by Madelyn Alt
I made myself turn away, before he caught me looking and we allowed ourselves to be ... sidetracked. No time for that.
Still, I did peek. A little.
Especially when he stood before the dresser mirror combing his hair and fastening it low at the nape. There was something about the shape of a man’s body standing in that position, the width of the shoulders, the play of muscles, the way the towel clung to his hips, and how certain movements made the biceps pop out in a way that made my mouth go dry.
All right, I’ll admit it. I watched. The whole time.
“Ready?”
We headed toward the front door. As he opened it, Marcus scratched Minnie behind her ears and shooed her off toward the bedroom since I had a feeling we were going to need to make a stop or two and it was too warm to haul her around in the carrier. I used the crutches to follow him out onto the porch. I was game to at least attempt the steps, but there was no handrail, and as soon as he saw me looking in that direction Marcus took my crutches from me and swept me up into his arms again.
I wasn’t complaining. A modern girl I might be, but there was something very primal and attractive about a man who could exhibit Tarzan-like strength but still harbor a softness and tenderness for his woman, too. Besides, it allowed me to be up close and personal with my guy and gave me the excuse to just gaze at his face in completely smitten admiration without looking like a total loon.
Sigh!
Outside, the sun was already slanting across the porch floorboards like crazy, and the heat was rising. But the sky was blue, without a hint of the usual steamy haze we “enjoy” this time of year, and the trees waved at us with the onset of a cheery breeze. It was going to be a beautiful day.
Marcus carefully placed me on his truck seat and went back inside to get my bag. I took my cell phone from my pocket and immediately plugged the car charger into the truck’s cigarette lighter, powering back up. My phone already had a light charge, but it hadn’t been plugged in long enough and needed a much longer time on the charger, so for now this would have to do.
Off in the distance, a police siren wailed, disturbing the day’s perfection. Or was that an ambulance I heard? Or a fire truck? I could never tell the difference. Still, I cast out positive energies toward whoever might be needing them in whatever situation they found themselves in on this almost painfully beautiful Saturday.
I tried my mom’s cell first, but it rang busy. So did Mel’s. Of course. They were probably on the phone with each other. Knowing them, it could be a while. With that in mind, I tried the store next.
“Hey!” I said as Liss sang her usual cheerful greeting into the phone.
“There you are, ducks. How are you feeling today? Will you be spending the day resting, I hope?”
“Well . . . I had intended to come in this morning.”
“Absolutely not. You need to rest with your foot up, Maggie, to keep the swelling down if you want it to heal properly.”
They had mentioned something about swelling, but I had kind of been distracted yesterday. Maybe that was why my foot felt a little like an overinflated inner tube.
“Well . . . I’m in the truck now, actually.” Before she could scold me for not taking proper care of myself or allowing someone else to care for me, I said, “But only for a short jaunt.”
Briefly I explained that yes, I had wanted to go into the store today, but the phone call from my mom had thrown a monkey wrench into the works. “I really need to get ahold of them and find out what is going on.”
“Good. Go back to bed and do that. I’ll be fine here. Tara and Evie had a band conflict today, but never fear, I have it all under control. In fact, I am basking in the peaceful glow.”
“Liss ... I am worried about Melanie. If it’s true, what Mom said . . . well . . . she is going to need my support.”
“That’s all we can ever give our loved ones, my dear. Loving support as they find their way through the eddying floes and mucky tide pools of life. Melanie will be fine. She’s strong, like you. Whatever happens, she will come to know herself a little better, and that is never a bad thing, now, is it?”
That was Liss for you, as thought provoking as ever. Every day I thanked my lucky stars that I could call her my friend. Life in Stony Mill wouldn’t be easy these days without her.
Marcus put my bag on the seat beside me and got in behind the wheel. “Liss won’t let me come in,” I told him. “In fact, she ordered me back to bed.”
Marcus laughed. “Surely she knows you better than that.” I wrinkled my nose at him. “Where to, then?” he asked, turning the key in the ignition.
“I’m not sure. Can we get some coffee? I still haven’t gotten through to my mom or my sister.”
“Yup.” He put the truck into gear and pulled away from the curb as I tried my mom again. Still busy. No sense in trying Mel, then. I dialed up Steff next instead.
As soon as she picked up, I blurted, “Steff! You’re never going to guess what’s happened now!” at the exact same time that Steff wailed, “Oh, Maggie! I’m so glad you called!” All thanks to the wonders of Caller ID. My nerve endings went on high alert, my news for the moment postponed. “What’s wrong, honey? You sound upset.”
“It’s Dan. We had a terrible fight last night.”
“I thought you weren’t going to see him last night,” I said. “Wasn’t he busy?”
She sniffled on the other end. “I wasn’t supposed to see him. Well, I had wanted to, but he was busy. Or something. But he called me after all and asked me out to dinner. And when I asked him a couple of nonchalant questions about the boy who died the other night in the ER, he flipped out on me!”
Oooooh, that was probably my fault. Guilt, guilt, guilt. “That doesn’t sound like Dan.” Dan, the voice of logic and reason? Dan, whose caring and compassionate nature drove his foray into the field of medicine and whose gentle bedside manner rivaled Steffs own?
Jordan Everett . . .
The thought came out of nowhere. Now my subconscious was getting in on the action. I frowned. What was it about Jordan Everett that was so important?
“He did, though. He told me in no uncertain terms that the boy’s death was none of my concern and to make sure I kept it that way so that I didn’t find my head on the hospital chopping block. He was so adamant about it, Maggie. It’s so unlike him. Honestly, I think I took more offense at his high-handed attitude about the whole thing than to him being concerned about me asking questions in the first place.
It didn’t feel like concern to me. It felt like . . . him laying down the law, and it got my back up, and I was stupid about it, and . . .”
She started crying, and I felt like a complete heel for asking for her help to begin with. What if my curiosity had gotten her into trouble? What if it had gotten her fired? That would be bad enough. But if it had forced a wedge between her and the love of her life? I don’t think I could live with myself.
“Listen, Steff. Don’t worry. Danny loves you. I know that. You know that. I think Danny knows that. I saw the way he was looking at you. All couples have their disagreements. Sometimes they’re silly”—I glanced over at Marcus, remembering how momentarily grumpy he had gotten over the repeated interruptions to our attempts to get up close and personal—“and sometimes there are bigger issues at hand. You either get over them or work past them . . . or the problems overwhelm the relationship.” For some reason that brought instantly to mind the hidden, behind-the-scenes vibes I’d gotten from the situation between Mel and Greg. “I don’t think that’s happening here with you and Danny, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Just breathe.”
“I am.”
“And don’t worry.”
“I’m trying.” She sniffled again, and I heard the liberal use of a tissue brushing against the mouthpiece of her phone. I smiled, shaking my head. She really, really had it bad. I’d never seen her so head over heels for a guy in my life. Maybe that was why she felt so lost now when faced
with the potential of a relationship gone sour before its time . . . or maybe it was just this particular relationship.
My money was on the latter.
Marcus had stopped the truck in front of the Java Hut and was gesturing broadly to let me know he would be right back. I waved him on.
“What were you going to tell me?” Steff asked just then, reminding me.
“Well, first of all, I was going to ask you whether you’d throw some of my clothes in a bag and bring them to Marcus’s house.”
“Of course. You know that.”
“Thank you, love you, owe you. And secondly: it’s Mel.”
“Is something wrong? Something with the babies?”
“No, no, nothing like that. It’s—” I laughed, but in truth it was a mirthless sound because the problem was affecting so many people in my life. “It seems as though the time has come for relationship issues, and I don’t mean just yours. Maybe it’s something in the water.”
“Ha-ha.”
I told her about the voice message from my mom. “I wouldn’t be so worried about it if it wasn’t for the timing,” I said. “Mel is in the hospital. She just had twins. Even if they were having problems, how often does a man just up and leave his wife, the mother of his children, when she is at such a vulnerable state in her life? What would it take for that to happen? How much has gone wrong in order to lead up to that level of dissatisfaction?”
“And you’re certain that something didn’t happen to him? That he is ... missing . . . on his own accord?”
“Honestly? Yeah. I think there’s something going on. I don’t think there’s anything mysterious or sinister about it . . . except as it relates to his marriage to Mel.”
“But what if you’re wrong? Maggie . . . what if Greg’s disappearance is directly related to your overheard elevator conversation?”
It might have been a viable option, if . . . “The voices I overheard were referring to a woman, Steff. So Greg wouldn’t fit.”
“Oh. I see. I guess I didn’t realize that.”
“That’s probably because I just realized it myself,” I told her, sighing. Strange, how memory worked. Or didn’t, as the case may be.
“Well, then, hm. Has anyone called the police about him being missing?”
“I don’t know. If they have, no one has told me. But I’m pretty sure as an adult he would have to be missing for twenty-four hours before the police will even fill out a report.”
Jordan Ever—
I sighed. All right. All right, already!
“Steff? Can I ask you a question? The kid who died in the ER—” Boy . . . “Was that by any chance Jordan Everett?”
The pause on the other end of the line told me Steff’s jaw had just dropped open. “How did you . . . I didn’t tell you that. I wouldn’t have—”
“No, it wasn’t you. Don’t worry, you didn’t divulge. But it was, wasn’t it?”
“In the interest of keeping the peace with my Danny, I can neither confirm nor deny . . . but does the word ‘es-yay’ answer that for you?”
So it was him. Which meant that his death was completely out of the picture for certain, too. Because even if I had misheard the men as saying “she” for “he,” he had died before I even left for the hospital. Tara had mentioned it at Annie’s Thursday night when we stopped for coffee.
“Thanks, Steff. For everything. Listen, I have to go. I need to talk to Melanie about Greg. I just know there is something she isn’t telling that might shed some light on her situation with him.”
“All right. I’ll talk to you later.”
“And Steff?”
“Yeah?”
“Hang in there.”
“I will.”
I folded my phone and sat for a moment with it in my hands, thinking. Next to me, Marcus cleared his throat, bringing me out of my reverie. “Trouble?”
I looked up, a little disconcerted to realize Marcus had gone into the Hut and had returned with two jumbo coffees without me realizing he was back. I reached for the cup he held out to me, grateful for it. “When is there not?”
“Steff?”
“And Mel. And . . .” I reached in my bag and withdrew the baby bassinet card. “You know, I tried calling the Watkinses’ place earlier, but I couldn’t get an answer. Since Liss insists that I shouldn’t come in and we’re already out and about, maybe we should knock another thing off the To Do list and try to deliver this to Frannie and Harry Jr. before Frannie realizes it has gone missing.”
Marcus shrugged. “Sure. Where do they live?”
I gave him the address, hoping he knew where it was, because I had no idea where Mount Holyoke Road was. Luckily Marcus had the gift for road names and directions that I was sadly lacking. He headed over in the direction of the Buckingham West subdivision, turning off two subdivisions ahead into one named Sherwood Forest. Of course.
Sherwood Forest was far larger than Buckingham West, which was fairly sizable to begin with, with homes built in what appeared to be the mid-eighties. The houses were starting to show a little bit of age here and there, but all of them appeared to be nicely maintained and updated, so the subdivision itself was not at risk of fading into real estate oblivion anytime soon. The property owners had money, good middle-class money. Nothing too flashy, nothing too modern, but always present.
We wended our way around a dizzying number of curving, winding, twisting, turning streets seemingly typical of all midwestern subdivisions. Thank goodness Marcus knew what he was doing, because I would have been lost in there forever. At last we turned onto Mount Holyoke, which again twisted, turned, curved, wound, and wended, until the house numbers began to approach the sequence of digits we were searching for.
Ahead of us, the road seemed to be blocked by a number of vehicles and people. If the house number we were searching for didn’t come up soon, it looked as though we might need to find an alternate way around the hubbub.
“Uh-oh,” Marcus said.
He had his sunglasses on; I was shade free and had been squinting against a glare on the windshield. “What is it?” I asked him.
“Trouble.”
Chapter 15
Marcus pulled over to the side of the road, parking against the curb in the nearest available space. People were milling about all around, standing in their yards and staring up the road with their hands shading their eyes against the sun’s brightness.
He reached across me and rolled down my window. “Excuse me,” he called to a young woman with a baby in a front carrier strapped around her waist, who was currently standing on the sidewalk, taking it all in.
The woman drew nearer, relaxing a bit when she spotted me in the passenger seat. “Can I help?”
“We were just wondering what was going on up ahead. We have something to deliver to a house up the road, and it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting through anytime soon.”
“Oh, so you haven’t heard?” Excitement gleamed in her eyes; she fairly vibrated with it. Whatever it was had snapped her out of the same-old same-old of her life as a stay-at-home mom, and she was enjoying it from that aspect at least.
“Someone found a body this morning at one of the houses up there. An intruder, so they say. Right here. Can you imagine?”
“Thank you,” I told her. She wandered back over and stood in the grass, swapping information with an older woman who had just come out of her house to take a gander.
My God. Another unexpected death, so soon after Jordan’s. What was happening in this town?
“Well?” Marcus queried. “What do you think we should do?”
I tried to look proper and respectable and not the type of girl who would allow her curiosity and—yes, fine, all right already—a little bad luck to get her into trouble. Given the elevator conversation and my recent history with death and destruction in Stony Mill proper, was there really any question about whether I wanted to know what was going on? Felt the need to know what was going on? I folded my hands primly in my lap,
even as I arched a brow at him and said, “Well, obviously I think we should go see if we can find out what happened.”
“I think we’ve forgotten something.” He directed a glance toward my cast, in all its sunshiny glory.
“We haven’t forgotten anything. We have crutches.”
“You can’t possibly be considering going down there on crutches, Hopalong.”
“Oh, but I can,” I said with confidence. And I opened the truck door to prove it.
Shaking his head (I preferred to think in admiration, rather than with long-suffering duress), he switched off the truck and hurriedly came around to my side before I could slip down from the tall bench seat. I was eager to show him that I had attained a stately level of elegance and grace already on the underarm stilts, but Marcus was just as eager to stay by my side, helping me along like a granny with a walker on wheels.
“You could just stay here in the truck while I run down and see what I can find,” he suggested.
“It’s eighty-eight degrees outside. Already.”
“There’s a breeze.”
“It feels like ninety-eight in the truck.”
“You could keep the A/C blowing.”
I made a wry pout. “You’re just afraid I’ll fall.”
“Or get tired. You did just break your ankle, Maggie.”
“But I’m not an invalid. Besides,” I told him with a wink, “I suspect I’ll get farther playing the sympathy card than you’ll get playing the tall-dark-and-handsome card.”
“Well . . . you might have a point there. Although I think winking and pouting like that might win you a few, too.”
“Hm. Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Pretty is as pretty does, Margaret Mary-Catherine 0’Neill, It only keeps them with you so long, And your hem is unraveling.”
Grandma Cora’s voice crackled in my ear again . . . only this time it was once too often.
I stopped short. “I’ve about had enough of that, Grandma C. In my head is one thing, in my ear is quite another,” I said before I realized I had in fact uttered the words out loud. And then I frowned. “Wait . . . What?”
