Maggie Box Set

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  Maggie hangs up. Her words are barely a mutter, but loud enough for Junior to hear the acid in them. “If she’s not out of here by eleven, there’s a lawsuit against the county by noon.”

  “Understood.”

  “Then let’s get this over with.”

  Junior follows Maggie back to the house to listen to her go through her lines, and Maggie reminds herself that Junior’s dead body on her front steps won’t help her cause.

  Twenty-Nine

  Maggie needs to make a liquor store run in a bad way. It only takes her fifteen minutes to park, shop, and queue up in the checkout line at Stoney’s.

  The cashier is a pregnant woman with meth peg teeth. She mutters to herself as she rings it up. “Balcones. Single Malt. Two bottles.”

  “Can you special order a few bottles from a distillery in Wyoming for me?” Maggie asks, pulling out her wallet.

  “You need to talk to the manager,” she states in the form of a question. “He’s in on Wednesdays. Two to four.”

  “How about leaving him a message?”

  She gives Maggie her total and takes her credit card. “I’m just filling in.”

  Behind Maggie, two women are talking. She pays them no mind until she hears her name. Not addressed to her, but in their conversation about her. She gives up on passing a message to the manager through the cashier and turns to the women. She’s immediately sorry she did when she discovers Gary’s little sister and his skanky ex-lover.

  Maggie sighs. “Hello, Kelly.”

  Kelly Fuller bats her eyes. “Maggie Killian. I didn’t see you standing there. Did you see her, Jenny?”

  The curvy redhead examines her nails. “See who?”

  “So great that you found someone for a playdate, Kelly. You girls have fun.”

  “Oh, we will. It’s hard not to when you’re young and not going to jail for murdering my brother.”

  The cashier says, “Here’s your credit card.”

  “Thanks. The blonde behind me is underage, by the way.” Maggie shoves the card in her wallet.

  “Bitch,” Kelly says.

  “Tell your mother I said hey.” Maggie hustles out before she gives the girl the beatdown she’s got coming.

  When Maggie puts Bess in gear, she finds herself driving somewhere besides home. Lumpy’s. It’s past time for her to check on him, and it will only take a few minutes. His place is barely even out of the way.

  When she reaches his property, his truck is parked at the house. She feels optimistic until two solid minutes of knocking convinces her he’s not coming to the door. Calling the sheriff’s department is out of the question for the obvious reason that they don’t believe anything she tells them. Her next step is to look for Lumpy inside, but to do that, she’ll have to break and enter. Lumpy doesn’t believe in hidden keys. She decides to try one more thing before busting her way in. She’ll just borrow his four-wheeler and make a quick circuit of the place to see if he’s out working on fence or clearing brush or something. It will only take five minutes.

  The four-wheeler is in the shed he uses for vehicles and sports gear. As she backs the utility vehicle out, she passes all his hunting and fishing gear, which look untouched. She starts her circuit of the property by riding his fence line. When she finishes the loop without finding any sign of him, she turns onto a trail that bisects his property perpendicularly. Halfway across, she sees a ladder on the ground, along with several pieces of plywood and two-by-fours. She parks the four-wheeler and cuts the engine.

  A thready voice calls out, “About damn time.”

  “Lumpy?” Maggie looks around in all directions but doesn’t see the big man.

  “Up here.”

  Maggie cranes her neck up, then up some more.

  Lumpy waves limply from high in a live oak.

  “What the hell?”

  “Would you mind putting that ladder against the tree? I’d really like to get down.”

  Maggie hurries for the ladder, shoving it around until it’s in position. She spots Lumpy as he climbs down, ready to break his fall. The ladder creaks and groans under his bulk. As he steps off the last rung, he falls to his hands and knees. His hat topples into the dirt. He’s a big man, even crumpled on the ground.

  “Are you okay?”

  He stands, brushing off his hat. His slow country accent is music to her ears. “Dehydrated. Hungry enough to eat a skunk. Tired. Weak like a newborn kitten. But I’m going to live. Help me over to the ride.”

  “Whew, you’re ripe.”

  “Pardon me, ma’am, but there’re no showers up there.”

  “I’m so glad I found you.” Maggie props him on her shoulder. He’s heavy, but he carries most of his own weight.

  “Not as glad as I am.” He climbs on the four-wheeler, making it look harder than it usually is. He scoots to the back to make room for Maggie.

  “Did your ladder fall?”

  “It did. But not without help.”

  Thirty

  Inside his stuffy house, Lumpy has a hasty shower, water and coffee—a lot of both—and two ham and cheese sandwiches thrown together by Maggie. Afterwards, he takes Maggie out to his porch swing, where he tells his story.

  “I’ve been working on a new deer blind.” He stands and hooks his thumbs in his suspenders, holding them away from his generous beer gut.

  “You were too high.”

  “Are you going to let me tell my story or tell it for me, little lady?”

  “Sorry.” Maggie pushes off with her toes and starts the motion of the swing. It stirs a light breeze that fans the sweat on her brow.

  “I’d been staging the ladder and materials out there, and Saturday I finally got some time to work on it. I was setting up a pulley system in the tree when I heard a woman’s voice.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know, but she shouted ‘Yoo-hoo,’ and I waved to her. She was trespassing, but she was a purty little thing. Curvy. Nice, um, bosom.”

  “Bosom. Okay. Go on.”

  “I was sitting up on that high branch where you saw me when she walked to the ladder and knocked it to the ground, pretty as you please.”

  “What in God’s name would she do that for?”

  “She didn’t bother explaining, other than to say I should be more careful who I pal around with. Then she waved again and took off. But that’s a tall tree, as you noticed, and I was so high I had a view back to the house. The little vixen took some wire cutters to the goat panels in the pasture where I was keeping Omaha and Nebraska.”

  “Which I fixed. The goats are at Michele’s now. But I don’t get it.” Suddenly, though, she thinks she might. “What did you say she looks like?”

  “Jessica Rabbit.”

  Maggie laughs. “You were hallucinating, then?”

  “No, she’s a curvy redhead. Pretty young one.”

  Bingo. Maggie’s damn sure she knows a curvy redhead who would stoop to endangering animals and a nice former Texas Ranger to get back at Maggie. Now she wishes she’d figured out which car belonged to Jenny at Stoney’s so she could have keyed it.

  “If you’re up for reporting this to the sheriff tomorrow, I know who did it, and I probably know why.” She tells Lumpy her suspicions and fills him in on the fire at the Coop and the dead body inside, even about Gary, Merritt, Tom, Thorn, and Kelly.

  “Sounds like I was safer up my tree than you were down it. Sure, we’ll go report this. Together, when we clear your name.”

  “Thanks. So you were up there that whole time, without food or water?”

  “I had one bottle of water in my pocket. I was getting pretty parched, I don’t mind telling you.”

  “Why didn’t you climb down?”

  “I tried, believe me. But that’s not a climbing tree. I’d decided that if no one found me by tonight, I was going to have to risk jumping.”

  She stops the swing with her feet and holds on to the handrest. “Oh, Lumpy. You could have broken every bone in your body.”
<
br />   “Could have. Should have. Would have. Thing is, I didn’t, because you came back for me. Thank you, Maggie.”

  “What are friends for?”

  Thirty-One

  Back at Nowheresville, Maggie finds her laptop and a note on the kitchen counter.

  Out shopping. Overnight to Austin w/R&A&C. Back around 5 to grab bags and update you. And hear how it went and what you need to tell me.

  Maggie pours her Balcones and retreats with her laptop and dog to what is fast becoming her bedroom. She piles pillows on the bed, then balances herself on them, leaning on the headboard. Louise jumps up, uninvited.

  “Warning, dog. I’m not in my happy place.”

  She hears Michele and her friends in the kitchen, bustling about.

  “Knock, knock.” Michele walks in.

  “Make yourself at home.”

  “It is my house, after all.”

  “That’s what Leslie says about mine, too. Hey, Lumpy’s back. I found him up a tree.”

  “What?”

  Ava appears in the doorway. “You want something to eat?” She’s carrying a tray with a bud vase that’s holding a plastic daisy. A banana, jar of salsa, bag of tortilla chips, and plate with a fat sandwich slide to one edge of the tray. “Whoops.”

  A smile creases Maggie’s face. “It’ll slow down getting my drunk on.” To Michele she adds, “Lumpy’s fine, but some Jessica Rabbit type knocked his ladder down and left him for dead.”

  Ava sets the tray down and Louise goes for the sandwich.

  Maggie catches the dog by the collar. “Get your own, Fucker.”

  “I don’t get it. About Lumpy.” Michele scoots the dog out of the room and shuts the door.

  “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.” Maggie gestures at the food. “This is probably smart. You didn’t poison it, did you?” she asks Ava.

  “I thought about it. I decided stress would probably kill you anyway, so I don’t have to.”

  A laugh escapes Maggie’s lips. “You guys are headed to Austin?”

  Michele sits in the spot the dog vacated. “Chuy’s and some band Ava wants to see at a club I’m going to hate. On a Monday.”

  “And you didn’t invite me?”

  Ava says, “Please. Like you’d say yes with me going.”

  “Depends on who would be picking up the tab.”

  Michele punches her arm. “Will you be all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “You say that, but I have news.”

  “More bad news.”

  “Not bad. Just not good.”

  “Spit it out.”

  Ava goes to the door. “Later, you two.” She wrestles past the dogs and closes the door behind her.

  Michele smooths the full skirt of a red flowered sundress. “The tech guy says the email address used to send those messages to Gary is really yours.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He thinks someone got into your account and wrote real emails. And that there are real answers from Gary’s account. Could someone have your password?”

  “I don’t see how, but anything’s possible.”

  “It’s not OmahaNebraska, is it?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  Michele groans.

  “I’m just kidding. It’s not.”

  “Do you have it written down anywhere?”

  “On my laptop. But I had that with me. And on a paper taped under my desk.”

  “Where anyone that goes into your house could get it.”

  “It’s not Grand Central Station.”

  “You could take tickets at your bedroom door. And you keep a key under your mat, with no security system, and rent to strangers you meet on the internet.”

  Maggie smacks her hip. “Kiss my ass.”

  Michele sighs. “Well, someone either got your passwords or hacked into your account. My guy said that happens all the time.”

  “But who would do something like this?”

  “Someone you’ve really, really pissed off.”

  “You know me. I piss everyone off a little, but no one off a lot.”

  “True.”

  “My real problem is Tom and Thorn, though.”

  “Who?”

  “Hold on to your pants for this one. I talked to Gary’s mom today.” Maggie relays the story about Tom, Thorn, and Gary’s money quickly.

  By the time she finishes, Michele is up and pacing the room. “Dios mío, Maggie. Why haven’t you told me this already?”

  “I tried.”

  “I’ll be on the phone with Fayette County as soon as we’re on the road. This is big.”

  “Thanks. I feel a little hope.”

  “Me, too. Now, keep the doors locked and dogs inside while we’re gone.”

  Maggie holds up her banana. “Thanks again for dinner.”

  Michele leans down and kisses Maggie’s cheek.

  After Michele leaves, Maggie eats the dessert banana first, then nibbles on the sandwich between sips of Balcones. Time to find out everything she can about her crazy-ass renter.

  She pulls up the original series of emails between Leslie and herself. Leslie DeWitt. What does she know about her? Very little, truth be told. They’d exchanged a few emails. Maggie’d thought she sounded okay. She didn’t have a lot to steal in her little house, so she didn’t worry overmuch about security. No background check was needed, because Leslie paid in advance originally. Maggie realizes that with her laptop back she can check on the supposed PayPal payment, since she couldn’t get her blankety-blank password to work on her phone.

  Louise whines at the door.

  She clicks to log in with her saved information. PayPal returns a message that her password is invalid.

  “Impossible.”

  She tries again. It doesn’t work. She enters it manually. It fails. She looks it up in her list of passwords, types it again, and gets rejected a fourth time.

  Her password has changed. It’s the only explanation. Anger starts building inside her. There could be a damn good reason she can’t find the email between Leslie and herself. And that reason could be that someone has a motive to jack with her PayPal and also has one to delete vacation rental emails, the same someone conveniently with current access to the password list. Her renter.

  Maggie seethes. Well, hopefully all Leslie wants to steal is Maggie’s house and not her money, because PayPal is connected to Maggie’s checking account with overdraft protection from savings. Maggie clicks to reset her password. She chooses a new one, changes it on her list, and saves it in her browser during the log-in process. She repeats the game for her email in a new tab and realizes she’s going to have to change all her passwords. She looks at the long list of accounts and groans. It can wait until after she’s done sleuthing Leslie.

  A niggling thought begins to worry her. If Leslie got into her email to delete VRBO messages, could she have messed with her other messages, too? The obvious answer is yes, she could have. But why would she? She had no reason to fabricate email between Gary and her. Of course, she was beginning to realize Leslie didn’t need rational reasons for anything she did.

  “Now let’s see you log in to my shit, bitch.”

  Louise barks from behind the hollow-core door.

  Maggie accesses her most recent received payments in PayPal. The Coop has been closed for nearly two weeks. First, because of reduced hours when she left for Wyoming. Next, because it was vandalized. And finally, because it burned to the ground. Her transactions have tapered off to just a few website sales, plus two rental payments. The first is Leslie’s original payment. It’s a big one for a ten-day stay. The second is for two additional nights.

  “She paid for the extra days.” Maggie is disappointed. More ammunition against Leslie would have been nice.

  She stares at the screen, feeling more than seeing a difference in the two payments. But when she studies them closer, she zeroes in on it. The payment account names used are different. The first payment
is from Leslie C. DeWitt. It has an email associated with it. LesliecDeWitt39@gmail.com. The next payment is from Leslie DeWitt, no middle initial. And the email is different: simonesays, from a Yahoo account. Maggie isn’t sure what to make of it, but she has more than one account herself. One personal, one business. Maybe that’s all this is.

  Louise loses it and scratches at the door like a rabid anteater.

  A quick review of payments made reveals nothing unusual. She double-checks in her bank account to be sure there are no unexpected withdrawals. There’s not. Leslie hadn’t been after her money.

  Louise whines, barks, and scratches more.

  “I’m fine, Louise.” Maggie tears off a big bite of sandwich with her teeth, struggles to chew it, then washes it down with Balcones. “Go find Gertrude. Mama has to get to work.”

  Her phone vibrates. She’d turned the ringer off earlier when she and Michele were meeting with Junior. Caller Id announces her mother. She picks up, reluctantly, and swigs more Balcones before saying hello.

  “Hi, sweetie.”

  “Hi to you and Edward.”

  “I’m so sorry about your shop.”

  “Thank you. And I’m sorry I had to leave your reception early.”

  “I understand. Do you want to come stay with us?”

  Charlotte’s house is in LaGrange. Maggie assumes Edward has moved in there, but she hasn’t asked. She feels like a terrible daughter because of it and so much more. “No, Michele’s place is closer to my stuff. Besides, we’re sisters now.”

  “You are. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “It is.” She decides not to fill her mother in on everything else that isn’t. Her life is a shit show.

  “Maybe it’s for the best, honey. You staying there instead of here.”

  “Why?”

  “Leslie called. She told me you’ve gotten a deputy to evict her. She’s on her way over to say goodbye on her way out of town.”

  Yes! Leslie is leaving! “Probably so, then.” She can’t believe her mom is taken in by such a lunatic, but there’s no use debating with her. Maggie always loses, even when she wins. “Hey, Mom, I was thinking about Dad today.”