Maggie snorts. Because it’s not her Leslie in the picture. It can’t be. Even with a haircut, a dye job, colored contacts, and plastic surgery, her Leslie is twenty years younger than the woman in the picture.
But why would Leslie use someone else’s picture with the same email she uses on her PayPal account? Trying to figure it out hurts her head. She’s exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Maggie lies down. Just for a minute, she’ll ponder this from the horizontal. But before she can close her eyes, blue and red lights flash through the window and on the wall beside her.
Thirty-Two
“What the hell?” Maggie walks to the window and peeks through the blinds.
Three county vehicles are parked outside, lights strobing. Junior is leading the charge to Michele’s door, with Boland and what seems like a legion of law enforcement personnel behind him. Maggie clutches the windowsill. The doorbell rings. Louise leaps from the bed like a flying squirrel and is sprinting before her paws hit the ground. Her barks join with Gertrude’s, reverberating through the house.
Maggie runs to the bathroom. She squirts toothpaste on her finger and brushes her teeth as she walks to the front door. Her steps are slow, her heart pounding like she’s climbing the steps to a hangman’s noose. Her lungs shut like metal doors, refusing entry to the air she tries to breathe in. Why are all these officers here, after Michele was going to call Fayette and Lee County about Tom and Thorn?
This can’t be good. Not good at all.
The door hardware is icy cold under her hand as she opens it. Louise and Gertrude dash past her to Junior’s ankles. They sniff him thoroughly then move on to Boland, who shoves Louise away with his foot.
Maggie says, “Don’t kick my dog. She won’t hurt you.”
Boland says, “Restrain her.”
“Louise, come.”
Louise comes, although not eagerly. Maggie grabs her by the collar.
Junior rubs his lips together. “Maggie Killian. We have a warrant to search the premises, as well as your vehicle.”
Maggie’s a search warrant neophyte. She’d feared arrest, not a search. Can they even search the house without the owner present? She has no idea what to do. “Michele isn’t here.”
Boland pushes his way around Junior. “Step aside, Ms. Killian, unless you want us to arrest you for obstruction of justice.”
She doesn’t budge from the center of the doorway. “I need to call Michele. I’m just a guest here.”
“No one’s stopping you. But meanwhile the law allows us to do what we’ve come to do. This is the last time I tell you to move out of the way. Next time, you’re taking a ride to lockup.”
Maggie turns to the side. Boland, Junior, and several deputies and other county personnel she doesn’t recognize file past her into the house.
“I need to see a copy of the warrant,” she says, trying to remember what she’s seen when she’d been boozed up and watching old cop shows on late-night television, something Gary loved to do.
Junior hands it to her. Louise struggles against her as she reads. The words swim on the page before her eyes. It might as well be in hieroglyphics. Around her, things move at hyperspeed. Officers don gloves. Boland barks orders that don’t register with Maggie, and his minions disperse. She tries again to read the warrant. This time she can make out words, but she doesn’t comprehend much. It’s a Fayette County warrant to be executed by ten p.m., dated that day, specifically for the home of Michele Lopez Hanson and the Ford pickup belonging to Maggie Killian, for the purpose of looking for fire accelerants, electrical communications and data relating to Gary Fuller and setting fires, and Rohypnol.
Rohypnol. The word jumps out at her. What is rohypnol? The officers are all inside now, so she lets Louise go. The dog tears off to join Gertrude and they run around with their sniff on. She snaps a picture of the warrant, texts it to Michele, and hits speed dial for her sister’s phone number. Just as Michele is picking up, Maggie places the word. Rohypnol. Roofies. Date-rape drugs.
“Hi, Maggie. We’re just walking into Chuy’s. Are you okay?” Michele asks.
“No, I’m not. Lee and Fayette County deputies—and Boland himself—are here executing a search warrant.”
“At my house?”
“Yes. And for my truck. I’m so sorry. I texted you a copy. What do I do?”
“Watch them like hawks. Take pictures. Video or audio if things seem hinky. But let me read the warrant first. Hold on.”
Maggie sits at the dining room table with the phone on speaker. She bounces her leg, watching strangers pawing through Michele’s drawers and cabinets. It’s wrong. Just wrong. Louise and Gertrude shadow them as best they can, but they’re far outnumbered. How can Maggie watch everyone at once any better than the dogs?
Boland emerges from the hallway to Maggie’s room. “You’ll get an inventory of the things we’re taking, but for now, know that pretty much everything in that bedroom is coming with us.”
“Wait. What do you mean? Not my guitar, laptop, my bag, my toiletries?”
“Everything.”
“You’re taking my IDs and credit cards?”
Michele’s voice is hard and loud. “That’s bullshit, Boland. You can subpoena her records, but you can’t take her keys, cards, and cash. And that guitar is expensive and priceless.”
“Who the fuck do you have on speakerphone?” Boland demands.
“Michele Lopez Hanson, my lawyer and the owner of this house. I believe you know each other from the quality time we spent together this morning.”
Michele’s voice takes no shit. “Leave her purse after you search it, Boland. And I’ll consider it a personal affront if you take that guitar. One that I’ll feel compelled to get noisy about.”
“We’ll try to eliminate the purse and guitar onsite. No promises.”
“None from me either. When can you have a copy of her hard drive made and get her laptop back to her?”
“We’re a small department. We’ll do the best we can.”
“It’s a simple dump to an external hard drive. We’ll bring you the hardware in the morning so you can have her computer back to her by noon.”
Boland turns around, muttering, and heads back toward Maggie’s room.
But Michele’s not done. “Why didn’t you return my calls, Boland? I’ve left you three messages in the last hour. We’ve got evidence for you.”
Boland stops. “Call me tomorrow. I’m busy here.”
“You’ll look like a jackass by tomorrow if you don’t hear what I have to say now, before the media gets hold of it.”
Maggie jumps to her feet. “There are two men in town who the estate of Gary Fuller thinks stole half a million dollars from him. One is the manager Gary planned to fire last Friday. Tom Clarke. The other man, Thorn Gibbons, is having sex with Gary’s seventeen-year-old sister. We’d already told you about them, before we even learned about the embezzlement today.”
Boland rolls his eyes like a pubescent girl. “Thanks, Nancy Drew.”
Maggie’s eyes burn, not with tears, but with rage. The kind of powerless rage she can’t do anything about without getting arrested.
Michele’s voice goes super soft. “Don’t say we didn’t try to warn you, before you did this. And now you know.”
Boland takes a toothpick out of his breast pocket and starts cleaning and sucking his teeth. “Duly noted.”
“Have you found the witness to the fire at the Coop? The one Maggie told you about?”
“Not my concern. I’m here about Fayette County.”
“Well, has Lee County found her?”
“Ask Lee County.”
Michele growls. “Exactly what are the grounds for probable cause for this warrant?”
“Besides the emails between them, Ms. Killian has a history of substance abuse and proven ability to obtain drugs, in addition to motive, means, and opportunity for administering them and starting the fire.”
“What does Maggie’s history have t
o do with anything?”
“Someone—we suspect Ms. Killian—roofied Gary Fuller before the fire.”
Maggie’s mouth goes cottony and she feels suddenly, horribly sober. Gary was drugged. Drugged and left to burn to death. She clutches her stomach and rocks. A sob lodges in her throat, halfway up, stuck.
“Dios mío. A roofie now has nothing to do with Maggie and cocaine addiction ten years ago. That isn’t probable cause. This is the cheesiest excuse for a warrant I’ve ever seen. I’ll get it tossed with one hand behind my back. Everything you’re collecting now, all fruit of the poisonous tree.”
“Knock yourself out, counselor.”
“What are you trying to do, other than harass my client?”
“Prove the person who died in the Coop was roofied, too, because then your client will be going down for both murders.” Boland sticks the dirty toothpick in his pocket, winks at Maggie, and disappears down the hall.
Thirty-Three
Maggie jerks out of a deep sleep. By the time she realizes she’s awake, she’s bolt upright, her shoulders rigid. Sweat drips down her neck onto her heaving chest. A thunderous herd of Wyoming horses gallop in her ears. At the foot of the bed, Louise whines plaintively.
She can’t remember what it is, but she knows something isn’t right. Is the wrong thing in a dream? But she smells the overripe half-eaten banana and the astringent odor of the open Balcones on the bedside table. This isn’t a dream. Boland and his crew were here. They tore the place apart. Took everything she had except her wallet and truck keys, and left with Boland looking pissed because, she assumes, they didn’t find what they were looking for. The fact that they accused her of burning the evidence in the Coop makes her assumption seem pretty darn reasonable.
Maggie was so drained after the officers left that she toppled onto the bed in the wrecked room. She was out in seconds. Until moments ago, when she awoke. She didn’t have to go to sleep to have a nightmare. Her life already is one.
Maybe she heard something outside. The curtains are open, the moon is full, and light is streaming through the window. Outside, the skinny oak trees are like dancing skeletons. She looks for movements along the ground but sees nothing. She holds her breath so she can hear, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary. So what woke her?
“Michele? Rashidi?” she calls. They aren’t due home until after midnight. Michele had offered to come home during their call earlier, but the search would have been over before she made it back. It was pointless. Maggie had thanked her and declined. She looks at the time on her phone. Ten thirty.
No answer. Her skin prickles. She’s being paranoid, though. The dogs would be barking if someone is in the house. Snap out of it, Maggie.
She gets up. In the bathroom, she splashes cold water on her face. She isn’t drunk anymore, although she wishes she was still under the influence of something to take the edge off. Anything to escape this feeling that she’s trapped in a garbage barge, lost at sea. It’s been years since she’s craved coke, but if there were lines in front of her now, she’d snort them and damn the consequences. She stares into the mirror. The chance for a relationship with Hank is ruined. Gary is dead. Her store is burned to ashes. Law enforcement is harassing her for it. What does she have to stay clean for anymore?
She walks back to bed in the dark and huddles under the covers, replaying the last few minutes. All those things that are wrong—she’s convinced they aren’t what woke her up. She thinks harder. Before the search team came, she was researching Leslie. She hadn’t found much. But it’s Leslie, she realizes. Leslie is what woke her. She missed something. She has to go back over her search results. Her subconscious is screaming that there’s an answer in there that she skipped over the first time.
She doesn’t bother turning on the bedroom light, just flops on her tummy and gropes for her laptop. When she doesn’t find the hard plastic rectangle amidst the bedding, she remembers Boland took it.
“Shit!”
She furrows her face, concentrating. What is it about Leslie that woke her up? She hadn’t thought she’d found anything earlier. Now she’s convinced she did, if only she could put her finger on it.
Louise barks at her.
“Keep your pants on.”
Maggie opens the door and Louise follows her out, the dog circling Maggie’s legs all the way to the living room. “Need to go out, girl?”
Gertrude pads up, dreadlocks swinging.
“Girls, plural. Sorry, Gertrude.” She lets them out the back door, gets herself a glass of water and a handful of grapes, then returns to the door. She opens it to let the dogs back in, but they’re not there. “Louise. Gertrude. Come.”
She waits on them a moment, remembering the woman she’d seen in the backyard that weekend. Her mind plays a funny slideshow of images. The woman in the backyard. The woman across the road from Flown the Coop the night of the fire. The pale braided woman with the dark eyes she’d seen in the rocking chair.
“Son of a bitch.”
The woman she’s picturing in her mind is the spitting image of the pictures she’d found when she ran a search using Leslie’s PayPal email account. Enough to be her sister. Goose bumps rise on her skin. It makes no sense. But one thing is clear. Maggie can’t wait for morning to look for answers. She needs to know Leslie is out of her house, right now.
And if she’s not, she has a whole lot of explaining to do, starting with the identity of the pale, braided woman.
Thirty-Four
On her way out the door, Maggie grabs the shotgun Michele keeps there on two wooden pegs. It’s for scaring off whatever needs scaring. Coyotes, bobcats, prowlers. The gun is only a 20-gauge, but it makes a powerful noise. If Leslie’s still at Maggie’s house, Maggie can blast a few shots outside the bedroom window. Maybe it will scare Leslie off like it does the varmints.
Shotgun under one arm and keys in the other hand, Maggie runs to the truck. She opens the truck door, and Louise jumps in first, without permission. She hadn’t even known the dog followed her out the door. Putting her back in the house will take too long, so she lets it slide. She’ll make her stay in the truck when she gets to her house. Maggie lays the long gun on the floorboard, business end pointing toward the passenger-side door. Louise settles on the seat above it.
Maggie peels out of the driveway and onto the road, taking the turns like Bess is on rails. The shotgun slides and bangs into the passenger door. To have lived in Texas all her life, nearly, and not have a gun rack behind her seat—it feels unpatriotic. And dangerous. She wishes she had one now.
She drives by an oil derrick lit up like a Christmas tree. A flare burns pressure off an oil well across the road. She hits a patch of old pavement on the mostly gone-back-to-dirt road as she takes another curve. The tires squeal. She slows down. All she needs now is a wreck and the delay and publicity of a DWI. But she’s too jacked to drive the speed limit. There’s no calming her down, even with the cooling night air blowing in the open windows, not after the night she’s had. The day. The week. The month. The life.
Maggie reaches her house in record time, ten minutes door to door from Michele’s. Leslie’s car is still there, parked partially out of sight from the road behind a copse of trees, but in front of the house. Light spills out two of the windows.
“Leaving tonight, huh? Doesn’t look like it.”
Louise bobs her head, almost like she’s nodding.
The Coop rubble is no longer lit up for crime scene technicians, but Maggie’s headlights illuminate the yellow tape barricade as she pulls into the parking area. She skirts it and drives over the lawn, like Leslie must have. When she’s close, she angles Bess toward the house, pointing the high beams through the front door and down the central hall.
“Take that, squatter.”
Now that she knows Leslie hasn’t left town yet, all thoughts of the pale, braided woman she’s seen in real life, dreams, and online fly out the window. Maggie rolls the window down halfway, tucks the shotgun und
er her arm, and holds Louise at bay while she shuts the truck door. Marching toward the front of the house, she calls, “Stay,” over her shoulder.
Louise howls in her best sad-coyote imitation, but Maggie ignores her.
She bangs on the front door of her house. She’s not surprised when there’s no answer, but Leslie has to be there. Not just because of her car, but because the chances of her still being at Charlotte’s at eleven o’clock on a Monday night are nil.
Maggie isn’t leaving without satisfaction.
She walks around the house. At the master bedroom window, she shouts, “I know you can hear me, Leslie. I’ve spent the evening getting to know you online.”
Maggie pauses, listening. She hears a moan. A sex moan. Who would have sex with Leslie? She’s attractive, but such a robot. And a bona fide head case.
Maggie yells again. “You hide online behind pictures of someone who isn’t even you.”
This time she hears a muffled yell, then an impact and a grunt. It gets her attention. If that’s sex, it’s not the good kind.
“Leslie? Are you okay in there?”
She presses her face to the window, her chin above the ledge. There’s a little sliver not covered by the curtains, big enough to see into her bedroom. It’s a small room. All the rooms in her old farm cottage are little. Her queen-size four-poster bed takes up most of the space, leaving just enough room for a rustic bedside table, a tall antique dresser, and a matching dressing table with a gilded mirror. Her favorite Gidget painting, Front Porch Pickin’, hangs over the head of the bed. A large urn on the dresser usually holds fresh flowers. Now, dead sunflower heads loll over its side. She’d left them for Leslie before her drive to Wyoming. Her white duvet is in a heap on the floor. The overhead fixture is out, but a lamp she’d made from an old milk jug sheds light on two people on the bed. She almost pulls back, the thought of Leslie mid-coitus giving her a wave of nausea. But she can’t force herself to look away.
Maggie Box Set Page 47