by Jennie Marts
“How did the college apps go last night?”
“Good. Cassie stayed up with me. She was working on her coupons and another one of those contest entries.”
Cassie was always entering contests, sending in recipes and entry forms for sweepstakes and free samples. She licked her fork and pointed it at her niece. “Hey, somebody has to win those things. It could just as easily be me.”
“Which schools are you looking at, Piper?” Maggie asked, used to Cassie’s claims of winning the next big sweepstakes.
“Only three. The two big in-state universities and the local community college. Obviously, I’m hoping to get into the same school as Drew.”
Maggie smiled at the girl. She had changed so much from when she had first come to live with Cassie. She had been a moody, depressed teenager, wearing dark clothes and makeup and taking out her anger with sarcasm at everyone around her. “I’m really proud of you. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”
“Thanks. I’m not sure I have the grades to get in. Before I moved here, I would never have dreamed that I could even get into college. You all have really helped me to believe in myself. Now, I know this is what I really want and that I can make it happen.”
Before Maggie could reply to the girl’s sweet sentiment, the doorbell rang.
She filled her cup and carried her coffee into the living room to answer the door. Maggie couldn’t imagine who would be here this early on a Saturday. Most of her sons’ friends didn’t get out of bed until noon on the weekends.
Taking a sip from her cup, she opened the door, and almost spat her coffee out. “What are you doing here?”
Nothing could have prepared her for the sight of Officer McCarthy standing on her doorstep, wearing a leather jacket, Aviator sunglasses, and heavy black motorcycle boots. She looked behind him to the gleaming black and silver Harley-Davidson that sat parked in her driveway.
Arching an eyebrow, she looked at him questioningly. “Are you here to offer me a ride on your bike?”
He pulled the sunglasses off, and a smile replaced the serious look on Mac’s face. “If I said yes, would you accept?”
Maggie heard the challenge in his voice, almost as if he were daring her to hop on his motorcycle and ride off with him. Considering the scene she would be leaving behind in her kitchen, she was actually tempted to say yes. She shook her head. “Not today.”
“Hmm. Not today or not at all?” He gave her another grin, and she was dazzled by the pearly white of his teeth.
She had thought he looked good in his cop uniform, but Holy Cow, he was downright dreamy in jeans and the muscle-hugging black t-shirt he wore under the leather jacket. The fantasy part of her brain went to a vision of him in motorcycle chaps, but she shook her head to clear the thought. He was just so buff and so tall. He was easily six-four, and being tall herself, she liked the way he made her feel small as she stood barefoot, looking up at him.
Geez. Down, girl. She needed to get back on track here.
As a lawyer and a woman, she was well practiced in the art of changing the subject. “What are you doing here, Officer McCarthy? I don’t imagine this is just a social call.”
“Please, call me Mac. And no, it isn’t just a social call. Although I kind of wish it was.” He looked out across her yard, and when he turned back to her, his face wore the stern expression of someone carrying bad news.
All of a sudden, Maggie wanted to shut the door, pretend this hadn’t happened, go back to bed, stay under the covers all day, and not answer the door to this good-looking police officer and his motorcycle. But she was never one to run from trouble. She would rather face it head on and stare it down. “All right. What is it?”
“It’s about Jeremy. We’ve got some new information, and it doesn’t look good for him.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“That’s a really great question.” Mac sighed and ran a hand over his clean-shaven bald head. “Maybe simply because I like you.”
Maggie gulped and took a sip of her now lukewarm coffee.
“And because it’s a small town and information tends to leak easily. Especially to your bunch. It wouldn’t surprise me if that Edna has a police scanner next to her bed.”
She laughed softly, still uneasy about the information he was about to share. “So, if I was going to hear it anyway, why not let me hear it from them?”
“Because I wanted you to hear it from me. So you would believe it. And not just think it was a rumor.”
Uh oh. Every nerve in Maggie’s body went on full alert. This was going to be bad. She took a deep breath. “Well, tell me.”
“First of all, we checked out Jim’s bank account, and a few things stood out. A few very large things. Within the last month, he made two notable deposits. One was a wire for twenty-five thousand dollars that we traced to Jeremy’s competitor, SkyVision. And the other was a ten- thousand-dollar check from Jeremy himself.”
Maggie thought for a minute. “Both deposits could be easily explained. Maybe Jeremy offered him a bonus. They’d been working really hard on this new game.”
“Maybe. But that wouldn’t explain the wire transfer from the company that has every reason to want to steal that new game.”
Which would also add up to a big fat motive for Jeremy. “But still, this is all circumstantial. If Jeremy found out Jim were selling secrets to his rival, why not just fire him? He certainly wouldn’t have to kill him.”
This information wasn’t so bad. Certainly not worth all the dramatic buildup. Maggie had a bad feeling there was more coming.
“There’s more,” Mac said.
She knew it. Sometimes she hated it that she was always right. She stared at Mac. Daring him to destroy her with his next words.
“Jeremy lied about his alibi.”
The breath went out of her lungs. This could be bad. If she didn’t ask, maybe he wouldn’t tell her. “Where was he?”
“Charlotte came forward last night and admitted that the two of them spent the night in a motel together. She’s got a receipt from the Travel Inn, and the desk clerk remembers her checking in with a dark-haired guy.”
Maggie felt like she had been punched in the stomach. Not Jeremy. Not the man that she had given herself to the night before. The one who had touched her and spoke words of love into her ear. Not the man who had laughed off those too-personal-sounding texts from his coworker. “That can’t be true.”
“I’m sorry, Maggie.”
“That bastard!”
Maggie jumped at Edna’s voice. She closed her eyes. Please no. Turning around, she opened her eyes and saw the Page Turners standing in the living room behind her. The stunned expressions on their faces told her that they had heard everything. Her heart sank even further as she saw Chad leaning against the jam of the kitchen doorway, a spatula still in his hand.
She turned back to Mac, praying that he had no more information for her. She had been humiliated enough for one day. For one week. For one year. “Anything else?”
Mac shook his head. “We’re still digging. I really am sorry. And I’m sorry that I had to be the one to tell you.”
“It doesn’t matter who told me. It doesn’t change it.” She put her hand on the door. “Thanks for letting me know.”
He took a step backward. “You know where to find me, if you need anything.”
She shut the front door, leaning heavily against it. If she needed anything. Yes, she needed something. She needed this day to go away. She needed to go back to that great feeling she had getting out of bed this morning. She needed Jeremy to not have lied. To not have slept with another woman. To not have paid off the murder victim.
She needed a lot of things. But mainly, she needed her new boyfriend to not be a murderer.
Chapter Ten
“Soooo, that happened.” Maggie sat on the sofa, looking at her closest friends and trying not to cry in front of them. She always held such a tough exterior, but inside she was crumbling like a house
made of sand.
Cassie sat on the sofa next to her and gently rubbed her back. “I can’t believe it.”
Sunny sat on her other side, forming a protective shield around Maggie. “I wouldn’t have believed it if Mac hadn’t shown up to tell us himself.”
“That’s why he did. He knew you wouldn’t believe him otherwise.” Edna sat across from them, her bony bottom perched on the side of the loveseat, the opposite of Piper, who curled casually into the corner of the small sofa. “So, the question is, what are you gonna do about it?”
Maggie covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know.”
“I could make you another waffle.” Chad waved the spatula, still standing in the doorway of the kitchen.
“Shut up, Chad. You’re not helping.” Maggie leaned back. “I guess I’ll go talk to him. Confront him and give him a chance to tell me his side of the story.”
Edna popped up from her seat. “Okay. We’ll all go. I have a few questions I would like to ask him, too.”
“That’s okay. I don’t need to bring my entire posse with me, like I’m afraid to face him on my own.” Although Maggie was afraid. In fact, she was terrified.
Sunny took Maggie’s hand, holding it gently in hers, the pressure helping to ease the trembling. “I have an idea. Why don’t we just give you a ride over? We’ll stay in the car and if you need us, great. If not, you can give us the signal, and we’ll take off, and Jeremy can drive you home later.”
Maggie thought for a second. This did not seem like a completely terrible idea.
“I’m not staying in the car,” Edna said, already hefting her purse onto her shoulder.
Cassie gave her a stern “mom” look. “Yes. You are. Or you’re not coming along.” She stood up, reaching for her bag and giving orders. “I’ll drive. We can all fit in the minivan. Maggie, go find some shoes and make sure you brush your teeth. Sunny, you grab her purse. Piper, grab some chips.”
Maggie and Sunny looked at her questioningly on the last instructions.
Cassie looked back innocently. “What? We might get hungry.”
“How ’bout me? Can I come?” Chad asked.
“No!” The five women’s voices joined in a chorus of one word.
##
Thirty minutes later, the Pleasant Valley Page Turners sat in Cassie’s van, parked a few houses away from Jeremy’s.
At Cassie’s advice, Maggie had thrown on some flip-flops and brushed her teeth. The mundane task had calmed her a little, but the drive over had given her nerves plenty of time to rev back up into super-nova mode.
She looked at her cohorts. Piper was in the far back seat, one earbud tucked in her ear, listening to music and the women talking while simultaneously staring out the window. Sunny and Edna sat in the middle seat, wearing matching expressions of support. Cassie had already pushed the driver’s seat back and reached for the chips, ready to settle in for the wait.
“Thanks, you guys. I’m glad you came with me.” Maggie smiled at her friends. “But I’ve changed my mind. Let’s forget this dumb idea and go see a movie. We can gorge ourselves on popcorn with tons of butter and pretend this never happened.”
“Yum. Popcorn does sound good.” Edna leaned forward. “I heard there’s a new movie out with Hugh Jackman, and he barely wears a shirt the whole movie.”
Sunny waved Edna back into the seat. “We are not going to a movie. You can do this. You are Maggie Hayes, attorney-at-law, and a mother. You have a law degree, and you have given birth. You are one tough chick. You can do this.”
Maggie appreciated the pep talk, though was not exactly sure how being a lawyer and motherhood correlated with each other. But still, Sunny was right. She could do this.
She dug in her purse for her favorite lip gloss. Turning the rearview mirror, she quickly swiped on a dab of color, then popped a stick of spearmint gum in her mouth. She was as ready as she was gonna get. She nodded at the Page Turners and pushed the van door open.
She walked quickly up the sidewalk, determined to face Jeremy. Do it quick. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. But, as she got closer to the house, she saw that the front door stood ajar. She approached the door cautiously, tiptoeing up the front steps.
She reached her hand out to the open door, both praying that Jeremy was okay and reprimanding herself for doing something so stupid. If the heroine did this in the movies, Maggie was always the first one to yell at her to run away. Go get help. Call the police.
Yeah, and tell them what? “Hi, I went over to confront my boyfriend for cheating on me, and his front door was open. Send the cops fast!”
This was ridiculous. But she was also smart. She was turning to head back to the van to get the girls to come in with her when she heard Jeremy’s voice. He must have been standing in the living room, because she could hear him speaking clearly.
“Look, I’m about ready to head up and see if I can find anything out.”
No one answered, so Maggie deduced he must be on the phone. Wow, she was quite the detective. See, that law degree was really paying off.
“I understand that, Charlotte. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”
Charlotte?! He was meeting Charlotte? Where? What for? She leaned her head closer to the door, listening attentively.
“All right. See you soon.” He paused. “You too. Bye.”
Maggie stood up straight. Crap! She needed to get out of there. She turned and sprinted toward the van, her stupid sandals slapping the sidewalk with each step.
She waved her arms, motioning for Cassie to start the car. She saw Cassie throw the chips to the floor and pull her seat forward. The engine was going by the time Maggie jumped into the car.
“What in the sam-hell is going on?” Edna asked.
Maggie gasped for breath, wishing once again that she had made it to the gym that week. That was actually a frequent wish on her list. “I heard him on the phone. He’s getting ready to go meet her.”
“Meet who?” Sunny passed Maggie a bottle of water.
“Charlotte.” She pointed to Jeremy’s house, where his Toyota 4Runner was backing out of the driveway. “Follow him.”
Cassie eased forward, trying to stay far enough back that Jeremy wouldn’t notice her car. “Thank goodness that I have the most popular minivan on the planet. There are dozens of cars like mine on the road.”
Maggie sank low in the seat. “Still, try to keep a good distance back.”
“Yeah, we don’t want him to make us.” Edna had pulled a ball cap from her giant purse and pulled it on over her silvery hair.
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Make us? Are you serious? What is he gonna make us? A cake?”
Edna rummaged around on the floor of the minivan and came up with another baseball cap. She passed it up to Maggie. “Shut up and put this on. You don’t want him to recognize you.”
Maggie snatched the hat from Edna’s hand and tugged it on her head, pulling her hair through the hole in the back to make a loose ponytail.
Cassie kept her full concentration on the road, keeping an eagle eye on Jeremy’s car. “What about me? Find something back there for me. I think my sunhat is in the back from going to the pool earlier this summer.”
Piper passed a big floppy black hat up to Sunny, who passed it to Cassie. “Geez, Aunt Cassie. You have tons of crap in this car. Are you preparing for a zombie apocalypse?”
Cassie crushed the big hat onto her head. “No, I’m just a mom. And that’s the beauty of driving a minivan, I have everything I could need in here. It’s like a giant purse on wheels.”
Piper ransacked the floor and various compartments of the van for more disguises and came up with a snorkel and mask, a hockey helmet, and a neon-green pair of sunglasses straight out of the eighties. She held the choices out to Sunny, who took the sunglasses. Piper considered her choices and pulled the hockey helmet over her head.
“He’s getting on the highway.” Sunny pointed to the on-ramp just as her cell phone rang. She pulled the pho
ne from her purse and put it to her ear. “Hey, Jake.”
Maggie listened as Sunny explained what had happened this morning with Jeremy. “Tell him we’ve been on the highway for about ten minutes. I have a bad feeling we’re headed out of town.”
Sunny passed on the message, listened a few minutes more, then hung up the phone. “That was Jake. He thinks he knows where Jeremy is going. They were talking earlier this week, and Jeremy told him the big Comic Con is in Denver this weekend and mentioned that he might try to go. I told Jake that it looked like we were headed to Denver, and he said he’ll jump in his car and meet us there.”
“What the heck is a Comic Con?” Cassie asked.
Edna sighed, like it was such a struggle that she had to explain everything. “It’s a big nerd convention they hold every year where everybody dresses like their favorite comic book or super hero, and they bring in a bunch of celebrities from the famous nerd shows, like Star Trek and Star Wars and Stargate and any other show with a ‘star’ in it.”
“How do you know all this, Edna?” Sunny asked.
“It’s called the internet. You should try it sometime.”
Maggie turned to face the back seat. “That sounds like something Jeremy would totally dig. Is Jake sure that’s where he’s headed?”
Sunny nodded. “He seemed pretty sure. And by the amount of time we’ve been on this highway, I’m pretty sure we’re headed to Denver.”
“Good thing I filled up for the football game this weekend. Oh crud!” Cassie reached for her purse and tossed it in Maggie’s lap. “Somebody’s gonna need to call Matt and tell him I don’t think I’ll make it to the kids’ game today.”
Chapter Eleven
The minivan carrying a hockey player, a movie star, an eighties enthusiast, and a couple of baseball fans pulled into the garage labeled “Comic Con Parking”. At least that was how Cassie’s van would have looked to an outsider. However, the number of crazy-costumed people that were filing into the convention center told Maggie her band of misfits would fit right in.
