by L. L. Muir
If someone had hurt Mac!
There was no use trying to contact her sister through the compact. She already knew the thing was sitting on the kitchen counter.
For the first time in her life, she was afraid to call out her sister’s name. If someone else was breaking in, expecting to find something of worth beyond the locked door, she could hide in the shadows and hopefully, they wouldn’t see her. And hopefully, when they found nothing worth their trouble, they wouldn’t take out their frustrations on the mirror itself!
Please let it be Mac.
The final lock rattled and knocked. The knob turned, and the door flew open. Maddy’s heart stopped until she saw her sister’s face.
“Mac!”
“Maddy! You’re all right!”
She moved into the open, up to the glass. “Why would I not be all right? Are you all right?”
Mac shook her head. “It’s…complicated.” She started backing out the door. “I’m going to fix you something to eat, then I’ll explain, k?” She closed the door again and started slipping bolts and slamming locks back into place before Maddy had much of a chance to argue.
After staring at the closed door for a minute, she sat back in the chair and waited, drumming her fingers on the mystery novel while she tried to imagine why her sister would worry about her. She’d been surprised to feel Mac’s emotions without contact of some sort, but the strength and proximity of those emotions explained that away. Mac’s worry had been very real, her relief almost overwhelming. The vibrations of such emotions must have traveled through the air of the house and under the door…
Something significant was happening, but since Maddy was stuck inside the mirror, she had to wait for her sister to come back before she could demand to know what it was.
Judging by the amount of time that passed, Maddy knew her sister must be making something more than just sandwiches. She was just about to buzz the compact when she heard the keys rattle again.
Mac was all smiles when she opened the door and came into the room with a big serving tray in her hands. “It’s a good thing you can’t smell through the glass or you would already know that I tried to make you an omelet. And burned it.”
“You didn’t have to make me anything.”
“It’s been a long morning. You’ll be hungry.” Mac started laying dishes out on the table. “So I fried you an egg instead. And made you a waffle.” She put a little pot of syrup on the table. “Breakfast for lunch.”
Of course Maddy wasn’t hungry, she was in the mirror. So, it was an odd thing for Mac to say. It was as if…
She swallowed hard. “Why are you nervous?”
If her sister had something to confess, it probably had something to do with Tripp Darro. And the possibility that the two had kissed made the thought of eating impossible.
“Don’t get upset, Maddy. Trade me places and I’ll explain everything while you eat. You’re about to accuse me of trying to steal your boyfriend, but don’t waste your breath. Nothing happened between us. So stand down, okay?” Mac brushed flour off her skirt and moved around the table to put her hands against the mirror.
Maddy checked the clock. “It’s way early.”
Mac shook her head. “I want you to eat it while it’s hot. What does it matter if we’re both in here together?”
Finally, Maddy pressed her hands against her sister’s, then willed herself out of the mirror. Before she let her arms drop, she looked into Mac’s eyes. “Were you telling the truth? Would I have accused you?”
Mac nodded. “And then you would have felt bad, after I tell you what’s going on.”
The smell of burned eggs creeped into the room and Maddy hurried to close the curtain. But before she got it shut, she heard Tripp pounding on the front door.
“Ignore him,” her sister said. “Believe me. If you answer it, he’ll push his way inside and he’ll turn this house upside down looking for you… and me…looking for us.”
“Us?”
“Shut the door, Maddy. I’ll tell you everything.”
Maddy patiently ate her fried egg while Mac told her what had happened after she’d left the house that morning. The idea that Rhonda Thorne might be the murderer was a surprise, but that seemed to be the least of Mac’s concerns. The more important detail was that Tripp Darro now knew there were two Muirs living in the old Hughes Manor.
A number of people in Dinkville knew there were two of them, which meant everyone in Dinkville knew. Pretending to be one person was a tactic they usually used on folks who wouldn’t be in their lives much. So, when Maddy had led Tripp astray, it was a signal to Mac that the man was only passing through their lives—or at least Maddy had hoped that would be the case.
When either of them made that kind of call, the other sister always went along, whether or not she agreed. So Maddy believed Mac hadn’t let Tripp in on the truth, that the last time she’d spoken to the guy, he’d still believed they were one woman with two personalities.
Which meant someone else had spilled the beans.
Considering the other cops waiting in the yard when Mac had come home, they figured it had to be one of them. Or maybe someone on his police radio.
Mac rolled her eyes. “When a man insinuates himself into our lives day after day, it’s only a matter of time before he either figures it out, or has it explained to him. Did you think he would never talk to anyone in Dinkville who knows?”
“I know,” Maddy said. “I’m not upset. I’m kind of relieved I don’t have to go on pretending. But…” She grinned. “I guess I wanted to be there to see his face when all the pieces fell into place.”
Mac laughed. “Yeah. Me too. He’s probably kicking himself right now. Mr. Special Inspector never suspected a thing.”
Maddy picked up the little pot of syrup and felt the emotions that had imprinted there. Her sister was sick to her stomach with worry, and it was not because a murderer might come looking for them.
She poured the rest of the syrup onto her quickly drying waffle, then set it aside. “Okay, Mac. What is it you’re waiting to tell me?”
Sitting on the bed in the mirror, her sister leaned back on her arms and heaved a heavy sigh. “I know you like him. I know he likes you. Probably more than you figured. And I know what I promised, that we’d still be here, a decade from now.”
“Was it a lie?”
“No. Not really. We can still be here a decade from now…”
“But?”
“But we don’t have to be.” Mac got to her feet and moved to the glass between them. “I know you like him, but he’s getting too close. And I realize I’m to blame for letting him in the house. I was ready to shake things up, to move on to something else, even if it meant…” She swallowed awkwardly. “Even if it meant breaking the mirror while inside, so you could live a normal life—”
“Mac!” Maddy moved to the glass too and put her hands against it.
Mac wouldn’t look her in the eye. She kept her hands to her sides and made fists like she was fighting any chance they might change places again. “Let me finish,” she said. “You know I was ready to be done with all this. One way or another. I’ve been ready for a while, actually. But then today. When I thought someone might get to you…” She choked up. Tears streamed down her face. “I don’t want to lose you. I want to stay the way we are. I want…to move away. Start again. No more fortune telling. No more people in the house. Ever.”
Maddy’s guts turned inside out watching the pain on her sister’s face. She realized Mac kept her hands from the glass so Maddy wouldn’t suffer the same agony she was feeling. But how could she not?
For a minute, when she’d worried that someone besides Mac was trying to get through the door, she’d had a taste of what her sister had gone through on her way back from Spirit Falls. She understood, even if her scare hadn’t lasted long. She’d gotten a glimpse of the possibilities, if their carefully constructed lives crashed down around them.
“Rules protected
us. Locks protected the mirror. The mirror keeps us safe,” she chanted.
“What are you saying?”
Maddy took a deep breath. “I’m saying…it’s time to move.”
19
Tripp waited all day for the Muir sisters to come out…
At six o’clock, he knocked on the door again, but they still ignored him. So he jumped in his vehicle and let them worry he was leaving them on their own. All he did, though, was run to Piney’s for some supper and to use the restroom. But he was right back again, whether they liked it or not. No number of security cameras and locks could keep a determined killer from getting into the house. And there wasn’t a regular unit near enough to reach the women quickly, if they called for help.
After dark, he dug the emergency gear out of the back of the car and made a big fuss while he spread out the blanket and bedded down for the night. He didn’t have to be a psychic to know he was being watched. He just hoped that someone would be irritated enough to come outside and tell him to go away. Maybe then he could get inside and see for himself that Maddy was all right.
It was a relief, honestly, to know there were two separate women. His heart had been trying to tell him something was off since day one, but his ears were closer to his brain, and he’d taken her at her word.
Multiple Personality Disorder my ass.
He knew there were plenty of folks suffering from complicated disorders, but thankfully, the girl he’d fallen for wasn’t one of them.
Ever since Maddy could remember, her life had revolved around a schedule of eight-hour shifts in and out of the mirror. They could have cut their days into equal halves, but that would leave one sister living her “outside” life at night, and the other during the day. Hardly fair. So the eight hour shifts were the solution.
When Mac insisted on taking her mirror shift early, it meant Maddy got almost twelve hours “outside” before her next shift began at midnight. After she and Mac made their decision to pick up and move on, she left her sister searching the internet for small towns, thanks to a program that allowed her to run one of the computers by voice alone.
Since Maddy wasn’t quite ready to shop for their new life, she spent her outside shift watching Barney Fife, who seemed determined to wait them out.
It might be easier to think of him as Barney Fife until she left him and Falls County behind. She knew for certain it would be easier on her heart if she stopped watching him out the window, too, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. He tried beating on the door again at dinner time. Heeding Mac’s warning, she was careful not to let him know she was standing just inside the door, listening, while he tried to cajole them into opening it.
“Five minutes,” he hollered through the wood. “Just give me five minutes and I’ll get out of here. I really just want to see for myself that you’re both okay. That’s all. Then I’ll go, if you want me to. Just open the door!”
If he’d wanted to see each of them separately, eight hours apart, they could have allowed it.
Her heart lurched when she heard his car start. She hurried to the dining room window and watched his SUV disappear down the hill, feeling both relieved and abandoned. Didn’t he know there was a killer out there, somewhere, who might be coming after her and Mac? How dare he leave?
But oh, the peace and quiet was nice, too. At least, until she realized that abandoned was the way he might feel when he came up the hill one day to find that they had left town. Even though she acknowledged it would be for the best, it couldn’t keep her from crying her eyes out while she collected a few boxes from the basement and started packing up dishes.
She taped up the second box and heard a car in the drive. Like a lovesick teenager, she flew to the window and squealed quietly when she saw the sheriff’s emblem on the door. Tripp was back—not that she would answer the door, of course. And while he stalked the house, she stalked him by watching out various windows and by sending Hootie out to follow him when he went into the woods. Of course, when she realized he’d walked into the trees to pee, she called the little owl off.
At midnight, she woke her sister and took her shift, offering just a little reminder before Mac slipped out the door. “It wasn’t easy, not answering that door all night. But if I can do it, you can too.”
Around midnight, Tripp finally accepted that no one was coming out to argue with him.
At six the next morning, when he saw the first light turn on, Tripp hoped Mac might sneak him some coffee. But he was wrong about that too. He stomped into the trees outback and peed the bark off a tree, then stomped back and turned on the engine because he was chilled to the bone.
By eight o’clock, when they still wouldn’t answer the door, he got pissed. He just didn’t have any idea what to do about it.
Tripp called Farley and explained the situation as best he could, leaving out any mention of things supernatural. Thankfully, Farley agreed to post around-the-clock surveillance on the place for a week, stressing that Tripp had better find the murderer before then, or he’d have to watch the house himself.
Lucky for him, the APB on Rhonda Thorne’s car paid off, and he was more than happy to head to Sun Valley to talk to her. He’d leave the care and feeding of witches to the locals, but he was bummed that Maddy wouldn’t answer the phone, so he could convince her to ride along.
20
At eight o’clock, Mac stumbled into the mirror room looking about as well rested as Maddy felt. While it was thoughts of Tripp Darro that had kept her from sleeping, Mac had spent most of the night searching the internet again.
“I’m too tired to move today,” her sister groaned, then dove onto the bed.
Maddy laughed, then sobered. “You didn’t let him in, right? You didn’t answer the phone?”
“I did not,” Mac said into the pillow.
Maddy calmly went through the ritual of locking her sister away, then she tip-toed over to the dining room and peeked through the sheer curtains to see if Barney Fife had stayed all night.
He had.
Even though they hadn’t let him in.
Even though they hadn’t answered the phone.
Even though they should have let him sleep on the couch as thanks for watching over them all night long.
She moved to the front door and pressed her hands against it. She could feel the frustration left there from the night before. His worry, his…obsession with her! Not Mac, but her!
She needed coffee, so she headed to the kitchen. After she’d calmed down, she poured a second cup, fixed it the way Barney had ordered it with lunch on Tuesday, and carried it out the front door—just in time to see his SUV at the bottom of the hill. An unfamiliar deputy sat behind the wheel of a sheriff’s car now parked in the drive. He looked surprised, but pleased, like he thought she was bringing the coffee to him.
Maybe she and Barney Fife weren’t meant to be after all.
Tripp had plenty of peace and quiet in which to think about the case while he made his way north. The day was overcast, so he tossed his sunglasses aside and took in the brilliant colors of fall that got more colorful with each mile. Too bad Maddy wasn’t there to see it.
It was reasonable to assume that Ms. Thorne wasn’t the one following them the day before, since she’d been holed up in Sun Valley for two days. But she might have had an accomplice, and Devon Whittaker seemed the most likely. If the grieving husband showed up at the Limelight Hotel, where Thorne was staying and where Sheriff King was staked out, Tripp’s search might be over. Unfortunately, so were the chances for those two little kids getting the happy life with their dad and the doting assistant.
But if Ms. Thorne was running away for some other reason, it would have been nice to have Maddy on hand to help drill down to the truth.
Maybe Thorne had killed her boss on her own. Maybe Loftus suggested the murderer was a woman because he’d known about it. Or maybe there was some secret admirer out there, somewhere, who hadn’t admired the victim so much after all. If that phone
was lying on the bottom of the lake, they’d probably never find him.
Solving crimes had been a science before Tripp had met Maddy and Mac. Before, he’d had no trouble seeing things clearly, and if he couldn’t, he’d kept digging until he could. Now, knowing there were a couple of gals who could discern the actual truth, facts notwithstanding, it would be hard to go back to the old way of doing things.
Of course, there was no telling whether or not the sisters would ever help him again. And even if they did, none of it would look good on an official report.
The Limelight Hotel, despite its name, was the fanciest place to stay in the Sun Valley area. Tripp assumed Rhonda Thorne was either paid well or her accomplice had plenty of money—maybe from an expected life insurance police.
Two hours, however, wasn’t far to travel for someone evading the police. It was almost like she wanted to get caught.
A single girl with a good job wouldn’t be happy about leaving her life and security behind, unless she was running to something else. Or at least, that’s what Tripp thought while he made his way to Blaine county. Before he hit town, he got a call from Sheriff King. The girl had checked out of the hotel and they’d thought it best to take her in for questioning. They were just waiting on him.
With an officer sitting on the opposite side of the table, Rhonda waited in a cozy interrogation room looking as defeated as the eyes of the buffalo head hanging over her. The officer jumped to his feet, nodded, then left the room.
The woman looked up, recognized him, and groaned.
“That bad, huh?”
She nodded and grabbed a couple of tissues from the box sitting on the table and held them up, poised for a good cry.
