by Abby Gaines
Her next words confirmed his suspicion.
“I need to go to Seattle,” Maggie said. “I need to be there for Holly. Can I ride back with you?”
He should say no outright—knock this thing on the head right away. “It’s not a trial, just an initial appearance where the charges are read out and she applies for bail. Wouldn’t she have told you if she wanted you there?”
Maggie’s mouth set in a firm line. “She needs me, she just doesn’t know it.”
Simon grappled with the suitability of driving a woman he’d just admitted to lusting after all the way to Seattle. Maggie could claim anything, and it would be his word against hers. On the other hand, the boss wanted him to spend more time with her. And he was a whole lot more comfortable in his car than he was in her trailer.
“If you won’t take me, I’ll hitch. I’d better start now. It may take a while to get a ride.”
Crook groaned inwardly. As if he was about to let her hitchhike. He’d doubtless find himself investigating her murder at the hands of some interstate psycho tomorrow. Wouldn’t his boss just love that?
“Forget it. I’ll take you.” He looked at his watch. It was nearly six. “How soon can you be ready?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
True to her word, a quarter hour later she stood in front of him, carrying what looked like a large purse, but which he assumed contained all she’d need for a couple of days away.
By that time Simon had his strategy worked out. She could sit in the backseat of the car. He would use the time to question her about Holly, and as soon as they got to Seattle he would write up his notes. So if later on she accused him of anything, he would have ammunition to fight back with.
Simon preceded Maggie down to the car and opened the rear door. “Hop in.”
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
Simon gritted his teeth. “You have to go in the back, it’s FBI policy.”
She pointed down. “I don’t think we’re going anywhere.”
The front tire was flat. And it didn’t take twenty-twenty vision to see the jagged gash that had destroyed it. Simon cursed, then cursed again when he realized the rear tire was the same. The other side of the car was okay.
“Those kids,” he muttered, remembering the youth with the cut-off T-shirt and the cop-hating father.
“I’m sorry.” Maggie’s regret sounded genuine. “Most of those kids are fine, but one or two…” She kicked at the tire with one of her sandal-clad feet. “What are you going to do?”
“You mean, after I find that kid and have the cops arrest him?” Simon closed his eyes. It wasn’t worth the aggravation.
Better to concentrate on getting the tires fixed. Which would mean reporting this to the office. Slater was always dropping hints to Pierce that Crook was off the pace. Pierce would probably think Crook was past it, that if he’d scared the heck out of the kids over those smart-aleck remarks about cops, this would never have happened.
That shouldn’t matter since he was about to retire. But he had his pride. He opened his eyes to find Maggie still watching him. “You go inside, while I find that kid.”
AN HOUR LATER Crook had scared the kid and his mother—the father didn’t live there—enough that they offered to replace the tires. The boy’s uncle owned a tire shop, but he wouldn’t be able to get ahold of the right ones until morning.
“I’ll find a motel in town,” Crook told Maggie when he got back to her trailer.
“You won’t get a room,” she said. “It’s the American Rose Growers’ annual convention. They book the town out every year.”
She was right. He borrowed a phone directory from the management office, only to find there wasn’t a room to be had.
“You’ll have to stay here,” Maggie said.
“Here?” Surely she didn’t mean…
“In the kids’ room,” she said, and her eyes gleamed with the knowledge of what he’d been thinking.
He couldn’t stay here. Could he? If spending hours in a car with her was fraught with risk, spending a night in the dump she called home would be like rolling around in dead fish then jumping into a pool with a shark.
He looked at her, at the abundant auburn hair he now admitted he wanted to run his hands through, at her womanly figure, at her intelligent eyes. And found himself unable to articulate the reasons he shouldn’t stay.
Maggie did it for him. “You don’t trust me,” she said. “You feel bad about what you said before, and you think I’ll take advantage of it.”
He acknowledged she was right with a slight nod.
“Nothing is more important to me than getting to Seattle to support Holly.” Maggie stuck out a hand. “Let’s call a truce, Marvin. I won’t accuse you of anything improper, and you’ll drive me to Seattle in the morning.” She gave a wry smile. “If you’re lucky, you’ll never see me again.”
She meant it. He may not have much left in the way of instincts, but Simon did know Maggie intended to stick with the truce she’d proposed. They could make this work. He would look on it as an extended interview, a chance to question her further about Holly. A growl from his stomach reminded him he’d skipped lunch.
“What’s for dinner?” he said, the implied acceptance of her invitation coming easier than an outright yes.
Maggie looked flustered, the first time he’d seen her less than sure of herself. When she stuttered, “I—I can do beans on toast,” he realized it was a lack of confidence in her culinary ability. A justifiable lack, by the sound of it.
Crook thought of the meals Sally had cooked him every night through fourteen years of marriage. Then of the microwave meals he mostly dined on alone since Sally died. Life would indeed be spiraling downward if he descended to beans on toast. “I’ll take a look at your kitchen,” he said, dignifying the cooking alcove with a title it didn’t merit.
He found eggs, a couple of soft but not unusable potatoes, milk and a can of tuna. “Got any herbs?” He asked the question without much hope, but Maggie disappeared outside and came back with a handful of freshly picked thyme.
He was chopping it when he spotted the envelope on the crowded counter. The letter was addressed to Maggie. But it was the sticker in the top left-hand corner, bearing the address of the sender, that caught Crook’s attention.
He picked it up. “You have a letter from Holly,” he said.
Maggie turned from her halfhearted attempts to straighten the room. “It’s been there a couple of weeks.”
“And you haven’t opened it?”
She shook her head. “I’m not planning to.”
“Mind if I do?”
Maggie lifted her shoulders, and Simon took that as permission to tear the envelope open. Inside was a single piece of paper, a check. His eyes widened when he read the amount. Was this the link between Maggie and Holly and the missing money? “Do you know what this—?” But he could see from Maggie’s closed expression that she knew exactly what he held in his hand.
“Does Holly often send you this much money?” he asked.
“About once a month.” She pointed to a shoebox on the shelf above the sink. “Put it in there.”
Crook opened the box, to find it stuffed full of checks, all from Holly, all, as far as he could tell, for the same generous sum. “So you’re not going to cash this,” he said. Maggie didn’t reply, and he put the check in the box, then slid it back onto its shelf. He’d noticed the checks dated back several years, so they must have nothing to do with the missing money. If Maggie didn’t want to talk about her relationship with her daughter, Crook wasn’t going to press the issue until he thought it vital to his investigation. Which right now he didn’t, no matter what his boss said. He picked up his knife and went back to chopping.
He made a frittata, a simple, satisfying dish that Sally used to make for supper on nights when he worked late and didn’t want to go to bed overly full. Maggie stayed out of his way, but sent curious glances in his direction every so often.
; They sat to eat at the Formica table. Crook would have killed for a beer, but it turned out Maggie didn’t drink, didn’t keep alcohol in the house.
“This is great.” She put her fork down after the first mouthful. “You made it look so easy.”
He chuckled, pleased with his own effort. “It’s not much harder than beans on toast.”
Over dinner, the conversation circled. Crook would ask something about Holly, Maggie would give a minimal answer then change the subject. Other times he would start off on an apparently unrelated topic, then turn it back to Holly, hoping to take Maggie unawares so she might let something slip. Such as when he asked if she’d ever thought about selling her paintings. “Some people like that sort of thing,” he said, before he realized how tactless that sounded.
“Incredible,” she said, and he began to apologize, until she laughed. “I do sell the occasional painting. There’s a second-tier gallery in Portland that takes my stuff, and a café here in Marionville that gets some passing tourist trade. It’s only a few hundred dollars at a time, but it makes a difference.”
“Is that your only income?” He tried to keep his tone neutral, but she saw right through it.
“I’m not selling dope on the side, if that’s what you mean. But actually, marijuana did get me into a business.”
“What’s that?”
“I used to grow dope out back.” She gestured toward the rear of the trailer. “Just for my own use, but I was good at it. When I decided the weed was killing off too many brain cells and it might affect my painting, I ripped it out and planted herbs instead.”
“The thyme we had tonight,” he said.
“And rosemary, mint, cilantro, basil. The restaurants in Marionville take whatever I can produce. I’ve been selling my herbs for three years.”
“So between that and the painting, you make enough to live on.”
“More than enough.” Seeing his obvious doubt, she added, “I even put a little money aside each month.”
“What for?”
She shrugged. “In case my kids ever need it…. But I don’t suppose they will. It’s only a couple thousand bucks. One day I’ll buy a plane ticket to Italy.”
“Italy?”
“You know, that place where all the best painters came from. I’ve always thought when I run out of ideas, that’s where I’ll go. Get a top-up of inspiration.”
“You mean, for a vacation?”
She shrugged. “Maybe a few months, maybe a few years. I’ll wait tables or something, and paint in my spare time.”
“But you wouldn’t get a work permit.”
The look of utter bafflement she sent his way reminded Crook just how different they were. No matter how easy it was to share a meal with her, how easy it was to imagine kissing her—and more than once he’d had to forcibly steer his brain away from that direction—she might as well be in Italy right now, for all the common ground they shared.
IT WAS ONLY nine o’clock by the time they’d tidied the tiny kitchen, but Crook felt wiped out. A man could only handle so much of Maggie’s full-on presence.
“Guess I’ll hit the sack,” he said. Turning, he found himself chest-to-chest with Maggie. “Uh, good night,” he said awkwardly.
Once again, she shocked him. She leaned in and kissed him hard on the lips. “Thanks for dinner. Good night…Harry?”
He wanted to be angry about the kiss, to tell her she’d breached their truce. To tell her if she tried anything like that again he’d arrest her for obstruction of justice.
Instead, light-headed, he shook his head to let her know she still hadn’t figured out his name.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN THEY LEFT for Seattle the next morning, Simon felt he was driving a perilously thin border between his own legitimate life and the wacky world of Maggie Stephens. For a start, he still hadn’t told her his name, though he’d spent nearly twenty-four hours in her company. That was weird in itself. But even weirder was that Simon derived some comfort from this anonymity. After all, he couldn’t be getting too interested in a woman if she didn’t even know his name.
Maggie didn’t make it easy to be with her. He could handle the whole-wheat toast and herbal tea for breakfast. He could even handle the tepid shower in the tiny bathroom that doubled as a laundry. But when she told him about her interstate phobia he began to wonder if he was losing his grip.
“What exactly is ‘fear of the interstate’?” he asked, having pulled off the road at her urgent request just as they were about to hit I-5.
“I can’t drive on those big roads,” she said. “It’s not just me. Thousands of people feel the same.”
Crook rolled his eyes, catching a glimpse of thousands of nonphobic people on the freeway above them as he did so. “You’re not driving. I am.”
“I can’t be on it at all. It’s tachophobia, the fear of speed,” she elaborated. “That’s what Holly says. Though I’m not scared of all speed, just interstates.”
Any other man would have dumped her at the side of the road and let her hitch, psychos or no psychos. Crook counted to ten, making sure to breathe evenly. “So what do we do?”
“There’s another road. Highway 101.”
He knew the road, though he’d never driven it. It would probably add an hour to their trip. With a sigh, he pulled back out into the traffic, headed away from the interstate.
“Thank you, Matthew.”
Simon shook his head. This was going to be a long trip.
An hour into the drive, a thought occurred to him. “Will your fear of speed stop you from flying to Italy?”
“I’ve flown before without a problem,” she said. “I met Andrew, Holly’s father, when we were both in the Peace Corps in Tonga. Flying was the only way to get there.”
“So your husband was something of an, er, idealist, too.”
“Maybe,” Maggie said. “I’d been with the Corps for three years when we met. It was Andrew’s first project and he left early, when my stint was up. I took it as a sign of his love for me rather than a lack of commitment to the cause.” She gazed out her window, as if intent on the view of the Columbia River. “Sometimes you ignore things that give you a clue to a person’s true nature. Maybe you just don’t want to know. But in your heart, you know the truth.”
She might be talking about hearts, but Crook knew she meant instinct. The thing he struggled with. If he had to go with his gut now, what would it tell him about Maggie?
She’s okay.
That’s not your gut, that’s your libido.
“You know, Crook, you’re not a bad guy.” Maggie’s husky drawl sent a shiver down his spine.
It seemed her thoughts had been running along the same lines as his, evaluating him as he tried to evaluate her. “I’m one of the good guys,” he reminded her. “On the side of right.”
“You’re on the side of the law. It’s not always right.”
He couldn’t in all conscience disagree with her. Hadn’t he seen instances where the law had prevailed and the outcome had been just plain wrong? Still, he didn’t want to give that much away, so he grunted.
“You could have refused to bring me along today,” she said.
“You mean, I had a choice?”
She smiled. “You did a good thing. Maybe not the right thing, but a good thing.”
“I wanted to question you, find out more about you and Holly.” He couldn’t let her believe he’d given her a ride just because he was a nice guy.
“I know. But you could have insisted on taking the interstate.”
“You might have done something stupid, like jump out of a moving car.”
Maggie closed her eyes and smiled. Crook’s unassuming nature appealed to something inside her. She reminded herself that any flirtation with the FBI agent was merely a distraction. She could throw as many phobias and other delays into this journey as she wanted, but it didn’t change the facts. At the other end was the daughter who Maggie was certain would reject whatever she
offered.
The daughter who needed her.
“IT’S ONLY A PLEA hearing.” Jared’s rough whisper told Holly she was losing her grip.
She took a slow, deep breath, squared her shoulders and lifted her chin from where it almost grazed her chest. Yes, she was in a courtroom. But she’d done nothing wrong. She was not her mother.
“Attagirl,” Jared said.
She frowned at him. “Don’t patronize me. I have nothing to feel guilty about—I’m not the one parked illegally right outside the courthouse.”
He grinned. “That’s more like it.”
Her attorney made a shushing sound as the judge entered the courtroom and they all stood.
Special Agent Crook outlined the case against Holly, who pleaded not guilty, and her attorney promised, more out of hope than certainty, a compelling case that would prove her client’s innocence.
“I presume there is no custody requirement?” the judge asked.
Holly sucked in a breath. Her lawyer had assured her she wouldn’t be taken into custody, but still, hearing the question was a shock.
“Your Honor,” the prosecutor said, “we consider Ms. Stephens to be a flight risk, and that remanding her into custody would be the best—”
“Your Honor.” Holly’s lawyer was on her feet. “My client is prepared to meet whatever bail conditions the court requires. She is determined to defend herself against these charges, of which she is completely innocent.”
The judge took a moment to scrutinize Holly. Just when she thought he was going to have them drag her away to a cell, he gave her a small smile and then his face resumed its former stern lines. “I am prepared to accept the defendant is not a flight risk, but the public expects those accused of financial crimes to be treated no more leniently than anyone else. The defendant is charged with stealing a sum beyond the imagining of most Americans, so is released on bail of five hundred thousand dollars,” he declared.