Sick Puppy (Maggie #2)

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

“I mean, I’m not saying there is. Just, you know, doing my job.”

  “It’s been a shit week, though, Franklin, and I’m running out of capacity to let anyone’s job roll off my back.”

  “Yeah. I get it. Well, thanks again. For the statement. And the picture. I’ll be in touch when things progress or if I need anything else.” He turns to go, then spins back to her. “And I’m very sorry about your boyfriend. He was a great musician.”

  Maggie wouldn’t classify him as a boyfriend or as great. Successful, yes. But that’s not the same thing. “Thank you.”

  “You’re better, though. The DJ was saying so, too. Iconic.”

  Dinosaurs are iconic. Or are they just extinct? Like me. She manages to say, “Thanks,” then waves goodbye.

  She locks the door behind him and turns on the air conditioner. Damn the electricity bill. Louise doesn’t react other than to groan and roll over with all four paws in the air. Maggie finishes filling the online orders, washing the road dust off the Wyoming finds, and triaging those and the shop contents into four piles: ready, easy-fix, hard-fix, and trash. She photographs the trash from every angle, then loads it onto the trailer. Hard-fix she pushes, drags, and carries into the barn. Easy-fix she crowds into a staging and work area behind the counter, which allows her to keep creating while tending to customers.

  Sweat soaks through her tank top and runs down her arms and legs. Her stomach growls. She wolfs down her sandwich and drains the last of her ice water from her thermos before dusting, sweeping, and mopping. She checks her phone when she’s done. It’s past three. But she wants a semblance of order. She needs it. So she spends an hour putting out the merchandise and arranging it artfully. She uses space to her advantage, along with additional inventory from her barn storage. The Coop ends up looking more customer-ready, save the broken windows. Now, if only the house was Maggie-ready, she’d feel a lot better.

  Michele’s voice interrupts her. “Knock, knock.”

  Louise lifts her head, wags her tail, and resettles her jaw between her paws on the concrete floor. Maggie studies her dog. She hadn’t even gotten up when Michele walked in. What’s wrong with her?

  She smiles at Michele, though. “God, I hope you brought cold beer.”

  Michele holds up a can. “Will a Diet Coke do?”

  “Like a life raft to a drowning man. Gimme.” She scrunches her fingers to hurry Michele over.

  Rashidi follows Michele into the shop, along with Collin and Ava. Michele hands Maggie the Diet Coke.

  “Wow, you work hard. This place a war zone last I see it.” Rashidi’s island lilt and diction seems appropriate somehow.

  “Yah mon.” Maggie winks at him.

  Ava raises her perfect, full brows and runs a finger across the spotless display nearest the door, a set of middle school lockers repurposed into a cabinet. “You must have been working hard. You’re looking rough.”

  Maggie is too tired to rise to the bait. She drinks the entire can of Diet Coke without pausing.

  “Great place,” Collin says. “Impressive collection of road signs.”

  Maggie salutes him with her empty can before ziplocking it into her sandwich bag. “Tip of the iceberg. I have an entire warehouse out back.”

  “You open for business?” Ava waggles a T-shirt two sizes smaller than Maggie would have suggested for her.

  “Not to the public, but I take money anywhere, anytime.”

  “I’m shopping, then. Collin.” She hands him a hot-pink satin purse.

  He pops a hip out. “How does this look with my nail polish?”

  The others laugh as he follows Ava around the store.

  Michele touches Maggie’s dirty elbow. “I hear you got the news.”

  On a day in a week of a lifetime overfilled with news, good and bad, it takes Maggie a moment to remember. “We’re sisters.”

  “You okay with it?”

  “If they’re happy, I’m happy. And I think they’re happy. Are you?”

  “I am. I . . .”

  Ava looks up from examining the sock display. Her voice goes back to the islands. “Michele think they move a little fast. But everyone else think Michele move a little slow.”

  Michele snorts. “I wouldn’t have put it that way.”

  “So when you gonna make an honest man of me?” Rashidi demands.

  Michele shakes her finger at him. “No pushing.”

  “I gonna be pushing, pulling, and everything else to get you to the altar if I have to.”

  Michele actually smiles at his response, a far cry from a year ago when a declaration like that would have resulted in her locking herself in her room and Rashidi out of it.

  “Get a room,” Maggie advises them. “And it was fast, Michele, but your dad is safe with my mother. She had a gadabout spell, but she’s a woman of GAWD and will make him a fine wife.”

  Michele turns to Rashidi. “I need a minute with Maggie.”

  He makes a face at her. “Well, fine, then.” Then he winks at Maggie and chases down Collin and Ava. “Load up, Ava. You can afford it.”

  Michele puts her head so close to Maggie that their hair mingles, the short Hispanic sister and the taller part-Crow, part-Wendish one. No one would mistake them as blood relations, but their hair color is a perfect match, if you don’t count Maggie’s artful gray streaks. “I got a call from Junior today. Lee County and Fayette County—including the fire marshal—want to set up a joint interview with you.”

  “Lovely.”

  “They suggested now.”

  “Uh-uh. I’ve got to go get ready for the wedding thingy at Mom’s church.”

  “Which is why I told them I’d check with you for Monday.”

  “If I have to, Monday isn’t the worst day.”

  “Chin up. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  “We’ve got to figure out the email clusterfuck.”

  “I have a technology expert who can take a look at that starting tomorrow. It’s going to be okay, Maggie.”

  Maggie says, “Thanks, sis,” and winks, but in her heart she thinks It’s never going to be okay again.

  Seventeen

  Maggie shortcuts to her bedroom through Michele’s side door. She wants no more of the canoodling twosomes. She flops onto the bed with Louise, who is as lackluster as she is. They both groan. Next up, Maggie has her mom and Edward’s ceremony and celebration. She stares at the orange-peel pattern in the ceiling. Balcones would help, if daytime drinking weren’t so ill-advised before a church ceremony. She has two and a half hours to self-medicate somehow. What would Michele do in her position? Her friend and new sister is a paragon of self-control. She’d go for a run or a bike ride or a swim or something. Those are out of the question for Maggie.

  But she can do Michele-light.

  She pulls a free beginner yoga video up on her laptop and a yoga mat out from under the bed, where Michele keeps it for guests, as if everyone is as health conscious as she is. Maggie strips to her underclothes and follows the video. For the next ten minutes, she ducks from dog kisses on the mouth and realizes the full extent of how she’s been betraying her own body. It’s stiff, and her movements are anything but strong and fluid.

  “We have to do better, Louise. Exercise. Eat right. Sleep more. Drink less.”

  Louise agrees, her tail wagging extra hard.

  “We could do daily goat yoga. Offer it to the antique show guests as a draw to the Coop.”

  Louise barks and sits up with her paws raised.

  “You’re feeling better, I think. I’m sure they’ll think you’re cute, too.”

  Louise paws at Maggie with one leg.

  “You think I’ll feel better if I take you for a walk?” Maggie checks the time on the laptop. “I’ve got fifteen minutes.”

  She turns off the yoga. One refrigerated water bottle to-go later, Maggie, Gertrude, and Louise stop at the pen to put halters on the goats, then make a circuit of Nowheresville with them, detouring through the greenhouse buildings th
at hold Rashidi’s home hydroponic farming equipment and experiments. Louise stops every few hundred yards to retch or squat.

  “That’s what you get for killing possums.” Should she take Louise to the vet? But the dog is bouncier after every bout of sick. She’s fine, Maggie decides. Just ate something that doesn’t agree with her.

  A lukewarm shower feels cool on her skin post-walk. To save time, she skips a hair-washing in favor of dry shampoo. She throws on light makeup and draws on some nearly symmetrical eyebrows. A long-sleeved silk top covers her burns and works with a blue-jean skirt in a pencil shape that she can wear with a pair of Old Gringo boots.

  When she emerges from the bedroom, the house is empty except for her and the dogs. She still has an hour before she has to be at the church. For a brief moment, she considers opening the Martin case. Getting out her beloved guitar. She could work her way through the new songs she’d written in Wyoming, the first in years. Maybe pick her way to a few new melodies. But she’s just not up for it. Playing is an extension of her emotions, and she doesn’t want to feel anything more than she already does. Normally in an emotional muddle like this she’d be seeking out a hassle-free sexual partner. If she lived in a metropolitan area, she might have been a Tinder-hookup kind of girl. But she’s not in the mood for sex as a salve either, maybe for the first time in her adult life.

  “Louise, Gertrude, guard the house.”

  The dogs hop up on the couch.

  “Good, just like that.”

  Maggie gets behind the wheel of her truck. Like Bess has a mind of her own that strangely thinks like Maggie’s, the truck takes her to Los Patrones in Giddings. Or so Maggie tells herself. She feels better after yoga and a walk, but not that much better, and Los Patrones is the closest fully stocked bar to the church.

  She parks and pats the dash. “Thank you, Bess.”

  Inside, she perches on a stool at the bar. NFL football blares on a TV to her left. She inhales the savory smell of sizzling fajitas being carted past her to a six-top table crowded with ten people. Above her head, red metal letters spell out CANTINA BAR, and almost touching her forehead, margarita glasses hang upside down from racks. Not much around town is open on a Sunday night, so the place is hopping.

  She settles for a double Balcones and pulls up People.com on her phone. Reading about herself may negate the soothing effect of the whiskey, but she’s put it off long enough. The article about her is still the top story on the site. “Gary Fuller and the Black Widow,” she reads. As Franklin had told her, there’s a picture of her singing karaoke at Pumpjack’s in Amarillo, although the main photo is one of her with Gary. One from her private stash. The only person she’d ever shared a copy with was Gary, via text. The two of them were in his kitchen. Their faces are smashed together for a selfie. Blueberry pancake batter is smeared across her cheeks like speckled war paint. She remembers that morning, maybe two or three years ago. The day after he’d returned from a tour. The morning after a welcome-home party between the sheets.

  She reads quickly, and her mouth drops open. The recycled shit in the article is irritating, but some items are flat-out defamation. They list her rehab stints, including a third round that never happened. They cite lovers she’s never met. And they name her as the cause of the deaths in her bandmates’ crash, never mind that she wasn’t with them or even there. Other stuff is naked, irresponsible speculation. That Gary’s legions of redneck-crazy fans are saying she might have caught Gary with another woman, that she might have killed him and set the fire to hide it. As “evidence,” the site includes a picture of fans holding a vigil outside his home. Hundreds of them. And quotes an unnamed source close to the investigation as saying they have “no other leads at this time.” But the part that’s most upsetting? People.com claims a witness in Amarillo outed her affair with Gary and their Friday meet-up before it happened, as reported on the TMZ entertainment blog.

  Maggie scrolls through TMZ until she finds the post. Sure enough, they’d posted a scoop on Friday afternoon. “Secret Affair Between Gary Fuller and Fallen Star Maggie Killian Rekindled.” What the hell? Her blood boils. TMZ credits an anonymous tip from someone in Amarillo, Texas, where they claim she’d last been seen belting Ava Butler karaoke songs. They link to the video on YouTube. The last assertion is the clincher: Gary and Maggie are planning a sexy rendezvous at his ranch in Texas tonight. Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do, kids!

  “Son of a bitch!” She thought people only found out about them after Gary’s death, because she was at the fire, and because of her admitting the relationship to law enforcement. But she was wrong. It doesn’t take much to narrow down possible identities for the rat. The only people she’d told about Gary were in Amarillo. Emily, her husband Jack, Officer John, and her new buddies Wallace and Ethan. Of those, one is obsessed with online gossip. She seethes. And she’s offered up the information about her date with Gary on a text string with the group.

  Maggie forwards the link to Michele in a text. One of your Amarillo friends is not mine. And I need an attorney to sue the shit out of People.com for libel. Then she forwards the TMZ link to the Amarillo friends group, with no comment.

  “You were talking about my ex-husband?” the bartender asks. Her name escapes Maggie, but the woman talks like a sailor and looks like a grandmother. She’s wearing a T-shirt that says BAKING FOR MY GRANDKIDS IS MY SUPERPOWER. She even smells like cinnamon. Or maybe that’s the Fireball she’s pouring for another patron.

  “What?”

  “I heard you yell son of a bitch. Got here as fast as I could.”

  Maggie laughs, although it’s bitter. She takes a deep breath to pull herself together, then changes the subject. “Y’all need to carry Koltiska liqueur.”

  “What the fuck is Koltiska? Is it from Texas?”

  “Nope. Our sister state to the north. Wyoming. Separated from Texas at birth.”

  “I won’t order any out-of-state shit, Maggie. You know the rules.”

  “You can always get smarter.”

  The bartender slides a shot glass to her. “You’re such a needy bitch. This is new. Try it.”

  Maggie passes her empty glass. She doesn’t pause to check her drunk. She’s only had one, albeit a double. This will be her stopping point. “What is it?”

  “Don’t be so goddamn pushy. Try it, then I’ll tell you.”

  Maggie knocks it back. She shudders and wipes her mouth. “Well?”

  “Rebecca Creek Whiskey.”

  “Tastes like Crown to me.”

  “Yeah. But way fucking cheaper. And I can’t give it away. Here, let me fill you up again. On the house.”

  No way is she turning down a freebie. Maggie holds out her shot glass for the top-off, then throws a twenty on the bar. “Thanks for taking care of me.”

  Grandma bartender salutes her.

  Maggie is about to drink her whiskey and leave when a man takes the barstool next to her. He’s big, but lean. He turns to her, so she shoots him a glance and snorts. Light blue eyes, blondish-brown curls under a John Deere cap. Stonewashed jeans that are more about optics than country living. Perfectly scuffed boots. A T-shirt that shows off gym muscles and is too tight for ranch work.

  “Maggie Killian?” he asks.

  “And you’re Thorn Gibbons, right?”

  His eyes flit around, like he’s making sure no one heard her. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that to yourself. Nice to see you again.”

  She almost laughs. His fake country accent can’t decide if it’s Tennessee, Oklahoma, or Texas. “We’ve met?”

  “Well, sort of. I opened for Gary once in Houston. You were backstage. We were introduced, but it was a long time ago.”

  Maggie has zero memory of it, but he could be right. “Sure.” She tosses back her shot.

  “Had, he, uh, mentioned me lately?”

  “Should he have?”

  “Just wondering.”

  A seriously random thing to wonder about. But she’s met a lot of per
formers obsessed with what other people say and think about them. She was just never one of them. “Well, we hadn’t been in touch.”

  “But I thought, you, um, talked to him before he died. Weren’t you on your way to his house when you found the fire? At least, that’s what I read.”

  “Can’t always believe what you read. I’d think you would know that.”

  He exhales. “Sure. Yeah.”

  “What brings you to town?”

  “Um, I had a gig in Austin. I drove over to see Gary. I should have checked the news before I came.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I didn’t know until I got here. About him . . . the fire.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “It rattled me, you know? He gave me my first break. He was like a big brother to me.” Thorn’s voice cracks melodically. He wipes dry eyes.

  “I’m sure his death rattled a lot of people,” she says, thinking of Tom Clarke. “So why are you still here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t I see you yesterday morning? At the grocery store in town?”

  Thorn studies his hands, which are wrapped around the body of a longneck, covering the label. “No. I was sleeping one off in Austin.”

  An internal siren goes off in Maggie’s head. “Huh. You’ve got a twin in Giddings, then.”

  “Does anyone know what happened to him yet?” He starts picking at a corner of the label.

  “You mean other than he burned to a crisp?”

  Thorn flinches.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He stands, setting his empty bottle on the bar, label away from her. But she recognizes a fancy city-boy beer bottle when she sees one. “Well, it was good to see you. I just wanted to say hello.”

  “You going to be in town long?”

  “No. Headed back to Austin to catch a flight to Nashville.”

  “Take care.”

  “You, too.”

  She watches the flashy stitching on his jeans pockets as he walks to the exit. A slinky-bodied woman with a pouf of peroxide-blonde hair almost trips in her spike-heeled boots in her hurry to get to him. Maggie expects him to duck her, since he’s trying to go unrecognized. Instead, he takes her hand, and together they push through the door and out of the restaurant. Maggie frowns. Another decidedly odd encounter. And probably an untruthful one.