Home for a Spell

by Madelyn Alt

  “I see your point. But I have to be careful. This is evidence in a murder investigation. Unfortunately, if it comes down to that, it trumps Ms. Miller’s wrongful persecution.” He looked us both in the eye. “And don’t make me remind you that you have both signed confidentiality agreements. I don’t expect any of this to get out in any way, shape, or form.”

  “Neither of us have said anything to anyone. And we won’t. Right, Maggie?” Marcus prodded.

  “I made my promise. I will stick to it.” Oh, but it would be hard, if Annie’s niece did end up losing her job because of a creepazoid like Locke. Angela was the victim. It completely offended my sense of universal justice that she could conceivably be victimized a second time by the school system, and none of it her fault.

  Tom pushed himself away from his perch on the edge of the worktable as though to leave.

  “One more thing, Tom. You remember the lodge that Locke was a member of?”

  “Yeah, I remember you told me that you found the place through Lou’s dealings with him as a lodge brother.”

  “Did you know that Harding was a member of that same lodge as well?”

  A frown crossed his forehead. “How did you find this out?”

  “Lou mentioned it when I was explaining to him that Harding was the owner of the apartment complex and that he had refused to offer me a lease. Not that I was about to sign it at that point anyway.” I just had to be sure I got that out there. Sheesh. A girl has her pride.

  “Hm. Harding said he barely knew Locke, outside of an absentee employer-employee fringe relationship. Now, I suppose that could be true—that even as members of the same organization, they weren’t on each other’s radar. But you’re right. It is something that needs to be clarified.”

  And that’s all that I asked. I knew there was no real reason to have latched on to that particular point . . . so, why did my inner senses all stand up and take notice at the repeated mention of “the lodge” over the last couple of days? That’s what I needed to understand.

  The devil is in the details . . .

  The voice again, chiming in with Grandma C’s intonations inside my head. At least it was nice to know that, whatever “it” was, it agreed with me. This time.

  After showing Tom out, Marcus came back to computer command central and leaned against the door frame, smiling at me. “Why is it that the more you mention this lodge thing being bandied about, the more the hairs start to lift on the back of my neck and the more sense it seems to make that there is something weird going on, somehow? I’m beginning to think that whatever you’re picking up on, it’s catching,” he said with a rueful shaking of his head that made his dark curls fall down around his eyes.

  “Sorry?” I offered, smiling back at him. “Anyway, it’s not like you haven’t worked your magick on me, making me see things I never even thought to look for before.”

  “Ha. Yeah, we’re mutually guilty of that, I guess.”

  He came purposely forward and, putting his hands on the armrests on each side of me, he leaned in to engage me in one of his ultraspectacular lip-locks. Completely distracting me. At least until my cell phone rang. The call screen identified the caller as Tom.

  “I should probably get this?”

  Marcus nodded.

  “Maggie,” Tom’s voice said in my ear the moment I flipped the phone open, “listen. Don’t freak out, but . . . I just thought I saw someone hanging around Quinn’s house.”

  My eyebrows shot up, and I turned to face the window, where the blinds were down but not closed. All I could see was the soft light from the lamps and the colorful glare of the computer monitor, with dark shapes for me and Marcus, and an ominous wall of blackness beyond. “Here? Now?”

  “Yeah. Dark, shadowy. Moved from the landscaping toward the backyard. I had pulled in to the driveway to turn around when I saw it. Got my spotlight out, but whatever it was, or whoever, was gone.”

  I shivered. “All right. Thanks for letting me know.”

  “You have Quinn keep an eye out, huh? And he needs to install some security lights. Jesus, it’s black as pitch back here.”

  “What’s up?” Marcus asked as I hung up the phone.

  Setting Minnie down on the desk with a grumble of protest, I rose on one foot from my chair and reached for the rod that twisted the blinds to a closed position, securing my need for safety before answering. “Tom said he thought he saw someone hanging around the house and yard while he was turning his car around. He checked it out with the spotlight, but whoever it was was gone by then.”

  “Here? Now?”

  I uttered a shaky laugh, rubbing my hands up and down my arms to dispel the goose bumps that had arisen there. “I think I hear an echo. Yes, to both questions.”

  A fierce, determined expression arose on his face. “I’m going to get a flashlight and go out myself.”

  “Do you have to? I mean, Tom did just check things out.”

  “I know the place a hundred times better than he does.” He dropped a swift kiss on my brow. “I won’t be long. Promise.”

  While he was out there, I distracted myself by going around and checking all windows to be sure the locks were secured, and all the curtains and blinds to be sure they were drawn. Passing through the living room, I saw the cameras that Marcus had never completely retired—the very ones he had employed a month or so earlier, when he had (correctly?) suspected Tom of being guilty of drive-by stalkery—when a sudden thought struck me. Why not? I switched the power on, wishing we had had the foresight to have them running all along. Oh well. Forewarned is forearmed. If anyone came around later tonight, while we were sleeping—assuming any sleep was to be had on my part—they would be caught. Candid Camera 2.0. A part of me all of a sudden wished that Marcus wasn’t opposed to gun ownership. Maybe he had a nice, old-fashioned baseball bat lying around.

  “No one,” he said when he came back through the kitchen door. “I even checked the loft over the garage.”

  “ ’ Kay,” I said, swallowing hard to keep my nervousness at bay.

  But not concealed. “Hey, hey,” he said, taking me into his arms and holding me against him. I tucked my head beneath his chin and breathed him in. “You’re not worried, are you?”

  “No . . .” I lied.

  “It was probably just a dog or something, sweetness. I honestly didn’t see anything back there, and there was nothing to indicate anyone had been hanging around, either.”

  I nodded, willing for the moment to let myself be lulled by the sense of security he offered. And yet, when the lights were out, I couldn’t help but wonder . . .

  Chapter 17

  I did sleep that night, nestled in the warm crook of Marcus’s strong arms. I also spent quite a lot of time staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the living world around me and hoping none of the sounds were portents of a break-in. I wasn’t sure. A couple of times, I could have sworn I heard a slight tapping, so slight that it blended into the other noises that were common in older homes: creaking, groaning, the whishing of air through oversized ancient duct-work. I convinced myself that it was just my imagination run amok, that I was just making myself nervous . . . even though Minnie also lifted her fuzzy black head at that very moment to listen intently for several long minutes before finally lying back down to return to sleep.

  I was being silly. It was just a coincidence.

  Marcus, with his uncanny ability to sleep through anything, didn’t even flinch.

  When morning finally came, I breathed a sigh of relief. And I felt pretty silly for worrying. It was so easy to feel foolish for my fear with dawn glowing on the horizon. I left Marcus sleeping and crutched myself into the kitchen to make him something special for breakfast. Special because he did so much for me and asked so little, and I wanted him to know how much I appreciated him. With bacon sputtering on the stove and a hot cup of tea cooling on the counter, I went out on the back porch to the birds singing their melodic chorus to the dawn. The porch swing w
as a little iffy for me to back into with crutches, so I stood there on the edge, watching the light growing and expanding all around me.

  It was just as I was intending to go back inside to check on the bacon and start the eggs and toast that I made a final circuit of the back porch, checking out the mounds of mums whose buds were cresting out on the far end. That was when I saw it.

  I stumbled back a step before I found my footing, then turned myself on my crutches with the kind of speed and agility that resisted crutch-assisted efforts. “Marcus?�� I called as I hit the threshold and kept on going. “Marcus! Are you awake?”

  “I am now,” I heard him groan from up the hall as I made my way down it.

  “You have to get up,” I told him.

  My face must have conveyed my urgency, because he sat up then and there. On any other day I would have stopped to admire the way the sheets fell away from his chest and pooled around his abdomen and hips, not to mention the five o’clock shadow that, combined with his tousled black hair, gave him a swarthy look that hovered somewhere between bed head and bed god. He pushed the hair off his face and swung his legs over the edge. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Just get some pants on and come look.”

  The bacon was just crossing the line from cooked to scorched, so I flipped the burner off as I crutched past to wait for Marcus in the doorway to the porch. He was right on my heels, though, with nothing more than a pair of unfastened jeans giving him even a modicum of modesty. I led him out onto the porch and jabbed a finger repeatedly in the pertinent direction. “There.”

  He looked to see what I was pointing at. In the passing of a moment, his expression changed from blind searching to curious uncertainty to full-out incredulity as he saw the footprints in the freshly turned dirt of the flower bed. The flower bed that stood right beneath the window to Marcus’s computer command central.

  “Shit. Tom was right. He did see someone out here last night.”

  I nodded anxiously. “But were those marks made before Tom saw them and chased them away with his searchlight . . . or after?” Yeah. I just lived to torment myself like that.

  He stepped down onto the grass and carefully knelt, making sure to avoid the impressions. “Lug-sole boots or shoes of some sort. A man would be most likely to wear a style like that. Someone not too big. Those feet aren’t too much larger than yours.”

  I certainly hoped that was supposed to mean it was a smallish man or a man with smallish feet, and not that I was the female equivalent of Bozo the Clown. Minus the freaky red ’do. “Should I call Tom?” I asked him.

  I could tell he didn’t like the idea of running to Tom for protection every time something happened, but I could tell he also realized how much this assault on my sense of security bothered me. He nodded. “Call him.”

  It took Tom a little longer than I’d hoped to get to Marcus’s house for what amounted to the third time in as many days . . . and yeah, trust me, I was weirded out by that, too. But, regardless of that, I had enough time to finish breakfast, wash dishes, bathe, do my hair and makeup, and get dressed before he finally showed up around eight thirty.

  “Sorry it took me this long,” he said. “You said it wasn’t an emergency, and I had already scheduled an early morning meeting with the bank manager. What did you want me to see?”

  Marcus led the way out through the kitchen onto the back porch. Tom followed Marcus, and I picked things up from the rear, staying as close as my crutches would allow.

  The expression on Tom’s face was unreadable as he knelt down to examine the print markings, much as Marcus had done two hours before him. “You found these here this morning?”

  “I did,” I told him. “I got up early and came outside to enjoy the sunrise.”

  “Did either of you hear anything last night? After I left?”

  “Not me,” Marcus said.

  “But he sleeps soundly,” I offered, and then winced at the unwitting cruelty of my interruption when I saw a look of pain flash behind Tom’s eyes, before he managed to mask it away behind a pretense of neutrality. “I mean . . . I thought I heard something. But it’s so hard to tell with older homes. And I was really trying not to make myself more nervous than I already was.”

  In spite of his personal feelings, good, bad, or otherwise, Tom’s professional, no-nonsense tone never wavered. “I can’t tell, looking at this, when the tracks were made. Before I scared them off, or did the person I saw return later? We may never know. And we may never know the reason they were here, if someone knew what they were looking for . . . or if it was someone with an eye on your expensive equipment. I think that’s probably the likely scenario. Do you have insurance against theft? If not, I would think about it, if I were you. Take the proper precautions. Lock your doors, your windows, keep your curtains drawn. Invest in a home security system.”

  Did he really think it was burglars? Why didn’t that resonate with me? I stared down at the crisply formed prints in the dirt, frowning, trying to see in my mind’s eye what had happened and who had made them, but for whatever reason, I could not. Hey, Grandma C? I could really use some help here. Any chance that you could lend me the wisdom and whatever else is needed in order to make sense of this?

  I continued to mull this over as Marcus went inside to take a phone call and I watched Tom take some photos of the prints, using a tape measure for size perspective. Tom finally rose and dusted the dried grass bits and crumbs of dirt from his knees. “Interesting turn of events, huh?” he offered offhandedly.

  Life. Is it ever not interesting? And isn’t that the point? To be intrigued, compelled, and fully engaged in the ever-changing moment? Whatever the experience, life is a gift, to be lived to its full measure. Staying in the moment. Although, that could be difficult in those particular moments that brought fear and anxiety.

  “How was your appointment this morning?” I asked, needing a change of subject.

  The look he threw me was disconcerted. “How did you know I was just thinking about that?”

  I shrugged and attempted a smile. “Just lucky, I guess?”

  “Whatever.” He shook his head to clear his thoughts. “The manager was very accommodating. He gave me the names and addresses for all the accounts that had transferred or wired money directly from their accounts into Locke’s bank account.”

  That was exciting news. “And?” I prompted.

  He sighed, shaking his head. “Just my luck. There are some important people here, Maggie. I gotta tell you, I am not thrilled about this. These are not the kinds of people you want to piss off if you intend to continue to have a career in city government. Some of them are real movers and shakers of Stony Mill. DA Ledbetter is going to want to tread lightly. Sheriff Reed, too. They’re both up for reelection next year.” And then his eyes took on a shrewd light, and his expression morphed into something sly and cunning. “I, on the other hand, know that it’s my business to get to the bottom of this. Whether Ledbetter decides to pursue or not, that’s his business.”

  “Do any of them have children who are middle school age?”

  “Funny you should ask,” he said. “I did get ahold of the middle school principal at home late last night. He was curious as to how I had received word of the situation with his suspended teacher . . . but that’s because he is protecting the school’s interests, I think, and wanted to know whether Miss Miller was going to fight the process through legal avenues. Don’t worry—I told him that information was privileged. But, when he heard that it could possibly be related to a criminal murder investigation, he was more than happy to cooperate, to the fullest extent.” If a voice could contain a smirk, his would have.

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said they’d traced the pics of Miss Miller back through forward after forward, kid to kid. A couple of the kids had received it through email because they didn’t have texting, and it showed the whole string of forwards. It seems originally to have come from one particular boy. An eighth-gra
der named Austin Poindexter.”

  Poindexter? The Poindexters were well-known in Stony Mill. They owned a string of hardware stores around the area. They could definitely be classified as town movers and shakers.

  “And is Austin Poindexter’s father on that list of bank accounts?” I asked him, because I could feel a connection there, something to explore.

  Tom gave me a manly blink, times three. If he were a woman, his eyelashes would have fluttered. “I can neither confirm nor deny . . .”

  I grinned in spite of myself at his roundabout and casual way of nonconfirmation. “There is no need.” Another thought occurred to me. “You know . . . social organizations like lodges often include many prominent citizens among their registry.”

  “The lodge thing again?” He looked at me askance. Skeptically. “You and your feelings.”

  And it was because they were feelings that he was so willing to dismiss the notion out of hand. It wouldn’t be the first time his personal prejudices muddied his vision. “Why not? Look, I can’t explain why I get these feelings. All I know is that I keep getting nudges about the lodge. And secret brotherhoods? It wouldn’t be the first time unsavory little details had been kept from coming to light by people bonding together over their secrets.”

  “I thought you said Quinn’s uncle was a lodge member.”

  I had, and it was the one thing that really bothered me. Because he had just the other day asked Marcus to speed up his own hard drive, much like Locke had hired Marcus to do. And he had mentioned videos and pics. But Uncle Lou wasn’t like that. He couldn’t be. And in his favor, he did seem unaware of the whole pics-for-sale thing. When he spoke of Angela Miller being suspended, he seemed surprised by the nature of the pictures and uncertain as to how the whole thing could have come about. For now, Uncle Lou had the benefit of the doubt as far as I was concerned. Because I knew Marcus and the type of man he was, and I knew how much he respected his uncle. Out of respect for Marcus, it was the least I could do.

  To Tom, I shrugged. “He is. But I doubt you’ll find that every member would be in the know about everything that happened within the organization.”