Little Death by the Sea (28 page)

“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—“