“Give me a heads-up before you crack the lock,” she said at his elbow as they walked up the steps. “I might not remember what I did yesterday but I never leave the house without setting the alarm. I’ll need to run to the front door and disarm it once the door is—” Maggie watched, confused, as Matt opened the back door with no problems.
“Do you normally leave your doors unlocked?”
Maggie didn’t answer right away. She was listening for what should have been a familiar sound.
“Not on purpose,” she finally said. “But again, I always turn on the alarm before I leave. Or at least I thought I did.” She motioned to the house and met the detective’s eyes. “The alarm beeps until you disarm it and—”
“And there’s no beeping,” he finished, turning back to the open door. He unholstered his gun. “Anyone else live here?”
“No. Just me and Cody.”
“Anyone else have the code?”
“Only Larissa but she has classes until two today.”
Matt gave one curt nod followed by an equally curt order.
“Stay here.”
“Yes, sir.”
She moved to the side of the doorway as Matt held out his gun and went inside. Despite his order and her common sense, Maggie wanted to follow him. She wasn’t a stranger to taking risks, though admittedly she had taken a good deal less of them since Cody had arrived, but leaving the door unlocked and the alarm off? That didn’t sound like her. Not even memory-less her. Something must have made her leave in a hurry.
Or someone.
That thought was the glue that kept her feet in place while the detective spent the next few minutes going through the house. During that time she revolved through question after question in her head. No matter which mystery popped up about her blank yesterday, she never reached any memories. No leads. No answers.
“No one’s in here,” Matt said, reappearing in the doorway. His eyes found hers with a notable amount of suspicion. If it was directed at her she didn’t know. “Nothing jumped out at me that might shed some light on everything but then again, this isn’t my place. I don’t know what to look for.”
They walked into the house, both uneasy. Maggie felt her defenses—and sarcasm—rising. In the past few years her social life had declined. The people who frequented her house were few and far between. Not that she was unhappy with her life. She just wondered what conclusions the man had drawn from his pass-through.
He followed her as she went clockwise through the house, starting at the kitchen and ending in the living room. It was the heart of their home and most lived-in. Stranded toys mingled with books and blankets and other odds and ends that never seemed to get sorted to their rightful places outside the room.
The detective stood sentry next to one of the large windows at the front of the house. His gun was back in its holster but his hands hung at his sides, ready to do whatever was necessary.
Maggie took a moment to watch the man. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about him off and on throughout the years. Mostly when a case he was working crossed over the media airwaves. She might have switched from a reporter to a magazine writer but that didn’t mean she’d stopped reading the paper. But there had been moments, quiet moments, where the detective had crossed her mind without her conscious volition.
He’d just be there. Like he was now.
A man she barely knew.
A man who loathed her.
A man seemingly always in sync with the world.
Except when it came to her.
Maggie cleared her throat. She wasn’t about to give herself permission to think about the detective as anything but a pain in her side. No. She wasn’t allowed.
“Okay, so as far as I can tell the house is how I would normally leave it.”
“Other than the unlocked door and the disabled alarm,” Matt supplied.
“Yeah, except those. Everything else, though, looks like it did before the memory loss.” To prove her point further, she turned to the couch. “See, my pillow from the other night is still there—”
Maggie’s eyes caught on to a few details she’d missed. The strangeness of what she was seeing must have shown in her expression. The detective’s body language became more open. He faced her with a look split between curiosity and concern.
“What is it?”
Maggie walked to the coffee table and paused. She pointed to the contents on its wooden top.
“Those are my keys,” she said, thoroughly confused. “My house and car keys.” She started to pick them up as if the physical contact would somehow answer the questions starting to spring up in her head when she noticed something else between the table and the couch. “And this is my purse.”
“What?”
Maggie picked up her bag. She pulled out her wallet and flipped it open. Her ID, credit cards and money were inside. The same as she remembered it from before her memory blanked out.
“Everything’s here.”
It was a statement but even to her ears, her confusion was still running rampant. The half-filled cup of coffee with lipstick marks on its edge didn’t help.
“You may think I’m a lot of things but let me tell you, messy isn’t one of them.”
“But you and your car were at Dwayne’s,” Matt added. “How did the keys end up back here?”
Like someone had flipped a switch, a new theory blazed across Maggie’s mind. She turned around and walked straight to the kitchen. Matt’s boots were heavy against the hardwood as he followed.
“Do you remember something?”
Maggie rounded the breakfast bar and made a beeline for the three metal canisters on the counter next to the sink. The one labeled Flour was open, its lid next to it. She was sure of what she wouldn’t find within it but still had to look. After she did she turned, confused.
“It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?”
“The spare key to my car.” She motioned to the canister. “I kept it in there.”
Matt looked between her and the tin for a moment.
“So let’s assume you used your spare car key to drive your car to Dwayne’s,” he said. “Why would you need it when your original car key is in the other room? And why not take your purse?”
“Why leave a half-filled cup of coffee out? Why leave the back door unlocked and not the front? And why not set the alarm?”
Matt’s eyes widened. Like her, his switch had flipped.
“Because you needed to leave in a hurry,” he guessed. “But why not grab your things?”
Maggie walked to the door that opened into the kitchen. From where she stood she couldn’t see the living room. But she could see the back door.
“I’m not one to make baseless guesses, despite your personal opinion of me, but I think someone was with me here yesterday,” she started. A knot of cold began to form in her stomach. “And whoever they were must have said or done something I really didn’t like.”
Chapter Five
“It’s a theory,” Matt reminded the sheriff. He was standing in the living room, phone to his ear, and looking down at Maggie’s key ring. After she’d become convinced of what had happened, he’d had to reel her in a bit. She’d excused herself to shower, not that he blamed her with dried blood caked on her head and a hospital stay that had extended through the night. Now he was bringing Billy up to speed. “But I have to agree it may be right on the money. I mean it looks like she just got up and got out. It’s not adding up.”
“Then we must not have the right numbers,” Billy said. The background noise of the department filtered through the phone. It reminded Matt that he hadn’t been home since he left for work yesterday. “I’ll keep things going on my end while Ansler runs point on the investigation.”
“You’re giving lead to Ryan?” Matt asked, surprised. He
was head detective in the sheriff’s department and had been employed with them for four years longer than Ryan Ansler. Not to say that Matt didn’t like the man. He was just more invested in figuring out what had happened thanks to his friendship with Dwayne. Which, he realized two seconds too late, might have been the problem.
“You need to figure out Ms. Carson’s part in all of this,” Billy said. “Whether or not she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, at the right place at the wrong time, or did exactly what she wanted to do. Finding out what happened with her is the key to solving this case. Trying to juggle everything at the same time won’t help Dwayne. Getting answers about what happened at that house might. Let Ansler and me cover the other details and questions. You focus on Carson.”
Billy was right. Like always.
Matt ended the call and decided to explore his surroundings while he was alone. It was less curiosity and more of an attempt to keep his mind from settling until he could ask Maggie some real questions. Ones that she did have answers for. Like the investigation into Erin’s accident.
He imagined his late wife as he often did. Years later and he could still trace every curve of her face in his mind. Bright eyes, button nose, all smiles. He felt more at home in those snatches of memories than he ever had since the accident. Matt didn’t know if that was because he’d moved on or that he hadn’t.
Depending on the day he could give an answer one way or the other.
Today, though?
He wasn’t sure.
The inside of Maggie’s house was surprisingly cozy, all things considered. Beige and white, linens, blue and yellow pops of color and various pictures of Cody, herself and a few people Matt didn’t recognize. He didn’t know what he had expected of the ex-reporter—maybe newspapers and magazines scattered around or a bulletin board filled with pictures all connected by strings—but normal hadn’t been it.
He moved from the living room to what he guessed was a converted dining room currently being used as an office. At least this room looked more like the speed of the Maggie he remembered. Surrounding her computer was a sea of notebooks, papers and empty coffee mugs. A small filing cabinet was tucked next to the desk, partially hidden by a wooden side table standing over it. Matt walked closer to inspect it. There was a lock on the bottom drawer.
A treadmill was tucked in the corner and against the left wall, while a small bookcase stood on the right and seemed to be dedicated to Cody. Colorful spines filled the openings while toys were interspersed between some of the covers. Matt paused at one and smiled. It was a toy cop car.
From there his attention roamed over the pictures hanging on the wall in this room. A collage of more unfamiliar faces hung above the desk while a picture of a newborn Cody sat in the center. He’d had a lot of hair as a baby and was swaddled in a blue blanket, filling up the entire image.
And then there Erin was. Heralding a memory of the first time they’d talked about having kids. He’d just joined the Riker County Sheriff’s Department and she was working through nursing school. They’d decided to wait until their life became less hectic.
Now here he was, years later, standing in Maggie Carson’s house wondering what his own child might look like.
It was another question he didn’t have an answer to. However, it shepherded in a thought that had been in the back of his mind as he moved around the house, looking at pictures.
“Investigating and snooping are separated by the finest of lines, Detective Walker. I thought you of all people would know when you’re toeing it.”
Maggie came to a stop at Matt’s side. A sweet aroma wafted off her, filling his senses before he’d known what hit him. Shampoo or soap or perfume. He didn’t know which but it didn’t matter. It caught him off guard all the same.
“Don’t worry, I know the urge to not answer a question is hard to resist,” she continued. “Did you finally get some insight into me? Find anything interesting, Mr. Keen Eye?”
She was teasing him. There was a small smile pulling up the corners of her lips. It caught his attention and held it for a few beats too long. It also applied pressure to the idea that he despised the woman next to him. That she was nothing more than a pain in the ass. His ass.
Maggie put a fist on her hip. She must not have liked his slow response time.
“Oh, come on, Detective,” she said more harshly. “Make an observation about me based on what you’ve seen. Wow me with your skills.”
“It’s not as loud as I thought it would be,” he started, rising to the challenge. “The house I mean. With how you present yourself in public and one-on-one I assumed this place would be...more chaotic. Instead, it’s pretty calm. Ordered. Except in here.”
He motioned to the desk and the scattered papers around her computer.
“But I bet my badge that all of those are just for show. I can’t imagine someone like you would leave any important documents out like that. Even in your own house. I imagine those are tucked inside that filing cabinet.” Matt motioned to the coffee cups next. “I also assume you work at home, considering the amount of coffee cups on your desk and the treadmill. I bet you use it when you get tired of sitting around all day. Unless I’m wrong and you work late nights instead.” He walked over to the toy cop car. “And if I had to take a stab in the dark about this, I would bet you tried to talk Cody out of this toy, explaining that cops are too by the book for your liking.”
Maggie’s eyebrow stayed high. She raised her hands in mock defense.
“Your words, not mine,” she said. “But anyone could have drawn the same conclusions if they’d just walked through the house. Especially if they already knew me or, at least, of me. It’s not a hard stretch to see a treadmill and coffee cups in an office and guess the person works at home.”
There was no smugness there but Matt did recognize a challenge when he heard one. Maggie was baiting him to prove himself.
So he did.
Dropping any hint of a smile from his lips he walked back over to her desk. He pointed to the baby picture of Cody. Her smile wavered before he even spoke.
“You adopted Cody,” he said simply. “The house is filled with pictures of him as a toddler but this is the only one I’ve seen of him as a baby. And it’s cropped, which means you weren’t the one holding him.”
Like a candle that had been lit, Matt could almost see her intention to tease him start to burn away. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“I suppose if you make enough guesses you’re bound to get one right.” Her smile had dwindled down to barely there but he wasn’t reading anger from her. “The first time I met Cody he was three.” She motioned to the picture of him as a baby. “That was the only picture that had been taken of him until he was placed in foster care. I make sure he knows that even though I wasn’t there, I still like to look at how cute my baby boy was.”
“He knows he’s adopted, then.”
Maggie nodded.
“There’s nothing wrong with being adopted,” she said, resolute. “And I wanted to make sure he knew that at an early age. I’m sure he’ll have more questions when he’s older but so far, he’s never had any problems calling me Mom. Even if I tell him it’s a little too formal sounding. But he’s a mini genius so I guess that comes with the territory.”
This time the smile grew. Love. Pure and genuine.
Matt might not have known Maggie Carson as well as he’d once thought but in that moment he knew one thing for certain. She loved her son with all of her heart.
He opened his mouth to say something when his ringtone went off. The caller ID read “Ryan Ansler.”
“That was fast,” Matt muttered. He looked at Maggie before pressing Accept. “Give me a minute.”
* * *
THE DRIED BLOOD had washed away easily enough in the shower but that didn’t mean Maggie wanted to push her luck by blow-drying her hair
. The gash left by the bat wasn’t bad enough to need stitches but it was still throbbing enough to be uncomfortable. She stood across from her reflection in her en suite, trying to see if the past two days were showing.
She felt tired and her legs were a little sore. The former could have been attributed to the sleep she’d gotten off and on in the hospital but the latter was troubling. Matt had been right about her working from home and using the treadmill when she felt too cooped up or restless. She wasn’t ready to knock out any marathons but over the past few years she’d gotten into fairly decent shape.
So why were her legs sore?
Had she walked around a lot the day before?
Had she run?
Maggie raked a hand through her hair and blew out a sigh. She’d always loved puzzles. Mysteries had to be solved. Questions had to be answered. That was all she’d ever wanted to do when she was little. Find the truth that people—bad people—tried to hide.
But now that the new mystery involved her?
She hadn’t asked to lose a day’s worth of memory. And well, she didn’t like the feeling.
Just as Matt hadn’t asked to lose his wife. Or have Maggie start her own investigation during what must have been the worst low of his life like some dog after a bone.
Again she sighed.
“You in here?”
Maggie straightened as the detective called into her room. One last look at her reflection and she nodded.
“Yeah,” she answered, walking out to meet him in the hall. His eyes were wide. Something had happened. “Was that the sheriff?”
“No, Detective Ansler. But we do have some new information.”
Again, Maggie searched his expression. It was troubled. The cold knot that had formed in her stomach earlier started to expand.
“And I’m guessing it’s not the answers to all of our questions.”
Matt shook his head.
“CSU reported in,” he started. “Your prints and Dwayne’s were found on the bat. A partial print was found on the inside of the screen door near the handle. And that’s it.”
Forgotten Pieces Page 4