“I didn’t know.”
“That was the way he wanted it. He didn’t want you kids near those boys. Tripp was the exception. Your daddy took it hard when he turned on him.” She looked out the window. “Some of those boys were one-hit wonders, waiting for their call back into the spotlight. A few of them were at Luke Powell’s party.”
That got my attention. “Were any of them Max Goodwin’s clients?”
“Most of your father’s country music clients came from Max.”
I cringed. “I can’t believe Daddy worked with a snake like him.”
“He hated that man.”
“Then why did he work with him?”
“I asked him that question a million times, and the answer was always the same—the money. But I knew he was lying. I suspected Max had something on your father and kept him on a line.”
“What could he possibly have had on him?”
“I don’t know, but the reins began to chafe at the end, and I know your daddy had had just about enough. Maybe Max figured it out and that’s what happened to him.”
A month ago, I would have denied the possibility that my father could have done something horrible enough to be blackmailed. Now I wasn’t so sure. But if Max had known my father well, Max must’ve known who I was before he invited me to dinner in New York a couple of years ago. Which meant he’d known full well he was hitting on Brian Steele’s daughter.
Disgusting.
But that also meant Momma knew exactly who he was when she saw him at Luke Powell’s party, and she’d said nothing. Nothing then and nothing after he was murdered.
Why?
I parked in the lot behind the catering kitchen and handed Momma the keys after I turned off the engine.
She took them and held on to my hand. “There’s something else we need to discuss.”
“What?”
“The business. What role do you want to play?” Her eyes held mine, showing no emotion.
“I’d like to be part of it,” I said. “I know I can’t cook worth crap, but I think there’s still a role for me.”
She nodded and a small grin lifted her lips. “I agree. You’ll take on that role tonight, and I’ll train you.”
“Okay . . .”
She seemed to have more energy as she opened the car door and strutted across the parking lot to the back door, but before she opened it, she turned back to me. “No one else knows about that house I brought you to.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“I know. But I still needed to say that. No one. No. One.”
I grinned despite myself. “I’m well aware that anyone and no one are synonymous in this instance. But don’t you think you should tell someone?”
“Who am I going to tell? Buying a house and storing paperwork in the basement isn’t exactly illegal.”
“But it’s mighty suspicious.”
She frowned. “We’ve got work to do.” Then she pushed open the door and walked into the kitchen, although it was obvious she wasn’t up to her usual energy level. Two of the kitchen help was already there—a young woman who was saving up money to go to culinary school and a middle-aged woman who had confessed to me the first week I started helping that she didn’t need the money. She was just bored. They were helping Tilly prepare tonight’s menu—some kind of chicken, accompanied by several vegetable options and, judging by the smell filling the room, Tilly’s homemade dinner rolls.
“Listen up,” Momma said in a booming voice. “Magnolia’s takin’ charge tonight.”
“What?” I gasped.
The kitchen staff grumbled, but the grin on Tilly’s face told me she was pleased. At least someone was happy.
Momma pulled a clipboard off its nail on the wall and handed it to me. “This is tonight’s menu. I’ll tell you how long each item takes to prepare, and you can write it down next to it. Tilly knows how to make sure everything’s done on time, but she much prefers the cooking while I like the managing.”
“You mean bossing people around,” Tilly said.
Momma shrugged with a glint in her eyes. “That too.”
I leaned close to Momma and whispered, “I can’t boss these people around.”
“Why the hell not?” Momma asked in a not-so-quiet voice.
“Because I don’t know what the heck I’m doing.”
“Well, you’re about to get a crash course.”
She wasn’t lying about the crash part. I spent the next half hour taking charge of the kitchen, preparing for tonight’s event—a church banquet in Brentwood. She told me what to do half the time but let me fumble through the rest. Colt walked in through the back door at five. He stopped and did a double take when he heard me telling one of the staff how to order the pans.
He stopped in his tracks. “Is it bring-your-daughter-to-work day and somebody let Magnolia pretend to be Lila?”
Tilly laughed. “Something like that.”
I shot him a glare, but couldn’t hold it for long. If he was teasing me, he must have gotten over his sullen mood.
Colt started loading the van, and once it was ready, we left the two women to clean up the kitchen. He and I rode together while Momma and Tilly took Tilly’s car. When we arrived at the church, the waitstaff had already begun setting up, but Momma had me take charge for the rest of the night. Part of it was that she wanted to train me, but I couldn’t help wondering if she was also too tired to do it herself. She spent a good portion of the night sitting in a chair against a wall, and I caught her dozing more often than not.
I made quite a few mistakes and pissed off the staff—not that I could blame them—but I’d started feeling more confident by the time we finished. As we started to load up the vans to go back to the catering office, Momma’s face beamed with pride. “You did well, Magnolia. Better than I expected.”
“Thanks, Momma.” Her approval meant a lot.
“Do you like doing it? I don’t want you doin’ this because you think it’s what I want. I want you to want it.”
“I liked it more than I expected,” I said honestly. “And while part of me hated you for tossing me into the deep end, I also know why you did it.”
She smiled, but she still looked so exhausted . . .
“Momma, Colt and I have the cleanup covered. Why don’t you and Tilly head home?”
She started to protest, but then she conceded. “Okay.”
Colt didn’t look very pleased with my suggestion, but he kept his mouth shut.
“Leave the dishes for tomorrow,” Tilly said. “We’ll wash them in the morning.” Then Momma and Tilly walked out the back door and into the parking lot.
Colt stepped up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. “She’s not looking good, Maggie Mae.”
“I know,” I said as I gnawed on my bottom lip. She’d gotten worse so quickly. How much longer did we have left?
Colt dropped his hand and grabbed a pan off the counter. “I can’t believe you volunteered us to finish cleaning up.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the screen.
I put a hand on my hip. “You got a hot date?”
He glanced up. “What?” Then he gave me a sly grin. “I’m going to listen to a friend play in Nashville. I would have asked you, but you’re sleeping with Hot Stuff.”
I didn’t believe him for a minute. He’d set up that meeting with his contact, and the guy was supposed to pick up the bar of gold at eleven. Had Colt already dropped it off? Would he have risked leaving the remaining bar of gold behind a metal drum all this time? Doubtful. Otherwise, the person behind the cameras could have picked it up hours ago. Colt probably planned on lying in wait to see who showed up. “Who’s the friend?”
“You don’t know him.”
“Obviously. I don’t know any of your friends.” And I hardly knew anything about them either.
“Let’s hurry or I’m gonna be late.” He grabbed a pan and headed out the back door. The two remaining waitstaff helped pack up the rest
of the linens and dinnerware.
Ten minutes later, we were both in the van and headed back to the catering kitchen. Colt bounced his leg most of the way, checking the time every thirty seconds or so. When he pulled into the parking lot, he turned off the engine and shoved the keys into his pocket.
“Why don’t you go unlock the back door and turn on the lights,” he said as he opened the driver’s door. “I’ll help unload the pans and then take off.”
“Why are you so antsy?” I asked. “You don’t usually get so excited over women.”
“I told you I’m going to listen to a friend, and he starts playing at eleven.”
He didn’t fool me for a minute. He’d set his trap, and now he was intent on watching it. I’d struggled most of the evening, wondering whether to confront him with what I knew, but in the end, I had decided to keep playing dumb and follow him. If Owen was behind the cameras, Colt was walking into danger. If he wouldn’t let me walk in there with him, side by side, then at least I’d have his back. So to speak. I didn’t have a weapon, but surely there was something I could do to help. I couldn’t let him go alone.
“You head home,” Colt said. “We can just come in early to clean out the rest tomorrow morning.”
“I can’t. I have to work at Ava’s Bible study.”
Colt opened the back doors of the van as I unlocked the kitchen door. After I went inside and turned on a few lights, I came back out to help Colt carry in the pans. Once we got them all inside, I opened the back door and said, “Why don’t you go? I’d hate for you to miss hearing your friend.”
“Thanks,” Colt said, running for his truck. “I owe you.”
He was going to owe me all right.
I grabbed a pan and put it into the commercial sink, then hurried over to the still-open back door and watched out of the crack as Colt steered out of the parking lot.
He wasn’t going to pull one over on me.
I locked up the kitchen and ran over to my car, but when I turned the key . . . nothing. The engine didn’t turn over, and the interior lights didn’t come on. The battery was dead.
Dammit.
This had the stink of Colt all over it. I knew I hadn’t left the lights on to drain the battery, which meant he must’ve messed with my engine. I climbed out of the car and popped the hood, grateful the overhead lights in the parking lot were bright enough to illuminate the engine.
My phone rang in my pocket. I expected to see Colt’s name on the screen, and even had a few choice curses prepared for him, but I saw Brady’s name instead.
“Hey,” I said as I lifted the hood of my car. “Sorry I haven’t checked in yet.”
“I was calling to see when you thought you might be home.”
Home. Brady’s apartment wasn’t home. Still, I liked the idea of having a home with someone. A peaceful, settled life. Brady could give me that, couldn’t he?
My mind shifted to Colt, but I immediately threw the idea out. Guys like Colt were dead end—I knew that.
But at the moment, I had bigger issues to deal with, like the fact that Colt had disconnected my battery cables. At least it was an easy fix. “I’m not sure.”
“Surely you’re not still at the church. I know the dinner was finished over an hour ago.”
I froze with my hand on the first battery cable. “How did you know that?”
“I’m not keeping tabs on you,” he added quickly. “It just so happens that I have a friend who goes to the church you catered. I’d mentioned that your mother owns the catering business, and he called a few minutes ago to tell me how impressed he was.”
“Huh.” That was a huge coincidence, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. I’d always been independent—even before my move to New York—and it felt suffocating to have someone monitoring my every move. Even if his intentions were good.
“So where are you?”
How was I going to explain that I would be another hour or more? I was tired of coming up with lies. I made a snap decision. “I’m not coming over tonight,” I said, grabbing one of the battery clamps and hoping I put it on the right screw. “I’m going to stay with my mom.”
“Maggie, if I pushed too hard—”
“It’s not you,” I said. “It’s just . . . you saw my mother today. It’s like she aged ten years in only a few days. I feel like I need to stay close to her right now.”
“Okay. I understand. Will you let me know when you’re safely locked inside your mother’s house?”
“Yeah.” I clamped the next cable to the battery. “But I have to clean up the catering kitchen first, so it might be a while.”
“Okay. Just be safe.”
“I will.” I hung up and let the hood slam shut before climbing behind the wheel. Closing my eyes and crossing my fingers, I turned the key, hoping Colt hadn’t messed with anything else. The engine turned over and purred.
I smacked the dashboard. “Take that, Colt Austin.”
Chapter 12
I headed toward the industrial park. While I knew where it was, I wasn’t familiar with the area, and I needed to park my car far enough away that Colt wouldn’t see me.
When I got to Cool Springs Boulevard, I turned off and parked in the Starbucks parking lot to make a plan. I found a map of the industrial park on my phone. It consisted of four buildings—three were in a row, and the fourth was perpendicular to them. There was a street on the east side of the complex, and there was an apartment building to the south. A strip mall lay to the north and a residential neighborhood to the west—the back side. I’d seen bigger, but I had no idea where space #145 was located, and most industrial parks were wide open with few places to hide.
Dammit.
First things first—I had to figure out where to park. After studying the map, I decided to leave my car in the lot of the apartment building next to the industrial park. Then I’d walk over and slink into the shadows.
Finding a parking spot was harder than I’d expected, but I finally parked on the side of the building, away from the main street, and looked at the time. 10:45. I was cutting it close.
I got out, leaving my purse on the floorboard of the car, and shoved my keys into my pants pocket. According to the satellite map on my phone, the buildings were accessible through a thin line of trees that bordered the apartment parking lot. Thankfully, it was late enough on a weeknight that there’d be no one around to question why I was slinking off through the woods. Unfortunately, it also meant that there was no way of seeing the spiderwebs until I stepped into them. The slow drizzle that began to fall from the sky didn’t help matters.
When I broke through the other side, I was at the south end of the industrial park, facing the corner of the first of the three buildings in a row. A semitruck was parked next to the first building and a Dumpster was against the wall of the second. There were no vehicles or anything flush to the side of the third building. The industrial park was wide open, so at least that direction provided places to hide. Torn over which way to go, I decided to walk the length of the building before deciding.
I stayed in the shadows and began to inch my way down the length of the building, trying not to slip on the damp grass as I searched for Colt’s truck, not finding it. If he was here, he was in the back. I could march in bold as I pleased, but that seemed like a bad idea. Better to hang back in the shadows and slink my way in.
Since time was getting away from me, I took off running along the tree line, moving back the way I’d come—toward the south end of the park. I bolted for the semitruck, slipping between it and the building, and then inched along until I could peer into the alley between the first and second buildings. Nothing.
Colt had said he was putting the gold behind a barrel at space #145. I needed to get my bearings. The building next to me had multiple garage doors along the building—like a storage unit—with numbers in the three hundreds, starting with #331. The building across from me had a mixture of the garage doors as well as metal, regular entry doors. The first spa
ce was marked #230. A quick calculation told me I needed to go to the back alley.
Glancing in all directions, I made sure no one else was in view before I ran across the alley to the second building. There was no room to slide between the Dumpster and the building, so I skirted it, ducking into the shadows on the other side as the rain began to fall in earnest. The alley sloped down, making the back side of the building a good three feet taller than the front.
I took a deep breath and peeked around the corner. There was another semitruck parked in front of a loading dock, its back end to the industrial garage door. A wrought iron fence ran along the edge of the alley, which was wider than the other alleys I’d seen. The sound of an approaching car on the other side of the industrial park kicked up my adrenaline. If it came my way, I’d be discovered, but if it went the other direction, it would be completely out of my field of vision. Which meant I’d miss seeing the cameraman if it was him. Or her.
I ran for the semi.
When I reached the truck, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled under the trailer, then hid behind the side-by-side set of giant tires on the back end, molding myself around the axle. At least I was out of the rain, but enough rain had seeped into my shirt to plaster it to my arms and shoulders. My ponytail dripped a line of water down my neck.
Light showered down from a street light at the end of the building, illuminating the figure of a man who was glancing in my direction. It was Colt.
As the roar of the approaching car grew louder, I realized my mistake. If each building had thirty spaces on every side, #145 would be right around the middle—where I was currently hiding.
Torn between locating the metal drum where Colt had supposedly hidden the gold, and hiding from the headlights of the approaching car, I chose self-preservation.
Call Back: Magnolia Steel Mystery #3 (Magnolia Steele Mystery) Page 13