Bad Blood (Maggie Ryan Book 8)

by P. M. Carlson

  If she went back, and refused to say where she had been, the police would probably arrest her. The scissors were hers, found in Buck’s car. And with such a handy and reticent suspect, would the police even try to find anyone else? Mom and Dad would be frantic. That one seemed to be out, too.

  If she went somewhere, a motel or something, that just postponed the choice. And there would be no way to learn what was happening at home. She could wait forever and never hear if the police had found the real murderer. She couldn’t call, they’d tapped her home phone. Maybe she could call Dad at work, or even Jan. But Jan wouldn’t know much, and Ginny would be afraid to call either number more than once, or they’d tap it too. How could she find out when she could go home? If ever?

  She’d be just as much a prisoner as if she’d been arrested.

  And the mirrored sunglasses really did hide those eyes.

  And even after she’d found Ginny, Maggie had honored those damn sealed agreements for thirteen years.

  Ginny said, “When you’re there, will you call and tell me what’s happening?”

  “Of course.” Maggie, pulling out her door keys, paused at the foot of the stoop.

  “The only reason I’m even considering this is Mom,” Ginny said sternly. “You have to swear you won’t let her find out, ever.”

  And under the streetlight, solemnly, Maggie raised her hand and said, “I swear, Ginny. They won’t find out from me.”

  So Ginny, with nowhere else to turn, consented to the outrageous scheme. A scheme that would trap her in Brooklyn with her little brother and sister, and would send her new-found mother to join her real one hundreds of miles away in Maryland. Insane.

  “I can’t believe all this,” she said grimly.

  “Don’t try,” said Maggie, inserting the key. “Just get through one minute at a time.”

  Sunday

  September 16, 1979

  XII

  “Nick, it won’t be for long. She loves the kids, and she’s responsible.”

  “She takes very good care of her cat, granted. But—”

  “It’s lots more than the cat, you know that! She’s trying to take care of her mother too. Trying to shield her. Besides, we’ll be checking on them.”

  “From hundreds of miles away, yeah. We can’t get back very fast if something goes wrong.”

  “Look, I’m calling Ellen. She’s as close as we would be if we were here, at work.” Maggie’s eyes, dusk-blue and intense, held him. “Nick, I’ve got to help her, and I just can’t think of another plan.”

  “Neither can I,” Nick admitted, resigned but unhappy still. Damn industrial show. He’d go do the private-eye gig in Washington himself if he could. But he couldn’t. And Ginny’s dilemma needed immediate attention.

  He had packed for St. Louis last night after he got Will and Sarah settled, and had only a few toilet articles to stow this morning before Maggie drove him to his plane. Now, glumly pouring himself some orange juice, he watched Maggie dial. “Hi, Dan, it’s Maggie. I can’t come in for a couple of days. Family crisis. But I’ll leave you the McGraw stuff, and give Rivkin a call and put him off.” She listened a moment. “Oh, shit. They want to come in tomorrow? Well, you and Joel will have to manage.” She laughed suddenly. “Right, that’s the spirit. I’ll vote you a bonus come Christmas. Thanks, Dan.”

  Ginny came in as she was dialing again, and she cupped her hand over the mouthpiece to say, “Scrounge your own breakfast, Ginny. Dishes there, orange juice in the—oh, hi, Ellen. Maggie. Can you walk Sarah to school for me for a couple of days? I’ll be out of town. It’s Claudia’s week to walk the kids home, of course.” She shrugged at the receiver. “Oh, he’s about what you’d expect. Itchy, cranky, feverish. A delight to all around him. Ginny will babysit, poor thing.” She shook her head. “No, I most certainly will not tell you, you don’t want to know.” A pause. “Listen, have I ever in my life misled you? … Well, except for that…. Yeah, that too. Okay, okay, forget I asked. Spare me your quips and quiddities. This is all in a good cause, you damn lawyer.” She smiled fondly at the receiver, then dialed again.

  “Annette? Maggie. Sorry to bother you Sunday morning, but I have to go out of town, and I wondered if you were going to the grocery today, by any chance.” A brief pause. “Right now? Terrific! Two half-gallons of milk and some whole-wheat bread.”

  Nick had pulled a bag of English muffins from the bread drawer and held it up with a questioning look at Ginny. She nodded and he put two in the toaster. She poured herself some orange juice and sat down at the oak table. She looked wan and solemn today, shaken by the internal and external crises that had swept over her. Nick was not eager to leave them behind.

  Maggie hung up, eyed their muffins, and said to Ginny, “Bring your fuel on upstairs. I need your advice.”

  A few moments later, when Nick went up to collect his jacket and overnight bag, the bedroom was a chaos of Maggie’s clothes. Ginny was sitting on the edge of the rumpled bed finishing her coffee and watching the flurry of activity almost in awe.

  “Oh, Nick, good, you can help too!” Maggie exclaimed. “Now, I’m a journalist, right? Eager young thing from a New York magazine. And I wear aviators”—she put on her new sunglasses—“and the question is, What goes with them?”

  Nick looked at her critically. “The black cowl-neck sweater is fine. Not jeans. Something else.”

  “A skirt?” Maggie hauled out a navy-blue and a tweed.

  “Not quite right. Though the tweed might do in a pinch.”

  “I’ve got these old gray tweed slacks. Haven’t worn them for years.” She held them up to herself. “God, look, I’d forgotten they flare! This journalist would never wear them. Neither would I, for that matter. Time to throw them out.”

  “Really?” asked Ginny, putting down her mug on the night table. “You’re going to throw them out?”

  “Do you want them? Take them. Hey, how about corduroy?”

  “Better,” said Nick. He unzipped his bag, noticed he’d forgotten his aftershave, and fetched the bottle from the bathroom.

  “Got any scissors?” asked Ginny.

  “Sewing kit’s on the top shelf of the closet,” said Maggie, pulling on the corduroy slacks. “Hey, look! How’s this with the corduroys?” She pulled a long white fringed scarf from the closet.

  “That’s great!” said Ginny. “Do you have any knee socks?”

  “Yeah, gray ones.”

  “Fine.” Ginny was snipping industriously at her newly acquired tweed slacks. Maggie pulled on the light tan corduroy jeans and peered at herself critically in the mirror. She tied her red scarf around her head.

  “How’s this?”

  Nick shook his head. “No. Let your hair curl. If you pull it back like that it flattens down like Ginny’s.”

  “You’re right. How about a beret, then?” She produced a white one. “What do you think, Ginny?Très chic, n’est-ce pas?”

  “If that’s a question, it’ll have to wait. You neglected to tell me I should be studying French.”

  “I did not! It’s all in the letters the agency won’t give you. Earrings, now. Your generation never wears them, right? Just safety pins through your ears?”

  “Yeah, or rusty nails.”

  “We’ll have tasteful gold circles, then. Don’t want to look your age.”

  “Heaven forbid,” said Ginny.

  Will, chubby, red, and cross, appeared in the door. “Gotta pee, Mommy,” he declared imperiously.

  “Okay, love. Come on.”

  “Want me to do it?” asked Nick.

  “Not if he’s in this mood. We’d better not cross him.” She scooped up the little boy. “Phew! You smell bad! Let’s get you changed!”

  Nick sat down near the window, trying to dampen his uneasiness. Ginny didn’t look like a problem at the moment: young, yes, but serious and competent, stitching skillfully around the legs of the tweed pants. Maggie returned in a few minutes with a grumpy but cleaner Will. She handed him t
o Nick. He propped the little boy on his lap and began to murmur, “Our revels now are ended.” His son, pimpled and itchy, leaned against his chest, a surly look on his face but at least listening, at least quiet. Parents had to learn to settle for less than constant joy in their children. A difficult lesson sometimes.

  Ginny said to Maggie, “Get the corduroys off. Try these.”

  “Those old things? Really? Hey, they’re different!” Maggie, intrigued, slid out of the corduroys and into the transformed tweeds. Ginny tucked pins into each leg to fasten them, and Maggie exclaimed, “My God! Tweed knickers!”

  “Where are those knee socks?” asked Ginny.

  “Third drawer. Ginny, they’re incredible!”

  Ginny found the socks and tossed them to Maggie, who was inspecting the knee pants with a rather dazed expression. She pulled on the socks, added black oxfords, and stood staring into the mirror. Nick was impressed too. Ginny’s spur-of-the-moment creation fit the invented journalist’s personality exactly.

  “I’m perfect!” announced Maggie.

  “Almost,” said Ginny. “Do you have any fur? Or maybe a leather jacket?”

  “Fur!” Maggie glanced swiftly at Nick. He saw her decide to go for broke. “Right. Here you are.” She dove into the closet and emerged with a white rabbit-fur coat that he hadn’t seen for years. She draped it around her shoulders. Nick, still murmuring to Will, felt memories crowding in. She’d worn that coat the winter he’d first met her. A bright, brash college student, determined to wring some joy from life but sometimes flung back into her grief by what he now knew were reminders of her lost child. Now, as then, she hid the pain behind a joke and a swagger. “Better than Lois Lane,” she said to Ginny, preening. “I oughta be on TV.”

  “Yes. Now you’re perfect. Take jeans and the corduroys for a change. And maybe a yellow sweater. I never wear yellow.”

  “God, I never do either. Makes my skin look gray. But I’ll pick one up on the way down.”

  Ginny was stirring her finger in the little button box. “I’d better put some buttons on your knickers.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  While Ginny fixed the buttons and buttonholes, Maggie padded storklike around the room in sweater, bikini panties, and gray knee socks, filling a flight bag with the tan corduroys, a white sweater, underwear, and notebooks. When Ginny had finished she picked up the knickers and inspected the work carefully. “Awe-inspiring,” she said, handing them to Nick. She put the scissors and sewing kit away.

  “I know a couple of costumers who could use your talents,” Nick said.

  “Say revels, Daddy!” groused Will on his knee.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Oh, God, Annette!” Maggie started out, then bolted back into the room to pull on her jeans before running downstairs, carrying the knee pants and her airline bag. Nick tucked Will into the crook of one arm, picked up his suitcase with the other, and followed.

  “I can’t get my shoelace right,” complained Sarah in the hall.

  “Ginny, help her, okay?” Maggie dumped her things on the hall floor and bounded out the door to talk to the driver of the car outside. Ginny knelt to untangle Sarah’s shoelace.

  “Get down!” demanded Will, squirming. Nick set him on the floor.

  “Annette will get groceries whenever you need them, and Ellen will walk Sarah to school tomorrow, and Claudia will walk her back,” said Maggie, returning with a grocery bag. “That way you won’t have to worry about bundling up Will to take him out.”

  “Oh. Good. It all gets pretty hectic, doesn’t it?” said Ginny, looking from Nick to Maggie.

  “Yeah, well, this family never does things the easy way,” Maggie admitted. “Sarah, you can tell her what you want for lunch tomorrow, right?”

  “Yeah! Peanut butter sandwich and an apple, okay?” Sarah looked up bright-eyed at her new sister.

  “Have you given Ginny the phone numbers?” asked Nick.

  “Oh, right! Here’s my babysitter’s book, Ginny.” Maggie led the way to the kitchen and pulled out a bright-red binder. “Schedule, phone numbers, favorite foods, et cetera. Here at the end is a special page on chicken pox. Dr. Page’s number is up above the phone.” She pointed out the list of emergency numbers.

  “And here’s my hotel in St. Louis,” added Nick, tucking a scrap of paper behind the phone. “As soon as I find out my room number I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay,” said Ginny. She looked alert, healthy, competent. Nick’s uneasiness abated, but only a little.

  Come on, old man, he told himself, it’s not the first time you’ve had a babysitter.

  “The kids can explain most of their routines.” Maggie picked up Will and hugged him. “Can’t you, Will? While we’re gone, you can tell Ginny how we do things, okay?”

  Will gave a grudging nod, and she put him down again. “We’ll be back in a couple of days. Ginny, I’ll call tonight and tell you how to reach me in Maryland. Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” said Ginny. “I’ve got questions. Who killed Mr. Spencer? And why did he use my scissors?”

  “Talk to you tonight. Come on, Nick!” Maggie kissed Will and Sarah, raced to the front hall, snatched up her things, and went flying out the door in her blue jeans, the tweed knickers and white fur coat over her arm, airline bag bouncing behind her. Nick, following at a more earthbound pace, felt a tug at his finger as he reached the door.

  Will, his unhappy little face crusted with a combination of dried, broken pimples and fresh blisters, glared up at him, lips trembling. “Say revels, Daddy!”

  “Hey, little guy, I can’t right now. I have to go away. But I bet Ginny will read you some stories.” He hugged Will and pushed him gently toward Ginny.

  “Come on, little brother.” She picked him up fondly.

  But as Nick went down the stoop to join Maggie in the Camaro, he heard Will’s whine of complaint.

  Ginny was going to have a long couple of days.

  Sergeant Trainer arrived late Sunday morning. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall,” he said.

  “Did you find her?” blurted Rina.

  “Not yet. But I thought you might like to know about the telephone tap yesterday.”

  “Oh, yes! Please come in, Sergeant.” Rina still felt guilty about that call. Yesterday she had wanted to cry out, “Ginny, they’re tracing the call!” But her yearning for her daughter’s return had overcome her urge toward honesty. And now, she was eager to hear. “Please sit down.”

  “I can only stay a minute.” He perched on the edge of the sofa. “I was hoping that you’d be able to tell us something about what we found out. We’ve traced it about as far as we can, but maybe it’ll remind you of something.”

  “Let us try, Sergeant Trainer,” said Clint, as eager as Rina.

  “Okay. Well, the call came from a shopping mall near Trenton, New Jersey.”

  “New Jersey?” asked Rina, bewildered.

  “Right across the river from Philadelphia. Just one big city around there.”

  “Yes. I remember now.”

  “It was a public phone booth, unfortunately. The police there checked around, found two people who had seen her.”

  “Really? They’d seen her?” Rina was dizzy with hope.

  “Yes. She was with a woman, maybe one of those friends she mentioned. Both of them in jeans, Ginny in the poncho you described, the other woman in a trench coat. Two witnesses identified Ginny’s photo and described the other woman. Caucasian, tall, maybe five nine, dark hair with a red scarf. That was it. Remind you of anyone?”

  Rina shook her head. “I know two or three tall, dark-haired women, but I can’t imagine what they’d have to do with Ginny.” She gave him the names anyway.

  “Okay. Well, the two of them had hamburgers out there at the mall, and on their way out to the parking lot they were seen by an employee of the soft-drink stand there. He saw them get into a car.”

  “Did he get the license number?” asked Clint.

  �
�No. But he noticed it was a blue Toyota. When the New Jersey police took him out to look over the parking lot, he pointed out a car that he said looked very similar, parked in about the same place. But it didn’t check out, so they must have been in another one nearby. Lots of blue Toyotas these days.”

  “Did they find out who owned the car?”

  “The one parked there was owned by a guy named Jeff Smith. About fifty-five, five feet ten, blue eyes, glasses, thin. Recognize him?”

  “No,” said Rina sadly, and Clint shook his head.

  “Well, we agree with New Jersey, he’s probably not involved. He’d been shopping for flashlight batteries, he said, and the salesman at the hardware store backed him up. He didn’t recognize your daughter’s picture, or the description of the other woman. So the department there concluded that it must have been some other Toyota.”

  “I can’t think of anyone I know with a blue Toyota,” said Rina. “Can you, Clint?”

  “Not offhand. But a lot of the high school kids have cars.”

  “Yes, sir, we’ll be checking into that. Well, now.” He stood up. “If you think of anything, let us know. The car is probably our best lead right now. The Philadelphia and Trenton police are looking hard.”

  “Good. Thank you, Sergeant,” said Clint.

  “And Mrs. Marshall, I probably should warn you, the press has been nosing around.”

  “The press?”

  “Asking about the murder weapon.”

  Even Mamma didn’t know yet about Ginny’s scissors. Rina was horrified. “You didn’t tell them! You told us not to tell!” Though she’d told Ginny, of course, so she’d know she had to come home.

  “No, ma’am, we don’t plan to give out that information to the press soon. But we had to say something about where the victim spent his last hours.”

  “I see.”

  “And if your daughter doesn’t turn up soon to straighten this out, we’ll have to tell them about her. Sometimes publicity brings out new information about crimes. Helps us find people quicker.”

  “Yes, but not yet! We’ll find her soon, and straighten this out!”

  “Yes, ma’am, I hope so. Let us know when you hear from her.”