Little Death by the Sea (36 page)

“Dear girl. That’s the nature of his
business. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t care for you, or love you, come
to that.”

“How very strange you people are.”

“’You people.’ By that, I take it you mean
‘non-Americans?’”

“He could lie to me, cheat me, intend to
continue lying and cheating me—and still love me?”

“Sounds jolly rude when you put it like that.
But I dare say he’s not interested in cheating you again. As for
the lying, well, once you start, it’s bloody difficult to pack it
up if you see what I mean. He can’t very well come clean on Nicole,
now can he? I’m sure he doesn’t relish living a lie the rest of his
life in regards to her—“

“But he could do it.”

“Maggie, life isn’t perfect, or haven’t you
come to that yet?”

“I could have you arrested.”

“Well, that’s very nice, I must say.”

“You cheated my family out of fifteen
thousand dollars.”

“I’m not going to give it back, if that’s
where this is leading.”

“I don’t know what to make of you, Roger. I
sort of like you but you’re a definite felon.”

“You Americans and your backward charm. Look,
Maggie, I’ve been honest with you, haven’t I? Why not go back to
Atlanta, go back to Laurent and pick up the reins again? Let Nicole
go on being Nicole and enjoy the fact that you and your family are
doing your best for one of the world’s downtrodden.” He shrugged
again. “I really don’t see what else is to be done.”

Maggie opened her mouth to speak and then
closed it. She turned away and looked once more at the frenetic
crowd. This is where Elise sat, she thought. This is where Elise
felt at home and happy. This is where Elise met Gerard.

Maggie took a sip of her wine, aware that
Roger was watching her closely. Still holding her glass, she looked
at him with resignation.

“A good year, I suppose?” she asked
wearily.

“Of course, my dear,” he said, reaching for
his own wine glass. “Wouldn’t expect anything less from ol’ Roger,
would you?”

She noticed that his eyes seemed to twinkle
with real pleasure.

Her meal, which Roger paid for, was a plain
egg omelet with a healthy serving of the ever-present
pommes
frites
. The omelet—fluffy, light, with barely a hint of the
cheese, green pepper or ham that had gone into it—was, without
doubt, the most exquisite thing Maggie had ever tasted. Later, when
she happened to see the bill the waiter planted in front of Roger,
she began to understand where her father’s money went during
Elise’s first year in Paris. Her omelet, heavenly though it was,
cost Roger nearly $US65.

She walked slowly down the Boulevard de la
Madeleine and watched the evening people scurry about their evening
activities. Sunday night might not be one of the more bustling
times in Paris, but it was not sleepy either. Plenty of people were
running to the opera, to the nightclubs, to late-night restaurants,
to sit in the always-teeming cafés to smoke and drink and watch the
pedestrians.

Remorse had not been Roger’s tendency, Maggie
thought as she walked. He made no apologies for his behavior or his
profession. And he seemed to genuinely like her. She wondered if
that was truly compatible with the kind of person he was. She
wondered the same of Laurent. Incredibly, Roger seemed to think
that lies were little, annoying things—necessary to do from time to
time and imminently forgivable if you got done to. Of course, she
thought, the man lies for a living. He admitted to her, in a
conspiratorial moment that should have flattered her, that he was
in town posing as a near relative to the Princess Michael and
serving as an aristocratic Parisian guide for a group of wealthy
East European tourists.

And so this had been Laurent’s work too, she
thought. She had been afraid to ask Roger—in case he decided to
tell her the truth—exactly how far he and Laurent would be willing
to go in their chosen profession. Where did murder fit in?
Blackmail? Kidnapping?

She waved down a taxi and gave him the
address of her hotel. Tonight was not a night for negotiating grimy
Metro stations with their late night clientele graduating from mild
panhandling to a more forceful rendition of acquiring a stranger’s
money. The night lights of Paris never ceased to thrill, she
thought, as she watched the golden, carnival glow of the Eiffel
Tower in the distance, illuminated like some wonderful Ferris
wheel. She eased back into her seat and wished she could feel the
thrill without experiencing it through the veil of gloom and
listlessness she felt wrapped around her.

In spite of the wine at dinner, she was sober
and dispirited as she paid the taxi driver and ascended the entry
steps to Hotel de L’Etoile Verte. The snotty young woman wasn’t on
duty tonight. At least Maggie could be grateful for that, she
thought as she asked for her room key. The middle-aged man who had
taken the girl’s spot for the evening seemed weary and
world-soured, yet not so aggressively peevish as the mademoiselle
before him.

“You have messages,” he said with no
curiosity. He pulled out two small pieces of paper with her room
key and handed them to her.

She felt a sharp pang. Laurent had called.
She thanked the night concierge and trudged to the hall elevator,
shoving Laurent’s message into her purse. The second communication
was from Michele, suggesting lunch tomorrow at a café called
L’homme
. Maggie could get directions from the front
desk.

Not much of an investigative trip, really,
Maggie thought as she punched the up arrow button for the elevator.
She had decided, in the taxi ride back to the hotel, that she would
leave Paris the day after tomorrow. First, she would say good-bye
and thank you to Michele, maybe take a quick walk down the Champs
Elysee for sentimentality’s sake and then put some closure to this
Elise-in-Paris thing. She knew her parents must be wondering why
she hadn’t called them yet. In a rare, self-indulgent moment, her
load began to feel very heavy and she could feel the message in her
pocket from Laurent start to leave scalding marks on her jacket
lining. The last thing she felt like doing right now was talk to
Laurent.

She raised her hand to give the elevator
button another impatient jab, a mild curse forming in her mind,
when the doors finally jerked open. She stepped aside to let the
sole occupant out and then dropped her purse when she realized that
that occupant, now staring menacingly at her from the elevator
interior, was Gerard Dubois.

Chapter Twenty

1

He stood, wavering, in the elevator, then
stepped clumsily over her purse and positioned himself in front of
her. Maggie could smell the alcohol wafting from his rumpled
clothes like steam. He looked at her through rheumy eyes as though
he didn’t know who she was.

He knew.

“So, you’re back,” he slurred, blasting her
with a vaporized mixture of cheap wine and garlic.

She made a face and took a step away from
him.

“Whatza matter?” He leaned toward her in a
threatening sway, as if he might topple over onto her at any
moment. “You are in Paris to see Gerard, eh?” He licked his lips
and grinned obscenely. “Gerard is here.”

Maggie was visited by a vision of awful
similarity: Laurent standing in her mother’s garden at Brymsley,
his hands open in a disarming gesture, his eyes full of love and
relief to see her. Laurent is here.

She pulled her eyes away from the tottering,
malodorant wretch blocking the lift doorway and stooped to pick up
her purse.

She was aware that her new knowledge of
Laurent had temporarily blotted out her desire to talk to Gerard.
She had actually been planning to leave France without speaking to
him at all. In light of Laurent’s betrayal, whatever Gerard might
have to tell her had seemed somehow inconsequential. In any event,
deep in her heart she knew that Gerard was still the key. He’d
always been the pivot around which all the pain and confusion had
spun. Deep down, she knew the true reason she’d balked at seeking
him out was because she was simply afraid to learn any more—about
Elise...and about Laurent.

“I won’t talk with you here,” she said
grimly. “Outside.” She jerked her head to indicate that he was to
follow her into the lobby. There, under the nose of the night
concierge, they would talk.

“You are afraid, little peony?” Gerard leered
at her and wiped his oily fingers on his pant legs, but he followed
her. “You are afraid of Gerard,
non
?” He snuffled a sort of
grunting laugh that put shivers down Maggie’s spine. That her
sister could have loved this!

She sat on a long, uncomfortable, settee in
the small lobby. It was well lighted and, although late, she felt
safe from him there. He heaved himself next to her on the sofa.

“Madame Zouk told me where to find you,” he
said, his foul breath blasting into her face.

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t? How are you thinking I am finding
you, eh? The bitch told me where you were!” He smiled widely at
her, displaying yellow and gray teeth.

She looked at him coldly and willed herself
to appear more in control than she felt. “Did you kill my
sister?”

He shoved his face closer to hers but she did
not retreat. His pupils were the size of pinpricks.

“You are a pig,” he said menacingly. “Your
family is a family of pigs.”

“Did you kill—“

“I did not kill her. I told the police I did
not kill her.”

“Did you kill Nicole?” Maggie swallowed hard.
Might as well get all the tough ones out of the way up front.

“You can ask me such a thing? Your own family
has stolen my—“

“Cut the crap, Gerard.” Her hands tingled
with her loathing. “I know the real Nicole is dead. Did you kill
her?”

He softened, his eyes still locked with hers.
Then, his shoulders slumped forward and Maggie had an awful moment
when she thought he was going to weep.

“I did not kill her,” he repeated, his eyes,
half-lidded as if sleepy. Maggie took a deep breath and willed
herself not to blink.

Gerard pulled out a crushed pack of Gitanes
and stuffed a bent cigarette into his mouth. She waited while he
lit the tip with a match. He dropped the used match at his feet and
looked at her smugly.

“I was drunk.” He shrugged and smiled. “Very
drunk? Peut-etre. She fell off the boat sometime in the night,
perhaps.”

Maggie wanted to put her fist through his
stinking, decrepit face, wanted to claw his features from their
very bones until his smirk lived only under her fingernails. She
waited, her heart pounding in her chest.

“After we left her mother.” He blew a smoke
ring at Maggie. “Elise was a very bad
maman
, eh? Nicole and
I lived on a little boat.
Un petit bateau
?” He smiled at her
again and took a puff from his cigarette. “One night, she is
falling over the side.” He made a graceful, slow gesture with his
hands to indicate the soft fall of Nicole over the side of the
little boat. “Pshhht!” he assimilated the sound of a small weight
spilling into the stagnate water. “In the morning we are finding
her little body.” He smoked harshly on the filter. “It was very
sad,” he said, smiling ruefully at her.

“Did...did Elise know?” Maggie began to feel
cold and distanced from the lobby at the
L’Etoile Verte
, as
if what she were hearing were from a television show, something
unreal and unrelated to her. Her mind fought to stop the image of
the little four-year old girl sinking to her death in the
night-dark Mediterranean Sea with no one to know or care.

He made an abrupt gesture as if waving away a
fly.

“Pfut! I did not tell her.” He looked
directly at Maggie. “She did not ask.”

Didn’t ask about the wellbeing of her own
daughter?

“You came to see Elise in my apartment the
afternoon she was killed.”

Gerard nodded almost gently.

“I wanted to screw her,” he said.

“Why should I believe you did not kill her?”
Maggie said. “You were there. Witnesses saw you there.”

“
Mademoiselle
,” he said sarcastically,
his tongue flicking out over his cigarette filter like a snake’s.
“Gerard was there. Gerard did not kill Elise.” He sighed. “I went
to Elise’s door.” He held Maggie’s gaze.

“How...how did you know where I lived?” she
asked.

“I am following you when you bring her home,
yes?”

Maggie felt her skin crawl.

“She is very sick when I see her,” he
continued, drawing hard on his Gitane. “She will not come away with
Gerard. The pig! She is
fou
...and very noisy. I am telling
her to shut up! Shut up!”

Maggie’s mind swelled with disgust for the
man who sat next to her on the sofa in the elegantly shabby lobby
of
L’Etoile Verte
.

“I am taking, for me, the things
ma
femme
should be giving me.”

Maggie snapped back to attention.

“What things should she be giving to
you?”

Grinning, Gerard dug into his pocket and
pulled out a wax-paper packet no bigger than a deck of cards. He
placed it on the sofa between them.

Maggie looked at the packet, then reached out
to pick it up.

He grabbed her wrist and held it firmly.

“You are paying, Gerard,
n’est-ce pas,
Mademoiselle
?”

“I am not paying for what I have not seen,”
she spoke calmly, forcing her dinner to stay in her stomach.

He released her.

“
Regarde
,” he said.

Gingerly, she picked up the little packet as
if it were full of incubated rattlesnake eggs and opened it.

Elise’s gold charm bracelet. A pony, a little
artist’s easel, a piano, a miniature book. Both girls had been
given charm bracelets when they turned ten years old. Maggie had
lost hers on a Girl Scout camping expedition the following year.
Their mother had added to Elise’s bracelet over the years...up
until the time Elise had moved away. Now, Elise’s gold-braided
bracelet made a soft tinkling sound in Maggie’s hands, every spare
loop filled with a tiny, bobbing gold charm except for the space
left by the little Scottie dog that had been found in Maggie’s
apartment the night Elise died.