She had tried to mislead him about who was involved with Aaron and who hated him, trying to draw attention away from Lily—or so he had thought at the time. Fletcher had called Jamie, the writer she’d so politely muddied, only to find out that he had been in California almost from the time Aaron had kicked him out. He was working as a technical writer for a firm near San Francisco, a time to “clear my head and make some money,” as he’d put it. His boss had verified his presence at work every day.
The circumstantial evidence against Maggie was strong. She’d found the body. She had motive—the money she’d inherit. Fletcher had also toyed with the idea that the first attack, the shot out of the dark, had been her idea, another distraction. He’d dismissed it quickly—she’d been hurt too badly, and her turning had been impulsive and impossible to synchronize with a long-range shot. And whatever she was going to say had been forgotten.
But that was the only suspicion that he had dismissed, and the attack was the only thing that kept him from pursuing her actively as the killer.
Well…not the only thing. Fletcher wasn’t the only one who believed in her.
“I guarantee you, Sir Fletcher, if I were to die tomorrow, that girl would be the only one I’d miss. Or who’d miss me.” Aaron stretched out on the leather couch in the downstairs game room, a cigar replacing a glass. He was tall enough that his heels rested on one arm and his head on the other, his frame still lean from years of jogging, too little food and too much booze. He closed his eyes for a moment, and Fletcher thought he might be drifting off.
“Why do you say that? You’re not together anymore.” Fletcher sat in a matching chair, enjoying the soft comfort of it.
Aaron sniffed. “Maybe because I’m a man and she’s the one who really got away.”
Fletcher hesitated, wondering if Aaron was serious.
After a moment, the writer grinned. “Okay, so not really. I think it’s just because she’s the only one who liked me.” He opened his eyes. “Not just loved me, but liked me.” Taking a deep breath, he sat up. “When you’re in my position, me boyo, you have no idea how intoxicating that can be.” He took a sip and grimaced. “She’s also fun, and I know there’s not a devious bone in her body.”
Fletcher shook his head. “Everyone can be devious if they want to.”
Aaron stubbed out the cigar. “Too true. And I guess she could. But I can’t imagine what would make her do that.”
Actually, that was an easy one. Her sister. Without a doubt, Maggie would even go to jail for Lily.
Fletcher jerked upright. “Lily,” he whispered. Well, not Lily. Not as the killer, but because she was someone who would suffer if the killer was caught. A killer who, of all the people at the retreat, was the only one other than Maggie with the clearest motive.
Scott.
Fletcher snatched out his cell phone. He had some calls to make.
Maggie drifted in and out of consciousness over the next twenty-four hours, her body finally claiming the sleep she’d missed during the past week. She had awakened briefly Sunday night, just long enough to eat something and take a pill for her pain. She slept through the night.
She awoke slowly on Monday morning, her grogginess gone, and most of her pain lessened to a dull ache. Except for the rib, which still made it hard to take deep breaths. Other than that, she felt almost blissful from the rest and the gentle waking. As her eyes focused, she realized that Fletcher was standing at the window of her room, looking out toward the airport. Since there was no hospital in Mercer, Tyler had brought her to Portsmouth, where they had treated her after the shooting.
She cleared her throat. “Are you going to hover every time I’m hurt?”
He turned, then smiled. “There’s a good possibility of that,” he said quietly. Before the meaning of it could register on her, his professionalism returned. “We need to talk, but I want you in full mind before we do. Can I get you something to eat?”
She reached for her console and raised the head of her bed. “No, thank you. But I should probably talk to the doctor and get dressed. Can this wait?”
He paused, then nodded. “I should warn you. This may get intense.”
Maggie looked him over carefully. He hadn’t shaved and he was more wrinkled than usual. His hair looked as if it had been styled by a wind tunnel. “Something happened in New York, too, didn’t it? After I left?”
He nodded.
“Have you slept?”
He tilted his head to the left and looked at her more closely. “A little.”
She looked down for a moment, then back up at him. “Fletcher, I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to see this through, no matter what the outcome. No matter who really killed Aaron. Why don’t you go back to the cabin and get some rest? It’ll take a while for me to be discharged. Plus—” She paused.
“What?”
She met his gaze. “We need to have this talk at Aaron’s house. Is that going to be a problem?”
His brows furrowed. “A problem how? I don’t think Korie is coming back anytime soon. It might be if this goes to court, in terms of a search.”
She smiled. “Well, even though Aaron owned the house, officially it sits on land owned by the retreat, and I have a key. I oversaw the care of it when they were gone. Doesn’t that give me legal access?”
He stepped a bit closer to the bed and crossed his arms. “Probably, but I’ll double-check. You’re not going to tell me what this is about, are you?”
She shook her head slowly. “It’s better that I show you. You need to see it for yourself.”
He didn’t respond, then Maggie realized he was looking at the side of her face, which was bruised from the blow of her attacker. He stepped forward, reaching out. His fingers traced the edge of it, and Maggie felt her stomach contract. His touch was tender, and Maggie could smell his cologne now that he was near.
Feeling suddenly vulnerable, she pulled the sheet up a bit. Vulnerable, not because she was wearing only a hospital gown but because she didn’t want him to stop. She closed her eyes. I’m not ready for this.
His fingers lingered, then traced down her cheek. I shouldn’t, she thought, as she turned her face and pressed it into his palm. She heard the sharp intake of his breath, and his hand curled gently, caressing her skin.
Then he pulled away quickly, whispering, “I’m sorry.”
Before she could open her eyes, he was halfway out of the room, and she watched as the door closed behind him with a muffled whuff. Letting out a long breath, she pressed her head back into her pillow. “Oh, Lord,” she pleaded. “What am I doing?”
TWENTY
Lee was persistent. “I don’t want to let this one get away, Judson.”
The older man paused at the door. “Then be creative. Just remember the rules about entrapment. Call me when you have an idea.”
Lee strode across the room. “Why aren’t you doing anything on this?”
Judson looked down on his partner with a slight smile. “What makes you think I’m not? If you want to set a trap that’s not a trap, it takes more than footwork.” He buttoned his coat. “I’m going to get some rest. I suggest you do, too.”
Lee motioned at his desk. “I want to go over the paperwork again. All the notes.”
Judson nodded. “Let me know if you find anything.” He started out, then paused at the door. “No matter what time it is.”
Lee grinned. “You got it.”
Tyler had left a message on his cell, so before he even left the hospital, Fletcher returned the call, not only to get an update on what had happened with Maggie, but to distract himself from the sandalwood scent that lingered on his fingers.
“No scrapings or cloth under her nails, although we tried,” Tyler explained. “Obviously Maggie connected with his leg or ankle, but not enough for serious damage. We thought Cookie might have hit him, so we carried one of the dogs out there, looking for blood or torn clothing so they could get an air scent, but no luck. There was only one set of f
ootprints on the scene that wasn’t Maggie’s or Cookie’s, but they were too mushed up to get a good impression. Basically, even if we knew who had attacked her, we wouldn’t be able to prove it. The scene isn’t giving us anything.”
“Any clues as to how he knew where she’d be?”
Tyler cleared his throat. “Not really. Maggie said half the retreat’s residents are night owls by nature and that she was not a quiet hiker. She mentioned something about a ‘moose in passing.’”
Fletcher stifled a snort. “Yeah. She’s not that hard to track, and I guess it’s pretty obvious that if she’s not at the lodge in the middle of the night, she’d be at Cookie’s.”
“Well, it’s not like we have a twenty-four-hour supermarket around for midnight prowlers.”
“True,” Fletcher said with a chuckle. “Anything else?”
“As a matter of fact…” Tyler paused and Fletcher could hear his chair scoot and papers shuffle. “I had a friendly judge light a fire at the state lab. They faxed me the DNA results on the champagne bottle this morning.”
“Anything significant?”
“Yes, but only if we already had a suspect. There were four different samples on the bottle.”
“Four?” Even Fletcher was surprised.
“Yep. Aaron’s on the main part of the bottle, where the label snagged skin cells when it hit him. One inside the mouth. That was Lily’s. Lily’s was also on the upper label, where you grip the bottle, along with two others. Maggie’s—we matched it to the sample you gave us—and one unknown. Could be the killer, could be just one of the folks who left their prints when moving the bottle around.”
Fletcher paused outside the hospital, near his rental, and looked back up at the windows. Maggie’s room was on the fourth floor. “Just out of curiosity, why is Lily’s DNA on file?”
“Very early in her career, she got involved in a scuffle with another actress, either over a role or a man, it was never made clear which. Lily was the one attacked, and it was just before her first big hit, so they think probably it was professional. Fingernails as well as jealousy were involved, so her DNA and her prints went into the system, even though it was settled out of court. You don’t read the tabloids, do you?”
“They dug that up?”
“Oh, yeah. Very juicy.”
“Tyler…”
“Yeah?”
“Do you read the tabloids?”
Tyler paused for a long moment. Fletcher could almost see him blushing over the phone. “My mother keeps me informed.”
“Gotcha.” Fletcher grinned and decided to let the young chief off the hook. “Too bad we can’t convince a judge that the retreat is a closed community so we could get a warrant for everyone else’s.”
“I could always ask. He might laugh, but it never hurts to try.”
Fletcher grinned at the young man’s innocence and chutzpah. “Go for it. Let me know what you learn.”
“Will do. Uh, Fletcher?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s one more thing. The lab found traces of Aaron’s DNA on the upper label as well. On all sides of the bottle. Not like he’d been hit with it. Like he had been holding it.”
“Which is consistent with him taking the bottle away from Lily, like Maggie described.” So she was telling the truth about that much.
“True. I’ll get to work on that warrant. The subpoena you asked about as well.”
“Thanks.”
Fletcher left the hospital, but was distracted enough that he became confused in the early-morning work traffic and wound up wandering the maze of roads and neoclassic office buildings near Pease Tradeport. Irritated, he stopped for a soda, got new directions then drove the twenty minutes or so back to the retreat. Once on the road, he let his mind drift again. Maggie was right. He needed more rest than the one night at his apartment had offered him. Too much was coming at him at once.
He let the automatic scanner on the radio run through the dial, finally choosing a classic rock station. Recognizing a song he loved from the mid-seventies, Fletcher couldn’t decide if it was a remnant of his mother’s love of music or if he was just getting old. He turned the volume down to the level of a thumpy background score for his thoughts as he drove by fields turned under for the winter and thick groves of trees now bare-limbed and skeletal. Horses were the only signs of life he saw, but he enjoyed the peace of it. After fifteen years in New York, a city he usually loved, he could see the pull this countryside had on Aaron.
And Fletcher realized he missed Vermont. With his parents gone, his one sister in Miami and Jason in New York, he’d only returned to his hometown a handful of times over the years. A funeral. His high-school reunion, which had been a disaster.
But the years he’d lived in the area around Stowe were filled with good memories as well. As Fletcher drove past a blueberry farm, he remembered days when he and his friends would explore every neighbor’s backyard, looking for discarded treasures. He crossed over the Lamprey River, thinking of himself as a teenage Huck Finn, lying on the bank of a stream, counting clouds.
Passing by one of the quintessential New England churchyards, complete with a white chapel banked by thick evergreens, Fletcher’s mind also drifted over times he’d sat in one of them, squirming on the hardwood pew. His mother had polished him up every Sunday until he’d left for college. After a while, he hadn’t minded, enjoying the youth group and the feeling of belonging, the comfort of the faith. He’d even continued going after arriving in New York. For a few years.
He shifted in the car’s bucket seat, also remembering the terror of that alley, the stark realization of what he had done.
“God’s not the one who moved away, you know.”
Fletcher shook away Cookie’s words. He liked his life now. He wasn’t sure he could imagine any other. Yet the older he got, the more he felt an odd tug on his heart, his mind. A tug that said he was missing out on something vital.
“Why are you still here?” Aaron asked, looking around at Fletcher’s functional but tiny apartment. “You could afford to move.”
“I like it here. It’s just what I need. I had bigger one once. A condo in the Village, remember? I sold it.”
Aaron took up his usual position on the lumpy couch. “Why?”
“I didn’t like the hassle. I’d prefer to be more mobile, and if I want an investment, I’ll look into another mutual fund.”
Aaron sighed. “I’m never gonna get you married, me boyo. Women like security. Stability.”
Fletcher coughed. “Didn’t stop you.”
Aaron laughed. “Yes, but I have the big bucks, and they all know it. Makes up for a lot.”
“Yeah, but I remember that you didn’t have any trouble with the ladies before you had the bucks.”
Aaron looked around Fletcher’s ceiling, at his walls. “That’s the creative spirit. Attracts a certain type of—why is it that you don’t even fix this place up? Are you so afraid the IAB will come snooping around that you can’t even paint?”
Fletcher growled. “It has nothing to do with Internal Affairs. If I were worried about them, I wouldn’t have bought that condo in the first place. I just haven’t had the time.”
Aaron sat up, looking over his friend closely. Then he grinned. “You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
“Told anyone what?” Fletcher tried to pretend he didn’t know what Aaron meant.
“Told anyone that I signed over part of the royalties on the last ten books to you.”
“Why would I?”
“What are you doing with the money? Other than buying and selling condos other cops couldn’t afford?”
Fletcher squirmed. He didn’t like talking about money. “Paid off the credit cards, then cut ’em up. Bought into some mutual funds. Gave some to a couple of charities.” He got up and went to the kitchen for more coffee. “Am I going to have to give you an accounting for it?”
Aaron laughed. “I can’t believe this makes you so uncomfortable. You r
eally don’t know what to do with money, do you?”
“Not a habit I’ve acquired, no.”
“How much is there?”
“They’re your books. Don’t you know?”
“I know the last one sold close to two hundred thousand in hardback. Edward takes care of everything else. Besides, I want to hear you say it.”
Fletcher stood in the door to the kitchen, coffee in hand. “With or without interest?”
Aaron grinned. “Just the raw details.”
“Just over seven hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
Aaron let out an Irish whoop. “Son, you ought to spend some of that.”
“It’s invested.”
“So’s your retirement money, but you probably get a better yield.”
“No doubt.”
“Still, you should never overlook the advantages of a good piece of real estate. Or, even better, a wife.”
“I’ll think about it.”
But he hadn’t. Not really. Until now.
Arriving back at the retreat just after eight in the morning, Fletcher took Maggie’s advice. He went to his cabin and slept, dreaming of slow-moving rivers, whitewashed churches and children who never seemed to stop running and laughing.
By Monday afternoon, Maggie’s discharge was complete and Ray drove her back to the lodge. Fletcher, Lily and Cookie waited on her in the main room and fresh coffee steamed on the coffeemaker’s hotplate. After gentle hugs, Cookie and Lily hovered as Maggie settled into a chair, wrapped in her favorite afghan. Fletcher brought her a cup of coffee. Ray stood next to the fireplace, looking ominous.
Maggie took a sip of her coffee, and after a moment of awkward silence, she cleared her throat. “I know it’s obvious, but I think someone needs to say it.”
A Murder Among Friends Page 18