Maggie Box Set

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  She makes quick work of his feet and other hand. “Can you hang on to me? Bury your face in my neck, and I’ll drag you?”

  “Yes.”

  She sits on the bed. He locks his arms around her shoulders, then pushes off the bed to help her stand. He’s big, taller than her and far heavier, and the drugs make him weak and unsteady, but the increasing roar of the fire gives her a strength she’s never had before. She holds her shirt over her face again. Leaning over as far as she can without faltering under his bulk, she walks under the worst of the fire, one arm out for balance. It’s achingly slowgoing. A few times, Hank yells as the flames claw at them. She’d scream, too, but she’s breathing too hard from the exertion of carrying him. The hallway—which has felt so short every time guests have loitered outside her bedroom—now feels miles long.

  Twice she goes down. Once to her hands and knees. Another time, all the way to her chest. Hank’s weight flattens her. For a moment she pants, dazed, aching, and sure they’re both done for. Then she rallies. They aren’t dying now, not like this. Straining, she pushes upward. Her muscles tremble. Hank puts some weight on his feet, relieving her burden enough that she’s able to get to her knees, then push off her thighs with her hands, then stagger to her feet. Her hands burn. Even her boot soles are hot. She ignores it all and slow-marches on, only sure she’s heading in the right direction because she keeps bumping into the wall to her left.

  Ahead of them, she hears shrieking and growling. Inch by hellishly hot inch, Maggie gets closer to the sound. As she tumbles through smoke down the steps and out of the house, she feels fur under her hand.

  “Louise.”

  A wagging tail hits her in the face.

  “Get this fucking dog’s fangs off of me.”

  Maggie ignores Celinda’s voice, even though it’s so close she knows she could touch the woman if she wanted. She hauls herself and Hank farther out into the yard, her thighs quivering. The heat on her back is still intense. She collapses. The grass under her cheek is a cool sip of mountain stream water. Hank touches her face, something blue clutched in his fist fluttering in front of her.

  “Good dog, Fucker,” she croaks, then passes out.

  Thirty-Five

  “Louise deserves a medal,” Junior says, leaning over Maggie, who’s sitting on a stretcher while an EMT dresses her cuts and burns.

  “She’s a good dog.”

  “Can’t believe you stole her from me.” Hank’s voice is a barely audible rasp. It still sounds woozy from being drugged. He’s on a stretcher, too, but flat on his back, still holding his scrap of blue fabric.

  Maggie pries it from his fist. “You foisted that mutt off on me. Now that she’s the second coming of Lassie, you want to rewrite history.”

  “Sir, I need you to quit talking or we’ll have to tape your mouth shut.” The second EMT is teasing, but stern. “Seriously, I do need to put a mask over it now.” He holds up an oxygen mask. “Your bronchial tubes are swelling. They’re not letting in enough air. This will help.” He lifts the back of Hank’s head and slides the strap around it, placing the mask over his mouth and nose gently.

  “Tape hers shut, too.” Maggie jerks her head toward Celinda, who is nonstop complaining about her injuries from Louise’s teeth. “She’s lucky Louise didn’t rip her throat out. It would have served her right.”

  Maggie opens her hand to look at the blackened piece of scarf Hank had carried out of the house. Blue with dirty white stars. It looks familiar. She stuffs it in her pocket, then takes several long sips of water. She’s desperately thirsty, but the water still hurts going down. Her second fire in a week, before she’d recovered from the first one. She hopes it’s her last. For sure there will be no mirrors allowed in her near future.

  Junior pulls on his chin. “I have news.”

  “If it’s good news, I’ll take it.”

  Before Junior can answer, the EMTs push Hank’s stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Maggie stands and attempts to climb in after him.

  The EMT who had been helping Hank with his oxygen mask turns to her and says, “No, ma’am. We’ll send another for you.”

  “I’m not letting him out of my sight.”

  Junior puts a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll drive you. We can talk on the way.”

  She winces and jerks away, trying to remember how she hurt her shoulder. The dive out the window? Glass? Burning embers? Wrenching Hank along and to safety? All of the above? “I’m riding with Hank.”

  Karen appears, getting out of an unmarked SUV with a light on top.

  “Shit,” Maggie mutters. “Tell me she’s not here to hassle me.”

  Junior follows her gaze to the fire marshal. “I don’t think so.”

  The EMTs start to shut the doors to Hank’s ambulance.

  “No. Please.” Maggie blocks them with her arm.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” The EMT removes her arm and closes the door.

  Junior says, “Maggie, wait. We have an ID on the body from the Coop.”

  Maggie tries to pull her hair back, but her bandaged hand makes it impossible. She flits her glance to Junior, her eyes wild. “Who was it?”

  “Leslie DeWitt. And she was roofied. Like Gary.”

  “And like Hank.” Although Junior’s words don’t surprise her, they’re a gut punch nonetheless. Leslie. The real Leslie. Her arm drops. Her hand finds the scarf in her pocket, and suddenly she knows why it looks familiar. She’s seen it before. In the hair of a pale, braided woman, rocking in her room at Michele’s, left in the chair. How had it gotten here? She pulls it out and squeezes it. Oh, Leslie, I’m so sorry. “It’s my fault.”

  “Why?”

  “Celinda. Her.” Maggie points at her old bandmate. “She came looking for me and found Leslie. All of this. Gary, my shop, even befriending my friends and family, Hank, and now the house. All of it was for revenge.”

  “She’s not just a sick puppy?”

  “Oh, she’s sick all right. But she claims I’m the reason she’s sick.”

  The ambulance engine fires up.

  “Let me drive you, Maggie.”

  She hesitates for a split second, then pounds on the ambulance door. She shouts, “Let me in.” Then to Junior, “Make them let me in.”

  He doesn’t move.

  “Make them, Junior. After all you guys have put me through—that you’ve been a part of—you owe me.”

  He sighs, walks to the driver’s door, holds up a hand. She peers after him, watches him speaking. The rear doors open, knocking into her, but she doesn’t care. Out of her peripheral vision, she sees Karen join Junior.

  The EMT inside the door says, “He needs care. Either get in, or stay out, but choose fast.”

  Maggie’s inside and holding Hank’s hand in a blink.

  Thirty-Six

  Two days later, under the midday sun, Maggie takes Louise to the charred ruins of her home. “All of this would have been yours, girl.”

  Louise whines and strains. The dog is on a leash, since the entirety of Maggie’s compound is a crime scene.

  The usual suspects are arrayed around the train wreck of her life, but Maggie ignores them. Media. Curious neighbors. Gary’s groupies. Karen. Junior. Sheriff Boland. Other county personnel in uniform. Maggie’s doctor had refused to let her be interviewed the day before, to give her voice a rest after the smoke strain. She’d given a statement first thing that morning, though, so the law enforcement types leave her alone now. She’s no longer under suspicion, either. Not just because she and Hank could have died, but also because they were corroborating witnesses to Celinda’s crazed confessions. Just for good measure, Maggie had told them about Lumpy and her goats, and about the redheaded woman who’d kicked his ladder over and left him treed for days. She wishes the authorities could pin that one on Celinda, too, but she feels certain Jenny did it. With Lumpy’s ID, they should be able to nail her for it. The county is currently over its limit in crazy women who’d be better off locked up.


  A very sane-looking woman, her face shaded by a straw cowboy hat with a pink band, is sitting on a folding lawn chair between the parking area and where the house used to be. Merritt Fuller stands. Maggie’s lips are cracked and dry. She has even sparser eyelashes and eyebrows than after the fire at Gary’s. No makeup, no moisturizer, not even a hat or scarf in her hair. She feels unprepared for a conversation, but she has no choice.

  Maggie lifts a hand in greeting. “Merritt.” She walks the rest of the way to the older woman, assisted by Louise pulling ahead of her.

  “Maggie. I read what happened. I came here as fast as I could.” She holds up a twelve-pack of Lone Star.

  Tears prick Maggie’s eyes, but she blinks them back. “Does this mean I can come to Gary’s service?”

  “Better you than those dickheads Tom and Thorn.” She sets the beer in the chair. “You were right. They were stealing from Gary, for Thorn and Kelly’s tour. Which went in the crapper when Gary got Thorn fired from The Singer. Served him right. I’ve already sicced the cops on them both. They were arrested this morning.” Merritt’s face droops. “But I don’t think Gary ever got over Kelly quitting on him. He thought he was doing right by her.”

  “And Kelly?”

  “She coughed up the whole story when I confronted her. Even signed affidavits against them.”

  “Did she know about the money?”

  “Says she didn’t.” Merritt shrugs. “She’s my baby girl. Corrupted by older men who should have known that if you mess with one Fuller, you mess with them all.”

  “I’m glad she did the right thing.”

  Louise winds her leash around Maggie’s legs. Maggie twists in the same direction to avoid getting tangled up.

  “She loved her brother. And she feels real bad about everything.”

  Now that her tour is on ice and her manager and boyfriend are being charged with embezzlement. If the world is a decent place, Thorn will get an adder for statutory rape, too. Maggie has a strong suspicion that Kelly should be in the clink with them, but maybe she’s learned her lesson. “But you’ve kicked her ass, right?”

  “She won’t walk for a week.”

  “Good.”

  “How about I keep the beer on ice for us, and we’ll toast Gary after we lay him to rest?” Merritt gives Maggie the details for the services in Boerne. “It would mean a lot to me for you to be there.”

  Maggie hugs Gary’s mother with her nonleash arm, gingerly to avoid the injured places. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  Merritt walks back to the parking area with the chair and the beer. Louise tries to follow her, but Maggie tugs her back. She’s glad the conversation with Merritt is over, even if it was a good one. She’s here for her house. Her shop. For closure.

  Her phone rings. She glances at the screen. The call is from Emily. She walks into the shade of the lone surviving tree on the front of the property, a barren, singed oak. Louise scurries around her six-foot-diameter world, checking out the new scents.

  “Hello?”

  “Maggie! Wallace and I are calling to make sure you’re okay. He was on my ass to call you. About your place. The fires. The person who died. I told him we should give you more time, but he’s persistent.”

  In the background, Wallace’s voice calls out, “Hi, Maggie!”

  Maggie closes her eyes and lifts her face up to the sky. Her shoulder hurts. And her palms, her knees, and her bruised ribs on the side where she’d been thrown into the air conditioner by the fireball. The emotional pain of facing betrayal is more than she feels equipped to deal with right now. “Wallace needs to stay off the gossip rags and get a life.”

  Emily hesitates, then repeats Maggie’s words to Wallace. There’s a scuffling sound.

  Wallace’s voice comes on the line. “Seriously, are you okay?”

  “Hi, Wallace. Yes, I’m fine.”

  “People dot com made it sound like you nearly died.”

  “I guess I did. Hank was closer to dying than me, though.”

  Louise darts between her legs. Maggie steps over the leash. Her patience with the dog’s manners is growing thin.

  “Is he as delectable as his picture?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hank’s smiling, dimpled face flashes through her mind. Saying his name makes her heart ache. Maggie had tried to talk to him repeatedly yesterday. He’d been in treatment or asleep every time. This morning her calls to his room went unanswered and the ones to his cellphone had gone to voicemail. Now that the danger of Celinda has passed, there are things she needs to know. Like why he came to Texas, whether he regrets it, and what his intentions are, toward her, Sheila, and Sheila’s baby. But if he’d wanted to talk to her, he’d surely have called her back by now.

  She draws in a sharp breath. She can’t think about those things now. She has to deal with Wallace, and him leaking details of her life to TMZ. “Wallace, if we’re going to be friends, it’s not okay to talk to reporters about me.”

  The pitch of his voice rises. “What?”

  “I know you’re the one who told TMZ I was headed to see Gary last week. I understand. But it can’t happen again.”

  “It wasn’t me, I swear.” His voice sounds sincere.

  But Maggie has been fed plenty of earnest denials in her life. “I can be friends with someone who tells me the truth, even if they’ve messed up. But I can’t be friends with a liar.”

  Wallace grows insistent. “Listen, I didn’t tell People.com you were going to see Gary. I’ve never talked with anyone at TMZ. TMZ doesn’t know I exist, damn them.”

  There’s the sound of another struggle over possession of the phone.

  Emily comes back on. “Oh God, Maggie, don’t be mad at Wallace. It really wasn’t him.”

  Maggie unwinds herself from the leash as Louise doubles back and tangles them both up again. “Kind of hard to believe. He’s the one with the obsession with celebrity gossip.”

  “It’s true. I know it’s not him, because it was me.”

  “What?” Maggie stops fighting Louise.

  “I’m so sorry. I only told Laura. And apparently those jerks writing for TMZ were in Sheridan trying to dig up dirt on you through Hank. They cornered Laura in the hospital. I know she didn’t mean to hurt you. She was trying to get them off her brother. She feels terrible. I feel terrible.”

  “Oh my God.”

  Louise hits the end of the leash hard.

  Maggie reaches down for an untangled section of the leash and jerks her back, then extricates herself. “Stop it, Fucker.”

  Emily’s voices is aghast. “What?”

  “Sorry. Not you. The dog. You were saying?”

  “If I’d ever have dreamed it would turn into what it did, I never would have said anything to Laura.”

  This. This is why Maggie doesn’t have female friends. Because they can’t keep from running their mouths to each other. Except for Michele. She’s different, thank God. “You told Hank’s sister. Of all the people to tell, you told his sister.”

  “I know. In retrospect, it was a bad call. At the time, I had this misguided feeling that I was helping Hank get over you so he could move on to become a father and husband without reservations. But it was none of my business, and I shouldn’t have done it.”

  Damn straight, you shouldn’t have. Maggie sucks in a shuddering breath. “Okay.”

  “So don’t be mad at Wallace. Be mad at me.”

  “And Laura.”

  “Well, yes, me and Laura. But I am sorry.”

  “Me, too. Very, very sorry.”

  A squirrel runs up the tree beside them. Louise goes after it, nearly jerking Maggie’s arm out of socket. She’s had it with reining the dog in. It’s her own property, after all, so if the law enforcement types don’t like it, tough shit. She unclips the leash. Louise bounds like a drunken reindeer toward the county personnel working the scene.

  “I hope someday you can forgive me.”

  Maggie sighs. Emily cares about Hank. Lord knows Ma
ggie does, too. “It will be okay. Can you let Wallace know I’m sorry I blamed him?”

  “I will. And thank you.”

  “Just remember this when I do some dumbass thing that pisses you off.”

  Emily laughs. “I will. By the way, Jack says hello.”

  Maggie hadn’t heard a sound from Jack, but she can’t help a small grin. The wooden Indian thing he does is pretty funny, whether he means for it to be or not.

  After they end the call, Maggie walks through the disaster area. She expects to feel anguish, but all she feels is numb. Junior waves to her from the far side of the scene. He’s restraining Louise by the collar. Maggie waves back, but she doesn’t go for her dog. She isn’t eager to interact with Junior or any of the rest of them. Especially Boland. He’d tried to railroad her. At best, he harassed her needlessly. At worst, he nearly made her a victim of his lazy police work. And now, when she needs a moment with her place, to say goodbye before she figures out her next steps—Sell the land and buy another shop? Rebuild? Liquidate her inheritance and travel?—they’re all here, keeping her from finding peace. Junior releases Louise and turns back to a conversation with his colleagues.

  Maggie calls her dog. Louise sprints to her, the very portrait of joy.

  “Come with me, girl.”

  Maggie and Louise walk past the former shop and burned-down house to the partially intact barn and workroom. The roof and walls are intact, and the place is no longer barricaded, so she follows Louise in. It’s dark inside. She pushes her sunglasses onto her head, where they catch in her unruly hair. She’d rather not break her hair with her glasses, so she carefully removes them and hangs them on the neck of her crumpled, one-day worn T-shirt.

  The first thing she sees is a big Dodge Ram truck with Wyoming plates. Hank’s truck. Realization hits her. This is why she hadn’t seen it out front the night of the fire. If she had, finding Hank in her house—and bed—wouldn’t have been as big a surprise. Maggie’s fists ball with a desire to find Celinda and snatch her baldheaded. The woman is clever, Maggie will give her that, but, whatever she has coming to her from the legal system isn’t enough.