“They’ve got that one out. And the damage back there isn’t as bad.”
“Did my renter call the fire in?”
“Who?”
“I have a short-term renter in my house. It’s the building off to the side, between the store and the barn. Her name is Leslie DeWitt.”
She rubs her forehead, leaving a red mark. “It wasn’t her. A rancher saw it when he drove by and called 911. I don’t remember his name.”
“Have you seen Leslie?”
“I haven’t seen anyone that isn’t from Giddings PD or Lee or Fayette County. Except for you.” She gestures toward a line of vehicles on the county road in front of Maggie’s house. “Although it looks like people are starting to gather.”
“Can someone check on Leslie?”
“We knocked. No one answered.” The deputy puts her hand on Maggie’s arm. “Why don’t you get off your feet. You look beat.”
Maggie jerks away. She moves in a tight circle, then points to the little silver sedan in the parking area. “That’s her car.” As much as she dislikes the woman, she won’t be able to live with herself if she bears any responsibility for her being injured. “She was at St. Paul Lutheran earlier, but she must be back. I saw her leaving.” She rewinds their conversation outside St. Paul. Leslie heading toward the parking area. Possibly leaving.
The deputy pulls a radio from her lapel. With her back to Maggie, she speaks into it. Then she turns to Maggie and says, “You’re giving us permission to enter your home?”
“Of course. It’s a life-or-death situation.”
“It is in the shop. Not in your house.” She leans in. “I shouldn’t tell you this. But do you understand that anything in plain sight is fair game and could lead to a search warrant for the entire property?”
Maggie shakes her head. “What is it with you people? I’m the victim here. And I haven’t been in my own house for weeks. I told you. There’s a renter in there. Leslie. Let me call her. If she answers, there’s no need to go in. If she doesn’t, then, yes, break down my goddamn door and make sure she’s okay, because there’s a fucking fire back there.”
Maggie can’t take any more death. Gary, killed in a fire. Chet, beaten to death. Patrick, dead, and Hank, injured, from gunshots. No more death. Please, no more death.
She pulls out her phone and finds a number for Leslie in the call log. She presses it, then chooses call.
A commotion at the front of the Coop draws her attention. The firefighters are agitated about something. The deputy moves in front of her like she’s trying to block her line of sight and directional hearing, but Maggie moves stealthily along the barricade until she can hear the phone ringing in one ear and the firefighters in the other.
“. . . body . . . charred past recognition . . . female . . . no identification or clothing survived the fire . . .”
Her hand drops to her side. She feels limp. She stares at the Coop. A dead body in the Coop. More death.
“Hello? Hello?” There’s a voice coming from Maggie’s hand.
Like a sleepwalker, she stares into the distance, but she lifts her phone as she does. “Hello.” Her voice is dull.
“Is this Maggie Killian?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you calling me?”
“Oh, Leslie. Fire at the Coop. Making sure you’re okay.”
“What?”
“My shop burned down. Your car is here. The deputies knocked at the house and you didn’t answer. I’m making sure you’re okay.”
“I’m on the way home from your mother’s church reception, where I’ve been, unlike you.”
“I was—” Maggie shakes her head. Not relevant. “Whatever. There’s a fire. You’re all right. When you come back, expect a whole lot of law enforcement activity.”
“Great.”
Maggie hangs up on her.
The female deputy has her head together with Junior. They look up at her.
Maggie shouts, “She’s fine.”
The deputy returns to Maggie. “What?”
“I just talked to Leslie. She’s on her way home from the church. She’s fine.”
“So, to be clear, do we have permission to enter your house?”
“No. You do not.”
“You wanted us to a moment ago.”
“As I said a moment ago, only if I didn’t get confirmation she is okay, which I now have. It’s rented to her. I can’t give you permission to violate her privacy without a good reason.” As much as she’d like to.
“We’re going to need to talk to her.”
“That’s between you guys and her.”
A small, warm hand grips Maggie’s shoulder. “Oh God, Maggie. All your hard work. I’m so sorry.”
Maggie lets Michele rotate her into an embrace. Maggie leans on her shoulder.
Michele whispers, “Not another word to anyone in law enforcement. We’ll talk to them all together tomorrow at our scheduled interview. Nod if you understand.”
Maggie nods.
“Good. I need to get you out of here. Rashidi and I will take you back to your truck.”
Another warm hand lands on Maggie’s back. She doesn’t have to look to know that it’s Rashidi. She allows herself to be trundled away from the scene, but her eyes keep cutting back to her shop. Her livelihood. Her identity. Her light after darkness. Who is she without it anymore?
“Hold up, Maggie.” Weaselly Rickey Sayles is fast-walking toward her, dragging a woman along by the hand.
Maggie doesn’t give the woman a second glance. “Come to gloat, Rickey?”
“Of course not. But I did want to make sure I withdrew my offer. In front of witnesses. I would, however, be happy to take any remaining inventory off your hands for an acceptable markdown off wholesale. Say, fifty percent.”
“I wouldn’t sell anything to you at any price. Not before, not now.”
The woman steps between them. “Are you sure? You don’t have your famous fuck buddy around to prop you up anymore.”
Maggie stares at her. She shouldn’t have discounted the woman in the beginning, because the curvy redhead is a woman scorned. Jenny.
“My new offer expires at noon tomorrow. The next one won’t be so generous.”
She jerks her attention back to Rickey. “Get lost, Rickey.”
Rashidi is suddenly in front of Maggie. “Leave her alone and get out of here. Both of you.”
Jenny pops a bubble in her gum.
Rickey laughs. “Call off your dog, Maggie. I know you can’t be a stupid woman, no matter what I read about you.”
Rashidi’s fist strikes Rickey’s jaw, spinning him sideways and to the ground. Jenny screams and huddles over him.
“Oh, Rashidi,” Michele says. “Not good.”
“No, it was bad. As in badass.” Maggie steps over to Rickey and Jenny. “What he said.”
Michele marches ahead of Rashidi and Maggie toward Rashidi’s Jeep, which is parked on the side of the road facing away from the house, like it’s ready to drive toward Michele’s. “You’ll be charged.”
“Well worth it,” Rashidi says.
“For you. Now I’ll be defending both of you in court instead of working on my next book.”
Just as they reach the Jeep, an SUV pulls to a stop in the middle of traffic. Leslie hauls herself out. For a moment, with the way the light falls on the woman’s face, Maggie gets a strong sense of déjà vu. Has she known Leslie in some other part of her life? Before she can place the memory, it’s gone, leaving only the wooden-faced woman she’s come to loathe.
“Leslie,” she calls.
The woman slams the door of her ride, and the SUV speeds away. “What?”
“The deputies over there.” Maggie points. “They need to talk to you.”
“Why me? I wasn’t here.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger.”
“I’m going to bed.”
Rage explodes in a starburst in Maggie’s head. This woman is keeping her from her own h
ome, at a time when Maggie’s lost the two most important men in her life and now her store and inventory. Tonight’s fire stripped her of her creativity, her passion, and her hard work. And Leslie won’t answer a few simple questions to help find the person who did it? She wants to throttle her, but she has a better idea.
She speed-dials Junior from her Recents.
He picks up on the second ring. “Maggie. Where’d you go?”
“My short-term vacation renter is standing in the road in front of the house with me and can talk to you now.” Maggie describes Leslie, then adds, “Short, robotic, rude.”
“Tell her we’re on our way.”
“Bitch,” Leslie mutters as she walks toward the ruined compound.
“Come on, hon.” Michele holds open the front passenger door of the Jeep.
Before Maggie takes a single step toward her new sister, her attention is ripped away again. This time by a strange glow in the trees on the other side of the road. She squints at it. Not a glow. A person. A woman. A tall, pale woman with a long gray braid.
“Hey,” she shouts.
Without even realizing she’s doing it, Maggie runs across the road. A horn honks. Looky-loos cruising the fire. She doesn’t spare the time to apologize. She has to catch the woman she just saw. The woman from Michele’s backyard. She got away before. Is she following me? Maybe she started the fire. Or saw who did.
Michele’s voice seems to float to her from a million miles away. “No, Maggie. Stop. Come back. Be careful.”
Maggie keeps running.
The pale woman is farther away from her than she’d realized. Way, way back in the trees and thick yaupon. Thorns rip at Maggie’s clothes and branches scratch her face. As hard as Maggie runs, she doesn’t seem to get any closer. There’s a tunnel between her and the woman that’s growing longer and narrower with every step, pulling the woman away from Maggie like she’s on a high-speed motorized walkway. But that can’t be. She’s just faster than Maggie. It’s the only logical explanation.
Panting, Maggie shouts again. “Wait. Please.”
She thinks she hears Michele, but far away. Rashidi shouts, too, the sound like his voice is coming from the bottom of a well. But she ignores both of them. All she cares about is catching the mystery woman.
The woman stops. Her eyes lock with Maggie’s.
Maggie slows and holds out a hand to her. “I just want to talk to you.”
Maggie is lying, though. She doesn’t just want to talk. She wants to get the woman back to Junior. She wants her to give him answers that will explain all of this.
Suddenly, Michele is there, in front of her, but Maggie doesn’t break her gaze from the woman. She’s so sad-looking. Is that guilt about the fire? Or does she feel empathy for what Maggie is going through? And why won’t she say anything?
Rashidi joins Michele. He steps in front of Maggie, blocking her view of the braided woman.
“No!” Maggie shouts and swats to move him out of the way.
He holds his ground.
“Shh, Maggie. It’s going to be all right.” Michele reaches up and puts a hand on Maggie’s face.
Maggie ducks around Rashidi and away from Michele. She doesn’t see the woman anymore. She pushes Rashidi. Frantic, she yells, “Where is she?”
“Where is who?” Rashidi asks, his voice gentle. Concerned.
“There was a woman here. The same one I saw earlier in the backyard.”
“In my backyard?” Michele asks.
“Yes. She ran off then, too. I have to talk to her.”
Michele sounds stricken. “Maggie, you can’t go running after a stranger. A witness. That’s a job for the cops.”
“But I have to get her to tell them what she saw.”
“Them who?”
“The fire marshal. The deputies. Law enforcement.”
“Give them her description tomorrow.”
“She could be long gone by then.”
“Well, you’re not going to find her out in the woods in the dark. And how do you know she didn’t start the fire? She could be dangerous.”
Defeated, Maggie’s shoulders slump. “There’s no ‘could be’ to it. If she started the fire, she is dangerous. They found a dead body in the Coop.”
Twenty
The unreality of the previous night still hasn’t sunk in. Maggie rotates a coffee mug back and forth in her fingers—her fourth cup of the day already—on the tile inlay top of Michele’s dining room table. The tiny author-athlete-sister-attorney is a miracle worker. She’s emptied her house and assembled all the hot-to-question-Maggie law enforcement personnel, on home turf. Or as close to home as Maggie can get with Leslie not out of Maggie’s house yet.
Michele’s not only gained home-court advantage, she’s kept the law enforcement ranks thin. This despite their original demand of a crowd of nine. They’re limited to Karen—the fire marshal—along with one representative each from the Lee and Fayette counties sheriff’s departments. Junior is here representing Lee and the big sheriff himself has come from Fayette. The three uniforms circle the table like buzzards around a carcass. If Michele is the guardian of the remains whose job it is to keep the flesh eaters at bay, Maggie is the rotting hunk of meat.
Louise peers through the back window, barking her fool head off, adding to a deep pain above Maggie’s brow. She appreciates Louise’s loyalty, though. She shifts her eyes over the dog’s head and into the backyard. She’d seen the pale woman from last night here, and she wonders if she’ll come back. Friend or foe? Maggie’s gut says the woman has something important to tell her.
Louise tests the glass, pushing against it with her nose, then trying to dig through it with her claws. Gertrude paces beside her. When Gidget died, little Gertrude broke through a glass window and went for help, finding Michele. Maggie would bet Michele is remembering that right now, too. It brings the slightest of smiles to Maggie’s lips. If Gertrude can break glass, Louise surely can. She imagines the two of them busting through, teeth sinking into ankles, officers screaming and running like small children from the yappy, runty dogs.
It’s a happy thought.
“You have exactly forty-five minutes.” Michele hits record in the Voice Memo app on her iPhone. “I suggest you get started, because I’m not extending the time. Ms. Killian’s had too much trauma in too short a time frame to be forced to endure anything longer.”
Karen presses something on her own phone. “For the record, we object to your terms.”
“That wasted thirty seconds.” Michele smiles at her.
Maggie watches as they waste another few seconds staring at each other. With their thumbs up their asses. She nods at Michele.
“We’ll start, then. Ms. Killian has something she wants to say.” Michele doesn’t look at her, but she squeezes her sister’s knee. They’d talked this through for hours the night before.
“No, I believe I will,” the sheriff says. He’d introduced himself earlier—in a voice that’s barely spent a day outside Fayette County—but Maggie’s already forgotten his name. He points at Maggie. “Did you or did you not confess to a Lee County deputy that you spilled gasoline on yourself while burning down Gary Fuller’s house?”
Michele jumps to her feet. “If you want to talk to my client, that’s the last we’re going to hear of misrepresentations and accusations. Those you can make at the station, if you arrest her, but not in my home. And not when you haven’t even classified this fire as intentional.”
“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t ask.”
“I can terminate this interview.”
“We’ll arrest her, then.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? It doesn’t escape me, Sheriff, that you’re under a bit of pressure to close this case. Traffic outside Gary’s gate now is a constant gridlock. He’s like Selena, for Texas rednecks. A folk hero. And they’re convinced their guy was murdered. Their narrative is to blame a woman. This woman.” She nods at Maggie. “But their agenda shoul
dn’t dictate yours, and it certainly doesn’t dictate ours. Ms. Killian did nothing wrong, and you aren’t going to get away with harassing her. Not on my watch.”
The sheriff guffaws. “Junior, hold my beer.”
Karen looks pained. “Enough. Ms. Killian, unless your attorney is going to terminate this interview, please answer the question.”
“Fine,” Michele says. “If she wants to.”
Maggie shakes her head, but answers anyway. “No, I did not make any kind of admission. And Junior damn well knows it.”
Michele holds a hand up. “Thank you. Moving forward, she won’t answer anything I tell her not to. You can’t bully us. Now, as I said, Ms. Killian will kick things off.”
Maggie nods. “I’ve already told Junior everything I knew about the vandalism of my shop, including the only people I could think of who might have a grudge against me. With respect to last night, I have no idea how the fire started. I’d spent the day there cleaning up from the last break-in and getting merchandise and displays ready for the antique show. I went home, did yoga, took a walk, went to Los Patrones and then to St. Paul Lutheran Church, where I was when I got the call about the fire from Junior. But some weird things have been happening, and my attorney thinks I should tell you about them.”
“With all due respect, counselor, Ms. Killian is eating into the time we were told we’d have to question her,” the sheriff drawls, his tone mocking and disrespectful of the tiny lawyer.
Michele ignores him. “Go on, Maggie. Just tell them what you told me.”
“I’ve had a few odd visitors to the Coop since I got back. The first and most concerning was Rickey Sayles. He’s opened up a rival business not far from here. He showed up uninvited trying to buy the Coop. He didn’t make a threat per se, but his attitude was threatening. He was at the fire last night, too. With Jenny, no less.” Maggie speaks directly to Junior. “The one I told you hated me because she didn’t like sharing Gary. Strange coincidence that they’re together now.” She returns her attention to the officers as a group. “Given that he’s been going around town telling people he’s going to kill off the Coop, I find the timing of his visits very suspect.”
Sick Puppy (Maggie #2) Page 13