by L. L. Muir
“No.” The woman smiled through her tears. “He knew I was around, that they had, you know...”
“Back up.”
“Yeah.”
“After I finish interviews, I’ll leave it to you to go through her computer, to see if you can find anything you think might be off.”
“All right.” She got nervously to her feet. He thought she might have something more to say, but when he asked, she shook her head. “I’m just...not sure what to do next.”
“Well, next, I need a list of everyone who works in this office. And while you’re making that list, send one of the other lawyers in, would you?”
A few minutes later, a guy walked in and introduced himself. Well dressed. Tall. Maybe a little effeminate.
“Good morning. I’m Julius Loftus. I’m junior partner here.”
“I guess that’s why you come in early? To get rid of the junior part?”
The guy laughed, but didn’t deny it. The laughter was a little inappropriate, depending on why he was nervous.
“I suppose, with Ms. Whittaker out of the picture, a partnership has just opened up?”
Loftus was instantly sober. “Who wants to be known as the guy who got ahead only because someone else died?”
Tripp shrugged. “Just about anyone with ambition, is my guess.”
The man was not amused. In the end, he didn’t claim to know anything about Whittaker’s plans for the weekend. Said they didn’t see each other socially. That, Tripp believed, after what he’d heard about the woman’s own ambitions. He figured she’d probably only partied with “all the right people.” And Loftus looked like a pretender.
“What I don’t understand,” Tripp said, “is why a woman with any ambition at all wouldn’t want to practice in a bigger city. Even Boise is too small for a motivated woman, don’t you think? Especially one considering politics.”
Loftus laughed. “Not politics. Politicians.” He said the word like it left a bitter taste in his mouth. Maybe Tripp had been wrong about the guy being ambitious. But that’s what being a sharp dresser usually indicated—a need to impress someone higher up.
“Anything else you’d like to add?”
The man got to his feet and brushed off his pants. “Nothing, really. But don’t hesitate to call if you have more questions.” He handed over his thick, embossed business card. “Any time.”
Tripp wasn’t sure, but he thought he might have just been hit on.
6
It was time to head to Boise. He wasn’t thrilled about going alone, and even as he thought it, his car turned Southeast, in the opposite direction. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Madison Muir had cast a spell on his vehicle!
It was a silly idea, and he knew it, but he still pulled his car off the shoulder just to make sure he was in control of the damned thing. Then he pulled out his notebook and stared at her phone number, trying to decide whether to call it or just memorize it…just in case.
“I’ve lost my mind,” he mumbled as he punched the numbers into his phone. But at least, if he could get her to go along with him, he’d be able to interrogate her all he wanted. Of course, she was too clever to fall for such an invitation, but he had to ask. It was too late. She’d already know who was calling—-
“Hello?”
“Hello. This is, uh, Deputy Darro. And I know this is going to sound odd, but I wondered if you might like to take a ride with me, over to Boise, to talk with Monica Whittaker’s husband.” He suddenly laughed like an idiot. “I just remembered the last thing I said to you…”
“And what was that?”
“You know. I promised that I wouldn’t call, that I’d come get you.”
“You said that?”
Oh, great. She was going to rub it in. He’d insinuated that he’d be picking her up and hauling her off to jail, now it sounded like he was asking her out. He had to make it clear that wasn’t the case!
“I was just thinking that…you know, maybe your fortune telling talents might come in handy while I’m talking to the guy.” He grimaced and wondered if she would be able to hear it if he started pounding his head against the window.
She laughed. “Yes.”
“Yes, you’ll come?”
“Yes. I’ll come. And yes, my talents will come in handy.” There was a low buzzing sound in the background and she told him to hold on. It sounded like she was talking to someone.
“When are you coming?”
“Ten minutes okay?”
“So you’re already on your way to DV?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“I’ll be ready.” Then she hung up.
“Well, at least she’s cheerful this morning.” He chuckled and pulled back onto the highway. “Looks like it’s going to be a Mac day.”
“Oh, yes you are!”
Maddy’s heart pounded hard while she paced back and forth on the inside of the mirror, wringing her hands. “I can’t! Yesterday, he as good as said he’d be coming to arrest me, and today, you tell him to come on over? You’ve finally lost it, Mac.”
“Have I? I’m not the one who’s pacing like a caged lion.”
Maddy stopped long enough to see that Mac was, in fact, calm as could be. “Of course you’re calm! You don’t intend to go!” She started pacing again. “You know I couldn’t sleep last night, worrying that he’d haul me off, get me charged with murder, and you’d be stuck in here for who knows how long before... And then, what if I didn’t get off? What if I went to prison? Someone would come to take the house and find you. In here! With no way to get out. What if they broke the mirror!”
“Maddy.”
“I would have to try absolutely anything and everything to escape, and then—”
“Maddy!”
“What?”
“It’s a date. Okay? He’s not coming to arrest you or trick you into confessing to a crime you didn’t commit. He likes you, and he would rather have you with him than drive to Boise alone. Okay?”
Maddy shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying that Barney. Fife. Likes. You. And you’re going to spend some time with him. And it’s all going to work out. You don’t have to marry him or anything. But you are going to date him, and you’re going to be...better for it.”
Maddy jerked back. “Better for it? Just what kind of vision have you had, sister?”
“I’ve seen you, in the future, and you’re happier, okay? And you...get along better with people.”
“Why in the hell would I need to get along better with people? We have rules and locks. Rules protected us. Locks protected the mirror. The mirror keeps us safe. Don’t tell me you don’t want to be safe anymore, because—”
“I don’t want to be safe anymore.” Mac’s words dropped on the floor like a giant sack of potatoes.
“What the hell does that mean!”
“You know what it means. We’ve lived this life. We’ve perfected this life.”
“We’ve enjoyed this life…right?”
“Of course, we have. But you know what? It’s time to move to the next thing. It’s time to say we’ve accomplished something. We’ve earned our degrees, we’ve built a modest empire, and we’re ready for what’s next.”
“And Barney Fife is next? Are you shitting me?”
“No. Getting along with people is next. Participating in humanity is next. And I’m sorry to have to say this, but you aren’t the easiest to get along with—to other people, I mean. Not me. I like you just fine, but, if we’re going to enjoy life, we’re going to have to interact, which means...” Mac took a step back out of sheer self-preservation. “You’re going to have to clean up that potty mouth of yours.”
“Potty mouth?!”
“You can yell at me later. Barney’s going to be here in five minutes, and you need to be ready.”
“Five minutes? Are you shit—”
“Get over here!” Mac ran to the mirror and placed her hands against the center, which was getting
worn after twenty-plus years of hands pressing there. “I know it’s early, but we have no choice. If I go with him, you’ll be inside for too long.”
Maddy grudgingly lifted her hands. A few heartbeats later, Mac looked out at her sister from the other side of the mirror. “And remember not to freak out if he doesn’t get you home in time. I’ll be fine and you know it. Don’t even think about me, do you hear? Leave the compact at home if you need to, but forget about me for a while.”
Maddy gave her sister a look that said she was reading Mac’s emotions loud and clear and they weren’t lining up with what she was claiming.
“Stop reading me and go! Or the second I find a way to break this curse, I’m going to kick your butt, do you hear?”
Maddy took a deep breath, forced a smile, and hurried to the door.
“Three minutes,” Mac hollered. “And if he kisses you, I want to hear all about it!”
7
Maddy hurried to the bathroom and did what she could to get presentable for a date she didn’t want to go on. Her hair was a mess after lying on the bed all morning, waiting for Mac to get her up to speed on the new t-shirt website. But she ran a brush through it and brushed her teeth. The thought of getting kissed was at once terrifying and exciting, but she would rather be kissing someone who wasn’t interested in putting her behind bars.
Darro did want her behind bars, didn’t he?
Mac acted like she knew differently, which made Maddy wonder if maybe she’d misinterpreted his threat of coming for her. Hadn’t he meant to arrest her?
She’d know soon enough. Her three minutes were up. If she moved fast, she could change her clothes while he waited for her to answer the door. Then she remembered what Mac had told him on the phone, that yes, her talents would be helpful. But which talents had she meant? Mac’s or hers?
She zipped up her jeans and the doorbell rang. She stepped into her cute leather boots she never had a reason to wear, then wished, for once, she’d left the door unlocked so she could ask Mac a few questions before opening the door to the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
But rules and locks…
The doorbell rang again. She waited a couple of seconds to catch her breath, then opened it. “Hello,” she said, feeling like an idiot, like she was going on her sister’s date. In their teens, they’d done that more than once. But this time, she had no intention of pretending to be Mac. If she could just relax and be herself, she’d be fine.
“Hello,” he said.
She took comfort in the fact that he seemed as embarrassed as she was.
“I’m glad you agreed to come.”
She just nodded. “I’ll get my purse.” In the kitchen, she looked through the contents to see what she could leave behind. She pulled out a wad of receipts and put them in a basket. Next, her hand found the heavy weight of the compact. Mac had told her to leave it, but she couldn’t. She put the bag over her shoulder, and headed out again, but stopped. The compact buzzed, so she hurried to the sink, turned on the water, then opened it.
Mac glared at her. “If you take that compact, we will have a big, ugly fight. Do you want that?”
“Shut up,” Maddy said, then left the compact open on the countertop and walked back to the front door. If she gave him any more time, he’d snoop around and find the locked door.
Tripp opened the car door for the woman. Then, as he walked around to the driver’s side, he prayed she would do some talking so he knew which version of M. Muir he’d committed to spending hours with. Thus far, she’d only said “hello”, so if he had to say her name, he wouldn’t have a clue what to call her.
Ms. Muir was the safe thing to say. But did he really want to call her that when he was practically taking her out.
It was a good thing he didn’t have a supervisor watching his every move, or he’d be in trouble for dating one of his prime suspects. Of course, he could have used the excuse that he was just getting close enough to find out if she was guilty. But when he imagined what her reaction would be to being used that way, he wondered if it might be better to resign than to let her find out.
But he wasn’t using her. She was there to help him. Yeah. That was it.
He climbed in and tried not to act like a besotted teenager. “I’m glad you agreed to come.”
“You said that already.”
He laughed. “Well, I was trying not to sound like a nervous teenager. Guess I failed right off the bat, so I can stop trying, right?”
“Good idea.”
“Have you had lunch?”
“No.”
“How about we stop by Piney’s and get a couple burgers to go?”
She looked around her seat. “You eat in here?”
“No. Actually. This will be a first.”
She looked at the road. “Lots of firsts, today.”
“Oh, like what?”
“First time I actually chose to be in a police car, for one.”
“Oh? And how many times was it not your choice?”
She lit up the car with an honest smile. “I’ll never tell.”
He took a chance. “Maddy?”
She looked a little stunned, but nodded.
“Excellent.” He realized he actually preferred her when she was brutally honest.
8
The trip to Boise flew by in spite of the silence that stretched between their short bursts of small talk. Though Maddy had made numerous trips into the city since moving to Idaho, she’d always been alone—except for an occasional reflection of her sister in the compact. For the first few miles, they had made nervous eye-contact, forcing smiles and conversation on each other. But thankfully, that awkwardness faded.
She grew curious. “Do you have a first name, or would you rather I keep calling you Barney?”
Darro chuckled. “Forgive me. My dad and I are both named Thomas. I go by Tripp.” Then he spelled it.
“I go by Maddy.”
After eating her lunch carefully, she pulled her driving gloves back on.
He’d noticed. “You cold?”
“Bad circulation in my fingers,” she lied. But what she really was avoiding were the possibly violent or devastating emotions that might have attached themselves to a cop vehicle. A roller coaster ride like that might bring her to tears with no reasonable way to explain.
She changed the subject and hoped he wouldn’t notice. In the next two hours, they talked about her businesses, her degree—and her sister’s degree, which Maddy helped earn too, which kind of made it hers. So basically, she held degrees in Business, Economics, and Social History.
He seemed surprised.
“What were you expecting, a Master’s degree in the Neopagan religion of Wicca?”
He snorted. “Dreading, not expecting. I have to admit, I’m relieved.”
After a little navigating on her phone, they arrived at Devon Whittaker’s home in North End, a Boise suburb. As soon as the door opened, she realized she should have waited in the car. But there was no turning back without offending someone, or pissing Barney off.
Children.
She always tried to keep away from them. They were boiling kettles of emotion happy to attach themselves to anything and anyone. These weren’t just regular kids, though. They were a boy and girl who had lost their mommy—powder kegs with lit fuses attached. If she got too close to them, their horrible pain would become her own.
Darro gave her a funny look. “Are you all right?”
She shook her head dismissively as they were led into the living room where the boy, about four years old, sat playing with a sprawling plastic castle and dozens of little figures. His father introduced him as David, but he was completely engrossed and didn’t notice.
The girl, Millicent, sat on the love seat. She’d just turned three and was the obvious cause of the dad’s nervousness. Ignoring the cartoons playing silently on the TV, she alternately wailed and whimpered and refused to be consoled.
Whittaker spoke quietly. “It’s not like she
’s crying for my wife, you know? Monica wasn’t much of a nurturer, though her assistant, Rhonda tried to make up for that.”
“I imagine the child support settlement would have been outrageous,” Darro suggested, “since she was a lawyer and all.”
Whittaker was genuinely surprised by the comment. “Monica paid me,” he said. “She only had the kids every other weekend. Sometimes longer when she didn’t have anything going on. But I’ve always been Mr. Mom. I only hope they find an insurance policy, because without Monica, I don’t know what I’ll do. We might end up back at my mother’s.”
Millicent started wailing again, her volume up a notch from before.
“I can’t understand her. The doll she usually clings to is right there and she won’t touch it.”
Tripp gave Maddy a frown and nodded at the girl. Maddy frowned back. Just because she was a woman, didn’t mean she automatically knew what to do with a crying little girl. But after another twenty seconds of wincing, she decided anything would be better than nothing, even if it meant she’d have to feel what the screaming child was feeling.
She gave Whittaker a tight smile. “Mind if I have a try?”
“Please do. She’s been that upset since we got back from my mother’s house.”
Maddy moved carefully across the room and scooped up the little doll as she went. Then she sat down on the love seat and started playing with the doll herself. The girl caught her breath and hiccupped while she watched. But the second Maddy looked at her, she was off again.
There was no use. She had to take off her gloves and help these poor people. But first, she was careful to set the doll onto the floor so there was no chance of touching it with her bare hands. Dolls and blankies were poison for her.
To distract the men from what she was doing, she started talking to the girl in a normal voice, pretending she wasn’t screaming in her face. “So, you went to your grandma’s this morning, huh?” She pulled off one glove and tucked it next to her leg. “I bet you love Grandma’s house, don’t you? Did your grandma give you those shoes?”
