“Baby’s Breath?”
“Yep. Are you going to be all right if I bail on you?”
Maggie waves a spoon at her. “Lots to do.”
“Don’t forget to put calling your mother on that list. And Boyd.”
“I texted Mom last night. No answer.”
“Yeah, she’s on a cellphone hiatus.”
“So my timing is perfect.”
“Not nice.”
Maggie grins. “Seriously, what do you mean?”
“Charlotte is on a getaway without her phone. She has news, but I’m sworn to secrecy.”
“About what?”
“I’m not supposed to tell you.”
“No fair. How long has she been gone?”
“Just since yesterday. But that’s all I’m going to say about it.”
“Oh, goodie. If she’s not here Sunday, she can’t try to drag me to church.”
Michele smirks and disappears back into her office.
Maggie finishes her yogurt parfait, then lets Louise and her new best friend Gertrude out. She returns to the bathroom and makes herself more hygienic and presentable, then flops onto the bed to brave her phone. She has a voicemail from Junior asking for a meet on her shop. Fine. She’ll call him in a minute. Condolence messages on the Amarillo friends group text. Had Michele told them, or did Wallace get the news from People.com? She replies with a sad face and Thank you.
Then, a text from Hank, shortly after their call the night before: I thought we were good. What have I done? And by the way, thanks for saving my life.
Maggie deletes it. She can’t let his gratitude soften her resolve. But she was pretty amazing, if she does say so herself. When Hank was shot while he and Maggie were out antelope hunting, she’d gone for help, first nailing the shooter with an arrow shot from Hank’s compound bow, then arranging for a helicopter and rescue team. She’d do it again if she had to. But that doesn’t mean she’ll answer his texts.
The doorbell rings. She hears two barking dogs, then Michele greeting someone. A male voice answers.
Michele hollers. “Maggie? It’s Boyd.”
Maggie sets her phone down. Well, that didn’t take long. She joins Boyd in the great room.
Michele’s phone rings. She glances at it, then holds it up to show she has a call to take. “Sorry.” She answers it as she’s closing her office doors behind her.
Boyd beams at Maggie. “There’s my beautiful daughter. I heard you were back.” He holds up a palm. “No, actually, I heard you left town. Not from you. Then I heard you were back. Again, not from you. I’m starting to get a complex.”
Maggie hugs him. “Hi, Boyd. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, in both directions.”
“I also heard some bad news. About Gary Fuller.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
“Just sad.” Maggie brushes hair back from her face, tucking it behind an ear.
“I’ll bet. I’m really sorry. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
“I will.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with your arms? And your . . .” Boyd leans closer, staring at her face.
“The fire. It’s not as bad as it seems.”
“Tell that to your eyebrows, because they’re not looking so good.”
“They’ll grow back.”
“It’s all over the news that you were there. Not just local. CNN, et cetera.”
“Swell.”
“The price of celebrity. Speaking of which, how would you feel about me running for office again?” He locks his eyes on her and leans in, his signature move. Voters love it. People think it shows his sincerity. Maggie thinks he knows he’s still a handsome and charismatic man, even at nearly sixty.
“Ambivalent.”
“That’s a ringing endorsement.”
“It’s up to you. Not my business.”
“It will impact you. Keep your name in the news. You’ll have to deal with reporters and talking heads.”
Michele rejoins them, watching the father-daughter exchange like a tennis match.
“You do you. I’ll worry about me.”
“It just seems like with Michele’s movie about us and all, the timing is good. My name recognition will be high.”
Only a politician would look at the disclosure of his secret love child and the murder of his baby mama by his sister and former campaign manager as good PR. Maggie shoots him a thumbs-up, out of words.
Michele grins. “You guys are coming to the premiere in Austin, right? I have tickets for everyone.”
Maggie grumbles. “If my eyebrows grow back in a week.”
“Two words: eyebrow pencil.”
“Do you promise me I won’t hate the performance of the actress playing me?”
“You’re such a snob. She’s great.”
“She’s all flash-bang-boobs. Big-budget movies. You know I wanted a real actor.”
Boyd says, “My wife and I will be there. Thanks for the tickets. I’m sure that’s what my churlish daughter meant to say.”
Maggie shrugs. “Or not. Thanks for coming by, but now I have things I gotta do. Lunch later this week?” She kisses Boyd’s cheek.
“Perfect. And I can introduce you to my campaign manager. Run through some ideas she has.”
Maggie rolls her eyes. “Let’s not and say we did.”
Seven
Later in Giddings, Maggie drops by the feed store for dog food and goat treats, then the grocery store for bandages and ointment. She can’t pick up her goats from Lumpy until she has her house back, but it makes her feel better to buy them something. Her sunglasses and the light jacket of Michele’s she’d borrowed on her way out the door help cover evidence of the fire, for which she’s grateful. At both stores, she fends off curious stares and condolences, gestures she knows are meant more to elicit information about Gary than to make her feel better. Barely anyone knew about the two of them until he died.
Leaving the parking lot of the grocery store, she sees a man who looks familiar. He’s tall. Very, very tall. Handsome, too, from what she can see under a John Deere ball cap pulled low on his forehead. His hands are jammed in his pockets. He passes, walking the other direction, and she sees a Skoal-can-like faded outline in the back pocket of his city-boy jeans. Not from around here. Maybe she doesn’t know him after all.
Before she goes anywhere else, she needs gas. She stops in town at the Valero c-store. As she’s pumping, a man’s voice calls her name. She looks around, hoping he’s speaking to a different Maggie.
“Yes, you. You’re Maggie Killian, aren’t you?” The voice belongs to a grungy-looking guy with acne on both cheeks.
“Who are you?” The pump clicks off. Tank full.
“I’m a reporter. I was hoping for a comment about Gary Fuller’s death.”
Maggie jerks the nozzle out so fast she spills gas on the concrete. She jumps back to avoid getting splashed. It gets on her hands anyway. She replaces the nozzle, then screws the gas cap back on. “Buzz off, cub.”
“Were the two of you back together? Did you catch him with another woman?”
She ignores him.
“Did he tell you he was going to be the newest coach on The Singer and whether it ended his friendship with Thorn Gibbons?”
She opens the door to Bess. Thorn Gibbons. The guy in the grocery store parking lot had looked like the TV and music superstar from Connecticut, the one who likes to pretend he’s real country and is just as famous for beating a charge that he and his college lacrosse team had roofied a teenage girl and taken turns with her as he is for his music. He and Gary had never been friends. Just acquaintances in the biz. And Gary hadn’t said a word about The Singer. Maybe that had been his good news. Hmm, if he was Thorn, why would he come to Giddings?
“Give up, already.”
“Is it true he fired his sister Kelly from his band? And that you’re a suspect in his murder?”
She slams the door, teeth gritted, and pushes down the
lock. Damn reporters. Vultures. Or, in this guy’s case, baby vulture. She should have expected they’d show up for the death of a star of Gary’s wattage, but she doesn’t have to like it. And now because of the little twerp, she and Bess smell like gas. But he got her attention with one tidbit. Had Gary really fired Kelly? She can’t imagine what would be bad enough to make him do that. He doted on the kid. Young lady. She couldn’t be more than seventeen. So, woman—barely.
Working through the to-do list she’d created on the drive yesterday, Maggie decides to call Junior for a report on the investigation. She paws through her bag, but she can’t find her phone. She searches the cab. No dice.
The reporter knocks on the window. “Come on, Ms. Killian. I’d still like a word with you. Tell me about the fire, at least.”
She pretends he isn’t there.
She digs deep to remember where she last had her phone. Boyd rang the doorbell. She was reading a text from Hank. The bathroom at Michele’s. That’s where she left it, dammit. That nixes a call to T-Mobile for a new phone number, at least for now.
Without a backward glance at the baby reporter, she drives away. Since she can’t call Junior, she drops in at the sheriff’s department. It’s noon, and he’s eating from a brown bag at his desk.
“Maggie.” His neck flushes. Junior has never quite realized he’s ten years younger than her, or that she’s not interested. He stands, like a pocketknife unfolding. He scratches his crew-cut hair. “Been hoping to talk to you.”
“I got your message. Left my phone at home. Is this okay, me stopping in?”
He wipes his hands on his trousers, then wraps wax paper around his sandwich and seals it in the bag. “Works for me. Come on.”
He leads the way into a small room with a Formica-topped metal table and a few low-budget rolling armchairs. The walls are bare. It’s a step up from an interrogation room. A very small step.
Maggie sits in a chair. It sinks in on one side of her tush. “You guys figured out who vandalized my shop yet?”
“Not yet. Not much to go on. What’s with the sunglasses?”
“The fire at Gary’s last night. It got my eyebrows and eyelashes.”
“I’m sorry. About that and about Mr. Fuller.”
“Were you able to clear Gary before he died?”
“We can’t much rule anyone out yet.”
“Except for me, I hope. I was in Wyoming.”
“I wasn’t saying . . .” He stops.
Maggie prods him. “Do you need anything else from me?”
“Well, your statement. And I was hoping you’ve had more ideas about who might have done this.”
“Honestly, my money’s on drunk teenagers. But did you look at Rickey Sayles? Or one of Gary’s latest bed bunnies? Jenny was the last one I knew by name.”
“Your renter said she hasn’t seen anyone come and go except Michele. And Gary.”
Maggie can’t resist bedeviling him, especially after he ducked her question. She puts a hand over her breastbone. “You think Michele did it?”
He blushes again. “Of course not.”
“Any direct evidence it was Gary?”
“No.”
“Well, I know you’ll do your job to the best of your abilities.”
Junior looks down. Maggie feels guilty, for half a second.
Then Junior says, “What were you doing out at his place last night anyway?”
She’s surprised. He isn’t usually this direct with her. Or nosy. “A little something called none of your beeswax.”
He looks away from her and toward the ceiling. “The fire marshal called. She wants to work together. Thinks there could be crossover between the vandalism of your shop and the fire that killed Gary.”
“I don’t see how.”
“You said Gary was angry at you.”
“So he told me, and everyone else that would listen.”
“But you were going to see him.”
“We’d buried the hatchet.”
Junior sucks in his upper lip and rakes it several times with his teeth. He twists in the seat of his chair like he can’t get comfortable. “That’s not what the emails between you say.”
Maggie snaps up in her chair. “How are you reading our emails?”
“He left his phone in his car. No password.”
“So read our texts.”
“We did. There’s nothing about you going to his place. Or a buried hatchet.”
Maggie’s brain races. What’s happening here? This feels like it’s a suspect interview in a possible arson-murder case. “That’s bullshit, Junior. I can’t remember the last time I sent Gary an email, anyway.”
He recites an email address. “Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Appears you emailed him plenty. And they paint a very different picture.”
“In what way?”
“That he dumped you.”
Maggie can’t help it. She laughs. Obviously her attempts to keep the fact that she’s in love with a cowboy in Wyoming who’s marrying another woman have been too successful. “What? He did not.”
“That he slept with other women and you got mad.”
Maggie stops laughing. “You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“He always slept with other women. I slept with other men.” And a few women, but she doesn’t volunteer that information. “We had an open relationship.”
“The emails also said he wouldn’t take you back, and you were coming over to make sure he understood you weren’t taking no for an answer.”
Maggie freezes. She never sent any such thing. None of them. Is Junior lying? Or is someone setting her up? But who? And how? One thing is for sure. She can’t continue this conversation without knowing more, and not without her lawyer. She’d talked to the cops once before without Michele, in Wyoming. She’d learned her lesson and good.
Her chair rolls back and smashes into the wall as she gets up. “I came here to talk about vandalism at the Coop, in good faith. Not cool, Junior. We’re done here.”
“What’s that smell?”
“What smell?”
“It’s like gasoline or something.”
“It is gasoline. Leftover from yesterday when I committed arson.” She slits her eyes at him. “As if. I got gas in my truck on the way here, and I spilled some on myself, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Okay. What about your statement?”
“Kiss my ass. There’s your statement.” She rushes out, angry and dazed. She needs to call Michele. No phone. Dammit!
In her truck, she drums her fingers on the steering wheel. What to do, what to do? Think, think, think. Her brain spins like a pinwheel. She puts her hand out as if to stop it, but it speeds up. She imagines little plastic pinwheel fins hitting her fingers.
Fine. She can’t fix everything at once. Or anything at all. After the last week and especially after Gary’s death last night, she’s a mess. She needs . . . What does she need? What will make her better? The answer is usually booze and sex at times like these. But the image in her mind is different, sudden, and strong. A little wooden farmhouse. Her own queen-size four-poster bed. Coffee percolating on her gas stove. Front Porch Pickin’, a simultaneously melancholy and joyful painting of a guitarist by her birth mother, Gidget, hanging over the fireplace mantel.
She needs home. She steers Bess toward her house. After. I’ll consult Michele after.
When she pulls into the small parking lot, her American flag is waving in the breeze from its pole on the front porch. There’s a sign over the door: FLOWN THE COOP. The outside of the house is a kaleidoscope pattern of painted boards, weathered so the palette is muted. Rustic impressionism. Her heart swells. The first time she saw this place, her hopes had been low. So much dirt, grime, and trash. She’d gone treasure hunting in the depths of the barn. Found the rainbow of reclaimed boards stacked against a back wall. In a brilliant flash, she’d seen what they could become. She set to work. Bringing
the vision to life had given her hope and the strength for the long, hard excavation and restoration project that turned into a new life.
A woman appears, walking down the flagstone path around the side of the Coop. Even from fifteen yards away, Maggie can see she’s wearing heavy makeup, large sunglasses, a voluminous sundress and a floppy hat. Very American-tourist-goes-to-the-beach. It seems like camouflage, but Maggie’s not one to point fingers at the moment. The woman is smoking a cigarette, her eyes cast down. She doesn’t look up, like she’s unaware of Bess, unaware of Maggie. Maggie slams the truck door and hurries to meet her. That brings the woman’s head up. She reverses course.
Maggie chases after her, passing a busy hummingbird feeder and a sign that reads PRIVATE RESIDENCE. “Wait.”
The woman speeds up.
“Leslie?” she calls. She isn’t even sure it’s her renter. Leslie checked in after Maggie left for Wyoming, so they hadn’t met.
The woman pauses with her hand on the doorknob of the other house. Maggie’s home. The one unseen from the road, only accessible from behind the store. “What do you want?”
“Hi. I’m Maggie Killian. The owner. Are you Leslie?” She closes the gap between them.
She nods. “I know who you are.” Her face and startlingly blue eyes have a flat expression that matches her voice. Under the pancake makeup, Maggie thinks she sees a scar on her lip and under her eye, but she’s still beautiful, if icy.
“I’m sorry.” She points at the cigarette. “No smoking at my place.”
Leslie drops her cigarette and crushes it under her sandal.
“Great. Well, I just got back in town. I was checking to see when you’re leaving. It’s today, right?”
“I have two more nights.”
Maggie frowns. She wishes she had the contract with her. She could have sworn that it ended today. But so much has happened in the last week, so many mind-stressing things. She doesn’t trust her brain. “All right, then. I’ll just drop my trailer out back and check on some things in my shop. Sorry for all the traffic in and out after it got vandalized.”
“You should warn people if you’re at a risk for crime.” She talks like an old woman, but it doesn’t look like she’s any older than Maggie is.
Sick Puppy (Maggie #2) Page 6
