“I can’t imagine what I could do for the state of Iowa with a botany degree, Mark.” Maggie smirked at Ben, surprising herself with her own flirtatiousness.
Mark did not get the message. He charged into recruiting, full speed ahead.
“Actually, there are several places your degree would come in handy. The state of Iowa is always looking for qualified research assistants. Ben and I both have environmental engineering degrees and we test soil and water samples for farmers all over the Midwest. You could put your name in with our department. When there’s an opening, you’d be first on the list.”
“Because no one else has signed up,” Maggie said.
Mark’s professional façade fell away. “I’ll be back in ten minutes, Ben,” Mark said as he walked around the table. “This is such a waste of time. I could be doing a thousand other things today, none of them as pointless as this.”
Maggie watched him go. “I guess I should’ve just signed up for an interview.”
“Oh, no,” said Ben. “You don’t want to work for the state.”
“But why?” Maggie laughed. “You work for the state. Is it really that bad?”
“It’s not horrible. But you’re intense, aren’t you? I’ll bet you work like a monster. You’d make the rest of us lackeys look bad.”
“I’m intense? You can’t tell that by just looking at me.”
“It’s more the way you talk, how you carry yourself. You look like an angel in this pocket-protector crowd. Forgive me for being so forward, but how many beautiful women do you see actively pursuing careers that involve dirt? Anyone else so naturally attractive, but less serious than yourself, maybe less driven, or easier to push around—they’d have been talked into doing something more girly. Dancing or interior design, teaching kindergarten, stuff like that.”
Maggie stood with her mouth open, wondering what to say next. Men often complimented her, or hit on her with no encouragement whatsoever, but no one had ever taken this approach. She couldn’t tell if he was being serious or joking.
Ben’s face held nothing but frank interest. “So—what’s your real passion?” he asked.
Again, Maggie was at a loss for words. Out of nowhere, this man who looked and sounded like he belonged in a rerun of Happy Days had asked her the one question no one ever bothered to ask.
“I like plants,” she said, feeling like a simpleton.
Ben nodded as though she had made a profound statement.
“Yes. I do, too,” he said. “But you know, what I really adore are mushrooms.”
Maggie glanced down to see if she was holding a brochure or folder that might have given her away. Finding nothing, she looked around for a colleague who might be in on the joke with Ben.
“What’re you looking for?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Maggie said, turning red. “It’s just that I specialized in mycology. I really adore mushrooms, too.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No.”
Ben said, “I remember hiking in the woods with my mom and dad as a kid. I was maybe eight or ten. We found a young puffball mushroom as big as a cantelope. Some are edible during the sporocarp stage, you know.”
“Yes, I do know.”
“So we picked it and brought it home. Mom chopped it up and we ate it in spaghetti sauce.” He stopped talking and smiled. Maggie waited for him to go on.
“And?”
“Well, it was terrible. Spongy and tasteless, kind of like chewing on a sneaker. But it was an awesome discovery. I haven’t seen one so big since then.”
They stood staring at one another for several moments before Maggie chickened out and broke the spell.
“I have to get going,” she lied.
“Look me up sometime. Ben Eliot. You know where I work, right?”
“For the Ag department. Yes.” Maggie scuttled around the corner and into a women’s restroom, where she scolded herself in the mirror for being such a clod.
Later that same day in line at a coffee shop, she was startled to see Ben again. He was at the counter ordering, a few people ahead of her. When he turned around with his coffee, he noticed Maggie right away.
“Hey, are you stalking me?” he asked.
Maggie was startled. “No, of course not.”
“I’m just joking. Not that I’d mind.” He paused, tilting his head to the side. “Isn’t this serendipitous?”
“Next,” the girl at the counter called. Maggie didn’t hear.
“Are you ordering or what?” the man behind Maggie asked. “I’m in a hurry.”
“Sorry,” Maggie said and stepped up to buy her coffee.
When she turned back around, her heart leapt to see Ben still standing there.
Chapter 4
Des Moines, Iowa
September 1998
Maggie followed Ben. The turn signal of his Honda Civic gave a wink to her 1971 Super Beetle. Her car winked back. Both of them took a right. In a game of green chasing blue, they wound their way along a neighborhood shortcut to the Toyota dealership where Ben would leave his vehicle overnight for a tune-up.
A week had passed since Fennel’s funeral. At least we got that much closure, Maggie thought to herself as she followed Ben’s car. Officials had released Fennel’s body for burial, but no information had become available from the autopsy, at least not for those outside her immediate family. Only Fennel’s mother currently had access to the autopsy results. Namasté told Maggie that she planned to wait a reasonable period before asking to see the information.
Images of the sad ceremony flickered in Maggie’s mind as she traced her lover through residential streets.
At the service, Fennel’s mother had stood alone, gripping herself in a pitiful hug till Tor went over to put his arm around her. Amazingly Loki kept his cool, looking like a subdued Cro-Magnon in his all-black suit and sunglasses, hairy as ever, hovering quietly on the periphery of the crowd.
Fennel’s community acquaintances, chosen friends and natural family standing around her modest coffin felt like a fitting homage to the woman they had all known and admired. Quite a few of her customers came, including Joe and Mary. As Fennel had been a member of the city council, the mayor of River City said a few words about her dedication to public service. The outpouring of graveside goodwill kept everyone on their best behavior. Several times, though, Namasté felt the need to whisper, “Something doesn’t feel right.”
Maggie wasn’t sure what Namasté meant. Of course something wasn’t right; a friend had died suddenly, and much too young.
Walking back to the cars, Namasté’s elaboration only added to Maggie’s confusion: “We’ve started locking the door, which makes me sad. The worst part is I keep dreaming that we’ve locked a monster in the house, that it’s hidden somewhere, waiting to pop out.”
Maggie and Ben discussed Namasté’s statement upon leaving the cemetery. Ben shook his head, casting off absurdity like droplets of water.
“It’s possible that Fennel just fell down the stairs and broke her neck.” Ben always went with the most sensible explanation. “I don’t know why Namasté feels the need to manufacture drama. Accidents happen all the time.”
“Yes,” Maggie had agreed. Neither she nor Ben liked jumping to conclusions. Namasté was a very insightful person, but her tendency to value improbable cause seemed childish when compared with real evidence. Ben and Maggie would wait to see what explanations the autopsy had to offer and not get worked into a lather, regardless of the findings.
Tonight was Ben and Maggie’s four-year anniversary. After dropping off the Civic, they would ride in Maggie’s car to their favorite spaghetti restaurant. Maggie hoped they would be skipping dessert. Four years of living together had not dwindled their appetite for one another. Stopped at a four-way intersection behind Ben, Maggie watched the back of his head. He’ll be wanting a haircut soon, she thought, noting the reddish brown curls on his neck. Their eyes met briefly in his rearview mirror. He smiled, then glanced
forward to the road. Her pupils dilated and color flooded her cheeks as she remembered waking Ben before work this morning, and she anticipated the evening ahead.
Ben drove carefully into the intersection and Maggie pulled forward to the stop sign, ready to yield to the woman on her right. What sounded like someone gunning the engine of a sprint car thundered up on their left. The rusty pickup that barreled toward them did not seem to be stopping or even slowing down. Before Maggie had time to register what was happening, the truck had slammed into the driver side of Ben’s car.
Maggie spanned out her hands in disbelief, as if to pick up the Civic, too late, and set it out of harm’s way. Seconds later, the truck backed up, its rounded fenders mostly unmarred. It screeched around Ben’s car and hurried away.
Maggie sat insensibly for a heartbeat, then ripped off her seatbelt, throwing the Beetle into park. She scrambled out of her car and ran to Ben’s side. His front airbag had deployed, but it had provided little protection from the side collision. Though Ben was unconscious and bleeding, Maggie shouted to him, repeating that he’d be all right, that she loved him. The door was too smashed to open.
The driver on the right was the only other witness. She was out of her car calling emergency services before Maggie even thought of using her phone. The fifty-something woman ran a hand through short, grey hair, muttering to the 911-dispatcher the names of streets and the outline of events.
“I didn’t get a license number,” the woman said, walking toward Maggie. “There was no front plate. It all happened so fast. Hey, did you see anything? Is the driver okay?” she called. When Maggie didn’t answer, the woman took note of the situation. She put a hand to her rounded mouth. “Oh, my God,” she said. “He was your husband, wasn’t he?”
Maggie didn’t respond. She heard sirens in the distance, but did not register the person speaking right next to her. Her gaze found Ben’s stubbly cheek, the same one that had nuzzled her this morning, had gently scraped against her neck and her belly. Encased behind a bloody, crumpled window, Ben looked asleep. Maggie felt sure that his hazel eyes would open at any moment, that Ben would smile at her as he had only moments before.
But Ben did not open his eyes. The paramedic who crawled in the passenger door of the Civic could not revive Ben. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Ben was gone, suddenly gone, in the amount of time it took the average person to wash their hands.
The woman who witnessed the crash gave her statement to the police. She had not recognized the make or model of the truck, just that it was either painted brownish red or had completely rusted over. She also told them that the driver looked like he was ready for an Arctic expedition: fur parka pulled tight around the face, eyes behind ski goggles. She called the driver ‘he,’ but could not really tell if it had been a man or a woman.
Maggie did not speak to anyone, just stared at Ben. She watched as he was taken away in an ambulance, painfully aware that she had no legal claim to him.
The police tried to get basic information from Maggie. One of them looked through her glove box for license information. Another asked for her cell and went through her contacts. She did not resist, nor did she assist.
Somewhere in the muddle of events, Joe drove up in the company van. Thomas, one of Maggie’s brothers, took over driving the van. Joe got behind the wheel of Maggie’s car, first buckling her into the passenger seat as he had when she was little. Joe sat for a while with his large, square hands over his face. Maggie waited for Joe to drive, wanting to go after Ben but unable to form words.
A tow truck backed up to Ben’s car and a police officer redirected traffic. The woman who had called 911 got into her vehicle and drove away. Soon, Maggie thought numbly, the intersection would look as though nothing bad had happened there. People would drive through on their way home from work, mothers would take kids to birthday parties in minivans, pizza delivery boys would zip through, checking addresses. Ben had been erased; all traces of him vanished with the swift efficiency of an ant colony.
“Dad…” she managed to croak desperately.
The stick shift and steering wheel looked like toys in Joe’s hands. “Sure, sure. Okay, Maggie. Dear God,” Joe said, maneuvering the Bug in a clumsy u-turn to follow the ambulance. “Dear God,” he repeated.
At the hospital, after a long wait and several phone calls, Ben’s parents were summoned. They and Maggie’s family gathered in a small room with couches and low lighting. As if in ceremony, a nurse presented Ben’s mother with items from his person excluding, of course, his bloody clothing. Everyone sat looking stupidly at the bag of everyday objects: his cell phone, leather wallet, the kinetic watch Maggie had given him last Christmas, some loose change. The only odd item to Maggie was a tiny black box. His mother’s hand shook visibly when she reached into the plastic bag of Ben’s personal affects and pulled out the velvet cube.
“This was meant for you,” she whispered to Maggie, handing her the tiny, hinged container. Then she clung to Ben’s father and shook with silent sobs.
Maggie opened the velvet box to find a square-cut diamond flanked by sapphires, set in a silver band.
“He asked me for ring advice,” Ben’s father choked out, lips trembling. “We thought the blue would look pretty with your eyes.”
Maggie took out the engagement ring and held it in her palm.
“For me,” she repeated. “From Ben. For me, from Ben.” She rocked back and forth in her seat. Joe picked Maggie up and carried her to the elevator.
Ben’s funeral was on a Friday. Maggie was back at work the next Monday. She told her family she couldn’t stay with them, that she’d rather go back to the apartment. Her mother meant well, and had dropped the suggestion that Maggie seek counseling. Mary went so far as to call Father Quincy over for dinner, but Maggie had nothing to say to him. She thought about what she and Ben had discussed regarding religion, that the concepts of sin and redemption were pretty subjective when you came right down to it. Neither had liked that a person could murder or steal from the poor, then ask forgiveness and technically be okay with God. A few Hail Mary’s and you were on your way, wiped clean till next confession. It had also occurred to both Maggie and Ben that their living together—the happiest, most blessed circumstance in either of their lives—was considered a sin.
She couldn’t stand to hear about heaven or God’s will and excused herself from the table. On the way upstairs, she heard Mary making apologies to their priest.
At least at work, she could forget everything, could become dissolved in the minute particles that required mindful arrangement on glass. She ignored the long faces of her colleagues and the hastily stopped conversations in the break room upon her entrance. All she wanted was to keep busy, to be absorbed in something other than the dark, creeping figure of grief which hovered just outside her peripheral vision, like a featureless, stocking-covered shadow. As long as Maggie looked forward, into the viewer of her microscope, she did not have to manage the inky creature which threatened to overcome.
At home Maggie slept on the couch, when she slept at all. She wore Ben’s ring on a strand of green embroidery floss around her neck.
The one person she could stand to hear from was Loki. He called her every day. Mostly he talked while Maggie listened. He told her about the changing colors of the trees and the pumpkins grown fat and ripe on the vine. Loki chattered on about the Canada geese that would not leave, although the threat of snow hung in the dusty, frigid air, so tangible you could taste it. He prattled and sang about everything but loss, so Maggie listened.
For a week Maggie worked from dawn till dusk, sometimes longer, then tuned into Loki spouting his prosaic nonsense. She pretended to hold herself together, until the morning that Della came into her lab and insisted she take some time off.
“Look, I appreciate the sheer volume of work you’re getting done here, don’t get me wrong,” Della began. “But it’s clear you need to get some perspective. You look terrible, Maggie. Please get help, sp
end time with family—something.”
“Della—please! I need to keep busy.”
“Your job is here when you’re ready to come back. Really ready, I mean. A person can’t lose a loved one, take a long weekend and expect to be okay.”
“I am okay, as long as I keep working.” Maggie started to hyperventilate.
“I’m sorry, Maggie. You need to go home.”
Chapter 5
Joe MacGilloway walked up the steps to Maggie’s apartment building with a heart like a wheelbarrow full of bricks. He paused in the foyer, eyes lingering on the row of mailboxes, especially the box which still read, “Ben Eliot and Maggie MacGilloway.”
Maggie’s boss had called the house that morning, having dug into Maggie’s employee file and found their number in her emergency contacts. She had spoken to Mary, who had immediately called Joe at work.
“Go over there and talk to her, Joe. Maggie never listens to me,” Mary had said.
Joe ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper buzz cut. He felt okay about giving the rest of today’s calls to Thomas and Malachi. Annie was doing invoices and Bridget was setting up appointments for the rest of the week; the four of them could run the show without him. Mary nagged that he was getting too old to sweat pipes and dig around under kitchen sinks, anyway. He knew it was time to retire, yet still kept a hand in the family business. The boys might be stronger and faster, but Joe had more experience and could solve problems better than either of them.
Joe was reluctant to approach Maggie’s apartment door. He wasn’t sure what to do with Maggie. He felt for her, truly he did, but she was smart enough to see through anything he had to say.
Maggie had never been like the other children. Granted, they were all different, all special and talented in their own way. But Maggie, she was sewn from an odd sort of cloth. From the moment he first held her, had baptized her sweet, bald head in church with his grandmother’s name—not Margaret or Marjorie or even (God forbid) Magdalene, but Maggie—he knew he was holding a serious little person. The ensuing twenty-odd years had not proven Joe wrong. While other little girls her age dreamt pink pony dreams under canopied beds, Maggie would sneak out to the garden shed with a flashlight to check on the compost worms. He and Mary found her, countless midnights, still reading when she was supposed to be asleep. It was hard to punish a little girl for wanting to pour through almanacs and books on plant taxonomy, when you got right down to it. Even if she was supposed to be sleeping.
Shallow Roots: An Iowa Girl Mystery (Iowa Girl Mysteries Book 1) Page 3
