Little Death by the Sea (25 page)

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.