Little Death by the Sea (21 page)

“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.”