Maggie and the Inconvenient Corpse

by Barbara Cool Lee

  Closer, Kira was crying, and there was a clang as Reese threw down the piece of rebar. Then he unceremoniously hauled her to her feet. "Not so tough without your gun, are you, kid?" he said dryly.

  "I didn't mean to shoot the dog," she cried in a whiny voice. "I didn't mean it."

  "That's what guns do," Reese said coldly. "They hurt living things. Take a good look at that beautiful dog. You did that." His voice was utterly contemptuous. "Hey, Ibarra," he added, "got any more of those handcuffs?"

  "Not on me," Ibarra said. "But you look like you've got her under control, Mr. Stevens." There was a grudging admiration in Ibarra's voice.

  But all of that was going on up there, away from where Maggie knelt on the ground with her dog, and she didn't care. "Oh, Jasper," she sobbed, holding his trembling body. "Don't die on me, Boy. I promise I'll keep you forever and ever if you only don't die on me…."

  It was hours later when Maggie got back from the veterinarian, and the morning sun was already bright overhead in the clear blue sky. It would be another picture-perfect day in Carita, Playground of the Stars.

  Casablanca was quieting down. There was only one police car squeezed into the driveway, and she could see its door had been opened into the sideways-parked Spyder, leaving a mark in the sports car's clear coat. She couldn't even summon up the energy to find that funny.

  She met Mrs. Queen in the driveway, leaving for her apartment downtown. Maggie gave her a hug, but there was really nothing she could say that would make any of this better for her.

  "He's gone," Mrs. Queen said. "I wanted to help him. But, no. They'll be putting him in the prison now, and he wouldn't even say goodbye."

  "I'm so sorry," Maggie said.

  "I did my best with the boy," she said. "It was never about the visas for me, you know. Mr. McJasper and my husband worked all that out. They just put a baby boy in my arms and told me to love him, and I did. I tried to give him the best life I could."

  Maggie nodded, and patted her shoulder. "I know. And I'm sure Big Mac knew," she added, and the housekeeper stifled a sob.

  "Maybe Patrick will know too, someday." Then Mrs. Queen put on her best stiff upper lip and straightened up. "And how's your laddie dog?" she asked.

  "My laddie dog's going to make it," Maggie said with a smile. "He's tough."

  "That he is," Mrs. Queen agreed. "I'm glad he has you. I know you'll do the best for the lad."

  "And you?" Maggie asked. "Can I do anything for you?"

  But she shook her head. "I'll be okay," she said. "Just need a good cry to wash it all clean."

  Maggie watched the older woman walk away, back straight and looking forward.

  "Maybe we all need a good cry," she whispered.

  She wandered out to the back of Casablanca. She spotted Jasper's sheeple on the lawn and picked it up. She called the veterinary clinic to tell them she'd be bringing Jasper's toy, so the dog wouldn't worry about his flock when he woke up from the anesthesia.

  Then she sat down cross-legged at the edge of the pool and dipped her fingers into the water. She would need to hire a new pool cleaner, she thought with a grim little smile.

  Across the lawn, she watched Reese and Detective Ibarra shake hands, a bit reluctantly, with the demeanor of two bull elephants who had decided to coexist in peace, at least temporarily.

  Reese went into the house, and Ibarra stood at the edge of the patio, looking out at the water.

  She got up and went over to him.

  "How's the dog?" he asked, seeing the sheeple in her hand.

  "The vet says he'll be okay. Maybe have a limp, but it should pass with time."

  "I'm glad," he said. "He's a good dog."

  "That he is," she agreed.

  "Sorry about your husband," Ibarra said. "I didn't say that before."

  "Thank you," she replied, not correcting him about her ex-husband. It didn't matter. Big Mac had been her husband for ten years. And now he was dead. There was a truth in there, no matter how much she tried to distance herself from it. She wondered how much you really know about people, even if you live with them. Which made her think of Patrick, and the lies of the people she'd shared her life with for a decade.

  "There'll be a trial?" she asked.

  "No doubt," he said. "He's claiming his father's death was an accident, and he killed Virginia when she walked in on him searching for his birth certificate. He's going to try to say none of it was premeditated, but I don't think that'll wash. If he gets a smart public defender he'll plead out."

  "I think he'll want the trial," she said. "He'll want to tell his story." Drag his father's memory through the mud to repay him for the years of secrecy.

  "Probably," Ibarra said. "But it won't be here. They'll have to move the case over to the county. I doubt they could seat an impartial jury here in Carita, between the townies on Patrick's side and the rich folks wanting his head on a platter."

  She nodded. The waves crashed below them, changing both the water and the shore in an endless cycle. Nothing stayed the same.

  "And Mrs. Queen?" she asked. "What about her?"

  "What about her?" he asked. "Do you think she knew what Patrick had done?"

  "No." She shook her head. "I'm sure she didn't. She wouldn't have sent me to get Jasper's toy if she knew what Patrick and Kira were up to. And she wasn't thinking of herself at all when she saw Mac's body. She was shocked and horrified by his death. I think she liked him more than the rest of us put together." She thought for a bit, watching the water. "No. I'm sure she didn't know anything about it."

  "I agree," he said. "You're very observant," he noted.

  "I like puzzles," she said. "Generally. But usually a puzzle is victimless. And this one has multiple victims."

  "Michael McJasper. Virginia Foley."

  "And Virginia's true husband," Maggie added.

  "Pool Boy Ned," he said with a touch of snark. "I guess."

  "I think he must have really loved her to stay close to her through all she was doing," she said. "They were crooks. But he lost the love of his life. Did they deserve to pay that high a price for their crime?"

  "They broke up your marriage to get a payday from Big Mac," he pointed out.

  But she shook her head. "That was already broken long before. They just stepped in to take advantage of the break."

  "And then we come to Mrs. Queen," Ibarra said with a sigh.

  "About that…," she said.

  "About what?"

  "The visas…," she said.

  "They have nothing to do with the murder case," he said. "Patrick was only looking for the birth certificate. He didn't see the significance of the visas until you pointed it out."

  "But the genius visas were payment for taking the child. Mrs. Queen could be deported for lying on a visa application."

  He shrugged. "Two of the three people involved in the visa scam are dead."

  "And the third is an old lady who lost her husband, her son, and her benefactor," Maggie said. "So you don't think it'll come up in the trial?"

  "What will come up?" he asked innocently.

  She started to explain, but then saw his expression. "Oh. Nothing. Nothing will come up. And think of all the paperwork you'll save if you don't mention it."

  He smiled at her. "Exactly. Chief Randall won't want to bring the feds into this. He wouldn't like sharing the spotlight."

  "Exactly," she agreed.

  He grinned, and it made him look quite handsome, in a burly cop sort of way. The ocean breeze lifted the strands of his salt-and-pepper hair. "You know, Mrs. McJasper, you're pretty clever."

  "My friends call me Maggie."

  "My name's William. My friends call me Will."

  "You're not so bad, Will."

  "For a cop."

  "I like cops," she said.

  "You do?"

  "They solve murders."

  He laughed. "Apparently so do you, Maggie."

  Chapter 26

  One afternoon about a week later, she k
nocked on Casablanca's big red door.

  Reese answered it. He had obviously just gotten out of the pool, and was wearing swim trunks and nothing else.

  "Oh," she said. "This is a bad time.

  "No, it isn't," he said.

  "I should have called. You have company?"

  "Nope. Eva left for Milan this morning."

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "I'm not," he said. He motioned her inside.

  She came in, the big rectangular gift box she was holding tucked under one arm. Jasper followed at her heel.

  Reese bent down and hugged the dog the way he always did. "How're you doing, buddy?" he asked. "How's the shoulder?"

  "He's doing better. Still hard to get up the stairs into my house. But improving every day."

  Reese stood up.

  He motioned her into the living room. "Wanna sit?" he asked.

  She did. She set the big box on the couch next to her.

  Jasper lay down and rested his head on her foot so she couldn't leave without him.

  Reese noticed her studiously averting her gaze to avoid looking at his body, and he excused himself. He ran up the stairs and in a couple minutes was back, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt.

  He started to sit down in the chair opposite her, but she motioned to the box on the couch. "It's for you."

  "Why? It's not my birthday or anything."

  "I thought you needed it."

  He just stood there, looking confused. "What are you talking about? I have everything."

  She motioned again to the box and he bent to pick it up, then sat down opposite her, the big wrapped present on his lap.

  "Maggie…," he started, very patiently. "You know what it's like in my world. You know I don't need anything at all. I have more money than I can spend in a lifetime. Unless I start shooting up drugs again, I can't get rid of all the money I already have. I can buy anything I could possibly want."

  "But you didn't buy yourself this," she said. "And you should have. And anyway, I felt funny about the parking thing. It wasn't an attempt to get more money from you. I had no idea you were going to do that."

  "Of course you didn't. I wouldn't have done it if you were trying to manipulate me. But that money was supposed to be for you. And now you need it for Jasper's vet bills."

  "It covered his vet bills, and then some. You paid me thousands of dollars to park your car sideways, you idiot."

  "Well, you should have kept all of it."

  He still wasn't opening the package, so she motioned at it.

  He shrugged, then pulled at the wrapping paper, blushing a bit. "People give me stuff all the time. Game tickets. Designer clothes. All kinds of stuff. You shouldn't have divorced Mac before awards season. You missed the sweetest swag bag at this year's Oscars. It had a diamond Rolex and a trip to Santorini. It's insane the things people give to you when you're already rich. I don't need anything. I can buy—"

  He stopped as the wrapping gave way and he saw what was inside. "Oh," he breathed out quietly. "Oh."

  For a while he didn't say a word, just pulled the telescope out and examined it. He started to put the pieces together, and she sat and watched him and smiled. It was worth it. For this reaction, it was worth every penny.

  About ten minutes later he looked up, the assembled telescope perched proudly on its tripod.

  "Um, thanks. Wow. Thanks."

  She smiled and stood up. "I've got to go back to the shop. Have fun with it."

  "Yeah. Gee." He sounded like a little kid, totally lost for words. "Thank you, Maggie."

  "You're welcome," she said. "Moon Boy."

  It was after eight the next evening when Maggie stood in her tiny house, staring down at Jasper.

  "It's not that bad."

  Jasper lay on the rug, wearing a striped T-shirt to cover his bandaged shoulder and keep him from scratching at the stitches. He gave her a baleful look, as if she were torturing a hospital patient.

  "It's only burned on the top," she said. "Here. I'll cut off that part."

  She picked up the bowl filled with her attempted roast chicken and took it back into the kitchen. Somehow, her dad's "simple" recipe had ended up charred on the outside and nearly raw on the inside when she'd baked it.

  "It's the oven," she told Jasper. "It's a tiny oven and probably didn't heat up properly."

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  "Well, it could be the oven," she clarified.

  He shook his head.

  "Okay. Maybe it's the cook. But what do you know? You'd drink out of the toilet if I let you."

  She looked at the unappetizing bowl and sighed.

  "How does kibble sound?" she asked him, and he barked his approval.

  An hour later Jasper struggled to his feet and limped over to the door.

  He didn't bark, but stood there by the tiny house's exit, wagging his tail.

  "What's up?" she asked him. "Do you need to go outside?"

  Then she heard a knock and put down the tray of beads she was counting to go answer it.

  Reese was standing there in the dusk, holding the telescope. "Wanna go for a drive?"

  They took her car, him sitting in the passenger seat and giving her directions to the state park way up on top of Archer Peak, half an hour inland.

  "It's away from all the city lights," he explained. "The best place around here for looking at the stars, so they say."

  They picked up In-N-Out on the way out of town. He fed a burger to Jasper, propped Maggie's fries in the cup holder so she could reach them as she drove, and then settled in to eat his animal-style burger while she admonished him not to get sauce all over her upholstery. "Now I know why you wanted me to drive," she scolded when a glob of thousand island sauce landed on the floor. He offered to pay to get her car detailed, and she laughed and shook her head.

  She drove in the growing darkness, with Jasper settling down in the back seat with a loud grunt, and the big pine trees crowding around as they climbed from sea level up the mountainside.

  They parked in a big paved lot in the shadow of some massive cell towers at the very top of the mountain.

  Then they sat in the open hatchback of the car with the dog between them, and drank the last of their sodas, and waited for the darkness to fall.

  Reese had to lean forward to keep from hitting his head on the top of the car, so he rested his elbows on his knees, and they chatted.

  The stars pricked out against the blackness, more and more of them.

  She saw the Little Dipper, and he pointed out Polaris, on the end of the tail.

  "The North Star," she whispered.

  "People used to sail the seas just by following that star," he said, and she felt a shiver down her spine at how small and alone a person must have felt to be out on the open sea with nothing but that tiny point of light to guide you to shore.

  Finally it was time. The whole sky was filled with stars, and the surrounding slopes covered in pine forest were lost in shadow.

  "Mrs. Queen plans to stay in town," she said, while he was putting the telescope together. "She insists she's going to keep cleaning Casablanca part-time, even though I told her I could hire someone else. I think she needs to keep busy."

  "I was wrong about her," Reese said. "She tried to fix Big Mac's messes for all these years. The jerk really did a number on her."

  "No," Maggie said. "I think…," she hesitated, then said, "I think Mac did the best he knew how to do with the situation. He didn't abandon his child. He had an orphaned newborn son, the product of an affair. He had a wife who'd just lost her child. He tried to take care of Patrick without causing Nora any more grief. If he were truly the narcissistic jerk I accused him of being, he wouldn't have cared about sparing Nora's feelings."

  Reese smiled faintly in the darkness. "You're a very forgiving person, Maggie."

  "No I'm not. Mac was a cheating, lying, selfish man. But he wasn't a monster." She watched Reese set the telescope on its stand and point it skyward. "P
eople are complicated."

  "That they are," he agreed. He put his eye to the eyepiece of the telescope and began adjusting things.

  Maggie leaned against Jasper and kissed his forehead. He gave her a big sloppy kiss back.

  "Found it," Reese said.

  "Found what?"

  "Albireo," he said.

  "What is it?"

  "It's a double star. Beta Cygni. It looks like a yellow dot with the naked eye, but through a telescope, it becomes clear. Come take a look."

  She looked through the telescope. Two stars, side by side. One giant, looming, golden and bright. The other smaller, circling it, in a rich blue.

  "Wow," she said. "It's like a frost gold crystal and a tiny azure pearl."

  He laughed. "Yeah. It's just like that."

  "It's amazing."

  "Thank you, Maggie," he said softly.

  "You could have done this for yourself long ago, if you'd thought of it."

  "But I didn't. I forgot I even cared about this stuff. I'd just left this part of my life behind. Wait! Look at this!" And he found another sight, long-lost in his past.

  She sat down in the open hatchback of her car, and petted Jasper, and watched the man who had the whole world at his feet, but was totally alone.

  He chattered on about constellations and star magnitudes, and the chances of alien life on other worlds. And she listened. And smiled.

  Can Maggie find the real killer when her teenage student threatens to strangle someone with a jet-black necklace... hours before the woman is found dead? And what deep, dark secret is Reese hiding from the world? Find out in Maggie and the Mourning Beads, the next Carita Cove Mystery.

  The Carita Cove Mysteries

  Maggie McJasper is starting over in a little California beach town. She has a craft shop, a nice circle of friends, and a handsome movie star who keeps flirting with her. Life would be pretty great if she could just stop stumbling over dead bodies….

  * * *

  Maggie and the Black-Tie Affair