Tangled Up in You

by Rachel Gibson

  Meg. That’s how she knew her. From photos of Rose. If Mick was the image of Loch, Meg looked a lot like her mother. The tingles on the back of her neck spread down her spine as if she were looking into the eyes of a killer. Her mother’s killer, but of course Meg was as innocent as she was herself. “That’s right.”

  “I’ve read your books before. You write about serial killers. The real sensational stuff. My mother wasn’t a serial killer.”

  Maddie didn’t want to do this here. Not in the middle of a drugstore with Carleen looking on. “Perhaps you’d like to talk about this somewhere else.”

  Meg shook her head and her dark hair swung about her shoulders. “My mother was a good person.”

  That was open for debate, but not in the middle of Value Rite. “I’m writing a fair account of what happened.” And she was. She’d written some hard truths about her mother that she could have easily glossed over.

  “I hope so. I know Mick doesn’t want to talk to you about this. I understand how he feels, but you’re obviously going to write this book with or without our input.” She dug around in her purse and pulled out a pen and a silver gum wrapper. “I don’t get why you think my parents’ deaths are worthy of a novel, but you do,” she said as she wrote on the white side of the gum wrapper. “But call me if you have questions.”

  Maddie wasn’t easily shocked, but when Meg handed her the wrapper, she was so stunned that she didn’t know what to say. She glanced at the telephone number and folded the paper in half.

  “You’ve probably talked to that waitress’s relatives.” Meg shoved her pen back inside her purse and her black hair fell across her pale cheek. “I’m sure they told you lies about my family.”

  “Alice only has one living relative. Her daughter.”

  Meg looked up and pushed her hair behind one ear. “I don’t know what she could tell you. Nobody around here even remembers her. She probably turned out just like her home-wrecking mother.”

  Maddie’s grasp tightened on the handle of her shopping cart, but she managed a pleasant smile. “She’s as much like her mother as I imagine you are like yours.”

  “I’m nothing like my mother.” Meg stood up straighter and her voice got a bit more strident. “My mother killed her cheating husband. I divorced mine.”

  “Too bad your mother didn’t consider divorce a better option.”

  “Sometimes a person is pushed too far.”

  Bullshit. Maddie had heard that excuse from every sociopath she’d ever interviewed. The old “she pushed me too far so I stabbed her a hundred and fifty times” excuse. She slid the gum wrapper into her pants pocket and asked, “What was it about your father’s affair with Alice Jones that pushed your mother too far?”

  Maddie expected the same response she’d got ten every time she asked that question. A shrug of the shoulders. Instead Meg got busy digging in her purse once more. She pulled out a set of keys and folded her arms across her chest.

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head.

  She’s lying. Maddie looked into Meg’s green eyes and Meg turned her gaze to bags of Purina ONE and Beggin’ Strips. She knew something. Something she didn’t want to talk about.

  “Only three people know what really happened that night. My dad, my mom, and that waitress. They’re all dead.” Meg stuck one finger through the ring and closed her fingers around the keys. “But if you want to know the truth about my mom and dad’s life, call me and I’ll clear things up for you,” she said and turned to walk away.

  “Thank you. I will,” Maddie answered even though she wasn’t a bit fooled by Meg’s eagerness to help, and she doubted that she’d get the entire truth about Rose and Loch’s life. She’d get Meg’s version, which Maddie was sure would be shaded and glossed over.

  She pushed her cart to the checkout line and put her items on the counter. Mick had mentioned that his sister could be difficult. Did she suffer the same mental instability as Rose? Maddie had felt Meg’s hostility and resentment toward Maddie’s mother and even herself. Meg had refused to even say Alice’s name, but she knew something about that night. Maddie was sure of it. Whatever it was, Maddie would find out. She’d extracted secrets from people a hell of a lot smarter and with more to lose than Meg Hennessy.

  When Maddie walked into the house after being gone all day, the carcass of a dead mouse greeted her. Last week, Ernie’s Pest Control had finally made it out and laid bait. As a result, Maddie kept finding dead mice all over the place. She set her Value Rite bags on the kitchen counter, then tore off some paper towels. She grabbed the mouse by its tail and carried it outside to the garbage cans.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Maddie looked over her shoulder, into the deep shadows created by towering ponderosas, and her gaze landed on two boys dressed up like mini-commandos.

  She held up the mouse. “Throwing this in the trash.”

  Travis Hennessy scratched his cheek with the barrel of a green Nerf gun. “Did its head pop off?”

  “Sorry. No.”

  “Bummer.”

  She dropped the carcass into the garbage.

  “My mom and dad are going to Boise,” Pete informed her. “’Cause my aunt had her babies.”

  Maddie turned and looked at Pete. “Really? That’s great news.”

  “Yeah, and Pete is spending the night at my house.”

  “My dad’s taking us to Travis’s in three shakes. He says my uncle Nick needs a drink.” Pete loaded his plastic camouflaged rifle with an orange rubber dart. “The babies’ names are Isabel and Lilly.”

  “Do you know if—”

  Louie called for the boys and interrupted Maddie. “See ya,” they said in unison, then turned on the heels of their sneakers and took off through the trees.

  “’Bye.” She replaced the garbage can lid and walked back into the house. She washed her hands and disinfected the floor where she’d found the carcass. It was after seven and she threw a chicken breast on her George Foreman Grill. She made a salad and drank two glasses of wine with her meal. She’d had a long day, and after she ate and put the dishes in the dishwasher, she changed out of her clothes and into a pair of blue Victoria’s Secret lounging pants with the word pink printed across her butt. She zipped up a blue hooded sweatshirt and pulled her hair back in a ponytail.

  A yellow legal pad sat on her desk, and she grabbed it before turning on a few lamps and relaxing on her sofa. As she reached for the remote, she thought about Meg and their conversation in the middle of Value Rite. If Meg had lied about knowing what had set her mother off, she’d lie about other things too. Things that Maddie might not be able to prove or disprove.

  Cold Case Files on A&E flashed on the television screen and Maddie tossed the remote on the sofa beside her. She put her feet up on the coffee table and jotted down her impressions of Meg. Then she wrote a list of questions she intended to ask and got as far as “What do you recall about the night your parents died?” when the doorbell rang.

  It was nine-thirty, and she looked through the peephole at the only man who’d ever been in her house or stood on her porch. It had been over a week since she’d kissed Mick inside his office at Mort’s. Eight days since he’d untied her dress and made her ache for him. Tonight he wasn’t wearing his happy face, but her body didn’t seem to mind.

  A sharp tug pulled deep in the pit of her belly as she opened the door.

  “I just talked to Meg,” he said as he stood there with his hands on his hips, all male belligerence and seething testosterone.

  “Hello, Mick.”

  “I thought I made it clear that you stay away from my sister.”

  “And I thought I made it clear that I don’t take orders from you.” Maddie folded her arms beneath her breasts and simply looked at him. The first pale shadows of night painted him in a faint gray light and made his eyes appear a startling blue. Too bad he was so bossy.

  They stared at each other for several prolonged moments before he dropped his hands t
o his sides and said, “Are we going to stand here all night staring at each other? Or are you going to invite me in?”

  “Maybe.” She’d invite him in eventually, but she wasn’t going to be all happiness and sunshine about it. “Are you going to be rude?”

  “I’m never rude.”

  She lifted a brow.

  “I’ll try to be nice.”

  Which was kind of half-assed, Maddie thought. “Are you going to try and keep your tongue out of my mouth?”

  “That depends. Are you going to keep your hands off my dick?”

  “Jerk.” She turned and walked into the living room, leaving him to let himself in.

  The yellow legal pad sat face up on the coffee table and she turned it over as he came into the room.

  “I know Meg told you to call her.”

  Maddie reached for the remote and turned off Cold Case. “Yes, she did.”

  “You can’t.”

  She straightened. It was so typical of him to think he could tell her what to do. He stood in her house, tall and imposing, as if he were king of her castle. “I thought you might have learned by now that I don’t follow your orders.”

  “This isn’t a game, Maddie.” He wore a black Mort’s polo shirt tucked into a pair of Levi’s resting low on his hips. “You don’t know Meg. You don’t know how she gets.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me?”

  “Right,” he scoffed. “So you can write about her in your book?”

  “I told you that I’m not writing about you or your sister.” She sat on the arm of the sofa and put one foot on the coffee table. “Frankly, Mick, you’re just not that interesting.” Lord, that was such a lie she was surprised her nose didn’t grow.

  He looked down at her. “Uh-huh.”

  She placed a hand on her chest. “I stayed away from Meg just like you wanted me to, but she approached me. I didn’t approach her.”

  “I know that.”

  “She’s a grown woman. Older than you, and she can certainly decide whether or not to talk to me.”

  He moved to the French doors and looked out at the deck and the lake beyond. Light from the lamp near the sofa touched his shoulder and the side of his face. “She might be older, but she’s not always predictable.” He was silent a few moments, then he turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. His voice changed: gone was the demanding tone when he asked, “How do you know my mother’s footprints were all over the bar that night? Is it in a police report?”

  Maddie slowly rose. “Yes.”

  She barely heard his next question. “What else?”

  “There are photographs of her footprints.”

  “Jesus.” He shook his head. “I meant, what else was in the report?”

  “The usual. Everything from time of arrival to positions of the bodies.”

  “How long did my father live?”

  “About ten minutes.”

  He rested his weight on one foot and folded his arms across his big chest. He was silent for several more seconds before he said, “She could have called an ambulance and maybe saved his life.”

  “She could have.”

  Across the short distance, he looked at her. This time a wealth of emotion burned in his blue eyes. “Ten minutes is a long time for a wife to watch her husband suffer and bleed to death.”

  She took a few steps toward him. “Yes.”

  “Who called the police?”

  “Your mother did. Right before she shot herself.”

  “So she made sure my father and the waitress were dead before she called.”

  Maddie stopped. “The waitress had a name.”

  “I know.” A sad smile curved one corner of his lips. “Growing up, my grandmother always called her ‘the waitress.’ It’s just a habit.”

  “You didn’t know any of this?”

  He shook his head. “My grandmother didn’t talk about things that were unpleasant. Believe me, my mother murdering my father and Alice Jones were at the top of the list of things we didn’t talk about.” He turned his gaze outside. “And you have photographs.”

  “Yes.”

  “Here?”

  She thought about her answer and decided to tell the truth. “Yes.”

  “What else?”

  “Besides the police reports and crime scene photos, I have interviews, newspaper accounts, diagrams, and the coroner’s report.”

  Mick opened the French doors and stepped outside. Soaring ponderosa pines cast black shadows across the deck, chasing away the muted grays of dusk. A slight breeze scented the night with pine and lifted strands of Mick’s hair where it touched his forehead. “I went to the library when I was about ten, thinking I’d get a look at old newspaper reports, but the librarian was a friend of my grandmother’s. So I left.”

  “Have you seen any accounts of that night?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to see them?”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t have a lot of memories of my parents, and reading about what happened that night would ruin those that I do have.”

  She didn’t have a lot of memories of her mother either. Recently, with the help of the diaries, a few had come back. “Maybe not.”

  He laughed without humor. “Until you blew into town, I didn’t know that my mother watched my father die. I didn’t know she hated him that much.”

  “She probably didn’t hate him. Both love and hate are very powerful emotions. People kill the people they love all the time. I don’t understand it, but I know that it happens.”

  “That isn’t love. It’s something else.” He walked to the dark edge of the deck and his hands gripped the wood railing. Across the lake, the moon began to rise over the mountains and reflected a perfect mirror image into the smooth water. “Until you came to town, everything was buried in the past where it belonged. Then you started digging and prying and it’s all anybody around here can talk about now. Just like when I was growing up.”

  She moved toward him and leaned her butt into the rail. She folded her arms beneath her breasts and looked up into the darkening outline of his face. She was so close, his hand rested next to her behind on the railing. “Other than in your own house, I take it the subject of your mother and father used to come up a lot.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Is that why you fought all the time?”

  He looked into her eyes and laughed without sound. “Maybe I just liked fighting.”

  “Or maybe you didn’t like people saying unkind things about your family.”

  “You think you know me. You think you have me all figured out.”

  She shrugged one shoulder. Yeah, she knew him. In some regards, she imagined they’d lived mirror lives. “I think it must have been hell to live in a town where everyone knows that your mother killed your father and his young lover. Children can be very cruel. That’s not just a clichй, it’s true. Believe me, I know. Kids are mean.”

  The breeze blew a few long strands of hair across Maddie’s cheek and Mick raised a hand and brushed them from her face. “What did they do? Not pick you for kickball?”

  “I didn’t get picked for anything. I was a little pudgy.”

  He pushed her hair behind her ear. “A little?”

  “A lot.”

  “How much did you weigh?”

  “I don’t know, but in the sixth grade I got a really awesome pair of black boots. My calves were too big and I couldn’t zip them up all the way. So I folded them down, deluding myself that everyone would think they were supposed to be worn that way. They weren’t fooled and I never wore the boots again. That was the year they started calling me Cincinnati Maddie. At first I was just so happy they weren’t calling me Fattie Maddie anymore. Then I found out why they called me that and I wasn’t so happy.” Through the dusky space that separated them, he raised an inquiring dark brow and she explained, “They said I was so fat because I ate Cincinnati.”

  “The little bastards.” He dropped
his hand. “No wonder you’re so ornery.”

  Was she ornery? Maybe. “What’s your excuse?”

  She felt his gaze touch her face for several moments before he answered, “I’m not as ornery as you.”

  “Right,” she scoffed.

  “Well, I wasn’t until you moved to town.”

  “Long before I moved to town you were giving Sheriff Potter hell.”

  “Growing up in this town was sometimes hell.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “No, you can’t.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “People have wondered my whole life if I was going to lose it like my mom and kill someone. Or if I’d grow up and be like my dad. That’s a hard thing for a kid to live with.”

  “Do you ever worry about that?”

  He shook his head. “No. I never do. My mother’s problem, one of them, was that she never should have put up with a guy who repeatedly cheated on her. And my old man’s problem was he never should have married at all.”

  “So your solution is to avoid marriage?”

  “That’s right.” He sat beside her on the railing and took her hand into his. “Kind of like you solved your fat problem by avoiding carbs.”

  “It’s different. I’m a hedonist and I have to avoid more than just carbs.” At the moment, her hedonist nature felt the warmth of his palm spread up her arm and across her chest.

  “You’re avoiding sex too.”

  “Yes, and if I fall off either of those wagons, it could get ugly.”

  “How ugly?”

  He was suddenly too close and she stood. “I’d binge.”

  “On sex?”

  She tried to pull her hand away, but he tightened his grasp. “Or carbs.”

  He grabbed the bottom of her sweatshirt with his free hand. “On sex?”

  “Yeah.”

  Through the darkness that separated them, he flashed a white seductive smile. “How ugly will you get?” Slowly, he drew her toward him until she stood between his thighs.

  The warmth of his hand, the touch of his thighs, and his wicked smile conspired to pull her in, suck out her will to resist, and shove her headfirst off the wagon. Her breasts felt heavy, her skin tight, and the relentless ache that Mick had created the first time he had kissed her hit her now, sharp, painful, and overwhelming.