“So now what? You’ve concluded that I’m a bank robber? An embezzler? Or maybe just a madam for a high-class call girl outfit? I’m surprised there’s not a patrol car parked up at the house. You did call the cops, right?”
“It was a lot of cash,” Julia pointed out.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you people,” Madison said, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Let me ask you something,” Julia piped up. “How did you figure out I’d been in your room? I mean, I was so careful. Did you set up some kind of booby trap or something, just in case somebody did go snooping around?”
“Some cat burglar,” Madison sneered. She held up the garment in her hand, which turned out to be a still-damp, white nylon running shirt, and flung it in Julia’s face. “You left this.”
34
The three women watched as Madison/Maryn gave her best effort towards stomping off in the damp khaki-colored sand. When she’d abandoned the beach, they returned their attention to Julia, who’d slumped back onto her beach towel, her hands thrown across her eyes, blocking the sun and their inquisitive stares.
“Your top?” Ellis said finally, flicking the sweaty garment with a dismissive fingertip. “Really, Julia? You didn’t notice you’d left your top behind?”
“I’m sorry,” Julia cried, her voice so shrill that a nearby seagull squawked in answer, and a small child walking by scampered quickly away, towards the water and an incoming wave. “Don’t look at me like that. Jesus! You saw how I was dressed. I’d just come back from my run. And that attic—the temperature must have been about two hundred degrees. I couldn’t get the door latch to open—sweat was pouring off of me, my hands were slippery, so I took off my top—for God’s sake—I was wearing a sports bra! And I used it to get the latch open. And then I climbed in the window, and I was rummaging around in her room. She didn’t even have the air conditioner on up there. Why am I explaining all of this to you? She’s the one with the stash of cash and the gun under her mattress.”
“This was just a really, really bad idea,” Ellis said, her voice low. “Unforgivable. I should never have gone along with this. I knew it wasn’t right, but I did it anyway. I feel awful.”
“Me too,” Dorie said. “And I’m just as bad as you guys. I could have stopped Julia, if I’d really tried.”
But Julia was unrepenetant. “Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have ransacked her room. I’m sorry. Okay? It was all my idea, and you guys are off the hook. But can we just get back to the matter at hand—which, after all, is what do we do about Madison and her gun and her giant stack o’ cash?”
Dorie looked uneasily at Ellis. “I think you should go talk to her.”
“Me?” Ellis was indignant. “Why me? I’m not the one who invited her to live here. And I’m not the one who is chasing her off because I went prying into her private business.”
“Who else?” Dorie asked. “She hates Julia. And she doesn’t trust me anymore, that’s for sure. You’re the calm one. The smart one. You can talk to her. You can talk to anybody. Weren’t you the one who persuaded Phyllis all those years ago that the moaning coming from our den was me, writhing with cramps, instead of Kieran Boylan, crying like a little girly man because he cut his knee crawling out the back window?”
“Just ask her where the money came from,” Julia advised. “But don’t say anything about the gun, okay? I mean, we don’t want to piss her off, just in case she’s got another one hidden in her car or something.”
“No!” Ellis said, flinging the sweaty top at Julia. “I am putting my foot down.” Despite her protests, Ellis knew it was no use arguing or stalling. They were all in their thirties now, but she, Ellis Sullivan, was still designated driver for life.
* * *
She took a deep breath and knocked lightly on Madison’s door.
“Go away,” came the muffled response.
“Madison,” Ellis called. “Please let me in. I want to talk to you. I want to apologize … for all of us.”
“Fine. Whatever,” Madison called. “I’m leaving in the morning, so just let it be. Let me be.”
“I can’t,” Ellis said plaintively. “You know Julia. She’s not going to let up on any of us until I talk to you. Face-to-face.”
The door opened abruptly. “Make it fast,” Madison said, gesturing her inside. “But this is a complete waste of time.”
Ellis crossed the threshold and looked around the room. The thin, white, cotton curtains ruffled listlessly in the faint breeze.
“May I sit down?” Ellis asked.
“It’s your house,” Madison said bitterly. “I’m just a boarder here. With no property rights.”
“About that,” Ellis said, clearing her throat and perching on the edge of the narrow bed. “We owe you an apology. All of us. Except maybe Dorie. She was totally against what Julia did, but we pressured her to act as lookout, and in the end, she caved.”
“Nice to know,” Madison said. She was emptying the drawers of the wooden dresser, folding clothes and placing them in a duffle bag.
“We really would like to help you,” Ellis said. “If you’d let us.”
Madison wheeled around, fire in her eyes. “Why should I let any of you near me? Why should I trust any of you?”
“I don’t know,” Ellis said truthfully. “Maybe you should trust us because we’ve trusted you. We rented you a room, based solely on what you told us, which turned out to be a lie. We know you’re mixed up in something … complicated. And that you’re afraid of your … is he your ex-husband?”
“Not yet,” Madison said grimly.
“What did he do?” Ellis asked. “To make you run the way you did? You don’t strike me as a scaredy-cat.”
“If I tell you, will you just let me alone?” Madison asked. “Not try to meddle in my affairs?”
“I’ll try,” Ellis said. “I can’t speak for Julia—nobody speaks for her. And nobody controls her.”
“My husband…” Madison started. “He’s an accountant, back in Jersey. He handled the books for the insurance company where I used to work. That’s where we met. He asked me to lunch, I went, and pretty soon, we were living together.”
“And?” Ellis said gently.
“Don was married when I met him,” Madison blurted. “Of course, I didn’t know that, he didn’t bother to tell me he still had a wife and two teenagers. They were separated, and he did get divorced, but he was definitely still married when we started dating.”
“Would you have dated him if you knew he was married?” Ellis asked, raising one eyebrow.
“Hell, no!” Madison said. “But I should have figured it out. There was a lot about Don Shackleford I should have figured out before we moved in together.”
“You told Julia he was into something really bad,” Ellis prompted. “What did you mean by that?”
Madison bit her lip. “He’s a thief and a con man. He’s been stealing from his clients, at least two million just from the insurance company, that I know about. There’s probably more, though.”
“How do you know?” Ellis asked. “I mean, you didn’t have anything to do with it, right?”
“Oh, because of the money, right?” Madison said bitterly. “You just assume I’m a thief too?”
“I don’t know what to think about you,” Ellis said, exasperated. “You keep everything such a freakin’ secret, what am I supposed to think?”
“I may be a lot of things, but I’m not a thief,” Madison said. “Swear to God. The money was Don’s. Or whoever he was stealing it from.”
“So how do you know your husband was stealing?”
“Adam—he’s a friend from work—told me that a team of auditors had been in the office, looking at all the files. They were investigating Don. I didn’t want to believe Adam. He’s always been jealous of Don, he had kind of a crush on me. So I snuck into Don’s office and checked, and Adam was right. Don had all these bogus companies set up, being paid from Prescott accounts.”
“What did you do?” Ellis asked. “Did you confront your husband? Did he bother to deny it?”
Madison’s laugh was mirthless. “You don’t confront Don Shackleford. It was the other way around. He drove up to the office as I was leaving and followed me home. He knew I’d been up to something, and he … made me tell him what I found out.”
“He hurt you?”
“Not in a way that would be visible to anybody else. He grabbed me, threw me up against the wall, and calmly informed me that if I told anybody about my suspicions that he’d kill me and hide the body where nobody would ever think to look.”
Ellis studied Madison’s face. “You think he’s capable of something like that? Murder?”
“I do now,” Madison said soberly. “He’s capable of that and worse.”
“So you ran?”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Madison said. “I was terrified. I’d begun to understand a little bit about Don—about his coldness, his dishonesty, but I truly didn’t know he was capable of something like that. Not until I saw it with my own eyes. As soon as he drove off, I knew I had to get out.”
“You couldn’t call somebody? A relative?”
Maryn’s voice was colorless. “You wouldn’t understand. I don’t have a lot of family, just my mom and my aunt, and we’re not close. Emotionally or geographically.”
“What about a girlfriend? Somebody from your office?”
“Don made me quit my job right after we got married. And anyway, I wasn’t exactly chummy with the women in my office. Adam was my only friend there. He’s coming here tomorrow. Him I can trust.”
“Like you can’t trust us?”
Maryn shrugged. “Breaking into my room, that was a really shitty thing to do. Friends wouldn’t do something like that.”
“You made it very clear that you didn’t need any friends,” Ellis reminded her. “But you’re right, it really was shitty. At some point, when she starts to really think about it, Julia will realize that too.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Madison said.
“You still haven’t told me about the money,” Ellis reminded her. “You’ve got to admit, it’s kind of shady, having all that money hidden in your closet.”
“It’s a long story,” Madison said. “Just go, okay? Tell the others they don’t have to worry about me any more.”
“I’d still like to hear it, if you don’t mind,” Ellis said.
“Whatever,” Madison said. She’d stopped folding clothes and was leaning against the wall opposite the bed where Ellis sat.
“After he threatened me, Don just left,” Madison said. “It never would have occurred to him that I might disobey him. Or leave.
“But as soon as he was gone, I knew I was outta there. I threw some clothes and stuff into that,” she said, gesturing towards the duffle bag. “I didn’t have a plan. I mean, I had some money squirreled away.” She laughed again. “My mother used to call that ‘get outta town money’, and how right she was. It came to a little over six thousand dollars. I grabbed that, and on the way out the door, I remembered my computer. My laptop. Don bought us new computers a few months ago. They came with matching cases, too. So I grabbed my laptop and threw it in the back of the car. And I left.”
“And drove until you got to Nags Head,” Ellis said. “What made you come here?”
A ghost of a smile flitted across Madison’s lips. “I told myself it was a coincidence. I was driving south, saw a billboard for Nags Head, and headed in this direction. But on all those long bike rides I’ve been taking, I’ve done some soul-searching. Nags Head was no accident.”
“You’d been here before?”
“As a kid, with my parents. It was the only vacation they ever took me on. We stayed in a little motel, swam in the pool, went on the bumper cars, ate ice cream—all the stuff normal happy families do. I’d saved my allowance, and I bought a little shell-covered jewelry box with NAGS HEAD, NC, written on the lid; the first thing I ever bought with my own money.”
“I think I had a jewelry box just like that,” Ellis volunteered. “Except mine said TYBEE ISLAND, GA. I still have it, come to think of it.”
“Mine’s long gone,” Madison said dully. “My parents split up when I was thirteen. We’d been living in Fayetteville, North Carolina. As soon as school was out that year, my mom loaded me in the car and we moved to New Jersey to live with my Aunt Patsy. We just drove off, with our clothes in some cardboard boxes from the liquor store. Left everything else in the house.”
“Oh Lord,” Ellis said. “What about your dad?”
“He got remarried,” Madison said. “To a woman who’d been my mom’s best friend.”
Ellis looked down at her right hand, at the narrow gold band lined with tiny diamond chips that her father had given her for her thirtieth birthday. It was the last of a long line of gifts her father had given her over the years.
“Did you ever see him again?”
“Who? Oh, my dad? Not much. They moved to Daytona.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellis said.
“It is what it is,” Madison said, practiced at not caring.
Ellis wanted to change the subject. “Your ring. The one you said was an old family piece. I noticed you stopped wearing it.”
“My engagement ring. Don bought it for me, right before we got married. I’m thinking of pawning it. Wanna make me an offer?”
Ellis glanced at Madison’s now-bare hands. “Why do you need to pawn it? With all that money?”
“I’m not touching that money,” Madison said. “I didn’t even know it was there, not until I went to unpack my laptop and realized I’d actually grabbed Don’s by mistake.”
“And the money was in his laptop case? Do you mind if I ask how much?”
Madison shrugged. “Close to a hundred thousand dollars.”
“For real?” Ellis’s eyes widened.
“I’ve got Don’s money. And I know he’s stolen millions more. He probably thinks I meant to take the cash. Now do you see why I was in such a panic when I found out Julia talked to him? What if he finds me?”
“You think he’d hurt you? To get at the money?”
“A few months ago I’d have said no. Now, for sure. With Don, it’s not just about the money. It’s about control. Ownership.”
Ellis looked down at her hands, then out the window, thinking about her own brief marriage, and its sudden, emotionless ending. It had been so painful at the time, but maybe, in comparison to what Madison was going through, Ben’s way was preferable.
“So … you and Don were already having problems before this?” Ellis asked.
“Yeah,” Madison said sourly. “If by problems you mean he was sleeping with somebody else and I’d moved into the guest bedroom.”
“Oh,” Ellis said weakly.
“Don’t know why I was surprised,” Madison said, tossing her head, as though she didn’t really care. “He cheated on his ex-wife with me, why wouldn’t he cheat on me with somebody else?”
“Any idea who she is?”
Madison reached in an open dresser drawer, balled up some shirts, and tossed them at the duffle bag. “I’ve got a very good idea who.”
Now that she’d starting talking to Ellis, it was as though she’d turned on a spigot and was powerless to turn it off. The words just kept spewing.
“Tara Powers! We worked together at the insurance company. We weren’t friends or anything—but she knew Don was married to me.”
Ellis kept thinking about all that money. “A hundred thousand dollars. Do you think he meant to give it to his girlfriend?”
“No way,” Madison said quickly. “Not his style. Don keeps his women on a tight leash.”
“So, what was he doing with all that money?” Ellis persisted.
“I don’t care anymore,” Madison said. “After tomorrow, I’m out of here. I’m only sticking around today because Adam begged me to. He thinks there’s something he can do to get me out of this.”
&
nbsp; “Adam? That’s your friend you used to work with?” Ellis asked, her curiosity aroused. “He’s coming here? To Nags Head?”
“He should be about halfway here,” Madison said. “He’s kind of a nerd, but in a really sweet way.”
“You two worked together?”
“Yep. And he’s still there. He’s taking a vacation day to come down here.”
“You told him everything that happened?” Ellis asked, surprised.
“Most of it,” Madison said. “He was on vacation when I took off. I kept trying to text him, but he never got back to me until last night. You won’t believe this—he actually thinks I should go back to Jersey and calmly start divorce proceedings against Don. As if!”
“Let me ask you this,” Ellis said. “You say you’re not going back. What about the insurance company, the one you used to work for, that he ripped off? Don’t you care about any of them?”
“I care!” Madison said. “But I don’t have any proof. Those files I saw at his office? All gone now, I guarantee.”
“What about his laptop? You’ve got that, right? Maybe there are incriminating files on that.”
“I don’t have the password.”
“And you have no idea if the auditors found anything about the embezzlement to tie it to Don, or whether or not the insurance company has brought charges against your husband?”
“No,” Madison said. “I rode my bike over to the library, thinking I could get online on their computers, see if there’s been anything in the news up there,” Madison admitted. “But they won’t let you use the Internet unless you’ve got a library card. And I wasn’t about to apply for one and start giving out personal information.”
“Hmm,” Ellis said, looking out the window. She could just see the edge of the deck of Ty’s garage apartment. She could access the Internet with her iPhone, but she had an ulterior motive—seeing Ty.
“I know somebody who’s got Internet access,” Ellis said. “And I think maybe he’d be willing to let us use his computer, too. That is, if you want our help.”
Summer Rental Page 27