Sick Puppy (Maggie #2)

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  “Well, I’m not. Or I haven’t been, anyway. But again, I’m sorry about that. Is everything okay otherwise?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be in and out some. Let me know if you need anything.”

  Leslie nods and goes in the house.

  “Wait. Your cigarette butt.”

  Leslie shoots her a look. “I’ll get it later.” The door closes.

  Maggie stares after her, then picks up the butt, pinching it in the middle, her face puckering with disgust. Something about Leslie that she can’t pinpoint seems familiar—Voice? Eyes? Shape and gait?—and at the same time completely foreign. Leslie sure had a lot more personality on the phone and via email. Well, all the deputies and insurance people probably had her miffed.

  Maggie pulls her trailer to the back of the property and unhitches it in front of the storage barn. Then she returns to her beloved store, steeling herself for what she’ll find. When she flips on the lights, the devastation takes her breath away. Everything on the shelves and counters has been swept to the floor. Broken glass is everywhere. Items on the wall hang askew. Others lie smashed on the floor. Her favorite installation piece, a photo booth she made of salvaged doors, is splintered and collapsed. A butcher-block table rescued from an old industrial application is covered in red paint. She forces herself to walk all the way in and examine every item. Almost everything will require at least minor repair, and some things will never be the same.

  A little more mess sure won’t make it worse. She returns to the trailer and spends the next half hour unloading her Wyoming haul into the barn. She hears a car pull up in front of the Coop but ignores it until the sound of footsteps behind her demand her attention. When she turns to see who it is, she gets a nasty surprise. It’s her customer-turned-competitor, a tiny slip of a man, with more hair in his mustache than on his head.

  Before he can speak, she says, “You’ve got some nerve showing up here, Rickey Sayles.”

  “I heard you had some trouble.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “You’re a sister in arms. I came to offer my help.”

  Maggie huffs. “I don’t need any more help from you.”

  “I’d be happy to renew my offer to buy the Coop.”

  Maggie gets in his personal space, finger stabbing at his chest, but not touching. “Get off my property now. I’ve told law enforcement about the threats you’re making around town. I’ve got my eye on you, Sayles.”

  Sayles doesn’t flinch or back away. He doesn’t even blink. “My offer isn’t going up, Maggie.”

  “You can put that offer where the sun don’t shine.”

  Looking like a librarian disappointed in a loud patron, he shakes his head. “You know where to find me, then.”

  “Oh yes. I most certainly do.” Maggie points toward the parking area.

  Sayles disappears the way he came.

  Maggie finishes unloading the trailer, fuming and muttering. She brushes dust off her hands, then locks up both buildings and leaves.

  She has no idea how she’s going to be ready for antique week, but she will be ready, and she’s not selling out, to Rickey Sayles or anyone else. Starting tomorrow, that has to be her sole focus, round the clock. Heartbreak over Hank and grief about Gary won’t bring them back. Worry about wrong-minded law enforcement won’t pay the bills.

  And there’s no way insurance will begin to cover all she’s about to lose if she misses her biggest sales opportunity of the year.

  Eight

  Maggie drives too fast on her way back to Michele’s. Without the trailer, Bess feels like a horse unhitched from a wagon. Maggie just wants to get away from the mess at the store, the smarmy Rickey Sayles, and the weird vibe from Leslie. The farther she gets from her house, the more convinced she is that Leslie was supposed to have checked out that morning. She would never have left her house rented this close to the antique show. She had always planned to come back from Wyoming and gear up for it.

  Suddenly, she’s sure Leslie is lying. Absolutely, positively sure. Maggie doesn’t want to wait to confront her. She wants her house back. She wheels the truck around, barely hitting the brakes as she U-turns. She pushes Bess as fast as she can go through the gravel on the curves. Steering the truck in the center of the road, she makes the last turn before her house and nearly plows into another car head-on.

  She slams on the brakes, steering to the right, grateful she left the trailer by the barn and doesn’t have to worry about whether it will jackknife or flip. To her surprise, the sedan stops, too. The driver, a man about her mother’s age, leaps out of the silver car and runs to the passenger door of her truck. Maggie shoves her hand into her bag. It comes out with her pepper spray, which she holds out of sight in her lap. At her door, the man leans over, panting.

  Maggie cracks the window. “Are you okay? Sorry if I scared you.”

  “Maggie.” He stands up, leveling startling watery green eyes on her. His thin white comb-over has flopped to the wrong side and hangs in a long, limp arc.

  It’s been a few years since she’s seen him, but she knows him. Gary’s manager. “Tom.” Tom Clarke. Late of Nashville, but unable to completely hide the Georgia in his voice. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Looking for you. Can we talk?”

  Maggie feels nervous butterflies in her gut. Something is way off about him. She and Tom aren’t exactly buddies. He’s one of the few people in the world that knew about her and Gary, back when, other than their families and a very few friends. They’ve dined together and watched Gary perform together, but they’ve also argued over what Tom called her unhealthy influence on Gary. She’d backed Gary when he refused to move to Nashville and turned down songs better suited for Luke Bryan. That wasn’t unhealthy. It was just less lucrative than what Tom had in mind for Gary.

  But now his cash cow is dead. The man before her seems desperate. Then it hits her. Gary was going to kick Tom to the curb. He’d mentioned thievery and other clients. Had he gone through with it? She grips the pepper spray tighter. “What’s going on, Tom?”

  “Not here.”

  “If you want to talk to me, then talk. You’re sounding like a crazy person.”

  “I don’t know who else to talk to. Gary is dead. And I’m afraid people are going to think I killed him. Did he say anything to you about me before he died?”

  Um, yeah. But she ignores his question. “Why would they think you killed him?”

  He looks around, his eyes wild. “Because I was supposed to meet with him yesterday.”

  “About what?”

  “That’s not what’s important. What matters is I didn’t show up. I was late. By the time I got there, he was long gone.”

  “I’m not the one to tell. You need to go to the authorities.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  He shakes his head violently.

  “Did you kill him, Tom?” Maggie holds on to her pepper spray for dear life.

  “I’m a lot of things, Maggie, but I’m not a killer.”

  “Yes.” She pokes the bear. “You’re greedy, a climber, and a thief, and we both know Gary knew it.”

  He stares at her for a moment. “I shouldn’t have believed you would understand.” He runs back across the road toward his car.

  “Wait! Where are you going?”

  But he doesn’t answer, just wrenches his door open and sprays a rooster tail of gravel as he guns his sedan in the direction of the highway.

  Nine

  At the Coop, Maggie parks Bess inches behind the bumper of the silver Taurus she assumes is Leslie’s car. She pauses, hands trembling. What the hell had that been about with Tom? He’d scared her. She knows she has to tell the authorities—will any of them believe her? But she’s here now to deal with Leslie. The Tom issue can wait a few more minutes. She takes three deep, calming breaths, then gets out of the truck.

  At the door to her home, Maggie knocks so hard it rattles glass in the si
de window. No one comes to the door. Her knuckles are smarting, so she pounds the door with her palm. When that doesn’t work, she stalks back to Bess and honks the horn, long and loud, over and over.

  Maggie has just given up on the horn and is returning to the door when Leslie finally steps onto the porch.

  “What do you want? I was sleeping.” Leslie crosses her arms over a perky chest. Boob job, Maggie realizes.

  “Our contract ended today. You were supposed to be out at eleven a.m.”

  “Sorry, but no. I emailed you about staying two more nights. You said yes. And I sent you the money for it.”

  Maggie scowls. That isn’t the same answer as earlier. “Two more nights? That’s news to me. And I didn’t receive any payment.”

  “Check your PayPal.”

  Maggie had turned off PayPal notifications long ago. She hates all the services that insist on emailing her if someone so much as farts in their app. She’ll have to look at it later. But she’s standing her ground now. “I need you to pack up and vacate my home.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “Let’s just call it a misunderstanding, as long as you leave.”

  “I’ll do no such thing.”

  “You’re a squatter.”

  “I’m a renter, and I’ll call 911 if you continue to threaten me.”

  “I haven’t threatened you.”

  “Are you calling me a liar again?”

  “I’ll be back. Don’t make me bring a locksmith.”

  The woman shuts Maggie’s own door in her face.

  Ten

  Maggie leaves the compound, her emotions in a jumble, Louise riding shotgun. She has no destination in mind. The wind through the windows blows her hair up and around her head and face. She holds it back with one hand and steers with the other. Moors & McCumber’s “Take Me Away” is just loud enough for her to hear it over the road noise. Her heart pounds along with the upright bass. The song is a perfect match for her confusion, tension, and grief.

  She cruises east on Highway 290. When she realizes she’s almost to Brenham, she decides to reverse her course. She doesn’t have any interest in heading into town. As she swings around into westbound traffic, she notices a long line in front of a small tan brick building. A black sign reads TRUTH. She’s heard of the place, a sort of mecca for worshipers at the altar of Texas barbecue.

  Truth. She rolls the word around in her mind. Truth. The truth is Maggie’s all kinds of screwed up. She accelerates, putting her mind on autopilot as Bess eats up the miles. She takes a left past Burton. The truck attacks the dips like a heavy car on a roller coaster. Six Flags Over Texas. The Runaway Mine Train ride. In middle school, she’d endured the heat and the lines to ride it seven times in a row on a class trip to the amusement park. She loved the sensation of jerking around corners, diving down descents, struggling up hills. Always taken by surprise by the unknown in front of her.

  She doesn’t love it so much now that it’s her life. She needs a destination. Enough of this floating. It’s killing her slowly.

  The smell of something charred fills her nostrils. Suddenly, she knows exactly where she’s headed, and she doesn’t have to change her course to get there.

  As she rounds a sharp curve, she comes upon parked vehicles lining the road on both sides, as far as her eyes can see. Brake lights flash, and she slows Bess. Her grief sharpens. All these people are here to rubberneck at the site of Gary’s death. In the distance, there’s a grayish mess where there used to be a house. A place where she spent countless hours with him. Working. Laughing. Talking. Not talking. Naked, clothed. Mostly happy. A refuge for them both. A place where they’d taken care of each other over the years, mostly in blessed seclusion. A friendship, she realizes.

  Now it’s gone. He’s gone. They’re gone.

  She’s close enough to see the crime scene tape, the county vehicles of the investigators, and the mass of bodies pushing up against the fence. Snapping pictures. Leaving balloons, stuffed animals, flowers, and other tributes hanging from the barbed wire at the edge of his property. As she passes, she sees grief-stricken, tear-streaked faces. Faces well-known to her in some cases. Neighbors. Customers. Friends. People who are part of the landscape of their community. Some trigger frissons of recognition she doesn’t have time to pin down. Others, she can’t place at all. Nonlocals. But Gary is a megastar. She wonders how far people have come to be here. Are they making a pilgrimage, creating a shrine to a fallen hero?

  Then a voluptuous woman with long wavy red hair turns and catches her eye. There’s no doubt Maggie knows her. Jenny. The hookup who’d taken her affair with Gary a little more seriously than he’d expected. The one who’d shown up at Maggie’s house to roust Gary from bed. Only Gary hadn’t cowed and begged Jenny’s forgiveness. He’d told her to get lost. That between her and Maggie there was no choice and never had been.

  Jenny had been humiliated. Now, she just looks enraged. It chills Maggie. The redhead flips Maggie off, and her lips stretch back over her teeth as she screams something at Maggie.

  Too late, Maggie realizes Bess sticks out like a sore thumb. People are leaning toward one another and heads are turning. Eyes are staring, fingers are pointing, more mouths are shouting. Maggie Killian, they’re saying. His lover, they’re saying. His killer, they’re speculating.

  Her breathing grows shallow. It was a mistake coming here. How could she have thought she’d find sanctuary and a balm for her emotions? She wants to pass the cars in front of her, get the hell out of Dodge, but traffic is gridlocked in both directions. She’s trapped. Watched.

  Icy pins prick her hands. She’s gripping the steering wheel too hard. She stretches them one at a time, keeping her gaze straight ahead on the bumper of the car in front of her, as she tries to wish herself home.

  Eleven

  Back at Michele’s, Maggie emails her to-do list to her laptop and adds to it:

  Find out about Gary’s service.

  Evict Leslie.

  Tell Michele about Tom.

  She’d decided against calling law enforcement about Tom on the way home. Michele would want to be with her when she makes that call. Or make it for her. And Maggie will wait for Michele.

  Now that she’s back with her phone, it’s time to change her phone number. She pauses with her finger on the number for T-Mobile. It feels so irrevocable. And Hank hasn’t called in more than twelve hours. Maybe it’s unnecessary? But if history teaches anything, she knows one of these days he will call, and she can’t guarantee she’ll have the strength to resist him when he does.

  Asleep at Maggie’s feet, Louise snores like a braying donkey.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Maggie calls T-Mobile and orders the change. They try to talk her into driving to Austin for a new SIM card at a T-Mobile store, but she doesn’t have the time or patience. They promise it will arrive within a few days. She’ll just have to stay strong until then, if Hank even calls.

  With a storm in her chest, she returns to working on her list, detailing steps to take in the restoration of the Coop. Her fingers pound the keys like hail on a tin roof.

  “What’s into you?” Michele walks into her kitchen.

  “My life is in the shitter.”

  “Colorful, but not specific.”

  “We’ll just go with the big-ticket items.” Maggie ticks her forefinger. “Lee County is joining forces with Fayette County because of the common links between the vandalism at Flown the Coop and the fire at Gary’s.”

  “What common links?”

  “Me. And their earlier suspicions about Gary.”

  “I don’t get it. Have they even ruled out an accident at his place?”

  “I know, right?” Maggie pushes her laptop back. “They claim there’s email—only I didn’t write them and have never seen them—on Gary’s phone, between us, that makes it look like he dumped me and I went to his house to threaten him.”

  “What?”

 
; “It’s nuts. And the texts between us confirming our plans? They’re not there.”

  “Did they Mirandize you?”

  “Negative. But Junior most definitely tried to surprise me into incriminating myself.”

  “I hope you told him you wouldn’t talk to him without a lawyer.”

  “You would have been proud of me. As soon as the bullshit started, I did. But I’d probably talked too long before then anyway, because I thought it was just about the Coop.”

  “I’ll call them. They’re only to communicate with you through me. Promise me.”

  “You already have so much on your plate.”

  “Please. You’re my best friend.”

  “You’re mine. And the best best friend ever. When you do call them, we’ve got something to offer. Gary’s manager, Tom Clarke, pulled me over about an hour ago. He was acting crazy, saying he went to see Gary last night but that he was long gone.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, Gary had called him in to fire him, but Tom says they never met.”

  “So Gary didn’t fire him?”

  “I’m not sure. I told Tom to call the cops. He said he was afraid they’d arrest him. For some reason he thought he should come to me. But when I wasn’t sympathetic, he changed his mind and left in a big hurry.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I have no idea. But I thought you’d want to tell law enforcement about it when you call.”

  “Thank you. Any more big-ticket items?”

  “Lots, but I’ll only bore you with one. My tenant is a Grade A bitch and a liar.”

  “Leslie? She’s been nothing but nice every time I’ve met her.”

  “Then she hates me for some unknown reason.”

  “She loves your place and the town. She wants to move here.”

  “Well, she practically is. She’s insisting she extended for two more nights and paid me for them.”

  “Did she not?”

  “My memory is that she was supposed to have left this morning.”