Murder in Nice Read Online Free PDF Page B

hatchet-faced woman in her mid-fifties with a
brand new face-lift. “Annie, this is Jim and Janet Anderson. They
were playing the part of the tourists for our little experiment.
And there’s Ben and Haley Newberry across there. You may have
already met them.” Maggie noticed Ben still didn’t look
up.
    “ To my left is Mademoiselle
Desiree Badeaux, and to her left, Miss Dee-Dee Bell, both of whom
worked with your daughter on this tour.”
    “ Competed , he means,” Dee-Dee said as
she smiled at Annie. She looked a little plain to Maggie, even
dumpy. “We were all going after the same prize. I really admired
your daughter, Mrs. Morrison. She was a total ballbuster, but I
mean that in the nicest way.”
    Maggie noticed Annie’s look
of confusion as she turned from Dee-Dee to the French woman next to
her that Randall had introduced as Mademoiselle Desiree Badeaux,
although Maggie did think it had been many years since the woman
could honestly claim that title.
    “ Madame,” Desiree said,
nodding curtly at Annie. Pencil thin and wearing a bone-hugging
knit dress, Desiree clearly cared very much about her appearance.
Maggie guessed she was mid- forties. Her dark hair was bobbed and
offset high cheekbones and full lips.
    “ We are all just so upset
at what happened to our darling Lanie,” Randall said. “My mind is
still blown. I cannot adjust to what happened.” He grinned as if
this were an endearing trait they should all enjoy knowing. Maggie
winced. Celebrities were a special case unto themselves, she
thought.
    He pulled a chair out for Annie and Maggie
slipped into a free one next to Haley.
    “ Thank you all,” Annie said
as Randall poured her a cup of coffee from a pot on the table. “I
wanted to meet you because you were all important to Lanie.” She
looked around the table, her eyes resting on Maggie as her
touchstone.
    “ I was hoping to see
Olivier this morning,” she said, an attempt at a smile trembling on
her lips.
    “ Oh, my gosh, didn’t you
hear?” Dee-Dee stopped in the middle of applying lip gloss. “He’s
gone.”
    “ Gone? Gone where?” Annie
looked at Maggie as if she might possibly know.
    “ They arrested him, I
heard,” Dee-Dee said, snapping her purse shut loudly. “He found the
body, you know.”
    What an ass you
are , Maggie couldn’t help think.
    “ Arrested Olivier?” Annie
looked around the table, bewildered. “But Olivier loved Lanie. That’s
impossible.”
    “ Well, you know the
French,” Dee-Dee said with a grimace. “ Cherchez la femme . Or in this case, I
guess it would be l’homme . Anyway, they wouldn’t have
taken him away if they didn’t know something we don’t
know.”
    Maggie watched Desiree’s reaction to
Dee-Dee’s words. The look that Desiree gave Dee-Dee was one of
undiluted loathing.
    “ That can’t be,” Annie said
to the group. “I know Olivier. He would never hurt
Lanie.”
    “ Love makes you do strange
things,” Dee-Dee said.
    “ What would you know of
love?” Desiree sneered. “From what you see on television soap
operas?”
    “ You French think you own
the whole love and passion thing,” Dee-Dee said, turning in her
seat to face the Frenchwoman.
    “ I imagine anyone might own
it more than a woman who has never known a man’s touch,” Desiree
said.
    Whoa! Score one for Team
France , Maggie thought as Dee-Dee’s face
blushed deep red.
    “ All right, ladies,”
Randall said. “We have company. Let’s try not to bicker, shall we?”
He turned to Annie. “And yes, losing Olivier will put a
considerable crimp in our taping abilities for the remainder of the
tour but I feel sure we—”
    Maggie spoke up. “You’re continuing the
tour?” She glanced at her brother and Haley. “I was told you were
canceling it.”
    “ Of course we’re continuing
the tour,” he said. “I mean, it’s horrifying and all that but I’ve
got a production schedule back home and we need to get this
co-anchor question decided.”
    “ When