"Liza, your almost fifty years old," Maggie said. "Why start a family now? Chase already had children, which we both know how well that went. I'm surprised he agreed to have another one."
"He wasn't pleased about it, and it took a few years for me to convince him."
"Maybe it's time to sell Dad’s house so that you will have some money for a real attorney and bail money."
"I can’t sell the house right now.”
“Why not?” Maggie asked.
“What if mom comes back? How will she find us? Where will she live?”
"Mom is not coming back," Maggie said, "and even if she wanted to find us, it's not hard; we are both on Facebook."
"You have to help me get out of here and pay for a good lawyer. I'm sure you still have money from dad. I can pay you back when I get out of this mess. If I have to, I promise I will sell the house."
"That is another thing, I talked to your attorney this morning, and he mentioned you have a $1 million life insurance policy for Chase,"
"Because of the baby," Liza said.
"But yours is only $25,000," Maggie said. "That's a big difference and raises red flags."
"I already told the detective. We couldn't afford more on me. The cost was way out of our budget since I have a heart murmur."
“Who is Angel Larson, and why is she the beneficiary of your life insurance policy?”
“She is the surrogate, and it was part of the contract with her. In case something happened to me before the baby is born. I told the detective that too. They don’t have anything on me. I don’t understand why I am behind bars.”
"I hope you didn't say anything else to the detective,” Maggie shook her head.
“I didn’t and Trey told me to stop talking, so I did.”
“Good, we are going to get you out of this,” Maggie said, but the thought of a baby stuck in her gut.
"Thank you, Maggie.” Liza put her free hand on the plexiglass,” I know we have had our problems in the past, but we are sisters and just know I would be there for you if you ever need me."
Maggie smiled tightly, narrowing her eyes as she put her hand up to meet her sisters. You were not there when I needed you. Maggie barely kept the words inside, pushing back the image of a sister, the opportunist. Maggie had felt abandoned by her family in the worst days of her life. But that was all in the past; this was serious. Her sister could go to prison for the rest of her life.
"Can you tell me everything that happened that day?” Maggie paused, “The day Chase died.” Maggie watched her sister’s face change. Her eyes opened wide, and she sat forward, taking her hand from the window. She began to speak, dramatically, as if she was reciting lines in a play.
"Last Sunday morning, Chase convinced me to join him hiking the Rapids Loop Trail at Staircase. It was his favorite trail, and the weather was perfect. You wouldn’t know it today, but we have had a mild October. Anyway, I packed a nice lunch, including a bottle of his favorite wine. Why not make a day of it, you know? It had been so long since we spent any time together." Liza's eyes got glassy as she recounted the events from that day and got silent.
“Go on,” Maggie encouraged her sister.
"He was telling me how some hikers spotted a Sasquatch a few days earlier. He had the coordinates on his phone. He spent over an hour looking for prints in the woods until finally, he agreed to sit down for lunch. There is the perfect place about halfway along the trail. He handed me his backpack and disappeared behind a tree a little way down the trail to relieve himself. I heard a loud crack that echoed through the canyon. Then I saw him fall off the side of the hill. I ran over to help him, but he was too far down the ravine. I called 911, but my cell had no service. I left the phone open, hoping the location was active.”
“It was just a small ledge. If he had landed a few inches, either way, he would have fallen into the ravine. I slid down the edge to reach him. There was barely room for both of us, but I had to save him. He had blood in the middle of his chest, but he was still breathing. I looked around and called for help a few times. I finally took my jacket off and balled it up to put under his head, and that's when I saw the gun. I don't know why I picked it up, but I did. It was Chase's gun. I didn't even know he brought it."
"Chase owned a gun?" Maggie was shocked that Chase would own a gun.
"Yeah," Liza wiped her nose with a tissue she retrieved from her front pocket before changing the phone to her other ear.
“Was that the gun that shot Chase?” Maggie was confused. “Did he shoot himself? Why was the gun next to him?”
“I don’t know,” Liza said, shaking her head. “Honestly, Maggie, I don’t know.”
"So, how did you end up getting help?" Maggie asked.
"Two guys, hiking the same trail, heard the shot and rushed up the path. They heard me calling for help. One of them had a satellite phone and called the ranger station, but by the time the medics showed up, Chase was dead. It was awful. I followed the group down the trail to the parking lot, where they took him away in an ambulance. I didn’t know what to do. There were so many people crowded around, and they just left me standing there.
The deputies were talking to the two guys, so I got in our car and went home. I had blood all over me. Trey said, I was in shock. As soon as I drove into the driveway, two sheriff deputies were already waiting for me. They wanted me to make a statement, but I wanted to take a shower first. They insisted I go with them, but I didn’t want to, so they arrested me for resisting arrest and then added the murder charge later at the station when they interrogated me."
“Did they say why they thought you murdered Chase?”
“They just kept talking and talking and asking the stupidest questions. I finally told them I wanted a lawyer and couldn’t afford one, so they gave me Trey. They also let me call Kat so she could take care of the dogs, and she promised she would get a hold of you.”
The back door opened, and the officer announced, “Time’s up, ladies.”
“Thanks for coming, Maggie,” Liza said before standing.
“Take care of yourself in here,” Maggie said.
“Don’t worry about me in here. Everyone is pretty nice. But I don’t think prison will be anything like the county jail, so thank you, Maggie, for helping me. I love you.”
Liza hung the phone on the wall and left the room, not looking back at Maggie.
Chapter 4
Maggie needed to clear her head, so she drove through the familiar small town, stopping for a coffee at the Starbucks and drinking it across the street in the gravel parking lot of Kitsap Regional Park. She watched the kids on bikes maneuvering the trails and disappearing into the woods.
Maggie was lost in the memories of baseball and bike rides that she didn’t notice the large truck pull into the parking lot until it parked right next to her. She watched two older men unlatch the tailgate and attempted to pull out a large metal bracket. As they struggled with it, Maggie almost left the warmth of her car to help them but didn’t need to because a man and his young daughter approached. Maggie had her window cracked enough to keep the windows from fogging up, so she heard the man tell his daughter to stand on the grass at the front of the truck. The girl looked like she might have been seven or eight years old.
The three men successfully pulled the metal from the truck's bed and set it on the ground on the grass near the girl.
“What is this?” the father asked the two older men.
“It’s a new section of track,” one of the men wearing a conductor’s hat spoke.
“For the Christmas train?” the little girl spoke excitedly.
“Yes, for the Christmas train,” the other older man said, kneeling to the little girl, “and if you daddy would be so kind as to help two old men carry it over to the track, it will be up and running by Thanksgiving.”
“You got it,” the dad said.
But Maggie couldn’t keep her eyes off of the little girl. Her hair was pulled back and secured with a pink
barrette. Her shoes, her small hands, this park, it was all too much. She couldn’t breathe. Maggie shook her head, trying to erase the memories, but they didn’t go away. Instead, she put the car in autopilot and headed home, up to the top of Mile Hill, crossing at Long Lake Road finally turned onto Banner Road. The closer she got, her heartbeat faster and her hands began to sweat.
As she turned onto View Park, she slowed until she spotted the small wooden structure her father constructed for her and her sister to wait for the school bus. It was now almost unrecognizable, as it had been overtaken by the blackberry bushes. The same blackberries that once provided blackberry pie and so many jars of jam, they gave it away to everyone they knew and still had plenty to last all winter.
The gravel driveway, hidden by the overgrown salah and the pine trees' limbs, hung heavy in the path. However, there was still enough room to maneuver down the driveway. Maggie drove her rental car, slowly trying to avoid the cavernous potholes along to the long twisty driveway.
When the house finally appeared, it was almost unfamiliar. The garden in front was overgrown with weeds, and the once manicured lawn looked more like a hayfield. The roof and front porch were both covered in light green moss. She listened for her mother’s voice calling to her and her sister in for dinner.
Maggie parked in what used to be her spot in front of the barn instead of the closest parking spots in front of the garage door. Like the house, the barn doors were also covered in a film of green. Maggie resisted the urge to look inside the barn. She wanted to remember how it was. Behind those doors used to house Old Blue, her father’s tractor. It was where he spent most of his free time. Maggie remembered he would let her ride with him as he repaired the driveway, plowed the snow, or pulled a stump. Her mother said he spent more time with Old Blue than he did with her.
Maggie reached under the front porch and found the extra key to the front door, but that effort was wasted, as it turned out as the front door wasn’t locked. She just walked right in. The house was dark and cool. She reached across the wall and flipped the switch, and the overhead light came on. Someone was paying the electric bill, but they hadn’t turned on the heat.
She stood shivering in the coolness of the room until she spotted what looked like fresh logs stacked next to the fireplace along with a sufficient quantity of newspaper. She sat on the hearth, feeling the chill of the stone. She opened the door of the fireplace insert and leaned in with a small shovel and scooped some of the ashes that had collected at the bottom.
Maggie picked up the top newspaper and ripped it in two. She then noticed the date of the paper and stopped. It was last Sunday’s issue of The Kitsap Sun, the same day Chase was killed.
Someone had been there, recently. Maggie sat quietly for a moment, wondering if the person could still be there. It wasn’t uncommon that squatters find these vacant homes so far in the woods and take up residence.
Maggie shivered and left her worries for the promise of heat. She balled up the paper in half sections until the entire bottom of the fireplace was lined with identical sized paper balls, just like her father had taught her.
Picking through the wooden box of kindling, Maggie chose the smallest thinnest pieces and strategically placing them on top of the paper. She then took some of the larger pieces, laid them across the smaller twigs and branches, and finally found two of the smallest split logs and stacked them in an X across the kindling. She reached over and pulled a box of long wooden matches from the same metal box her father kept them.
Her father's approval was in the room as she lit the match and started at the back, touched the paper in several places watching the flames spread gracefully and evenly through the newspaper, through the kindling until the flames were licking at the small logs. It was the perfect fire. She stood as the fire crackled and filled the room with a soft glow and a familiar warmth.
Maggie opened her backpack and found her dry socks. She placed her wet shoes and socks on the hearth to let the fire dry them before standing now, taking in the entire room, a vortex to her past.
She walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and was surprised to see a half-gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, and four cans of beer. She looked around and saw a loaf of bread and a coffee mug half full. Someone was definitely living there.
"Hello?" Maggie called out now with her senses again on high alert even though there were no cars in the driveway. "Is anyone here?" The house was dark and cold so whoever was living there wasn’t there at the moment.
She walked down the hall to the bathroom and looked at it as if she was the intruder. There were a man's razor and aftershave sitting on the sink counter. A man was living here. Maggie wondered if Liza knew. Maybe she had rented it out and not informed Maggie. The spare room was at the end of the hall and the door was cracked open.
Maggie stood against the wall for a minute before pushing the door completely open. She looked in and saw a suitcase open on the floor and men's clothes piled in the corner. She decided it was safe to go in, keeping her senses on high alert. Maggie picked up a t-shirt and examined it. It was one a man would wear under a dress shirt, likely a middle-aged man. No young men wear t-shirts anymore. She dropped the shirt back in a pile and opened the closet door. Half a dozen men's suits were hanging from the rack, most still covered in thin plastic from the dry cleaners.
She pulled one of the dry-cleaning receipts off, held it up to the filtered light, and read the name, Chase Dawson.
“Chase is living here?” Maggie asked aloud.
Maggie shook her head. Why was Chase staying here, at her father’s house? Were Liza and her husband separated? Why hadn’t Liza said anything?
Maggie shook her head and went back into the living room where the fire was now in full flame. She picked up a full-size log and added it to the fire causing some ashes to escape to the hearth; she paused for a moment watching the fire take the new log into its possession before she descended the stairs to the basement.
She felt the temperature change as soon as she reached the bottom step. It was still chilly, but she was in a fog of confusion. Maggie looked through the rec room bookshelf. There were books by Dante and Ayn Rand. Her father loved books and the entire back wall was covered with his collection. She took an antique copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and headed back upstairs, but that is when she noticed the door under the stairs.
Maggie placed the book aside as she knelt, touching the door with her palm before opening it. This space is where she and her sister, two young girls, brought their favorite blankets and set up forts, pretending to be camping in the deep woods. They even had an EZ Bake oven where they would patiently cook snacks with a 60-watt light bulb.
Maggie reached in and pulled the long string to illuminating the small space that was now stuffed with plastic storage bins, an old tent, fishing gear, and several stacks of old record albums. She had no idea what she was looking for, but she pulled the first few boxes into the rec-room, opened each of them, and finding nothing significant. Just when she was about to give up, Maggie spotted a firebox in the furthest darkest corner. She braved the spider webs and mouse droppings and climbed in, reaching and pulled it to the doorway.
Maggie lugged the box up the stairs into the living room, where she could get feeling back into her cold feet. She put another log on the fire before searching the junk drawer in the kitchen for anything that looked like it might unlock the box. The effort didn't immediately pay off until she pushed a small flat screwdriver into the lock and turned. It didn't turn but bent the metal until it was just a hole. She used a pair of needle-nose pliers and grabbed the frayed metal and pulled. The lid finally snapped open.
Maggie took out each piece of paper, examining it for significance before setting it aside. There was her father's social security card, an old driver's license, and several expired passports. She looked at each picture carefully, trying to remember her father at that age—each of these representing a specific time in her life. There was her grandfather�
��s military paperwork, some papers she didn’t understand; it could have been immigration paperwork from ancestors.
Finally, Maggie pulled out a copy of her birth certificate. She breathed a sigh of relief. Her father and mother were both listed as her parents. She folded the birth certificate and put it into her backpack, but she heard a loud knock on the door before looking through the remaining documents. She stuffed the remaining papers into her bag as another loud knock reverberated, but this time, the knock was accompanied by the strong words "Open the door, this is the police."
The police? Maggie thought, peeking out the window where she saw a sheriff's vehicle and another official-looking car. She took the lockbox and pushed it behind the couch and slung her backpack over her shoulder before going to the door.
"May I help you?" she asked the officer. It was a Kitsap County sheriff’s deputy.
"You can step outside," he said, standing aside, keeping his hand on his gun.
"Is there a problem?" Maggie asked as she came out cautiously.
"Yes, ma’am, I need you to come out here.”
“I’m sorry officer, what is the problem?” Maggie took a few steps out the door.
“Is this your residence?” he asked with his hand still covering his gun.
“No, but…”
“Ma’am, you are under arrest," he said, now blocking her way to the door or the steps.
"I'm under arrest? For what?"
"Breaking and entering," he said, pulling the backpack from Maggie's arm and setting it down next to his feet. "Please turn and put your hands behind your back."
"I'm not going to resist, so no need for handcuffs," she said.
"It's procedure, ma’am,"
"I didn't do anything wrong. This is my father's house, and the door was unlocked."
Maggie turned and put her hands behind her back. There was another car parked down the driveway. It was an official Military Police car and a man in a military uniform standing with his arms crossed, watching her closely.
Deception Trail: A Maggie McFarlin Mystery Page 3