Maggie and the Whiskered Witness

by Barbara Cool Lee

  But it didn't happen. Not then, and not later that afternoon.

  Chapter Seven

  The afternoon dragged on. Willow left work at four, and then Maggie was alone with the dogs, with no customers and no news.

  She felt so helpless, and her mind kept spinning out of control. And then she'd remind herself that there was absolutely no proof anything was wrong, and she'd calm herself down again. It was a long day.

  When she closed up shop at five o'clock, Ibarra pulled up to the curb in his police department SUV.

  He had the windows rolled down, and called out to her: "Take a ride with me, Maggie?"

  She gathered the two dogs' leashes and led them over to the SUV. "Where?" she asked.

  He got out and came up on the sidewalk to meet her. "Out to Lauren's place."

  "You haven't found out anything yet?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "But I'm going to keep looking. I trust your gut instinct."

  "I could be wrong," she pointed out.

  He raised an eyebrow. "That would be a first."

  "You think it's the first time I've ever been wrong?"

  "Not being wrong," he said. "Admitting it."

  She matched his grin, then it quickly faded. "If I'm wrong, I'll be glad to admit it this time," she said.

  "Then come on and we'll do some more searching. Unless you've got a hot date with Charm Boy."

  She gave him a sharp glance.

  "Yeah, I saw the picture," he said. "I don't think you looked all that bad, myself."

  "That's flattering for you to say," she replied. "But you've got a coffee stain on your shirt cuff, so I'm not sure how seriously I should take your fashion advice."

  He grinned. "Well, at least if you dated me you'd always be the pretty one. Unlike you-know-who."

  Ibarra occasionally made comments like that, and Maggie had always assumed he was just ribbing her because he was jealous of the handsome movie star in their midst.

  "So?" he asked again. "You free to go do this or not?"

  "Sure. I want to figure out what's going on. And anyway, Reese is out of town," she added, feeling a pang at his absence. He was always willing to help her with her investigations, and she missed having him around to talk things over with. And there were other things about him she missed….

  Ibarra cleared his throat, and she realized she had lost her train of thought.

  "We gonna stand here all day?" he asked.

  She looked down at Jasper and Hendrix. "What should I do with the dogs?"

  "They can come along." He opened the back door and lifted them in to the car, one at a time. "Now don't give me any guff, boys, or I'll run you in."

  Maggie smiled weakly. It was hitting her that she wasn't sure whether she really wanted to find out what Lauren was up to. Her personal problems might be very messy and embarrassing, and she had enough of that in her own life.

  But Ibarra already had both dogs in the car. Then he opened the passenger door for her and she got in.

  He went around and got in on his side, started the car, and they headed out.

  "She lives down the coast a bit," he replied when she asked where they were going, and again she realized how little she knew about Lauren's everyday life.

  They drove down the coast highway for about ten minutes and eventually turned inland, away from the sea. The road was paved, and there were several modest houses along the way, each with its own little driveway and big yard.

  They passed one house, and Maggie noticed the curtain move as someone watched them go by. It was an older bearded man, and she could have sworn he was holding something long and thin. She hoped it was a broom handle, and not a rifle.

  They turned in at the next driveway. The SUV lurched as it left the paving and crunched across the gravel drive until they arrived at a little clearing in a stand of woods.

  They came to a stop behind the same green pickup Lauren had been driving this morning.

  "She's home!" Maggie said, and it was only Ibarra's hand reaching out to grab her arm that kept her from opening the car door before the vehicle even stopped.

  "Settle down, Maggie," he said, in a serious tone, and she wondered why.

  She asked, and he said, "I want you to wait for me. Just in case."

  She didn't ask just in case of what. He was taking her gut feeling about this awfully seriously, and she was going to feel like a fool if Lauren was just playing hooky.

  They got out, leaving the dogs in the back seat. Hendrix whined, the first time Maggie had ever heard him do that. He was probably just reacting to Maggie's tension, though. "Give us a minute, boy," she said, "and we'll see what's up." She shut the car door.

  Ibarra had come around to her side of the SUV while she was talking to the dog, and now he stood, looking over the front yard with a frown.

  She looked it over, too. "This is not at all what I pictured Lauren's home to be like," she said. It was a little cabin, rustic and cute, not much bigger than her tiny house, but nestled under the trees, with a shingled roof dark with clumps of windblown leaves, and siding grayed with age. A rustic picket fence enclosed a yard that was mostly scraggy lawn and bare dirt.

  "What did you picture?" Ibarra asked.

  "I don't know," she said. "I guess a normal condo or something in town. This feels so… isolated."

  "It's not that far from downtown."

  "But still," she said. "It's not what I pictured a stylish young woman to choose as her home, that's all. But I guess she wanted a place where she could have her dog. That's probably it," she added, looking at the big fenced yard. "Dogs like ours need a lot of room to run, even at Hendrix's age."

  "I asked her about it once," he said.

  "About why she lived here? You mean you've seen her house before?"

  He didn't answer that, for some reason, so instead she said, "what did you ask her about?"

  "Why she wanted to live here."

  "And what did she say?"

  Ibarra stood there in the gravel driveway, looking at the tiny cabin with the satellite dish on the roof. "She said she liked a defensible space."

  Maggie shivered. "What? She said that?"

  He nodded. "Then she laughed, and said it was a cop joke."

  "Was it?"

  "At the time, I thought so. But now…?"

  He hadn't moved to go knock on the door yet. They stood there in the driveway, and she noticed he was acting "cop like"—casing the situation, eyes scanning from side to side, treating this all very seriously.

  "Lauren?" she called out toward the cottage, and he turned quickly, surprised. Clearly he was feeling as edgy as she was.

  "What?" she asked, and he shrugged.

  "Lauren?" he said, echoing her call in his booming voice. "You okay?"

  The windows on the cabin were closed, and the curtains were drawn. "Maybe she didn't hear," Maggie said.

  "Or maybe she left in someone else's car," he mused.

  "Her car hasn't been moved in hours," she pointed out, and he raised an eyebrow at her. "Because there's moisture on the hood from sitting under the trees," she said, answering his unasked question.

  He shook his head and smiled. "You'd make a good cop, Maggie." He opened the gate in the picket fence and left it open behind him. He walked toward the house, calling Lauren's name again, and Maggie followed behind.

  He froze when he got to the porch ahead of her. He pulled his gun and motioned for Maggie to stop. He turned back to her and mouthed, "go back to the car."

  She wasn't about to argue. She backed away, wondering what he had seen to make him turn into Rambo all of a sudden.

  She walked quickly back to the car, and then crouched down on the side away from the house. Both dogs were on their feet, wanting to get out, but she hushed them and stayed where she was.

  She could see Ibarra when she peeked around the front fender on the driver's side. He had waited for her to get under cover, and now he moved forward, gun at the ready. She watched him push the door
open with his foot and go inside.

  Maggie ducked down behind the car, with the dogs whining in the back seat, waiting to hear something.

  It was very quiet. Only Jasper whining, and Hendrix's patient sighs, and the whisper of the wind in the trees. Her heart was pounding, and the longer she heard nothing, the worse it got. No sound of voices, just nothing.

  She finally heard steady footsteps coming out onto the gravel.

  "Maggie?" Ibarra called.

  She stood up. "So she's not home…?" she started to ask, but let the words trail off.

  Maggie knew as soon as she saw his face. All day she'd been kicking herself for making a big deal out of nothing. Maybe she was seeing things that weren't there. Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe she was an idiot with too much imagination and not enough common sense. Maybe Lauren's absence was like Willow's had been, just obliviousness or distraction or some silly, unprofessional lapse of judgment that was unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and everyone would laugh at her when Lauren turned up, alive and well and explaining that she'd been at the beach or out with a new boyfriend or just getting a manicure.

  But in her gut she had known she was right. Knew something was wrong. But not this. Not the finality that was telegraphed by the closed-off expression on Ibarra's face.

  "No," she whispered. "No, no, no!" She came around the front of the car to meet him.

  But again he motioned her back. "No, Maggie. I don't want you to come any closer. Stay out here." He paused and closed his eyes, as if gathering his strength, though his cold, clinical expression didn't change at all.

  He opened his eyes again. "You don't want to see. Wait here." He took a couple of deep breaths, like someone preparing to plunge back into deep water. Then he turned and went back into the cabin.

  "I have to," she whispered. And she did. She didn't want to see. But she needed to know. Needed to understand.

  So after he disappeared back into the cabin, she followed him over to the porch, hugging herself, walking carefully over the gravel, trying to take in every single thing. She tried to notice everything, the way the police did, separating out the emotions that were hitting her so hard her body trembled and she had to wrap her arms more tightly around herself to keep still.

  There was a bracket mounted above the door, on the porch overhang. Cut wires hung down from it, as if something had been hastily removed. A security camera, she figured. That had been what had caused Ibarra to draw his gun and warn her back, most likely.

  The door must have been unlocked. He had pushed it open without touching the knob. It now stood wide open, so she didn't have to touch it at all to step inside.

  The body had been moved after death.

  That was the first thing Maggie noticed. The body lay face up on the floor. She had been shot, from very close, because there was black powder on her white blouse, surrounding the neat hole in the center.

  She had been moved from somewhere else and put here. Here in the cozy little rented cabin with the chintz curtains and the clutter of personal items on the table and the dirty dishes in the sink and the little twin bed that served as a sofa, so much like Maggie's own daybed in her tiny house. So much of the cabin was like Maggie's own home, a single-room place for a woman who lived alone, with a minimal kitchen, and a soft place to lie down and read books, and a table set up for doing crafts in the evenings, and a big dog bed nearby on the floor for her only companion.

  There was no blood on the floor. The body lay neatly there in the middle of the floor, arms at her sides and legs straight out. Her clothing appeared undisturbed, and that brought just a little comfort to the awful scene, for the fear of personal violence happening to a woman alone had crossed Maggie's mind on occasion.

  But that wasn't what this story was about, Maggie realized. This was about something different, though she didn't yet understand what.

  Lauren almost appeared to be asleep, her body still and silent, with her face covered by a pink bath towel. Covering the face meant the killer knew the victim, supposedly. At least that's what it had meant in all the mystery books she'd read.

  So she couldn't see the face. And didn't want to. But it gave her just the tiniest, irrational sliver of hope: "Maybe it isn't her," she said, and Ibarra, who was crouching over the body, jumped back, startled.

  "I told you to keep out," he said, but softly, as if not wanting to disturb the dead.

  "I had to see," she said. "I had to understand what happened."

  She stayed very still, not wanting to contaminate the crime scene. But she could see the body pretty well, and recognized the navy jacket and crisp white shirt that was part of Lauren's typical work wardrobe. "She's wearing the same clothes she had on this morning," she said, and Ibarra nodded.

  "They match the description you gave."

  Ibarra's eyes were bloodshot, as if he had been feeling less than neutral about the death of his work colleague, and the emotion had spilled out when he was away from Maggie's sight. That was a normal reaction, Maggie supposed, but it was very unusual to see Ibarra be anything but a by-the-books cop, and it made Maggie a bit uncomfortable. She didn't like to think of him being haunted by the crimes he investigated. Unlike her. She was always upset by death, and she was sure that was why he'd ordered her to stay back.

  "Well now you're a witness, Maggie," he said in disgust. "I didn't want you involved."

  Maggie wrapped her arms around herself and tapped her foot on the floor. "Are you positive it's her?" she had to ask, though of course she knew it was.

  He silently lifted the pink towel by one corner so she could confirm it for herself, then lowered it again. There hadn't really even been a need to do that to prove who it was. Lauren was still wearing the mourning beads necklace, and the onyx angel resting on her neck with its crystal wings outstretched was quiet and still, with no breath or pulse to move it. The black angel now meant something very different than it had before. It had been a talisman, a lucky piece, a memorial. But now it symbolized only death. Death for the unknown person Lauren had lost. And death for her.

  Maggie sobbed aloud, unable to hold it back.

  Lauren was with him, now, whoever the boy she'd mourned had been. They were together. She wanted to say at peace, but the bullet in Lauren's chest didn't make Maggie feel peaceful. It made her enraged. Where was the justice for a young life taken away before its time? She should be alive, and free, and living her life. Not here, still and cold and alone in this cabin.

  Maggie blew out big breaths, over and over, until she could speak in a normal voice again.

  "A single bullet to the chest," she said, and Ibarra nodded.

  "From close range," she said, and Ibarra nodded. He still looked at the body, as if memorizing every detail.

  "And no signs of assault," she said, and again he nodded.

  "And no signs of robbery," she said, and for the fourth time, he simply nodded and didn't offer anything more of his own.

  "But why would anyone do this?" she asked.

  "I don't know." He stood up and stared down at the covered body. "I really don't know."

  Chapter Eight

  The crime scene team arrived quickly, probably running with lights and sirens the whole way out to the little cabin in the woods, though it was too late for them to do much of anything except assess the damage.

  By the time they arrived, Maggie was sitting in the passenger seat of Ibarra's SUV, hands clenched together in her lap. Ibarra had ordered her to sit there and not speak to anyone, and this time she obeyed, realizing she was now a witness, just as he'd said, and wishing she hadn't gone inside.

  Her phone rang while she was sitting there. She picked up when she saw it was Reese, and answered his cheerful hello with some incoherent mumble that brought him right down to earth.

  "What's up? Find another body?" he joked, just as Ibarra had done a few hours ago.

  "Yes," she whispered, and he grew quiet, knowing she wasn't kidding. She could hear voices in the background
on his end of the call; he was clearly in some public place, and so she quickly apologized for shocking him, but he covered the phone and said something that sounded brittle and muted, and then the voices were gone and he was back on the line with her.

  "Are you all right, Magdalena?" he asked softly. "What happened?"

  So she told him. About Lauren and the dogs, and about the terrible day she'd had, and about how she was sitting in Ibarra's police SUV in front of the little cabin in the woods where the young woman she'd barely known lay inside, gone forever, and she had no idea why.

  "I'm so sorry," he said several times. "So incredibly sorry."

  A voice interrupted on that end, and he barked something at them in his rich baritone that sounded harsh, and they retreated.

  "You're busy," she said.

  "I'm in the green room," he said. "I go on in five minutes for the taping of that first talk show."

  "And now I've messed you all up," she said, feeling awful for dragging him into her problem. "I should have waited and told you later."

  "No," he said. "You should never keep things from me. I have to do this show now; I'm here and I can't back out. But I'll be done in an hour and I'll drive straight home to take care of you."

  "No way," she said, thinking of him driving like a maniac on the coast highway all the way from LA. "I don't need to be taken care of. I just need to go home and pig out on ramen noodles and hug the dogs and I'll be fine. Honest."

  He was doubtful, but she told him more firmly that she was really fine. "It's not like it's the first time I've seen a body," she tried to joke. "So what else do they have on your schedule today?"

  "Just a quick Q&A with a reporter for some review site. Then I'm going back to the hotel. I called to ask you to watch me on the show tonight, and then call me and we could talk. But if you just want to go to bed, forget it. It hardly matters. I was just feeling lonely."

  "Are you kidding?" she said, forcing a bit of cheerfulness into her voice. "It's exactly what I need. Some silly talk show chatter should help. And I need to talk to you later, to decompress after this. I'm feeling a bit lonely myself. What time is the show on?"