Shallow Roots: An Iowa Girl Mystery (Iowa Girl Mysteries Book 1)

by Anomie Hatcher

  Maggie covered her mouth with her free hand.

  thousand, Eighteen—one thousand,

  “Once Ben was gone, you came to us like a stray kitten. And we gave you a home, better than the one you came from. You’re happy here, Mack.”

  Twenty—

  “I know you’re sorry about Toby. I am too. But I’ll let him go easy, don’t worry. He was never going to do any good in this world. He doesn’t appreciate one thing he’s been given, not one. He’s got a mom who adores him, a dad who gives him everything he needs. All he cares about is getting high. Do you realize he’ll do anything for me? He’d do anything for a lid when he’s short on cash and needs to get his buzz on. I’ve pushed him, too, just to see how far he’d go to get his dope. Lend me your dad’s truck Toby? Sure. Care if I repaint it? Okay. Run my errands? Steal things? Show me where Fennel keeps her key? Suck me off? No problem. That’s not a moral individual we’re talking about, Maggie, now is it? The world is better off without him.”

  The floor creaked and Loki stopped whispering. He reached to turn on the light, but Maggie stopped him again. Keeping her thumb on the recorder caused the side table to wobble. The digital recorder slid across the surface of the table, loosening her grip and revealing the light for a half second. She covered it as quickly as she could.

  “What is that?” Loki asked, craning his neck in the darkness to get a better look.

  “I don’t know what you mean—I think the house is settling.”

  “What are you holding?” he asked. “I want to turn on the light.”

  “It hurts my eyes. Please leave it off.”

  Loki’s hand found the recorder. He moved her thumb and the red light stared accusingly in the dark.

  “You. Little. Liar.”

  In a flash, Loki had grasped Maggie’s throat with one hand and reached into a pocket with the other. She couldn’t speak now if she tried.

  “I thought I could trust you, Mack. If you didn’t like it here, you could’ve just gone home, back to your boring life. I would’ve let you go. But now,” his voice became lifeless, but for a hint of exasperation. “Now I have to get rid of you, too.”

  Maggie saw the silhouette of a sharp object in Loki’s hand and prepared herself to deliver a forceful kick to his groin. His grip around her throat was an iron clamp. She twisted from side-to-side to test the force of his hold on her. There wasn’t much give. He was too strong. Clearly, she would not get loose without Loki being incapacitated somehow.

  “There were two adrenaline shots in the package. I put one in Toby’s truck. I was saving the other in case he didn’t kill himself properly. Big surprise. He didn’t. Not even after a dooby soaked in PCP and a push in the right direction.”

  Loki wagged the needle in the air, teasing it toward her shoulder, circling it over her breasts. She stopped struggling for fear of puncturing herself accidentally.

  “I don’t know exactly what this will do to you, but it won’t be good. There are some deep snowdrifts between here and Des Moines. You won’t thaw out till spring, most likely. I think we’re in for a long winter, don’t you?”

  Loki raised the needle in his clenched fist, preparing for a swift downward drive into her abdomen. Maggie closed her eyes, anticipating the help that would come, and concentrated all her energy on the necessary kick. She heard a clunk. Loki collapsed on top of her. The needle clattered to the floor.

  The lamp came on. Sunflower stood with a piece of firewood in one hand.

  “Did I wait too long?” Sun asked.

  “You did just fine,” Maggie gasped, rubbing her throat. She pushed Loki off and stood.

  He moaned and writhed on the floor.

  Sunflower dropped the wood and picked up a length of rope. She had Loki hog-tied in two minutes flat.

  “I grew up in Pasadena. Used to work the junior rodeo circuit,” she panted. Standing tall, Sun raised her arms like a gymnast who had just performed a perfect balance beam dismount.

  Maggie tried to laugh. Her faltering laughter ended in a breath-sucking sob.

  “It’s okay,” Sun said. “Let it out.”

  Maggie wept, swaying on her feet like a willow.

  “Fennel was my best friend,” Sunflower said. “I can’t believe he killed her because she messed up his plans. What a psycho.” She kicked Loki in the side with her stocking foot. His head was bleeding, but he was conscious enough to glare with one eye.

  He spat, struggling against his bonds.

  Maggie took a step backward.

  “Don’t worry—he’s not getting loose any time soon,” Sun assured her. She reached in to the waistband of her pajamas and pulled out the article that Maggie had handed to her upstairs. She unfolded the article waved it in the air. “Thanks for my get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  Maggie collapsed on the sofa.

  “Thank you, Sunflower.”

  “Loki named me that. I’ve never liked it. Call me Susan.”

  “Okay. Susan.” Maggie paused and caught her breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you the article sooner. I’ve had it for some time, so I’ve known about Jeremy, that you didn’t kill him.”

  “No,” Susan answered. “I’m not a murderer.”

  Chapter 24

  “Those go in the kitchen,” Maggie called to her brothers Seamus and Frankie. The two young men stood with cardboard boxes in their arms and questioning looks on their faces, feet planted on the sidewalk leading up to Maggie’s new cottage.

  “I think this is the last load,” Joe said, wiping sweat from his forehead with a navy blue bandana. It was unseasonably hot for April, nearing eighty-five degrees and muggy. “I’ll give Mom a call pretty soon, see how it’s going at the apartment.”

  Maggie linked her arm in Joe’s. “I really appreciate this, Dad.”

  “Well, sure. What’re we going to do, make the pregnant lady do all the heavy lifting?” Joe smiled his daughter. “You know what I mean. You’re welcome.”

  A small army of volunteers had descended on Maggie’s apartment that morning, packing boxes and loading various trucks and cars with her belongings, hauling everything to her new place in River City. She had been relegated to the role of supervisor. Annie and Bridget had come early, to help pack a few survival items in a suitcase. Then they had pushed Maggie into a kitchen chair and brushed her hair out, smoothing it into pigtails that fell behind either shoulder.

  “Great,” Maggie groaned, when they presented her with a mirror. “Between the pink maternity overalls and the hair, I look like a four year-old who swallowed a pumpkin.”

  “Shut up. You’re beautiful,” Bridget insisted.

  Maggie’s mother Mary and a bevy of aunts had stayed in Des Moines to clean the apartment, promising that by six o’clock there would be a chili feast at Joe and Mary’s for all the helpers. Supper seemed impossibly far off to Maggie.

  “Shush,” she said to her belly, rubbing the spot where the baby had just kicked. “How can you be hungry already? We just ate lunch.”

  “Talking to yourself again?” Seamus asked, another box in his arms. “Where does this go?”

  “I don’t know—set it anywhere. I’ll sort it out later.”

  “Okay then. I’ll put this on the toilet.”

  Seamus skipped up to the door, disappearing into the house.

  “Very funny. Get back here! I know where I—”

  Seamus did not reappear. Maggie gave up, waving her hand dismissively. A patrol car pulled up and parked next to the curb. Maggie pressed both hands into the small of her back, her elbows stuck out like wings, and waddled over to meet Lyle.

  “Looks like you’ve got a lot of help,” he said.

  “They whisked me out of one house and set me back down in another, MacGilloway style. I haven’t had much to do but boss people around.”

  “Anything left for me to do?”

  “Just tell me how it went, Lyle.” Maggie shaded her eyes with one hand in order to look up at his face. The sun was behind him. Li
ght shone around Lyle’s head like a crown of fire, causing her eyes to water.

  “It went like I said it would. Between yours and Susan’s account and Toby’s testimony, it was a done deal. The judge went with the jury’s recommendation for sentencing. Loki’s going away for a life.”

  “And the recorded confession?”

  Lyle looked like an angry sun god, “I think that might have helped, but it doesn’t matter. It was too big a risk to take, Maggie. It was a stupid thing for you to do.”

  “But it helped.”

  “Yes, it helped. I still don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me. I would’ve believed you. I would’ve helped.”

  “I was the link, Lyle. I had the information in front of me all along. I just had to step back and look. No one else could’ve seen it. Loki covered his tracks too well, let us follow the trail to Toby. I had to flush him out on my own. He trusted me.”

  “Promise me you won’t do anything like that again. Please, Maggie.”

  Thomas pulled up in the plumbing van and rolled down the window. “Maggie, Mom says they’re done at the apartment. She needs your other keys for the landlord. You forgot to give them to her this morning.”

  “Shoot. That’s right,” Maggie began to waddle to her car.

  Lyle took hold of her elbow.

  “I can drive you,” he said.

  “That’s okay. Driving is awkward, but I can still do it. Do you mind staying here? Seamus will have my dishes stacked in the bathtub if no one stops him. That would be his idea of a joke.”

  “Okay. I can stay for awhile.”

  Maggie wedged herself into the Beetle and headed to Des Moines. She rolled down the window and let the air blow her pigtails loose.

  The Originals were no more. Tor went back to being David Falstaff, deeply in debt and with nothing left to do but sell the farm. He sold his house and land to two young couples hoping to turn the farm into a cooperative, where members could trade shares for work hours. It was a fitting way to hand off the legacy. The new owners decided to keep the name. They repainted the barn, however.

  The ten acres of timberland also got sold, but not to Val-U-Shop. Maggie convinced David to sell to someone who would preserve the land. Vivian Delay, and several other citizens of River City, agreed that the woods should never be developed. With a little private funding and some small business donations, the land became known as the Louise Carpenter Land Trust. Maggie was part of the committee that planned to create a path through the woods. As long as one did not litter or destroy the nature there, they were free to hike and enjoy all the species from aspens to badgers.

  David was currently working at a health food store in Des Moines and hoped to save enough money so that he could hike the Appalachian Trail the following year.

  Susan sold her Hog and purchased a different bike, a black 1982 Yamaha Virago 920 that needed a new gas cap but was otherwise in good condition. As far as Maggie knew, Susan was currently making her way from one motorcycle rally to the next and planned to end up in Sturgis, South Dakota by August.

  Toby Meadows had recovered. He was currently doing community service and working for his dad on the farm. Walt Meadows was pretty sure that long, hot days of walking beans and detasseling corn were just what his son Toby needed to stay out of trouble that summer.

  Taped to Maggie’s dashboard, a hand-lettered invitation flapped up and down in the highway breeze. The invitation was for the commitment ceremony of Anabel Jones and Beatrice Hawkins and would be held in July. Both of them had insisted they wait to get hitched until after Maggie’s baby was born, so there’d be no chance of their being out of town honeymooning when Maggie went into labor. Maggie did not want to change practitioners so near the end of her pregnancy and was glad they had decided to wait.

  The two were renting an apartment above a shop in downtown River City and were a comfortable walk from Maggie’s new bungalow.

  Maggie slowed to a stop at a red light, a few blocks from her old apartment.

  She had already given notice at PhyllaSlide, planning to work right up to the week the baby was due. Joe and Mary had helped Maggie buy out her apartment lease, so she could live on her savings for a while. Her job at the Greystone Nature Center wouldn’t begin till September. The time between jobs would be for her and the baby. As for when she started working in September and where the baby would be during the day—Maggie hadn’t quite figured it all out yet.

  Mary and Aunt Kate met Maggie by the mailboxes of her old apartment.

  “Thought we’d come downstairs. Knowing you, Ms. Stubborn, you’d try and hike up there and get winded,” Aunt Kate said.

  “I’m pregnant, not an invalid. But thanks, Aunt Kate.”

  She took the apartment keys off her keychain and handed them to Mary. The names on her old mailbox caught Maggie’s eye. She reached up and slid out the small piece of paper and folded it in half. She gave the paper a kiss and tucked it into the chest pocket of her bib overalls.

  “Are you okay?” Mary asked.

  “I’m good. Thanks for all your help. There’s something I’ve got to do in town. Don’t send the National Guard if I don’t make it back to the house by dinner, okay?”

  “Okay. You’ve got your phone with you?”

  “Yes. I’ll be fine.”

  “I like your hair down loose. You should comb it, though,” Kate said.

  Maggie wrinkled her nose and smoothed her tangled pigtails without much effect. One of the bands was missing, the other was at the ends of her hair. Aunt Kate chuckled.

  Maggie waved and got back into her car.

  Halfway to her destination, she stopped at a sub shop and picked up a sandwich and a bag of chips.

  When she reached the cemetery, Maggie parked the car, but did not walk directly to Ben’s grave. She found a bench near a pond and ate her sub while watching the trumpeter swans. A pair of birds came over and she threw them bits of sandwich bread.

  There were not many other visitors. It was a peaceful stroll to Ben’s headstone. Maggie struggled into a cross-legged position at the foot of his grave.

  “So,” she said. “I know we said we thought this was stupid, talking to dead people who can’t hear. But I’ve missed you. A lot has happened since you died. As you can see—or maybe you can’t—I’m round with child. Your child. I didn’t see that one coming, did you? We tried so hard to be careful, Ben.”

  “A person can only control so much, though. Life has a way of reaching in and mixing things up whether you’re ready or not.”

  “I’ve moved. Baby and I are going to live in a two-bedroom house in a little farm town. I’ll be working outside every day, teaching some, keeping track of the land. It’s different, I know, but everything is different without you. I’ve had to make these changes so I—” she wiped her nose on a paper napkin from the sub restaurant. “So I can feel right. Life will never be the same without you, so I have to find a new way. I hope you understand. I’ll always love you, wherever you are.”

  Maggie made an appearance at her parents’ house, explained that she wasn’t all that hungry and thanked everyone for helping her move.

  The sun was sinking low in the sky by the time that Maggie returned to her new home in River City. There were no cars out front. She was surprised to see a light on in the kitchen.

  “Hello?” she called.

  Lyle was standing elbow deep in boxes, dusting off the top shelves of her kitchen cupboards. The humid air was ripe with the scent of orange oil.

  “I figured you couldn’t reach this high, thought I’d make sure it got cleaned before the dishes get put away.”

  “Taking care of me again, I see. What’ll I do when you’re not around, Cowboy? I’ll have to invest in a step ladder.”

  “You know, I live just around the corner.”

  “I didn’t know that. Explains why there’s no car out front.”

  “Yes. I parked at home, got some cleaning supplies and walked back over.”

 
; “So we’re neighbors now. We’ll have to trade recipes, borrow cups of flour…”

  “Share seeds from the garden, drop by for a cup of coffee…” Lyle set down the dust rag and walked around boxes to where Maggie was standing in the doorway. It was a small kitchen. He reached her in three easy steps.

  Maggie could not ignore the warmth that radiated from the center of her chest. She remembered being six, skinning her knee after falling from her bike, how the scrape felt hot beneath her fingers. Mary had explained that this meant she was healing, that all it would take was a little time and loving care.

  “I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of one another now.”

  His statement was really a question, one that itched for an answer.

  Maggie nodded, maintaining eye contact.

  “Anything is possible,” she said. “Anything at all.”