Little Death by the Sea (35 page)

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.”