confess if he didn’t do it? And he’s not going to cop a plea to murder, for crying out loud. I mean, why would he?”
“Cop the plea...?”
“Never mind. Maybe I will have some coffee after all.”
He came into the room with a small tray holding a china creamer, matching sugar bowl and two steaming mugs. Maggie removed her feet from the coffee table and he set the tray down.
“Mmm-mm, thanks,” Maggie said reaching for a mug.
The phone.
“I am sure it is not for me,” Laurent said, shrugging.
Maggie reached over and picked up the receiver.
“Yes?” she said.
“Miss Newberry? This is Carole Wexford. Alfie’s mom? We talked a couple days ago?”
“Yes, Mrs. Wexford, I remember.” Maggie nudged Laurent’s leg with her foot. He nodded his head: yes, yes, I’m listening.
“I got one more thing to tell you that Alfie just told me but I got to have a promise from you that if I tell you, you won’t be asking Alfie all about it, hounding him, like. Do you promise?”
“What is it, Mrs. Wexford?” Maggie watched Laurent with large eyes.
“Not until you promise me you won’t come after Alfie asking him a bunch of questions. Now, he’s real upset ‘bout all this and he don’t want to talk to you again, d’ya hear?”
“Yes, all right,” Maggie said. “I promise to leave him alone. What did he tell you?”
“He told me he made another trip to your apartment building that afternoon—“
“You mean about the time my sister was—“
“I ain’t gonna say this twice, lady, so you better listen good the first time. He was deliverin’ groceries that afternoon and saw some guy hanging out near the door where he fought with your sister early that morning.”
Maggie licked her lips.
“Can he describe him?” she asked.
“He said he was dressed real nice. All slick and a jacket and all. He had reddish-brown, sorta curly hair, maybe balding, and he was a big guy. Maybe six-one. Wearing them sandals with socks that some people wear.”
“Do the police know this?”
“God, you don’t listen, do you? I told you, Alfie just told me. And if you ask him about it or go the cops, he’s gonna deny ever being there, understand?”
“All right, Mrs. Wexford, I understand. Is that all?”
“Yeah, but remember, stay away from my boy, d’ya hear? I don’t want to hear you been snooping around him.”
“I’ll leave him alone,” Maggie said.
The phone clicked dead in her hand as the woman hung up on her.
“What is it?” Laurent took a healthy sip of his too-hot coffee. “More clues?”
“God, I’ll say,” Maggie said quietly as she put the phone back in its cradle.
“Alfie’s mom just placed Gerard here at the time of the crime.”
2
Detective Jack Burton quietly closed the glass paneled door of the office of the Chief of Police. His ears were burning and a flush crept up his neck and spread across his face. He knew the open squad room was not oblivious to him, no matter how busily they seemed to go about their duties. He’d had his behind chewed and the world knew it.
The Chief was right. They’d been whacking themselves in the heads with hockey sticks over this one. Keystone Kops, southern-style. Their only suspect had an iron-clad and they had had to let him walk. Burton was to find the Newberry murderer within ninety-six hours or he was off the case.
Jack headed back to his office, his head tucked in a protected crook of determination. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see cops looking up as he passed. He restrained himself from running the last twenty yards to his office, pulled open the door and forced himself to close it behind him without slamming it.
Dave Kazmaroff sat, smoking, on the corner of his desk, staring out the window onto Spring Street. He twisted around to greet Burton.
“Hey, man, what’s happening?” His smile faded and he eased himself off his cocky perch when he saw Burton’s face.
“You bastard,” Burton snarled, fists clenched at his side as he advanced toward Kazmaroff.
“Hey, man, what are you talking about?” The younger detective backed away, taking a drag off his cigarette until the filter glowed in his mouth.
“I’m talking about the shit you’ve been feeding the Chief, you scumbag.”
“Hey, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t said anything to the Chief.”
“Oh, no? Not even a casually dropped comment about how good cops need to learn to agree to disagree when it comes to developing a case? Huh? Ring a bell, asshole?”
“Look, all I said—“
“I know what you said, De-tective! I just got outta the Old Man’s office!”  Spittle had formed on Burton’s bottom lip. He wanted to throw the yuppie bastard out the third story window. Maybe he’d land on the hood of his own Jeep Cherokee.
“Am I supposed to pretend I agree with every theory you’ve got? We happen to disagree on how this case is being—“
“I’m the senior officer on this case, or had you forgotten that?” Burton clenched his fists. “I’d like to smash your face in,” he said, moving away from the younger man. “Fact is, you’re as stupid as I’d always believed. Because just in case your plan was to take my place, let me clue you in.” Burton contorted his angry features into a sneer. A perverse part of him was enjoying himself and he could see that Kazmaroff was nervous. “The Chief said we’ve got four days. After that, our team is closed down and ‘B’ team takes over. Understand, smart boy? We both lose out. I go down, you go down.” Burton heaved himself into his swivel chair. “Nice work, jerk-off.”
Dave Kazmaroff remained standing. He tossed his filter into an ashtray on his desk and shook out another cigarette from a pack in his shirt. He did not look up at his partner.
3
Gerry peeled back the bread in his sandwich and extracted a few imaginary hairs from his corned beef.
“Just eat it, Gerry.” Maggie picked up her own sandwich and poised it in front of her face. “Why were you so testy this morning? What is the deal?”
“You want to know why I’m testy? You want to know? I’ll tell you.”
“I wish you would.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be worried about me. Worry about yourself. I hear the cost of sheep farming is skyrocketing.”
“Very funny. You and Darla should open up an act together. Preferably one on the road.”
“What is it, Gerry?”
“All right, you want to know? And Darla said I should definitely keep my mouth shut—“
“Well, maybe you should.”
“...And I’m only saying this because we’re friends.”
“Just say it.”
“I want to know how in the hell you can have any kind of meaningful relationship with a guy who can barely handle the basics of asking where the men’s room is.”
“Excuse me?” Maggie put her sandwich down and frowned at him.
“Your French boyfriend. His English is so bad, I’m surprised y’all can converse on anything more complex than how much parsley to put in the ragu.”
“Well, it’s not your worry, is it?”
“Hey, don’t get pissed, Maggie. I’m just saying, the guy can’t speak English.”
“I understand him fine.”
“Oh sure, the language of love. Give me a break. Your French is shit, excuse me. Is there any substance to y’all’s conversations?”
“None of your business.”
“Meaning, ‘no’.”
“Meaning none of your business. Where did all this come from? I could tell you didn’t like him the other night—“
“That’s not true—“
“Oh, bullshit, Gerry. You were practically rude to the man.”
“That’s not true! How can I speak to him? He doesn’t speak English! Have you two had an argument yet?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a fight. Have you two made it to the disagreement stage?”
“Gerry, not everyone is as stubborn and disagreeable  as you are. Some people get along for great periods of time.”
“Great boring periods of time. And excuse me, Miss Sweetness and Light, but you are not describing yourself. If you haven’t had even a small fight with this guy, Larry—“
“You know his name.”
“...then y’all are just playing house. There. I’ve said it.”
“And you feel good about it.”
“Yes. Yes, I must say I do. I wouldn’t want to lie to you, Maggie. The fact is, I don’t like him.”
“No kidding.” Maggie bit into her sandwich and rolled her eyes at him. “I’m a mature human being, Gerry,” she said, her mouth full of turkey and rye. “So take notes: all my friends don’t have to like each other. I’ll live with it. Besides, Darla liked him.”
“She likes Dan Quayle too.”
“Look, you don’t like him, fine. Next subject of conversation, if you don’t mind.”
“Well, I said what I had to say.”
“That’s clear.”
“May I have your pickle?”
“And while we’re being so helpful with one another, may I ask a question about your travel plans?”
“Shoot.”
“You’re still moving to New Zealand, right?”
“Correct.”
“And nobody in the office knows  yet, am I right?”
“Just you.”
“ And would you say that your...um...interest in the goings on at the office has, say, slid off a bit?”
Gerry looked uncomfortable. He reached for the mustard.
“I suppose that’s possible. After all, I don’t intend to be there much longer.”
“Sure, I can see that. But, in the meantime, you’ve signed off on all projects in-house?”
“That’s ridiculous! I’m in meetings all day long.”
“Wrong. Your body’s in meetings. You are in Bora-Bora or Ruaphehu or some such place. Gerry, we can’t afford to have you off in la-la land while we still have clients.”
“Well! I like that! It’s my agency, if I have to remind you, Maggie.”
“Oh, put a sock in it!” Maggie glanced around at the diners surrounding them. A couple of them looked their way. “Aren’t you about to dump your own advertising agency? Aren’t you about to drop-kick it into the great unknown while you go peel kiwis in Dunedin?”
“Will you stop with the kiwis, already? New Zealand has other exports, you know.”
“Just stay awake while you’re with us, please. At least until you come to your senses. You’ll hate yourself if, after this phase passes, you’ve lost a client.”
“It isn’t a phase.”
“Yeah, okay.” She dumped some ice into her Coke cup and shook her head. “Whatever. Hey, what about Patti-cakes? She decide you’re not quite the man she thought you were?”
“Seems to have, thank God.” Gerry talked around a mouthful of sandwich. “She’s pissed at me and seems to be sniffing around young Bob, now.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t know what to make of all the attention, and, under the circumstances, that’s probably good.”
Maggie laughed.
“What a place. How can you bear to think of leaving it?”
“My sanity demands it.” He looked at her strangely, his eyes misting.
“Oh, Ger, don’t you think this will all work itself out?” Maggie touched his hand with hers.
“Sure, it will, Maggie. I have every confidence that it will.” He brightened. “Finished? I believe this is your treat?”
“You asked me to lunch!”
“Yeah, but that was before I knew you were going to criticize my performance as an adman. I can only redeem myself by sticking you with the check.”
She nodded. “I can see that.” 
 As she stood up, hoisting her purse strap onto her shoulder, she stopped suddenly.
“Gerry, I forgot to mention Paris.”
“This sounds like a scene out of Casablanca.”
“No, really. I’ve got to go overseas next week. Will that be a problem”
“Not for me. Is it on account of this investigation thing you’re doing?”
“There are some people I need to talk to over there. I shouldn’t be very long. Four or five days.”
“Maggie, do what you have to do.” He stood up and handed her the check. “I certainly intend to.”


Chapter 14
1
Gerry straightened the storyboards on the floor and looked at his telephone. His desk was covered with the various materials used to present a pickle campaign to a new client earlier that day. Storyboards, all with green the predominant color, were propped up against the side of his desk.  Stacks of carefully collated scripts: print copy separated from outdoor board copy, separated from broadcast continuity, lay adjacent to stacks of paper explaining, in great and expansive detail, media recommendations and account-handling information. An arsenal of radio-spot cassette tapes lay scattered about the base of the telephone.
There was a time when all this used to get him charged up, Gerry mused. When the experience of a job well done would have hit all his feel-good buttons. The new client had loved the creative presentation, had approved, without reservation, both the media budget and the suggested placements. Under normal circumstances it would be one to re-live over agency lunches, to boast about—without need for hyperbole—to one’s colleagues at all the ad community functions.
 Under normal circumstances.
He sighed and pushed himself out of his chair. Under these circumstances he couldn’t give a flying damn. He opened up his office door and peered down the hallway. Awfully quiet for the afternoon of a great client victory, he thought. On the other hand,  did they expect him to bring out the champagne every time they won a significant account? At least Maggie had to take back that business about his mind not being on the clients. Today’s success story certainly threw that theory in the crapper.
Gerry wandered down to Maggie’s closed door and stood there, frowning. The traffic manager, Dierdre, was passing in the hallway.
“What’s the deal with Maggie?” he asked.
“Private phone call, I guess.” Dierdre said. “Should I buzz her to be at the condom meeting?”
“Stop calling it that, would you? It’s a prophylactics client, for God’s sake. You make it sound like we’re practicing safe sex in the conference room. No, don’t bother her.” 
Dierdre walked away and Gerry lingered for a moment outside Maggie’s door. He spotted Patti and Pokey making their way to the conference room for the meeting and ducked into the supply room to avoid a  confrontation. It was easier to deal with her under the protection of a meeting in progress, he’d decided.   
Jenny poked her head into the room.
“They’re looking for you, Gerry,” she said sweetly, the light never reaching her eyes.
“Oh, good. Just checking to make sure we’ve got enough paper. Great. We do! On my way.” He handed her a paper stack and hurried down the hall for the meeting.
2
The oily little fishbone of a man glared at Gerard from across the café table. All along the Rue de la Clingancourt, shopkeepers were opening their doors and beginning the morning ritual of hosing down the patch of sidewalk in front of their stores. The Sacre Coeur was just visible in the distance, its bone-white onion dome dotting the horizon like a bright exclamation point. Gerard thought of his grandmother when he saw the cathedral, that ferocious old crow who, every Sunday, would drag him and his brother—unprotesting but unwilling—up the hundreds of steps to mass. He could still feel the pinched grip of the withered old hand clamped on his small-boy’s wrist. He did not remember Grandmère with love.
His eyes shifted away from the church and back to his companion. It was too early to order a drink, even in Paris, and Gerard would very much have liked to have had something. He eyed the filthy bundle of flesh and clothes across from him.
“It’s all I have,” he said in French. “It’s all I could get.”
“That’s not my problem,” the other man, a foreigner, rasped in much poorer French. “It’s not enough.”
Gerard raked a hand through his thinning, reddish hair.
“Take it as an installment,” he said. “I’ll get more.”
“Soon,” the little man wheezed. “Get it soon, Monsieur Gerard. Your credit with my boss is...am I saying this right? My French is not good.” He smiled obscenely, his tongue darting out to moisten his little beak-like lips. “Your credit is very soft. You are understanding?”
Gerard stared at the nasty creature. Perhaps he should suggest that the filthy crapaud use some of the money to have his lungs checked, or his teeth cleaned, or, peut-être, some newer rags?  He scraped his chair back and stood up slowly.
“Je comprends,”  he said.
3
The skirt of Maggie’s stiff cotton sundress spread out in a fan against the lawn. She drew her bare legs up under her and sipped from one of the frosty glasses of lemonade Becka had just armed everyone with. Laurent stood a few yards away, in khaki trousers and a black polo shirt, holding Nicole’s pony. The child, her jodphurred legs sticking out awkwardly, sat woodenly atop the Welsh pony. Laurent chattered to her in French and Maggie enjoyed hearing his fluency for a change.
She hated to admit that Gerry might be right. It was possible that the language difficulties did serve as an impasse to a deeper understanding between them. She didn’t doubt the passion or the love, but from time to time, she yearned for a more complicated exchange. 
Yesterday, in a rare visit to their local videotape rental shop, Maggie had been appalled to see Laurent head—not for the foreign films as she had expected—but to the horror/sci-fi aisle of the store. They had argued about it.
“I can’t watch this stuff,” she’d said, her face twisted into her most unattractive grimace.
“Why not?”
“It’s garbage. It’s stupid.”
“Ahhh.”
“’Ahhh’? What does ‘ahhhh’ mean? I mean, come on, Laurent...blood and guts pouring out of a deadman’s eyeballs? Give me a break. It’s gross and meaningless.”
“D’accord,” he’d agreed, placing his gruesome choices on the counter to be checked out.
In the end, they’d compromised, if not happily. Maggie promised not to make retching noises or cover her eyes too much during his video and Laurent resolved not to sigh too heavily or yawn during the British drawing room mystery that she had selected. After all, she consoled herself on the drive home from the store, it could’ve been a lot worse. It could have been a Jerry Lewis movie.
As she listened to him now, talking fluently to her little damaged niece, she made a silent vow to take a French grammar class at the local community college. Soon.
She turned to her mother who was seated on a white wrought iron bench next to her.
“Do you think she enjoys that?” Maggie asked.
Elspeth shaded her eyes against the sun and smiled at Laurent.
“Watch her left foot, Laurent. She looks like she’s a little lopsided.”
Laurent waved a finger in Elspeth’s direction to indicate he had it under control. He trotted up and down the lawn next to the pony. Nicole clung to the saddle like a tenacious but somnolent jellyfish. Her little face was screwed into a squinting mask of concentration, or did Maggie imagine that?  As the child bobbed along, it was hard to tell whether she was deliberately trying to stay on or was simply hanging on by instinct.
“Laurent mentioned to your father the other night that you are planning a trip overseas.” Elspeth took a long sip of her lemonade and then patted her lips with a lace-trimmed cotton handkerchief. 
“He did?” Maggie was surprised. Laurent hadn’t mentioned another meeting or conversation with her father.
“It’s not true?”
“Well, yes, it’s true.” Were Laurent and her dad becoming buddies or something? “I was going to tell you.”
“He said you were going because of Elise.”
Maggie cleared her throat and winced into the sun, trying to keep her eyes on the pony and its charge.
“Well, sort of.”
Elspeth turned and looked at her daughter. She wasn’t smiling.
“Maggie.”
Maggie sighed. “Look, I don’t know how to explain to you why I feel I need to go. I just feel it, that’s all.”
“He said you think you may find her killer over there.”
“I’ve got a letter that Elise was writing before she died and I want to talk to the woman she intended it for. I know it may seem feeble, but I think it’s worth a trip.”
“Will you need any help with money?”
Maggie looked at her mother’s profile. It was implacable, a little too smooth, a little hard.
“No, thanks, Mom. I’m fine,” she said.
Elspeth stood up, setting her lemonade glass down on the bench, and applauded the approaching twosome with a wide smile.
“Très bien, Laurent! Nicole!” she called. “Our own little National Velvet.” She touched Maggie’s head lightly. “I love you, Maggie,” she said. “Possibly more than anything on this earth.” She turned on her heel and walked back into the house.
Astonished by her mother’s words, Maggie stared after Elspeth’s retreating back. Her drink glass was dripping blotches of condensation all over her freshly-pressed frock.
“You are getting wet, Maggie,” Laurent called to her. He picked Nicole up and deposited her on the ground next to her pony and led the beast to where Maggie was sitting. He tucked the reins under the pommel and let the pony graze while he flopped down next to her. Very slowly, as if she’d just regained the use of her legs, Nicole moved to where Laurent was seated and lowered herself to a spot beside him.
“She seems to like you,” Maggie remarked, indicating Nicole.
“Ahh, mais oui!”  Laurent patted the little girl’s hand. “We are very fond of each other, n’est-ce pas, mon petite chou?”
“What else did the detective tell you?” Laurent asked, smiling at Nicole.
Maggie flicked away the droplets of water that had pooled in fat beads on her dress.
“I did more telling than he did,” she said, squinting in Nicole’s direction. “He hadn’t done much work on the case at all. It’s sort of appalling when you think about it. That someone can die a violent death and the police only go through the motions of finding out why.”
Maggie combed her fingers through her hair. It spilled down onto her shoulders in a shiny sheet of black silk.  
Laurent pulled out some grass and sprinkled them on Nicole’s lap. She looked at him somberly.
“And so you told the detective everything you know?” Laurent asked.
“Pretty much. I told him about Alfie and about Gerard being here at the time of the...at the time.”
Laurent nodded without looking at her.
“And he either didn’t believe me or thought it was no big deal. It’s so hard to understand...what more do they want? I mean, I practically have a video tape of Gerard killing Elise, and the police do nothing.” She looked guiltily at Nicole and then lowered her voice. “They don’t even want to talk to him again.”
“But Gerard is not in Atlanta, is he?”
Maggie looked at him with a startled expression on her face.
“How did you know that?”
“Mon Dieu! You have been telling me, n’est-ce pas?  You said, Gerard, he leaves Atlanta the day you went to his hotel?”
“Yeah, okay, that’s right. I guess I did.” She shook her skirt free of remnant grass blades. “But it doesn’t matter. If the subject is murder, they can question him anywhere on earth if they want to. But they’re not interested. What it comes down to is this: Burton doesn’t give a flip who killed Elise unless it can put his name in the paper. That’s the way I read it.”
“Tant pis, Maggee.” Too bad.
“Yeah, tant pis, all right.” She stood up and gave her dress a shake. “Come on, let’s take Nicole inside. I’m starving and it’s mostly your fault.”
“Comment?”
“Your cooking. It’s stretched my stomach. I used to eat like a bird. Now, if I don’t get multiple course meals on a regular basis, I feel like I’m on a starvation diet. Thanks a heap, Laurent. I hope you like your women hefty.”
Laurent hopped up easily for someone of his height and bulk. He caught her by the waist and swung her effortlessly into the air and back down again. He kept her pinned lightly in his arms.
“Not too bad,” he said judiciously.
She smiled and gave him a hug. She felt her irritation with him dissolve.
Nicole sat quietly between them, staring at the torn grass bits scattered across the lawn and her bright blue dress.
4
Burton sat in his Honda and watched the front of the little cottage on St. Juniper’s Street. He’d watched the man, Alfie, go in about six o’clock, his arms full of groceries, and the woman leave about eight. She returned a half an hour later with a smaller grocery bag. Wine?  
Every minute of the investigation was precious now. In a desperate moment, he’d called the Newberry woman and admitted that the suspect they had held in custody for her sister’s murder—the dope peddler—turned out to have been uninvolved. But it would have been no great loss to the world if the scum had gone down for it. Might as well be him, for lack of anyone else. But now, something Maggie had said yesterday on the phone made him think again about the retard. They’d not interviewed the mother. If they had, they would have discovered that she was protective and maybe treacherous. The Newberry girl had uncovered it. And it was as good a lead as any to follow in a case that sprouted damn few. With the heat he’d been taking lately from the Chief, he couldn’t afford to screw up another one.
Jack shifted uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. He hated stake-outs, hated waiting for something to happen and half the time you weren’t even sure what it was when you saw it. He’d already spilled the remnants of cold 7-ll coffee on his pants. Gluey miniature doughnuts sat in their own sugar and grease on a cardboard strip on his dashboard. He’d eaten ten of the dozen in the packet.
Alfie had opportunity. He practically lived next door to the murder victim. His motive? What kind of motive does any maniac ever have? Maybe Alfie doesn’t have such a good relationship with Mama. Burton leaned over and drew out a stale pack of Winstons from the glove box. He shook one loose into his mouth and took a long drag on it, unlighted. Alfie was certainly capable, physically, of the stranglings.
Burton tapped his finger against the dashboard and waited. He didn’t have enough evidence to have the boy picked up and he didn’t have the time to wait for him to slip up. His only real chance seemed to be in bringing the kid in for questioning and maybe beating a confession out of him. Or hassling the mother. Surely, she knew what was going on, else why so venomous when questioned by the Newberry woman? He took another smokeless drag on his cigarette. Maybe that was the key. Pick up the mother. Most people can’t lie worth shit. Tell her the boy’ll never do any hard time, he’ll be sent to a hospital or something. Maybe push the fact that she’ll have an opportunity to resume a normal life without him. Without guilt. That could just be the magic button. No more having to take care of him until she’s too old and worn out to have some kind of life of her own. Burton tapped the steering wheel with his cigarette.  
His cellular phone blinked at him to pick up. He hesitated. Chances are it was Kazmaroff and he was the last s.o.b he wanted to deal with right now. Reluctantly, he lifted the receiver off its base.
“Burton,” he said.
“Jack, it’s Dave,” the voice crackled. “Guess who just turned himself in down at HQ?”
5
Maggie dipped her crust of bread into the trail of olive oil on her plate. Thirteen grams of go-straight-to-your-hips fat, she thought as she popped the savory, sodden morsel into her mouth. She tried to remember the last time she had gone to an aerobics class or jogged around the block.
They had had Sunday dinner at her parents’ house. This was a “light supper” that Laurent had thrown together to keep them from starving until Monday breakfast. Tiny sardines fried in batter, miniature onions swimming in some kind of spicy tomato sauce, raw carrots, artichoke hearts, radishes and, of course, the ubiquitous saucers of oil-drenched peppers and bread. And since no meal was worth eating without du vin,  there was a steadily-breathing bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape  to wash it all down with. Maggie wondered how long it would be before she started craving a cigarette and spending her mornings hanging around cafés, doing nothing but drinking espresso and watching the world go by.
The wine was heavy but good. Maggie took a long sip from her glass and wondered if there would be much talk at the office tomorrow if she showed up wearing a mu-mu.
“It’s all delicious,” she said, smiling over at Laurent. They had taken their feast and spread it out on the coffee table in the living room. He sat, an over-sized linen napkin tucked into his shirt collar, across from her. Tall tapers sputtered and dripped amidst their banquet setting.
“There is no cooking,” he protested, refusing to accept the compliment for pulling things out of a refrigerator.
“Doesn’t make it any less tasty.” She popped a final viscous artichoke into her mouth and wondered if he’d notice if she stopped eating. “Can I go over my notes with you?”
He nodded mutely, a slight shimmer of oil lining his full lips. He reached for his wine glass.
“Okay. I’ve got a witness—Alfie—who can place Gerard at the scene and at the time of the murder. Gerard has motive and opportunity.”
“The police say—“
“Yes, yes, he was in his hotel room. But listen, I’d just given the bastard five thousand dollars. I’m convinced he could buy all the alibi he wanted to with that kind of money, regardless of what the police think. I just need to prove it.”
“C’est diffiçile.”
“Anyway, okay, that’s Gerard and he’s my number one suspect so far. Next is Alfie. Although not as a real strong contender at this point. He also was here at the time of the murder. And maybe, according to his delightful mother, maybe he had motive too. I don’t know. So that’s Alfie and Gerard.”
“And the drug dealer?”
“The cops have let him go.”
“Ahhhh.”
“Yeah, so there’s nothing there.”
“I wish you to not talk with him.”
Maggie looked at Laurent and sighed.
“Laurent, I need to talk to—“
“D’accord. Then I will be with you. He is a criminale, Maggie!” Laurent looked quite disturbed. He stopped eating for a moment.
“Okay, fine. We’ll do that together. Anyway, I think what I’m coming down to is that I believe in my heart of hearts that Gerard killed Elise and now I need to make the police see that too. That means building a case against him. If Elise was such good friends with this Madame Zouk character, then Zouk should know Gerard, don’t you think? I think that’s where I start.”
A sick look began to come over Laurent.
“I do not want you talking with Dubois,” he said flatly.
“Laurent—“
“I do not want you talking with Dubois! Je ne le permettrai pas! I forbid it! He is a character dangereux! If he is killing Elise, then he can hurt you aussi!”
“Then, what if I just talk to Zouk?”
Laurent eyed her carefully.
“You will go all the way to Paris and not talk with Gerard Dubois?”
“If you absolutely insist.”
“I do. J’insiste, Maggee. He is a bad man. Très mauvais.”
“Okay, I won’t approach him. I’ll gather my information in Paris and build my case without talking with him. Okay, Laurent.”
He seemed to relax a little.
“In any event, I’ll start with Madame Zouk. Maybe she can help me prove that Gerard had a motive to kill Elise. If I can do that, and then bring Alfie in to place Gerard here at the time of the murder, I might just have a case.”
The phone rang.
“I hate phone calls at night,” she said, pulling away from their circle of food and candles. “I’m always afraid of bad news.”
She picked up the receiver gingerly.
“Hello? Oh, hey, how are you?” She glanced over at Laurent and his eyebrows shot up. Qui?
“You’re kidding.” Maggie sat down abruptly on the arm of the couch. “When?” Her hand went to her mouth and she gnawed a cuticle. There was a long pause, then: “Okay, yeah, I will. Thanks a lot for calling. No, I know you will and I appreciate it. Thanks, Detective. Okay, bye.” She hung up the phone.
“Well?” he asked.
Maggie turned slowly and walked back to their coffee table picnic.
“It was Detective Burton,” she said as she lowered herself back into her seat at the table. “He says they’ve got Elise’s killer.”
“Zut! Mon Dieu!” Laurent squeezed Maggie’s knee. “That is wonderful, is it not? Maggie?”
“Huh?” She looked up at him, her mind a confusing tangle of thoughts and feelings.
“They caught him?” he pressed.
“No, he walked in and gave himself up. This afternoon.”
“Who is it? Maggeee,” he asked impatiently pouring her another glass of the heady red wine. “Who is it?”
 She shook the cobwebs and the spiders out of her mind. “It’s nobody we know. Just some guy. Some faceless whacko out there who’s done it before. Nobody we know.”
“Detective Burton, he was happy?”
Maggie looked at Laurent and wondered what had made him think of such a thing.
“Naturally.”
Laurent resumed his meal.
Maggie frowned at the phone. Bull-shit, she thought. No way the guy they got is connected to Elise. I don’t believe it.
“Laurent?” she asked, suddenly.
“Mmmm—mm?” He looked up and smiled. A question mark hovered in his eyes.
“Do you have any ideas about our future together?” Maggie was surprised as the words came out of her mouth. She had not expected them. She had not suspected they were hiding in her head.
Laurent finished chewing and removed his napkin from his shirt collar. He placed it down on the coffee table and scanned their finished repast.
“I am hoping we would get married someday,” he said, finally. His eyes locked hers. “This is surprising you.”
It occurred to Maggie that Laurent, who always seemed to know what to say, when to get excited, when to let something pass, was a little uncomfortable.
“You think I am wanting my American green card from this?”
She looked at him with surprise.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.
“Perhaps I will get the job as the French chef at Burger King?”
“Why are you saying this? What did--?””
“Mais non! Maggie must do it all her own way, yes? Must go to her gym and work at her job and eat with her ex-boyfriends because she is always so independent? Living with her French lover is one more impressive item on her dossier but not to be taken too seriously!”
Very vaguely aware that his English seemed to have improved somewhat, Maggie was too angry to do anything but sputter: “What are you talking about? Are you talking about Brownie? You never said it bothered---“
Laurent made a grunt of disgust.
“I am not jealous of your little Brownie,” he said. “Always you are misunderstanding me. I am talking about Maggie. About Maggie not changing, about Maggie not making room for Laurent in her life.” He waved away her attempts to speak with an impatient hand. “Do not tell me you cleaned out a drawer for me, I am not talking about bureau drawers! I am talking about your life!”
Maggie wrapped her arms around herself and stared stonily at him.
“I see,” she said, stiffly. “I had no idea you—“
“Bien sûr!” he exploded. “This is the probleme! You have no idea, pas de tout!  You think you can go on and being the single girl, n’est-ce pas? Ach! You are so Americaine...”
“Well, excuse me for being so American, I’ll try in future to be a little more Libyan...or would my being a tad more French be good?” She began picking up dishes. “That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? Maggie being some simple-minded French girl who’ll spend hours plucking her eyebrows and starving herself bony while whipping up heavy creamed sauces for her big Frenchman...”
“You could not possibly be French,” Laurent said with disdain.
“I hate you.”
“D’accord,” Laurent said. “As you Americans say, I can live with that.”
“Great,” Maggie said, whirling around and stomping toward the bedroom. “Why don’t you live with cleaning up this mess in the kitchen while you’re at it?”
“That would be different than usual?” he called after her. The door slammed between them.
Later, as Laurent lay snoring against her, Maggie watched the moon through her window as it tore loose from behind the diaphanous shreds of spooky cloud.  She touched his sleeping face next to her. The fight had been stupid but necessary. When he had finally tapped on the bedroom door and entered the room, she could see from the frown on his face that his making this first move was as far as he was going to go with the reconciliation. Relieved to have at least been offered an olive branch—if somewhat withered and hesitant—Maggie had reached out to him.
She looked at the alarm clock on her night stand; it was a little after two a.m. This wasn’t the first night Laurent had fallen asleep peacefully and quickly after three or four cups of strong Brazilian coffee, while Maggie fidgeted and tossed after her one meager and milky café au lait. 
She eased away from the sleeping form of her lover and got out of bed. Making sure not to wake him (though she didn’t think anything short of another charge up the Bastille could), she gathered up a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and closed the bedroom door behind her.
She set up her small portable typewriter on the dining room table, poured herself a glass of milk and rummaged in the cabinets until she found a few Oreo cookies. Rationalizing that she needed the sugar to go with the milk which she needed to make her sleepy, she set up her snack by her typewriter then pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt over her filmy silk chemise.  
“What is it?” Laurent’s sleepy voice came to her from the bedroom.
Maggie walked to the bedroom door. “Nothing, go back to sleep,” she whispered, then turned and settled down at the typewriter to work on her notes from her conference with Detective Burton.
Several minutes later, Laurent appeared in the doorway, dressed, his hair mussed and full about his face, his eyes squinting against the light in the dining room.
“Oh, Laurent, go back to bed,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I am not sleeping good when you are gone,” he said, holding a huge hand up to contain a yawn.
“I’m sorry.” She hoped he wasn’t going to try to make them something to eat.
“I will go for cigarettes,” he said, nodding to himself and tapping his tee-shirt pocket as if to show that they were not where they should be.
“Tonight?” She stopped flipping through her notes. “Jesus, Laurent, it’s past two in the morning.”
He shrugged, now more fully awake, and tucked his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans.
“There’s an Amoco station open on the corner, down Peachtree,” she said, turning back to her typewriter.
“I will be back,” he said, kissing her quickly before disappearing out the door. Maggie tried to sense if there was any vestiges left over from their fight. She could feel none from him. No hangover, no recriminations.
It was a cool night, unusual for late August.  Maggie got up to open the dining room window that looked out over the back parking lot and adjacent woods. Aside from the reputational splendor of living at the Parthenon, Maggie had been drawn to this apartment building because it felt like a little bit of country in the heart of the city. It, and a few residential houses in the neighborhood, shared a fair-sized tract of woods. The stand of trees were thick and forbidding, protected by some stubborn dowager who’d owned the property for generations and refused to sell to developers.  Peachtree Creek flowed through the elfin forest and Maggie  had seen raccoons and foxes in it. Once, after she moved to her apartment, she had indulged in a nature hike in the woods. Although, it was true, she had felt for a few moments like she were somewhere on the Appalachian Trail, she’d also twisted an ankle and hadn’t found time to revisit the woods in over four years.
Tonight, the moon cast an eerie incandescence over the wooded patch. Blackened tree limbs were elongated by shadows and stretched out in all directions like skinny witches’ arms beckoning wickedly toward her. She shivered and enjoyed the comfort of her little lighted nook in the darkness.
She flipped open the notebook she’d begun keeping on her investigation, then tucked a clean piece of paper in the electric typewriter. She typed out the date and entered the information she had been given about the man who had turned himself in tonight. She munched on a cookie and stared at the notes in her notebook.
Suddenly, she heard a noise from outside her window. She took a breath and held it. Her blood pounded in her ears and she craned her neck to look out the window towards the woods. The wind seemed to have risen. She could hear it moaning in the trees. And then the sound again. Like a dog in pain.  Maggie stood up and went to the window. She heard it again.
Why is a man never here when something happens?  While she was debating whether or not to wait for Laurent to return before she did something, Maggie heard the cry again.
Quickly, she pulled on her sneakers and stuck her keys and a small flashlight from the kitchen drawer in the pocket of her jeans.  She closed the apartment door behind her and the hall lights, triggered by her movement, blinked on.  Maggie ran down the hall and pulled open the heavy outside door at the end of the corridor.
She slipped outside into the night. The moon, although not quite full, kept her path lighted. She didn’t need to use her flashlight. Running quietly in her sneakers, Maggie hurried to the opening of the woods in front of her dining room window. She glanced up and was surprised to see her dining room illuminated clearly and distinctly from outside.
“Here, boy,” she called gently. “Where are you, puppy?” She was sure the sound was being made by a dog.
She listened for more sounds. She hesitated to go into the woods. In fact, now she wished she’d picked up her can of mace as well as the flashlight.
“Here, puppy,” she said, finding herself afraid to speak loudly.  Suddenly, she heard the dog whimper directly ahead of her. Clicking on her flashlight, she moved through the trees and into the opening of the woods toward the sound. As the darkness engulfed her, she had to resist the impulse to return to the comforting glare of the street lamps of the parking lot.  Her eyes followed the flashlight beam, her ears straining to hear in spite of the thundering of her heart in her head.
Then she saw it. It was tied to a small sapling. A six-foot ravine separated her from the puppy. Her emotions see-sawed between relief at having found the animal and trepidation that human hands had put him there. At the bottom of the ravine was a representative trickle of Peachtree Creek. It would go on to a bolder showing a few miles down the way, but here it trailed away to just a moving, damp creek bed.
 Maggie made her way down the steep side of the slippery slope. She grabbed at branches and rocks as she slid her way to the bottom of the muddy creek bed. The puppy squirmed against its bonds and watched her approach with large, frightened eyes.
“It’s okay, puppy,” she said, trying to keep herself calm as much as  the dog. “I’m coming.” Her light flashed spasmodically along the leaf-choked side of the ravine. She took a couple of steps up the other side, her fingers reaching for the little dog and his rope. She pulled at the hemp twine but it held fast. The puppy whimpered again.
Maggie knelt down on one knee near the puppy and pulled out her house keys.
“It’s all right, little guy,” she said as she used the teeth of the key to saw away at the twine. She touched the animal gently and it whined. She drew back her hand and stopped sawing. The dog was covered with blood. There were cuts along its head and haunches and Maggie could see that it was missing toenails on each paw.  Maggie gave the weakened piece of twine a sharp jerk and pulled it free of the tree. Quickly, she picked up the animal, ignoring its cry, and tucked it snugly against her. It was then that she heard the other noise.
Her eyes went in the direction of the light from her dining room. It was only about forty yards away. She had heard a movement in the woods above her, a movement of something heavy treading on leaves and sticks. A blundering sound of someone stalking her.
Fighting the urge to panic, Maggie clutched the dog and moved steadily  up the steep side of the ravine. The dog trembled against her chest. Her mouth was dry and she could feel the beginnings of terror start to unravel her mind. Who was out here? She reached for a hanging root and hoisted herself a few feet higher up the ravine. She neared the top, her hands trembling and clumsy with the cold, her heart fluttering in her throat.
She sensed her assailant behind her before she heard him, before she felt the heavy hands on her neck.  When he attacked, she was vaguely aware that she dropped the puppy, heard it cry as if from a long distance. She was even mildly aware that Laurent would be home by now and that she had left her typewriter on. She smelled a light fragrance, like violets or lily of the valley. And then a blinding pain crept up from the back of her head and the dark, damp ravine bottom of Peachtree Creek rushed up to slam into her face.



Part III


Eliminating the Impossible


Chapter 15
1
Dave Kazmaroff pressed his fingers into the soft, yielding flesh above his hip bone.  All that tennis for nothing. All those early morning jogs, a waste. He lifted the glutinous, overly-sweet pastry to his lips. It wasn’t even good pastry, he thought  as he bit into it. A cop’s lifestyle and a tendency to pack on pounds obviously didn’t match up. He stared at the chorus line of Styrofoam coffee cups lined up in front of him on the metal conference table. A thin cardboard box holding a last few doughnuts and pastries sat crumpled and used amongst the cups. He shoved the whole raspberry pastry into his mouth and licked the flakes of sugar off his fingers. It tasted dry and stale. He eyed the doughnuts in the box, then leaned back in the metal folding chair. Where was Burton?  How long does a shower take?  He reached over and delicately extricated one more plump doughnut from the box. His eyes moved to the large simple-faced clock that hung over the only door to the room. Six a.m. They’d been here all night talking to one Douglas A. Donnell, confessed psychopath and overall despicable human being.
Kazmaroff finished off the doughnut. Sprinkles escaped down  his shirtfront. The bastard had recounted the murder easily, and with a degree of pleasure as though he was looking to them for applause or approval or, at the very least, some sort of reluctant respect. Amazing. 
Donnell had rattled off details that only the cops, the coroner, the murderer  and the general newspaper-reading public could have known. When asked why he’d killed her, he had merely shrugged and smiled. Were they supposed to think this low-life was mysterious or something? Dave wondered, finishing off the last of the doughnut. The man had spilled it all, without apparent reservation, and without apparent truth.  He worked as a bank teller at a Fulton County Bank branch in Buckhead, where he had been a teller for nearly twelve years. Preliminary questioning of his fellow workers had revealed the usual: he was thoughtful, considerate, a little stand-offish, but generally well-liked. He had no girlfriend and had never been married. He had a cat, and no friends or acquaintances outside of work. Most of his co-workers expressed surprise at that. 
Wearily, Dave picked up his notepad.  Burton wasn’t going to like this new bit very much. He wasn’t sure what he felt about it himself.  His glance fell on a jelly doughnut that had served all night as the sticky landing strip for two flies. His lips twitched slightly. What was taking him so long?
Suddenly, the door swung open and Burton was there. He strode into the room, his thinning hair plastered against his head from the recent shower, looking revived,  even cheerful. Kazmaroff felt a perverse pleasure in being the one to change all that.
“The Newberry woman was attacked last night,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “Her boyfriend called the downstairs desk about three a.m.”
Burton stopped and stared at him.
Dave felt an irrational impulse to laugh. Man, I must be tired, he thought.
“What?” Burton backed two steps away from him as if Kazmaroff and the news could somehow be avoided.
“Attacked, you know, as in assaulted and done ugly things to.”
“But, we...” Burton trailed off, his eyes bouncing around the interrogation room.
Kazmaroff knew what he was thinking. He’d gone through the same mental maneuvers himself. Yeah, but we caught the son of a bitch.
“Come on, man, let’s go talk to her.” Kazmaroff led the way past their offices, down to the receiving desk and through the hall that led to the underground parking garage. He stopped briefly to pick up their messages at the front desk. The new shift was just coming on duty.
“Gotta handful for ya, Kaz,” the scrawny-looking sergeant at the front desk said as he handed over a small stack of messages. “Jack, your wife called. She didn’t sound happy.”
Burton looked up slowly. He felt like he had entered a fog. Just moments before, life had seemed so tidy and ordered. Locked up, buttoned up, nailed down. 
“Jack?”
Burton nodded at the sergeant. He knew he must look drunk or half-asleep.
“Rough night, huh?”
Kazmaroff answered for him, taking charge, leading the way, sorting through their messages as if Burton’ were of concern to him too.
“Long one,” Kazmaroff said, sifting through the white note slips. “We’ve been at it since...when was it, Jack? Yesterday afternoon, I guess.”
Burton looked at Kazmaroff briefly.
I hate your slimy guts, you Russian bastard.
“You guys better get going.” The scrawny little sergeant turned towards his typewriter and began to insert a processing form.  
“Come on, Jack,” Kazmaroff said turning away. “You can read these in the car.”
Holding his temper in a frail grasp, Burton followed down the hall after his partner.
He’d already spent a good part of the preceding night having his joy at a walk-in confession marred by the thought that he had been mere moments from destroying his career by arresting a retarded delivery boy for the crimes. Throughout the night, as he questioned Donnell, he couldn’t help but imagine what would have happened  if he had brought Alfie in—and then  Donnell had given himself up. He’d have been the laughing stock of the entire department. Hell, entire department nothing—this kind of news wouldn’t have stayed put. He’d have been a joke throughout the entire southeast. His reputation and his career would have been in shambles. He’d have been taken off the case, probably off the damn force. And the worst of it...the worst of it was when he imagined the look on Dave Kazmaroff’s face. Burton shuddered to think how close he had come to doing time in a federal prison. Because he would’ve killed the bastard. He would’ve pulled out his regulation-issue Colt-45 and emptied every round into the bastard’s teal blue Polo shirt.
2
Maggie hung up the phone in the living room and, even in the pressing heat of the late morning, rewrapped the wool afghan rug tighter around her. She sat back down on the couch and nestled into the pillows, her eyes open but unseeing.
Perhaps, on some subconscious level, she had believed that Burton’s suspect in custody really had killed Elise. What other explanation could there be for the fact that she had felt surprisingly little concern about entering the woods last night? She had somehow felt that since the bad guy was locked up, there was nothing to fear in the night anymore. And she had nearly died last night. Would have died too, if it hadn’t been for Laurent.
He had returned to the apartment and found her gone. A quick search of the apartment and the parking lot had revealed that she had not taken her car. Laurent had begun a search of the apartment building grounds. He had begun a very noisy search of the apartment building grounds. In the process, he’d awakened Mr. Danford, the night watchman, as well as a good number of residents at the Parthenon, and had, it seemed, succeeded in scaring off Maggie’s assailant.
Maggie picked up the ice pack and held it to the back of her head. Laurent had found her lying crumpled at the bottom of the ravine, a large, swelling knot on the back of her head, the wounded terrier cowering at her side. Laurent had insisted they spend the rest of their early morning hours in the emergency room at Piedmont Hospital to confirm that Maggie would not lose her memory or begin reciting chants in Urdu at some point in the future. She was released with the assurance that, although nasty and painful, her wound was a relatively mild concussion. It felt anything but mild now as she sat in her living room—her head banging like a rusty kettle drum being attacked by a shovel—and remembered her terror in the dark last night.
Laurent entered the room, his eyes clouded with concern. He held a steaming mug of tea and a small flask of amber-colored liqueur. Wordlessly, he placed the tea in front of her and handed her the brandy.
“Never had spirits before noon,” she said, wincing as she drank the brandy. It hurt to tip her head back and the fluid burned in her throat.
“You have called Gerry?” he asked, sitting down opposite her.
She nodded carefully and deposited the ice bag in a bowl on the coffee table.
“He doesn’t expect me in.”
“Bon. And the police?”
“Laurent, what do you want me to tell you?” She winced in pain again and lowered her voice. “I gave Detective Burton another call. He hasn’t called me back.”
“C’est incredible!”
“Well, I’m not really surprised.  On the other hand, cops swarming all over the place isn’t going to get me any closer to figuring this thing out. It’ll just ensure that my neighbors permanently refuse to talk to me. And I’ve got a few more questions to ask them now.”
“And the note?” Laurent gestured to the folded piece of paper on the coffee table in front of them. When they had returned from the hospital, they had found it jammed in the slot of Maggie’s mailbox.  
Maggie picked up the note and reread it. The handwriting was a tight, almost European style with elongated, loopy “l’s” and “t’s”.
“Stay away. Stop doing what you are doing. I’m watching you. If you don’t back off, I will kill you.”
She dropped the note back onto the coffee table.
“Well, maybe the police can get something off it.” She sighed and eased back into the couch pillows. “Besides our fingerprints, I mean. But we still don’t need a whole S.W.A.T. team of cops here to check one lousy note for prints.”
Laurent shrugged.
“Drink your tea, please, cherie,” he said wearily.
She felt a sudden urge to tell him not to worry. That she’d stop asking questions and stop trying to find out what happened to Elise. She knew their lives would settle down if she did. And surely her love for Laurent was big enough that she could give him that much? She watched him with guilt and caring and said nothing.
The phone rang. Maggie pulled back onto the couch. She wasn’t in the mood for phone conversations.
Laurent picked it up and spoke into the receiver:
“Allo?”  His face softened and he smiled slightly. “Une moment,” he said, covering the receiver. “It is Brownie. I can tell him you—“
Maggie shook her head and held out her hand for the receiver. 
“Hey, Brownie,” she said.
Laurent took the empty brandy glass into the kitchen.
After she hung up the phone she padded barefooted to the bedroom door. She wore a faded pair of navy sweat pants and a light cotton sweatshirt. Laurent was peering into the refrigerator, his back to her, rigid and expectant.
“He wants to meet me for lunch tomorrow,” she said.
“Ahh, yes?” Laurent turned his head slightly over his shoulder.
“You don’t mind, do you?”  
“I don’t mind, cherie. We French are secure!” He smiled and turned to face her. She moved forward and slipped easily into his arms.
“Good thing,” she said. “Makes up for my wobbly American ways.”
He tilted her chin up with his fingers and kissed her lightly on the mouth.
“Perhaps a little food would help?”
“No food,” she said firmly, kissing him back. “Oh! What happened to the little dog? The one that was with me last night?”
“Oh, it is a bad dog. He is the reason you are walking into the woods in the middle of the night.”
“He’s not a bad dog. Laurent, what did you do with him? I thought you liked him.”
“I am teasing you.” He wiped his hands on a dish towel draped over his shoulder and she moved back to the kitchen doorjamb to watch him. “He is with the animale docteur. Yes? Monsieur Danford has taken him there.”
“Oh, Laurent, do you trust that guy? He’ll probably chop him up for a stew to cook on his hot plate or something down there.”
“I am telling him I will be very disappointed if the little dog is not getting well. He is taking him to the docteur. Pas de danger!”
“Okay, but check on him, okay? Did you see how cut up he was? His little feet? God, it was awful.” Maggie wandered over to the dining room table. Her typewriter was still sitting there, her notes still stacked beside it.
The outdoor buzzer sounded. Maggie looked questioningly at Laurent, who shrugged. She depressed the button. “Yes?” she said into the intercom.
“Miss Newberry? Detectives Burton and Kazmaroff. We’d like to come in if we could.”
3
Gerry hung up the phone and tapped the base of it with a mechanical pencil. Mugged! In her own parking lot. Wait until Darla heard about this. She’ll be calling Qantas Airlines herself.
He stood up and raked up the Venetian blinds on his window with a jerk on the dangling cord. The full blaze of the morning sun shot through the window. Mean temperature in Auckland in summer is 78 degrees with less than ten percent humidity. He turned away from the sight of cars and trucks moving at a slug’s pace down the street below. Situated on an isthmus, the views of harbor and beach are enjoyable from every vantage point of the city.  
Gerry leaned over his desk and engaged the public address system, clearing his throat loudly at the same time. “Attention, all hands,” he said into the speaker. “This is your captain speaking. There’ll be a short meeting in the conference room in ten minutes. That is all.” He felt a rush of adrenaline push through his veins. He’d been waiting for this, the point of no return. The crossed-over line.
He straightened his tie and patted down the pockets on his double breasted suit. He knew what he would say, no further preparation was necessary. It was annoying that Maggie wasn’t here but he’d describe it all to her later.
He jumped at the knock on his door. It pushed open and Patti’s blonde head popped through.
Gerry coughed. “Er...yes, Patti?”
“I can’t make the meeting, Gerry.” She entered the room, her clothing making its entrance first. A loud complaint of a hair bow was knotted in her hair, something ruffly and pink. Wasn’t there an age limit on women wearing bows in their hair, Gerry wondered?  The rest of her outfit was reminiscent of the psychedelic sixties. Dramatic swirls of red and yellow were captured in a glimmering polyester pleated skirt with matching overblouse. As usual, Gerry thought, she looks like she’s trying to offend before she even opens her mouth.
“Can’t make it?” He knew he sounded formal. It was just the right tone.  After his announcement at this morning’s meeting, he’d have very little to worry about from this place. Or from Patti.
“I’ve got a job interview, if you must know,” she said, her mouth pressed together in a punishing line, her hands folded across her colorful chest.
He nearly smiled. She was so obviously baiting him. A perverse part of him—the part of him that was almost free—felt the impulse to drop to both knees and scream, “God, no, Patti! You can’t leave!  Please, won’t you change your mind?” And all for the twisted pleasure of seeing the look on her face. As it was, he bit back the smile and merely shrugged.
“Okay. You don’t need to be there.” 
“I’ve decided to leave the company, Gerry,” she said, taking a step forward.
“So have I, as a matter of fact,” he said. 
Her mouth fell open and, for the first time, he could see small blemishes around the bottom part of her face. Her surprise was real and unchecked. 
“What?” she sputtered.
“I’m leaving. That’s what the announcement is. To say I’ve decided to leave.”
“Because of me?”
The suggestion was so absurd that Gerry nearly laughed in her face. Instead, he paused as if considering it and then shook his head.
“No, Patti,” he said. “I am not leaving because of you. I am leaving...” He turned and waved a hand at the scene outside his window. “...because of everything.” He liked the sound of that. Maybe he’d use it in his speech to the others. “I wish you luck, though. I don’t think you’ve been happy here and it’s probably a good idea you’re looking elsewhere.” 
It was true. The freedom he felt by cutting his ties—even by breaking the news to just one person—was profound. He felt energized, yet relaxed, capable of talking honestly about anything. Maybe Janis Joplin was right: freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose. 
He felt great.
“I see,” she said. She stood facing him in her ridiculous dress, her arms pressed in a Joan-of-Arc fold across her chest, her eyes burning with some indecipherable passion. “Well, that’s it, then,” she said.
“I wish you luck, Patti.” He felt more in control than he ever had before. He watched her shoulders sag beneath her dress, her head sink into her shoulders. A sad smile crept onto her face.
“Thanks, Gerry,” she said in a voice softer and more sincere than he’d ever heard from her. She held out her hand to him. “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she said.
“Just a little peace,” he said. “And I will.”
She moved toward the door. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too,” he said happily, buoyed with his factory-fresh, hither-to-untried ability to handle any situation. He smiled at her until she closed the door behind her. Then he turned for one last look out the window, patted down his suit pockets again, and went out to tell the rest of the world.  
4
“Well, it’s sort of complicated,” Kazmaroff said, shaking his head at Laurent’s proffered coffee pot. He turned to face Maggie. “We’ve got a confession, and a believable one at that—“
“Why did this Donnell-guy kill Elise?” Maggie asked. She sat on the couch, next to Laurent, a chipped mug of tea in her hands. Opposite them, in mismatched tub chairs, sat Kazmaroff, in his cool chinos and Vuarnet sunglasses, and Burton, precision-pressed and held together like a rubber band around a bundle of nerves.
“He just did,” Burton said, a tinge of harshness to his voice as if to belie all doubt and argument from any corner. He wiped his hands on the knees of his Sansabelt slacks and examined his nails. They were yellow and chewed.
Maggie saw Kazmaroff give Burton an annoyed look and she wondered who to believe. Did Kazmaroff not think they had Elise’s killer in custody? She didn’t feel she could ask him with Burton present.
Burton rubbed his hands together and made a squeaking popping sound with them. 
“Miss Newberry,” he said. “Even a psycho thinks he’s got a reason to kill, you know? I mean, it may be a nuts reason, but it makes sense to him.”
“I think what Miss Newberry wants to know, Jack, is, does this mean that the guy who killed her sister—did he do it because he had a specific reason against her sister?”
“I understood the question, Dave.” Maggie was surprised to hear the bite in the detective’s voice. It had always been clear that their partnership was not heaven-sent but the relationship had obviously deteriorated with the investigation. “If you’re suggesting this guy had to have a reason to kill your sister, I would have to say ‘probably not’. There was no reason.” he flipped open his notebook and looked at a page of notes.
Maggie felt tired all of a sudden. She wanted to go take a nap. For the rest of the week. She felt a chilling nimbus of loneliness envelope her as the detectives subtly retracted any help or support.
“So, what do you think?” Laurent’s voice boomed out impatiently, causing Maggie to look at him with surprise.
“Er, what do you mean?” Dave asked uncertainly.
“Maggie’s sister is killed and two months later Maggie is attacked and it means nothing?”
“It’s quite possible...” Burton reached for his notebook again.
“Pfut!” Laurent rolled his eyes. “And it is the coincidence? Eh?”
Burton shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his eyes still on his notebook. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything—“
“Why doesn’t it mean anything?” Maggie asked, beginning to show her impatience.
“Look,” Dave Kazmaroff leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He gave her a look that suggested he would now tell her some inside dope. Maggie began to see why his partner couldn’t stand him. 
“There’s a lot of crime in this city,” he said, smiling warmly at her. “Coincidence that your sister would be murdered one month and you mugged the next? Maybe, but absolutely believable. What’s less believable is that they’re connected in some way. If that’s what you’re saying?” He addressed this last comment to Laurent and ran a hand through his hair.
Now it was Burton’s turn to look irritated with Kazmaroff. He stood up and carefully picked up the note on the coffee table that Maggie had shown them earlier. He dropped it into a little zip-lock plastic bag and sealed it firmly with his thumb and forefinger.
“We don’t know exactly what’s going on at the moment, Miss Newberry. We think we got our killer—I know we got him—but we haven’t had time to make some of the other pieces fit.”
Yeah, like my sister, Maggie thought.
“I’ll take this downtown and see what the lab guys can make of it. Dave and I’ll have a look-see at the woods on our way out and we’ll give you a call later on. Might not be today.”
She nodded and wagged a hand to indicate she didn’t much expect it would be.
“Meanwhile, I wouldn’t take any more midnight walks in the woods. Even without psychotic killers on the loose, Buckhead isn’t as safe as it used to be. That drug dealer—the guy we originally held as a suspect for your sister’s killing?--he still roams loose around here. You just can’t afford to play Anne of Green Gables in a big city like this, Miss Newberry. Okay?”
She nodded politely at him wondering if they could arrest her if she asked Laurent to throw them out on their shiny polyester keisters.
“I think your attack was probably an isolated incident,” he continued, as both cops moved to the door. “But we’ll run down a few leads and see where it takes us.” He smiled at her and she smiled back. 
When she closed the door behind them, Laurent went out onto the small stone balcony that faced Peachtree Road to light up one of his foul-smelling Gitanes. Maggie ran a comb through her hair. She looked awful, she decided, as she stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Her face was too pale and a tiny vein under her right eye, normally imperceptible, was now vivid against her white skin—an unmistakable sign of weariness and stress. After splashing cool water on her face, she gave her cheeks a quick rub with a rough towel to bring back some color. She still looked awful.
Laurent appeared in the hallway. She could smell the scent of tobacco on him as it clung to his clothes and hair.
She eased past Laurent in the hallway. She went to the dining room and opened a chest of drawers. Laurent followed her. He leaned against the dining room table, his arms crossed in front of his chest, and watched her.
Maggie pulled out a large photo album and placed it on the table. She began flipping the pages.
“They are trying to tell me that Elise died for no reason. She was just some random face, some incidental body that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just...bad luck.” She stopped flipping the pages. She froze for a moment, then tugged out a color snapshot from the plastic pages. 
“You are leaving?” Laurent asked quietly.
 She tucked the photo in her jacket pocket and picked up her purse.
“I’m going to ask Alfie one last question,” she said. “What are you going to do?” She noticed his cigarette pack was in his top shirt pocket, which usually meant that he was going out. 
“I did not know you would want to be going out so soon..”
“Laurent,” she said impatiently, “what is it?  You know you don’t have to ask my permission if you want to go somewhere.” She moved to the front door. Laurent remained in the doorway of the kitchen.
“I had an engagement with your father pour dejeuner—“ Lunch.
“My Dad? You’re having lunch with my Dad?” Maggie stopped looking for the small tape recorder and note pad she’d stashed in the bookcase. Was Laurent looking for a father figure? She really didn’t know much about his family. Was his own father still living? She touched him on the arm.
“Look, Laurent,” she said. “I’m glad you and my Dad are getting along so well.” She turned away, resuming the search for her tape recorder. “I’m just surprised is all. He never spent much time with any of my friends before.”
He leaned down to kiss her.
“You will be careful if you go out, eh?” he said, holding her chin in his hand.  “Faites attention?”
“Yes, yes. Je promis. I’ll be careful. Listen, don’t tell him what happened last night, okay? He’d freak and there’s no sense in it. Oh, and tell Dad not to tell you any stuff about my teenage years or anything.”
“Pfut!” he turned to walk to the door. “We have covered all that many weeks ago.” He turned to give her a last smile and left.
Giving up on the tape recorder, Maggie tucked a pad and pencil into her purse. Next, she went into the kitchen and put together a ham and cheese sandwich using a slightly runny Camembert instead of Swiss slices since that was all the fromage Laurent had purchased.  She poured herself another glass of juice and took her lunch onto the balcony overlooking busy Peachtree Road.
It struck her as bizarre that here she was eating a ham sandwich, with Laurent off to keep a lunch engagement, and just last night she’d been knocked unconscious into a ditch. She touched the knot on the back of her head. Maggie tried to see the attack in elementary terms. Had she—as the cops seemed to think—merely interrupted a dog abuser during his moment of gleeful torture? Or had someone been watching her through her apartment window and used the dog to lure her outside? Was the attack meant for her?  More importantly, was it connected to Elise’s death? She drew the photograph out of her pocket and stared at it. In it, the photographer had caught Elise looking tired, unsmiling. Maggie tried to remember when it was taken. After a tennis game? But, then, Elise wasn’t dressed for that kind of sport, Maggie noted. And when she showed this picture to Alfie this afternoon at his mother’s house, how was it that Maggie now knew, beyond a doubt, that Alfie would say he’d never seen her before? Was it because there was someone else who had frightened him that day? Someone no one had a picture of?
 Maggie felt a light sweat develop on her forehead as, for her, things just got a lot less random.



Chapter 16
1
  “How do you expect to pay for this, may I ask?” Gerry shuffled through the Paris brochures stacked on Maggie’s desk.
Maggie, uncomfortable in a now too-snug knit dress, gathered up her maps and travel brochures and placed them in the bottom of her briefcase.  She closed the top of the case firmly. 
She felt tired from a late night of conversation and lovemaking with Laurent the evening before. He had gotten home early and they had spent much of the time going over the results of her visit with Alfie and his mother. As she had predicted, Elise had not been the one who had ridiculed Alfie in the hall that day. Alfie had never laid eyes on the person in Maggie’s photograph. The person he described was someone so bizarre as to be a cross between something out of a sci-fi movie and a demented person’s wild imagination.
‘She had a big, big face and awful, big teeth! She wanted to eat me up! She was red and green, like a big Christmas tree! And mad at me and wanting to eat me!’
 Maggie left wondering if the poor guy had even been in the apartment building that day.  She felt defeated and stymied.
“I’ve charged it to my MasterCard,” she said to Gerry.
“The same card, I believe, on which you put that lovely and very expensive frock you wore to the Addies banquet a few months back?” Gerry leaned up against the windowsill to the right of her desk. He wore jeans and a light cotton sweater. Maggie noticed he wore colorful leather moccasins too instead of his usual wingtips. “The same card upon which you blew two hundred smackeroos last spring for that ungodly kitchen appliance you said would make your life complete?”
“The very one.”
“Don’t those people require payment periodically?”
“I’ll worry about it when I get back. I don’t have the cash and I need to do this.”
“I see. The old worry-about-it-later-credit plan. Yes, I think Darla subscribes to that too. Can’t say it works very well for her, though.”
“Aren’t you dressed a little casually today, Herr Boss? I mean, I didn’t miss an interoffice memo, did I? This isn’t the afternoon we all have to go out and do the lawn in front of the building or something, is it?”
“Ahh, Maggie.” Gerry smiled and folded his arms. “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. I’m going to miss that keen, snappish wit. That biting—some might say, corrosive—repartee. You’ll have to write me a lot.”
“Why are you being so hateful?”
“What are you talking about?” The smile was replaced by a puzzled frown. “I’m not being hateful.”
“Talking about knowing each other from now on only in letters? That’s not hateful?” Maggie tossed a file folder across her desk. It skidded and fell on the floor, flopping open and spilling its contents on the carpet.
“I’m only happy because I know I’m going on to a better place for me. That’s all—“
“You sound like you’re going to start transchanneling any minute now.”
“You know what I mean.” Gerry shifted uncomfortably on the windowsill. “Being here isn’t good for me. You should be glad that I was able to figure it out. Otherwise, I’d just go on being miserable, making everyone around me miserable. I’m not happy to leave you, Maggie, you old boob, but I am happy about starting a new life someplace better.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Maggie covered her eyes and felt a leaden weariness descend upon her.
“And you’ll come visit us down there—“
“Are you kidding?” Maggie uncovered her eyes and stared at him. “It’s over ten thousand miles away from here. It costs thirteen hundred dollars just to get there—“
“You’ll stay with us. There won’t be any hotel costs.”
“It takes twenty hours flying time, not to mention the time difference.” Maggie began ticking the calculations off on her fingers. “Say, I leave on a Tuesday. Two days of travel later, I arrive in Auckland on Monday! What happened to those other two days?”
“You probably need to take this vacation to Paris more than I thought.”
“And returning? Going northeast across the date line? Let’s say I leave on a Friday—“
“I really do get the point, Maggie.”
“I’m so very glad. Hey, listen, gar , go to Kiwi-Land if you have to. Knock yourself out. She’ll be right, mate. No worries. Do what you have to do.”
“That’s really what it comes down to, don’t you see?”
“Oh, don’t explain this to me, Gerry.”
“I’m not doing this to drive you crazy or to break Darla’s heart. I’m doing this because I have to. I have to! Doesn’t anything move you? I’m dying here. How can I make it clearer to you?”
“Well, go then.” Maggie bent over to scrape up the contents of her spilled folder.
“You’ll visit me?”
“Of course.” She tried to smile but gave it up. “Laurent will come too.”
“Naturally. You know, Darla has a hissy fit if I even mention New Zealand, and we’re scheduled to board the airplane in less than six weeks.”
“You are?” Maggie gaped at him in astonishment.
“Yes. What? Did you think this was just bullshit? Maggie, I am moving, emigrating  with my family to Auckland, New Zealand. I am getting residency, a work permit down there and leaving the good ol’ U.S. of A. Okay?” Gerry tossed a paper clip at her waste paper basket. “And Darla is a mess about it. Very nonsupportive if you want to know. And it would be nice, I’m just saying it would be nice if there was one person on the planet besides my travel agent with which I could discuss my plans. My dreams, as it were.”
“Six weeks. Man, that’s so soon. What are you going to do down there for work?”
He grinned broadly, his eyes alive and happy for the first time in a year.
2
Elspeth Newberry picked up the newspaper, careful not to get newsprint on her fingers, and placed it at her husband’s breakfast place. The headline shouted up at her: Man Confesses to Buckhead Murder.
“Good morning, my dear.” John Newberry turned from the breakfast buffet in their dining room, his Belleek plate sparsely adorned with a scrambled egg and a melon slice. “I didn’t know you were up.” He kissed her absently on the cheek as he set his plate down.
John Newberry’s thick shock of white hair was trimmed neatly in a cap around his head. His eyes were cerulean blue and a pink flush was on his high cheeks. Last night’s schnapps and a generally happy disposition contributed to his good coloring. John Newberry was a man happy with his world. He never doubted the future, he never regretted the past. As a result,  he thoroughly appreciated his present. He was a man with the incredible propensity to always feel in step with life. It showed, too, in his overall affect, in his relations with others, and in his nights of sound, dreamless sleep.
Elspeth sat next to him at the long table. It was set with china and silver for a simple Friday morning breakfast for two. She poured his coffee from a large silver pot and then added a small amount of skim milk to it. 
He frowned. “Honestly, El, what could a speck of cream hurt?” He knew it was a waste of breath and his wife didn’t bother responding to him.
“Did you see the headlines?” she asked.
“Is that all you’re having?” John Newberry looked at the solitary melon slice on his wife’s plate.
“The police say he confessed to it. There’s a picture of the man. He looks a little like Uncle Jim.”
“Hmmm.” Her husband took a bite of his eggs and glanced at the newspaper story. “Who is he?”
“They’re not terribly specific.” Elspeth sighed and poured her coffee. She took it black. “No names.”
John wiped his mouth with his napkin and placed a large hand over her small one.
“And how, exactly, does it affect us, my dear?” he said. “Whether the police have Elise’s killer or only someone claiming to be?”
Elspeth withdrew her hand and picked up a spoon to carve open her melon slice.
“It affects us, John, as long as we still have a daughter alive and living in Buckhead.”
John Newberry looked at her with surprise. “You think Maggie is in danger?”
“I know she still lives in the apartment where her sister was brutally murdered.” She looked at him coldly. “I know that the press have given reason to believe this confession is not authentic which would mean the maniac is still on the loose. Do I need to know much more?”
“She’s living with that great big brute of a Frenchman, for pity’s sake!” he said, not hiding his exasperation. “His only full-time job is to look after our daughter. I should think that would—“
“I’m not sure what I feel about Monsieur Laurent Dernier,” his wife said, returning to her melon.
“You don’t? Well, then I think I can help you out.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Yes, I think I can set your mind at rest about that point at least. It is my belief that Laurent is the one stable, normal thing that our daughter has had in her life for a long time—“
“And what do you call Brownie?” Elspeth pushed her fruit plate away and stared at him.
“I’m not saying anything against Brownie. Personally, I always liked the boy. But he wasn’t right for our Maggie and I wouldn’t have liked to have seen them get together.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this. Brownie comes from the finest family—“
“I’m not saying he doesn’t.”
“He adores Maggie.” Elspeth looked around the room in agitation. “He...he has practically grown up with her...”
“I’m not sure what kind of a recommendation that is. All I’m saying is the girl doesn’t love him and I don’t blame her. Nice chap, but I’ll pass on the son-in-law part, if you don’t mind.”
“I cannot believe you are saying this,” she repeated. “And you’d rather have this...Laurent Dernier, instead, I suppose?”
“I would.”
“He doesn’t have a job! He barely speaks English—“
“Maggie understands him. Come to that, you  have no trouble understanding him either.”
“I’m not against Laurent.” Elspeth stood up from the table, her gold bracelets jangling softly as she did so. “But I think to compare him to Brownie is preposterous.”
“I quite agree,” John said quietly.
“You know what I mean, John. I cannot understand that this is what you would want for your daughter. An unemployed foreigner. Yes, charming, even, handsome, but marriage material for Margaret? Honestly.” With that, she turned to make an elegant exit in complete possession of the last word.
John Newberry replaced his napkin and finished his coffee. He grimaced and added more milk to the cup. Idly, he flipped the paper to the sports section and got up to find a small sausage on the quickly-cooling buffet table.
3
“They’re expecting us there around six, I think.” Maggie juggled the phone receiver against her chin and flipped through her work diary on her desk.
“I will get the cadeau,” Laurent said on the other end of the phone line.
“Cadeau? Oh, yeah, right, Nicole’s birthday present. That’d be great if you would, sweetheart. I’m not going to have time today.”
“You have seen the paper this morning?”
“I saw it. I think it’s crap, but I saw it.”
“Peut-être we will not think about it for a few hours? Put it away for a little bit?”
“Yeah, I’m not thinking about it. It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Je t’aime, cherie. Est-ce que tu m’aime?”
“With all my heart, you big mush,” Maggie said softly. “And you know it very, very well.”
“Mais, bien sûr,” he said before hanging up.
4
Laurent smoothed his shaggy brown hair from his forehead and kept his eyes fixed on Nicole Newberry. She sat, stiffly, a starched white petticoat peeking from under her velvet tunic. Her hair, shiny and soft with a simple wave Elspeth had put in it, was caught up by a long blue velvet ribbon which draped down her back in a demure ponytail. Her eyes were flat and stared unseeingly at her mirror-bright black patent leather shoes.
“Nicole is sex ans today, oui, ma petite?”  Laurent sang softly to the little girl. He lifted her chin and smiled encouragingly at her. “A big girl now, is our Nicole.” She stared dully into his bright blue eyes.
“She’s a little tired tonight, Laurent dear,” Elspeth said as she straightened the candles on the dining room table. Laurent and the child were seated in chairs lined against the far wall. The butler’s table with Nicole’s birthday cake, a sugar castle of icing and roses, was placed next to them, and Elspeth thought, suddenly, that it made a winsome picture. “A Kodak moment,” as her irreverent daughter would say. All the same, Elspeth wished she had a photograph of the scene. She even wished she were the kind of person who could snatch up a camera and capture the image herself.
“We’ve been shopping today and visiting people and wrapping prezzies and helping Becka in the kitchen...all kinds of things, haven’t we, darling?” Elspeth didn’t look at Nicole when she spoke, just continued to straighten and re-position the immaculately set dining table of crystal and china. The table was set for five although Elspeth had been tempted to add another plate for the one person who would never show.
“Oh, that is formidable,” Laurent murmured to the girl. “You have been getting many beautiful things today, yes?”
Elspeth felt a budding annoyance with Laurent. She didn’t want the child picking up his crippled pronunciations although she knew that Maggie would say that should be the least of her worries. Nonetheless, she would have preferred the man to either speak French to Nicole—and she certainly disapproved of that at this point—or to keep communication to a minimum. She felt a pulse of guilt at this thought. Laurent was kind to the child, gave her, in fact, more attention than her own aunt. She sighed and looked at them both. Nothing was turning out the way she had planned.
“Dad’s got the drinks and stuff in the library, Mother. Is that okay?” Maggie appeared through the swinging doors that led to the kitchen, carrying a frosty highball glass.
“That will be fine, dear,” she said.
“How are you two doing?” Maggie walked over and sat down next to Nicole. “Happy Birthday, darling.” The child continued to stare at Laurent.
“Do you need any help, Mom?”
“No, I think we’re about ready.” Elspeth stood back and surveyed the perfect table.
The doorbell rang and Maggie put her drink down.
“I’ll get it,” she said.
Brownie stood on the other side of the Newberry threshold, dressed in a natty sports jacket and razor-pleated trousers.
“Brownie—“
“I can’t come in. I just stopped by to give you this to give to Nicole.” He pushed a stuffed giraffe into Maggie’s hands. “So tell her ‘happy birthday from Uncle Brownie’. That is, unless you’ve already told her I’ve died or something and, in that case, forget it.”
“Don’t be an ass. Why don’t you come in and give it to her yourself?”
“Can’t. Got someone waiting in the car. And this is for you.”
Maggie tried not to look towards the darkened interior of Brownie’s BMW, its engine still running, parked in the circular drive.
He pressed something cold and hard into her hand. “It’s what I told you I found in your—“
“Oh, yeah, okay. What is it?” She looked at the strange, circular piece of jewelry for a minute.
“You’re asking me? Look, I gotta run. Tell Nicole—“
“It’s a scarf ring, is what it is,” Maggie said.  “This looks like one of my Mother’s.”
“Mystery solved. Great. Later, Mags.”
He turned and hurried down the wide flagstone steps of the mansion’s verandah.
“Yeah, Brownie, thanks. Thanks from Nicole too.”
Maggie watched as he opened his car door, illuminating the car’s interior. The girl waiting for him was young and pretty.
Maggie dropped the scarf ring into her purse on the foyer marble-top table and returned to the birthday gathering.
“Who was it, darling?” Elspeth was still retouching the flawless place settings.
“Just Brownie. He brought this for Nicole.” She waved the giraffe at Nicole and smiled. The child looked at it.
Maggie took a quick sip of her drink and offered it to Laurent who shook his head. 
“She is very beautiful tonight, is she not, Maggie?” he said.
“Oh, yes,” Maggie plucked at Nicole’s dress with her hand. “Very pretty, Nicole. Très jolie!”  She turned to her mother. “What else did you get her?”
“That would be telling, darling. We don’t want to spoil Nicole’s surprises.”  
A  loud crash sounded from the other side of the swinging doors and, Elspeth sprang into action.
“What is the woman doing?” she said as she hurried into the kitchen. Maggie noted the sense of satisfaction apparent in her mother’s voice.
Maggie took another long drink and listened as the ice cubes fell musically back into the half-empty glass.
“I can’t believe you’re going to do this.” She gestured to Nicole with her glass.
“Your father said it would be all right,” Laurent said. He was watching Nicole closely, fondly. Maggie knew the child had become special to him in a way the Newberry family hadn’t expected. It was as if there was an already existing kinship between them—their both being French? Maggie wondered—that Laurent took care to fan and tend.
“Yeah,” she said to him. “But Dad told you that without checking with my mother. She will freak.”
“I don’t think so.” Laurent leaned back in his chair and Nicole dropped her eyes again to her knees. “In fact....” he stood up and placed his hands on his hips. “Now is a good time, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oh, Laurent, are you sure?” Maggie couldn’t help grinning. This gift of Laurent’s really was a disastrous idea. “I think we should warn my mother first,” she repeated. She was finding herself interested, even eager, in an impish way, to see her mother’s reaction to Laurent’s surprise.
“Your father is the man of the house, is he not? He is the Papa?”
“Yes, yes, all that. But the Maman will freak, all the same.”
“Pfut!”  Laurent waved away her comment with his hand and gave Nicole a quick kiss on the top of her head.
“Une moment, cherie,”  he said to the child. “Oncle Laurent will be right back with a wonderful birthday present!” With that, he turned and exited the room. Nicole let out a long sigh that surprised Maggie.
“Hard day, huh?” she said with a smile, reaching for the child’s small, cool hand.
Elspeth returned with Maggie’s father in tow, a large drink in each of his hands.
 “Hello again, Daughter,” John Newberry said jovially. “Refresh that drink for you?”
“John,” Elspeth said firmly, her eyebrows arched. She was all-business tonight, Maggie noticed. This was clearly to be another family occasion whipped into shape, marched out in front of the video cameras and Kodaks and made to form into a proper memory of the moment. Like the rest of the family, Maggie’s father had long ago learned not to resist Elspeth’s determination to manufacture life as it should be—life as it damned well would  be. He just drank a little more.
Elspeth looked at Maggie. “Where’s Laurent?” she asked.
“He had to go get something. Well, our birthday present for Nicole, actually,” Maggie said cheerfully.
“Ahhh, yes!” Her father set down one of the glasses and took a healthy sip from the other. “The famous birthday present. Meanwhile, tell us about your upcoming trip.”
“Well...” Maggie hesitated briefly. She crossed her ankles and straightened out the neckline of her knit dress, it was a deep blue and, she knew, offset her dark hair nicely. “Laurent takes me to the airport tomorrow morning,” she said. “I’m supposed to be gone about a week, I guess. But if I find anything, I might stay longer.”
“And Gerry doesn’t mind, dear?” Her mother moved an errant, silver fork on the dinner table to its proper place next to a plate.
“Not really. He’s so wrapped up in his own plans to bolt the country that he really can’t be bothered. I mean, I think he’s sympathetic and all...” She shook her head. “but my not being here is way down his list of priorities.”
“What’s wrong with him?” her father asked.
“He’s going through a bad stage, Dad. He’s worried to death about his family’s safety with all the crime in town. This thing with Elise was actually the trigger.”
“I can certainly understand that,” Elspeth said.
“—and taking over the company was more... I don’t know ...stressful...than he thought it would be.”
“And he’s moving out of the country as a result?” Her father sounded incredulous.
Maggie nodded. “New Zealand,” she said. “In late November. About six weeks from now.”
“How does his wife feel about all this? What’s her name?” Elspeth settled into the chair abandoned by Laurent. She took the girl’s hand in her own and held it on her knee.
“Her name’s Darla. Not great. How would you feel? I mean, Darla’s not the one coming unglued. She doesn’t want to leave.”
“Poor man. I don’t suppose he’d consider some kind of therapy?” Her father looked genuinely concerned and Maggie felt a sudden rush of love for him. 
“He thinks this is therapy, Dad,” she said.  “He thinks it’s the epitome of mental health to be doing this.”
“Poor lad.” He shook his head.
Suddenly, Maggie’s mother gave a small shriek and jumped up, dropping Nicole’s hand. Maggie, sitting on the other side of Nicole, jumped up too, although she didn’t know why. Her first thought was, bizarrely, that her mother had seen a snake curled up under the child’s chair.
“What is it? What is it?” Maggie moved away from Nicole, totally bewildered. “What’s happening?”
“Nicole!” Elspeth took Nicole by her thin shoulders and forced the child to look at her. Only then did Maggie see the puddle of yellow pooling under Nicole’s antique wicker chair.
“Oh, dear,” Maggie said, looking at her father with dismay.
“Nicole, honey, are you all right---?” her mother asked.
Suddenly, Nicole jumped up and wrestled free of Elspeth’s grip.
“Laissez-moi tranquille! Laissez-moi tranquille!”  she shrieked, running from the room. Her voice, bleating and frantic, echoed through the house, room by room, until they heard the distant slamming of her bedroom door.
Elspeth sat, twisted around in her chair facing Nicole’s exit route, her hands still in the air and her delicate mouth open in a caricature of astonishment.
Maggie gaped at her mother and then her father and then at the little puddle of urine on the imported Moroccan tile beneath the child’s chair.
She looked up in time to see Laurent walk through the doorway, the squirming little terrier puppy in his arms—its front paws bandaged and a worried glint still in its large dark eyes.
“Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”  His brow puckered in confusion. What’s happening?
“Well,” John Newberry said, picking up the other drink from the table and bringing it to his lips. “I believe we just had a breakthrough.”  

Maggie turned to face Laurent in the car as it sped through Buckhead. 
“Peeing on the floor and running away screaming ‘leave me alone!’ during your own birthday party? That’s progress?” she asked.
Her mother had been joyous after the initial shock of Nicole’s behavior. So much so, in fact, that the arrival of Laurent with the scruffy little dog seemed to have gotten lost on her usual list of things-to-obsess-and-be-unhappy-about. She had sliced off a large piece of birthday cake, tucked a gaily packaged gift under her arm, and had disappeared upstairs to spend the rest of the evening with Nicole. And although she later admitted that Nicole hadn’t uttered another word, it was clear that Elspeth felt encouraged by the incident. She even instructed that the puppy be put in a box with a warm blanket and a bowl of food in the kitchen until Nicole was ready to receive him. Maggie was thunderstruck.
She, Laurent and her father had retired to the library to eat cake and drink Wild Turkey for the rest of the evening.
Hey!” She said suddenly, giving his shoulder a shake. “Pull into Selby’s for a sec, would you?”
“Eh?” Laurent began to turn down the street where the advertising agency was located.
“I forgot, I need that little portable tape recorder Gerry said I could borrow for the trip. It’ll just take a second, okay?”
“Of course.” Laurent sighed and rubbed his eyes. After this was all over, she’d make it up to him, she promised herself. She’d swamp him with attention the way she was sure most real French girlfriends do.
Laurent pulled the Mitsubishi into the office building parking lot and stopped in front of the large double doors. He unbuckled his seatbelt. But she was already out of the car door. “No, darling, pas de necessaire. Don’t even turn off the engine. I won’t be a minute.”
Maggie dashed for the heavy outside door and used her key to get inside. She stood in front of the lobby elevators, now looming like wicked maws in the vacant lobby and glanced through the side panels of the building’s entrance to see Laurent waiting patiently in the car. She punched the Up button and the lift came almost immediately. Holding her keys in a manner that, according to an article she’d read in the newspaper’s Sunday Supplement, would enable her to seriously wound or disable any would-be attackers, Maggie stepped off the elevator and onto her office floor. She looked behind her and to the sides, then slid the key into the lock of the agency’s front door. She was surprised when it opened easily. It hadn’t been locked. She slipped inside, closing the door behind her. Had Jenny forgotten to lock up tonight? Who’d been the last one out?
The darkened receptionist counter looked sinister to her with its disorderly assortment of telephones, snaking wires, and magazines. Maggie scurried by, cursing herself for the forgetfulness that had prompted this mission in the first place. She ran past the art director’s cubicles and down the hall to her own office. Couldn’t this have waited until morning?  she wondered, her irritation with herself competing with her edginess.  
She found the light switch and was immediately assaulted with a bedlam of sensations, as if there were a terrible odor in the room that was released with the flick of the switch. She stared into the office, her hand still wavering near the wall. Her desk, quite messy at the best of times, was on its side, its drawers hanging open, reams of paper and open file folders erupting from them like great winged birds frozen in flight. Her desk chair was across the room, upside down. The filing cabinet, although right side up, had its contents scattered everywhere in a white, snowstorm of paper and manila envelopes.
Maggie felt her stomach lurch violently and she thought for a minute that she might be sick on top of the paper mess. She felt a strange creeping sensation on the back of her neck. One part of her thought she should look for the recorder while another, more controlling, part of her wanted to flee—by the window, if necessary. She thought about calling Gerry. Then, more sensibly, thought about calling the police.  
Instead, she turned and ran.
Sprinting down the darkened hall, clutching the office key in front of her like a protective talisman, Maggie cut through the conference room to the receptionist’s alcove that led to the outside foyer and stumbled over what felt like an oversized bag of laundry. She fell, tumbling face-first into the receptionist’s desk, flinging her arms out in an attempt to catch her fall.  
As she scrambled to her feet, cursing Jenny for leaving her gym bag in the middle of the hall, she felt the hard resistance of the “bag.” And then its warmth. Not wanting to know, she turned to look at it.
It was Dierdre. She lay, staring blankly at Maggie,  like an overly-large Madame Alexander doll, her brown curls framing her calm face, her limbs poking senselessly from her torso, which was propped woodenly up against the desk in an affected pose.
Maggie began to scream.


Chapter 17
1
Maggie got up from the bed, leaving Laurent sleeping peacefully, and padded into the kitchen.  As she pulled the refrigerator door open and peered inside, the interior light sliced a wedge out of the darkness. 
It was three o’clock in the morning. The police had allowed them to leave the office building at just before one a.m.  
She pulled out a carton of two-percent milk, grateful she’d been able to convince Laurent to stop buying whole milk. She poured a stream of Hershey’s chocolate syrup into a glass, added the milk, stirred vigorously, and took her drink into the living room.
Punching the buttons on the television remote control, she ran through her viewing choices: a sixties movie about a bunch of hippies intent on overthrowing the United States government, a cooking show with the Galloping Gourmet, a Spanish vocabulary lesson presented by a woman with a very strong Southern accent, and an old Bonanza  episode she’d seen at least half a dozen times. Muting the volume for Laurent’s sake, she settled on Bonanza  and sank back into the couch with her chocolate milk.
Gerry had come in to the office for questioning just before midnight. Maggie could still see his face, serious and nodding, shocked but not surprised. She thought he looked like one of those converts from some fanatical religious sect who is unable to conceal his pleasure when evidence of man’s sins is displayed so prominently. He feels vindicated now, Maggie thought, as she raised the volume on Little Joe just a tad.
Poor Dierdre. Poor little girl. So happy to be a part of the advertising world, to be a part of its wit and glitter and hard work and excesses. She had obviously surprised the vandal when she stopped by the office to do something. Maggie closed her eyes to blot out the sight of the perky traffic manager propped up against the back of the receptionist’s desk like some large, broken mannequin.
Kazmaroff and Burton had not been able to disguise their surprise at finding Maggie connected to yet another violent death. They probably think it’s a simple burglary gone awry, she thought, flipping off the television set.  She could still hear Detective Burton’ niggling question: “What do you suppose he was looking for, Miss Newberry? In your office, Miss Newberry?” Jesus! Did he think she was withholding clues or evidence or something? How was she supposed to know why her office was trashed?   One thing seemed sure, anyway, Maggie reasoned miserably, it couldn’t be Gerard this time. The man’s been in France for nearly five months. She thought of Gerry’s strained, unhappy face. He looked old, she thought. When did that happen?
She gazed at the television set and then away from it at the front door, which faced the couch.
This is where Elise sat, Maggie thought. And where, she wondered, had the killer been? Burton and Kazmaroff had said the front door showed no signs of a forced entry. So, the killer had a key? Had he come in while Elise was sleeping? Had he been hiding inside the apartment somewhere? Maggie’s eyes lingered on the door to the front hall closet.  
Maggie closed her eyes tightly and imagined Elise, strung out and needy. She’d come home. She’d screwed her life up and everyone knew it. Her parents knew it, her once adoring big sister knew it. Maybe even her little daughter knew it. And so she was sitting here wanting a fix so bad that nothing else mattered. Not her family, not Nicole, not tomorrow. 
And then the closet door had creaked softly and swung open.
Maggie’s eyes flew open and she stared at the closed door of the closet. She felt suddenly cold. Reminding herself that she needed to try to get a few hours sleep before her trip tomorrow morning, she stood up slowly and stretched, hoping the action would incline her toward  drowsiness. 
Whatever Elise was feeling or thinking that afternoon, now three months ago, Maggie sensed it wasn’t going to help her now in trying to find her killer. Instead, thoughts of it only tended to fill her with an immobilizing sadness and futility. She picked up her empty milk glass, deposited it in the sink and returned to bed. 
In a few hours, she told herself, the real heart of her quest would begin. Tomorrow would be the start of the revelations. If she found out nothing in Paris as to who killed her sister, she would at least find out more about the kind of person her sister had become. She would at least discover who it was who had died in her Buckhead living room six months ago and left so many people so injured.
2
The stand-up café counter at the Charles DeGaulle Airport held a dazzling array of pastries and breads. The confections were displayed in staggered tiers to tempt weary travelers as they trudged to and from their international connections. Maggie leaned against a stone pillar, munching a croissant and drinking strong coffee. Noticing that every other person she saw seemed to be puffing away on cigarettes as they moved about their business made her think that perhaps Paris truly was a place out of pace with the rest of the world. Untidy things like emphysema and clogged arteries and destroyed ozone layers must not exist over here, she mused, taking another bite of her flaky, rich roll. And she was glad. A Paris that shrugged indifferently to a concerned, fastidious other-world was the sophisticated Paris every romantic traveler expected to see.
This was only Maggie’s second visit to Paris. The first, when she was thirteen years old, had been on a shopping trip with her mother and sister. Paris had enchanted her then and, even now she was expectant about her return to the City of Light.
Dumping the remnants of her breakfast in a rubbish bin, Maggie hoisted the strap of her carry-on bag to her shoulder and dove into the bustle of pedestrians moving frenetically within the large airport. She planned to change her currency first, then buy a metro ticket to La gare du Nord. Although she was tempted to take a taxi to her hotel, Maggie reminded herself that she was on a budget.
Dierdre’s death seemed to have caused a bigger stir among Fulton County’s finest than Elise’s, and why this should be, Maggie wasn’t sure. She didn’t know much about Dierdre. She knew she’d graduated two years ago from the University of Georgia with a major in advertising. She knew that Dierdre had loved her job at Selby & Parker. What she didn’t know was why she was dead.
The events of the last twenty-four hours and the burgeoning symptoms of jet lag combined to give Maggie a glassy-eyed look and a slightly hysterical feeling. Although she had bought an open-ended ticket to Paris and could leave whenever her business was completed, she knew she couldn’t stay long. And now she wished very much that Laurent had come with her after all. As she went through the motions of buying her metro ticket and then boarding the train, she was overwhelmed by how much everything reminded her of him. Together with her thrill of being in Paris again, she felt a wistful longing for him.
The train ride to La gare du Nord took her past forty minutes of seedy Paris suburbs and nondescript office parks. She stared out the train window and wondered if Elise had known anyone in these dirty tenements, these bland and impoverished apartments of concrete. It was amazing to her that such ugliness could ring what some would say is the most architecturally blessed city in the world.
Once at the train station, tired and unwilling to decipher the bus schedule that would take her the rest of the way to her hotel, Maggie found a taxi and handed the driver the address of her hotel on the Left Bank. The driver, a large, malodorous woman lolling on a seat cover made of rolling wooden beads, seemed irritated either with Maggie’s lack of bags or, perhaps, her destination. At any rate, she snorted continually throughout the long drive to the Hotel d’Etoile Verte  on Rue Tournon and refused to look at Maggie when they arrived. Maggie tipped generously and left the taxi with relief.
It’s just the long trip, she told herself as she trudged up the few short steps to the concierge’s desk in the hotel. She checked in and took the single, rattling elevator to the third floor.
Maggie opened the hotel door onto a small, clean room with a double bed shoved up against one wall, a large armoire facing the door, a small w.c.  and a bathtub. There were even little chalk and plaster busts of cherubs and various goddesses scattered about the room. Over the bed hung a huge, gilt-framed oil painting of Napoleon crossing a treacherous sea—on his way to exile in St. Helene, she wondered? The painting dominated the room. But best of all was the set of French windows that opened outwards onto a Paris roof with Paris pigeons and a melancholy view of more Paris roofs. Espying the impressive dome of Le Pantheon from her window, Maggie felt another thrill.  The pigeons cooed amiably and pecked at each other and the roof.
Maggie unpacked her few things and put a call in to Laurent. It seemed to ring a long time before he picked up.
“Allo?”
“Laurent—“
“Maggeee! You are there? How was the trip, eh?”
“It was good. Oh, I miss you! I wish you were here with me, Laurent. How come we didn’t do this à deux?”
“Ahhh, C’est très cher, n’est-ce pas?  Very expensive. It is best you are just there.”
“Not from where I’m sitting.” Maggie settled back onto her bed and gazed out the tall, open French windows. “Is everything okay there?” she asked.
“Ah, mais oui,” he said. “But I am sleeping the night without you and that is not good, cherie.”
“Not good for me either, sweetheart. I’ll be back soon, though. I love you, Laurent.”
“Et je t’aime, aussi,  Maggee.”
She felt happy and tired and loved.
“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” she said.
“Okay.”
Hanging up, Maggie committed herself to snapping out of her exhaustion. She remembered that all the travel books said not to give in to jet lag until it was your regular bedtime. That was nearly a full day away. Kicking off her shoes, she wiggled her toes and massaged her swollen feet before putting on a pair of high-top running shoes. She wanted to be comfortable for the ground she would need to cover and at 145F a ten-block taxi ride, it was pretty clear she would be doing a lot of walking. 
The sky was leaden with a threat of rain so Maggie slipped into a thin cotton jacket, put a few francs in her pocket, and left her room, locking it behind her. 
She deposited her key with the sullen young woman at the hotel desk, gave her a cheery “au revoir!”  and bounded down the hotel stairs with more energy than she felt. Looking westward, she could see the grand boulevard of Saint Germain but decided against taking it this time. Plenty of time to wander all over it before she left Paris, she told herself. Instead, she turned north onto Rue Racine and crossed to the area’s other large boulevard, Saint Michel. Along the way, Parisians appeared to be preparing for their weekends with last minute afternoon shopping expeditions. Maggie wasn’t surprised to see that most of those preparations seemed to involve food, the preparing of it, the selling of it, carrying it, and eating it—all on the busy, bustling streets in the heart of the Latin Quarter. The buildings that lined the narrow cobblestoned streets were ancient and jammed together. The crumbling eighteenth century architecture was testimony to the fact that little had changed in this neighborhood in many years. Quaint shops and frenzied marketplaces sprang up out of doorways and alleyway entrances. Café fronts and restaurants, one after another, heralded Greek dining, each restaurant advertising itself as better and more delectable than the last. Couscous, coq au vin, pot au feu. The scent of baking rillettes and the ever-plentiful Croque-Monsieurs filled the air. Maggie walked past bookstores, cinemas, art film houses, discothèques and outdoor cafés, all jammed with young people.  
She continued down the Boulevard St.-Michel until she reached the Seine where she stopped and stared across the river. She had passed very near to Elise’s first apartment but had deliberately avoided going there. Not yet, she told herself. From the Seine, she turned east and walked parallel to the city’s great river until she came to her destination: the Cathedrale de Notre-Dame de Paris.
The cathedral loomed magnificent and imposing before her, its twin towers as familiar and reassuring to her as if she’d seen them every day in Atlanta, Georgia. Her mother had taken her and Elise to Mass here as children and Maggie had been impressed by an exquisite feeling of the glory and power of God. Now, standing in the square before the cathedral, surrounded by the ubiquitous lavender sellers, pickpockets and tourists, Maggie felt the same majesty and magnificence  reaching down to her. She settled on a cold stone bench on the parameter of the square and watched the famous church and its patrons for nearly an hour before she realized that, aside from her early morning airport croissant, she’d had nothing to eat all day.  
Circling Notre-Dame, Maggie walked westward again, this time on the Quay de la Tournelle Montebello  until she reached Rue Dauphine. She took a seat at a small café called  “La Place Americaine.” She ordered the fixed-price menu of paté and roast beef with pommes frites and the house wine, which turned out to be a flinty dry white which tasted like bouquets of flowers without the sweetness. To her relief, the waiter was pleasant and friendly to her.
She looked out onto the street as she ate her lunch and wondered which of the shops was “Chez Zouk.” The address she had was ll Rue Dauphine in the Latin Quarter. She guessed that Zouk’s boutique must be only a few blocks from Elise’s old flat. Maggie had an image of Elise, the young American artist, walking home from art classes and stopping in at Madame Zouk’s shop. Probably caters to the bohemian-artsy crowd, Maggie figured. Elise’s style was definitely not Ellen Tracy.
When she finished lunch and, again, overtipped, Maggie continued down Dauphine until she found the shop. It was small and looked old. A heavy wooden door with ornate carvings seemed to bar the little boutique from a curious public. The small display window showed antique jewelry amid dark cashmere drapes and sweeping skirts. Nice stuff, Maggie thought. A little on the black and spooky side, maybe, but then, that’s Paris. A sign over the door read “Chez Zouk,” with a smaller hand-lettered placard propped in the window which read “Ferme pour dejeuner.” Closed for lunch.
Maggie checked her watch. It was nearly three o’clock. These Parisians ate late, she decided. Undaunted, she turned and headed north on Dauphine until she reached the Seine where the Pont Neuf crossed over to the Quay de Louvre and the Right Bank. The wind had begun to pick up and she felt the rain in the air although it wouldn’t fall just yet. The river looked wild and angry. 
She remembered Elise writing about a view of the Seine from her first flat in Paris and Maggie wondered how many times her sister had seen it just like it was now. Exciting and gray and compelling. She held her rain jacket tightly around her, the temperature seeming to dip as she walked. She hurried down the Quay de Conti  until it turned into the Quay Malaquais  where L’Ecole des Beaux Arts  appeared before her. The street where the School of Fine Arts was located was brimming with some of Paris’ oldest cafés. Immediately south of the school, Maggie caught her breath to see the L’eglise St.-Germain-des-Pres. Originally built in the sixth century, the church and adjacent abbey were stunning in their majesty and antiquity.
Maggie returned her attention to Elise’s school. So this is where she went, Maggie thought, moving toward the entrance of the school. This is where Dad sent her. And while I was studiously trumping all my classes with A’s at the University of Georgia, Elise was prancing through the massive stone gates of one of the finest art schools in the world.  Maggie regarded the impressive façade of the school. 
And then she had dropped out.  
Maggie retraced her steps on the Quays as they flanked the Seine and imagined her sister returning to her flat this way. It was the most direct route to Elise’s apartment and would have taken her by Zouk’s shop. Maggie was aware that the most “direct route” home would not necessarily be Elise’s first choice. Chances are, she’d stop in at one of the smoky, dark cafés packed shoulder-to-shoulder with ponytailed young people who subsisted on thick and harsh demi-cups of French coffee and pack after pack of Gitanes and Gaulouises.
Maggie walked until she reached the Rue Dauphine and then turned south onto it. She could see before she reached the shop that the proprietor had returned.
Madame Zouk stood in the doorway of her shop, as if expecting Maggie. A cigarette was held to her mouth and blue smoke encircled her beautiful face. Maggie was not prepared for the intensity of the woman’s appearance. Madame Zouk  was tall and slim, dressed in black with gray stockings and black velvet slippers. A thin web of black velvet caught her long dark hair up and carried it gracefully at the nape of her long pale neck. Michele Zouk ‘s eyes were dark and almond-shaped, her mouth was full yet not too large for her delicate and finely-boned face. The drama of her dark eyes against her swan-white skin was startling.
Maggie approached slowly. Zouk smiled, then dropped the cigarette gracefully at her feet, not looking to see it fall into the deep Paris gutter. She retreated into the shop without turning her back on Maggie.
“Bonjour, Madame,” Maggie said huskily, unsure of her voice. It suddenly occurred to her that Zouk might not know any English.
“Bonjour, Madame,” Zouk answered in a light, musical voice. She smiled at Maggie and gestured her into the interior of her shop. “You are American, are you not?”
Maggie nodded, finding it difficult to stare at the woman so openly and not blush.
“How did you know?” she asked.
Zouk swept into the shop before her, tendrils of her black chemise wafting behind her like fog on the air. She moved to the other side of a counter in the shop upon which was displayed an assortment of jewelry and hair ornaments.
“I didn’t,” she said. “I guessed.” Madame Zouk settled herself on a stool behind the counter and looked up into Maggie’s eyes. “How can I help you, Madame?...or is it Mademoiselle?” Her eyes danced.
“It’s ‘Mademoiselle’,” Maggie said, following the woman to the counter. “Your English is so good, you hardly have any accent at all. You are French, aren’t you?”
Zouk laughed, a warm throaty sound that made Maggie smile.
“Mais, bien sûr, I am French!” she said, shaking her head and gesturing to herself, her shop. Except for the flawless English, the woman was the pure embodiment of Maggie’s idea of the quintessential French woman: stylish, beautiful, mysterious, with just a tincture of hard-earned wisdom or sadness.
Maggie shook her head and blushed.
“Stupid question,” she said apologetically.
Zouk smiled kindly. “You aren’t looking for clothes today, Mademoiselle?”  
Maggie touched her rain jacket and felt distinctly frumpy next to Zouk.
“No, Madame, I am looking for you.” Maggie rushed on in the face of the woman’s raised eyebrow. “I think you knew my sister, Elise Newberry, and, if you did, I was hoping you could tell me some things about her.”
As she spoke, she noticed that Zouk’s manner had changed. The smile disappeared from her lips and her graceful spine stiffened. Zouk brought her hands together quietly and observed Maggie for a moment.  
“You are Maggie,” she said finally.
Maggie nodded. “And you were...Elise’s friend,” she said. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
The French woman looked at Maggie without speaking. Then, she got up slowly and picked up another handmade sign with the word “Ferme” printed on it. She walked to the front of the store and Maggie watched her place the sign in the window. She carefully turned the lock on the massive front door and returned to where Maggie was standing.
“Come,” she said, leading Maggie to the back of the store. “I’ll make tea.”
2
The man’s fingers drummed nervously on the paint-chipped wooden desk, his fingernails bitten and scarred as if he’d actually chewed them completely off his fingers a time or two in the past. Burton watched Donnell’s mutilated fingers continue their drumming and vowed to stop biting his own nails just as soon as he had the nicotine thing kicked.
Dave Kazmaroff sat across the room—with its single table and three chairs—and balanced a legal pad on his knee. He’d heard all this before. A hundred times before. But they had to keep asking. You never knew, something might get said. His stomach growled and he glanced at his watch.
“Come on, Bob, it’s a simple question.” Kazmaroff could hear the fatigue in Burton’s voice. Usually, it was a feigned weariness to allow the suspect a certain false security, to encourage him to lower his guard. Tonight, Kazmaroff doubted  the weary tone was affected.
“I told you. I told both you guys. I told—“
“Told us what? What did you tell us?” Kazmaroff chimed in.
“I told you that I was just walking along and—“
“Oh, give me a break, man.” Burton tossed a pencil down onto the table and Donnell flinched. His partially bald head glistened with sweat. Every so often, he would reach up and smooth the top of his bare crown with his fingers. It was a gesture that repulsed Burton. “You were just walking along and saw this apartment and decided to go knocking on doors. Right. Man, you don’t start helping us out here—“ The threat hung in the air.
“I don’t know what other kinda help you want from me!” Donnell’s hands flew to his mouth where he began to gnaw the forefinger with some vigor. “I confessed to everything, didn’t I?” His voice was muffled.
“Man, take your fuckin’ hands outta your mouth,” Burton said, his eyes flashing at the man seated across the table from him.
Donnell jerked his hands back to the table.
“I said I did her, right? I told you who and how I—“
“And now we just wanna know why, Bob.” Kazmaroff spoke softly to countermand Burton’ roughness.
“Yeah, Bob,” Burton said quietly. “Why’d’ja do her? How come, man?”
“How come?” The killer looked at the detectives with wide eyes as if he didn’t understand the question.
“Yeah,” Burton said. “Like, instead of riding your bike ten miles that day...or say, painting your living room, why did you go out and strangle someone you didn’t know? Why?”
“Why?” the man chirped back at them, a panicked look beginning to appear on his face.
Kazmaroff didn’t know how much more patience Burton had for this kind of crap but he knew it was considerably less than he had and he  was about to throttle Donnell with the next repeated “why?” or “how come?”
“Well,” Donnell crooned softly, staring at his bad hands, “’cause she never cared about me. That’s the reason.” He looked down at his shirt front, resting his chin against his chest. “She only pretended to when he was around but when he was gone she used to laugh at me or not talk to me at all, not talk to me or look at me never, just pretend like I didn’t...like I wasn’t there.”
Kazmaroff eased the front legs of his chair back onto the ground. Here we go! he thought, a small pulse of excitement bursting in his chest.
Burton’ calm face hid his own eagerness as he nodded his head and picked up the pencil from the table.
“Who?” he asked.
Donnell looked up, a mask of misery and frustration. “Betty,” he croaked. “You know? Betty?”
Burton restrained himself from screaming: Betty Rubble? Betty Crocker? How would I know what Betty you’re talking about you stupid prick?!
“Betty?” he said, instead. “Your...mother?”
Donnell nodded bitterly and buried his sweating head on his folded arms upon the table.
“Mother,” he said, weeping. “I picked up the gun, she looked so much like Mother. I had to kill her.”
The gun?  Burton covered his face with his hands.
“He didn’t do it,” Kazmaroff said to no one in particular over the prisoner’s sobbing. “He didn’t friggin’ do it. I’ll be damned.”
3
Maggie took a sip of tea from the fragile tea cup, its roses long faded from the translucent china rim. Across from her, on a dark red velvet loveseat trimmed with heavy gold tassels and ropy fringe, sat Michele Zouk, her small, slippered feet tucked daintily under her. Zouk held her tea cup with both hands and gazed pensively at the worn, expensive Oriental rug on the floor. She had wept, briefly, while making the tea, her back to Maggie as she spooned the loose tea into the large china teapot and then poured in the boiled water. Now, Zouk sat silently and sipped her tea.
Maggie waited and watched the French woman. It didn’t seem odd to her at all to discover this exquisite creature as the best friend of her sister, Elise. Elise, who had grown up in old-south-Atlanta, with white-gloved parties and little friends whose fathers were either colonels or reverends. And although Elise may have rebelled against the gentility and sterility of a southern childhood, she’d nonetheless, lived it. Maggie imagined that Michele Zouk had probably been the dream-embodiment of all of Elise’s fantasies of who she wanted to be. The difference was that this woman had grown up in an environment that had been friendly to her exotic development, had encouraged her sense of style and presentation. Elise’s ages-old habit of bucking the system had become so completely ingrained in her that she couldn’t stop once she’d achieved her dream, her level of desired sophistication. Unlike Zouk, Elise had turned to drugs and despair to fill in the gaps for her.
“Your sister was my dearest of friends,” Zouk said finally, sharing a sad smile with Maggie. “Une amie de coeur,  you are familiar?”
Maggie nodded, knowing the term if not the sensation.
“She once lived near here. Do you know that?”
Again, Maggie indicated that she did. This time the woman shrugged.
“Ahh, but you want to hear what it is you do not know, am I right?”
“Madame Zouk,” Maggie said, taking a long breath. “I am trying to find out who killed her.”
Their eyes met and locked. Zouk’s long lashes fluttered briefly and she looked away. “And you have come to Paris to do this?” she asked doubtfully.
Maggie pushed her empty tea cup onto the nearby hassock which was dressed to match the ornately gilded loveseat. “I’m not quite sure why I’ve come to Paris, to tell you the truth,” she said, sighing. “I need to talk to her ex-boyfriend and he’s here—“
“Gerard Dubois?”
“That’s right. Do you know him?”
 Zouk shrugged. “But, of course. He is a very bad man. When he took Elise with him to Montmarte, I cried for Elise.” Michele poured herself and Maggie more tea. “I was very sad. I cried and begged her not to leave. But it was l’amour, eh? She was in love with him.”
“So, you knew her before she met Gerard?”
“As I’ve said, her apartment was very near. She would shop here, we would talk. We were of one spirit, do you understand?”
Maggie nodded. Elise had, of course, never mentioned this woman in any letter or phone conversation to Maggie or her family.
“I was older but we were both artistes, in our own ways. We met when she came into the shop one day after her art classes. Your sister was very beautiful, Mademoiselle. She would have made a wonderful model. We talked and became friends. Soon, we would shop together, have dinner together. She was so different from my other French friends, yes? Her...American-ness made her blunt and forward. I found it charming.” Michele smiled at the memory. “Elise wanted so much to be French and, in many ways, she was very French. But it was the, how can I say this? her straightforwardness, yes? that I found beguiling and valuable.”
“She shot from the hip,” Maggie suggested.
“Exactement. To be so beautiful and so honest...”
“Elise didn’t always tell the truth,” Maggie added gently. 
Zouk laughed. “No, of course not. I wasn’t talking of honesty in that way. Elise had many secrets and some of them so bad that I feared they would end up killing. But we resonated, she and I. The beautiful American artiste. Tortured, intelligent. And the most loving of friends.” She glanced at Maggie to see her reaction. “I loved her very much,” she said.
“And Gerard?” Maggie prompted.
“When Elise met Gerard,” Zouk said, her cheeks darkening in anger. “everything started to die for her. We saw less and less of each other until, poof! Nothing. He moved her to his apartment—filthy pigsty!--in Montmarte. She would write me. We live in the same city, but she would only write me!” Michele Zouk’s eyes were wide and indignant. “Then, he drags her and the child south—“
“You knew Nicole too?”
Zouk got up to rummage through a bureau drawer standing against a wall in the cramped little room.  She returned holding a small photograph. She examined it carefully herself and then handed it to Maggie. Maggie felt her heart squeeze to see Elise, a few years younger and smiling sweetly at the camera. In her lap was eight-month old Nicole, a thin and pallid baby with large eyes and dark hair. Maggie scrutinized the tiny face of the baby in an attempt to see a resemblance to the Nicole now living in Atlanta.
“May I keep this, please?” she asked the woman. “I...I’ll have a copy made and return it to you, okay?”
Zouk sat back down. “Keep it,” she said, straightening out the long, languid pleats of her skirt with pale, tapered fingers. “After they moved to the Cote d’Azure,” she continued. “I never saw her again.”
“But she still wrote to you?”
“She did.” Zouk tossed a small wadded-up paper napkin at the tea tray perched on the tasseled hassock. “Monsieur Dubois is a swine and a jackal,” she said. “He is your murderer, Mademoiselle. I am sure of it.” Michele Zouk’s eyes were a deep, frigid blue.
“Do you know Monsieur Dubois very well?” Maggie asked the French woman.
Michele’s face hardened into a frown. “You are looking to find him in Paris, are you not?”  
“I am.”
Zouk contemplated Maggie briefly and held her teacup to her lips.
“I know where you can find him,” she said grimly.


Chapter Eighteen
1
The little china plate that held her two over-sized croissants was obviously antique, Maggie noted, as she spread freshly-made jam on her rolls. She had risen early to breakfast in the hotel before the rush of tourists and travelers, and had the pleasure of a solitary meal in a very sunny and very French dining room.
After she had left Chez Zouk, Maggie had come directly back to her hotel and gone to bed. Now, refreshed and ready to begin her investigations, Maggie ticked off her to-do list on a small pad of paper. The walls of the little dining room were lavishly papered in a country French mini-fleur design combined with an elaborate border and ribboned panels. It was pretty in a confusing sort of way, Maggie decided. The same unpleasant young woman who worked the front desk served her coffee and croissants and was no less cross in this new role. Maggie was determined to ignore her while being as cheerful as possible herself during her stay at L’Etoile Verte.
After breakfast, Maggie dropped off her room key at the front desk and left the hotel, heading north again toward Notre-Dame. There seemed to be even more people out this sunny, but cool, Saturday morning and Maggie picked up her pace to join them in their hustle. All their hurry and urgency was in sharp contrast to the numerous cafés filled with happily idle coffee-drinkers, smoking and arguing politics and philosophy. As she hurried along, Maggie had another twinge of missing Laurent and wishing they were just another couple mooning over each other and a cup of café-au-lait at one of the crowded tables.
She hesitated when she reached Notre-Dame and had to fight the impulse to again take a seat on one of the stone benches in the cathedral gardens facing the Seine. The roses, in tender colors of pink and violet, were still in full bloom in early October and the air felt cool and invigorating. Even at eight in the morning, there were lovers strolling the sidewalk bordering the Seine, and solitaires reading L’Express and munching on crusty baguettes. Maggie forced herself to move on.  Hurrying across the Seine on Pont St.-Louis, she spotted a Metro sign and jogged down its steep stairs to board the train to Montmartre.
 Maggie emerged from the underground station and entered a seedy world of cheap strip shows, porn cinemas and sex shops. Although still wearing its late-nineteen twenties Bohemian artist’s garb of darks and sooty grays, Montmartre had long since become mired in the oily underworld of drug lords and panderers. The streets were filthy, the few reputable shops sold leather-studded costumes or pizza-by-the-slice, and “Ne Rodez Pas” signs hung from most doorways. No loitering.
As Maggie wandered through the squalid avenues, once teeming with easels and colorful characters and stories, she could almost believe that she was about to bump into one of Pinnochio’s  “Donkey boys” fresh from Paradise Island.
She could see the milky-white dome of the Basilica Sacre-Coeur peering between the high windows of tattered apartment buildings. Her mother had taken her and Elise to Mass there as well. She wondered if Elise had ever taken her own daughter there. The church would easily have been walking distance from their flat. Turning away from Sacre-Coeur, Maggie headed west up Rue de Steinkerque, passing two-penny instant portrait artists and paper-etchers busily snipping out a living doing die-cut portraits for the throngs of tourists who were gripping their cameras and fanny bags. Noisome, shabby hucksters flapped the air with “original” Montmartre landscape watercolors and etchings. Maggie kept her eyes on the next street block and trudged ahead.
She turned north onto Rue des Martyres and continued down it until it dead-ended into the Rue des 3 Frères, stopping only once to check the address on the slip of paper that Madame Zouk had given her. There, at the intersection, was the hospital. A small, dilapidated structure held together by what paint had not yet peeled off and the oil and grit of the neighborhood. L’Hopital des Martyres. This is where Elise had gone to give birth to Nicole.
Maggie drew in a long breath and marched up the front steps. Inside, she had the feeling she was stepping back in time.  The velvet, buttery smell of wood oil permeated throughout the reception room. So strong and pleasant was the scent, in fact, that it succeeded in blotting out any aural hint of medicine or antiseptics in the small hospital. The loose wooden-slatted floor was polished to a satiny gleam. The admitting desk was as tall and forbidding as was the severe-faced nun who manned it. Her eyes were small and unfriendly, and her broad face, though smooth and unlined—almost like a canvas pulled tight behind her wimple—was still quite obviously the face of an old woman.
“Bonjour, ma Soeur,” Maggie said in a tiny voice as she approached the woman behind the desk. “Est-ce que je vous demande une question, s’il vous plait?”  May I ask you a question?
The nun, dressed in blue-black capes and a starched white headdress  looked at Maggie as though she did not understand.
Maggie berated herself for not taking Zouk up on her offer to come along and interpret. She had been so keen to do this alone, almost as if the errand were a crusade with the final understanding of her sister as some kind of personal Holy Grail. Maggie took in a determined breath. No, she thought stubbornly, as difficult as everyone in Paris was obviously going to make this for her, she knew she wanted to do it alone.
“Le archives de patients?” Maggie asked, smiling in the face of the stone wall in a habit. “Est-ce que je peux voir le archives de patients enciente Americaine, s’il vous plait? Pour l’annee de une mille dix-neuf quartre-vingt six, merci.”  Might I see the files for any American patients giving birth within the last five years?
The nun looked away from Maggie and flipped through a large book on the desk. Abruptly, the Sister left her post altogether, leaving Maggie standing on tiptoe on the other side of the counter not knowing whether she was heard or understood or dismissed. She noted there was very little activity in the waiting room area. A young mother sat with her baby, both gazing, as if hypnotized, out the front window. Faintly, Maggie could hear a hoarse moaning drift down one of the four corridors that emptied into the main reception area where she stood. The entrance hall was studded with high, ornately-carved wooden columns, perhaps twenty in all, each buffed and kneaded to a glossy, copper-colored sheen. The waiting room chairs were rickety, wooden affairs—likewise brutally polished and oiled—and topped with hand-made green velveteen cushions. Maggie got a mental image of a whole convent full of women sitting around stitching green velour pillows for the hospital waiting room when it was certainly cheaper and easier to buy pre-fab foam seat pads. Maggie found herself reaching out to touch one of the immaculately glimmering columns. Her eyes met those of the young mother.
After a few moments, the stern-faced Sister returned. She looked directly at Maggie.
“A quelle annee?”  she said in a sweet voice that belied her harsh face.
“Uh...nineteen...er, quarant-huit?”  Maggie said lamely. Oh, man, why didn’t I get Zouk or Laurent to write this stuff out for me, she thought miserably.
The nun made an exasperated noise and spun out a rapid-fire reprimand in complicated, incomprehensible French. She slapped down a piece of paper and a pencil on the counter in front of Maggie.
Maggie scrawled out the date and under that, the name “Newberry.” The woman snatched it up and read it. Making another sound in her chest that must have caused some discomfort, the nun twisted on her heel and disappeared again. Maggie turned to look around her and noted that the bored young woman in the waiting room was now watching her openly.
Within moments the nun was back with a folder. She indicated that Maggie was to take the folder to a straight back wooden chair to the immediate left of the counter where the nun would be able to keep her in sight at all times. Maggie took the folder and settled into the uncomfortable chair, smiling gratefully at the Sister.
She opened the folder and found only one slip of paper inside. It was Nicole’s birth certificate. It read: Nèe l8 May. Mere: Elise Stevenson Newberry. Pere:  inconnu.  Unknown.  Maggie felt a surge of anger at Gerard’s refusal to be accounted as the father and then corrected her emotion. The last thing any child would want was a document that linked her to that creep, she reasoned. Her face lightened into a smile. This meant that Gerard had no legal claim to Nicole! In the middle of the certificate was the full name of Elise’s baby, handwritten, no doubt, by one of the nuns, in full-flowery scroll: Margaret Nicole Newberry. Maggie stared at the words. Elise had named her baby after Maggie.  
 Swallowing her emotion, Maggie looked around for a copier machine, knowing she would not find one and then looked over at the scowling nun who was bending over a large ledger. Maggie tucked the birth certificate into her jacket pocket and closed the file.
Returning the empty file to the counter, Maggie thanked the nun brightly and fled out the front door.
Once outside, the sunshine hit her full in the face as the cool breeze of the late morning sent her hair billowing around her shoulders like a loose silk scarf. Elise had never told anyone Nicole’s full name, Maggie thought as she hurried away from the shambling old hospital. No one knew and no one would ever have known unless they came to this desolate street in degenerate Montmartre. Even Michele Zouk hadn’t known that Elise had named her only child after Maggie, her only sister.
Maggie touched the pocket which held Nicole’s birth certificate. Her mother would be glad to see this, she thought. She would be glad to safely file this document away in the Newberry archives along with all the other family documents.
She stopped at a stand-up pizzeria and bought a slice of pizza and a can of Coke and consumed her lunch as she walked down Boulevard de Clichy, a street as cheerless and ugly as any she’d found in Montmartre so far. Pigeons flocked and crowded her until she finally gave up the bulk of her lunch to them, scattering it in handfuls in the air and stepping away from the frenzy of feathers that resulted.
The address that Zouk had given her for Elise and Gerard’s old apartment was 1/2 Bijoux in Montmartre. She had been warned that it wasn’t a proper street and didn’t appear on any maps of the neighborhood so she was prepared to have to hunt for it. Across from the Moulin Rouge, with its gaily-lighted blades, and before Clichy jammed into Rue Caulaincourt, Maggie could see the ghostly spires and columns of Montmartre Cemetery and she knew she was close. Zouk had said that Elise would often write of the view of the celebrated cemetery from her flat. Maggie approached it slowly, looking around, trying to find in the rows and rows of ancient, towering apartment buildings the window that might have been Elise’s perch as she wrote to her friend, Michele.
  A large orange neon-painted bread truck pulled away from the curb in front of Maggie, quickly revealing the alleyway. 1/2 Bijoux. Barely wide enough to allow two mopeds abreast, it was paved with large, rough cobblestones bordered on both sides by a long, thin gutter. The alley entranceway smelled of stewed cabbage.
 A long row of colored wooden doors lined each side of the small street. Bright colors of blue and red and yellow, the paint peeled off in big gouging wedges to reveal gray, depressing portals to the lives that lay within. A small boy emerged from one of the painted doors. He glimpsed Maggie and ran squealing  down the alley to dart into another door. The stone steps of the street echoed his laughter until it seemed to Maggie, that it nearly drowned out the traffic noises from the main street.
She looked for numbers by the doors but there were none that she could see. The very brick of the buildings seemed to envelope her. She began to feel suffocated, even nervous. Elise lived here, she thought?  It was just one more wretched street in a whole wretched neighborhood. But the fact that Gerard could bring Elise here—where she would live with her baby, little Nicole—was, in Maggie’s eyes, further evidence of the man’s guilt and general uselessness as a human being.
An old woman swept mindlessly at the dust and dirt on a broken threshold. Maggie approached her.
“Pardon, Madame?”  Maggie said. “Uh...je cherche pour une apartment. Est-ce que vous m’aider, peut-etre?”  Maggie didn’t care how her French came out. She knew she couldn’t speak it well enough not to escape a Parisian’s scorn so she didn’t care to obsess about it. Get the right verbs out and who cares what tense they’re in, she reasoned. They’ll get the idea. 
Usually.
The woman stopped sweeping and stared at Maggie.
Maggie tried again. “Je voudrais l’apartment de demi Bijoux. Comprenez-vous, Madame?”  
Within seconds another woman appeared in a nearby doorway. She was about Maggie’s age but her face looked crushed by time and harsh weather. Her eyes were a beautiful light blue which negated the travesty of her life. She was dressed in a soiled daydress of bright poppies. She was very thin with wiry gray hair that hunched on her shoulders like a diseased Pomeranian. And, like the broom-woman who had resumed her sweeping, her face appeared ravaged and old before its time. She crossed her thin arms in front of her chest and stared at Maggie. A strong odor of urine and cooking food drifted from her doorway.
“Madame?” she barked at Maggie.
“Oui, Madame.”  Maggie licked her lips and tried to smile. “Je voudrais l’apartment de demi Bijoux,”  she said. “Je cherche—“
“Madame is renting the apartment?” the woman interrupted nasally.
Maggie swallowed and forced another smile to her lips.
“Pas exactement, Madame,” she said. Not exactly. She held out the scrap of paper with Elise’s name and Cote d’Azure address scrawled on it.
The woman in the flowered poppy dress took the paper and scrutinized it. She motioned for Maggie to follow her.
The doorway was about four and a half feet high and Maggie instantly got a picture of her tall sister having to stoop every time she entered the building. It was no wonder these women looked twenty years older than they should, Maggie thought, as the woman unlocked the miniature door and gestured for Maggie to enter.
Maggie bent over and took a step inside. She heard the scurrying of tiny feet and then not-so-tiny feet as if little animals had been interrupted in the midst of some activity. It was dark and her eyes could just make out the profile of a short staircase in the gloom. Behind her, her guide slammed the door shut on the dim sunlight, immersing them into complete darkness. She then snapped on a feeble overhead lamp and led Maggie up the stairs.
At the top of the stairs was another door, this time of normal height.
“Poussez-vous!” the woman urged from behind.  
Maggie placed her hand against the rough wood, careful of splinters, and gave a gentle push. It yielded against her hand. There was no lock, no latch, not even a shutting mechanism to keep the door firmly against its jamb. Had Elise lived here with just the downstairs lock on her door? Maggie wondered, as she stepped into the room beyond.
Inside, light seeped into the room through the slits of the loosely shuttered windows. Maggie squinted and waited for Madame to find the light switch. Instead, the woman pushed past Maggie and strode to the window. With a loud grating sound, she unlatched the shutters and whipped them outward. The room filled with the gray light from the alley. Madame moved across the room and began working on the opposite window.
Maggie looked around her. It was a pest-hole. One room of very dark wood and no furniture save a large and ugly armoire. The sounds of the little creatures living behind the walls were loud and constant. On one dirty, bleak wall, someone had painted a group of gilt-framed silhouettes. A man, a baby, a woman. Maggie felt a catch in her throat as she looked at Elise’s whimsy, her family. She imagined her sister painting them. Her back to the south window, waiting for the sun to create the shadow, waiting for the light to come to her.  Against the wall was a small iron sink, rusted black and filthy from the years. Unwillingly, Maggie intercepted another barrage of images. This time of Elise bathing Baby Nicole in the sink. Of Elise washing her long mane of pale curls in that sink.  
Madame jerked open the last of the windows and a different kind of light filled the room. Bright and lifting, this light came from the window that faced away from the alley, away from the heart of Montmartre. Maggie walked to the window and looked out. The grim, stately stone markers of Montmartre Cemetery spread out below her, its few large trees shading the dead, the celebrated and the wretched. Elise would have sat at this window in order to see the cemetery and to write  Michele and she would have used this light by which to paint. Maggie felt a tremendous sadness and wished there were a place where she could sit down for a moment. To think that Elise had been living for three years in this slum and her Atlanta family had never had a clue.
“Two hundred francs, Mademoiselle.” The woman stood in front of Maggie, her arms again pressed rigidly across her bony chest. “You are understanding?”
Maggie leaned gently against one of the windowsills, her head whirling in the close heat of the apartment. She nodded at the woman. Understood. Two hundred francs to rent. She apologized for wasting the woman’s time and left the little apartment. 
3
He placed the newspaper on the kitchen table, knowing she was watching him from her position at the sink. He reached for his cooling coffee, refusing to look at her for the moment.
“Any good headlines?” Darla asked quietly, her voice casual  to cloak the fear she’d begun to feel these days.
“Still complaining about the traffic on the perimeter loop,” Gerry said, taking a long sip of coffee.
“You’d think they’d be bored with that.” Darla carried her coffee to the table and sat down with him. “They’ve only had the perimeter for twenty-seven years now.”
Gerry noted the distancing pronoun “they” instead of the more familiar “we” and felt a small satisfaction. She was coming around. She was already starting to say good-bye to this place. She would be ready to leave when it was time.
Darla cleared her throat. “Anything about Dierdre in the paper?”  
Gerry shook his head. “Guess they got tired of it,” he said. “There’s so much happening these days, you can’t expect one little ol’ murder to occupy more than a day or two of media time.” He flipped the paper deliberately to the back to read the “Far Side” cartoon.
“Gerry.” She spoke his name and touched his hand and he was forced to look at her. Her face was soft and sad. He hated to think he had contributed to that look but he couldn’t weaken now. He couldn’t ease up on her when they were so close.  
“What?” he said flatly.
“What do the police think? I mean, why do they think poor Dierdre—“
“Darla, I honestly don’t know, okay? Is there any more coffee in the pot?”
“But they think it’s the same guy, right? I mean, the guy who killed Maggie’s sister? Isn’t that right?”
“Look, Darla, you obviously seem to know more about it than I do so why are you—“
“No, why are you  acting like this?” Her face dissolved into an expression of frustration and despair. “I feel like I’m all alone in this, Ger,” she whispered, reaching for his hand again.
Gerry put the paper down and tried to show her a face of firmness and pity. He wished he didn’t have to act, but he was afraid to let his guard down. He knew that if he were honest with her, she’d back out. She’d start rationalizing why it all happened. She’d find a toe-hold in it all and then the battle to stay would continue. No, he couldn’t let her backslide now.
“I guess when it comes to dying, we’re all alone,” he said.
“Gerry!” She spilled her coffee in the saucer and he noticed that her hand was shaking. “Is that all you can muster for poor Dierdre? That we’re all alone when it’s our turn to die?”
“I’m sorry,” Gerry said, pushing his own coffee away. “I didn’t realize it was my reaction to Dierdre’s death we were talking about. I thought we were talking about how alone you  felt in dealing with it.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks and he physically steeled himself against the table to avoid comforting her. Didn’t she know he was doing this for her and Haley? That emigrating was the only way he knew to save them?
“It could’ve been us, Darla,” he said. “It could’ve been Haley, just as easily.”
“What are you talking about?” She was crying now, but he knew she knew what he was talking about. She was afraid too.
4
“You are not going to see Gerard?”
Maggie caught her reflection in her hotel room mirror and frowned.
“I said I wouldn’t, Laurent,” she said.
“You promised, cherie.”
His voice sounded strong yet sweet. If he weren’t in the process of irritating her, Maggie would have smiled just to hear his dear insistence, his loving, low rumble of a voice, all guttural r’s and sliding z’s. So excitingly French, she thought, and wondered, not for the first time, how much of her attraction for him had to do with his foreignness.
“Yes, yes, yes. Honestly, Laurent, give up the grip on this, would you? Je suis  bored with it, okay? I won’t talk to him. Enough already. Finis. Done.”
 “Et  Madame Zouk,”  he continued. “You trust her?”  
“Yes, of course. What’s not to trust? I mean, she was Elise’s friend. She’s not the enemy or anything. In fact, she’s being a big help.”
“I miss you. I do not understand what is this stuff you cannot know here in Atlanta.”
“Have the cops come out with a line on Dierdre’s killing yet?” Maggie ran a hand through her tangled hair and tried to remember the last time she’d washed it. Atlanta?
“Nothing.”  
“Figures.”
“Maggie, will you be long in Paris?” 
She heard the exasperation that had been hovering in his tone for the full conversation. “I miss you too, sweetheart,” she said, looking again at her reflection in the mirror that hung opposite her bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the phone onto her knees. She knew this call was costing a fortune.  
“Then why not come home?”
“I am coming home. Just as soon as I talk to a few more people.”
“Who know nothing.” His voice came across the transatlantic line without emotion or energy. In fact, it occurred to Maggie that his whole attitude since she’d arrived in Paris had been pretty unsupportive. It was clear that Laurent was beginning to lose patience with Maggie’s search for Elise’s killer. She turned away from her own reflection.
“Who probably know nothing,” she agreed. They were both silent for a long moment. “I’ll call tomorrow,” she said, finally. “And be home probably the day after that. I love you, Laurent.”  
“Et moi aussi,” he said, almost sullenly.
After they’d hung up Maggie sat holding the phone for a few more minutes. Slowly, she stood up, replaced the phone on the nightstand next to her bed and went into the bathroom to splash cool water on her face. It was only seven in the evening and she didn’t feel like staying in her room, but she had no place she could think of to go. She tidied up her make-up and pulled a comb through her black hair. Mindlessly, she tied it back in a single ponytail with a dark blue ribbon and stared at herself in the mirror.
She wore a black cotton turtleneck and a long, pleated navy skirt. Very French, she had thought when she had packed them.  Now, she just shook her head. She had circles under her eyes and the lipstick she’d brought made her look too corporate in spite of her dramatic outfit. Naturally, Elise could’ve pulled it off, she thought with a sad smile. Elise could’ve pulled off looking sultry and exotic in clown shoes. 
Maggie sat down at the writing table crowded into one corner of  her room and shook out a few postcards from a tissue-thin paper sack. She addressed one of the cards to Brownie and one to her parents. She wrote cheery, generic sentences on them, stamped the cards and placed them into her handbag for posting the next day. She wanted to call her mother to talk about Elise and to talk about herself and Paris, but decided against it. She’d be home in a few days. Plenty of time to tell her everything then.
She picked up a blank postcard and thought of her office back in Atlanta. She thought of Pokey and Patti and Bob and Jenny and Gerry and the rest of them and how they must have reacted to the news of Dierdre. She imagined the look on each of their faces when they realized that little Dierdsie wouldn’t be showing up for traffic meeting any more. She pushed the postcard away, with its familiar image of Notre-Dame, and thought, sadly, how far away she felt tonight from the people she cared about. I should be with them. I should be sharing their grief in the office. My God, Gerry is probably having a full-blown, living-color nervous breakdown about now. I was mad to think he would take it okay.  She looked again at the postcard and let the full weight of her melancholy envelop her.
When the ringing of the phone interrupted her satisfyingly sad mood, she jumped and then snatched it up hoping it was Laurent again.
“Hello?”  
“Hello, Maggie? It’s Michele. I’m downstairs.”
Michele? 
“Michele Zouk,” the voice said. “I’m here to take you to dinner. You don’t have plans, do you, cherie?”
The restaurant was a short walk down the street from Maggie’s hotel. It featured polished wooden floors, deeply recessed paneling and mouldings, offset by the dramatic Brunschwig & Fils wallpaper pattern, ecru lace café curtains and all of it lit by candlelight.
The menu was equal to its setting. It featured a simple, but well-planned French cuisine of roast meats and fish at a fixed-price of only 32f, wine included. Maggie made a mental note to eat there for the rest of her stay in Paris.
Talking herself into believing that the French were kinder to their young cows than the Americans, Maggie ordered the veal with a salad, an eggplant dish of some kind, and crème brulée. Michele Zouk ordered a Cabernet Sauvignon.
Michele looked wonderful. Her hair fell like a dark curtain to her shoulders, framing the face that even made other Frenchwomen pause and admire her. Surprising Maggie, and overturning one of her fashion theories, Michele wore a one-piece lemon-yellow catsuit. Anyone else in the outfit would look like a big, wingless canary, Maggie thought. Zouk still looked enigmatic. 
Maggie was beginning to feel at home with the Frenchwoman.
“I saw Nicole’s birth certificate,” Maggie said. “Gerard wouldn’t give his name as the father.”
Michele cut into her crudité. Like all the French, Maggie noted, food was a serious business with her.
“I think I got an idea of how she lived when I saw where she lived in Montmartre. Michele, it was disgusting. It’s hard to believe my sister lived there. I mean, she was always a little, you know, artsy...even a little sloppy, but this place was a real dump. My mother would’ve wept.”
“Monsieur Gerard put your sister through many changes, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s just what he did.” Maggie toyed with her food for a moment. Zouk had nearly finished her meal. “You know, Michele, I don’t know whether or not Gerard really killed my sister—“
“He is absolutely capable of it.”
Maggie hesitated, watching the other woman. “Yeah, I believe that,” she said finally. “But there has been another murder that the police think is connected with Elise’s.”
Zouk stopped eating and looked at Maggie. “Oui?”
“It happened the night before I came to Paris. She was a friend of mine.” Maggie felt hot tears spring to her eyes and she was surprised. Wasn’t Dierdre a friend of hers?  It’s true they never went out for drinks together. She hadn’t had her over for dinner, nor had she met her boyfriend, Kevin, ever. But she mourned her. She would miss her.
“You knew another victim?” Michele gave Maggie a look of pity and caring. “I am sorry, Maggie. This is very hard on you.”
Not half as hard as it is on Dierdre, Maggie thought, concentrating on her plate again. Or Elise.
“Anyway,” she said, taking a ragged breath and reaching for her wine. “I’m open to believing that Gerard might not be involved in Elise’s death.”
“Yes, of course, I see.”  Michele said. She caught the eye of their waiter and asked him to bring their desserts. “And why are you in Paris, then, Maggie?”  
“Funny, that’s just what my boyfriend asked me tonight.” 
“You have a boyfriend in America? He supports your...what are you calling it..?”
“My investigation. Yes, mostly. He’s losing steam with it though. He’s French too.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah, I met him through all this, as a matter of fact. When I came to Cannes to find Nicole, he helped me get her.”
“And how did you know him?” Their custards came and Michele ordered coffees for both of them too.
“Well, he was a surprise, really. I met him through another guy, an Englishman, that my father had contact with. Anyway, Laurent was helping this Englishman find my niece.”
Michele nodded and spooned into her crème brulée. Maggie noted that Michele ate delicately, almost theatrically, holding the spoon in front of her after each dip into the pudding as if she expected to be photographed for Paris Vogue.
“Gerard has a brother named Laurent,” Michele said.
Maggie felt her stomach tighten. What an odd thing for her to say, she thought. “Well, I guess it’s a common name, huh?” she said lightly. “Laurent’s last name is Dernier, not Dubois.” Maggie watched Michele and her reaction came slowly, almost as if a video had been slowed down. Maybe, on some level, Maggie had already known what Michele would say. Why else would she have watched her so closely, waiting for her response? Why wouldn’t she just have dug into her own egg custard without another thought to the topic?
“Your boyfriend’s name is Laurent Dernier?” Michele was not eating her custard either.
Maggie didn’t answer. She watched Zouk’s mouth as the words tumbled relentlessly out.
“Oh, cherie, is this possible?” Michele whispered. “That is the name of Gerard’s brother.”


Chapter Nineteen
1
Maggie rubbed the sleep from her eyes but remained in bed. She had slept badly, finally falling asleep, miserable and exhausted, in the early hours of the morning. As she drifted off, she had heard the slow, snarling rumble of a Parisian delivery truck as it began its early morning route.
  Laurent was Gerard’s brother. She felt a dull cramp in her chest as the words formed and images of him unfolded: Laurent lying to her, Laurent being “helpful” during her investigation, Laurent feigning ignorance about Elise and the child, Nicole.  When she thought of his passive, sweetly uncomprehending eyes during her frustrating months of questions and tortured bafflement, she wanted to smash his dear, familiar face with both her fists.
  Bastard! Liar! 
She swung her legs out of bed with no intention of going any further. Finally, she forced herself to stumble to the tile-cracked bathroom to splash water onto her face. For a minute she wasn’t sure she wasn’t going to throw up into the hand-painted ceramic basin.
Suddenly, she ran into the bedroom and snatched up her purse. She pulled out the picture of Elise and Baby Nicole. It had been there all along and Maggie had refused to see it. The birthmark across the baby’s cheek extended into her hair line. Elise’s daughter had been born with a significant birthmark. An identifying one. Maggie stared at the picture and thought of the little girl living with Maggie’s parents. In her mind, she saw Nicole’s face as she sat at Elspeth’s dinner table. She saw her mother’s bright and loving face as she bent over the little girl in a conspiring, happy moment. She saw the birth certificate of the child that Elise had given birth to. She saw an image of Laurent holding Nicole on his knee and murmuring to her in French. So it’s true, she thought. She isn’t ours.
Her thoughts returned instantly to Laurent. And he’s known all along. He knew that this child was not Nicole, was not her niece. Suddenly, she felt an icy wave of nausea ooze through her when the realization finally hit her that the real Nicole was almost certainly dead.  And that’s something else that Laurent knew, she thought numbly. 
And has known all along.
2
Looking up at the famous pointed bronze tower soaring towards the sky from the roof of Notre-Dame, Maggie leaned against the back of a cold, stone bench and allowed the agony of the last twenty-four hours to permeate through every molecule of her body. She watched the familiar façade of the cathedral, with its Gallery of Kings—each of the twenty-eight granite replicas of France’s Kings looking much like the other—and ached with a memory of her visit here with her mother and Elise. 
She remembered the Coca-Colas and pommes frites they’d lunched on after Mass that Sunday so many years ago. Her mother had indulged her girls, her two bright, happy girls. She saw Elise, beautiful at eleven, her little lips pink and full against her creamy complexion, watched her smile coquettishly at the young brutish waiter and sip her Coke as if it were Drambuie. Even then, Elise had a style and a vision of herself.
Maggie gazed up at the screaming faces of the gargoyles and hellhags rimming Notre-Dame. Human, lunatic heads attached to hunching dog’s bodies, wailing souls, shrieking griffins and goblins.  
Laurent smiling, presenting Nicole as the long, lost relative.
Laurent standing in her mother’s rose garden.
Maggie wrenched herself off the stone bench and stood, wavering, for a moment in the square, beneath which, she knew, lurked the Crypte Archeologique. She began walking, quickly, away from Notre-Dame, pushing past the lavender sellers and the Nikon-necked tourists, away from the sparrows bathing in mud puddles and pigeons staking out the stone saints in the cathedral gardens.
She crossed to the back of the church and headed south on Rue Dante au Double. The street was busy, even for a Sunday afternoon, and Maggie was surprised to see so much gaiety and laugher as she walked. 
Are all these people going to a party or something? she wondered as she rushed down the narrow sidewalk. Shops were closed on both sides. Banks and bakeries, sandwich shops and boutiques were tightly shuttered up. And still the people came in hordes, smiling, hugging, chewing on golden wands of bread, and walking.
Maggie turned abruptly as the Rue Dante jagged westward, and then she stopped. There, in front of her, was Elise’s first apartment. The cheery little shuttered upstairs flat had a window box spilling over with geraniums and mums.  The windows had yellow shutters against a light blue building front of shops and restaurants. The street at this juncture—not much more than an alleyway—was full of life and activity. A boulangerie faced the flat, with a small, academic bookstore situated next door. Students were everywhere. Clean, well-scrubbed, if disheveled, young people that scurried and playfully shoved each other on the sidewalks and looked like they had a place to go.
She looked up at the cheery little window. l5 Rue Dante au Double. Gerard had taken Elise from this sunny spot and spirited her away to Montmartre.  
Maggie shifted her purse strap to her opposite shoulder and looked around for a place to sit. There were no cafés on this part of the street. She looked up once more at the window but couldn’t imagine Elise’s face in it.
Slowly, she turned and walked up the street to the intersection where she remembered seeing the sign for the Metro. She was surprised that she seemed to know exactly where to go next. It was, she thought sadly, as if a part of Elise were guiding her.
 She took the subway—never more aware of the filth and despair in each station platform as she passed. At one point, while changing trains in the cavernous, urine-saturated halls of the Chatelet station heading toward L’Opera, a tiny Indian girl, half the age of Nicole, held out her hand and touched Maggie’s soft chamois skirt. The child was making an appeal for money but, to Maggie, it felt like the curious, investigative nuzzle of a wild animal that doesn’t know enough to be afraid. She saw the child’s mother and father sitting in dirty, stained sari and pajamas, a cardboard cigar box in front of them, filled with francs. She gave the girl fifty American dollars and smiled largely at her as if to make her believe that it was the gift of a benevolent, spoiling auntie, and not pity money for food begged from a total stranger.
She surfaced on Boulevard des Capucines with the magnificent Opera House the first image that soared into view. Holding her breath at the sight of it, Maggie  had the overwhelming sensation of a coma-victim awakening to a world that has been living and breathing and loving and hating furiously for centuries...while she slept.
To her left, was the Café de la Paix, her destination. Its bright, striped awning stretched the full length of the block and she hurried toward it. Perhaps now all her pain could finally come together in one seamless ache. Perhaps now, here, where it all started, where Elise met Gerard and began the whole series of events that would hurt so many people, Maggie would be able to get the perspective for which she’d so diligently searched.
She stood at the door of the café, peering in, amazed at the sheer number of people crammed into the overflowing outdoor seating area which eddied and bulged into the street, and at the enormous sea of bodies pressed together inside the café itself. This was madness to think she could just pop over to the famous Café de la Paix and expect to grab dinner. Her chances of getting a table seemed about as good as making partner at one of the larger law firms back in Atlanta—without a college degree.
The waiters, in starched white shirts and black bowties, scurried past each other, balancing huge silver trays in the air over the heads of the diners. It was like watching a Fellini movie, Maggie decided, as she followed the dizzying activity. And then she saw him. In the massive, confusing jumble of smoking, drinking, masticating humanity, she saw the one person she expected least to see and, had she thought of it, should have counted on seeing.
Roger Bentley sat alone at a small corner table, protected from the hubbub and cacophony by two barely visible earplugs. He was engrossed in a hardback book. He was drinking wine, his food had not yet arrived.
Maggie’s feet were moving toward the center of the dining room before she had time to accurately register what she had seen. Within seconds, she stood in front of his table, staring down at him, her hands clenched at her side, her mouth open as if she would speak.
He looked up questioningly and recognized her instantly. A smile escaped him and he stood up, placing the book on the chair beside him.
“Well, I say!” he blurted cheerfully, “Miss Newberry! In Paris! What a surprise!”
“The child isn’t Nicole,” Maggie said. She stared him directly in the eyes, eyes that danced and feinted, cajoled and convinced.
“Fine, just fine, and you?” Roger looked behind her. “You’re dining with friends? Alone?” He gestured to an empty chair at his table.  “Sit, sit! Well, I’ll be switched! Maggie Newberry in Paris.”
Maggie dropped her purse on the floor and placed her hands on his table.
“Roger, I...” She didn’t know what to say. He looked at her with confidence, even pleasure. She felt baffled.
“Please, dear girl, sit, sit. Have some wine.” He reseated himself and waited until she sat down across from him. “Such a nice surprise, I must say! Garçon!” He waved over one of the speeding waiters and asked for another wine glass and a menu. Then he turned back to Maggie. “So, old girl, what brings you to Paris?”
Maggie took a deep breath.
“The child isn’t Nicole.”
Roger sighed and removed his earplugs. He paused for just a moment and then looked at her again, sadly.
“Ah, no. I’m afraid not.” 
The waiter brought the glass and menu but Roger waved it away. “The Mademoiselle will have an omelet also.” He turned to Maggie. “They’re jolly good here. Like nothing you’ve ever tasted.” The waiter departed and Roger proceeded to pour the wine. Just like old times, Maggie thought.
“Where is Nicole?” she asked bravely.
“That’s hard to say, Maggie.” Roger flapped his napkin out onto his lap.
“Is she alive?”
“I don’t believe she is, no.”
“I see.” Maggie felt her hands begin to tremble and she pushed them into her lap under the table.
“You must see it from my position, Maggie, dear...”
“You flim-flammed me,” she cried and then looked around her at the other diners. She really didn’t feel like making a scene in one of the world’s most famous restaurants.  “You conned me,” she said more softly. “It was all a set-up. Did you kill the child?”
“You must be joking! Are you serious? Maggie, really! I cannot imagine you would even—“
“Roger, I haven’t got the energy for this bullshit of yours. I really don’t. Maybe the gendarmes  have more patience for it, but I’m not used to it.”
“Jolly well put, yes, well. All right, from the top.” He ran a thin hand through his dark blond hair and then massaged his jutting chin with the same hand. He looked at her as if he were about to drastically cut the selling price on a set of china they were haggling over. “We took advantage, shall we say, of an existing situation,” he said. “I knew the child had died—“
“You knew the murderer?”
“I’m not sure there really was a murderer, my dear. I believe the child died...naturally.”
“I didn’t know someone could die ‘naturally’ at five years of age.” Maggie felt warm. Her cheeks were flushed. “I thought ‘natural causes’ involved old age, Roger.”
“I’m just telling you what I know, pet. The girl was dead, maybe an accident, I don’t know. What I did know was that her mother’s family had money and they had never laid eyes on the girl.”
“How did you know Elise hadn’t sent us a photograph of the child?”
“Honestly, Maggie, you must think I just took up the business or something. I’m not a total get, you know. It was known to me that Elise was disinherited or at least—“
“That’s not true!”
“In any event, the child was not bandied about in snapshots to doting grandparents. Am I wrong?”
Maggie didn’t answer him.
“It was quite the ready-made scam, if I may say so. Something an artist dreams of. Rich family, dead main players...nothing but for a chap like me to step in and make it all happy and right.”
“Is that what you think you did?”
“You were happy. Your parents, I take it, were happy?”
“And the little girl? Is she  happy?”
“My dear woman! The child was virtually rescued from a swarm of male relatives who’d had the rather perverse pleasure of her sex from the time she was two years old! Am I to believe that my taking her from a ghetto of incest and poverty and dropping her into the lap of one of the wealthiest families in Atlanta, Georgia was doing a disservice to the little mite?”
“My God.” The tight feeling returned to the pit of her stomach. “She’s been molested?” 
“That’s delicate, my dear. She’d been overhauled by every man within spitting distance to her. Do you think I didn’t enjoy the idea that her life—in one miraculous stroke—was going to change for the better? You think that didn’t appeal to me?”
“She needs psychiatric help, Roger. She’s in bad shape.”
“No, my darling, she’s in very good shape now. She’s in your hands, isn’t she? I assume she’ll not be dumped into some social worker’s jurisdiction now that you know you’re not blood-related?”
“Don’t be obscene. You think you played God, you think you actually did a good turn?”
“I do. I must say, I do. Your parents needed someone to help assuage their guilt over their daughter—“
“What do you know about what my parents need?”
“You’d be surprised the things I have to know in my business. And little ‘Nicole’ needed people to love and care for her. And not just anybody. As you pointed out, she needs special care now.”
Maggie shook her head.
“And Laurent? Where does he fit in to all this?”
Roger shrugged and took a sip of his wine.
“He was my partner, that’s all. A good chap, Laurent. He knew Elise and Gerard—“
“Don’t lie to me, Roger! I know Laurent is Gerard’s brother.”
“You’re not going to let me finish a full sentence, are you?” He smiled at her briefly. Maggie glared at him. “All right, all right, so of course he knew him. Anyway, that’s the connection. Laurent knew about the little  girl and Elise’s family having money—“
“Laurent knew so much,” Maggie said bitterly.
“Hmmm? Well, he’s quite a capable chap, if you know what I mean. Likable, I must say. Yes, quite likable.”
“For a criminal.”
She watched the sea of faces at the surrounding tables, faces laughing, smoking, pouting, shoving huge amounts of rich food into moving, chewing mouths.
“Great fun to work with too,” Roger continued. “Good sense of humor. Haven’t you found that? Aren’t you two—as the French so politely put it—à folie à deux? Involved? I thought you were. Laurent gave me the impression that you were.”
“He did?”  
“He most certainly did. It’s not true?”
“I don’t know what’s true.  Nicole’s dead, Elise is dead. And Laurent is a very mysterious equation to me all of a sudden. He lied to me.”
“Dear girl. That’s the nature of his business. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t care for you, or love you, come to that.”
“How very strange you people are.”
“’You people.’ By that, I take it you mean ‘non-Americans?’”
“He could lie to me, cheat me, intend to continue lying and cheating me—and still love me?”
“Sounds jolly rude when you put it like that. But I dare say he’s not interested in cheating you again. As for the lying, well, once you start, it’s bloody difficult to pack it up if you see what I mean. He can’t very well come clean on Nicole, now can he? I’m sure he doesn’t relish living a lie the rest of his life in regards to her—“
“But he could do it.”
“Maggie, life isn’t perfect, or haven’t you come to that yet?”
“I could have you arrested.”
“Well, that’s very nice, I must say.”
“You cheated my family out of fifteen thousand dollars.”
“I’m not going to give it back, if that’s where this is leading.”
“I don’t know what to make of you, Roger. I sort of like you but you’re a definite felon.”
“You Americans and your backward charm. Look, Maggie, I’ve been honest with you, haven’t I? Why not go back to Atlanta, go back to Laurent and pick up the reins again? Let Nicole go on being Nicole and enjoy the fact that you and your family are doing your best for one of the world’s downtrodden.” He shrugged again. “I really don’t see what else is to be done.”
Maggie opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. She turned away and looked once more at the frenetic crowd. This is where Elise sat, she thought. This is where Elise felt at home and happy. This is where Elise met Gerard. 
Maggie took a sip of her wine, aware that Roger was watching her closely. Still holding her glass, she looked at him with resignation.
“A good year, I suppose?” she asked wearily.
“Of course, my dear,” he said, reaching for his own wine glass. “Wouldn’t expect anything less from ol’ Roger, would you?”
She noticed that his eyes seemed to twinkle with real pleasure.

Her meal, which Roger paid for, was a plain egg omelet with a healthy serving of the ever-present pommes frites. The omelet—fluffy, light, with barely a hint of the cheese, green pepper or ham that had gone into it—was, without doubt, the most exquisite thing Maggie had ever tasted.  Later, when she happened to see the bill the waiter planted in front of Roger, she began to understand where her father’s money went during Elise’s first year in Paris.  Her omelet, heavenly though it was, cost Roger nearly $US65.
She walked slowly down the Boulevard de la Madeleine and watched the evening people scurry about their evening activities. Sunday night might not be one of the more bustling times in Paris, but it was not sleepy either. Plenty of people were running to the opera, to the nightclubs, to late-night restaurants, to sit in the always-teeming cafés to smoke and drink and watch the pedestrians.  
Remorse had not been Roger’s tendency, Maggie thought as she walked. He made no apologies for his behavior or his profession. And he seemed to genuinely like her. She wondered if that was truly compatible with the kind of person he was. She wondered the same of Laurent. Incredibly, Roger seemed to think that lies were little, annoying things—necessary to do from time to time and imminently forgivable if you got done to. Of course, she thought, the man lies for a living. He admitted to her, in a conspiratorial moment that should have flattered her, that he was in town posing as a near relative to the Princess Michael and serving as an aristocratic Parisian guide for a group of wealthy East European tourists.  
And so this had been Laurent’s work too, she thought.  She had been afraid to ask Roger—in case he decided to tell her the truth—exactly how far he and Laurent would be willing to go in their chosen profession. Where did murder fit in? Blackmail? Kidnapping?
She waved down a taxi and gave him the address of her hotel. Tonight was not a night for negotiating grimy Metro stations with their late night clientele graduating from mild panhandling to a more forceful rendition of acquiring a stranger’s money. The night lights of Paris never ceased to thrill, she thought, as she watched the golden, carnival glow of the Eiffel Tower in the distance, illuminated like some wonderful Ferris wheel. She eased back into her seat and wished she could feel the thrill without experiencing it through the veil of gloom and listlessness she felt wrapped around her.
In spite of the wine at dinner, she was sober and dispirited as she paid the taxi driver and ascended the entry steps to Hotel de L’Etoile Verte. The snotty young woman wasn’t on duty tonight. At least Maggie could be grateful for that, she thought as she asked for her room key. The middle-aged man who had taken the girl’s spot for the evening seemed weary and world-soured, yet not so aggressively peevish as the mademoiselle before him.
“You have messages,” he said with no curiosity. He pulled out two small pieces of paper with her room key and handed them to her. 
She felt a sharp pang. Laurent had called. She thanked the night concierge and trudged to the hall elevator, shoving Laurent’s message into her purse. The second communication was from Michele, suggesting lunch tomorrow at a café called L’homme.  Maggie could get directions from the front desk. 
Not much of an investigative trip, really, Maggie thought as she punched the up arrow button for the elevator. She had decided, in the taxi ride back to the hotel, that she would leave Paris the day after tomorrow. First, she would say good-bye and thank you to Michele, maybe take a quick walk down the Champs Elysee for sentimentality’s sake and then put some closure to this Elise-in-Paris thing. She knew her parents must be wondering why she hadn’t called them yet. In a rare, self-indulgent moment, her load began to feel very heavy and she could feel the message in her pocket from Laurent start to leave scalding marks on her jacket lining. The last thing she felt like doing right now was talk to Laurent.
She raised her hand to give the elevator button another impatient jab, a mild curse forming in her mind, when the doors finally jerked open. She stepped aside to let the sole occupant out and then dropped her purse when she realized that that occupant, now staring menacingly at her from the elevator interior, was Gerard Dubois.



Chapter Twenty
1
He stood, wavering, in the elevator, then stepped clumsily over her purse and positioned himself in front of her. Maggie could smell the alcohol wafting from his rumpled clothes like steam. He looked at her through rheumy eyes as though he didn’t know who she was.
He knew.
“So, you’re back,” he slurred, blasting her with a vaporized mixture of cheap wine and garlic. 
She made a face and took a step away from him.   
“Whatza matter?” He leaned toward her in a threatening sway, as if he might topple over onto her at any moment. “You are in Paris to see Gerard, eh?” He licked his lips and grinned obscenely. “Gerard is here.”
Maggie was visited by a vision of awful similarity: Laurent standing in her mother’s garden at Brymsley, his hands open in a disarming gesture, his eyes full of love and relief to see her. Laurent is here.
She pulled her eyes away from the tottering, malodorant wretch blocking the lift doorway and stooped to pick up her purse.
She was aware that her new knowledge of Laurent had temporarily blotted out her desire to talk to Gerard. She had actually been planning to leave France without speaking to him at all. In light of Laurent’s betrayal, whatever Gerard might have to tell her had seemed somehow inconsequential. In any event, deep in her heart she knew that Gerard was still the key. He’d always been the pivot around which all the pain and confusion had spun. Deep down, she knew the true reason she’d balked at seeking him out was because she was simply afraid to learn any more—about Elise...and about Laurent.
“I won’t talk with you here,” she said grimly. “Outside.” She jerked her head to indicate that he was to follow her into the lobby. There, under the nose of the night concierge, they would talk.
“You are afraid, little peony?” Gerard leered at her and wiped his oily fingers on his pant legs, but he followed her. “You are afraid of Gerard, non?”  He snuffled a sort of grunting laugh that put shivers down Maggie’s spine. That her sister could have loved this!
She sat on a long, uncomfortable, settee in the small lobby. It was well lighted and, although late, she felt safe from him there. He heaved himself next to her on the sofa.
“Madame Zouk told me where to find you,” he said, his foul breath blasting into her face.
“I don’t believe you.”  
“You don’t? How are you thinking I am finding you, eh? The bitch told me where you were!” He smiled widely at her, displaying yellow and gray teeth.
She looked at him coldly and willed herself to appear more in control than she felt. “Did you kill my sister?” 
He shoved his face closer to hers but she did not retreat. His pupils were the size of pinpricks.
“You are a pig,” he said menacingly. “Your family is a family of pigs.”
“Did you kill—“
“I did not kill her. I told the police I did not kill her.”
“Did you kill Nicole?” Maggie swallowed hard. Might as well get all the tough ones out of the way up front.
“You can ask me such a thing? Your own family has stolen my—“
“Cut the crap, Gerard.” Her hands tingled with her loathing. “I know the real Nicole is dead. Did you kill her?”
He softened, his eyes still locked with hers. Then, his shoulders slumped forward and Maggie had an awful moment when she thought he was going to weep.
“I did not kill her,” he repeated, his eyes, half-lidded as if sleepy. Maggie took a deep breath and willed herself not to blink.
Gerard pulled out a crushed pack of Gitanes and stuffed a bent cigarette into his mouth. She waited while he lit the tip with a match. He dropped the used match at his feet and looked at her smugly.
“I was drunk.” He shrugged and smiled. “Very drunk? Peut-etre. She fell off the boat sometime in the night, perhaps.”
Maggie wanted to put her fist through his stinking, decrepit face, wanted to claw his features from their very bones until his smirk lived only under her fingernails. She waited, her heart pounding in her chest.
“After we left her mother.” He blew a smoke ring at Maggie. “Elise was a very bad maman, eh? Nicole and I lived on a little boat. Un petit bateau?”  He smiled at her again and took a puff from his cigarette. “One night, she is falling over the side.” He made a graceful, slow gesture with his hands to indicate the soft fall of Nicole over the side of the little boat. “Pshhht!” he assimilated the sound of a small weight spilling into the stagnate water. “In the morning we are finding her little body.” He smoked harshly on the filter. “It was very sad,” he said, smiling ruefully at her.
“Did...did Elise know?” Maggie began to feel cold and distanced from the lobby at the L’Etoile Verte, as if what she were hearing were from a television show, something unreal and unrelated to her. Her mind fought to stop the image of the little four-year old girl sinking to her death in the night-dark Mediterranean Sea with no one to know or care.
He made an abrupt gesture as if waving away a fly.
“Pfut! I did not tell her.” He looked directly at Maggie. “She did not ask.”
Didn’t ask about the wellbeing of her own daughter?
“You came to see Elise in my apartment the afternoon she was killed.”
Gerard nodded almost gently.
“I wanted to screw her,” he said.
“Why should I believe you did not kill her?” Maggie said. “You were there. Witnesses saw you there.”
“Mademoiselle,” he said sarcastically, his tongue flicking out over his cigarette filter like a snake’s. “Gerard was there. Gerard did not kill Elise.” He sighed. “I went to Elise’s door.” He held Maggie’s gaze.
“How...how did you know where I lived?” she asked.
“I am following you when you bring her home, yes?”
Maggie felt her skin crawl.
“She is very sick when I see her,” he continued, drawing hard on his Gitane. “She will not come away with Gerard. The pig! She is fou...and very noisy. I am telling her to shut up! Shut up!”
Maggie’s mind swelled with disgust for the man who sat next to her on the sofa in the elegantly shabby lobby of L’Etoile Verte.
“I am taking, for me, the things ma femme should be giving me.”
Maggie snapped back to attention.
“What things should she be giving to you?”
Grinning, Gerard dug into his pocket and pulled out a wax-paper packet no bigger than a deck of cards. He placed it on the sofa between them.
Maggie looked at the packet, then reached out to pick it up.
He grabbed her wrist and held it firmly.
“You are paying, Gerard, n’est-ce pas, Mademoiselle?”
“I am not paying for what I have not seen,” she spoke calmly, forcing her dinner to stay in her stomach.
He released her.
“Regarde,” he said.
Gingerly, she picked up the little packet as if it were full of incubated rattlesnake eggs and opened it.
Elise’s gold charm bracelet.  A pony, a little artist’s easel, a piano, a miniature book. Both girls had been given charm bracelets when they turned ten years old. Maggie had lost hers on a Girl Scout camping expedition the following year. Their mother had added to Elise’s bracelet over the years...up until the time Elise had moved away. Now, Elise’s gold-braided bracelet made a soft tinkling sound in Maggie’s hands, every spare loop filled with a tiny, bobbing gold charm except for the space left by the little Scottie dog that had been found in Maggie’s apartment the night Elise died.
She looked back up at Gerard.
“You took this bracelet from Elise in my apartment?”
He nodded.
Maggie looked back at the bracelet in her hand.  How was it possible that Elise had kept the bracelet? Through crack houses, prostitute wharves and slums? All these years? And something so bourgeoise? So hated a reminder of her boring, civilized southern past? 
She looked at Gerard, her fingers closing loosely around the packet of charms. “Why did you take it from her?” she asked quietly.
He smiled wickedly. “Because it was important to her, yes? She is always loving her beautiful bracelet...it is from when she was a little girl, no?” He looked at Maggie eagerly as if expecting her to agree with him.
“How much?” she asked dully.
“One thousand francs.” He grinned broadly and she noticed his yellow stubs of teeth. 
She tossed the charms back into his lap. They fell between them on the sofa.
“Keep them,” she said.
“Eight hundred francs!”
“I don’t want them.”
“You are a pig!” Gerard looked at her with a stunned expression on his face. “I cannot take less than eight hundred francs!”
“And you are une idiot. I don’t want the damn thing. What else have you got to sell?”
“Mademoiselle.” His face turned into a wheedling mask of pathos and need. He placed the bracelet almost lovingly on Maggie’s knee. “Gerard is needing money tonight.”
“Not my problem.” Maggie forced herself not to look at the charms. “Gerard is...” he groped for the words. “Gerard is needing money tonight,” he repeated.
“Did you hit my sister that day?”
“I...no, I did not hit—“
“Liar!”
“Gerard is not lying!”
Maggie stood up abruptly, causing the charms to tumble to the rug in a muffled jangle.
“You hurt my sister, threatened her, beat her...and now expect me to give you money? Is that how the French do things?”
“I did not hit her!” 
Whatever drugs he’d done prior to coming to her hotel were obviously on the verge of kicking in. Gerard sat transfixed, staring up at Maggie as she stood over him.  
“Gerard might get hurt if he doesn’t get money?” she sat back down. She glanced over at the hotel desk to double-check the lack of interest they were generating with the night manager. He continued to stand, hunched over the counter, reading a magazine and drinking a Coca-Cola. He acted incurious about anything except, perhaps, his own misery at having to work tonight.
“Oui, mademoiselle,” Gerard said, scooting himself a little closer to Maggie. “It could mean my life.”
“Do you have anything else to tell me?” she asked softly.
“To...to tell you?” Gerard looked at her, hopefully, his pitted and ravaged face blinked a kind of peace like a neon light. That would be the drugs, Maggie thought as she watched him. “Your sister, she is making me hit her. She is very bad to Gerard. She is hurting my ears! Screaming!”
“You said she was sick that afternoon.”
“Yes, sick. She is not getting her...how to say it?”
“Her fix? Her drugs? Is that it? Elise was strung out?”
Gerard smiled sweetly. He cocked his head at Maggie almost shyly.
“I am thinking so, yes,” he said.
“So, you did hit her a little bit,” Maggie offered.
“Just a little bit, perhaps.”
He closed his eyes softly, the smile still on his lips and seemed to go into a sort of trance. Maggie watched him sleep for a moment. Then, her eyes caught a glimpse of the bracelet at his feet. Carefully, she bent down and picked it up and slipped it into her purse.
Gerard’s eyes fluttered open. He grunted and looked drowsily at Maggie.
“You need to go now,” she said to him.
“Eh?” He snorted and looked around the lobby without seeming to focus.
“You need to go, Gerard. I’m calling the gendarmes to come for you. They are going to put you in jail to rot for a hundred years where no one will know but me where you are or what happened to you.”
He looked at her in confusion.
“Les gendarmes...?” He struggled unsteadily to his feet and took a few hesitant steps toward the door. The night clerk turned, briefly, from his magazine to watch Gerard.
“You are giving me my money,” he said loudly.
“No, scumbag,” Maggie said, standing up too. “I’m giving you a five minute headstart on the police. Comprenez-vous?”
He cursed her loudly but continued to move in the direction of the lobby exit.
“Gerard will hurt you!” he shrieked.
The desk clerk, now looking bulkier and younger than Maggie had originally thought, moved from behind the desk counter to approach Gerard. He spread his hands out in a questioning gesture.
“Qu’est-ce qui le prend?” he said to Maggie. What’s his problem?
Ignoring him, Maggie spoke directly to Gerard:
“Gerard will hurt no one,” she said. 
For a moment, she thought he would attack her, but, in the end, he was probably too far gone for that kind of energetic performance. He screamed another round of French curses at her and then allowed himself to be crowded out of the lobby in a shuffling dance of pushes and threats by the stout night concierge.
When he had gone, the clerk gave Maggie a sour look and spoke roughly to her in a language she was, finally, glad she’d never bothered to learn. She smiled contritely until he turned away and back to his magazine. The clock over his shoulder showed that it was nearly two in the morning.
Maggie shouldered her purse and walked to the elevator. Now, she thought gravely, she could leave. She had seen what she had to see, she had talked to the devil himself and found out what she needed to know. The elevator doors opened for her and, stepping inside, she thought of the other little girl, Nicole, who had died without her maman  on a warm summer’s night in the South of France. Pushing the number of her room floor, Maggie closed her mind to the image. She would put her grief away into a little box and push it to the back of her mind to be brought out later—later when she was stronger, when she was less tired. Much later.

2
“I guess all this sort of puts the final nail in your plans to bail out of Dodge City, huh?” Maggie chewed on a croissant and leaned against the interior of the phone booth. The morning sun was bright in her eyes. She blinked and wished she’d brought a cup of hot coffee with her. Or had broken down and made all her phone calls from her room—and hang the cost.
“The movers come in two weeks,” Gerry said. “And I’m meeting a guy in Savannah tomorrow morning who’s interested in buying my share of the business. Don’t worry,” he said quickly. “You’ll be brought in on all that if it comes together. And...” he took a long breath as if overwhelmed with the speed of things himself.”... we land in Auckland the week after that. Haley is thrilled, really excited.”
Yeah, I’ll just bet, Maggie thought, watching some French workmen construct a makeshift awning over a shop across the street from her phone booth. She took another bite of her croissant and noticed the oil the bun was leaving on her fingers.
“And Darla?” she said through her mouthful.
“Darla might not be excited about it, but she’s committed to going. This has really gotten to her too, Mags. When we got the contract on the house here? That sort of pushed her over the edge, I think. Then it really started to feel real for her.”
“How was the memorial service for Dierdre?” Maggie said, switching the subject. “I felt bad about not being there.”
“It was nice. I read some stuff. A poem by Houseman. Her brother talked about her, you know, gave the eulogy.”
“I wished I’d been there.”
“You were missed. It was really sad. Everybody cried through it.”
“But nice.”
“Yeah, well, you know.”
There was a pause.
“Got a job, yet, down there?” she asked.
“Got a bunch of interviews and they’re as good as got. New Zealand’s economy has been in bad shape for awhile now, but their advertising community is pretty healthy. Plus, they respect outsiders, probably more than they should. They put Yanks and the Brits in all their top spots.”
“So, you’re expecting to do well on the job-market scene.”
“I am,” he said briskly.
“Gerry, I am not indicting you for moving to New Zealand, so I would appreciate it if you would take that defensive tone out of your voice when you talk to me. Is that possible?”
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. But, I mean, I have to have a certain mind-set to pull this thing off, you know? I can’t relax or the whole thing will fall apart, and no, Darla is not leading cheers from the sidelines about all this. She’s going to New Zealand with the same attitude that the penal colonists went to Van Dieman’s Island, okay?”
“And you still believe—“
“With my whole heart.”
Maggie sighed. One of the French workmen reminded her of Laurent. He stood on the bottom rung of the ladder and yanked on a long rope pulley. She watched the gray striped awning flap open over the metal scaffolding.
“Well, that’s important,” she said.
“Glad you think so.”
Minutes later, after she had given Gerry a bare-bones rundown of her time in Paris and then assured him she would be back in the office by Thursday, she was dialing Detective John Burton’ office number.
He picked up the phone himself.
“Burton, here,” he snapped into the phone.
“Detective Burton? This is Margaret Newberry.”
“Yes, Miss Newberry.” His voice mellowed noticeably.
“I’m calling you from Paris where I’ve been doing some investigating of my own...?” She rushed on before the inevitable lecture and suggestion she contact Victim’s Families Anonymous could begin. “And I’ve talked with Gerard Dubois.”
There was a slight hesitation on the line. Then,
“I see,” he said. “Maybe you’d better tell me about it.”

3
“Non, non, merci, Roger, I am happy you called me.”
Laurent switched the telephone to his other ear. He stood in Maggie’s small galley kitchen, leaning against the stove, regarding the red plastic wall clock opposite him. He wore a pair of faded bluejeans and trainers with a stark-white cotton T-shirt.
“Well, I thought you’d want to know, old chap. Bit of a surprise for me, I can tell you...running into the girl like that.”
“Mmm-mm, yes, I can see that,” Laurent said, thoughtfully. He stretched out an arm and examined the hairs on it. His T-shirt strained across his chest as he took in a long breath.
“Not sure what you’ll want to do about it,” Roger continued on the other line. “She’s dead keen to get to the bottom of this Nicole business, I can tell you. I’m afraid you’re in for it, squire.”
Laurent sighed into the phone.
“Well, thank you for calling, Roger. I will handle it from here,” he said.
“I know you will, old darling. Listen, I’m to Cap D’Antibes next month. I don’t suppose you’d be...?”
“Ach, non, Roger.” A thin smile found its way to Laurent’s lips. “Not this time, mon ami.”
“Ahhh, well. Never hurts to ask. Take care of yourself, Laurent. Cheers.”
“Adieu, Roger.”
Laurent hung up the phone slowly and then rubbed a large hand across his face as if to erase his very features. Ahhh, Maggee,  he thought sadly.

4
“No, Michele,” Maggie said, cradling the telephone against her cheek while she threw another sweater into her suitcase.  “Gerard denied killing Elise. I’m not surprised and I’m not sure I care any more. I mean, if he did kill her, what am I supposed to do about it? Make a citizen’s arrest, or something? There’s no damn evidence or the Atlanta cops would’ve nabbed him. He’s, like, this mega-loser....so blitzed on dope he probably couldn’t crack an egg let alone devise a foreign murder. I mean, this whole trip was nuts.”
The French woman murmured softly on the other end.
“Do not give up, Maggie,” she said.
“I am giving up,” Maggie said. “Besides, after what I’ve learned about Elise and...and Laurent, I’m afraid I just don’t have the energy or...passion, if you will...to try to prove Gerard’s guilt. I guess that makes me a pretty lame excuse for a sister, but that’s the way it is.”
“Perhaps Gerard did not strangle the life out of her on that night, cherie,” Zouk said. “But he has killed your sister as surely as if he held the sash that tightened around her throat. He put an end to her art. He put an end to her family. He put an end to her friends and time took care of the rest. Elise was alive with her friends. She could not live without her art. She was an artiste!”  
“You don’t get it, Michele,” Maggie said, tossing her cosmetic bag into her suitcase and snapping it shut. “I don’t care any more. Okay? Elise lived her life the way she had to and if she crapped all over her family as a result of it...well, what’s new about that?”
“I hope you will write me, Maggie, as your sister did,” Michele said quietly.
“I will.”                                       
“And also to tell me when you find Elise’s killer.” 
Maggie sighed. “I’ll write you, Michele. Michele?”
“Yes, cherie?”
“What do you think of Gerard’s brother, Laurent?”
“Cherie, I do not know the man very well. Only that he makes his living as le voleur...the con-man. But what is it mattering now? Oh, you must get to the bottom of this Laurent fellow, absolutement! There are too many questions, eh? But if it is love...” The knowing smile was as evident to Maggie as if she’d been in the same room with her.
Truly, the French are not like the rest of us, Maggie thought with a touch of admiration in her heart for her new friend. She said farewell and wished she could believe the same philosophy. 

5
It was still early evening but Maggie didn’t begrudge the taxi ride. After all, Montmartre was not necessarily a safe place to be at any time. She paid the driver and stepped out onto Rue Caulaincourt. She walked quickly and with purpose. The Moulin Rouge windmill sliced through the thick night air, beckoning the streetlife inside in a slow, insidious, come-hither gesture. People bumped into her as she walked, she held her purse tightly to her stomach, hurrying faster now to find the little alleyway.
When she found it again, it yawned before her, dark and unwelcoming.  Maggie took a breath and turned into the cobblestone avenue that led to Elise’s old apartment. 
She’d said good-bye to Michele and had felt a genuine sense of loss. The woman had cared about Elise. She seemed to care about Maggie too. Maggie was starting to recognize just how rare that feeling could be.
The shuttered windows stared down at her like jack-o-lantern eyes from the apartments that lined the little street. She glanced up at the landlady’s window. Like the others, it was closed to the world. No sign of light or life behind it.
Maggie slowed her pace as she passed beneath Elise’s window and looked up. Nothing. She turned the corner at the end of the alley and stopped. There it was. Montmartre Cemetery.
From where Maggie stood, she could see oversized granite urns and what looked like miniature Washington monuments punctuating the row after row of plain stones—which looked like a field of gray surfboards jammed into the ground. The wind picked up as she stared at the semi-darkened graveyard. Little, luminescent stubs of white crosses jutted out from the hard ground. Stone angels and fierce cherubs guarded long-dead babies under ghostly great trees, their leaves having long dropped onto the patient graves and markers.
Maggie crossed the street and entered the cemetery through the arched gateway which led to a stone trellis and a pergola, as gay as a garden wedding.
The eerie obelisks and weathered tombstones, washed in the light of dusk, shot irregular shadows in every direction, like spirits leaping out in confusion and panic. Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea, Maggie thought.
She moved between the headstones, careful not to trample the flowers that attentive mourners had placed next to the graves, and took a seat on one of the many wrought iron benches, its scroll work was intricate and lovely. She thought for a moment of the ancient artisan commissioned to create these graveyard thrones. She wondered what his thoughts had been as he worked.
The cemetery did not frighten her, although it did give her a vague sense of unease. Lost or earth-bound souls were not much of a consideration for Maggie. Never had been, she mused, as she thought of her father telling her and Elise ghost stories when they were girls. Elise seemed to want to believe in witches and spirits and supernatural things. Elise had paid close attention to her father’s stories, jumping in the appropriate spots, eyes widening in exquisite fright to his delight. Maggie hadn’t seen the point. If someone was dead, he was dead.  She’d thought so then. She thought so now. Elise had always told her she had no imagination.
Maggie turned to find the window of Elise’s apartment, the window where her sister had painted her watercolors, written her letters.  Gone forever, Maggie thought. Elise gone, her little girl gone. And here she was, Maggie, sitting directly in the scene Elise had painted maybe a hundred times. Maggie touched a nearby headstone and felt its hard smoothness. It was marble, and icy-cold, but looked like old chalk, crumbling and dirty. 
Why had she come here? To say good-bye to Elise? Why not the Elise who had lived in the Latin Quarter? At least that was an Elise she might have understood.
Maggie’s eyes filled and she opened her purse to search for a tissue. And, of course, the Latin Quarter Elise was an Elise who hadn’t felt at all understood. She was an Elise who’d packaged herself in such a way as to be accepted by her family—but who had compromised herself to do it. This was the real Elise, Maggie realized, the one who had lived in Montmartre and taken drugs and brutal lovers. Wild and free and too different to be honestly loved by her family, this Elise had painted. And died. For, surely, Michele was right: Elise had died here long before she ever went to Atlanta.
Maggie pulled out of her purse the glittering goldtone scarf ring Brownie had given to her at Nicole’s birthday party. She thought of that little girl and her heart squeezed. What is Nicole’s real name? she wondered. Who is she? Maggie sat on the hard little bench, her lap full of the contents of her purse, and felt a light breeze touch her skin. It was getting late.
Shaking herself, she began to put everything back into her purse. Plenty of time for all of those questions, she told herself. Her time in Paris was through. She’d done what she had come to do. And more, she thought, as a picture of Laurent came to mind. She held the little scarf ring in her hand for a moment and thought of Brownie. Poor Brownie wanted to help so much. He wanted to be a part of her world so very much.
Suddenly, looking at the little gold-painted scarf ring, Maggie felt a realization so swift, so undeniable, that she nearly gasped when it hit her. She held the scarf ring tightly in her fingers and stared at it.
She knew who Elise’s murderer was.



Chapter 21
1
Darla stared at the map propped up against her coffee cup. Gerry had drawn loopy black lines on the map of Auckland City to indicate areas where they might live in, where he would work, where Haley might attend school. Darla touched a spot on the map. Kohimarama.. She traced the line across Hobson Bay. One Tree Hill. Onehunga. Te Papapa. Her finger came to a stop at Manukau Harbor.
“Finding everything all right?” Gerry dried his hands on a dishtowel and leaned over the back of his wife’s chair. He smelled of soap and coffee beans.
Darla withdrew her finger and placed her hands in her lap.
“See, this is Waitemata Harbor.” He jabbed at an expanse of blue that divided  the city of Auckland.  “If I take the Bates’ job, I’ll be able to see the water from my office. They’ve got a regatta every Wednesday in full view. That’s what the headhunter said. Pretty neat, eh?”
Darla sighed loudly.
“Or maybe you don’t think so.” Gerry tossed the kitchen towel down onto the table and pulled his jacket from the back of one of the kitchen chairs.
Darla lifted up a corner of the map and felt under it for her cooling coffee. Gerry pulled on his suit jacket, jerking the cuffs down and pushing the front together, although not buttoning it.
“If we get a place in Remuera, for example, there’s a good school for Haley there.”
“Your headhunter said so.” Darla spoke softly as she brought the coffee cup to her lips.
“Interesting name, Remuera. Maori, I suppose. Wonder what it means, don’t you?” Gerry adjusted his tie, jutting his chin out like a startled turkey stretching at a sudden sound.
“When will you be back?” Darla picked up the map and began to fold it. Gerry watched the precise movements which demonstrated an unusual deliberateness for his wife—usually so fast and slap-dash.
He shrugged and peered around the corner of the kitchen into the living room as if searching for something.
“Tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “I’ll get there around eight or so, I guess. Meet with Bryant for dinner...God, it’s going to be a late night.”
“You think he’ll buy you out of Selby’s?” The map crinkled noisily in her fingers. He thought it was taking her a long time to get it all folded up.
“We shall see,” he said breezily. “Seen my briefcase?”
She said nothing. Holding the map tightly in her hand, she sat and looked vacantly at the kitchen wall opposite her.
“Should be back, everything wrapped up, by tomorrow afternoon,” he repeated, “I’ll call you, of course.”
“Going to wrap up everything before Maggie’s had a say?”
Gerry stopped hunting for his briefcase and looked at his wife. He needed to get this over and done with, he thought. The sooner moved, the sooner adjusted.
“She knows I’m talking to a guy.”
“She know you intend to sign on the dotted line?”
“I’m not sure I do intend to.”
She turned in her chair and looked at him. He thought she looked frightened. I’m doing this for you, Darla!  
“Okay, I do intend to,” he said. “But it can’t be helped. Maggie knows that. She knows how important this is to me. I wouldn’t sell her down the river.” He pulled up a chair and sat down next to his wife. “If this guy isn’t right for Selby’s, I won’t sell. You believe that, don’t you?”
She stared into his eyes, then dropped the map onto the table and put her hand up to his freshly-shaved cheek.
“I love you, Gerry,” she said, beginning to cry.
He put his arms around her.
“Believe in me, Darla,” he said. “Believe I’m doing what’s best for all of us.”
 She buried her face into his suit jacket. 
2
The taxi driver gave Maggie an impatient toot on his horn. Maggie turned to glare at him from where she stood outside the hotel in a telephone booth. I’m so sick of these people!  She gripped the telephone receiver a little tighter.
“Une moment!” she shouted, forcing a feigned smile in his direction. Her bag was sitting in the backseat of the taxi and she wasn’t totally convinced he wouldn’t take off with it just to show the impertinent American that he could not be kept waiting. Weren’t we on the same side during the war? she wondered. Didn’t we help liberate bloody Paris?
“Sorry, M’am,” the voice crackled over the telephone wire to her. “Detective Burton isn’t answering his page either.”
Maggie shifted the phone receiver to her other ear.
“I’ve got to talk to him.” She closed her eyes in agony. “I have got to speak to the detective.”
“You’ll have to leave a message.” The impersonal drone of the sergeant’s voice served to increase her agitation.
“A message? God, what kind of...” She took a deep breath and looked briefly in the direction of the angry taxi driver. “Look, tell Detective Burton or Detective Kazmaroff that Margaret Newberry called again, okay?” She paused until she was sure the man was writing this all down. “Tell him, please, that I know who killed my sister. And Dierdre Potts, too. Tell him that. And...and to page me at the Paris airport, okay? I’ll be there in about thirty minutes and for about an hour once I’m there. Charles DeGaulle airport in Paris. Okay?”
I must be mad to think that redneck cop is going to call the airport in Paris, France, she thought, pushing a hand through her hair. She heard the sound of the taxi driver’s door slamming shut and she turned back to the phone.
“Look, just give him my message and have him call me, please.” She hung up on the sergeant’s assurances that he would give Burton her message. She hurried down the stone steps of the Hotel L’Etoile Verte and greeted the indignant taxi driver.
“Sorry! Sorry!” she sang breathlessly as she tugged open the passenger door of his taxi. “Je me regret! Je m’excuse!” 
The man grunted and returned to his side of the car. He poked viciously at his watch as if to indicate that he would be charging Maggie for the extra time spent waiting for her.  
Maggie climbed into the back seat and tossed her purse to the far side in an exhausted gesture. She had tried last night and most of this morning to reach either Jack Burton or Dave Kazmaroff to tell them of her discovery. The police department had refused, understandably, to give out their home phone numbers, and the pair had been unavailable for the last twenty hours or so.
Maggie told the driver to take her to Charles DeGaulle Airport and then sank into the stained and lumpy backseat.
3
She drummed her fingers on the Delta Airlines countertop, unaware of the annoyed look the pretty flight clerk was giving her.
“Here’s your passport, Mademoiselle,” the clerk said to her, handing back her American passport. “We hope you have enjoyed your stay in Paris?”
Maggie looked at her uncomprehendingly. “Huh?”
“Your flight leaves Gate Five, please. Thank you,” the clerk said, looking beyond her to the person next in line.
“Oh, okay, thanks.” Maggie gathered up her carry-on bag and stuffed her passport and ticket into the side pocket of her purse. She moved out of line, her ears straining to catch the sound of her name being paged over the public address system.
Charles DeGaulle was chaos. Drug-sniffing German shepherd dogs roamed aggressively at the ends of taut leashes held by uniformed officials, signs insisted from every doorway that passengers should not leave their bags unattended for a single moment, crying children seemed to be everywhere—either attached to sour-faced mothers or roaming pitifully alone, presumably in search of sour-faced mothers.
Maggie pushed through the crowd and tried to remember the excitement and anticipation she had felt just a few days ago when she had landed here from Atlanta. Then, the airport had seemed abuzz with hope and promise, a traveler’s way station of rare adventure about to happen. This morning, she saw the filth on the floors and the distrust in her fellow traveler’s eyes. It made her shiver all the way through her double-quilted bomber jacket.
She took a place at the back of the line that wrapped around the Information Desk and checked her watch. She had a full hour before take-off, and still no word from Atlanta. She hoisted her carry-on bag to her other shoulder and tried to take mental refuge in the stillness of the queue from the roiling, noisy crowd moving and milling around her 
Why wasn’t he paging her? Was her message not forceful enough? My God! I said I’ve discovered the identity of the killer, is that not strong enough?  Maggie eyed the woman manning the information booth and hoped she spoke English. Should she have left a message actually naming the killer? Was it safe to do that? She looked at her watch again. It was late afternoon back home. Where had the detectives been all day? Will I need to prove that what I say is true?  She had an uncomfortable image of Burton crumpling up her message and tossing it away. “Not that Newberry woman again! Why doesn’t she give it a rest? ‘Found the killer’, she says! Brother!”
Maggie looked around the rotund German hausfrau standing stolidly in front of her in line to the pinch-faced woman behind the booth. The woman didn’t look to Maggie to be particularly helpful. Suddenly, she felt a permeating weariness creep over her. She was so sick of trying to make people give her information or help her.  A garbled message in French came over the public address system, and Maggie  strained to catch some semblance of her name being mentioned. In frustration and relief, she finally approached the counter.
“My name is Margaret Newberry,” she said breathlessly. “I am expecting a page.”
“Your question?” The woman looked at her coldly.
This is it! I’m going to kill a human being in an international airport!
“What part did you not understand, Madame?” Maggie said testily. “The pronunciation of my name? Mar-gar-et New-berry. Comprenez?”
“There have been no pages for you.”
“Thank you. You’ve been a dear.” Maggie scowled at the woman, enjoying the perverse pleasure of finally not having to force a sociability she was long-past being able to feel.  She turned away from the counter, frustrated and defeated. She walked toward the long corridor that led to her departure gate.
Maggie turned quickly to the wall of telephones that lined the tiled boulevard within Charles DeGaulle Airport. She deposited her bag against the wall and jammed a franc coin into the machine. She had been crazy to withhold the name of the killer in her messages to Burton and Kazmaroff. She had been so sure that Burton would doubt her word that she had held off naming the murderer until she could do it on the phone to him herself—outlining her detailed evidence, sketching out her argument. But, apparently, not having the name to work with only seemed to ensure that Burton disregarded her messages. She had to tell him what she knew and pray he would take it from there.
When the same bored Fulton County desk sergeant came on the line, Maggie was brief. “Look, this is Margaret Newberry again—“
“Detectives Burton and Kazmaroff are not in, Miss Newberry. They have not seen your messages—“
“Do they call in for their messages from time to time, I wonder?”
“I will deliver your messages to them as soon as—“
“Look, forget it. I have a new message.”
There was an audible sigh on the other line.
“Shoot,” he said.
“Tell Burton this,” Maggie licked her lips and watched the traveler’s parade by her—nasty raincoats and broken-down umbrellas, patched-together satchels accented by the wicked slickness of leather micro-skirts and peeled-back hairlines. “Tell him the key is Gerry Parker. You got that?” Maggie turned away from the stream of airport travelers and faced the phone box.  “All the victims are connected to him. Tell Burton that Maggie said ‘Stump did it’.”
4
A haphazardly taped flap of the box that held every piece of her wedding china began to slowly curl up as if repelled by its own adhesive powers. Darla watched it from the kitchen table where she was in the process of packing another box. She made a mental note to repair it later and turned back to the box on the table in front of her. Carefully, she placed a ten-inch ceramic Madonna-and-child, which she and Gerry had found on their honeymoon nine years ago, in a nest of tissue and newspaper. The Madonna’s head was cocked as if questioning her. Are you really going through with this? it seemed to ask. Darla tried to imagine this box, with its fragile, hidden prize, in the bowels of some rusting tramp steamer making its tedious, laborious way across the Pacific Ocean, past atolls, uninhabited islands, radiation-cooked archipelagos, and ancient shipwrecks to the lonely little apostrophe of a country in the middle of the sea, at the bottom of the world. She looked around her kitchen and saw the boxes stacked against the counters, crowding the butcher’s block table, obstructing nearly every passageway to and from the kitchen—normally the room with the highest traffic in the house. 
Darla’s kitchen—warm and country with its wooden spoons on the walls and beribboned, macraméd potholders—had been where the family congregrated for “comfort foods”, for standing around and talking about what happened in school, at work. There was always a pot of coffee bubbling, a freshly-iced layer cake on the counter, the lovely, lilting aroma of something delicious just removed from the oven.
Gerry had even cleared the refrigerator of magnets.
The house was quiet this afternoon. Darla had allowed Haley to spend the night with a friend although she had been tempted to keep her daughter home for company. But the weeks were racing away when Haley would still be able to see her friends and Darla couldn’t deny her much during these last hard weeks before the move.
“Your father and I would move without batting an eyelash.” Her mother, the stereotypical Army wife, had called earlier in the day to see how the packing was coming. As Darla had expected, her mother could see no reason for Darla’s reluctance, let alone resistance, to the idea of moving. “Guam, Germany, California...”
“I know, Mom, I know,” Darla had argued, “but you and Dad did your moving before we kids were born.” 
“So? We certainly didn’t plan it that way. The service won’t let you, you know. You go when and where they tell you to go. And Gerry needs to do this for his career, and you, as a good—“
“It’s not for his career, Mom!” Darla had wanted to rip the phone out of the wall. Was everyone ready to see her in a covered wagon, forging ahead to some primitive new land...at the bottom of the world? “He doesn’t even have a job down there. He’s just doing it out of fear.”
“Darla, I don’t like to hear you talk like that. A wife should support her husband. Not snipe behind his back, dear.”
 Darla wanted to weep, and she had already done plenty of that. She shoved another empty box onto the kitchen table and began rummaging around for more newspaper. Some days she thought she could really make it work, could stop fighting with Gerry about it and just get in step with him. Other days, she cried.
5
Maggie sat with her airline seat tray half-open and propped up against her knees, gazing blankly at the flight attendant as he methodically inflated life saver vests and indicated where to access oxygen masks.  
It was pretty clear that Elise had died in Maggie’s place. Mistaken identity had never occurred to her. To believe that some low-life scumball would want to kill her druggie sister was more acceptable than to believe that it had been Maggie all along that the killer had been after. Totally besotted with Gerry, Patti Stump had killed, or tried to kill, all women close to him. 
Maggie tugged on her seat belt, although it was already fastened and tightened, and glanced at her seatmate. He looked a businessman. She was surprised that someone would travel transatlantic in a suit and tie. He smiled at her pleasantly and she returned the smile.
How many times had Patti seen Gerry smile jovially at Dierdre? Or seen him ask Dierds with real animation and pleasure how her weekend was? How many times did Patti watch Gerry laugh at one of Dierdre’s silly—usually unintended—jokes, all the while plotting to kill her? Maggie shivered. The bitch had meant to kill Maggie as well. 
She had killed Elise. She had wiped out Maggie’s only sister.
A flush of rage seared through Maggie at the thought. She tried to remember Stump’s reaction the next day at work after Elise had died. All she could picture was the woman, in her psychedelic glad-rags sitting at the conference room table and tapping an impatient fountain pen against her spiral notebook. It was Stump who had run into Alfie in the apartment hall and ridiculed him. Stump had made the obscene phone call, and the threatening note. It was Stump who had attacked Maggie in the woods. When Maggie thought of the condolence card Patti had signed for Elise, she wanted to rip the woman’s face from her skull.
“You okay?” Her seating companion cocked his head at her and smiled slightly. “Are you a little nervous about the flight?”
Maggie took a deep breath and nodded affirmatively. “Yes, I guess so,” she lied. How else to explain the fact that she couldn’t sit still and wanted to run up to the cockpit and jam her foot on the accelerator pedal? Get this crate moving!
“The statistics are in our favor, you know.” He had a pleasant, English  accent,  and Maggie found herself wondering, for a moment, what his business in America might be. He vaguely reminded her of Roger.
“Although I know that’s little comfort where hysteria’s involved.” He raised his hand as if to pat hers and then thought better of it. “We’re quite safe, though, I must say. I shouldn’t worry.”
“Yeah, I know.” She smiled at him. “Thanks.”
“The drinkie’s cart will put you right,” her companion said affably, and Maggie nodded, then turned her head away.
All this time, sharing office space with the woman who murdered Elise—who would’ve murdered me as well if she could have. When her next thought hit her, it occurred so abruptly and with such certainty that she jerked upright against her seatbelt and gave out a sharp gasp that prompted her seatmate to wrap his hand around her wrist. And although she could hear him making soothing noises to her, she understood nothing of what he said.  
My God, she thought, gripping the armrests. 
Darla...
6
Jack Burton tossed the chalk lightly in his hand and stared at the blackboard facing his desk. He was tired and edgy and craving a cigarette. This case felt like it was unraveling at his feet but with nothing at the end of the string.
 Kazmaroff hit the door solidly with the palms of both hands as he walked through it and Burton jumped. Jerk-off! he thought, angrily. He’s trying to rattle me.
“So, you gonna answer her messages?” Kazmaroff said as he settled himself, noisily, in his desk chair. He walked the chair out from behind his desk, the wheels squeaking annoyingly as he did so, until he too was facing the blackboard. “Still nothing, huh?” He nodded at the board.
“Unless you’ve thought of something between here and the can.” Burton sneered.
“No, can’t say that I have.”
“And no, I am not calling Paris, France, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“She’s not in Paris now.”
“Or wherever the hell she is.”
“I imagine she’s en route.”
‘En route?’ Jack wanted to stuff the large stick of chalk down the smug bastard’s mouth. ‘En route?’
“I’m not calling her airplane, Dave,” he said wearily, tossing the chalk onto the blackboard tray and returning to his desk.
“Well, then, what about this Stump business, huh?”
Jack tried to think if he knew any other adults who said “huh” the way Kazmaroff did. He leaned against the corner of his desk and watched both his partner and the blackboard.
“You tell me,” he said.
“I think she’s crazy,” Kazmaroff said flatly, flicking a blond hair from his burgundy Gap blazer. “I think she’s got some idea that she’s a detective, like, you know...I don’t know, Nancy Drew or something, and she’s pulled together a story in her own mind that takes care of someone at her office she doesn’t get on with. That’s what I think.”
“Have we questioned Patricia Stump?”
“We questioned everyone, Jack, right after the secretary got killed.”
“The secretary didn’t get killed. It was the traffic manager.” Jack watched Kazmaroff closely. 
Kazmaroff seemed to be inspecting his nails. “Yeah, okay, whatever,” he said.  And...wait a minute, which one’s Stump, anyway?””
“Christ...”
“No, now, give me a minute.” Dave jumped up and sorted through the pile of file folders scattered across his desk.
“You don’t even know who you talked to?” Burton felt both pleased and disgusted at the way this conversation was evolving.
“Listen, I talk to a dozen people a day, give me a break, okay? Oh, yeah, hey that’s interesting.”
“What?” Burton forced himself not to go and look over the bastard’s shoulder. “What does it say, man?”
Kazmaroff scrutinized the file folder contents. “I guess we didn’t talk to her,” he said.
“What?”
Kazmaroff cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably from his left foot to his right. “Well, she wasn’t available the day we hit most of ‘em at the office and when we went to the memorial service, she said she couldn’t talk. Said she was too broken up, you know?”
Burton stared at him. “So we never got back to her?” he asked, finally.
Kazmaroff scratched his neck and continued to look at the file. “Doesn’t look like it.”  
“I see. Perhaps we should talk to her now.” Burton decided he felt a little better. Kazmaroff was actually reddening and Burton thought he could see a bare hint of sweat forming on his upper lip.
Dave was already dialing the phone.
“And perhaps a few of the others in the office?” Oh, yes, Jack was feeling much better now. “Why don’t we give them a jingle and ask them about Miss Stump? Think we could do that, Dave?”
Kazmaroff wasn’t looking at Burton, but concentrating on staring at the front of the blank file folder while he waited for a pick-up on the other end of the line.
“No answer,” he muttered, still holding the phone.
“Call the others, Dave.” Burton walked over to the blackboard and picked up the piece of chalk again. He heard Kazmaroff hang up and dial again and then begin speaking. Jack wrote at the top of the board: “Gerry Parker.” Under that he wrote: “Maggie’s sister, agency employee” He tapped the last name lightly with the tip of his chalk. What’s the connection here?  Carefully, he drew lines from all three categories and connected them with the circle he was drawing around Gerry’s name. Coincidences can solve cases, he thought, still looking at Dierdre’s name. 
“Okay, thanks, a lot, no, you’ve been a big help. We’ll let you know.”
Kazmaroff hung up the phone.
“Jack...” Kazmaroff  clutched a small notebook in his hand and massaged it restlessly with his fingers.
Burton turned and looked at him. “You found out something?” he asked.
“I talked to a guy, Pokey Lane,” Kazmaroff said quickly. “He’s the art director at Selby and Parkers.”
“Yeah, okay, so?”  
“Lane said it was common knowledge that Patti Stump was in love with Parker.”
7
Maggie dialed in her international credit card number on the airplane phone and then Gerry and Darla’s number. She heard the busy signal and a wave of almost unbearable frustration came over her. She quickly hung up the phone and dialed a different number. The seconds were long and painful as she waited for Brownie to answer. She watched the wobbling backside of her irate businessman as he waddled down the airplane’s center aisle. Please be home, Brownie. I can’t think of anyone else who can help me now.
The phone rang on the other end. The answering machine did not even pick up. After ten rings, Maggie hung up and dialed Gerry’s house again. This time the phone rang but there was no answer.
She hung up and placed her head down on the tray in front of her.
“Miss?”
She turned to see a stern-faced flight attendant standing before her.
“All trays in their upright position for take-off, please,” she said.
8
Darla flicked off the television remote control and sat on the couch trying to savor the stillness of the house. It was no use. She missed her family. Her home felt strange and unfamiliar now, with boxes filling every room, obstructing every hallway. Already-packed pictures and photos left blank, uncomprehending walls where reassuring loved ones had stared down at her.
She considered calling her mother again but decided against it. The only thing on her mind tonight was the one thing that was bound to start another parental lecture. And she wasn’t in the mood for it.
Getting up slowly from the couch, Darla pulled her cotton cardigan around her and slipped on her flat ballet shoes to pad into the kitchen and make a bowl of popcorn for dinner. She wondered why Gerry hadn’t called yet. He had, she assumed, been in the hotel by now for hours. Sighing as she reached for the microwave popcorn packet, she had to admit that she hadn’t exactly been acting like the kind of loving, understanding wife a husband would want to call. She braced herself against the urge to feel sorry for her current loneliness and tossed the popcorn bag into the microwave. She set the oven timer and stood in the doorway of the kitchen.
Moving away from a job she liked, from a school for Haley she was satisfied with, from friends she’d known since childhood, from a city she loved, and from family right around the corner. Moving away from a lifetime of comfort and familiarity to a land at the bottom of the world. A place that saluted a queen, not a president, that drank tea—but never iced, that revered windsurfing over tennis. A place she had never expected to visit, much less live. 
The sound of the bell on the microwave ripped into her indulgent mood and she jumped a little. Must be spooked, she thought, mildly amused with herself. She had packed all the bowls already, so she just opened the steaming popcorn bag and ate a handful standing up in the kitchen.
What in the world is my life going to be like in Auckland, New Zealand? she wondered sadly. The dark windows of the kitchen reflected her own image back at her. Through them, she could see the bare branches of the trees behind her house, as they swayed gently, wickedly in the blackened windows.
Suddenly, she heard a different sound. Not a quiet creaking sound of the house settling down for the night, or a gentle whistling sound of the wind spinning leaves against the siding. Darla heard a crunching sound that shouldn’t be. A sound of slow furtiveness. A sound from within the house.


Chapter 21
1
Gerry rotated his neck slowly, trying to work the strain out of his shoulders. He sat propped up on his Best Western double bed, fully clothed except for his shoes. He had arrived in Savannah nearly an hour ago and had gone immediately to bed for a brief nap—something he rarely did at home. The stress must be getting to me, he thought as he massaged his neck with inexpert, blunt fingers.
He had debated calling Darla as soon as he arrived but had decided against it. The seven hour drive had afforded him a peaceful respite that he wasn’t willing to relinquish just yet. No sullen stares or recalcitrant answers in response to perfectly normal, even friendly, questions. Just a seven-hour stretch of road and radio. He wasn’t willing to stir the numbness of his mind right now with the guilt and silent accusations Darla would certainly feel obliged to dish up over the phone.
Needless to say, he thought with a sigh, the frequency of sexual episodes had been a little low lately. He looked at the phone again. Soon enough to call her after he’d had dinner with the prospective buyer, he thought. If all went well, he’d be in a good mood and better armored to endure her unhappiness. He got up from the bed to put on a clean shirt.
2
Had these events always been on a collision course? Since when? Since Elise came back? Since Nicole was born? Since Elise was born? Maggie lifted the gin and tonic to her lips and smiled politely at her seatmate. He’d insisted on buying the drink for her. They were approaching Atlanta. Things could finally start to happen now once she got down. She pulled out the flight magazine and flipped through its well-flipped pages, not really seeing the pictures and advertisements. She found it impossible to concentrate on anything but the slow passage of time until the plane landed.
So, Elise hadn’t died because of Gerard or because of a wicked, dirty part of Paris,  or even because of drugs.  She had died because of a sickness in her own, native country. And what about Nicole? The damaged, little waif belonging to no one? What’s to become of her? Maggie thought of her parents  experiencing one more loss, one more bone-crushing disappointment, and she took a long gulp of her drink.
“Plenty more where that came from.” Her seatmate smiled over at her.
“You’ve been very nice to me,” Maggie said.
“Ah, well, I’ve had a nervous flight here and there, myself.”
“I’m not really afraid of flying, you know.”
“The thought did occur to me.”
The attendants came by with plastic bags and collected their cups and indicated that they would be landing within a few minutes. Maggie felt a rush of energy fill her chest. She’d decided not to waste any more time calling the police once they’d landed. As soon as she got down she would hire a taxi to take her straight to Gerry and Darla’s house.
3
“I guess it never occurred to you, huh? That you were holding him back?” Patti Stump sat at the Parker kitchen table, her spine rigid in the straight-back basketweave chair. Balls of wadded up newspaper ballooned in front of her on the table. The dark, blocky form of a twenty-one round Glock pistol lay casually on the table by her hand.
“I mean, I can’t imagine your taking the time to ask him if you were meeting his needs? Did you ever do that?”
Darla sat at the table facing the woman. Her hands were drawn tightly behind her and bound to the slats of the matching kitchen chair. Her beautiful chestnut brown hair stuck out of her head in shocks as if she’d been maneuvered around by it.
She licked her lips and stared at the woman. And at the gun.
“I want you to talk to me, Darla,” Stump said. Her eyes were mad and piercing. She wore a lavender pantsuit, the kind Darla hadn’t seen since the sixties. The pant legs were flared and the trousers rode tightly on the woman’s bony hips. “I didn’t let the others talk, you know. You should feel honored.”
“You know about the others, right?” A hint of annoyance seemed to creep into Stump’s up-to-now quite patient voice. “Gerry knows too. Did you know that?”
Darla cleared her throat but was afraid to speak.
“Sweet little Dierdre? Remember her?” Stump smiled wickedly as if the first real dose of pain were about to be administered. “Gerry screwed her, you know. At the office one night. When it was over, and he’d gone, I waited for her. Do you understand me?”
Oh, my God. She killed Dierdre.
Stump’s gaze darted toward the kitchen appliances as if she were looking for something and then returned to watch Darla’s reaction.
“I’ll bet you didn’t know that Gerry screwed her, did you?”
Darla bit her parched lips.
“We’ve screwed too, you know.” Stump leaned across the table toward Darla. “He loves me and wants to divorce you. He told me he couldn’t stand you...that just to touch you makes him sick to his stomach.” She stroked Darla’s bare arm. “I’m sorry the little girl isn’t here tonight.” Stump stood up as if she would search the house again to make sure. She looked back at Darla and smiled. “I’ll have to kill her too, of course.”
Darla fought back the bile rising in her throat, wondering if terror itself was enough to kill you or just make you go mad.
4
Gerry dialed the number and tucked himself further into the phone booth. His buyer waited patiently at their dinner table over the Dover sole and Brussels sprouts. Gerry tried to remember how many client dinners he had sprung for, enthused over, gushed during, and then rolled his eyes about afterward.
His potential buyer tonight, Jim Panfel, was not a bad sort. He was canny and smart, and would probably get along great with Maggie. Or was Gerry just trying to allay any guilt feelings over selling out before Maggie had a chance to disagree? God, he was starting to think like Darla.
He tapped a finger against the pay phone impatiently and listened to it ring a half a dozen times on the other end before she finally picked up. By then, Gerry had worked up a mild annoyance. Give me a break. How long does it take to wander in to the kitchen from where ever the TV is?
“Hello?”
Instantly, he knew something was wrong. Her voice was withered yet controlled. Immediately, all of Gerry’s fears of the last six months came roaring back in living color to settle around his neck.
“Darla, what’s wrong?” He clutched the phone cord, his eyes darting to the other phone booth situated three feet away and wondered if he could stay on the line with her while dialing the police from the other cabinet.
“Oh, Gerry—“  She sounded weak and frightened.
He could hear her begin to cry, as if the sound of his voice was the only catalyst she’d been vulnerable to.
“Darla!” he said hoarsely.
And then the other voice came on the line. A voice that would awaken him, time and time again for years to come, in a screaming sweat from the deepest of sleeps, the sweetest of dreams.  A voice he would remember until the day he died. 
“It’s me, darling,” the voice hissed. “It’s Patti. I’m here with wifey. We’re all here together.”
Gerry was mute. He tried to imagine the scene. Patti at his house, Darla hysterical...
“What’s going on, Patti?” he asked evenly, hoping he didn’t sound as out of control as he felt.
“I’m taking care of business, lover. I know how hard this must be for you.”
“Patti, what are you doing there?”
“Don’t worry, darling, I told you—“
“What’s going on?! Patti, let me speak to my wife—“
“Your ‘wife’?  Your ‘wife’?”  Her voice came across the wire like serpents writhing across dried leaves. “You can forget your ‘wife’, darling. She’s deadsville, okay? She’s terminated, okay?”
My God, my God, my God...Gerry felt his mind unraveling.
“...I did little Dierdre too, or hadn’t you figured that out? Maybe I overestimated you, Gerry. I’m doing it for you, you bastard! Do you hear me? I did ‘em all for you!”
Gerry saw his prospective buyer rise from his dinner chair and look impatiently in Gerry’s direction in the phone booth. Gerry twisted away from the image and stared at the back of the booth.  “My God, Patti,” he said. “You couldn’t have...”
“Couldn’t have what? Killed someone for you? How about two someones? How about going on three someones?” A screech of laughter erupted across the telephone wire into the claustrophobic phone booth.
“Patti, don’t...don’t hurt Darla...if you care...” He knew he sounded impotent.
“The bitch is as good as dead, okay? So forget it. What I want to talk with you about now is the kid.”
Jesus! Haley.
“You call the police or screw things up in any way and I’ll kill her, okay, Gerry? Do you understand, dearest?”
“Let me speak to Darla, Patti...please...” He felt his tears splash against the phone receiver.
“No way, darling. Behave yourself and it’ll just be the three of us. I’ll be Haley’s new mama. Screw me over, Gerry, and I’ll strangle her right now with her own Winnie-the-Pooh bathrobe belt, okay?” 
He heard her small, guttural laugh, and he thought he would lose his mind. “Patti,” he said softly. “Please don’t hurt my wife and daughter. Please, don’t—“
“You want to say good-bye to your first wife? I don’t mind that, Gerry. I’m not the jealous type. Especially when it comes to widowers.”  
He heard Patti laugh again and then the small muffled noise that was his wife’s voice.
“Gerry?” Darla said. She sounded so weak and small to him.
“Sweetheart, be brave. Keep her busy until I—“
“Until you what, asshole?” Stump’s ugly, strident shriek was back on the line. “I told you, the bitch is history. Your only hope is for the kid now, understand? Do you fucking understand me?”
“Yes,” he said quickly, swallowing hard. “Yes, Patti, I do.”
5
Burton hung up the phone and turned back to the blackboard.
“No answer?” Dave asked. He stood, holding the Selby & Parker file in his hands.
“It’s busy.”
“The art director said Parker was scheduled to be out of town tonight.”
“So you said.”
“The wife would have the number where he could be contacted—“
“Her line’s busy, Dave,” Burton repeated testily.
A silence mushroomed between the two of them and they both stood looking at the blackboard.
Suddenly, Burton grabbed up his jacket from the back of his desk chair and jerked open the door.
“Bring the address,” he said over his shoulder.
6
Stump waved an arm at the cluttered kitchen, its boxes stacked and perched on counters and kitchen chairs.
“We’ll go away, just the two of us, Gerry and I,” she said. “But I think we’ll have to change our travel destination under the circumstances. Perhaps Columbia, or maybe Mexico if he doesn’t want to go quite that far.”
Afraid to speak, but convinced that her fate was assured if she did not, Darla cleared her throat again. “Why...why not just let him divorce me?” she asked in a whispery croak.
“Divorce you?” Patti’s face contorted into a sneer. “You must think I’m a moron. Is that what you think, Darla? Do you think Patricia Stump is stupid?”
She slammed her hand down hard on the table beside the gun and it jumped, making a harsh thumping sound. This seemed to remind Stump of its existence because she snatched it up and pointed it at Darla’s head.
“Go into divorce court with that mewling brat of yours and stick Gerry for alimony and child support and the house and the car and the agency? Just how well would I be taking care of him if I were to let that happen? And then you always popping up in our lives, I suppose? ‘Haley needs shoes, Haley needs a father, Haley needs, Haley needs..” Stump mimicked a sing-songy tone. “The only way Gerry and I can begin our new life together is for me to erase his old one.” She smiled and wagged the gun in Darla’s face.
Darla was surprised she wasn’t crying. Surprised she hadn’t broken down and become totally deranged. The bitch was pointing a gun ten inches from the bridge of her nose, and she was just sitting there, continent and calm. So this is what true fear does to you, she thought numbly. This is what facing your own death feels like. She tried to force herself to think of a plan. To concentrate on what she could do, could say, could possibly say...
The knock at the door made them both jump violently. Stump’s finger twitched against the trigger—the Glock did not have a safety latch—but the gun, miraculously, did not fire. She lowered the weapon and looked suspiciously at Darla.
“I don’t know who it could be,” Darla said, her eyes desperate and hopeful.  
“Stay here and keep your mouth shut,” Stump said. “I’ll kill whoever it is if you so much as fart in here.” Her mouth was a tight, nasty little slit that spewed words like the snakes and toads from one of Haley’s book of fairy tales.
Darla nodded woodenly, her eyes never leaving Stump’s face.
Patti Stump took the gun and walked to the front door.
7
The taxi driver had refused to wait. Had snatched her money, deposited her suitcase on the sidewalk, and left, convinced, no doubt of his inability to find return fares in this out-of-the-way suburb. 
Gerry and Darla lived in a tract subdivision with double and triple story elevations of stucco and brick. Maggie never noticed before how unfriendly the neighborhood seemed before tonight.
She rang the doorbell and held her breath. The house was dark but she could hear noises from the back. When the door finally opened and she faced Patti Stump—grinning insanely from behind a large, ugly handgun—Maggie found herself running through the options of what she could have done besides driving out here. And when she heard Darla’s sobs coming to her from down the hall and out onto the front steps, she knew that she had never had any other choice.
“You’re dead, Maggie,” Stump said. “You know that, right?” Stump grabbed Maggie by her hair and jerked her into the house.


Chapter 23
1
She lay quietly in the large, queen-sized bed.  The house was quiet now. No more screaming or phones ringing or awful threats. At last. Just a quiet easiness to the house, and, more particularly, to this room. Patti rolled over lazily and buried her face in one of the cotton floral pillowcases. Her heart quickened as Gerry’s distinct scent filled her nostrils. This must be the side he sleeps on, she thought with joy and she scooted her body over and lay on it. Here’s where he dreams and wakes, reads and makes love. A jarring thought pierced her when she called the image to mind of her beloved locked in a passionate embrace with the creature downstairs. Erasing the picture, she replaced it with a more vivid one of herself and Gerry, together, finally, in this bed. 
She rolled across the whole bed, reveling in the feel of it. Our bed now, she thought happily, as she pulled the soft sheets, with their roses and violets dancing against a white background, up to her sharp, hard chin.  She lay and listened to the quiet of the house and tried to imagine it filled with the sounds of Gerry’s laughter and pleasure in her. It gave her a warm feeling to think that it would all happen soon.
Getting up slowly, she walked to the bedroom closet and pulled out several of his shirts. Most of them she had seen over and over again at the office. She smiled to herself and looked at the bottom of the closet. There, amongst his shoes, was the laundry basket. She pulled it out and began pawing through it. With shaking fingers, she extricated a man’s blue and white striped dress shirt. She held it to her face and breathed deeply.  Quickly, she peeled off her own violet-colored pullover and tossed it into the dirty clothes basket. She slipped the soiled button-down over her shoulders and fastened it up to her neck. Raising an arm to her face, she smelled the fabric. Any moment now that she cared to, she could access him, call him to her, by just raising a shirt sleeve. Patti moved to an old maple dresser that stood alone against one wall of the bedroom. Odd, she thought, that he would have this old crate here in among all this expensive furniture. Possibly a boyhood dresser, she wondered? She pulled open the drawers one by one. Underwear, undershirts, socks, his passport, bowties, cufflinks, a Father’s Day card from the little girl, postcards, a packet of condoms.
Patti held the condoms in her hand and reflected for a moment on how she felt about finding them. Deciding, at last, that they were his commitment not to have any more children by the bitch downstairs, she replaced them in the drawer and pulled open another. Her fingers touched another card: “To the man I married on our anniversary.” She opened the card and read its personal contents as coolly as if she were reading an autopsy report. She closed the drawer quietly, tucking the card in the waistband of her hiphuggers. Perhaps the bitch would like to look at this while the trigger was being pulled?
Feeling annoyed and agitated once more, she left the room, the card pushing uncomfortably into her midriff, the Glock gripped in her hand. She shut the bedroom door behind her and turned to the stairs leading back downstairs.
Time to do it, she thought. Time to finish it.
2
Maggie sat in one of the kitchen chairs next to Darla, her hands bound tightly behind her. Stump had pressed packing tape to their mouths and so the two sat, mutely watching each other, as if willing the other to be either a solution or a solace.  Stump had propped up the anniversary card in front of Darla on the kitchen table. The cover showed floating silver bells and pink hearts, some art designer’s idea  of marital bliss, with the words now screaming out: ‘To The Man I Married—On Our Anniversary.’
Darla knew it was all over. She knew it was going to end right here at her own kitchen table, her own macaroni-and-cheese-hot-soup-and-tea kitchen table. A bizarre thought came to her: she and Gerry had made love on this table once. She wished she was ungagged just long enough to tell the crazy bitch that. She looked over at  Maggie. She looked dazed and scared. She felt a rush of guilt.
“Botched it with you once, Maggie,” Stump said as she wagged the gun at her. “Remember all that great advice you gave me? About how to make a man run for his life away from you? Remember that? You bitch. I’m going to enjoy killing you as much as wifey.” She turned to Darla. “I killed her sister, you know. It was easy. She was this stupid tramp, drunk or something. I just walked in, and did her. So easy. Didn’t have to shoot her. She had the strength of nothing.”
Without another word, she placed the snout of the Glock to Darla’s temple, her finger quivering on the trigger.
“Bye, wifey. Time to become the ex-wifey.”
2
Burton stepped across the tidily shaved and edged front lawn, and around to the side of the house. These new suburban housing designs made his job easier, since they eliminated all side windows. A small beam of light at the back of the house pushed through the row of oleander bushes which crowded the kitchen door. The light from the kitchen stabbed into the woods, illuminating the back yard and the trunks of the trees in the forest behind.
Moving as quietly as possible, while still being mindful that Kazmaroff’s watch was usually a little fast when timing ten-minute rear entries, Burton heard the first murmur of human voices coming from inside the house. His heart beat quicker. I was right.
He crept around the backyard and crouched at the end of a small deck behind the large kitchen window. Through the window, he could see two women, tied to chairs, their backs to him, and another woman—dressed like some kind of homeless person—waving the familiar, angular shape of a Glock. In the instant it took Burton to process the scene, the armed woman brought the gun to the head of one of the seated women. 
And then the front doorbell rang.
No! No! Too soon!
The gun-woman froze. She looked over her shoulder toward the front door. Then she scanned the kitchen frantically as though looking for an intruder to suddenly materialize before her. The expression on her face reminded Burton of a cornered, wild animal. Her hand never wavered from the woman’s head where she held the gun. 
Burton quickly tried to size up the possibilities. Would she try to answer the door? Would she make a run for it? Jesus, would she kill her hostages first?
He tried to get a bead on her with his own Colt-45, but the Parker woman was blocking the way. Think, man, think! She’s not gonna wait forever.
The sound of the brick as it hit the seven-foot expanse of window in the breakfast nook felt like a nuclear explosion to Maggie.  She screamed, then jerked her chair over on its side, crashing into Darla and knocking her chair off-kilter too as both of them tumbled to the floor. At the same time, Maggie was aware of Stump screaming and shooting out the back window. The crazed woman pumped a dozen rounds into the darkened backyard through the jagged framework that was the rear of the breakfast room. Her screams were maniacal and frenzied. 
“I’ll kill you, you bastard! Is that you, Gerry? She’s dead, you bastard! I killed her! I killed her! I killed her!”
Kazmaroff heard the first shot, then smashed his way into the house through the living room window, bringing drapes, curtain rods, window blinds and window frame crashing down with him. Still clutching his gun, he struggled to his feet and threw the draperies and hardware away from him and lunged down the short hallway to the kitchen, kicking and knocking over packing boxes as he went, years of sentimental keepsakes, photo albums, Christmas ornaments and special family treasures smashing against the wall behind him. Holding his gun in front of him in the ready position, he bellowed as he ran, “Police! Drop your weapons!”  
He arrived in the kitchen with no time to assess the situation beyond pointing his gun at a woman shooting out the back window of the breakfast nook.
“Police!” he shouted again. “Drop it!”
She started to turn to face him, her gun still level, her finger still pushing the trigger.
He shot her once, in the forehead.


Epilogue
Gerry walked away from the gate and patted down his jacket pockets. He kept his wife and daughter in view at all times. In time, I’ll calm down, he thought. After a while, I’ll be able to relax again. 
He watched Darla sitting in one of the long lines of plastic airport chairs, a roll of magazines in one hand and little Haley’s mittened hand in the other. She seemed very animated as she talked to Laurent. Only the clutching hand holding her daughter told a different story.  
“I guess you got everything?” Maggie stood next to Gerry in the airport gift shop and watched him anxiously.
He tapped his inside coat pocket. “Passports, visas, beaucoups American dollars, and a representative sampling of Kiwi dollars. Want to see them? They’re very pretty.” He stuck his hand in his jacket and pulled out a few pastel money notes in purple and pink.
“Very nice,” Maggie said.
“I was tempted to bring  Monopoly money, but Darla assured me the vendors Down Under would be too sophisticated for that.”
“So, I guess you’ve got everything.”
“Yes, Maggie. I do. Calm down, okay?”
Maggie shook her head. “I just don’t know what to say,” she said.
“You act like you’re at a funeral.”
“I’m losing a friend.”
“There are daily flights to Auckland.”
“And applications for the next space shuttle too. Excuse me for thinking neither is a very viable possibility for me.”
“You choose your own limitations.”
“Oh, thank you, Dale Carnegie. Isn’t it time for you to go yet?”
“Maggie—“
“No, Gerry, listen. I’m glad for you, I really am. If this is what you want, then I am just too-happy, okay?”
“Really.” He looked unconvinced.
“And I officially apologize for that crack I made in the car.”
“You mean the one about Kiwi fruit causing cancer? Forget it. Darla will explain Auntie Maggie’s sense of humor to Haley and I’m sure we’ll get her to eat fruit again.”
“I’m going to miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too, Maggie. But you’ll visit. We’ll come back here for visits.”
“Won’t you be afraid of being gunned down in the concourse if you come back to the U.S.?” Instantly, Maggie regretted saying it.
“Well, no,” Gerry said slowly. “Not being a fanatic or obsessive or anything. I think I can handle bringing my family back for a visit from time to time.”
They were both quiet a moment. Gerry smiled at Darla and waved to his daughter from where they sat with Laurent.
“I forgot to ask you how you knew in the first place that it was Stump,” he said, quietly.
“Well, it wasn’t the ‘first place’ unfortunately,” Maggie said. “But Patti’s scarf ring was what made it all click for me.”
“Her what?”
“It’s something women use sometimes as an accessory with scarves. Patti lived by them.  Brownie had found it in the hallway the afternoon Elise was...was killed and he’d pocketed it. The cops never even bothered to ask him to empty his pockets. Anyway, he gave it to me later, thinking it might be important only he didn’t know what it was. I knew it was a scarf ring, even a familiar one, but it wasn’t until I was sitting in the cemetery at Montmarte that it finally came to me where I’d seen it.”
Gerry shook his head.
“Yeah, only about a million times stuck on Patti’s graceful bosom. And that’s when I knew.” Maggie rubbed her arms as if a terrible chill had come into the room. “She’d been there that day. She’d been waiting for me to come home. Elise got in the way.” She shivered.” Soon as I made the office connection—Dierdre and all that—well, the rest of it fell into place.”
“You got the Laurent thing sorted out yet?” Gerry asked, switching the subject as he paid for his purchases at the counter. Candy bars, magazines, chewing gum, a paperback book.
“He’s told so many lies about so many things,” Maggie said. “It’s hard for me to get past that. He’s got a lot of good reasons for much of it all, and some very lame reasons for other stuff.” She made a helpless gesture with her hand. “My folks like him...”
“I suppose that’s good.”
“He’s not what I thought he was. Not as wonderful...and not as awful.” She ran a hand through her combed hair, knocking loose a restraining barrette. “Of all the things he’s lied about,” Maggie said, watching Laurent as he talked with Darla, “I do believe he loves me.”
“Quelle surprise, mon amie,” he said smiling. 
Maggie smiled too, then gave him a hug.
“Good-bye, boss,” she said. “Show ‘em how to do real American retail advertising down there.”
“I fully intend to. The starburst price-point and the use of oversized type is about to arrive in the land of sheep and honey.” He grinned. “Antipodal advertising will never be quite the same again.”
“Nor on this side of the pond either, dearest.”
They smiled fondly at each other.

******

The little dog cocked its head, forcing a small scruffy ear to flop into one of its eyes. It sat, attentive and enduring, in Nicole’s lap. The little girl’s small fingers pressed into the animal’s fur.
“Grandmère says she’s got fleas,” Nicole said, her face screwed into a mask of serious concern. 
I’m sure Grandmère is delighted about that, Maggie thought with amusement. Dressed in a forest green velvet tunic with black leggings, Maggie stood by the fireplace in the Brymsley library and watched the flames. Christmas was a week away and she had never remembered her parents’ home—all dressed for the season—looking or feeling more enchanting. The whole mansion smelled of fir boughs and toasted cinnamon sticks with the scent of even greater, impending, wonders wafting on the air. Maggie moved from her position by the fireplace and sat down next to Nicole on her parents’ overstuffed settee. The puppy looked at her with solemn, large brown eyes. She touched its soft fur.
“I have a cadeau for you, Nicole.” Maggie said.  “An early present.”
Nicole looked up questioningly into Maggie’s eyes, her little hands momentarily stopped in their incessant searching of the dog’s coat. 
“Is it from Maman?”  she asked.
Maggie bit her lip. “In a way.” she said, placing the glittering bracelet of charms in Nicole’s narrow lap of swansdown and cashmere. “It belonged to Elise when she was a little girl.”
Nicole touched the tiny charms with her fingers, then delicately lifted up the bracelet to watch the tinkling figurines. An ice skater, a ballerina,  a wee gold sailing ship, a miniature horse and rider, a typewriter, a Cocker Spaniel dog, an easel.
Nicole looked into Maggie’s eyes and smiled.
“Merci, Aunt Maggie,” she said.
###