“Tell me why,” Scott said.
“I ain’t sayin’ I did,” Phyllis said. “It’s you gotta prove I did.”
“If you know something about Mamie’s death,” Scott said, “it will be better for you to cooperate with me and save your own hide.”
“Nope,” Phyllis said, as sat back in her chair and crossed her arms in front of her. “If you thought you could prove something, youd’ve already arrested me. I don’t see no cuffs out. So I’m telling you I had nothing to do with it. That’s all I got to say.”
Scott studied her.
“Trick’s weak,” Scott said. “He’ll turn on you.”
“That’s what you think.”
“You’re not smart enough to get away with it,” Scott said. “But you are smart enough to know that whichever one of you turns on the other, that person will have a better time of it in court.”
“Not another word,” Phyllis said. “We’re done here.”
“I saved your hide once,” Scott said. “You remember that?”
“You also hounded my son into an early grave,” she said. “You remember that?”
“Think about your position. Think about what the Rodefeffers are capable of,” Scott said. “You know where to find me.”
Outside, Scott checked her garbage cans, which were empty. He thought about the huge dumpster at the Mountain Laurel Depot. That’s where she’d throw them. There would be no way of telling Mamie’s garbage from all the other garbage in there. He turned back to look at the house as he opened the squad car door. Phyllis was watching him through the front window, her lit cigarette hanging out of her mouth.
Scott was finished with his paperwork in time to join his team for the pub quiz at the Thorn. He got as far as the front step, where he could hear Hannah shouting over the music, and then laughter. He stopped in his tracks. He had been fighting this headache since being in Mamie’s attic, and didn’t have the energy it would require to pretend to have a good time. So he turned away and headed home, which currently meant Maggie’s apartment over the bookstore.
He let himself into the stairwell up to Maggie’s apartment and met her brother Sean on the way down from his new apartment, across the hall from his sister.
“Hey,” Sean said. “I was just headed to the Thorn to sub for you.”
“Do you mind?” Scott said. “I’m not feeling up to it.”
“Not at all,” Sean said. “Everything okay?”
“Just a long day,” Scott said. “You know how it is.”
“Not anymore,” Sean said. “My seventy-two-hour work weeks are behind me.”
“Do you miss working at the bank and life in the big city?”
“I wouldn’t mind having more restaurant choices,” he said. “But I definitely don’t miss the endless meetings.”
“Are you making any progress up there?”
“It seems like the renovations are taking forever,” Sean said. “It’s like camping in a construction site.”
“Have you decided where to have your office?”
“I was going to have an office in Tony’s insurance agency,” Sean said. “But that fell through.”
“I’m sorry to hear about that,” Scott said. “I know you had hopes there.”
“He’s just not ready to take that step,” Sean said. “Not while his parents are alive, anyway.”
“That’s a shame,” Scott said. “Life’s too short.”
“I wish he realized that,” Sean said. “When’s the wedding?”
“I wish I knew,” Scott said.
“You want me to talk to her?”
“No,” Scott said. “I think the less said the better. If too many people bug her about it, she’ll just dig in her heels.”
“You’re a brave man.”
“Or the biggest fool,” Scott said, but he was smiling when he said it.
He meant to wait up for Maggie, and had every intention of just lying down on the couch to rest his eyes for a moment, time enough to let his headache medicine do its magic. He woke up to Maggie kissing his forehead. Duke, the giant tabby cat he and Maggie co-parented, was stretched out along Scott’s legs with his long, furry belly up in the air. The cat gave Maggie a dirty look.
“That cat’s getting fatter every day,” Maggie said.
“We both are,” Scott said. “It’s all the pizza we eat.”
Maggie sat down on the floor next to the couch.
“We lost,” she said.
“I guess that’s my fault,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” Maggie said. “I’ve been thinking about your punishment.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Maybe a little,” she said. “The hardest part will be removing that cat from your lap.”
“I’ll risk it,” he said.
Later on Scott raided the fridge while Maggie made tea.
“There’s a lemon, a bottle of ketchup, some moldy cheese, and something that may have once been a peach,” he said. “What can we make out of that?”
“A call for pizza delivery,” Maggie said.
“I need to cut back on the late night snacks,” Scott said. “I need to eat a vegetable.”
“Veggie pizza?” Maggie said.
“Would you care if I actually bought groceries for this fridge?”
“Would I care?” she asked. “I’d celebrate the occasion.”
“I’ll do that tomorrow.”
“This is your home, too, you know,” Maggie said. “Why would I mind if you buy groceries?”
“Is this going to be our home, then?” Scott said. “We’ve never really talked about where we’d live.”
“Duke and I like living here,” Maggie said. “I guess I assumed you did, too.”
Scott could sense from her tone that her defenses were going up. He sighed and hung his head.
“Can we just talk about it without you getting mad?”
“Sure,” Maggie said, but her tone had not changed.
Scott sat down at the table and gestured for her to join him. She gestured at the tea kettle heating up on the stove and leaned back against the counter, her arms crossed.
“I have two houses,” Scott said. “Mine and mom’s.”
“If we’re listing real estate holdings,” Maggie said, “I have this building and an empty lot out Possum Holler.”
“Do you want to build a house on that property?”
“Heavens, no,” Maggie said. “In case you haven’t noticed, Possum Holler is not exactly the best neighborhood these days. The police should really do something about that.”
“So, do you want to sell it?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it. Do I have to sell it?”
“No, of course not,” Scott said.
“It’s not that I’m sentimental about it,” she said. “It’s just that it seems like a worthless piece of property; I probably wouldn’t get back what I paid for it.”
“I have to sell Mom’s house,” Scott said. “I have to give half its value to Penny or buy her half.”
“Why would you buy it?” Maggie said. “You don’t have good memories there.”
Scott’s mother had died in that house earlier in the spring, and he could hardly bring himself to look at it as he drove past, let alone go inside.
“So, I guess I’m selling Mom’s house, and I have to decide what to do with my house.”
“Do whatever you want. It’s your house.”
Maggie shrugged. She removed the whistling tea kettle off the burner and poured hot water into each mug.
“If we live here,” he said, “I’ll need to figure out what to do with all my stuff.”
“Do whatever you want,” Maggie said, as she brought the mugs of tea to the table and sat down across from him. “If you want some of your furniture in here, we can get rid of some of mine.”
“So this will be our home?”
“Isn’t that what we just decided?” Maggie asked.
; “Yes, of course,” Scott said.
“Okay, so that’s decided,” Maggie said. “Let’s change the subject.”
“On a related topic,” he began.
Maggie groaned.
“Are we ever going to actually get married?”
Maggie made a face as if she were in agony.
“What’s the hurry?” she said. “Everybody keeps asking me about this like if I don’t lock you up soon you might get away.”
“You know that’s not going to happen,” Scott said. “Just tell me, Maggie. If you want things to stay the way they are, then I’m content. I don’t need the piece of paper. Just say that’s what you want and we won’t have to talk about it ever again.”
“It’s more complicated than that, and you know it,” Maggie said. “Between Sister M-squared, Father Stephen, and my mother, there will be no peace until we are properly wed, in the church, before God and everyone.”
“So let’s do it,” Scott said. “Let’s set a date and get it over with.”
“You make it sound so romantic,” she said.
“I tried that,” Scott said. “I also offered to forgo it completely; I offered to elope; Hannah and Claire even offered to plan the whole thing as a surprise so you’d just have to show up.”
“You did not agree to that,” Maggie said. “I would kill you all.”
“Of course not,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, this is your show. You know how I feel. You just let me know when I need to do something.”
“You need to brush your teeth and come to bed,” Maggie said. “We need to have as much premarital sex as we can; it’s my understanding that after the wedding we can’t have that anymore.”
“That’s a shame,” Scott said. “I’ll be right there.”
Scott called his voicemail to check his messages before he turned in. There was one message from Sarah.
“Get ready,” she said. “This game is officially on. Knox has lawyered up and is refusing to talk. I got her post mortem moved up, and I’m going to touch base with the feds tomorrow. I’ll stop by as soon as I’m in town, probably around ten. You need to find out about her trust arrangements, her will, and if there are any life insurance policies. If you’ve got an old girlfriend working at the Podunk Savings and Loan, get in there first thing in the morning and see what Mamie’s got going on.”
Scott listened to Maggie softly snoring next to him as he went back over his day. If Mamie had looked the least bit peaceful, he decided, he would have just assumed she died of natural causes. No matter how mean she had been in life, and without a doubt, Mamie Rodefeffer had been a selfish, mean-spirited, bossy so-and-so, she didn’t deserve to die in agony. Scott thought about his mother gasping for breath at the end. Tears filled his eyes. He sat up as quietly as he could, trying not to wake Maggie.
“Hey,” she said.
“Be right back,” he said.
“Stay with me,” Maggie said. “I don’t mind if you cry.”
“I’m not crying,” Scott said, wiping his eyes.
“You’re lying and crying,” Maggie said. “Why won’t you let me comfort you?”
“I shouldn’t still be doing this,” Scott said. “I know that’s what you think.”
“You don’t know me half as well as you think you do,” Maggie said.
She reached for him and he lay back down in her arms.
“Now tell me what you’re thinking,” she said. “That’s what husbands are required to do by law; you may as well practice. And don’t bother to lie; you’re a terrible liar.”
“I can distract myself during the day,” he said. “But at night, I can’t sleep, and I just keep reliving her death over and over.”
“That must be awful,” Maggie said.
At first Scott couldn’t speak for how overcome he was, both by admitting the depth of his grief and how grateful he felt for Maggie’s patient compassion. He knew deep down that she loved him, but she was not the most romantically demonstrative person, at least not until you got past several outer layers of her personal defense system.
They lay awake, talking in soft voices, for what felt like hours. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he awoke he was the inner spoon to Maggie’s outer. His grief was still there; it always greeted him with a jab as soon as he was conscious, but the pain wasn’t as sharp as it had been before. It was as if last night Maggie had released some of it, maybe taken on some of it, and if she had, she’d more than proved she was willing to help him bear it. Whatever that willingness was, whether it was proof of her love and their long friendship, or just common decency, to Scott it felt like relief, and he was grateful.
The next morning Scott was waiting when Roy, the security guard, opened the front doors at the bank. He made a beeline straight to Roy’s wife, Amy, the bank mortgage officer, someone with whom he had attended school. She smiled as he plopped down in the chair next to her desk and helped himself to a chocolate candy out of a bowl she kept there.
“I was wondering when I’d see you,” Amy said.
“What can you tell me?” he said.
“There were two separate insurance policies notarized by the infamous Courtenay, copies of which Knox got out of his safety deposit box yesterday.”
“What about her will?”
“I suppose her attorneys have that. It wasn’t in his box.”
“I don’t care how you know what was in the box,” Scott said.
“Roy’s in charge of the keys,” Amy said. “There isn’t anything in that room that he doesn’t know about. He has the safety of the bank to worry about.”
“Checking for explosives and whatnot,” Scott said.
“That’s right,” Amy said.
“So Trick was not a beneficiary on any of the insurance policies?”
“He was a contingent beneficiary on all of them. One was drawn up when Knox and Anne Marie were still married and one while he was married to Meredith,” Amy said. “Two policies at one million dollars each.”
“That’s a lot of motive,” Scott said.
“Here’s some other interesting news,” Amy said. “Knox also has policies on Anne Marie and Meredith.”
“Did Knox pick up those, too?”
“Nope,” Amy said.
“That man has no shame,” Scott said. “Courtenay notarized all the signatures?”
“Yes,” Amy said. “She probably also forged signatures for Mamie, Meredith, and Anne Marie, but that’s just my opinion.”
“Do you have any idea what’s in Mamie’s will?”
“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “I have heard Knox mention that she was leaving all her glass to the museum.”
“That’s probably a pretty valuable collection.”
“That means the Rodefeffer Foundation gets it,” Amy said. “They’re in control of the museum. Knox is president and chairman of the board. Guess who the vice president is?”
“Anne Marie.”
“Bingo,” Amy said. “That’s how he guaranteed her cooperative silence when he filed for divorce so he could marry Meredith and run for the United States Senate.”
“What does the foundation do, exactly?”
“They apply for grants, lots and lots of grants.”
“Interesting,” Scott said. “Didn’t Congressman Green just get in hot water because of all the money he steered toward the nonprofits he was connected to?”
“I’ve seen the minutes from their board meetings,” she said. “He was at every one.”
“Now, why would Congressman Green care about such a piddly little nonprofit?”
“Because it’s a wonderful way to filter money back to him and his cronies,” she said. “Nonprofits can use federal funds to purchase land and buildings that might be worth a lot of money some day; buildings that his historical preservation nonprofit can then rehab and resell to cronies who can rent them out or flip them to make even more money.”
“Especially if a certain interstate being built has an exi
t near here,” Scott said.
“Congressman Green was very influential on the planning,” she said. “Within a few years there will be a four-lane highway from Interstate 81 near Winchester, Virginia, all the way to the highway just north of here, with an exit above Rose Hill. That gives D.C. tourists a convenient way to visit the area.”
“And for property values to rise.”
“Yep.”
“Now that his earmarks have been curtailed, what will happen to the nonprofits?”
“They’ll shut down,” Amy said. “They were all ticks on the Congressman Green dog.”
“So Mamie’s estate will keep the Rodefeffer Foundation afloat.”
“Unless she’s broke,” Amy said. “There might not be as much as they think there is. Her quarterly trust payments are transferred out right after they come in, to a bank account in Pittsburgh. She hasn’t paid her mortgage payments for several months. Knox was able to hold them off from foreclosing when he was in charge, but now …”
“If the bank held the deed on Mamie’s house as collateral on her mortgage,” Scott asked, “won’t all her assets have to be sold to pay off that mortgage?”
“There’s another life insurance policy,” Amy said. “It was a condition of her mortgage. The bank is the beneficiary.”
“So the bank stood to gain by her death.”
“And Knox was the bank president at the time that policy was drawn up,” Amy said.
“I’m surprised the bank board would loan money to Mamie in an arrangement like that.”
“They wouldn’t have if Knox hadn’t coerced them,” she said. “When he was sure to be the next senator, no one wanted to be on the wrong side of him.”
“This has all been very enlightening,” Scott said. “I knew you would be most helpful.”
“I’m always glad to assist you,” Amy said. “Back in grade school, you, Ed, Sam, and Patrick were the only people who stood up for my little brother after he got his back brace. Nobody dared pick on him for fear one of you would punch them in the nose. Neither of us ever forgot that.”
“How is your brother?”
“He’s fine,” she said. “He and his wife are expecting their third child. I’ll tell him you said hello.”
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