Maggie and the Whiskered Witness

by Barbara Cool Lee

  She looked around the room. "Yes, this is the place for me. Since I don't need a job, I was thinking, if you're willing, I can just come to the shop every day. And I can answer your phone and ring up sales on your little cash register, and I can chat with people who come in."

  She winked at Maggie. "And I might even bake up an extra pie for you on occasion, if you'd like that. But I don't need a salary. Just a friend." She smiled gently. "When you get to be my age, it's important to have a reason to get up in the morning. A place to go. People to see. Something to do."

  She smiled at the old dog by her side. "Hendrix knows that as well as I do. So if you'll have us, Hendrix and I would like to volunteer here." She laughed again. "You can call us your unpaid interns, if you like." She was making it all very light and funny, but Maggie saw the longing there, just under the surface.

  And Maggie felt the same longing herself. For someone she'd known forever. Someone she could trust. Someone kind and good and with no hidden agenda. For a friend.

  Maggie hugged her, long and hard. And then she said, "I've missed you so much, Mrs. Queen. I'd like to have you here. I'd like that very, very much."

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  She and Jasper spent the last hour before closing sitting alone in the shop, watching the rain, which now poured down enthusiastically on the street outside.

  It gave her time to think. Sometimes she found herself doing more thinking than she wanted to, without a way to turn it off. Today was one of those days.

  So after she closed for the day, they went out to Lauren's cabin.

  The storm had made the private road almost pitch dark, and her headlights raked across the wet gravel as she made her way carefully down the driveway to park by the closed-up little cabin.

  She grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment and then got out, leaving the dog in the car.

  It was still raining, but she had put on her poncho. Now she raised the hood to cover her head, and then stood next to the car, listening to the rapping of the rain on her plastic hood, echoed by the same tapping on the hood of the car.

  The cabin was dark and empty, and the woods off to the side were still, except for the treetops, which she could see waving in the wind, black spires against the dark gray of the sky.

  She walked to the gate and opened it, starting at the flash of bright silver in the beam of the flashlight. It was only the gate latch, and she lowered the flashlight beam to her feet and walked through the gate.

  She jumped again when she heard the sharp crack of the gate blowing shut behind her. She went over to the big redwood tree in the corner of the yard, the wet grass squishing beneath her sneakers.

  Under the canopy of the massive tree, the rain sounds were softer, filtered by the branches to a slow, steady drip.

  The scent of wet moss and sequoia crowded in close, dank and earthy all around her.

  She put her hand on the rough bark of the trunk, remembering Ibarra doing the same when Chief Randall had given him the news that he was being removed from the case.

  And she looked down at the big hole at the foot of the tree, where drugs and money had been dug up by the police.

  The hole was filling with water.

  There was nothing to see. Just an empty hole, water seeping in to refill it and soften the sharp cuts of the shovel that had been used to create it.

  There was no reason for her to be here. There was nothing she could resolve by looking. No way she could make peace with this horrible situation.

  She walked back to her car, letting the gate slam shut behind her and not even jumping at the sound this time. Jasper had fogged up the windows with his heavy breathing, and he moved like a ghost behind the foggy glass. She took off the rain poncho before getting in, and the rain immediately soaked her, dripping down her neck and plastering her hair against her scalp.

  She opened the door and threw the poncho onto the passenger seat, then got in, and sat there, with her wet hands slippery on the steering wheel and water running down her face.

  She wiped away the tears, started the car, and then headed back to Carita, and home.

  When they got home both she and Jasper sprawled out, exhausted by the day.

  Jasper took over the daybed, stretching out on his belly to his full length. His long nose was pointed toward her, and his big ruff surrounded him, puffed up like an angel's halo. And he watched her with his eyes wide and alert, sensing her tension.

  She sprawled in her chair next to her craft table. She kicked off her muddy shoes, and stretched her legs out in front of her. She was all wet, with her jeans clammy against her thighs and her hair starting to dry to a mass of snarls.

  She rummaged through the drawers built into the tiny house's stairs. She found her purple striped cotton pajamas and took them into the bathroom to change out of her sodden clothes.

  Immediately she heard a grunt, then the tick-tick sound of Jasper's claws as he followed her into the bathroom.

  He didn't fit in the mini bathroom with her, but he tried his best, shoving her aside so he could push his way in.

  "Jasper, Bed," she said firmly, and he refused, not taking her seriously.

  "I mean it!" she said, and the stress in her voice must have given her an air of command, because he gave her a pouty lip before retreating to let her put on her PJs.

  She changed clothes, then combed out her hair until it was smooth and only a bit damp. There was something about putting on dry clothes after being soaked by the rain that felt cozy, and she started to relax.

  She and Jasper were fine. The disruption of Lauren's death and Hendrix's temporary presence was over now. They could return to their normal lives.

  She took the towel she'd used to dry off her hair with her when she left the bathroom.

  Jasper was on his pillow bed, but he was still pouting about it, so she released him from the command and he bounded over to bump her and try to jump up and give her kisses. "All right, boy, that's enough," she scolded, but she was glad to have his cheerful self around to jolly her out of her funk.

  She added the towel in her hand to the stack on the floor that was left over from when she'd dried the dogs this morning.

  Then she poured out some kibble for Jasper, and opened up a can of soup for herself. It seemed just the thing for a rainy night like tonight, and even she couldn't ruin canned soup.

  She explained the agenda to Jasper: they would spend the evening relaxing, and not thinking about the last few days. She was done with all that.

  An hour later she was sitting on her daybed, with Jasper resting his head on her feet. He had his favorite mangy old stuffed sheeple, and he kept one paw on it to keep it from getting away.

  "We really should wash that thing," she told him.

  He gave her a skeptical look.

  "Yes, we should," she said. "It's filthy."

  He bumped it with his long snout and gave it a good sniff, as if checking. He sneezed and then shook his head.

  "Told you so," she said.

  She washed the dishes, her soup bowl and Jasper's dinner bowl, and set them to dry on the rack next to the sink.

  The pile of dirty towels was still sitting in the middle of the floor, but the rain was still pattering at the windows, and she didn't feel like heading over to Casablanca to use the washer and dryer tonight.

  So she just gathered up the towels to put them in the laundry basket. They smelled of wet dog. She shook them out one by one as she picked them up. She heard the tinkle of metal hitting the floor. She saw a small coin skitter away under the kitchen cabinet.

  She finished shaking out the towels and dropped them into the laundry basket, then had to get down on her hands and knees to find the coin.

  Jasper came over to stick his nose under the cabinet and offer his assistance in the search.

  "You're not actually helping me," she told him, but he found having her head down at ground level made it much easier to lick her face, and he intended to take advantage of the opportuni
ty.

  She let him have a couple of good licks with his rough tongue before sending him back to go sit on his bed.

  Then she reached under the cabinet and pulled out the coin.

  It wasn't a coin. It was Hendrix's ID tag, which must have come loose during his battle with the escallonia bushes this morning.

  She sat back on her heels and looked it over. The phone number had an odd prefix, not a local one. Was it from Hendrix's native New York?

  Maggie got up and went over to her work table. She set the tag on it and then pulled out her phone. The guy who'd found the dogs when they ran off had said he couldn't reach anyone at the number on Hendrix's tag.

  So she punched in the number to check for herself.

  "Wait a second," she muttered. No wonder he hadn't gotten a response. The number on the tag was eleven digits long. A normal phone number was ten, including the area code.

  She switched on her craft lamp and examined the tag more closely:

  483 Feyeldrawp Street

  Magunomi, California

  55587943028

  She opened up her laptop and typed in the street address. It was a phony, all right. There was no such location on Google maps.

  She searched some more.

  There was no city in California called "Magunomi."

  No street by that name, either. Not in California. Not in New York. Not anywhere she could find.

  But as she searched, something popped up in an ad next to her search box.

  FEYELDRAWP: confidential and secure!

  She clicked the ad.

  It was a file storage site, and Maggie felt her heart begin to pound. Why would Lauren put a link to a file storage site on Hendrix's collar? Surely she knew her own account.

  She typed the long phone number into the account box, and it popped up with NO SUCH ACCOUNT.

  She sat there and fingered the little id tag.

  ENTER YOUR ACCOUNT NUMBER stared back at her from the computer screen.

  She typed the phone number followed by the street address number.

  NO SUCH ACCOUNT.

  She reversed it, starting with the three-digit street address number, followed by the phone number.

  WELCOME BACK, LAUREN. ENTER YOUR PASSWORD.

  She tried magunomi. INCORRECT PASSWORD: YOU HAVE THREE MORE ATTEMPTS BEFORE LOCKOUT was the reply.

  She tried hendrix. INCORRECT PASSWORD: YOU HAVE TWO MORE ATTEMPTS BEFORE LOCKOUT was the reply.

  Maggie took her hands off the keyboard before she messed up the access.

  She pulled out her phone and made a call.

  "Ibarra?" she said when he picked up. "I've found out something about Lauren's death. You need to see this."

  "I told you not to get involved, Ms. McJasper." He sounded defeated.

  He was doing the Ms. McJasper thing again, which meant he was at work, and there were other officers in the room with him.

  "You in the squad room?" she asked. "You need to tell everyone about this."

  "It's late, Ms. McJasper," Ibarra said. "Did you know that?"

  She glanced at the kit-cat clock on the wall. It was 10:17. But she kept talking. "Look, I know you're mad about me sticking my nose into the case, but you need to come over and see this right away. Or I can come to the police station. But you need to see this now. I found something Lauren was hiding. Some sort of computer file. I think we need a computer expert to get into it."

  There was a pause. She could picture other cops there with him, probably rolling their eyes and stifling laughs. He finally said, very quietly, "you at home?"

  "Yes," she said. "Listen, I—"

  "I'll come there." He hung up on her, clearly out of patience with her meddling.

  She rushed to the bathroom to put her clothes on before he got there.

  Jasper of course followed her into the bath. He had brought her his sheeple, and he kept trying to hand it to her while she pulled on her jeans and shirt.

  "Yes, Jasper. I know you love your toy, but this isn't the time. Yes, dear. I know you. And you know me, my little boy. You know it drives me crazy when you do this. Now move your buns so I can get my pants on…."

  She could see herself in the bathroom mirror as she froze there, one foot inside her jeans, the other out. She was balanced on one leg. Her face was pale and startled, like it had been when the paparazzo had caught her in a moment of shock, a moment of realization that her world had turned upside down in an instant. She stared at her own image, paused at the moment of insight. "Magunomi," she whispered.

  She grabbed Jasper's sheeple, and threw it across the floor. He scrambled after it, giving her room to move.

  She shoved her foot all the way into the jeans, pulled them up and zipped them closed.

  Magunomi.

  Mag U No Mi.

  Maggie You Know Me.

  "Yes, Lauren. And you knew me. You knew I'd look for a message if anything happened to you. So you sent me one." She whispered it into the cold air, and could almost feel the dead woman's presence, urging her on.

  She ran for the computer.

  The message was still on the screen: INCORRECT PASSWORD: YOU HAVE TWO MORE ATTEMPTS BEFORE LOCKOUT.

  "What do I know about you, Lauren?" she whispered. Enid Ramirez, the property clerk, had called Maggie Lauren's "dog friend." She had tried Hendrix, and that hadn't worked.

  There was one other thing Maggie knew Lauren loved, and Enid had mentioned it as well.

  She took a deep breath and typed pearls. Then with a quick prayer, hit enter.

  It was that simple.

  WELCOME, LAUREN.

  There were twenty-seven files. One was called BLACKMAIL. One was called MURDER PROOF. There were others, marked as trial transcripts and surveillance footage and tracking.

  But one was called GABRIEL, so she clicked on that one first.

  It was the arrest record of one Gabriel Malak Franklin. The date was over six years ago. Her eyes scanned the PDF image, looking for something to explain what all this was about.

  Jasper barked, letting her know someone had pulled up next to the tiny house.

  The door opened.

  Gabriel's age at the time of arrest was twenty-one. His home address was listed as a college dorm. He was arrested on suspicion of murder. The arresting officer had signed the form in a neat signature she had seen before—

  She whipped around to face Will Ibarra.

  He was standing there in the doorway, soaking wet from the rain. He could see the excitement on her face that betrayed that she'd figured out the explanation for Lauren's murder, and his expression was resigned, pitying.

  He shook his head at her. "Oh, Maggie. If only you hadn't called me."

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  She hit delete on the laptop and slammed it shut, then grabbed for her phone on the table, but Ibarra took a step into the room, shoved by the man who was behind him.

  "Chief Randall," Maggie sneered. "Or should I call you Sergeant Randall like you were back in New York?"

  Randall had a gun, of course. And it was pressed against Ibarra's back, too close for comfort.

  Randall also had a smirk, the same smirk that had made her instinctively hate him from the moment she'd first met him.

  "You knew it was him?" Ibarra asked. "Then why didn't you tell me on the phone, Maggie?"

  Randall gave him another push with the gun and he came all the way into the room.

  Jasper grabbed his sheeple in his mouth, then jumped down from the daybed to come over and sidle up against Ibarra, rubbing and preening and trying to give his toy to the man who stood there, dripping rain on the floor of her tiny house.

  Randall shut the door behind him, leaving the storm outside. And then they were alone with a killer holding a gun.

  Jasper pushed against Ibarra, trying to get him to take the toy and throw it for him.

  Ibarra took the toy just as Randall put the gun up against his temple. He didn't shoot, but instead hit him, hard, at just the right spot
to make Ibarra crumple to the floor like a rag doll.

  Jasper whined at the fallen man. Then he pushed at Ibarra's face with his nose, trying to wake him.

  She called the dog back and ordered him to get up on the daybed. And he did, reluctantly. "Stay," she ordered him firmly, and he did, whining.

  "Why did you do that?" she asked Randall, watching Ibarra, who lay totally still, his hand clenched on the little stuffed toy and his eyes closed and his face drained of color.

  "Because it was easier than doing it at the station and trying to haul his body here." He looked down contemptuously at the big man. "He must weigh a ton."

  "But now that he's here, you don't need him anymore."

  "I need him," Randall said. "He's going to kill you before taking his own life."

  "They'll figure it out," she said desperately. "They'll see the bruise on his head."

  "Not when this little wooden deathtrap burns to the ground."

  Maggie glanced at Jasper. Not that. "Let the dog out first," she said.

  He smiled. "That would make people suspicious, Ms. McJasper."

  And he didn't care about the dog's life. Or Ibarra's. Or hers. Or Gabriel Franklin's.

  He didn't care about anyone else.

  But he didn't shoot her. Not yet. And she knew why.

  "You don't know what I know," she said flatly.

  "Right," he agreed. "And I need to find out."

  "I see." And she did.

  "You do see," he said. "So how much did you see in these files?"

  "You heard Ibarra talking to me."

  "He told me what you'd said about finding files of Lauren's."

  "But then everyone knows you came here with him."

  "Everyone? There wasn't anyone else there. I was talking to him in that dinky little office of his when the call came in."