Halfway down Main toward Java Moon, Maggie stops and stares into a window. “I love their displays.”
“Twisted Hearts. Girly stuff.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“You might not have noticed, but I don’t wear many dresses.”
“On account of your bowlegs?”
“Very funny.”
The door to the shop opens. Three women emerge with navy paper shopping bags.
Maggie groans. “Don’t look now, but it’s the Witches of Eastwick.”
Hank says, “Shit. Well, Mary’s nice, but June and Sheila aren’t my biggest fans right now.”
“Or mine.”
Turn the other way, turn the other way, Maggie wills them. “Let’s go.” Maggie takes Hank’s elbow and pulls.
But it’s too late. “Hank Sibley, are you going to pretend you don’t even see your ex-fiancée?” June asks.
The three women are upon them in an instant.
Sheila pulls a pair of pants from her bag. She drapes them across her. “I hope when I’m nearly forty I can still fit in these.”
Maggie pulls her embroidered top up with her free hand, looking down at her tight tank. “I’m sure glad I don’t have to stuff socks in my bra to look like a grown woman.”
Hank clamps his hand over Maggie’s on his elbow and propels her forward with two big steps. “Come on, before Penny and Andy run off and elope.”
A mewling sound whips Maggie’s head around. It’s coming from Mary.
“Penny? I don’t think so.” She looks close to tears.
Maggie’s strange feeling from earlier returns. What is it about Penny? She stops, which wrenches her hand out from under Hank’s. “Why?”
“Don’t listen to her,” June says. “She’s crazy when it comes to all things Paco Lopez.”
“I am not. And Penny is the one obsessed with him. Paco’d been trying to foist her on Andy for weeks.”
Sheila reloads her merchandise bag and leans to whisper in Mary’s ear, but just loud enough that Maggie overhears it. “Mary, honey, why do you think he was using that religious freak as a beard? Because he could make it look like something it wasn’t. Andy was a safe place to park his other woman. So quit lying to yourself. Up until the day he died, Paco was still giving it to Penny every bit as often as he was giving it to you.”
Thirty-Five
On the drive back to the ranch, Andy is more like a lovesick puppy than a man charged with murder.
Maggie’s still reeling from her interaction with the three witches. What’s Penny’s angle? Is she using Andy for something? Lying to the police and everyone else about her relationship with Paco? “You seem upbeat.”
“It will all work out. I didn’t do this. The lawyer feels I won’t be convicted.”
Hank turns right on Main, taking the back way out of Sheridan to US Highway 87 and on through Story. “But I don’t think that’s the reason you look so happy. I think it’s the girl.”
“A Cheyenne girl at that. I thought you didn’t like Indians?” Maggie says.
“Depends on the Indian.”
“Are you allowed to date non-Amish?” Maggie can still picture the glowering face of Reggie when Andy agreed to coffee with Penny. Maybe religion will save Andy from Penny. If he needs saving.
“During Rumspringa, yes. But outside marriages are against Ordnung—community rules. So if I go back and get baptized, I have to marry Amish.”
The religion and the community fascinate Maggie. From growing up Wendish, she can relate to the isolation and the extreme views. “Can people convert to Amish?”
“It’s very difficult. Rare.”
“But not impossible.”
He smiles. “No, not impossible.”
The news isn’t as good as she’d hoped.
Thirty-Six
That evening, Hank and Maggie exit the dining room with Andy, Michael, and Gene, to find Penny in the great room waiting for the music lesson.
“Hello, Penny.” Hank kisses Maggie’s cheek. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“See you in a few.” To Penny she says, “You ready?”
Andy’s face turns the color of a beet. “Penny.”
“Hi, Andy.”
Michael’s eyes narrow, and he looks confused. “What are you doing here? You could have called me if you needed something.”
She hugs her purse to her side. “Sorry. I’m not here to see you.”
Maggie’s hackles rise. How widespread are Penny’s affections?
“Oh?” Michael says. “Who are you here to see?”
“I’m taking a music lesson from Ms. Killian.”
“Like Andy.” His brows draw together.
“Yes.”
“Is this lesson with him, too?”
“Yes.”
Michael studies her face, then Andy’s. The air is thick with something that Maggie wants away from.
She points at the stairs. “Let’s go make some beautiful music together.” She immediately regrets her word choice.
Michael stares after them as they go.
Thirty-Seven
Half an hour after the music lesson ends, Maggie and Hank lay intertwined.
Maggie is limp and sweaty. “The bed didn’t crash. That’s good.”
“I Maggie-proofed it.”
Maggie laughs. In the background, Alison Krauss is crooning “Stay.” “Definitely the afterglow. My favorite part, I mean.”
Hank kisses her clavicle. “You think? I’m all about the pursuit.”
“So if I’d stayed with you in Wyoming originally, we would have been over before we began? Because to you it’s all about the pursuit?”
He runs his finger down the centerline of her body, from the hollow of her throat to just below her belly button. “In case you haven’t noticed, you require a lot of pursuing.”
“Don’t try to talk your way out of this, cowboy.”
He chuckles, and she touches the indentations in his cheek. “I believe I just pursued you to Texas. And up the stairs. And around the bedroom.”
Maggie is mollified. She worries about leaving him to go back to Texas, if she can’t get him to come with her. It’s not that she’d require chasing, but she would want him to come after her. The thought of being apart makes her jangly and anxious. That reminds her she has two estimates sitting in her email inbox, a result of having no time to call the contractors back the day before. She hasn’t even opened the emails.
“Hey, where’d you go?” he jostles her toes with his.
“Sorry. Thinking about Andy.” She crosses her eyes instead of her fingers as she tells the white lie. “He and Penny were all googly-eyed on the porch after the music lesson. He’s moony over her.”
“You don’t sound like you approve.”
“I don’t disapprove, but something isn’t right with that girl.”
“She seems nice enough.”
“Harrumph.”
He laughs. “You sound like Andy’s mom.”
Not what she wants to sound like when she’s naked in bed with Hank. “Enough of that. Did you do your shot?”
“I did.”
“Good.”
Louise scratches at the door.
Hank growls. “Damn dog.”
“She keeps getting shut out whenever we . . . you know.”
“I don’t need her watching my performance.”
“You think she’s going to critique you. Like, ‘Hey, Mister, aren’t those things usually straight?’”
“Too soon.”
Maggie laughs. “About Louise. I have a confession on her behalf.”
In the hall, the dog sighs and lies down on the floor with a loud, dejected thump.
“Uh-oh. As long as this isn’t a story about Louise and one of your previous boyfriends, I’ll be good.”
“I got Louise here. In September. How fast do you think I work?”
“We were apart for a few weeks.”
She nips at his nipp
le, eliciting a groan. “Louise has been keeping the ranch safe from small creatures. Rodents. Rabbits. Porcupines. Even an owl. I told Michael about it, and he thinks the owl was a witch, and that Louise saved me. That Louise is my protector.”
“That’s one bloodthirsty animal.”
“Were you even listening to the punch line?”
He rolls her onto him and tips up her chin. In the moonlight, his face is shadowed, but his breath is warm and sweet on her lips.
“If Louise is protecting you, she’s my favorite animal in the world.”
Maggie nestles her face in the center of his chest. Hank holds her tight against him. Soon, his breathing is rhythmic and snuffly. Louise snores from the hall. Maggie is drifting off herself when she hears a screech and sees a shadow against the window. Is it another owl? But sleep pulls her under before she can decide.
Sometime later, Maggie wakes with a start. She’s on her back, arms flung out.
“Waddafock,” Hank mutters.
Her heart is kicking like the hooves of Lily’s foal against the inside of her chest. She puts her hand on her throat. It’s slick with sweat. There’s an odor in the room. She sniffs. Something rank. Rotten. Dead?
Louise scratches on the door and whines. She sounds like she’s digging for moles in the hall.
Maggie pushes herself to a seated position against the headboard. An image is fading from her memory. A dream? It’s Paco’s face, Paco’s red boots running from the dead pile. He’s pointing at something, or someone behind her. Hank is there. Gene. Michael. Andy. Penny. Her. She runs, gasps. Paco’s image fades. What was he pointing at? Was he trying to show her something? His killer? She clutches at the covers pooled in her lap. Her hand closes over something warm, soft yet hard, and wet. She screams and rockets out from under it, landing on the floor with a thud on her side.
Hank is on his feet, fists swinging. “What? What? What?”
Maggie’s voice is strangled. “Something was in my lap. I don’t know what it is.”
Louise scratches more frantically. Maggie doesn’t tell her to stop, even though she’ll have a sanding and staining job to repair the damage later. Hank switches on the bedside light. He hurries to her, leaning over to get a closer look.
“I’m fine. It’s up there. On the bed.”
He stands and searches the covers. She knows the second he finds it—whatever it is—because his expression of revulsion is unmistakable.
He crouches beside her, puts the back of his palm against her forehead. “Are you sick?”
“What? No. I was having a . . . a . . . nightmare, and I woke up.”
“It’s vomit.”
She feels her chin, her neck, her chest, her mouth. “It’s not from me.”
“Or me. And Louise is in the hall.”
The dog redoubles her efforts at the sound of her name.
“Having a cow.”
Hank uses his alpha voice. “Louise, stop it.”
Silence in the hall.
Maggie holds up her hands. “It’s on me.”
Hank grabs her wrists and gives them a gentle shake. “Go wash up. I’ll try to figure out what’s going on.”
She nods and accepts his help standing up. Together they stare at the drippy bundle stuck to the covers.
“Are those bones?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“And fur?”
“Yes.”
“It’s like something from a voodoo curse, or a witch doctor.”
“Funny you say that.”
“Why?”
“Last night you told me Michael thinks you had a visit from a witch.”
“So?”
“This is from an owl.”
“Owl vomit?”
“Yes.”
“An owl couldn’t get in our room.”
Maggie runs to the door and lets her frantic dog in. Louise scrambles around the room, hackles up, growling. Hank and Maggie stare at each other.
“Hank, what the hell is going on?”
Thirty-Eight
After the discovery of owl vomit on her in bed, Maggie and Hank can’t get back to sleep. They decide to get a jumpstart on the morning chores and do the feedings together early.
After breakfast, Hank stops to hug her at the front door. He and Gene are on their way to meet Paco’s family in Sheridan. “Don’t let the dog out of your sight.”
“I won’t.” She Eskimo-kisses him. “I hate that I’m not going with you.”
“I’ll be fine. Besides, I appreciate your help here.”
“But the morgue.”
“Not the first time I’ve been to one. Seriously, I’m good.”
Gene walks up behind them. “You coming, Sibley?”
Hank picks up a travel mug of coffee he’d set on the sofa table on the way through the great room. The two men leave. Hank turns back for a moment, flashing her some dimples, and she waves to him from the open front door. Louise gives herself a side rub up against her leg. As the men back out and drive away, Maggie is alone, except for the dog. Her unease amps up.
Footsteps from the other direction draw her attention away from the ranch exit. She sees Andy walking up to the main house from the bunkhouse, his head down. His presence is comforting.
“You missed breakfast,” she calls.
“Morning chores ran long.” He doesn’t look up.
As he skirts her to enter the door, she sees something dark around his eye. Purplish green, dark blue, and red. Like a blackened eye.
“Andy, wait.”
He stops, not facing her.
“What’s wrong with your face?”
“Nothing.”
“Let me see.”
He starts to walk away, but then he turns to her, revealing the mother of all shiners.
“Did you get kicked?”
He sighs, shaking his head. “Michael found out I like Penny.”
“He punched you? But aren’t you his boss?”
“Yeah.” He clomps toward the kitchen. Then he turns back. “But I’m still going to marry her.”
“What?”
“I asked her to marry me. She said yes.”
“Whoa, what?” This doesn’t feel like good news for Andy. “That was fast.”
He trudges away.
“Wait,” she calls after him. And what the heck is Penny to Michael, she wonders, but Andy doesn’t hang around for her to ask more questions. She starts to chase after him, but decides she needs more information first. If she disapproves of their engagement, she’ll drive Andy away. But if she figures out for herself who Penny is and what she’s up to, well, then she’ll have a better idea of what to do.
Maggie heads to the bedroom. Remembering her missed calls and emails, she quickly reviews the building estimate emails that came in two days before. The numbers are a little higher than she’d hoped, but one of them is close to workable. She sends a reply to that contractor, letting him know he’s in the ballpark but needs to come down further.
She yawns. A quick makeup nap is in order after the rough night. There will be plenty of time after it to tackle the rest of her chores and her list of follow-ups, both in relation to Texas and to keeping Andy out of a bad marriage and prison. She’s asleep almost before her head hits the pillow.
Loud knocking at the front door wakes her. No one answers the door, and the knocking just keeps going and going. She hears barking, growling, then yelling. Shit. Louise is outside. So much for Hank’s request that she not let the dog out of her sight.
Maggie scrambles out of bed and downstairs, pushing wild hair out of her eyes and checking her breath on the run. She throws the door open. “Where’s the fire?”
A puffy man dressed all in black is pinned on top of a Prius. Louise is lunging and snapping the air around it. She shoots Maggie a look as if asking what took her so long, then runs to her master and dances around her, tail wagging.
Maggie isn’t about to scold the dog for protecting her. No one local drives one of these t
in-can cars. It’s a recipe for getting stuck on the side of the road in a pothole or snowdrift, or being killed when hitting one of the many deer who insist on suicide by vehicle. “Who’s your friend, girl?”
Louise runs back to the muddy little car and resumes haranguing the visitor.
“Call off your beast, dammit.” The man is holding his nose, giving his voice a nasally quality. Still, it sounds familiar.
Maggie crosses her arms. “Not a good idea to show up unannounced around here, mister. Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Amos. We talked on the phone.”
“Sic ’em, Louise.”
His scream is high-pitched like a young girl. His arms flail the air, and he releases his nose, ducking his head and face. “No, no, no.”
Louise doesn’t know any commands. Even “come” and “sit” are still beyond her, no matter how many treats Maggie has offered her to learn them. But Amos doesn’t need to know that.
“I told you not to come.” Maggie’s nose wrinkles up. “God, what’s that horrible smell?” She’s been so focused on the unwanted visitor, she just now realizes she’s standing beside something dead and seriously rank. Not rank like owl vomit. Rank like . . . she searches the ground around her. Yep. Rank like a baby skunk. “Louise, bad girl.”
“She smells like a skunk.”
“You think?”
“It’s making me nauseous.”
The dog slinks to her, but she looks proud, not chastened. Her tail wags harder and harder. She smells as bad as the dead animal. Maggie is about to banish her to the barn until she can bathe her, but decides against it. She can take it, and it appears the sensitive flower from Colorado can’t.
“If you don’t like it, the interstate runs north and south, just a few miles that way.” Maggie points.
His voice is icy. “Are you always this nice to people who drive hundreds of miles to see you?”
“No. Sometimes I call the cops.” She opens the door to the house and starts to go back in. “Stay out here, Louise,” she tells the eager dog.
Dead Pile (Maggie #3) Page 18
