Suzie-Sue’s baby blues narrowed on me and her tone became all prissy. “Detective Bishop’s not available right now.”
My blood pressure climbed a notch.
Of course he wasn’t available. He’d probably dragged Mrs Biggenhill in straight after he was done mauling Mrs Colby. Oh dear Lord, who else had I incriminated? I couldn’t think of anyone right now, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t. In any case, the things I’d said about the Daggon-Biggenhill saga overshadowed anything and everyone else. If anyone had motive for murder, it was poor Mrs Biggenhill.
Suzie-Sue popped her gum and went back to admiring her nails.
I rounded the long reception desk, my eye on the swing doors behind. Unfortunately, Suzie-Sue was not that engrossed in her manicure. She reached the doors before I did and spread-eagled herself in front of them like a mother bear protecting her cubs.
She was also a whole lot couple of inches shorter than me, which allowed me to glare down on her with serious intent.
“Let me through,” I pushed through gritted teeth. This was ridiculous. Did Suzie-Sue even work here? I was pretty sure she’d still been in kindergarten when I’d graduated high school.
She gulped, and I think she might have swallowed her gum, but she didn’t budge. “I can’t let you go back there.”
“Then fetch the detective,” I said. “Tell him it’s me and I need to talk to him right away. It’s urgent.”
“I told you, he isn’t—”
“Oh, for goodness sake!” My fingers itched to throttle her. “For all you know, this could be a real emergency.”
“Aha.” She brought one arm down to point a finger at me. “You wouldn’t have said that if this was a real emergency.”
I’d forgotten about that. Suzie-Sue had a sharp mind to go with that sassy mouth.
The door behind her swung inward, nearly taking her with it. Jack put a hand out to prop her upright again as he looked over her shoulder to me.
“What’s going on?” he asked, his brow wrinkling. “Has something happened?”
“Nothing like that,” I assured him. “I’m looking for Detective Bishop and I don’t care if he’s busy, Jack, I really need to talk to him right now.”
“You just missed him.” He nudged Suzie-Sue gently aside so he could get past. “He took a team up to Hollow House.”
“Who does he plan to arrest next?” I spluttered. “Burns?”
“Hey there,” Jack said, looking mightily concerned, “are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I snapped back and I didn’t wait around for his response.
I hurled myself about and stormed out of the station, flying down the passage and breaking into a full-on sprint before I reached the bottom of the town hall steps.
I was acting like a madwoman, I knew that, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I wasn’t just mad, I was scared. I’d indulged in plenty of harmless gossip over the years, but this was serious. I’d shot my mouth off and now people were being harassed by the cops. Visions of Mrs Biggenhill pleading her innocence on death row swam inside my head. My stomach soured and I ran faster, as if I could save the world if I could just catch up to Detective Bishop.
I didn’t pause for breath, not until I came up around the back of Hollow House and the moment I did, my legs turned to instant butter.
Holy crap, I’d just sprinted a half mile without even thinking about it.
Adrenaline was better than jet fuel. That adrenaline still coursed through my veins, but I’d burned off the edge.
On the side of the house, pulled up around the kitchen door, was an unmarked black van, a police cruiser and a black truck. The kitchen door was closed and guarded by a uniformed cop. Short brown hair and a neatly cropped beard, a face I didn’t recognize.
Before I could demand an explanation, he called out, “Please go around the front entrance, ma’am, police business.”
I walked around on my rubbery legs, sucking in gasps of air that my lungs desperately needed, but didn’t seem to want.
My phone chirped crickets at me. I slid it from the elastic inner pocket of my sweats. Between the blood-rush to my brain, the cramp in my side and the swat team at the back door, I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d hit the accept call button and put the phone to my ear before realizing it could be Miss Crawley, the last person on earth I was in the mood to talk to.
“Ms Storm?” queried a pleasant female voice. “I’m calling from Desson, Bright & Russel.”
“Speaking,” I said, vaguely recalling something about the name Bright.
Either way, it could only be one of the divorce lawyers I’d cold-called. What was it about legal firms that they always had to include everyone plus the kitchen sink in their name?
“I just wanted to let you know that we’ve had a cancellation and Mr Bright can see you this afternoon at three,” she went on. “If you can make it.”
My head developed a sudden ache.
“This afternoon’s impossible, I’m afraid,” I told her.
She sighed softly down the line. “Hmm, it’s short notice, I do understand, however if you can’t make it…” Silence for a moment, followed by, “The next available appointment is Tuesday, four-thirty?”
“Excellent, I’ll be there.” I hung up, belatedly aware she might have needed more details from me.
But I couldn’t think about Joe and the divorce now.
My phone beeped as I climbed the steps to the porch. I checked it and saw a text message from the law firm confirming my appointment for next week Tuesday.
Wonderful.
I was getting divorced next Tuesday.
Absolutely freaking wonderful.
The front door stood open and I walked in to find Burns behind the reception desk. On his feet and wide awake. He clutched the lapels of his jacket, his cheeks puffed up like indignant balloons, the confounded look on his face slightly stirred and thoroughly shaken.
That just made me madder.
“Where is he?” I said. “Where’s Detective Bishop?”
“Ms Daggon’s room, last I saw,” Burns murmured. “They could be crawling all over the house by now. I didn’t know if I should stop them, Ms Storm. They have a search warrant.”
A search warrant? “Where’s Mr Hollow?”
“He went out this morning,” Burns said in a new extreme to that muted tone of his, swallowing more words than he spoke. “I’m not expecting him home until this evening.”
From the look of him, I’d assumed Burns understood the severity of the situation. But maybe not. “You need to call Mr Hollow at once.”
Burns shook his head. “He doesn’t believe in cell phones.”
“They’re not an urban myth, Burns.” I still had my phone in my hand and I held it up to show him.
“It’s the brain tumors he has a problem with, Ms Storm.”
“Of course it is,” I muttered in exasperation.
I didn’t want to deal with all this swat team search warrant crap. All I wanted was to set Detective Bishop straight on what I might or might not have said and get his grubby hands off innocent folk.
Burns just looked at me, white-knuckling his poor jacket lapels.
I threw my hands up. “Fine, I’ll just take care of everything while Mr Hollow enjoys his tumor-free day, shall I?”
“Would you?” Burns exhaled a sigh that pricked the balloons he’d been hiding in his cheeks. He sank into the chair behind the desk and released the death grip on his jacket to fold his arms and assume the napping position.
Apparently the man didn’t understand sarcasm.
I marched across the foyer and down the narrow hallway in a huff, my ears pricked for sounds that might filter from the stairs above. I swear, if I found strangers had crawled anywhere near my bedroom, my head would literally explode.
The kitchen swing doors had been propped open, the threshold crisscrossed with yellow crime scene tape. This was surreal. This kind of thing didn’t happen to norma
l people living normal lives in normal homes.
I pressed a finger to the tape and watched the action behind with a sense of ever-dwindling realism. Two men worked the room. One picked away at the charred remains inside the oven. The other appeared to be shopping in our pantry, packing all our groceries into olive green crates.
Plastic slippers wrapped their shoes.
White surgical masks and gloves covered their mouths and hands.
What were they afraid to contaminate? There was nothing left after the emergency sprinkler flood and Burns’ efficient mop.
“Ms Storm?”
I whirled about, slap bang against a granite slab of chest. With a small cry, I jumped back and my gaze shot up into Detective Bishop’s smoke-gray eyes.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. “And why are you taking all our food?”
“Everything’s being sent off for analysis. I’m afraid it’s not safe, anyway, not until we’ve identified the source.” He brought out that slow, warm smile of his, the one that invited you to come on in and trust him with your first born child. “I’ve been waiting for you or Mr Hollow to return before we start upstairs. We have a search warrant, but I prefer to keep things amiable where possible.”
No doubt he did. How else could he lure people in to ferret out their dark—innocent—secrets? I was onto this detective with the smile that softened his jaw and creased into his dreamy gray eyes.
I had a list a mile long, but the yellow crime scene tape jumped the queue. “The toxicology report came back?” I said, more of a demand than a question. “Was Ms Daggon poisoned? Is Hollow House a crime scene now?”
“How do you know about the toxicology reports?”
Uh oh.
The smile went out of his eyes as he rubbed his jaw, studying me. Maybe drawing lines from me to my best friend Jenna to her new boyfriend Jack. Nothing I’d divulged during that interview was sacred, and unfortunately I’d divulged just about everything.
Detective Bishop turned his shoulder on me and called down the passage, “Sanders!”
A uniform popped his head out from around the bend in the passage.
“I’ll be upstairs, starting with Ms Storm’s room,” the detective informed him. “Send Jeffers and Manderson up when they’re done in there.”
“Wait just a minute,” I blurted out.
He cocked his head at me, brow raised.
“I haven’t given you permission.”
“I don’t need it, remember?” he said, moving toward the foot of the staircase in a determined stride. “You’re welcome to come along and watch or stay down here. Your choice.”
I scurried after him, staring daggers into his back and bristling at the seams. My legs were still a bit rubbery, my lungs still starved of oxygen from my mad dash. The stairs were killing muscles I never knew I had.
At the top, I bent double to rub a cramp from my calf, clawing at the railing and breathing heavily. It wasn’t just the long drop from my adrenaline high. It was the swirl of anger and frustration, the cop invasion, the realization that Ms Daggon had likely been murdered one floor below while I slept.
I felt like I was spiraling out of control.
Detective Bishop stopped his striding to turn and watch my imminent collapse. His suit jacket hitched open as he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “If this is a delay tactic, Ms Storm, it won’t work.”
I glared up at him from my tilted position. The blasted man was about to go sniffing through my underwear drawer. Why on earth would I delay the inevitable when I wished it were already over?
“No one,” he explained to my genuine expression of cluelessness, “is that unfit.”
“Believe me, detective,” I said in what was meant to be a waspish tone but merely came out sounding like a woman in the final stages of labor, “I’m this unfit.”
“You wouldn’t think so to look at you,” he drawled, a grin melting into the ridges and dips of his jaw while his look grazed every inch of me from head to toe.
Then he was off again, striding down the long hallway until he came to my bedroom. “It’s this one, right?” he said, glancing back at me. “Mr Burns indicated it was right at the end.”
I straightened and nodded, and stood there a moment longer to regain my lost composure. When I finally slipped inside my bedroom, Detective Bishop was rifling through the cherry wood bachelor chest.
I leant against the wall just inside the door, wrapping my arms around my waist. If this were a movie, he’d pluck out a dainty piece of lace and dangle it with a leery gleam in his wicked eye. I almost wished he would. There was something too real about the way he methodically opened and closed each drawer with cool detachment.
“What exactly are you looking for?”
“This is an ongoing investigation, Ms Storm.” He left the chest of drawers and crossed to the wardrobe. “I can’t disclose that information.”
“But it’s okay to disclose everything I told you and use it against me,” I lashed out. “Funny that, I don’t remember you reading me my rights.”
“You weren’t arrested,” he said, his head hidden behind the wardrobe door. “What am I supposed to have used against you?”
“Not directly, maybe, but you hauled Mrs Colby in for questioning based on what I told you and don’t bother trying to deny it.”
“I’m not denying anything.”
“I told you those things in confidence,” I said. “I assumed it was off the record.”
“I’m not a journalist, Ms Storm, I don’t do off the record.”
“What about protecting your sources?” I was pretty sure even the FBI followed those rules.
He popped out from the wardrobe with my suitcase, regarding me with a concerned look as he brought it over to the bed. “You need protection?”
“I didn’t need to be ratted out,” I shot back. “Mrs Colby knew you’d gotten your information from me.”
“I don’t usually,” he said. “Mrs Colby denied any animosity toward Ms Daggon, swore the incident with her dog was an unfortunate accident. I was trying to get to the truth and I went too far.”
He looked at me, not smiling, not trying to win me over onto his side. “I’m sorry, Ms Storm. This is a small town and I realize that can make things awkward.”
An apology was the last thing I expected.
I didn’t even know what to do with it.
My blood was high and suddenly I had nothing left that needed fighting.
He seemed to take my stunned silence as an acceptance for his apology and went back to the task at hand, flicking the catches of my suitcase, flipping the lid open.
Something about his paws all over my battered suitcase cracked me, the suitcase that had taken me from this place and brought me back full-circle.
Everything hit me at once.
It wasn’t just Mrs Colby and Mrs Biggenhill.
My room was being searched. I was a suspect in a murder investigation. Joe had cheated on me. A stranger in my room, a detective rifling through my life for incriminating evidence, had the sensitivity to apologize for making my life awkward while the man who was supposed to love me forever and forever, the man I’d handed my heart over to, had callously crushed my life while I watched.
My legs gave way and I crumpled, sliding down the wall.
I curled into a ball, hugging my knees, my head buried. My throat closed, swollen with silent sobs that racked through me.
“Ms Storm?”
I peered up to see the detective hunched before me.
“I meant it,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”
I tried to talk, but couldn’t get a word out. I stared at him, but it wasn’t his rugged face I saw. My head had filled with the static picture of Joe and Chintilly caught in the throes of passion. Then the image dissolved and suddenly I was looking at what lay trapped behind Joe’s betrayal. The man before the fall, the one I’d wanted to grow old with. The Joe who’d always looked at me as if I were the most beautiful, most
special woman in the world to him. I’d had no tears for the cheating scumbag, but this Joe, well…
The hours we’d spent lost in each other, chatting about everything and nothing. The warmth of Joe wrapped around me. The love etched into every smile. The promises etched into every look.
Joe had hurt me, but he’d also loved me and that made it a hundred times worse. How could he have been so stupid, so careless with our love? Why couldn’t he be a man I’d have no trouble hating?
I put my head down as the sobs erupted, great big chunks of grief ripped straight from my heart.
“Ms Storm?” A hand landed on my shoulder. A wad of something soft—toilet tissue—was crammed into my fist. “Maddox, I’m done here. Okay? You’re not a suspect. Hell, I never considered you one, you know that, right? This is just routine.”
I shook Detective Bishop off and buried my head deeper into my arms.
“Is there anything I can do?” he said. “Someone I should call?”
“I’m fine,” I sobbed. “Please go.”
He went.
I stayed there in my ball, remembering every minute of everything I’d had and lost, feeling the loss to my bones, sobbing until I choked and then sobbing some more.
The next thing I knew, Jenna was at my side, throwing an arm around my shoulder, pulling me close. “Oh, Maddie Mad, I know, I know.”
“What are you doing here?” I blubbered.
“Detective Bishop swung by The Vine and said you needed me.”
For some silly reason, that just made me cry harder.
SEVEN
I have this to say about psychotic breakdowns. They cleanse the heart, purge the soul, blah blah blah, but they also leave you empty. I felt like a hole had opened up inside me, too big to ever fill.
Not that I didn’t intend to try.
I’d woken with a craving for a stack of Patty’s pancakes dripped in hot banana sauce.
The breakfast hour was long gone. The sun sat high in a pale blue sky and my weather app promised record temperatures for this time of year, but I had a chill wrapped around my bones that wasn’t letting go. So I pulled on jeans, my snuggly cable sweater and a pair of sneakers.
Worst Laid Plans (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 1) Page 7