Murder in Nice Read Online Free Page B

Something about his
office door bothered her, but she pushed the feeling to the back of
her mind. She needed to be present in every sense of the word for
Annie.
    Massar led them into an elevator, which took
them two floors below the main entrance. There, the temperature
dropped significantly. Maggie had the sense that they were
literally entering a catacombs of graves buried deep beneath the
city’s vibrant and pulsing core. Perhaps Annie did too, for her
hand clutched tightly at Maggie’s.
    Massar opened a door to a large room, for
which Maggie was grateful. She was already having trouble breathing
just thinking of how far below the surface they were. She didn’t
think she could handle a small room at this point.
    A table was set off to the side against the
wall, a draped body on it and a large overhead lamp poised over it.
Massar strode to the table and waited for Maggie and Annie to catch
up to him. He turned on the light and, once they were standing next
to him, jerked back the drape to reveal the corpse. Annie sank to
the floor without a sound and Maggie, momentarily stunned, failed
to move fast enough to catch her. Massar whipped the drape back
over Lanie and knelt next to Annie. Maggie took a step back and
felt her stomach lurch.
    In the background of her mind she heard
Massar talking to Annie in French. The words didn’t matter. The
voice was kind. Maggie stared at the draped body and a series of
images burst into her head: Lanie in her cheerleading outfit; Lanie
lip-syncing to a Backstreet Boys song in her mother’s living room;
Lanie drinking her first beer and laughing when most of it ended up
down her shirt front.
    And underneath it all was
the niggling memory of what she’d seen on the walk down to this
terrible place—the door with Massar’s name on it and the plaque
under it that read Enquêteur
Homicides .
    Homicide detective.

    Three
     
    “ They think she was murdered,” Maggie said to
Grace on the phone that evening after she and Annie had checked
into the Soho—Annie had begged her to stay with her. After her
afternoon, Annie promptly took two sleeping pills and went to bed.
Maggie spoke on the phone from the balcony, the door open in case
Annie needed her.
    “ You’re kidding.
Why?”
    “ I don’t know but I intend
to find out.”
    “ Does Lanie’s mother know
yet?”
    “ No. She’s so upset about
it all that she hasn’t really asked any questions about how Lanie
died. Just the fact that she did is occupying all her mental
abilities at the moment.”
    “ I can imagine.”
    “ I know. Me too. It’s
awful, Grace. Just terrible to think of one of our own little
dears…”
    “ I know, dearest, so shut
up. I don’t want to think of it.”
    “ But the point is, the cops
are looking at this as a homicide. If Annie asks them, they’ll have
to give her answers.”
    “ Because that strategy has
worked out so well for us in the past.”
    “ Problem is, I don’t think
she wants to ask too many questions.”
    “ Well, she probably would
if she was told the truth about how Lanie died, don’t you
think?”
    “ Maybe. But I’m not sure
she can take much more. And telling her that her daughter is not
only dead but was murdered definitely qualifies as much more .”
    The sound of the hair dryer falling to the
carpeted floor made Maggie whirl around to see Annie standing not
four feet from her, her eyes wide with horror, mouth open.
    “ Oh, shit,” Maggie said
into the phone.
     
     
    *****
    The café faced the Quai des Etats-Unis and
the brilliant blue of the sea beyond. Only in Nice did the café
chairs face the street rather than the table, Maggie noted as she
poured her bottled water into a glass. It was the dinner hour but
neither she nor Annie had done anything but pick at their
meals—omelets with pommes frites and the omnipresent bowls of citrus
olives.
    “ I didn’t know how to tell
you,” Maggie said. “I thought you’d had enough for one
day.”
    Annie looked like she’d