Dead Pile (Maggie #3)

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  “Say what’s on your mind, sis.” Hank takes a bite of meat loaf.

  Maggie got it, too. It’s a little dry, but surprisingly good.

  Laura puts a thimbleful of potato on her fork. “I don’t want the land.”

  “Land is all they have.”

  “Land can be sold.”

  Maggie holds her breath. Laura wants Hank to sell the ranch where he runs Double S?

  Hank pushes his plate back. “The value of the place is far greater than the price it would bring. To me.”

  “I understand that. But I need money. Mickey and I need money. Very badly.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I need us to put it on the market.”

  “You understand my entire livelihood is built around that property? Couldn’t I just buy you out of your half of it?”

  “How would you propose to do that?”

  “In monthly installments.”

  She shakes her head and pushes back her tray. “I need the cash now. Could you get a mortgage?”

  “Maybe. But I don’t have W-2 type income. Banks don’t like to lend money to guys like me. I don’t own anything to put up as collateral.”

  “I’m sorry for your situation. But when it sells, you can use the money to get another place.”

  The sound Hank makes can’t be described with mere words. The closest Maggie can come is a strangled cat in a dryer. “Did you have a time frame in mind?”

  “As soon as humanly possible.”

  “Gosh, then, sis. You’d better hope Mom doesn’t make it.” He’s on his feet like a jack-in-the-box. His hip jars the table and knocks over condiments and drinks. Ice and tea race across the table toward Laura.

  Laura grabs napkins and sops liquids off her lap and legs. “Aren’t you going to help me clean up your mess?”

  “Not feeling helpful,” Hank says from his clamped jaw. “And thanks for humiliating me and showing your true colors in front of Maggie.”

  Laura’s voice escalates. “I warned you this was a family discussion.”

  Hank pushes down on his hat like he’s walking into a stiff wind. “If only that felt like family.” To Maggie he says, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I’ll meet you up front.”

  He nods and strides off.

  Maggie turns to Laura. “What’s the matter?”

  Laura finishes wiping down the table. “Other than my brother is a selfish asshole?”

  “Why do you need the money?”

  “That’s none of your business.” Laura lifts her tray with a jerk.

  “Laura, I know you don’t believe it yet, but I’m not the enemy. If there’s something I can do to help, I want to.”

  “How can you help?”

  Maggie follows Laura to a conveyor belt, carrying her own tray and Hank’s. “I don’t know. Talk to Hank, at least.”

  “I can talk to my brother myself, thank you very much.” She slams her tray down on the belt.

  “If you change your mind . . .”

  “I know you’ll be lurking around.”

  Maggie bites back what she wants to say, but she thinks it. You don’t have to be such a bitch about it.

  Forty-Three

  Gene joins Hank and Maggie at the Mint Bar after Maggie sends him a distress signal text. Hank’s been drinking for an hour. Maggie’s taken Louise for a constitutional and drink of water. She’s catalogued every animal head trophy and photo in the place. An email came in from the contractor in Texas, offering to work with her on a design that meets her budget. She made an appointment with him for the end of the next week. Now she’s just trying to keep Hank upright.

  Maggie side-talks at Gene. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Gene holds up three fingers in a question to her. She holds up five. His eyes widen.

  He nudges Hank with his shoulder. “Buddy, I’m so sorry about your mom.”

  “I lost all the rest of my fam’ly today.”

  “No, buddy, your Mom’s still with us. And you’ve got me. Maggie. And Laura.”

  “Not Laura. Fam’ly doesn’t try to sell your life out from under ya.”

  Gene looks to Maggie for interpretation.

  “Laura wants the ranch to go on the market, ASAP.” She takes a sip of her Koltiska original, straight.

  Gene’s eyes fly open like someone has cattle prodded him. “Put it on the market?”

  “She’s dead to me.” Hank downs the whiskey in front of him. He holds up a finger.

  Maggie curls it down. “You’re getting too far ahead of me, cowboy.” Like four ahead, but she doesn’t tell him that.

  He slant-eyes her. “You don’t drink as much as you used to.”

  She realizes he’s right. Not that she doesn’t drink, but that she was drinking way too much for a while. She smiles. “You’re the only drug I need. How about you?”

  Hank locks eyes with her and shakes his head back and forth. “Doesn’t appear so.”

  Ouch. She hopes he took his shot, because he needs all the help he can get. Grief and anger are doing a number on him. She rolls her eyes at Gene.

  He’s chewing his bottom lip. “We can make Laura an offer.”

  “We don’t have the money to buy her out.”

  “Maybe she’ll take a promissory note.”

  “She wants cashhhhh.” Hank throws a twenty on the bar.

  Maggie adds another.

  “We gotta get back to the hoshpital.”

  “I’ll drive.” Maggie snatches the keys from his hand.

  Gene says, “I’ll be there in an hour. You got him until then?”

  “Yep. He’s safe with me.”

  A few minutes after Gene leaves, Maggie props Hank on her shoulder. “Time to go.”

  “Do you need a hand?” It’s Penny’s voice at her elbow.

  “Hi, Penny.” Maggie almost says no, then changes her mind. This is a good chance to talk to the girl. At least find out her last name. “Sure.”

  “I need to go to the bat’room,” Hank announces. “Bleed the lizard. Drain the main vein.”

  “We can get you there, but after that you’re on your own,” Maggie tells him.

  One on each side, she and Penny support Hank as he stumbles to the men’s room.

  “You gonna be okay?” Maggie asks him.

  He salutes her as he falls through the door.

  “Not good.” Maggie leans against the pool table. She likes the small room in the back of the bar with historic ranch brands burned into the paneling, hand-carved wooden booths thick with varnish, and her favorite photographs in the place, all black-and-whites. A plane dating to the early days of flight with the mountains in the background. Snow-covered cattle and cowboys. Sheep at a mountain lake.

  Penny nods. She gazes into the jukebox. “He’s pretty hammered. His mom had a stroke, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Michael told me.”

  That’s one of the subjects Maggie wanted to talk to her about. “Michael.”

  “Yes.”

  “You talk a lot?”

  “Kind of. Not as much as we used to.”

  “You were close?” Maggie walks over to the jukebox, too.

  “We still are. But we used to have an apartment in Sheridan.”

  “You lived together.”

  “Yeah.” Penny dips her head. Her hair falls forward.

  Maggie can only see part of the girl’s profile. “Before you dated Paco?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I heard you were still close with Paco when he died.”

  Penny closes her eyes. “We broke up.”

  “But you were still close?”

  “Yeah.”

  Maggie breaks a long silence. “And now you and Andy are engaged. Congratulations.”

  She shakes her head. “I broke it off with him. It’s probably for the best. But I thought he would be a good dad.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Michael. But I didn’t tell Andy th
at. I don’t want to cause trouble between them.”

  “You mean trouble like Michael blackens Andy’s other eye?”

  “That was from Michael?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No.” Her hand covers her mouth, and she backs up to the jukebox.

  “How did Andy take the breakup?”

  She shakes her head. “He’s okay, I think. I just told him. I guess this means I won’t be coming to music lessons with him anymore.”

  Maggie is more confused than ever, but at least Andy is free from Penny. She thinks that’s probably a very good thing. “I guess not.”

  Hank staggers out from the bathroom.

  “I’ve got it from here,” Maggie tells Penny.

  The Cheyenne woman stares at her with inscrutable eyes. “Whatever you say.”

  How can she know less about this woman every time their paths cross? Penny walks away, and belatedly Maggie wonders what Penny was doing at the Mint.

  “Give me your arm, cowboy.” Hank throws it over her shoulders.

  Maggie and Hank make their way to the door like the last-place team in a three-legged race. Once they’re outside, Maggie turns right down the alley. They’re parked in back. Not ten feet down it, they meet a man coming the other direction. A man dressed in the Amish style.

  He looks up. The angry face is familiar. Reggie Yoder.

  When Maggie is three feet from him, she gets a blast of the medicinal odor from his breath. If she didn’t know he was Amish, she’d think it was moonshine. “Good day, Mr. Yoder.”

  “It ain’t looking like a good one for my son’s employer. What kind of man is drunk in public? Midday, no less.”

  Hank looks up, bleary-eyed. “I hear congraduelashions are in order, Reggie.”

  Maggie can’t help but raise an eyebrow at his slurred pronunciation.

  “What do you mean? My son is charged with murder and subject to any number of bad influences working for you.”

  Maggie tries to interrupt. “Hank, no—”

  Hank bumbles on, pointing in the air. “Your son Andy is engaged.”

  Reggie hesitates for only a moment, then sprays spittle. “That’s impossible. I would know.”

  Maggie tries again. “Hank—”

  “You would know if she wash Amish, and if you wern an asshole.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Surely thish isn’t the first time someone has told you you’re a jerk?”

  “Not that.”

  “Penny. You met her in court. Pretty Indian girl. Cheyenne, right, Maggie?”

  “I think so. But—”

  Reggie’s face turns crimson and he punches the air. “This will not stand.”

  Hank grins drunkenly. “You jus keep thinking that. Have a good day, Yoder.”

  Maggie considers correcting the situation, but Reggie Yoder is so completely unlikeable, she decides he deserves to stew in it. Andy can set him straight later.

  Forty-Four

  After a quick stop at Walmart, Maggie and Hank return to the hospital. Something long-legged, blonde, and smelling like strawberry Lip Smacker rushes Hank at the door.

  “Oh, Hank. You poor thing. Your mom. I’m so sorry.” Sheila attaches herself to Hank like a baby koala to its mother, only a little less platonic.

  Hank staggers back a step, but Sheila doesn’t let go. Only the fact that Maggie is behind him saves them from toppling out the door and back onto the sidewalk.

  “Uh, thanks.” Hank pats his former almost-fiancée.

  Maggie peels one of Sheila’s arms off Hank and slings it back at her. Sheila glares from behind Hank’s midsection. Maggie doesn’t give a shit, so she slings off the other. Then she comes around Hank and gives Sheila a little push in the small of her back, to get her moving in the right direction. She nearly jams a finger on something hard. Sheila’s concealed gun, holstered high and tight.

  “Hello, Sheila.” Maggie slides her arm through Hank’s. “So nice of you to come.”

  “Well, when I heard, I just rushed right over. I’ve been comforting your sister, Hank.”

  Hank grumbles, “She’s no sister to me.”

  Sheila looks confused.

  Maggie mimes walking with her fingers.

  “Where is she?” Hank’s voice nears bellow level. “Laura?”

  Sheila’s voice catches. “She’s up with your mother.”

  Maggie whispers, “It’s about to get ugly.”

  Sheila’s eyes flit to Maggie, to Hank, then back. She says, “I’ll be praying for you, Hank,” and leaves.

  Suddenly, there’s a loud, feminine wail from the far side of the lobby. “Hank.”

  Hank bows up, ready for battle, but when his tiny sister comes toward him, she’s racked with sobs and walking with one hand on a couch back for support.

  He runs to her. “What is it, sis?”

  “Mom. Gone. Dead. Oh God, Hank. We’ve lost them both.”

  They fall into each other, their cries primal. When they release each other, Hank staggers to sit on the couch. He sinks down, his hat in one hand, his head in the other. Maggie sits beside him and slides herself under one of his shoulders. She wraps him in her arms and rocks him.

  Long moments pass, and she becomes aware that Laura is sitting on the other side of Hank. Maggie looks across Hank’s chest. The tips of Laura’s hair are plastered against wet cheeks. Her face and neck are splotchy. She encircles her brother with her arms and grabs Maggie’s elbow. The skin on Laura’s hand is calloused and a little sandpapery, the palm small, and the fingers like the talons on a raptor. Her eyes meet Maggie’s. She’s given Maggie plenty of reason to hate her. But Laura is Hank’s baby sister, and their mother and father are dead. Maggie puts her hand on Laura’s elbow, so they’re locked forearm to forearm.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Maggie gives the words a lullaby quality, repeating them over and over until both Sibleys start to breathe normally. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “I know it’s for the best.” Laura’s fingers dig even harder into Maggie’s elbow. “She wouldn’t have wanted what was coming for her. With the Alzheimer’s.”

  Maggie feels a kinship with Laura in that moment. “My father had Alzheimer’s. It was horrible. So bad that he killed himself.”

  Laura sits upright, her jaw slack and eyes round. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  Face against Hank’s chest, Maggie nods.

  Laura stares out the window into the parking lot traffic. “Mickey’s dad has cancer. And no insurance. That’s why we need the money. For his treatment.”

  Hank lifts his ravaged face. “God, sis, why dincha just tell me?”

  “He’s embarrassed to be a hardship to his family. And Mickey feels like a failure because we don’t have the money to help him.”

  “Thank you for telling us,” Maggie says.

  Laura gets to her feet, scrubbing at her eyes with her fist. “I told the nurse I’d be right back. There’s paperwork.”

  “I’ll come, too.” Hank doesn’t move.

  “No. It’s fine. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

  “I wanna say goodbye.”

  “They promised they’d let us know when it’s time for that.”

  Hank nods. She leaves, looking back once at Maggie on her way out. Maggie wipes tears from Hank’s face.

  He focuses on her eyes. His words come out in a low croak. “Don’t let me end up like my mom.”

  She grabs his face with both hands. “Oh, Hank. We all go somehow. Sometime.”

  “Promise me.”

  Maggie can’t do that. “It will be okay, Hank. It won’t be like this.”

  “I never gave her a gran’child.”

  “She had Farrah.”

  Hank shakes his head. “Who’m I kidding? I’ll never have a child.”

  Maggie feels like a cold wind is blowing through her. They haven’t talked about kids together. She hadn’t thought about it much, but she realizes she assumed that they would have
them, some way, somehow. “Why is that?”

  “Because you’re going back to Texas. Arnchoo?”

  “I don’t want to be anywhere without you,” she says carefully, and reaches for his face again. Of course she has to go back and salvage her professional and financial situation. Is now really the time to discuss the complexity of her options, though?

  He shucks her off, and stomps away unsteadily. Each step feels like it’s landing in the middle of Maggie’s chest.

  Forty-Five

  A man’s voice breaks through her consciousness. “Maggie. Wake up, Maggie.”

  Her eyes fly open in the dark. She throws an arm out, feeling for Hank. His side of the bed is cold and empty.

  “Come to the window, Maggie.”

  “Hank?” She tries to crawl out from under the covers, but she’s stuck, her pj’s like Velcro against the flannel sheets. “Dammit.” She kicks and makes it worse.

  “Hurry, Maggie.”

  She stops, clutching the sheet. It’s not Hank’s voice. Her eyes drill into the dark, searching for movement or a shape, but she sees nothing. “Who’s there?”

  Downstairs, she hears a cracking sound. Her eyes jerk from the window to the door. She holds her breath. Two long, high-pitched scrapes. Then a thud.

  Louise, she thinks. She calls for the dog. “Are you in here, girl?” There’s no response. Yes, it must have been the dog.

  The voice is a hiss now. “You’ve got to hurry.”

  Something about it is familiar. Compulsion overcomes fear and she finally wrestles out of the bedsheets and runs to the window. No one is there. She’s hearing things. She presses fingertips to glass and gets her face as close to it as she can without fogging it over. The glass is cold.

  “What is it?” she asks, then she snorts. Like she expects an answer from someone who isn’t even here.

  “Too slow, Maggie.”

  She gasps. Someone is in the room. But where? She scans the nooks and crannies, but movement snaps her attention outside. There’s a shadowy figure moving along the road, toward the barn. Her eyes lose it in the dark. It must be Hank, which would account for his absence from bed. Or Gene. Or one of the hands. People move around the ranch at all hours, depending on weather or the needs of the animals.