A Deal to Die For

by Josie Belle

  The phone rang early the next morning. Maggie was burrowed under her covers, trying to ignore the distant chiming. She’d had dreams filled with the Madisons: Buzz and Vera and Bianca. She’d been in their house trying to gather them all for supper, but no one would come to the table. It was maddening.

  “Maggie.” Sandy’s soft voice interrupted her snooze. “It’s for you.”

  Maggie pulled the covers off her head. “What time is it?”

  “Eight thirty,” Sandy said.

  “What?” Maggie threw off her cover and sat up. “Ack! I’m supposed to be at Dr. Franklin’s by eight. Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “I tried,” Sandy said. “Josh tried. There was no waking you. Besides, do you really have work if your boss is in jail?”

  “Oh yeah.” Maggie stood and staggered to her closet. “Good point.”

  “Maggie, the phone,” Sandy said. “It’s Cheryl. I think she has news about Doc and Alice.”

  “Oh, thanks.” Maggie took the receiver. She was still battling her way out of the cobwebs of sleep, so she shook her head to try to dispel them before she put the phone to her ear.

  “Hi, Cheryl. I’m sorry I’m late. Is everything all right?”

  She watched Sandy leave and shut the door behind her.

  “Well, don’t rush. There isn’t much point, since Doc isn’t here either,” Cheryl said.

  “Why not?” Maggie asked. “Doesn’t he have patients?”

  “Yes, but unless they’re critical, they’re just getting me today,” Cheryl said. “Of course, old man Dalton complained. I told him he was welcome to reschedule with Doc when he gets back from his conference.”

  “Conference?”

  “My little euphemism for jail,” Cheryl said.

  “Sam did not arrest him!” Maggie gasped. “How could he? Oh, that’s just—”

  “Hold your temper there, sparky,” Cheryl said. “It wasn’t Sam who kept both Doc and Alice in jail, it was them.”

  “What?”

  “Yep. Sam refused to accept Doc’s confession about killing Vera, since it appears that Courtney is the most likely suspect now, and Doc finally admitted that he had lied. But then Alice said she didn’t think she could be left with Doc in an unsupervised capacity, so she asked to spend the night in jail, and Doc refused to leave once he heard she was staying.”

  “Oh, good grief,” Maggie said. She opened her closet door and pulled out a forest green turtleneck sweater and a pair of black corduroy pants. “They’ve gone mental, haven’t they?”

  “So it seems,” Cheryl said. “But you know, what I can’t figure out is why Alice would brain Doc with a frying pan now. That letter that we found from Courtney, why would that set Alice off if she already knew about the affair? Maggie, I don’t think we have the whole story.”

  “What do you mean?” Maggie asked. She had felt the same way last night, and she was glad that Cheryl was putting it into words.

  “Maggie, I think something else made Alice angry at Doc, but for the life of me I can’t figure what it could be,” Cheryl said. “It has to be pretty bad, though; that knot on his head was a doozy.”

  Maggie’s mind raced through the past few days: Doc telling her about cheating on Alice, Alice in tears and being taken to jail, Bianca staring at her through frightened eyes—frightened light blue eyes that looked exactly like Doc’s. Oh, wow.

  “Cheryl, I have to go,” she said. “I’m going to the jail. I’ll call you if I have any news.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  Cheryl sounded taken aback by Maggie’s abrupt tone, but Maggie didn’t have time to explain. She ended the call and rushed to get dressed.

  In five minutes, Maggie was barreling through the house on her way out. Sandy held out a travel mug of coffee for her, and she kissed Josh’s head and promised to check in later.

  Sandy gave her a bemused smile and waved from the open door as Maggie raced to her car. Trying to kick-start her weary brain, Maggie slurped coffee at every stop sign, and she felt almost human when she rushed into the sheriff’s department.

  A young deputy was manning the front desk, and Maggie gave him her most winning smile, and asked, “Can I please see Dr. Franklin? It’s urgent.”

  The young man looked at her with concern, and Maggie realized that, with her hair shoved into a ponytail on top of her head, no makeup on and only a cursory effort at brushing her teeth, she was not at her most winning in the charm department.

  “Pretty please?” she added.

  “I—it’s not for me—the sheriff—” The deputy stammered until Maggie wanted to reach across the desk and give him a good slap on the back to get the words out.

  “Maggie, what are you doing here?” Doc asked as he came through the swinging half door.

  He looked amazingly well rested, better than Maggie did in fact, and she wondered if spending the night incarcerated had eased his sense of guilt. Well, that party was over.

  “Doc, I need to talk to you.” She glanced past him at Dot, who had walked him out. “Alone.”

  Dot gave her a curious look, so she added, “It’s about a patient.”

  “Which one? Why didn’t Cheryl call me? Is it Jerry Applebaum? Did his gout flare up?” Doc tossed a flurry of questions at her.

  “Over here,” she said, and pulled him by his sleeve to the corner of the room.

  Doc’s hair had been smooth, but she saw the first tuft break free, and he lowered his brows and looked at her with concern. “What is it, Maggie?”

  “Bianca Madison is your daughter, isn’t she?” she

  asked.

  Chapter 27

  Doc sucked in a breath. He looked at the floor but not before Maggie verified that his pale blue eyes were the exact same shade as Bianca’s.

  “That’s why Alice rang your bell with the frying pan, isn’t it?” Maggie asked. “Because she found out that you have the one thing she always wanted—a child, but you had it with Vera Madison.”

  Doc paled. Maggie didn’t need him to confirm it. She remembered how kind he had been to Bianca on the morning of Vera’s death. He had to have known even then.

  “Maggie, this isn’t the place,” he said.

  “Doc, you can’t keep this a secret,” Maggie said. “Courtney tried to rip the hair out of Bianca’s head for some forced DNA testing last night. This is not going to be kept quiet—none of it. You have to come clean.”

  “I can’t,” Doc said. “Bianca doesn’t know. How can I do this to her when she just lost her mother? I only found out a few weeks ago myself.”

  Maggie could tell he was still working through the shock.

  “Doc, you have no choice,” she said.

  “But what about Alice?” he asked. “You can see how well she’s taking this.” He pointed to the bandage on his head.

  “Problem here?” a voice asked from the other side of the room.

  Maggie felt her face get red as Sam crossed the room toward them. He was watching them with his all-knowing cop eyes, and Maggie couldn’t meet his gaze.

  “So, you need to get right to the office before Mrs. Pulliam has another conniption on Cheryl,” Maggie said.

  Doc gave her a grateful look, but Maggie gave him a scowl. She was not finished with him, not even close.

  “Well, it sounds like you had better get going, Doc,” Sam said.

  “But Alice…” Doc said.

  “I think she was pretty clear this morning that she wasn’t ready to speak to you,” Sam said. “I’ll see that she gets home safely. In the meantime, you should probably see if Patty over at the St. Stanley Arms has a vacancy for you.”

  “An apartment? But…” Doc protested.

  “You need to give Alice some time,” Sam said. He glanced quickly at Maggie. “Just a little time—not too much.”

  Maggie gave him a surprised glance. Did Sam think that was his mistake? He’d given Maggie too much time? Abruptly, she was horrifyingly aware of her lack of makeup and bad hair. Urg.
<
br />   “Maggie, are you aware that you have blue spots on your nose?” Doc asked.

  She sighed. “Go to work, Doc.”

  He glanced back at the doorway that led to the cells, and Sam said, “She’ll be fine. I promise.”

  Dot came forward, and said, “Come on, Doc. I’m off duty. I’ll give you a lift.”

  “Thank you, Deputy Wilson,” he said. He gave Maggie a long look before he left, which she took to mean that he didn’t want her to tell anyone what she had figured out.

  “Doc seems worried about something,” Sam said.

  Maggie kept her eyes on the doors, as if she were deep in thought, and didn’t look at Sam, even though she could feel his gaze on her face.

  “Yeah, well, he’s had a rough couple of days,” she said. “Well, since I’ve delivered my message, I guess I’m off, too. Bye, Sam.”

  “Not so fast,” Sam said, and caught her by the elbow before she could step out of range. “We need to have a little chat.”

  “Now?” she asked. “I’m already late. Couldn’t we do this later?”

  Sam ignored her, however, pulling her forward by the elbow through the half door beside the main desk, through the door that led to the back of the station, down a short hall and into his office.

  She had never been in his office before and was surprised at how stark it was. There was a bookshelf crammed with criminal texts and law statutes, a file cabinet, a utilitarian desk with a computer and a tidy inbox, and several hard chairs. That was it; no photographs decorated the small room, no art hung on the walls. There was no clue that someone actually spent time in the room.

  “What’s going on?” he asked as he shut the door behind him.

  “Nothing, just business as usual,” she said. She went for a diversionary tactic. “Has there been any word on Courtney? Is she all right?”

  “She will be,” he said. “She responded well to treatment, and they think they’ll be able to release her soon.”

  “Wow, that’s great,” Maggie said.

  “Maybe not so much for Courtney,” Sam said.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I’ve just been out at the Madison estate with a search warrant,” Sam said. “Courtney had a stash of needles and injectable ampoules of morphine hidden in her room.”

  “So Doc was right,” Maggie said. “It was morphine.”

  “The preliminary test results on Vera do suggest that,” Sam said.

  “So you’re thinking that Courtney is the one who killed Vera?” Maggie asked.

  “It seems likely,” Sam said. “Of course, the evidence is all circumstantial at this point. Still, I think we have enough to convince the county prosecutor to move forward.”

  “So, that’s that,” she said.

  “Yes, it looks like both Doc and Alice are in the clear,” Sam said. “Thankfully, Doc recanted his confession; otherwise this could have gotten messy.”

  Maggie felt herself sag with relief. For a while there, after she’d clobbered Doc, Alice had appeared to be the likeliest suspect. But now that Maggie knew that Bianca was Doc’s daughter, she supposed that had just been more than Alice could take. Still, Maggie was awfully glad Alice hadn’t done Doc any permanent damage.

  “What are you thinking about?” Sam asked.

  “Me? Oh, nothing,” she said. “I just hope things can get back to normal around here.”

  “Oh, yeah. You have a hot date to plan for, don’t you?”

  Maggie did not like the gleam in Sam’s eyes. It reminded her entirely too much of when he used to grab her braids, and yell, “Carrots!”

  “On that note, it’s time for me to go,” she said.

  “Let me get the door for you.”

  He moved right into her personal-space bubble to do it, forcing Maggie to squeeze by him to get out the door. Except he didn’t open the door all the way, and Maggie found herself standing entirely too close to him while he held the door open just an inch, giving her only a glimpse of freedom.

  “For what it’s worth, I hear Pete finds it irresistibly sexy when women wear large, bulky wool sweaters that itch,” he said. “And he’s partial to drab colors, like mustard and puce.”

  Maggie laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, and he really gets turned on by baggy pants and big combat-style boots. I have a pair I can loan you if you’re interested,” he said.

  This time Maggie snorted and then covered her mouth with her hand. Sam was grinning at her like, well, like she was something special. It was a look she hadn’t seen from him in a long time, but it still made her dizzy.

  Sam reached out and pushed a stray lock of hair that had fallen over her eyes back behind her ear. Then he leaned forward and kissed her. It was electric. Twenty-four years might have passed since he’d last put his lips on hers, but the sparks that flew the first time he’d kissed her in the alley had only been dormant.

  Maggie found herself leaning into him, and then quickly stepped back before they created enough lightning to torch the place.

  His look was sly and more than a little wicked, as if he knew exactly what she was feeling.

  “Sorry.” He stepped back and opened the door. “Friends don’t do that, do they?”

  She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “No, they don’t.”

  Maggie stepped through the door and away from him before she got sucked back into his gravitational pull.

  “Pity,” Sam said, and he closed the door.

  Maggie stood staring at the door for a second, quite sure that she heard him whistling on the other side of it.

  Sheer force of will carried her out of the building and back to her car.

  Maggie knew she should go home. She needed to clean up and do some work on the shop. The GBGs were supposed to meet tonight and start planning for the biggest bargain day of the year: Black Friday. It was two weeks away, and with shops now opening in the middle of the night on Thanksgiving Day, they needed to do some serious strategizing to get the biggest bang for their bucks.

  Maggie was pretty sure that, if she planned it right, she could use Black Friday to stock her store well through the holidays. The trick would be to hit the early-bird sale hours at the stores she wanted to buy from and use the coupons they had been collecting already, as well as the ones in the newspaper on Thanksgiving Day.

  She wondered if Summer had the same plan for her shop, but then she put the thought aside. Summer did not have the Good Buy Girls to help her, so Maggie knew she was already ahead of Summer in that regard.

  Maggie thought about Ginger’s rather surly good-bye at the shop last night after she’d found out that Maggie and Sam had once been a couple. She really couldn’t blame Ginger for being miffed at her. She should have told her sooner.

  She wondered if Ginger was still mad at her or if a good night’s sleep had eased her ire. Maggie knew of only one way to get Ginger to forgive her, so instead of driving home she drove over to Ginger’s office, which was housed in the garage beside her historic house.

  She knocked before she entered, waiting for Ginger to invite her in. No one answered. She tried the doorknob, but it was locked.

  “Hi, Maggie. Are you looking for Ginger?” Roger asked as he came around the side of the garage. He was wearing a suit and pulling a rolling carry-on bag behind him.

  “Yes,” Maggie said. “I was wondering how she’s doing today?”

  “Grumpy” he said. “She’s inside cleaning.”

  “Oh,” Maggie said. That was bad. Ginger always cleaned when she was mad at someone, and Maggie had a pretty good idea that someone was her.

  “Did you two tiff?” Roger asked as he put his bag in the trunk.

  “No. Well, she might be a little cross with me,” Maggie said. “On account of…well, it’s a long story.”

  “Don’t tell me; let me guess,” Roger said. “You scored a better bargain than she did, and she’s put out with you.”

  “I did score s
ome Joe’s Jeans for eighty percent off,” Maggie said. Although that had been last week, she figured it still qualified.

  “I figured it was something like that. Don’t you worry; she’ll come around,” he said. “She’s your best friend.”

  “I suppose,” Maggie said, feeling relieved that Ginger had obviously not told Roger about her and Sam. “Where are you off to?”

  “A late business meeting in Richmond,” he said. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  He paused beside Maggie and gave her a quick hug. “Have fun on your date tomorrow night, but not too much.”

  Maggie felt her face grow warm, and Roger laughed. He climbed into his car and shut the door. Maggie waved as he disappeared down the drive.

  Maggie headed up the walk to Ginger’s front door. She could hear the vacuum roaring, so she didn’t bother to knock. Instead, she opened the door and walked in.

  Ginger had her Hoover in motion and was giving the carpet below it a workout. As if she sensed Maggie’s arrival, Ginger glanced up. She took one look at Maggie and turned her back on her, continuing her work. Maggie knew this was Ginger’s way of letting her know that she wasn’t done being mad. Yet.

  Maggie sat down on the couch, determined to wait Ginger out. Ginger came at her with the vacuum and Maggie dutifully lifted her feet so Ginger could vacuum under them. This went on for fifteen minutes; clearly this was going to be the cleanest carpet in all of St. Stanley. Maggie was about to give in when Claire and Joanne peeked around the doorframe at her. As one, they came in and sat down on each side of Maggie. Ginger saw them, but she didn’t acknowledge them either.

  “What brings you here?” Maggie shouted over the vacuum.

  “Roger called us,” Joanne shouted back. “He thought you might need backup.”

  Maggie nodded. Smart man.

  “We have to get this going,” Claire yelled. “I’m on my lunch hour. I only have twenty minutes left.”