Black Cat White Paws_A Maggie Dahl Mystery

by Mark McNease

  It was a lot to digest. It was also time to go back to work. Peter’s mood had soured more from talking about Chip and Alice than it had telling her about the day Lilly disappeared. Maggie waved at Judy for the check.

  A moment later they left the diner. Tom Brightmore was busy with a customer and didn’t see them leave. Maggie knew they would have another chance to talk, and after their brief encounter she felt better about it. She would caution her sister not to rush into anything, but she would not discourage it.

  Outside, they began walking toward the corner when Maggie looked across the street and saw Sergeant Hoyt coming out of the bank. He was dressed in civilian clothes and Maggie assumed it was his day off.

  “Peter,” Maggie said, “I need to talk to someone. Do you mind meeting me back at the factory?”

  “Not at all, Mrs. Dahl. I can use the walk to think. Especially after talking about all that.”

  The light changed and Peter headed up Union.

  Not wanting to miss her chance, Maggie jaywalked, waving at Hoyt, who was about to get into his car. “Sergeant!” she shouted. “Excuse me! Sergeant Hoyt!”

  Maggie could tell Hoyt was not happy having his morning disturbed. When he saw her, he closed his car door and stood next to it in the street. He crossed his arms over his chest.

  “What now?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Sergeant—”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Undeterred, Maggie continued, “I just had breakfast with Peter Stapley.”

  “I saw that,” said Hoyt, looking down the street as Peter walked off in the distance.

  “Anyway, we talked about Lilly, his daughter, and he told me he was certain Chip McGill had nothing to do with it.”

  Hoyt sighed: here we go again.

  “And this is significant because …?”

  “Because Chip had two keys to my house made, with two receipts. He wanted a key my husband didn’t know about.”

  “I’d say you’re confusing me, but you’ve been doing that since we met. What does Chip having a key to your house have to do with Lilly Stapley?”

  “I don’t know,” Maggie said, exasperated. “But I believe it does. I believe it’s all connected—Alice’s murder, Lilly’s abduction, the intruder in my house.”

  Hoyt waited a moment, either calming himself or thinking what to ask next, Maggie wasn’t sure.

  “How do you know about the second key?” he asked, honestly curious now.

  “Because Cal Davies told me.”

  “Cal Davies?”

  “Yes!” said Maggie. “He told me Chip had two keys made, not one, and he asked for two receipts. So he could give David a key and receipt back, saying he didn’t want it. But he kept one, you see? Maybe he keeps keys to other people’s houses, maybe he’s been doing this for years.”

  Maggie waited for Hoyt to respond while he thought about what she’d said.

  “Sergeant Hoyt?” she prompted.

  Hoyt had humored her as long as he could. “I don’t want to be rude,” he said. “But I really don’t have time for your speculation. My wife’s waiting at home.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Yes, I have a life you don’t know about, and I plan to keep it that way.”

  He opened his car door and got in.

  “But will you think about it?” Maggie asked hurriedly.

  “About what?” he asked, not hiding his irritation.

  “About Chip. The keys. All of it.”

  “I haven’t stopped thinking about it,” Hoyt replied, taking a deep breath as he reached for his seat belt and closed the door.

  Maggie realized they’d been standing in the street. She hurried around the back of the car to the sidewalk and watched as Hoyt drove away.

  CHAPTER Thirty-Four

  MAGGIE WAS TRYING TO MAKE sense of it all, to decipher the clues she’d found the past few days. Instead of going back to the factory where she’d be distracted by people and responsibilities, she headed home after calling Janice to let her know her change in plans. It was just as well. Chip was coming in an hour to start another project, retiling the bathrooms, beginning with the one Gerri was using. It meant the sisters would have to share a bathroom for a few days, a prospect Maggie dreaded, but one she would deal with, as she was dealing with everything about her new housemate.

  She arrived home to find Chip sitting on the porch eating his lunch from a paper bag, his toolbox on the step next to him.

  Maggie parked in the driveway and walked up to him.

  “You’re early, Chip,” she said, as he stood up to greet her.

  “I’d shake your hand but I got some chicken salad on my fingers,” Chip said.

  “I think we passed the handshaking stage a few months ago,” Maggie replied, forcing a smile. “Come on in.”

  He rolled up his lunch bag, grabbed his toolbox and followed her to the door. As she led them into the house, he said, “Mr. Collier had to reschedule some work I’m doing on his office so I took the liberty of having my lunch on your porch. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. The timing’s perfect, actually,” Maggie replied as they entered the living room. “I just had lunch with Peter Stapley and came back here instead of the factory.”

  She saw a pained look on Chip’s face at the mention of Stapley.

  “How is Peter doing?” Chip asked, using Stapley’s first name in a rare show of familiarity. “I know it’s coming up on ten years since that whole kidnapping business. Everybody in town knows.”

  “It’s tragic. I didn’t realize just how big it was … I mean, the murder of a child is as big as it gets, but the Lilly Stapley kidnapping touched so many lives here.”

  “Yes, it did.”

  Maggie saw an opportunity and took it, not wasting time debating with herself about the propriety of it.

  “Yours, too, from what I know,” Maggie said.

  Chip stared at her, unsure where she was going with it.

  “I know you saw the Stapleys the day Lilly went missing.”

  His expression went from pained to hard. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “I believe that, Chip,” Maggie said. “Peter said as much.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “You both are, but I have to ask you about something.”

  Visibly steeling himself, Chip asked, “What would that be?”

  “Someone came into this house a few nights ago. That’s why I asked you about the key my husband had you make for yourself.”

  “I gave it back to him, Mrs. Dahl. I told you that.”

  “I know you did, Chip.”

  She sighed. She’d gone this far and decided to spell it all out.

  “I asked Cal Davies about it, on the off chance he remembered making the key, and he said yes. In fact, he said, you made two keys …”

  “Why would he say that?” Chip nearly shouted. “That’s not true!”

  “Let’s assume it’s not, then. Why would Cal Davies lie about having keys made to my house?”

  “Why would Alice tell people I was the one who took Lilly Stapley?” Chip said angrily. “Why do people say evil things about other people? I don’t know, but I didn’t have two keys made, and the one I brought back, I gave to Mr. Dahl.”

  It hit Maggie then, with the force of a blow. She knew in that instant it was not Chip who had lied, or Chip who had come into her home with a key he’d had made. It was the man who made keys himself. Who knew how many he’d duplicated, or why? How many houses he entered when no one was home, or why.

  “I believe you,” Maggie said quietly. “I know now you’re not the one who was lying.”

  Her words took a moment to sink in. They’d been standing in the living room having a conversation about false accusations, home intrusions and murder, when the import of Maggie’s confession hit home. Chip walked to the arm chair and sat down, dazed by what he’d learned.

  “It was Cal Davies,” Chip said, his voice almost a whisper.r />
  Maggie sat on the couch across from him.

  Chip slowly looked up at her. “It was all Cal Davies. Lilly Stapley. Alice Drapier. Your visitor here.”

  “I wouldn’t call an intruder a visitor, but yes, that’s where this seems to be heading.”

  “You should tell the police.”

  “I did, sort of,” said Maggie. “I ran into Sergeant Hoyt after lunch.”

  “Did you tell him about Cal?”

  “Only that Cal had implicated you.”

  Chip sat breathing and thinking for several moments as the implications set in.

  “He ruined my life. He ruined my marriage. He destroyed my family. He killed a child, and probably Alice. He can’t get away with this.”

  His tone sent a chill through Maggie. Had she told him things he would be better off not knowing? Had she opened their own Pandora’s box right here in Lambertville?

  “He won’t get away with it,” she said. “But there has to be evidence.”

  “Alice has been dead almost a week and there’s been nothing.”

  Maggie watched his face soften and realized that despite what Alice had done to him, Chip still felt something for her, even if it was just compassion for a sad and brutal death.

  “We don’t know what Hoyt and the police have, or where they’re at with their investigation. Let them do what they’re trained for.”

  “Sure,” he said bitterly. “Like they solved Lilly Stapley’s murder. That girl vanished ten years ago and they never found her body, never found a single shred of evidence. I don’t trust them to do much better now.”

  Maggie got up from the couch. “We have to,” she said, even as her mind began to formulate a next step. “Remember, Chip, killers kill, that’s what they do. Alice found that out the hard way. We don’t want anyone else being harmed.”

  “No,” he said, sending another cold wave through her, “we don’t.” Rising from the chair, he added, “I think it’s time for me to get to work.”

  Maggie nodded and watched as Chip headed upstairs to the second bathroom.

  She kept hearing one word in her head: evidence. If she only had evidence of Cal Davies’s involvement with any of it. If the police just had proof …

  Was there a way for her to find it? Did she dare even look?

  Yes, Maggie, she told herself. In fact, you have no other choice.

  She would have to act, to flush out her prey … for she had to admit she was now a predator. The vital question, the one of life and death, was which of them would prove to be more dangerous.

  CHAPTER Thirty-Five

  “WHAT MOVIE ARE YOU GOING to see?” Maggie asked.

  She’d been watching her sister become giddy over the course of the evening, waiting for Tom to pick her up for dinner and a movie in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a thirty minute drive from the house. Giddy was not Gerri’s style.

  “It’s some kind of comedy we thought we’d both like,” Gerri replied, fussing for the tenth time with her sweater.

  “Some kind of comedy?” Maggie repeated. “How do you know you’ll like it if you don’t even know the title?”

  They were in the kitchen. Maggie had made herself a sandwich of sliced turkey and Swiss cheese, unsure if she even wanted that much to eat. The day had left her stomach in knots.

  Gerri cocked one hand on her hip and leaned against the counter with the other.

  “I’ll like it because I’m with Tom,” she said. “Why are you so worried? He likes you.”

  Maggie was surprised to know Tom had said anything about her, considering how brief their conversation had been at lunch.

  “Yes,” Gerri continued. “I know you spoke to him at the diner today.”

  “Barely.”

  “And I know you were there with Peter Stapley.”

  Maggie knew Peter was a fixture in town, as well as in the town’s imagination. Of course Tom would know who he was.

  “What was that about?” Gerri asked.

  “I wanted to talk to him about his daughter’s disappearance.”

  “That must have made for light conversation.”

  Getting to the point, Maggie said, “It wasn’t Chip.”

  Gerri took her hand off the counter, straightening up.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Chip had nothing to do with Lilly Stapley’s abduction and murder. He had nothing to do with breaking into this house, and he did not lie to me about having a secret key made so he could do god-knows-what in the middle of the night while we slept.”

  “You learned all this from lunch with Peter?”

  Maggie put the uneaten half of her sandwich down. She was not going to finish it.

  “No, Gerri. I learned that Peter never suspected Chip and has considered him innocent all this time. However, I do think—I believe—it was Cal Davies who lied to me about the keys.”

  “Which means he’s part of it all.”

  “Yes.”

  “Including Alice’s murder?”

  “Up to and including Alice’s murder. If he had anything to do with what happened to Lilly Stapley, who knows what else he’s done? But Cal is the answer to all these questions.”

  A car horn sounded outside. Maggie glanced toward the front door, forming a sudden, unfavorable, impression of Tom Brightmore.

  “He’s not coming to the door?”

  “Don’t be so quick to judge,” Gerri said, grabbing her purse off the kitchen counter. “I told him to honk the horn when he got here. Stop looking for reasons to dislike him. And stop thinking I’m not a big girl who can take care of myself. There will not be a husband number four.”

  Gerri quickly kissed Maggie on the cheek and hurried out of the kitchen, saying behind her, “I want to hear more about this. And I want you to contact Sergeant Hoyt.”

  Maggie followed along to the front door.

  “I already did, and I think I planted a seed. He took me seriously about Cal Davies. At least I think he did.”

  “So let him take it from there.”

  Gerri opened the door. They could see a brown Ford Focus parked against the curb. The passenger window slid down and Tom leaned over, waving at the women on the porch.

  “Hello, Maggie!” he called. “She told me to honk!”

  Ah, thought Maggie, he knows it’s not so gentlemanly to wait on the street. And he cares what I think.

  Maggie waved back, then said to Gerri, “Maybe I’ll wait for the police on this. Maybe not. I’m this close …”

  “To getting killed, just like Alice. Don’t do anything stupid. Or more stupid than you’ve already done.”

  Gerri hurried down the steps.

  Calling after her, Maggie, said, “You’re the one who wanted to go into her house!”

  Gerri waved behind her, not responding. She got into Tom’s car and shut the door.

  Maggie stood on the porch, watching them drive up the street.

  Don’t do anything stupid.

  The words weren’t unfamiliar to her. She’d heard them many times in her life: from her parents when she’d first met David and told them he was the man she’d spend her life with; from her friends when she’d told them they were moving to Lambertville; almost every time she’d done something daring, something others might not have the courage to do.

  Like dating a man ten years younger in a town you just moved to …

  She smiled at the thought. She was cautioning her sister not to do anything stupid with a man she just met. If Maggie was going to take risks, she had to allow others to do the same.

  And with that thought she knew what she had to do.

  DAY 6

  “Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for?

  If he really liked birds, he would have done better to preach to the cats.”

  – Rebecca West

  CHAPTER Thirty-Six

  MAGGIE WOKE UP WITH A sense of foreboding. She had never been given to premonitions, including the night David died—the one time in her life when
she wished the universe had sent her a warning. But this morning she sensed something was going to happen. She could not discern if that something was good or bad, only that it was important and would change the course of her life, if not the lives of others.

  Gerri was awake when Maggie headed down for her morning coffee. She’d expected her sister to sleep in, regardless of what time she’d come home from her night out with Tom Brightmore. But there Gerri was, sitting at the kitchen table reading a copy of the New York Times with a cup of coffee in front of her and a single, dry piece of whole wheat toast on a paper plate. She was wearing the flowing floral housecoat she’d brought with her, draped over cotton pajamas.

  “Up so early?” Maggie asked, walking to the counter and taking a cup down from the cabinet.

  “I wasn’t home that late,” Gerri replied.

  Maggie poured herself coffee, wondering if something had gone wrong.

  “Everything okay? With your evening, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes,” Gerri replied cheerfully. “Everything is great. Tom is a good man, Maggie. Younger than me, but we don’t need to keep pointing that out, do we?”

  “No,” said Maggie. “We’re no spring chickens, so being a decade younger than you still puts him at, what, thirty-nine?”

  “Forty in December.”

  “So you know his birthday. Did you put it in your calendar?” Maggie teased.

  “As a matter of fact, I did.” Gerri took a bite of toast, then asked, “Do you ever miss it?”

  “Do I miss what?”

  “New York!” Gerri pointed at the newspaper. “The greatest city in the world.”

  “I’m sure they say the same thing in Paris, London, Chicago … Philadelphia. Speaking of which, why are you reading the New York Times, and where did you get it?”

  “It’s yesterday’s,” Gerri said. “Tom had it in his car and gave it to me. I know Philly’s closer, but it’s still The New York Times.”

  Maggie took a seat across from her. “In answer to your question, yes and no. I miss my friends, I miss some of the things the city has to offer, but the stress? The almost mindless frenetic pace? Not at all. I’d had enough. We both had.”