Little Death by the Sea (20 page)

“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.