Dear Maggie

by Brenda Novak

  “And it’s not like Zach has any siblings,” Nick added.

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “Don’t overdo it, buddy, or I’ll change my mind. First you show up on my porch with luggage. Now you bring a dog. What next?”

  Nick gave her an endearing grin and ambled into the kitchen. “I was kind of hoping for dinner. Is it by any chance your night to cook?”

  MAGGIE COULD HEAR Nick banging around in the kitchen and was almost afraid to see what he was doing. In the past week, she’d acquired a roommate, a dog and a psychopathic killer who was now sending her threatening letters as well as voice-mail messages. How much more exciting could life get? She wondered what would’ve happened if she’d joined the dating service.

  “In the morning I’ll go to the grocery store,” Nick called out.

  Maggie smiled at her son and his efforts to drag Rambo to his bedroom. Zach had hold of his collar, but the dog was far stronger and apparently not sure he was going to allow it.

  “Why go shopping?” Maggie asked, leaving her son to play with the dog and joining Nick in the kitchen. “We may as well share the groceries I have and split the bill. You probably eat as much as Zach and me put together, so that should be fair. Otherwise, it’ll be too difficult to keep everything separate. And the good news is we’re all set.” She opened the cupboards to show him her neat rows of wheat bread, wheat crackers, bran cereal, cans of Healthy Request soups, natural peanut butter, honey and raisins. “I had Mrs. Gruber get me some groceries when she went the other day. We’re stocked up on just about everything.”

  Nick made a disapproving face at her display. “Not to be critical or anything,” he said, “but we could use a few more items.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know, the essentials of life—brownies, chocolate milk, condoms.”

  “What?”

  He cracked a devilish smile. “Just making sure you were paying attention.”

  The telephone rang and the doorbell sounded at the same time, saving Maggie from having to respond and sending Rambo into a barking frenzy that started in the hall and lasted all the way to the front door.

  “Tell me he didn’t just say condoms,” she muttered to herself and reached for the phone, leaving the door to Nick.

  It was Darla calling. “Did you hear?” she asked without preamble.

  “Hear what?” Maggie pulled the telephone cord taut as she strained to see around the corner. She wanted to enjoy the view of Nick from behind as much as she wanted to determine who was at her door, but the wall blocked her line of vision. She could only hear the murmur of voices, no words.

  “There’s been another victim. A thirty-one-year-old state worker named Marge Brown was stabbed to death and found in Discovery Park yesterday morning. I heard Jorge talking about it with Ben.”

  “You’re kidding.” Maggie instantly forgot about condoms. And, suddenly, she didn’t care who was at the door. Her knees felt weak. Searching behind her for a chair, she sank into the first one her hands encountered. After all her diligence with the police scanners, how had she missed Dr. Dan’s next strike? The fact that she’d been so blissfully unaware made her feel out of touch and vulnerable, in more ways than one. She’d been busy worrying about Nick, wondering about this sudden disappearance and trying to decide whether or not to forgive John. And all the while, Dr. Dan had been out stabbing another woman. Knowing it might have been her went a long way toward putting her problems in perspective.

  The whispery recording on her voice mail came back to her, as did the composite in the paper and the letter she’d received yesterday, and Maggie shivered. Jumping to her feet because she couldn’t sit still any longer, she went to the kitchen window to gaze out over the backyard. He could be anywhere. He could be watching her right now….

  “When did the call come in?” she asked.

  “I guess the dispatchers must’ve been warned to keep things hush-hush. It didn’t go out over the scanners. The detectives were called privately as soon as the guy who found the body phoned in, but I can’t tell you any more than that. You’ll have to talk to Ben.”

  Ben. There’d been another murder and he hadn’t called her. He was letting Jorge write the story.

  “Maggie? Are you still there?” Darla asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay?”

  “I will be when the police catch up with this creep, which I hope is sooner rather than later. But I’d better go. I’ve got to get into the office to see if I can straighten things out with Ben. This is my story, and he knows it. Dr. Dan sent me a letter just yesterday, and I’ve been on the phone most of the day. I dug up some great stuff on the Lola Fillmore murder. It’s going to make a good article.”

  “He sent a letter? To your home address?” Darla sounded as horrified as Maggie felt.

  “No, he sent it to the paper.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Basically more of the same. Listen, I gotta go.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you soon. By the way, what’s all the noise over there?”

  Maggie glanced over her shoulder, remembering that she had a visitor. “Someone’s at the door.”

  “Sounds like a dog,” Darla said.

  Maggie sighed. “You don’t want to know.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “WHO WAS IT?” Maggie asked, coming from the kitchen, still upset by Darla’s news.

  Nick kept a firm hold on his dog as he closed the front door. “Your neighbor, Milly Something.”

  “It’s not Milly S-s-something, s-s-silly. It’s Milly S-s-sims-s,” Zach informed him.

  Nick smiled. “Okay, Milly Sims.”

  “She owns the dry cleaner’s down the street,” Maggie said. “What did she want?”

  Nick kept his voice neutral but Maggie could tell by the look in his eyes that something was wrong. “She saw someone lurking around the house while you were at work last night. But don’t worry. I’ll check the yard and the garage. And I’ll be here when you get home in the morning.”

  “Milly’s always seeing something,” Maggie said. “She jumps at her own shadow.” But her words rang hollow, even to her. She looked at her son, then at Rambo, whom she suddenly saw in a whole new way. Nick was right. Rambo would provide her with some peace of mind. Dogs made noise. They sensed things long before humans did. She figured she could abide him in the house, at least until Dr. Dan was caught, just in case Milly wasn’t imagining things this time.

  “What about Zach? Do you think he and Mrs. Gruber are safe at her place?” she asked.

  “Just to be sure, let’s have them take Rambo tonight.”

  “Good idea. I’m going to get ready for work. I have to go in early today.”

  “I’ll go to the office with you,” Nick said.

  The telephone rang again, catching Maggie just as she was on her way to change. What now? she wondered, half hoping it was Ben. She raced to her room and snatched the handset off its cradle, but the voice that came across the line wasn’t her editor’s.

  “Maggie? This is Brian Wordelly.”

  “Brian who?”

  “Wordelly. I live in Auburn, but my family’s from Iowa. Your mother contacted me last night.”

  “Oh, God, she didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. How are you?”

  “Good. Fine. Listen, your mother suggested we get together. I thought I’d call and see if you were interested in having dinner this weekend. I’m relatively new in town and I don’t know a lot of people….”

  Maggie opened her mouth to refuse, then remembered that Nick had mentioned another job. If he started doing weddings, she was going to be alone a lot. She needed a social life. She needed to meet new people, make a change. What did it matter whether her mother set her up with someone or a dating service did?

  “I work nights as a journalist, but I’m off on Sunday,” she heard herself say.

  “Great,” Brian replied. “Why don’t I pick you up at seve
n?”

  “Sounds good.” Maggie gave him directions to her house, then hung up, wearing a bittersweet smile. She might have accepted Brian’s offer of a date, but she certainly wasn’t excited about it.

  FOR SOME REASON, the noise level at the paper seemed higher than normal. Probably because Maggie’s ears were still ringing from the last fifteen minutes with Ben. For the first time since she’d started at the paper, she’d marched into his office and stood up for herself. She’d demanded the exclusive she deserved. When he yelled, she yelled. When he’d tried to put her off, she’d insisted on an answer. And, amazingly enough, when the emotional maelstrom had passed, she’d won. Maggie could hardly believe it had been her in that room—and from the stares of those around her when she walked out of Ben’s office, neither could anyone else.

  But it had worked. She’d gotten the exclusive. Now she had to perform.

  A daunting thought…but Maggie refused to let the old doubts get the better of her. Not this soon, anyway. She was feeling good about herself, strangely empowered, less inhibited. It was an intoxicating experience, so intoxicating that when Nick looked at her from his desk down the hall, she met his gaze without flinching—thrilling at the way he made her breath catch and her heart pound.

  A slow, sensual smile curved his lips, and Maggie smiled right back. She wasn’t sure she was any more of a match for Nick Sorenson now than she’d been six weeks ago, but it didn’t do any harm to flirt with him.

  “You going to forgive John?”

  Maggie glanced up to see Darla standing at her cubicle, carrying her purse and a water bottle. It was five o’clock. From the looks of it, she was heading home.

  “Who?” Maggie asked absently, still preoccupied with her recent success, as well as the story she had yet to write…and Nick. Unfortunately, Nick usurped more than his share of her thoughts, but she seemed to have little control over that.

  “John,” Darla repeated.

  Of course. Maggie had nearly forgotten him. Now that Nick was back, he seemed to absorb all the surrounding energy. But what about poor John? What had happened to “I like you just the way you are”? And “No need to send a picture”?

  “Probably,” she said. “I just haven’t had time to e-mail him yet.”

  Darla studied her. “You’ve been pretty busy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think he’s going to say when you tell him you have a man living in the house?”

  “I’m not going to tell him. Nick’s not a ‘man,’ he’s a roommate.”

  “Try selling that ‘Nick’s not a man’ stuff to any woman you meet.”

  “Come on, Darla. Forget about Nick. Anyway, I have a date with someone else this Sunday.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy my mother set me up with.”

  “Yikes! I’m glad I’m not the one who’s going. On another topic…any more messages or letters from Dr. Dan?”

  Maggie shook her head. She hadn’t wanted to sift through her mail or check her messages, but she knew she couldn’t simply ignore the possibility. She’d summoned up the courage to do both as soon as she arrived at work and had been pleasantly surprised to find nothing from any mass murderers. “Not so far, thank goodness. Did you hear I had it out with Ben?”

  “Are you kidding? Everyone knows you had it out with Ben. Even Ben’s proud of you.”

  Maggie couldn’t resist a smile. “I got the exclusive.”

  “Good for you. You have the inside track on this story. You deserve the chance to run with it.”

  “That’s what I told him. Thanks for the heads-up call, by the way.”

  “You’d do the same for me. Hey, when you’re finished here, why don’t you come over and we’ll celebrate your good fortune?”

  “Reese won’t want me showing up in the middle of the night.”

  Darla frowned. “Reese’s gone.”

  Maggie reached up to squeeze her friend’s hand. Darla acted as though she didn’t really care about Reese, but Maggie knew she did. “What went wrong this time?”

  “He quit his job. I just can’t respect a man who won’t work.”

  “I’m sorry, Darla. I’ll finish the article I promised Ben, then I’ll stop by the store and buy some goodies on my way over to your apartment. We’ll eat until we forget all our troubles. I should be there before midnight.”

  “Are you sure Ben won’t mind you taking off so early?”

  Maggie grinned. “I won’t be taking off early. I’ll bring my scanners with me and monitor them from your place.”

  Darla looked heartened. “Okay. If I can’t have a man, I guess chocolate’s the next best thing, right?”

  BROWNIES…BROWNIES…BROWNIES. Frosted or plain? Walnuts or no? Maggie frowned as she considered the selection in Safeway’s bakery. She liked frosting and Darla liked nuts. Why not go for the double whammy?

  Putting eight good-sized, thick-frosted walnut brownies in her cart, she moved on to see what else she and Darla might want. Tortilla chips were a must, along with some good salsa. But what about yogurt-covered raisins? A bag of microwave popcorn?

  Might as well go for the works, Maggie decided. At this point, health was a secondary issue. Darla had seemed pretty upset.

  Her cart squeaked as she wheeled it around the perimeter of the store, taking her time, enjoying the air-conditioning and the quiet, empty spaces. Safeway wasn’t a particularly popular place to be at eleven o’clock at night, but she had some company—a man reading in the magazine aisle, a tired-looking woman buying children’s Tylenol, a couple of men in their mid-twenties happily loading their cart with cases of beer.

  Maggie skirted the man whose nose was buried in a magazine and made her way to the dairy section, where she spotted the chocolate milk. Remembering Nick and his list of life’s necessities—brownies, chocolate milk, condoms—she paused. If she got the chocolate milk, she’d only be missing the condoms.

  Feeling daring and a little shy, Maggie added the milk to her cart, then glanced around to make sure she wasn’t being observed before heading to the Feminine Hygiene aisle. Sure enough, birth control was right there, next to the pregnancy tests. And other than a few passersby at either end, the aisle was deserted—a good thing considering she’d never bought anything like condoms before and would’ve kept going if anyone had noticed her.

  Finally comfortable that no one was paying any particular attention, Maggie read a few labels. Tim had insisted she stay on the pill until he’d agreed to have a baby, so they’d never used any over-the-counter stuff. She didn’t even know what was available. Not that it was difficult to learn—lubricated, ribbed, sheepskin, neon colors.

  Maggie bit the insides of her cheeks to keep from smiling as she thought about these choices in connection with Nick Sorenson. What would he buy? He didn’t look like a neon kind of man. Ribbed maybe. Real sheepskin definitely—

  Not that she was planning to sleep with him. She was just checking things out. A girl never knew what she might encounter. Or whom…

  “Finding everything okay?”

  Maggie jumped and turned to see a woman wearing a Safeway smock and knee pads standing behind her. Evidently she’d come around the corner while Maggie was busy imagining Nick in nothing but a neon orange condom. “Yes, fine. Everything’s—” she cleared her throat “—right here. Thanks.”

  “No problem. I stock these shelves, so if you need anything, just let me know.” The woman knelt down and started straightening packages in the section behind Maggie and, for a fleeting moment, Maggie considered asking her if she’d ever tried any of these products. Instead, she decided to make her own decision, and that was when she noticed the different sizes—regular and large. Who would ever have guessed there’d be so many choices involved in buying a box of condoms?

  When Maggie didn’t move on right away, the store clerk turned to look at her again, and Maggie decided it was definitely time to go. Grabbing the first thing that came to hand—a six-pack of large, ribbed
condoms—she shoved it into the cart next to the brownies and started off.

  “Have a good night,” the woman called after her.

  Maggie felt a warm blush rise to her face. “Thank you,” she mumbled and hurried out of sight.

  SHE’D DONE IT. She’d actually bought her first box of condoms. Not that Maggie knew what she was going to do with them. It was all part of her new, liberated self. She fought with her editor. She lived with a male roommate. She bought condoms. How much more modern could a woman be?

  Still, she didn’t want Darla to see them. Slipping the package into her purse the minute she unlocked her car, she situated the groceries in the back seat, got behind the wheel and started her engine. If she didn’t hurry, Darla might fall asleep. Then she’d have to return to her own house, or to work, if Nick’s truck wasn’t in her driveway yet. She’d promised him she wouldn’t go anywhere she’d be alone, and she meant to keep that promise. The condom purchase had distracted her for a moment, but now she felt the same uneasiness she’d experienced when she left the office, a lingering sense of being watched or followed. But other than a blue Geo Metro parked several spaces away, the lot was empty.

  MURDER VICTIM FIRST BECOMES

  CONFIDANTE OF KILLER

  By Tribune Reporter Maggie Russell

  SACRAMENTO—According to an unidentified source, the late Lola Fillmore, crime reporter for the Seattle Independent, received several letters from the man who subsequently murdered her and recently struck down two victims in the Sacramento area. The first letter from the self-dubbed Dr. Dan arrived in March. It was a response to the article Ms. Fillmore had written on the woman he’d stabbed only days before in Seattle, and it reprimanded her for not including certain information on the crime—“obvious” clues the detectives couldn’t, or shouldn’t, have missed, he said. In the letter he censured police and seemed angry that Ms. Fillmore hadn’t reported their ineptitude with greater accuracy. He demanded she set the record straight. She subsequently wrote an article blasting the task force’s inability to apprehend such a violent criminal. Dr. Dan continued to contact her over the next five weeks, feeding her information about his victims and his crimes, but only after the fourth letter, when the killer’s tone became personally threatening, did Ms. Fillmore turn to the police.