A Taste of Death (Maggie Olenski Series)

by Hughes, Mary Ellen

  Maggie took another deep breath and leaned to the edge of the window. "Dan, it won't work. I can wait."

  Silence.

  "I know you're out there, Dan. I can outlast you. Your plan isn't working."

  More silence. Maggie leaned against the wall next to the window and grabbed short, quick breaths. She hoped she was managing to sound much stronger than she felt.

  "You're nothing but a coward, Dan Morgan" she called out. "You killed Jack and tried to pin it on Elizabeth. A coward! And stupid for thinking you can get away with it. Leslie is right to run from you." Maggie leaned back again, breathing heavily. She waited.

  After what seemed like hours, he finally answered her. "I could have had her. Except for you! She would have been mine. I could have cared for her."

  Maggie called back quickly. "You would have cared for the money that came with her. Jack's money."

  "No! I don't need his money. But he ruined my life. I deserved his life in return – everything that was his."

  "His money, you mean. That's what it's all about. It's all greed with you, Dan. You're as bad as Jack was. You both wanted to grab everything you could. From everyone else."

  "No!"

  "You think you're better than him, that you had some right to destroy him. But you're two of a kind. Except you aren't as smart. You're just plain dumb. You've murdered twice, three times, and you're trying to kill me. But it won't happen and you won't get away with it. You'll end up in prison, on death row. With nothing."

  A bullet flew through the open window, hitting the far wall. Maggie fell back, her heart pounding. But she couldn't stop now. She leaned back to the edge of the window.

  "Killing your wife was part of the plan, wasn't it, Dan? She was simply an inconvenience, just in your way."

  "She deserved to die!" Dan's voice had risen in pitch. "She lied," he cried. "She betrayed me."

  "Of course she lied. Of course she betrayed you. Who wouldn't?"

  "She pretended. Always pretending. Claiming innocence! I couldn't stand it! I had to kill her!"

  "And Alexander knew, didn't he."

  "He was always in the way."

  "He saw you, didn't he? He knew you killed Brenda."

  "She deserved to die!"

  "Because she betrayed you? But why not? How could she ever have loved you? You're a fool, Dan. A coward and a fool! Who could love a fool?"

  Silence again. Maggie listened, hardly breathing, every fiber of her body listening. Then she heard it. Footsteps running through the snow. Toward the cabin. He was coming. And fast.

  Maggie had to move quickly now, fight the weakness and her reeling head. She lurched painfully in the dark against the door frame, not daring to pause, moving frantically along the hallway wall to the wrought-iron stairway. She reached the first step when she heard it.

  Thump!

  He was at the side door, kicking at it.

  Maggie's heart stopped, then beat again, double time. She dropped to the top step, sliding down the staircase as rapidly as she dared, head bouncing against the curving side railing, hands reaching blindly, backside thumping from step to step nearly as rapidly as Dan Morgan's foot kicked at the door. She had just reached the bottom of the staircase when a heart-stopping shot rang out. He’d shot the lock off!

  Maggie scrambled on all fours to the far end of the sofa. Crouching, she grabbed for the afghan draped on the top and flicked it over herself, hoping desperately that in the darkness she would blend into the shape of the sofa, invisible. It was all she could think to do in this small, open layout. It was all she could do, and she prayed it was enough.

  Dan burst through the door, then stopped at the edge of the kitchen, listening, possibly scanning the area. Maggie held her breath, pressing against the sofa as tightly as possible, all her senses alert as she fought to ignore the pain still attacking her within. She felt a rush of icy air come down from the open window in her room and heard a crash. Had the wind blown something over? Or was it Ali? Maggie had forgotten all about him. Had he knocked against something in his own scramble for safety? She had barely formed the thought when she realized Dan heard it too.

  His steps pounded up the stairway and into her bedroom. Maggie immediately flung off the afghan. She might have only seconds to act. Could she do it?

  Her own breath coming in spasms, Maggie heard Dan's grunts and bellows of fury above her as he failed to find her. She searched frantically through the shadows of the living room. Where was it? Where was it!

  She heard a door slam against the wall above, then another crash and a piercing yowl. Ali.

  Run, Ali! Run!

  Maggie's fingers suddenly closed over what she wanted, and a rush of excitement coursed through her. She heard Dan's pounding steps as he charged from the bathroom to Dyna's room, another closet, and finally back into the upstairs hall. She scrambled with shaking limbs to do what she had to do before he came down.

  Maggie saw his dark shape loom at the top of the stairs as she stood in the shadows below, her hands reaching up to the side railing. Dan, holding his rifle in both hands, came running down the stairs, ready, she was sure, to find her there and kill her. But his legs encountered something unexpected. The fireplace poker Maggie had jammed between the wrought-iron decorative swirlings of each side railing caught him just above the ankles. He fell, full force, head slamming against the floor, rifle flying out of his hands.

  Maggie leaped forward, grabbed the rifle and jumped back. Shaking now from fear as well as from whatever was eating away at her insides, she cocked the rifle and struggled to hold it steady as she aimed it at Dan. Light in the room had increased from faint moonlight to the dark grey of pre-dawn. She could see Dan's shape on the floor breathing, stunned, and motionless. For a moment. Then he began to stir.

  "Stay right there, Dan," she ordered, her voice sounding strangled to her ears.

  Dan groaned, his hands going to his head. His head lifted, and she saw it turn toward her, looking at her. Was he sizing up the situation? Calculating his chances? He pushed himself, grunting, to a sitting position.

  "I have your gun, Dan. Believe me, I'll use it if you make me." But could she? Her hands were shaking, despite all her efforts to control them. Dan must see that. She saw him shift slightly, and she tensed. Would she be able to shoot if she had to? Would her fingers work? Most of all, could she take a life? She had to, to save her own. But could she?

  Dan suddenly sprang up with an animal-like roar, lunging at her.

  A shot rang out.

  Maggie watched in horror, as he sank to the floor. He groaned, spasmed, then lay lifelessly, unmoving. She looked at the rifle in her hands, then up to the broken side door which Dan had rushed through in what seemed only seconds ago. Regina White stood there, framed in the gray light behind her, her gun pointed downward as she watched Dan Morgan's body for any signs of life. After a moment, satisfied, she returned Maggie's stunned gaze and spoke, softly, with a hint of sadness.

  "Some people the world will be a whole lot better without."

  CHAPTER 25

  Maggie awoke with a groan, gradually realizing she was in a hospital bed. She vaguely remembered figures in scrub suits working on her, pumping her stomach. Looking to her left she saw the IV attached to her arm, dripping in precious fluid. She felt wrung out, but the awful pain, nausea and dizziness was gone.

  Had it all been a dream? A nightmare? She moved slightly on the bed and was instantly aware of acute soreness at scattered points of her body – shoulders, legs, but mainly backside. She pictured ugly bruises in those areas and knew exactly how they had come - not from any dream but from bouncing off walls and sliding for her life down that iron staircase.

  Maggie tried to pull herself upward, but stopped when her rubbery arms buckled. She knew there must be an electric control for the bed somewhere but decided the effort of looking for it outweighed the benefits for the moment. She tried to think back to how she had got here, but her memory seemed to have large holes in it.


  She remembered Regina taking the rifle from her and ordering her onto the sofa. A few brusque questions, and then she was gone. The next thing Maggie remembered was being in the hospital emergency room, in the hands of those medieval torturers/life-saving saints.

  Maggie had many unanswered questions left, and could only hope, immobile as she was at the moment, that someone would show up soon with a few answers. She closed her eyes at this thought and it seemed to her the next instant she was hearing Dyna's voice.

  "Maggie, Maggie are you okay?"

  Maggie suppressed the groan begging to be released from her throat as her awareness of the scattered pains returned with consciousness. She peeked at Dyna's worried face through squinted eyes.

  "The doctors said you'd be all right, but how do you feel?"

  Maggie opened her mouth to speak, managed only a croaking sound, then tried again. "Peachy keen."

  Dyna's face lit up. "Really? I'm so glad. I felt so bad since I'm the one got you into all this."

  Maggie shook her head. "I got myself into it. Can you find the control that will raise up this bed?

  Dyna fumbled around until she got Maggie elevated to a sitting position, then pulled a chair close to the bed rails and sat down herself. Maggie instantly felt better to have Dyna at her eye level. "When did you get back?" she asked.

  "Just minutes ago. I drove like a maniac from the airport in Boston. When I couldn't get hold of you last night I figured it was a storm or something that knocked the lines down. But by this morning I was worried enough to call John. He told me what happened, pretty much. Thank heaven Regina goes out walking as early as she does."

  Maggie remembered Dan's final lunge at her and, shuddering, wondered if she would be alive now, if not for Regina. "Does she always carry a gun with her?"

  "She said she started to after Alexander was shot. She also said she was concerned about you, that your poking around might be "stirring up the cesspool" as she put it. She deliberately hiked toward the cabin just to look things over, like she's the town's unofficial security guard or something."

  "I'm glad she feels that way," Maggie said, managing a weak smile.

  "You look kinda beat," Dyna said. "Do you want to rest awhile?"

  "Oh, no, I'm ... okay," Maggie said, needing to take two breaths to get all the words out. She let her eyes close, just for a moment, and when she opened them again Dyna was gone, the sun was coming through her window at a different angle, and she realized she felt better. The healing power of sleep.

  Someone brought her a tray of broth, cranberry juice, and jello, and it actually tasted good. She was just polishing off the jello when Dyna knocked at the partially open door.

  "Hi! You're looking better."

  Maggie's hand went to her hair, and she wondered for the first time how she really did look.

  "I dropped my things at Elizabeth's," Dyna said. "John still has the cabin roped off as a crime scene."

  "How's Elizabeth doing?"

  "She's okay. Of course she's more worried about you and feels guilty about what you went through for her. The whole town is in a turmoil. I could hardly get away for people stopping me and wanting to know about you, and talk about Dan."

  "What are they saying about Dan?"

  "Well, now they're saying stuff like 'I had my suspicions about him', but I don't think anyone really had a clue about him."

  "He was a tortured man," Maggie said.

  "Yeah. John told me what you told him about his killing his wife and all."

  Maggie thought back, and the memory of talking to John at some point in the emergency room came back, dimly.

  "The funny thing is, though," Dyna said, "it doesn't seem as though Brenda, his wife, ever had an affair with Jack Warwick."

  "What?"

  "No. I got this from Vickie. She says Brenda told her Dan had become insanely jealous back in Atlantic City after learning she had been alone once or twice with "someone". She didn't name names to Vickie, but it must have been Jack. She insisted they were only discussing business connected with the restaurant. But Dan wouldn't believe her. She agreed to leave Atlantic City and come to Cedar Hill to mollify Dan, and she thought he had finally come around to believing her. And there he went and killed her after all."

  Maggie grappled with this information. "So Dan killed his wife because of something he only imagined she had done?"

  "Seems that way."

  "And Jack, who was certainly not an innocent, ended up being murdered for the one thing he hadn't done?"

  "Uh-huh."

  Maggie thought back to the town meeting where Jack had been poisoned. She remembered the spirited debate that had gone on about the zoning change that would facilitate the sale of Big Bear. Dan Morgan had been pointed out as one of the owners of a business that would suffer if Cedar Hill changed from a ski town to a mining town. She remembered how he’d sat there that night, grimly silent, not adding a word of protest against the change.

  Maggie remembered Regina's comment later, at her house, that any clear thinking person who cared about his life here would speak up against Jack Warwick's plan. That should have alerted Maggie to Dan Morgan. He never spoke up. He had kept silent during the debate, since he was going to put an end to Jack's plan that night.

  She wished fervently that she had picked up on that clue inadvertently presented by Regina. Alexander might still be alive if she had, and others, including herself would have been spared much suffering.

  "John's not mad at you anymore," Dyna said, interrupting Maggie's self-castigation.

  "Oh?"

  "Well, he is, kind of. But since you're still alive and the town murderer is done away with, he forgives you."

  "Kind of him," Maggie said. But she understood John's difficulty. "Will he have some free time now to spend with you?"

  "Pretty soon, I think." Dyna smiled. "Maybe I'll cook up a nice vegetarian dinner for him. At his place. The cabin's probably going to take a while to get cleaned up."

  "What time is it, by the way?" Maggie asked. "Did I just have lunch or dinner?"

  "You had dinner. Which reminds me, I haven't had mine yet. I wanted to take Elizabeth out, to celebrate, but guess what? She's going over to Paul's. I've got my fingers crossed about those two. She wants to come see you too, later. Are you up to it?"

  "I'm feeling better by the minute." Maggie suddenly straightened up. "Ali! Is he okay?"

  "Oh, sure. He's at Elizabeth's right now."

  Maggie sank back. "Get him something special from me, okay? He deserves kitty caviar. He helped save my life last night."

  "I sure will. Hey, I just thought of something. Do you suppose Dan was the one who poisoned Ali?"

  Maggie thought that over. "He just might have. He probably knew how Leslie felt about Ali and decided to get rid of him for her. I think by that time he was becoming obsessed with Leslie."

  Dyna shook her head, looking distressed, and to turn her thoughts away from the painful path they were probably going down Maggie said, "Dyna, when you get Ali's caviar, would you mind picking up a hairbrush for me? And maybe...." Maggie ran down a short list of things, and Dyna, successfully distracted, made a note and promised to gather them all. She then took off to investigate the cuisine of the hospital cafeteria.

  Left alone, Maggie mulled over what she had recently learned. So much misery, it seemed, had been brought about by relationships falling apart. What must have begun with much love and hope between two people had somehow disintegrated. Dan and Brenda, Karin and Alexander, Leslie and Jack. Had the foundations of each union been on such shaky ground from the beginning? Or had tiny cracks formed that were never patched, allowing huge wedges to form?

  She'd likely never know, but it made Maggie think about things in her own life. She had been close to losing that life, frighteningly close, and she began taking a closer look at what was truly important.

  Her parents and Joe were truly important to her. Rob was becoming very important to her. But had she
treated them as such? When Joe worried about her safety, she had brushed him off with impatience, possibly causing a crack to form. When Rob became hard to reach, instead of understanding the hectic schedules of his work and allowing for the fact that hers was just as unpredictable, she began to pull back, allowing another little crack to form.

  Maggie didn't want wedges to form between her and the people she cared about. It was time to start patching. She reached for the phone.

  Maggie hesitated as she held it, wondering who to call first. It should probably be Joe, she thought. After all, he knew the most about what she had been involved in, and he would therefore be the one most worried. He deserved to hear that she was alright, although she would get an earful as he learned what she had gone through. Rob, on the other hand, had been kept in the dark about most of this. Therefore, other than perhaps worrying about why he hadn't been able to reach her, he wouldn't be nearly as stressed. Yes, Joe probably should be called first.

  Joe or Rob, Rob or Joe. There really shouldn't be a problem, she knew, when it came to choosing between boyfriend of some months and brother of one's lifetime. Except, that is, when one could expect a chewing out.

  Maggie punched in the familiar numbers.

  A chewing out that one knew was deserved. Which, of course, made it all the harder to –

  The phone clicked, then that familiar baritone voice answered. She drew a breath.

  "Rob! Hey, I'm glad I caught you!"

  <><><>

  The End

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mary Ellen Hughes is the author of RESORT TO MURDER, the first of the Maggie Olenski mysteries, as well as the Craft Corner Mystery series – WREATH OF DECEPTION, STRING OF LIES, and PAPER-THIN ALILBI. Her new Pickled and Preserved mystery series will be out soon.