Murder in Nice (29 page)

“
That’s not a
question.”

“
Did Lanie give it to
you?”

“
Of course. She slipped it
under my door that night.”

“
And then you put it in
your wallet.”

“
That’s right.”

“
So were you planning on
visiting her later?”

“
Comment
?”

“
Well, she gave you the key
to her room, right? Like an invitation?”

“
Oui
, of course. Yes, I was intending on going to her
later.”

“
Only you didn’t
go?”

“
Non
. I had an errand to run. When I returned, I felt it would be
too late to disturb her.”

“
But if she was expecting
you, would you really have been disturbing her?”

“
Why all these questions?
This is what the police asked me.”

“
Sorry. It’s just that I
got the idea that Lanie
wasn’t
expecting a visit from you. It was late when she
took her bath and she had no makeup on.”

“
The light sucks here,”
Olivier said, picking up the tripod and collapsing the legs into
one. The flashlight, still attached to it, bounced an erratic beam
crazily around the stone room. Maggie’s stomach lurched to watch
it.

“
You want to set up
somewhere else?” she asked.

“
Where the hell are they?”
he said, looking over his shoulder toward the door.

“
I was wondering the same
thing.”

“
You are cold,
Maggie?”

“
Aren’t you? It’s like a
walk-in freezer in here.”

“
During the Protestant
Reformation, the Abbaye was used to imprison suspected
Protestants.” Olivier replaced the lens cap on the camera, his eyes
focused on the task. “It is said that any poor soul left in the
abbey’s dungeon, even on the hottest day of the year, would perish
from the cold within fifteen hours.”

“
Wow. You really know your
history, Olivier.
You
could give the tour.”

“
I overheard Desiree
rehearsing it.”

“
Really? When was that?
Because I thought she only rehearsed alone in her hotel
room.”

Olivier looked at Maggie and she was struck
by how flat his eyes were. For a moment, she wondered if he might
be feeling ill. Suddenly, in one swift movement, he unsnapped the
light from the tripod and shoved it into her hands. “Wait here,” he
said, then turned and walked to the main entrance and disappeared
around the corner.

Maggie was so startled that she stood
holding the light and gaping after him for a full five seconds
before breaking into a run to where he had gone. Before she reached
the outer hallway leading to the entrance, her ears told her what
her mind could not believe.

He had slammed the door behind him.

Eighteen

This isn’t happening. It
can’t be.

The door was too heavy for
Olivier to have
accidentally
shut it. And it didn’t close on its
own.

Maggie stood in front of
the door, her hands against the heavy wood, her cheek pressed
against it.

Why would Olivier shut her
in here? Was he about to do something he didn’t want her to see?
That must be it. She turned to look behind her and flashed the beam
of her light upward but the darkness came within feet of
her.

Does that make sense? If
he doesn’t somehow kill or neutralize the others, then there
were
five
people
out there who knew she was locked in here! Her hands felt damp, and
without looking at them she knew they were trembling.

Olivier
knew she was in here. Her hand traced the wood
grain in the door and felt along the hard iron hinges with her
nails.

Olivier had put her in
here.

Why? Were they all in on
it? What possible reason? Were they all in on Lanie’s
murder?
And somehow I got too close to the
truth?
Maggie heard the sound of her own
heartbeat thrashing in her ears. She felt a sudden urge to sit down
before her legs gave out on her.

Would Laurent miss her yet?
And come looking for her? What would they do with her purse? Her
bags?

She took a step back from
the massive door and tried to breathe slowly to combat the panic.
They were either going to come and let her out or they weren’t, she
reasoned.
If they come back, my problem is
solved. If they don’t…
She
rubbed her free hand against her jeans and was
surprised to feel even in the cold that it was damp with
perspiration.

If they don’t, I’ll just
have to find another way out.

She directed her light in
the direction she’d come and felt the coldness permeate her bones.
Something unimaginable, untouchable was urging her to stay back, to
go no further. She hesitated. Staying in front of the door wouldn’t
help her get out. She took two steps toward the cloister, the
muffled sounds of her shoes and her pounding heart the only noise
in her head.

The camera bag!
Olivier had left it behind. There might be a cell
phone in it. Maggie hurried back to the cloister. Forcing herself
to ignore the ghostly grotto walls that engulfed her, she shone the
beam in front of her and ran to the bag. Setting the light down so
its beam was directed downward, she threw back the flap of the bag
and dug into it. There was an energy bar, a lens cap, and a wad of
papers. In frustration, Maggie emptied the bag onto the slate
floor, hearing the sounds as the contents hit the ground as eerie
preludes to some low-budget horror movie about to inch toward its
climax.

There was nothing in the
bag that could help her. Maggie felt a wave of nausea thunder
through her and she sat on the floor to steady herself until it
passed.
This is panic, pure and
simple
, she admonished herself. And panic
was the enemy to planning and reason. Panic was not going to get
her out of here.

When her stomach settled,
she stuck the energy bar in her sweater pocket and picked up the
papers. She shined the light on them and saw they were a set of
three sheets stapled together and folded into a tri-fold. The words
were in French. The title of the pages read,
L'Abbaye des Martyrs
. Scanning the
document, she saw it was a description of the abbey. Maggie flipped
to the back sheet, where someone had written in an obviously female
hand:
remember to stand over the crypt
when talking about the hermitage
.

Maggie looked away from
the paper. These were Desiree’s notes for the presentation. She
looked toward the entrance hall.
Unless
she’s doing it outside, in which case I wouldn’t hear her, Desiree
is not giving the presentation…but she clearly intended
to
. Maggie looked back at the
sheet.

Why are Desiree’s notes in
Olivier’s camera bag?

*****

Maggie sat in the dark with
her back against the north wall of the cloister. She wanted to
preserve the light battery for as long as possible. How she wished
she wore a watch like in the days before she used her cell phone
for telling time. Laurent still wore one because he wasn’t tied to
his smartphone like she was. She thought back to the moment when
Olivier told her she didn’t need her purse.

No purse, no cell
phone.

She figured she had been in
here at least an hour, maybe more. And still Olivier hadn’t
returned. So he was likely gone with the others. And he wasn’t
coming back. This wasn’t a joke, sick or otherwise. This was
Olivier trying to…get rid of her? Kill her?

She glanced at the camera
bag. If Olivier and Desiree are together, does that mean Olivier
was in on the attack on Dee-Dee?

How stupid can I
be?
Because I liked him—just like Annie—I
didn’t want to believe he could be guilty.

So did Olivier kill Lanie
after all?

She rubbed her hands
together, trying to create some kind of friction or warmth. Her
teeth chattered. Olivier had said they were in the cloister,
whatever that was. Were the cloister and the dungeon the same
thing? Did the same warning go for the cloister about not staying
here longer than fifteen hours if you didn’t want to die a
freezie-pop?

She picked up Desiree’s
notes and snapped the light back on. Waiting for rescue in the
cloister was as stupid as waiting for rescue by the door. If Maggie
was going to find a way out, she needed to get off her butt and
find it.

While there wasn’t a map in
the notes, Maggie thought the descriptions might help to at least
orient her. She read the first page and then looked around where
she was sitting. It appeared she was in the north gallery of the
cloister. She stood and aimed the light above her head, where she
saw leaping traverse arches supported by ornate brackets that were
decorated with elaborate carvings.

Weird
, she thought, flicking the light over the carvings.
Everything from the floor to ten feet up was barren and bald, with
all the fancywork happening way over your head where nobody could
see it. Except the angels. Her beam caught the carving of a leering
maw of a monster and she nearly dropped the light. When she
steadied her arm, she saw the monster was devouring a man
whole.

Lovely
.
I’m sure that got everyone in the
mood to pray.

Her fingers and toes were
tingling painfully and she rubbed her fists against her slacks to
relieve them.

Some of the other columns
and brackets showed carvings of human heads. Many appeared to be in
distress, others were outright screaming in agony.

None of this is
helping
. She eyed the small window over
the arches.
I can’t climb up
there
. Her eyes flicked to the stone
archway that led out of the cloister. It was darkened and she had
no idea where it led. But she also knew staying in the cloister
wasn’t getting her any closer to getting out. She glanced down at
the paper in her hand.

Built in 1030, the dungeon
in Saint Jean’s chapel is the oldest existing part of the
abbey
.
It is
situated off the cloister and consists of a narthex with two
parallel naves—the older one cut into solid rock and leading to the
cemetery.

Maggie felt her scalp
prickle. She did not want to go there. If she knew anything, she
knew she did
not
want to go there. She looked again at the dark
archway.
But a cemetery is usually
outside, isn’t it?

She shone the light into
the archway and realized the beam had dimmed considerably. She
figured if she and Olivier had entered the abbey around nine
o’clock, with the summer sun just setting, and she’d been in here
another hour, then she had at least seven hours of the darkest part
of the night left.

Her light wasn’t going to
last one more.

A fissure of fear pierced
her and the need to hurry fluttered through her chest.

That’s
panic
.
Don’t pay
attention to it
.
Don’t give in to it.
She walked to
the archway, her wavering light beam weakly piercing the darkness
before her, and entered it.

It was a long tunnel of
stone. The obviously colder temperature wrapped around her
immediately. No matter how far she held her arm out, her light
wouldn’t reveal an end to her path, just more darkness. Every step
she took she found herself imagining she would suddenly come upon a
skeleton grinning at her from a cage hanging from the
stonewalls.

One of the poor
Protestants
. She unconsciously crossed
herself.
But this is the only passageway
from the cloister
.
The notes say it leads to the dungeon in Saint Jean’s
chapel
.

Desiree’s
notes
, she reminded herself. Could they
have been planted for her to find? And was she now walking right
into a trap they’d laid for her?

Stop it
.
They’re not that smart. If you
can’t trust the stupid notes, you’ve got nothing.

Careful where she placed
her feet but mindful of the minutes she had remaining with the
light—
What would I do if it quits on me
right now? Feel my way through the tunnel?—
Maggie walked quickly, her shoulder once scraping the wall
when she didn’t see the tunnel curving around until it opened onto
a room flooded with moonlight.

She ran into the room,
desperate for the light and space it afforded after the dark,
narrow tunnel and felt the chill of a hundred opened graves against
her bare skin. An arcade of rounded Romanesque arches rested on
columns that seemed to beckon her forward.