Murder in the Rue Dumas: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery (Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mysteries) by M.L. Longworth Read Free Book Online Page B

secretary, not someone who had done graduate work in art history. She sighed as she remembered that today was Saturday and she had to make her weekly visit to her parents and watch them fawn over her older sister Lisa’s perfect baby, and worry aloud whether Lisa and her husband, both doctors, were getting enough sleep. Her parents never asked her about Michel, her boyfriend, nor did they ask her if she was getting enough sleep, or had enough to eat (no on both counts). At least today she would have something dramatic to tell them. The baby getting a new tooth was nothing compared to a murder.
    Her parents regretted that she had not continued her studies, that she knew, but to pass up full-time work in Aix would have been foolhardy. Besides, she needed the money; Michel didn’t make much as a waiter, and working at the university at least meant that she was among her peers. Michel was certainly not an intellectual, but they seemed to be destined for one another. It had been advantageous working for the doyen, and she had not been looking forward to his replacement, whomever that would be. Mlle Zacharie sat down and ran her hands over the top of the glass paperweight the doyen had given her for her birthday, and she realized that she would miss that silly old man.
    Verlaque walked out into the early evening and it began to drizzle. Mlle Zacharie could be a beautiful girl, he thought, but her sourpersonality ruined any softness around the edges she might have. Was she unloved, or incapable of loving? The dancerlike policewoman on the stairs? Loving. He forced himself to think of that morning in the hotel room, but he could no longer hear Marine’s voice, and he had a gut feeling that he had said something wrong. The bells of Saint-Jean-de-Malte began to ring in the distance, and he walked on, pulling the collar of his coat up around his neck.

Chapter Seven

An Uncomfortable Moment for Sylvie
    “T his room is bigger than my apartment!”
    “Hardly!” Marine answered.
    “I’m exaggerating, of course, but the bed is huge. There’ll be lots of room for us three tonight!” Sylvie Grassi said, fluffing her pillow and lying on it with her hands behind her head.
    “With me in the middle!” cried her nine-year-old daughter, Charlotte. “I’m so lucky!” Charlotte had been raised by Sylvie alone, and for the first two years of her life had slept with Sylvie in her double bed. Marine’s parents had been aghast; when Marine had tried to explain Sylvie’s reasoning, she had remembered that the subject of babies and sleep was taboo in her family, and so had to quietly listen to both parents complain of spoiled children.
    Charlotte hugged her mother and godmother, hopped off the bed, and went into the marble bathroom to explore, and Sylvie gave Marine an earful.
    “He is so undependable. You always come last.
Last
. He’d better take you on a replacement weekend.”
    “Sylvie, I’m not a prima donna,” Marine replied, turning on her elbow to look at her friend. “I don’t need to be pampered. He has an important job, one of the most important jobs in the region. I understand that he has things hanging over his head all the time. Professors do too…always grading to be done, class prep, papers to publish. We choose our careers and then have to make the best of it.” Marine wanted Sylvie to lay off Antoine, so she delivered the news. “Besides, today’s call came from his commissioner. There was a murder late last night in Aix.”
    Sylvie sat up and glanced toward the bathroom, where she could hear her daughter humming. “Murder? Who? Where?” she whispered.
    “This is the thing. It was at the university.”
    “
What
?”
    Marine nodded. Luckily she didn’t have any details, as her friend’s love of the macabre and sensational had always irked her. She was sure that it came from the fact that Sylvie got all of her news from the television instead of a newspaper.
    “Marine! Details!”
    “I don’t know any