Read Online Murder à la Carte by Susan Kiernan-Lewis - Free Book Online Page A

ignobility and shame. He’d found the sweet, demented Lydie there, hadn’t he? The taxi took another sharp swerve and Connor groped for a handle to secure himself. He needn’t have bothered. Within a microsecond of the two-wheeled turn, the driver had slammed to a stop and was now twisted around to face his passenger. “ Deux cent francs,” the driver said, his throat rattling with the phlegm caused by too many Gauloises.
    Connor peeled off the franc notes and handed them over. These French are clever, he decided, as he slammed the taxi door and glanced up at the gaily welcoming restaurant façade of Le Vacarres . They know you wouldn’t pay two hundred francs for a measly taxi ride...but for your life? For the chance to cheat death and live to enjoy another meal? Perhaps father children? Plant a vegetable garden? Write a book? Ahh! This was worth two hundred francs.
    He saw his man immediately on the eastern portion of the elegant café, not hidden, but hardly front and center either. He could see he’d already ordered a large Pernod . No local pastis for him, Connor thought as he picked his way toward the table. Connor had been curious when Monsieur had called last night to arrange the meeting. After all, they’d not even been on nodding terms after their last...discussion. He called to mind, briefly, the accusations, the insinuations. Yes, he thought as he approached the table, squinting against the late morning sun, today’s meeting would prove to be very interesting.
    The older man turned as Connor reached him and pulled out the other chair for himself. Neither man offered to shake hands. The seated man looked at Connor grimly, his face set in a visage of determination and controlled hatred. 
    Connor seated himself.
    “Good afternoon, Monsieur Marceau,” he said, almost tauntingly.
     
    5
    Maggie eased herself into the driver’s seat of the car, her head aching slightly from the effects of nearly five cups of coffee. Grace had left their coffee-into-lunch rendez-vous to do some shopping in Aix. Funny, she doesn’t talk about her daughter very much, Maggie thought as she started up the little car. Thank goodness. Few things were more excruciatingly boring to Maggie than hearing in minute detail the cutenesses wrought by other people’s children. She thought of her niece, Nicole. With her picture-perfect politeness, Nicole was the quintessential French girl. Her little-girl English was still tinged with charming spots of French, her eyes were bright and lively. She was always ready to jump up and fetch you another cup of this, to shut the window, answer the door, evacuate her yapping terrier from a social group. Where had she learned all that? Maggie wondered. Where had she learned to be a perfect child? So French, so pleasingly ingratiating that not even American TV could destroy her sense of style and spirit. Nicole had been an abused child before she came to live with Maggie’s parents. But she was making a remarkable comeback at seven years of age.
    Maggie drove to the edge of the village, its narrow streets lapping up onto the curbs with the dust of the streets. There was a light violet stain to all the narrow roads of St-Buvard these days, the residue of the grapes that currently obsessed the village, from the landowners to the pickers to the negociateurs to the tradespeople to the eventual drinkers.
    She had to shop for the evening meal to which Laurent had―without consulting her―invited the Marceaus. It was annoying. Not only was she relegated to the position of fetcher and carrier of the groceries (Laurent would prepare the meal), but she would have to sit through what she was sure was going to be an endless documentary this evening, narrated by Eduard and Laurent, on grapes: the growing of, the picking of, the crushing of, the eventual drinking of. Danielle seemed an unlikely candidate for introducing any other topic into the mix, or for doing anything, for that matter, except nodding