by Unknown
“I don’t think he was ever unwilling to cooperate. He was just freaked out that everyone thought he’d committed the murders. He has a timeline that he wants to share with you that should prove that he wasn’t involved, but I think for moral support he’d like me there.”
“Uh, okay, sure. When do you two want to come in?”
Paul shouted, “Now!” in my ear.
I winced but was able to keep my voice steady for Keith. “We could be there in thirty minutes if that’s okay?”
“Okay, we’ll be looking for you. Just come to the information desk and ask for me.”
I hung up with Keith. Paul said, “I’ll be at your house in five minutes.” Nearly thirty minutes to the second of when I hung up the phone with Keith, Paul and I were walking up the steps to the police station. Keith met us in what looked like a regular conference room, no long mirror that resembled two-sided glass, just a regular conference room that you might see anywhere. There were no pictures on the walls, only a projector that didn’t project anything and a fake plant that even when it was new couldn’t have looked like a real plant.
Keith started with, “Paul you’ve already been Mirandized. It’s important for you to understand that our meeting today will be recorded. You have waived your right to have your attorney present, is that correct?”
Paul and I were seated right next to one another with Keith on the other side of the conference table. I leaned over to Paul, took his hand in mine, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. He glanced at me briefly, and, if he was at all capable of reading minds, he could hear me telling him everything was going to be fine.
Paul blurted out, “Yeah, I know my rights and I know that I can have a lawyer present. Can we get on with this?”
“Go ahead, Paul. What information do you have that will aid in the McMasters’ investigation?”
Paul handed Keith a typed three page letter of his exact route that Sunday morning. Each entry on the three pages included a column for time, location, activity. I had briefly reviewed the pages while we were in the car and had been impressed with his level of detail. Keith’s expression turned from disdain to interest as he read through all three pages slowly. He stepped out to make a copy of the papers. When he came back in, he handed two copies across the table, one for both Paul and me.
“Okay, let’s take this from the top. At 8:45 you left the McMasters’ residence. That seems a little early for a Sunday visit?”
“I live just down the street from the McMasters. Mr. McMasters was in his front yard watering his flower boxes. I waved to him, and he motioned me to come over. We talked for about 20-30 minutes; he was always really interested in how I was doing. He asked me about school, classes, my friends. He knew more about me than my own mom did. My mom and Mr. McMasters worked together.”
“I get it, you were close. But how did you go from watching him water his flowers to taking off in his car? You have to admit that seems like a bit of a stretch, right?”
“He was a very giving person; he knew I loved his car. I washed it for him nearly every weekend, and anytime it needed to go in for service he’d let me drop it off and pick it up. That day we’d been talking about,” Paul looked embarrassed, “…my not having a girl to take to a party the next weekend. He tossed me his keys. He told me to go cruise around, that it was a chick magnet. Those were his words, not mine, and he was sure I could get a date by lunch.”
“Hmmm, where does a young man find a girl on a Sunday morning to show off to anyway?”
Paul rolled his eyes and remarked, “Funny…that’s the same thing I was asking myself. I ended up at the mall, but nothing opens ‘til noon. Rather than drive around in circles, I decided to sit in the food court and wait for the stores to open.” He gave a heavy sigh and continued, “That was when I noticed Rachael and Lauren. Rachael and I struck up a conversation and had an instant connection. Lauren,” he paused for a second then looked at me cautiously, “was less than impressed with me. But Rachael seemed really into me, so I asked her if she wanted to go see my car. You have to understand that I’m not all that smooth and had no idea what to say to her.”
Keith didn’t say anything, so Paul continued, “You’ve seen her, it’s not like she’s hard to look at or anything, and I was worried I was going to say something stupid if we sat inside. Mr. McMasters seemed really sure that I wouldn’t have any problems getting a date if I just showed a girl his car. I didn’t know what was going on when the police came up to me and patted me down for weapons. I thought I was being punked.”
I could see the strain on Paul’s face. This was an explanation he should have given on Sunday. “When you asked me about Mr. McMasters and told me he had been murdered, I just kind of shut down. You would understand if you knew him. He was the greatest guy, not a mean bone in his whole body. I don’t know why anyone would want to kill him. He would give the shirt off of his back if he thought someone needed it.”
Keith cleared his throat, “When you left the McMasters’ residence, did you see anything out of the ordinary?”
“No, nothing. I pulled out of the driveway, and Mr. McMasters just waved with one hand and had his garden hose in the other.”
“Was it like Mr. McMasters to do yard work on the weekend?”
Paul looked puzzled for a second, then slowly, “No, come to think of it, I don’t think I ever saw him do yard work. They had a lawn service and a sprinkler system. When I was younger, I used to cut lawns in the neighborhood, but never theirs.”
“How long did you and Mr. McMasters speak before you drove away?”
“I guess about twenty minutes - not really long. It was too early for any sporting events; sometimes he watched NASCAR on Sunday afternoons.”
“Did you hear anything peculiar? Either in the neighborhood or from inside the house?”
Paul waited a long minute, “Mrs. McMasters was in the house. I did hear her say ‘What, John?’ but Mr. McMasters was outside, and he hadn’t said anything to her. He just shouted through the window ‘I’m outside, Rose,’ but she didn’t come out or say anything.”
“Did he seem concerned?”
“No, he went in the house to grab his car keys a couple minutes later, but they were usually on a hook by the front door. He wasn’t in the house long enough to talk to her.”
“Paul, I’m not sure why you didn’t tell us any of this when we brought you in for questioning. If the timeline and route checks out, we should be able to clear you as a suspect.”
Paul had a forlorn look, and he finally asked, “So, why would anyone want to hurt them?” Keith shook his head and pursed his lips.
Paul and I left the police station. It was getting late when we walked to his car on the nearly deserted street. We chatted absently about everything but the last two hours: where he and Rachael were going for dinner, how much he enjoyed staying with his grandmother, my summer plans. We were about halfway back to my house when he uttered, “I must be getting paranoid.” He made eye contact with me briefly, then followed with, “The same car has been behind us for the last five minutes. Do you think the police would be following me?”
I turned around to get a better look, only to see the car put on its turn signal and make a right hand turn down a street. I didn’t get a good look at the driver, but it was a dark grey sedan. It could have been an unmarked police car, but I couldn’t be sure.
“I think you’ve just had a stressful day and you’re exhausted. I can’t imagine why a police car would be following you. It’s not like they don’t know where you’re going. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.” It may have just been a coincidence, but those weird warning tingles shot through the hairs on my arm. As soon as I had turned around to get a better look, the car had sped up to get around a corner.
Great, now I’m getting paranoid. Paul and I talked about Rachael during the rest of the drive back to my house. He really was taken with her. I would have to call her and let her know that Paul was more excited about this weekend than
she was.
When we pulled up outside my house, Paul confessed, “Lauren, I wish there were some way to tell you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done to help me.”
“You just did.”
“No really, when my own mom wouldn’t believe in me, you did. You found bail money for me, you told me what I needed to do to clear my name, and then you made the police listen to me. You’re like a force of nature.”
“Okay, Paul, that’s a little over-the-top. You’re innocent. If you weren’t, believe me, I’d know. I’ve got plans tomorrow with Max, so I’ll talk to you in a couple days. Good luck on your date with Rachael if I don’t see you before.”
Paul wore a strange expression, and it was odd that his mood seemed to change from grateful to something else. He reached for my hand, which felt clumsy and awkward. Paul looked nervous, “Lauren, I really don’t know what to make of you. There’s no logical explanation for you to believe in me, let alone help me.”
Warning bells went off in my head telling me to get out of the car. Paul had wrongly interpreted my help as some sort of an invitation for something more – I could see it on his face. I tried to free my hand in as covert a way as possible, but Paul held on a second longer.
“I just wanted to help. I don’t have any ulterior motives, other than maybe seeing my friend Rachael happy.” It worked. My mention of Rachael made him release his hold on me, so I was able to make my exit quickly. My mind quickly shot back to taking his hand in the conference room, trying to comfort him. He must have taken my support to be an invitation of some kind. This was awkward, and I’m rarely taken by surprise.
You would think with all our conversation about his plans with Rachael, he wouldn’t have confused the support for anything else. I was wrong. I was out of the car, up the sidewalk and into the house before I took a breath. Unwilling to believe that had been anything more than misplaced gratitude, I pushed the incident to the back of my mind, and filed it away, never to be thought of again.
Chapter Twenty-three
Friday moved along at a snail’s pace. I looked at the clock on the wall, at my watch, and the time on my phone every five minutes all morning long. I couldn’t help replaying my last few minutes with Max last night over and over. I wasn’t sure if I could make it until one o’clock. My imagination was running wild, and as much as I wanted to see his home, I mostly wanted some alone time with just the two of us.
All these sensations were foreign to me. Last night was the first time I was sure that Max felt the same about me. I knew he liked me, I’d seen his spark of jealousy enough that I knew he cared, but last night he nearly set me ablaze. With forty-five minutes to go before my class let out, I decided I’d much rather wait in the sunshine. I gathered my books, packed my bag and stepped out of class. This late in the semester, half the students skipped anyway. I made my way out to the front of the building. I took five steps outside the door, and there it was. It was only 12:15, but Max’s truck was waiting at the curb.
I sprinted to the truck, ripped the door open and was inside in a matter of seconds. Max hadn’t seen me coming, so my abrupt appearance startled him. Before he could get a word out, “I am soooo glad you’re early.” The blaze was fully ignited.
Max pried himself away from me and looked at me deep enough to make me melt right there on the seat. He wrapped his arms around me, burying his face in my hair. I could feel his breath on my neck. “Okay, we need to stop doing this or we’ll never get there.” He moved back to the driver’s seat, but pulled me close to his side and kept his arm around me.
Although mildly disappointed that we didn’t detour to his apartment, I found myself again excited about seeing his home. We drove in silence for a long while, not the uncomfortable silence following an argument but the silence that comes from quiet anticipation. The truck turned off the main road, and the sun was nearly blocked out from the canopy of branches from the trees on either side. We stayed on this shadowed road for just a few minutes when we came to a brick entryway with huge iron gates. Max reached up to a compartment in the roof and pushed what looked like a garage door opener, and the two immense gates opened wide for us to drive through. The lane from the gate wound on for better than a mile. Each side of the drive was lined by large Crape Myrtle trees spaced about a car length apart.
As we got nearer the end of the drive, I saw the most enormous oak tree I’d ever seen, even bigger than the ones at Middleton Plantation. Max stopped the truck, and I got out, staring at the tree. The width of the tree trunk was wider than I was tall, at least eight feet. On one side a frayed tire swing hung loosely, as if it hadn’t been swung on in decades.
I was so overwhelmed by the oak tree that I completely missed the house behind it. About a hundred yards directly behind the gigantic tree sat an amazing house that looked like a miniature castle. It was all brown brick trimmed by tan shutters with a tan metal roof. The front porch ran the length of the front of the house.
I stood motionless, taking it all in and didn’t realize that Max had come up behind me. He was standing close and gently placed his hands on my shoulders. “This is your home?”
“Do you like it?”
“Of course, it’s beautiful.”
“I’ve wanted to bring you here since I got back, but I wanted to make sure you would have enough time to explore. There’s a lot to see.”
“Why do you even keep an apartment in the city?”
“That apartment is just where I sleep. This place is my home. This is where I grew up. It’s a little too far to commute when I’m on call, so I keep an apartment near the hospital.”
The place was in great shape, the lawn mowed, the bushes all trimmed, “Who lives here?”
“Julio’s the caretaker. He stays in the guest house out back. For a long time I couldn’t stay in the house, too many memories. But now I’m out a couple times a week. Missy loves it here; she’s not very happy cooped up in the apartment all day. Julio took care of her for me when I went out of town. Since I’ve been back, I’ve been spending a good bit of my free time with you, so he’s been watching her. She’s around here somewhere.” He spoke softly in my ear, “I love that you’re here.”
“Me too.”
His Golden Retriever, Missy, barreled around a corner as soon as she saw us. She pranced in circles around Max, letting him know she’d missed him, then made her way to me for another warm welcome. “C’mon, let me show you one of my other favorite girls.” Max took me by the hand and walked around the house to a huge red barn. Like everything else, it looked to be meticulously cared for. It was a deep red with bright white trim. Max opened a stubborn door and led me in. “Hi, Christy, I want you to meet Lauren.”
In front of us, in a huge stall was a tall grey horse. When she heard him, she gave out a welcome and walked over to him. As he reached out to pet her, she put her head down low, and he scratched her ears. Max spoke sweetly to the animal, and it was evident that she, too, was his.
From inside the barn we went through a side door that led to a covered parking area with a golf cart. “Let me guess, you have a golf course here, too?” Nothing would have surprised me now.
“No, but there’s a lot to see, so we’ll do a riding tour.” Max drove all around the estate, pointing out things that only someone connected to it would know. Nestled deep in a wooded area was an old tobacco barn that was more than a hundred years old. He showed me the garden where he had more types of vegetables than most grocery stores. We went out to a lake at the very back of the property and then made our way back to the house.
In awe of this place and thrilled that he was sharing it with me today, “This place is like a wonderland.”
When we made our way into the house, it was the first time I noticed its odd shape. The whole house was shaped like the letter U. The front of the house had a gigantic family room, a bar, kitchen and dining room. In the lower part of the U were three bedrooms, and the back half of the house was the master suite. Where the opening to
the U should have been was a large seven foot brick wall, giving the feel of a compound protected from the outside world. In this center courtyard surrounded by the rest of the house was a swimming pool. The pool was visible from every angle inside the house, but it was invisible from the exterior of the home. “Wow,” was all I could manage.
After our tour of his house, he asked, “So what do you feel like doing?”
“Max, this place is beyond words. I’ve never seen anything, anywhere, like it. If I were with anyone else, I’d have a million things I’d want to do, but I don’t care what we do as long as I can keep spending time with you.”
“We could lay around by the pool.”
“You didn’t tell me to bring a swimsuit.”
“It isn’t like there’s a dress code. I’ve got a pair of shorts and a t-shirt you could put on.” He walked me down the hall and pointed me to a dresser, “There’s bound to be something in here you can wear.”
I’m normally self conscious in a bathing suit, so this kept my nervousness manageable. When I got to the pool, he was already lying on a chaise lounge. There was a second setting just to the side of the one he lay in, so I sat down.
Conversation between us came easy, so our time together flew by. Before I realized it, it was nearly 6:00. He noticed the time. “I guess I’d better get you back and get going to work.”
“Okay, I’ll go get changed.”
Max reached his hand to my arm, “Wait, before you go . . .” He paused as if the easy conversations we’d had for the last several hours somehow left him speechless. “Lauren . . . I really care for you . . . a lot.”
I could feel a warmth wash over me. For the first time I could feel his emotion as clear as I could anyone else’s. I knew what he was trying to say – I could feel it. Knowing what someone feels before they have the nerve to actually put it into words is never a good idea – I learned this lesson when I was five and had decided to paint my father’s car blue.
“Me too.”
