Home for a Spell

by Madelyn Alt

  Why couldn’t Marcus sound more convinced? Darn it, now he was making me jumpy.

  “What is that over there?” He pointed toward the grassy yard and the obviously new building at its center, with the fenced area beyond.

  “It’s the new health center that belongs to the apartment complex,” I explained. “I saw it yesterday.”

  “Well, it looks like it’s open for business.”

  He was right. There was a light on inside. Just a tenant working away the pounds? “Should we go see?” He opened his mouth, but I had seen that look in his eyes before, and I quickly said, “I am not going back to the truck by myself. Either we both go and check it out, or we both go back to the truck.”

  Exasperated, he just shook his head. “You are one stubborn woman. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

  “Maybe. Once or twice. So what’s it going to be, angel?”

  He gave a small if reluctant smile at the misquote from his all-time (and old school) favorite movie and let out his breath in a resigned sigh. “Fine. But I go in first. You stay behind me.”

  “Deal.” It was better that way, anyway. Crutches didn’t really allow for a smooth, silent ninja entrance.

  He was speedier than I was, but then, I think that was his intent. Having long legs on his side, he covered the ground in between the office and exercise center fast, fast, fast, leaving me to follow as quickly as I could manage—no mean feat considering that I had three legs to deal with to his two. I cursed my slowness as I saw him make a sneaky approach from one side of the industrial steel door with its long and narrow window, bending down to look in from a low vantage point. I wanted to call to him to ask him what he saw, but I gritted my teeth against the urge and concentrated instead on just getting there myself, one hop-step at a time. I was even more intrigued when he turned back to me and again held a finger to his lips to caution me to remain silent. I was just within a step or two when he opened the door to . . .

  Nothing.

  And no one.

  I sighed as the tension released from my shoulders. My breath came out more forcefully than I meant for it to, and I realized just then that I’d been holding it. “Whoever it was, they must be long gone by now. They probably didn’t even come through here. The place is spotless.”

  Marcus nodded. “What’s through that door?” he asked, indicating a similar door on the other side of the equipment-and mirror-filled room.

  “The pool.”

  “Should we?”

  I shrugged. “Why not? And then we should either find Locke or else call the police, I guess, huh?”

  “Finding Locke would be my first choice,” Marcus said with a wry grin.

  “Understood. Well, let’s go check the pool area, in case someone heard us coming and went out that way?”

  This time we crept on quiet feet toward the door together—or, as quiet as my crutches would allow me to be. The one on the right had developed a squeak a few days before, with only a month’s mileage on it. Guess they just don’t make things like they used to.

  We paused together at the door, our eyes on each other. “Ready?” Marcus muttered, waiting for my nod. “All right. One . . . two . . . three!”

  On three, he yanked the door open, and we peered out into the swimming pool area together.

  The first thing that I saw was the shoe lying upturned on the perfect, new concrete surrounding the pool. A scuffed loafer that had seen better days, with heels beaten on the edges and soles worn smooth. Not exactly appropriate pool wear.

  I had seen that loafer before. Just the day before actually. On Locke.

  That feeling of something being off? It was back again. Bigger and better, this time.

  “Maggie.”

  I dragged my attention away from the shoe and blinked up at Marcus. His expression was stoic and grim, but he didn’t look down at me. His gaze was focused straight ahead.

  The pool.

  I hadn’t gotten that far yet. My gaze had been snared by the shoe, and immediately my mind had started whirring around why that worn loafer might be there—none of the possibilities good. The best I could come up with is that Locke had interrupted the intruders in mid-destruction and had chased after them, losing his shoe in the process. But now, I was going to have no choice.

  I made myself look toward the pool.

  At first, I thought someone had dumped some clothes in the water. Or maybe that’s what I had hoped. A floating heap of clothes to go along with the single shoe on the surrounding concrete. Like, maybe it was the last laugh of the burglars or intruders or vandals, whatever the case might have been. That could have been an acceptable supposition. Unfortunately, such desperate Pollyanna optimism fell swiftly by the way-side when faced with harsh realities.

  Such as the bare foot poking out of the soggy clothing.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” I whispered in repeat mode.

  And that’s how my day went swiftly from promising to completely sunk in sixty seconds.

  But not as sunk as Locke’s.

  Locke’s day was dead in the water.

  Literally.

  “Is he”—I had to swallow against the rising gorge in my throat—“is he dead?”

  “Yes. His face—”

  He didn’t need to tell me. I could see it myself, now that I knew where in the heap of soggy clothes to look. Not that I wanted to. Gazing unflinchingly on the face of death was not tops on my To Do list. Ever.

  I took an involuntary step back. My heel bumped something as I did so, something heavy. I froze in an instant and looked down at my feet . . . and felt the gorge make the northerly climb again. The thing my foot had nudged was a weight. A hand weight, to be precise. One that matched the set lining the spanking-new racks in the health facility. The thick smear of rusty color on one chunky end of it, though . . . that was different. That was . . .

  My head stopped spinning, and I regained control of my faculties long enough to move away from the offensive object, fast, fast, fast.

  There was zero chance that this was an accident . . . This was murder, plain and simple.

  As plain and simple as a crime like murder can be.

  Another murder in Stony Mill.

  Criminy.

  This hadn’t just happened. From the look of him, Locke had been in the water awhile, maybe (probably?) all night long. At least I could feel safe in the knowledge that whoever had done this to him was probably not still hanging around.

  Now that we both realized we had breached the scene of yet another suspicious death in Stony Mill, we were loath to move lest we destroy some kind of evidence. I clung to Marcus, my arms locked around his waist, my crutches held loosely as I used his body for support. But more important than physical support, his personal energy was now my shelter from the storm of horror and dismay from which neither of us could hide our faces.

  Gradually I became aware that Marcus was not just holding me. I had felt movement just above my head, and I knew he was scanning the area around us. I shook my head, feeling the soft material of his T-shirt rub against my cheekbone. “They aren’t still here,” I told him. “They wouldn’t stay to watch him be found.” I don’t know why I knew that to be true, but I did. The person who did this was not here.

  We stood there a few moments longer just like that, huddled together, before I felt Marcus reach into his pocket and pull out his cell phone. I stood there, within the circle of his arms, listening to his voice rumble through his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat as he gave the 911 operator the address and let them know the “nature” of the emergency.

  Nature had nothing to do with this emergency.

  The sirens could be heard for miles, wailing, shrieking, clamoring on the clear September air. Just another day in Stony Mill, I thought. We had far too many of them. Every time it happened again, I thought, this could be it. This could be the one to break the spell we’d been under. This could be the last. Over. Done. Finito. And every time, I was lulled into a tragically false sense of as
surance, to dream again, to hope.

  I was so afraid that hope was lost to us. That fear sunk in a little more with each bad thing that happened, month after month after month.

  A wise man once said, nothing to fear but fear itself, Margaret Mary-Catherine O’Neill. I always thought he was right. Doesn’t do to worry, little girl. Keep your head out of the clouds. Stick to the sunshine. The wise, crackly voice of Grandma C came in my ear that time, as real as Marcus next to me, but still ethereal somehow. Tinny. Things were changing in my extrasensory world. I was only beginning to grasp how. I hoped someday to understand why. For now, all I could do was accept the changes with some level of grace and dignity. Keep on keepin’ on.

  Stick to the sunshine.

  I was trying to do that, but the storm clouds kept closing in.

  And at that moment, so were Stony Mill’s boys in blue. Black and white police cars screeched in from all directions, converging on the various apartment complex parking lots. I saw flashes of movement in one or two of the apartments overlooking the health center and pool area, but then my attention was snapped front and center by the shouts of several officers now approaching fast with their weapons drawn.

  Chapter 7

  “Hold it! Stop right where you are!”

  “Don’t move!”

  “You two . . . back up and get your hands in the air!”

  Were they . . . were they talking to—

  “I said, back up and get your hands in the air!”

  Marcus backed up two steps and slowly complied, a sneer of open derision lifting his upper lip. I was a bit slower in my confusion. “What are you talking about? We’re the ones who called you. Where’s Tom?” Nobody answered my question, so I prodded, “Fielding?”

  Right on cue, I saw a familiar figure walking up from the side parking lot through one of the apartment pass-throughs, his cocky walk giving him away even at a distance.

  “Look, there he is,” I said, pointing him out. “I know him, all right?” I didn’t glance Marcus’s way. I hoped he would see the wisdom of my admission. It was certainly better than having a gun pointed in our direction.

  Two officers had already headed over to the far side of the pool to check the body. I saw one of them speaking quietly into his shoulder mike as he unclipped something from his breast pocket and reached out with it—it looked like a long, extendo-rod or radio antenna—to lift at the edge of the body.

  “Well, if it isn’t Maggie O’Neill and her . . . compadre in crime.”

  The dry humor-but-not present in the too-familiar voice snapped me back from what was going on in the pool. Tom Fielding, Special Task Force Investigator for the SMPD—and my former boyfriend, of course—had stopped ten feet from me and was now standing with his hip cocked out, his hands on his heavy-duty and fully loaded gun belt as he stared at me through his favorite mirrored aviators. The sardonic slash of teeth against the tan of his skin was more a mockery of a smile.

  He shook his head at me. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

  My patience had seen better days, as had my nerves. “What do you mean, tsk, tsk, tsk? For heaven’s sake, call off your goons, would you? And can I put my hands down? My shoulders are starting to ache.” They weren’t, not really, but it sounded as good an excuse as any.

  “My . . . goons . . . would probably respond better to a request accompanied by a very special, very handy word someone came up with a long time ago: ‘Please.’ ”

  I gritted my teeth. “Please . . . may we put our hands down?”

  “That’s better.” With a single nod from Tom, the cops lowered their weapons and holstered them. They did not, however, snap the leather fasteners in place. They were still considering themselves on guard. To his fellow officers, Tom asked, “Anyone checked the property?”

  “Hayden and Olds are beating the bushes right now.”

  “Why don’t you four go help out? I’ll take over here with Johnson and Kirkland,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the two cops closest to the body, one of which was wielding a camera. “Oh, and Chief is on his way. You know what that means.”

  The cop closest to him nodded. “We’ll keep the equipment away from him. Maybe someone else can help steer him away from the pertinent areas. I vote for Olds, since he’s the newbie.”

  “Olds it is, then. Let him know, huh?”

  “You got it.”

  Marcus came up behind me and put a protective arm around my waist as I cleared my throat noisily. “Um, your guys will want to head over to the apartment complex’s office.”

  Tom’s attention snapped back to me. “Well, of course, but . . .” His eyes narrowed in obvious suspicion. “What will we find at the offices, Maggie?”

  “Well, for one thing, the man whose body is floating out there is the apartment manager, Rob Locke . . . and, well, for another thing, the office is a wreck.”

  “And you would know this . . . how?”

  Before I could say anything more, one of the officers—his name tag read “Kirkland”—came hurrying over, a dripping piece of paper, folded into three, held out in front of him over the extendo-rod in his hand. “We fished this out of the water. It was almost all the way out of his pocket, so I didn’t think it would be a problem. Johnson’s taking photos of the body as we speak.”

  Tom went to the supply kit one of the guys had brought over and donned a pair of latex gloves. A frown had gathered between his brows as he carefully gripped the corners and ever so slowly peeled the wet folds apart. The frown deepened substantially as he read the words laser-printed onto the page. His gaze lifted to mine, but his glower didn’t lift at all.

  “Maggie . . . why is your name on this lease that was in that man’s pocket?”

  Of course he had the lease on his body. Sigh. Well, it complicated things but only for the moment. I knew I had nothing to hide, and that the facts would bear me out. Besides, this was Tom. He might not be very happy with me at present, but he would never suspect me of something like this. “Well . . .” I began calmly, “that would probably be because I was supposed to meet him this morning to sign the lease for an apartment here.”

  “Huh. I guess that answers my next question, which was, why in the hell are you here. So, that means you’re moving out of loverboy’s house?”

  I frowned at him. “How did you—?”

  At the same time, Marcus’s grip on me tightened. “That’s none of your business, Fielding, and you know it. You’re out of line.”

  Tom’s laugh was caustic enough to stab home the point that he still hadn’t forgiven me for breaking up with him for Marcus. Not yet. “I think the dead man in the pool kind of makes it my business. You know, since it’s my job. How’s about you both make my job easier, huh? I’m going to need to know everything that happened this morning.”

  I felt Marcus tense behind me, so I turned and put my hand on his chest to stay whatever comment he was thinking about spouting. It was better that I did the talking. “It is really very simple,” I told Tom. “I had an agreement with Mr. Locke—the apartment manager—to stop by this morning to sign a lease for the apartment he showed me yesterday. When we got here, we stopped in the office and found that it had been broken into and ransacked. We saw lights on in the health center, so we came this way, hoping to find Mr. Locke. We didn’t expect to find him like . . . like that.” I gestured weakly. “So Marcus called 911, and we waited here until your guys got here and pointed their guns at us, and . . . well, there you have it.”

  Tom was writing all of this down. Without looking up, he asked, “Did you see anyone at any time while you were here on the premises?”

  I shook my head. “No one. The door to the office was standing ajar when we arrived, but there wasn’t anyone there. From there we came directly here, by passing through the health center. The door to the health center was closed but unlocked, and the lights were already on inside.” A flash of an image projected itself onto the blank screen in my mind’s eye. “Oh—I doubt this is releva
nt, but I did see curtains move in a couple of the apartments. But that was after your men got here, so it’s only natural, right? Whoever was at home wanted to see what the hubbub was about?”

  “We’ll be talking to the various tenants in the apartments. Let’s you and me get back to the office and the health center. Did you touch anything? Anything at all?”

  “The only things we touched were the doors.”

  Tom arched a coolly assessing brow at Marcus. “And you agree with that?”

  “It’s just like Maggie said,” Marcus told him. “We got here and found all of this, just like you see things now. I called the cavalry in. They threatened us with guns. Good times.”

  Tom ignored the jibe, but I saw the muscle tic in his jaw. “And neither of you knows the manager in any other way?”

  I blinked at him. “Are you seriously asking us if we might have any reason to dislike Mr. Locke?”

  “Answer the question.” His gaze flicked from the notepad in his hands to my face and back again. “Please.”

  I huffed out my breath and crossed my arms. “No. For your information, I had never met the man before yesterday afternoon.”

  “Me, either,” Marcus grated out between clenched teeth. “Never met the man.”

  Tom nodded, saying nothing. Over by the office, one of his guys gestured at him. He lifted his chin to acknowledge them. To us, he said, “I’d like the two of you to leave the immediate crime scene area—carefully—but stick around for more questioning.”

  As soon as he had gone, I fussed to Marcus, “I should have known. I should have known this was not a good idea. It was just another of my not-well-thought-through plans.”

  “It’s not your fault someone decided to whack the poor guy, sweetness. How could you have known?”

  “I couldn’t. But I’m starting to wonder about this knack I have for running into bad situations. I mean, who wants to be known for that? Maggie the Jinx? No thank you.”

  “There’s no way you can possibly think you’re the problem here,” Marcus countered. “You have no idea who this man is or what his story is or who he knows. You just have no idea. Or maybe this really was a burglary gone bad. I mean, we didn’t think so, but we really do need to leave this to the professionals, huh? The people with all of the connections, who can really get to the bottom of things. The people who are paid to do this. Like Fielding. Let him earn his salary.”