Margie started sobbing hysterically, so Scott gave her some wet paper towels from the bathroom to clean her face, watching all the while to make sure she didn’t make a break for it when he left the room.
Hiccupping and occasionally letting out a ragged gasp, she eventually calmed down, eyed Scott shrewdly, and asked, “Why don’t you just arrest me, then?”
Scott shrugged, as if it mattered not in the least to him, and said, “I still might.”
“Why might you not arrest me?” she asked.
“I’m willing to offer you a deal,” Scott said, and watched her eyes light up at that.
Looking at her tearstained, swollen face, Scott was repelled by the predatory energy that jumped right back into her demeanor. She was willing to do anything, he was sure, to escape public shame and jail. Scott doubted she would ever repeat her confession, and didn’t think he could re-open the case and get Willy exonerated without it. He just wanted her to think it was possible.
“If you agree to sign a power of attorney document appointing a trustee to be in charge of your mother’s finances and medical care,” he concluded, “I will put all the evidence I have somewhere secure, and no one ever has to know.”
She was nodding to everything he said.
“I will,” she said. “I will.”
“But,” Scott warned her, “you give me even the smallest reason to doubt your sincerity where your mother is concerned, or get in the least bit of trouble somewhere else, and I will reopen the case and have you prosecuted.”
He barely listened to her as she promised to do all that, and thanked him, virtually prostrating herself before him.
“I have people watching your bank account, so don’t try anything funny there,” he warned her. “And when you get home you’ll find I’ve ordered private around-the-clock home health care until your mother can get moved to Pendleton, so you will never again be left alone with her. You will call in sick tomorrow, and take as much sick and vacation time as you have left until you can quit, and then you are never to step foot in this post office again, you understand?”
Scott could tell she was seething over what he had managed to do to the life she thought she had full control over, but she just kept agreeing to everything he said.
“I’ll be watching you and so will several other people, so don’t think you can do anything but what we have agreed upon today.”
Scott had the feeling that it was not safe to turn his back on her, and even if that was just paranoia, he honored it. He kept her in sight as she set the alarm, locked the back door, and handed him the keys. As she trudged around the corner towards home, Scott suddenly felt so weary his knees wobbled, and he felt the tiniest twinge of a headache.
Maggie was in her office, and didn’t look glad to see him when he arrived, but Scott was feeling so crappy he didn’t care. He ignored the look on her face that said “go away,” shut her office door, and plopped in the chair next to her desk.
“Do you have any aspirin or ibuprofen?” he asked her. “My head hurts.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t,” Maggie said. “Where are your migraine pills?”
“At home,” he said. “I’ll run up and get one in a minute, but first I want to tell you what’s going on.”
Scott told her about Sarah’s visit and that the Feds were taking over the murder investigation.
“Probably because of all those drugs in the safe,” Maggie said. “Theo was probably a big drug dealer.”
“I think it’s more likely to be about the blackmail. I think it may involve some powerful people.”
“Do you think they will figure out what Hannah and I did?”
“Not if you don’t go around talking about it, and for crissakes, quit telling each other stuff on the cell phone.”
“I tell you what I am going to do,” she said. “I’m going to get on my cell phone and tell Hannah the Feds are investigating people who use illegal scanners to eavesdrop on private citizens, and they’ve narrowed it down to twenty people in Rose Hill. That should shake up the scanner grannies.”
“It may also cause a few heart attacks,” Scott said. “I wouldn’t do it if I were you. Just be careful.”
Scott told Maggie how the confrontation with Margie had gone, about the threat card and photo, what she had done to her mother, and what she had done to Willy.
“I knew Margie was a vicious gossip, but I never thought she’d do such awful things. Poor old Willy; we all treated him like dirt. I guess there’s nothing I can do for him now.”
Scott told her he was going to take up a collection for Willy’s burial, and then he returned to the subject of Margie and Enid.
“I’m going to make sure Enid has a big color television in her room at Mountain View,” Scott said. “High definition, flat screen, plasma, with a satellite dish.”
Maggie laid her hand on his arm, which was resting on her desk, and said, “You are a good egg, Scott Gordon.”
Scott felt as if she’d kissed him, and said softly, “Thanks. I think you’re a good egg, too.”
They sat there a few seconds, enjoying the warmth of the moment.
“Thank you for helping me try to figure this out,” Scott said. “It seems like no one cares who killed Theo but me.”
“I just want it to be over so we can get back to what passes for normal life around here.”
Scott was feeling pretty warm and comfortable with Maggie, and ventured, “Can I cook you dinner tonight?”
Maggie smiled at him sweetly at first, and then abruptly removed her hand from his arm.
“I can’t, I’m sorry. I promised Drew I’d come to his place for dinner.”
“You have another date with Drew?”
“No, no, not a date,” Maggie said hurriedly, but she didn’t look him in the eyes when she said it. “It’s just a friendly dinner.”
Scott stared at her for a moment and then stood, shaking his head.
“Have a nice night,” Scott said as he left.
As soon as Scott left the bookstore, Gwyneth Eldridge accosted him outside, her rich perfume falling over him like a toxic cloud, causing his throat to close.
“I need your help, Todd,” she said, standing way too close for his comfort.
Scott disengaged her hand from his arm and stepped back from her, repelled by her touch as much as her strong perfume.
“Scott,” he said. “It’s Scott.”
“I thought Aggie and I had resolved our differences, but evidently I am once again banned from the bookstore. You owe me a favor for doing nothing to stop that Amazon from assaulting me in the first place,” Gwyneth said. “I desperately need a soy cappuccino with a double shot.”
She started digging through her enormous handbag for money.
“I thought you hated her coffee,” Scott said, with some satisfaction.
“Well beggars can’t be choosers, now can they?” she said. “My espresso machine has not arrived, and for some reason once again I cannot go in there and buy anything.”
“For some reason?” Scott said. “You’re the one who sat in her café and insulted her business and everyone in this town. Then you asked her mother, a successful business owner, mind you, to be your cleaning woman, just because she has an Irish last name.”
Just then Gwyneth spotted the mayor down the street, and with a brief, acid soaked, “Thanks for all your help, Todd,” she ran toward Stuart, teetering on spike heels while trying to dodge icy patches on the sidewalk.
Scott hoped she landed on her ass. His headache was starting in earnest now, thanks to her perfume. He needed to go home and take some medication before it turned into something much worse.
He crossed the street and walked towards the corner, just as Billy and Phyllis spilled out of the diner onto the sidewalk, screaming at each other.
“I hate you!” Billy yelled at her. “I wish you were dead!”
“You better watch your mouth, little man,” she yelled, “or I’ll drop you in some deep shit! Do
n’t think I won’t!”
Billy saw Scott, looked scared, and screamed, “Go to hell!” at his mother before running down the hill. He made a right into the alley without looking back.
Phyllis was trembling with rage. She turned to look at some tourists watching the performance and hissed, “What’re you looking at?” with enough venom that they turned and went in the opposite direction.
When Scott ran across the street and approached her, she held out a hand to ward him off.
“Not now, Scott, I’m just a little upset with my psychotic son.”
She seemed more than a little psychotic herself, he thought. Scott was trying to decide whom to pursue, Phyllis or Billy, and decided Phyllis was the bird in the hand.
“Let me take you somewhere to cool down,” he offered, smiling in a way he hoped would disarm her. “Cause you’re being a little naughty out here on the sidewalk.”
“That would be great, honey,” she said, smoothing down her skirt. “Let’s get out of here and find someplace cozy.”
Scott was amazed at how quickly she transformed from she-devil to sex kitten, and wondered if she had turned just as quickly on Theo, and killed him.
Scott cursed his luck at not having his personal vehicle close by, so he steered her toward the police cruiser, parked right up the street. Phyllis linked her arm through Scott’s and allowed herself be led to the passenger side, and then crossed her legs seductively as she got settled in the seat. She peeked up at him from underneath her bangs in a practiced way, to see if he was noticing. Scott was glad she wasn’t wearing a lot of perfume. The cigarette and booze smell was bad enough.
“Where to?” he asked her.
“Let’s go to the Roadhouse,” she said. “They’re used to me being naughty out there.”
There was no headache medicine left in the bottle in the cruiser, and he didn’t dare stop anywhere and give Phyllis the chance to sober up, have second thoughts, and escape. All the way to the biker bar, located out near the four-lane highway, Scott flirted with her. It was easy to do, as everything seemed to remind Phyllis of something sexual.
When they arrived at the Roadhouse, there were several cars and motorcycles parked in the lot. When the police cruiser pulled in, a few people quickly left while trying to look casual and invisible.
“What’re you doing bringing the law out here, Phyllis?” someone asked her as they walked in, and Scott saw her instantly sober up a bit and lose some of her nerve.
Once seated, Phyllis kept touching her face, unconsciously drawing attention to the black eye she meant to hide. She still wore heavy makeup over it, but despite her new hairdo he could still detect the swelling and the odd color.
“You want to tell me the truth about that shiner, Phyllis? Theo give you that?”
“You gonna seduce me or interrogate me?” she asked, but Scott just smiled at her and ordered them some drinks.
“You help me, and I’ll help you,” Scott said.
After a couple of rounds she loosened up considerably.
“So how long had you and Theo…?”
“Been having sleepovers?”
“Yep, you tell me everything,” Scott said. “Don’t lie to me, and I will do what I can to make sure you and Billy are treated fairly.”
“I didn’t kill him,” she said.
“But you know who did.”
“No,” she said. “Not for sure.”
“All right then. Tell me about you and Theo.”
Scott sipped his beer and Phyllis knocked back another shot, chased it with beer, and lit a cigarette. Scott wanted to ask her to put it out, but thought it might piss her off and cause her to clam up, so he didn’t.
“Theo started sniffing around me when I was a teenager. The summer between sophomore and junior year, you remember, the year his brother died?”
“I remember.”
“I ran around with Brad for a couple of weeks that summer. Hell, I ran around with a lot of people. That was the best summer of my life. It’s been downhill ever since.”
“Was Brad Billy’s father?”
“Maybe,” Phyllis said, with a cagey smile.
“Billy doesn’t look like him, or you, for that matter.”
“You never knew my granddad, Scotty-boy. Billy looks the spittin’ image of him at that age.”
Phyllis took a long drink of beer and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, wiping off most of her lipstick.
“So did Theo know Brad might be Billy’s father?”
“No, he didn’t,” she said, and blew smoke in Scott’s face. “Not ‘til Saturday night.”
Scott felt the headache escalate; it was going to be a bad one. On top of the smoke, there was a kerosene heater somewhere in the place, and those fumes were noxious.
“And you’re sure about Brad.”
“I don’t know for sure. It could have been one of several other lucky losers I palled around with that summer.”
“Does this have anything to do with Theo being murdered?”
“Buy me another drink and I’ll tell you,” she said.
“Get to it,” Scott said, his patience gone, and his stomach rolling. “This place is making me sick.”
“You’re such a mama’s boy, Scott; always have been, always will be. You think Maggie Fitzpatrick wants a mama’s boy in her bed? She doesn’t. Now me, I wouldn’t mind it. I wouldn’t mind it at all.”
Phyllis ran her foot up the side of Scott’s calf and he pushed it off.
“C’mon Phyllis, stick with the subject. What happened that night?”
She rolled her eyes and put out her cigarette, but immediately lit another. Scott didn’t know if he was going to be able to stand it much longer.
“Theo came over in a crappy mood. He was still mad about the damn dog Ed stole from him. He was drunk, as usual. He wanted to stay but I wasn’t in the mood. We fought. Then he started on Billy. When was he going to get a real job or go to school? Why did he wash dishes all day and play video games all night? Why didn’t he have a girlfriend? Well, I agree with most of that, but Billy’s my kid and only I get to yell at him. Billy and Theo got into it then. I tried to break it up but they were going at it pretty fierce.”
She signaled for another drink and Scott willed himself not to be sick at the table. The nausea part of the migraine had arrived.
“Go on,” he said, “and make it the short version.”
“All right, keep your shorts on. You brought me here, remember? You’re asking me the questions. I’m helping you out. You remember that.”
“Get on with it. What happened?”
“You know Billy’s got a mouth on him, and it seemed like he couldn’t back down. Finally Theo dared him to take the first swing and Billy ran off. Then Theo turned on me. Theo said something about how Billy was a worthless excuse for a person, no better than the white trash he came from, and I said, ‘then you’re calling your little brother white trash, cause Brad’s his Daddy.’ Well that set him back on his freakin’ heels, I’m telling ya. He just stood there with his mouth hanging open and this crazy look on his face. Then he up and popped me one.”
“Did he say anything else?” Scott asked, and closed one eye to stop the double vision he was now experiencing.
“Said he’d see me in hell before he’d let me or Billy have one dollar of his family’s money.”
“What then?”
“Well, I told him to leave, so he left, and I went to bed.”
“When did Billy come home?”
“Oh, right away, right after Theo left,” she said.
“What time was it?”
“I don’t know. Theo usually shows up after last call at the bar, so it must have been around 1:15, 1:30.”
“Anything else happen?”
“I went to bed with a bag of frozen tater tots on my eye. I don’t remember anything after that.”
“Why didn’t you claim Billy was Brad’s son earlier, after he died, or when their old man died? You coul
d have got some money then.”
“Well, the truth is, Scotty-boy, I did get me some money from that old man. A little while after Brad died I went to ole Teddy Bear and asked for help, and he paid me a little something every month up until he died, and no one was ever the wiser.
“After the old man died and Theo came back, he and I started seeing each other. I wasn’t sure Brad really was the father, and I thought maybe I could get Theo to marry me; he was always saying he would. By then they had those tests, you know, those DNA tests. If I claimed Brad was the father and a test showed he wasn’t, I’d have blown it with Theo. I thought marrying Theo was a safer bet. Some stupid idiot I was. I know it’s a crapshoot, but if Billy really is Brad’s kid, we are owed some serious money. We’re gonna get us a lawyer.”
“Let me ask you something,” Scott said. “How do you think you’re going to prove Billy is Brad’s son now? Brad’s been dead almost twenty years.”
“I watch those crime shows,” she said. “They can check DNA even after you’re dead. They can dig him up.”
“Brad was cremated,” Scott said. “Just like Theo was this week. Brad’s ashes were scattered over Bear Lake after the funeral. If you’d bothered to be there you’d know. There are only grave markers at the cemetery, not bodies.”
Phyllis looked shocked, but quickly recovered.
“Gwyneth and Caroline have the same DNA as Brad; we could check Billy’s against theirs.”
“I’ve got news for you, Phyllis,” Scott said. “Brad and Caroline were adopted.”
Phyllis had gone pale, and now the yellow, puffy bruise around her eye was easy to see in contrast.
“So there is no body to get Brad’s DNA from,” Scott said, “and Brad was not related to the family by blood, so his sisters would not have the same DNA.”
“That’s not true,” Phyllis said. “Theo would’ve told me.”
“No, he wouldn’t have, Phyllis,” Scott said. “You didn’t mean anything to Theo. He didn’t trust you. He didn’t care about you. He used you. You were disposable to him.”
Scott was seeing bright auras now around all the lights in the bar. The edges of his peripheral vision were wavy, with a kaleidoscope effect.
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