Abby Ruth crossed one leg over the other, swinging her foot casually. “If you’re too chicken, then you can stay here while Sera and I check out the shop teacher’s classroom.”
“No!” The thought of her friends leaving her behind felt like the times Maggie had been the last one picked for the dodgeball team years ago. She was part of something now—something productive and good and fun—and she’d be darned if she was giving that up just because Lil was finally home. “In fact, I just ordered a perfect B&E outfit from White House Black Market.” And it sure had felt good buying clothes she didn’t mind leaving the tag in. Gone were the days when she clipped the XXL out of her jackets so no one would know. Like they couldn’t tell by looking at her.
“What about Lillian?” Sera asked.
Dread soared through Maggie’s gut. “We’ll make sure she’s fast asleep before we leave.”
Chapter 17
When they got to the high school, Maggie was so busy admiring her black bootleg jeans that she almost ran into a pile of cinderblocks behind the portable buildings. She had to get her head in the game. But darned if Lycra wasn’t a miracle fabric.
She tiptoed to catch up with Sera and Abby Ruth, who were already lifting a skinny metal-framed window. Maggie’s insides sank. Even in her smaller-sized pants, there was no way her backside would fit through that thing.
Abby Ruth gave Sera the once-over. “You sure dressed for the job, didn’t you?”
Yeah, in her body-hugging catsuit, Sera would slip through that window like a greased-up hinge pin.
“Once I’m in, I’ll unlock the front door to let the two of you inside.”
They boosted Sera up in their cupped hands and she wiggled through the opening. Maggie half expected a crash to sound from Sera landing on the floor, but of course, there was barely a shuffle. Maggie and Abby Ruth scooted around to the other side of the building where Sera was already standing in the open doorway.
They climbed the concrete stairs, and once inside, Abby Ruth passed out small high-powered penlights. “Meant to put these in your Christmas stockings,” she said. “But I forgot in all the hullabaloo of Jenny’s visit.”
Sera flicked hers on and the beam illuminated the casing on Maggie’s. Oh, goodness. Abby Ruth had even had the lights engraved with their initials. The woman might act like she was hardhearted, but she had an ooey-gooey center. Maggie couldn’t imagine her life without these two women.
“Maggie, why don’t you check the junk pile in the corner?” Sera said. “And Abby Ruth, if you’ll get a closer look at the sculptures, I’ll see if I can find anything in the storage room.”
They all hit their areas of the room, with Sera disappearing through a door near the teacher’s desk. As quietly as possible, Maggie rummaged through a large plastic bin of metal flotsam, separating them into piles as she might with her grandkids’ Legos. Part of an old fireplace set. Nuts and bolts. A motorcycle fender. Hmm. There was the metal beater Sera had mentioned. And a stack of license plates. Colton had used license plates on the Virgin Mary’s cloak. But parts alone weren’t really enough to condemn the teacher as a forger.
Abby Ruth was busy turning over sculptures on the worktables and checking their buns of steel…literally.
“Find anything?” Maggie called out softly.
“With some of these things, I can’t tell the ears from the ass,” she grumbled. “Regardless, I haven’t seen the fake-o Colton signature anywhere.”
A scraping sound came from the front of the building. One that sounded a lot like shoes against concrete steps.
Maggie grabbed Abby Ruth’s shirt sleeve and strong-armed her toward the door where Sera had disappeared.
“What the hel—”
Maggie yanked hard enough to rip the seam of Abby Ruth’s favorite western shirt. “Need to hide. Now.”
They hustled inside the storage area, and Sera whirled around. “You scared me to death—”
“Someone’s here,” Maggie whispered, her voice hoarse and shaking. This scenario was all too familiar. The last time her underarms had produced this much moisture, she, Sera and Abby Ruth had been trapped inside a bad guy’s house and Teague had been about to catch them at it.
“Well, shit,” Abby Ruth muttered. “What now?”
“The tarps.” Sera grabbed a couple of beige mounds.
“We can’t just throw them over our heads and pretend to be tan ghosts.” Still Abby Ruth snatched one and draped it over her shoulders.
“We can squeeze behind here.” Sera headed around a shelving unit filled with a collection of dustpans, metal birdhouses, and some other unidentifiable projects. Without any trouble, she shimmied between it and the wall.
Abby Ruth followed her lead, creating a tarp-colored faux wall back there.
Maggie eyed the gap and sucked in her stomach. The sound of the building’s door closing spurred her into action, and she shouldered her way behind the first support. The whole thing shook, rattling the students’ projects against the metal wiring beneath them.
Maggie froze, a metal support pole pressed against her sternum. Oh. So not good. Her right boob was behind the shelf, but the left one poked out as though it was peeking around during a game of hide-and-seek.
“Get back here,” Abby Ruth whispered.
“I’m trying. Some of us are more mammarily gifted than others.” Maggie tilted in her pelvis, even did one of those Kegel exercises for good measure. Then she squished her left breast almost as flat as those mammogram machines did. With that combo, she was able to wiggle her way behind the shelf.
Probably wouldn’t matter. Whoever was inside was sure to spot the puddle of her nervous sweat.
Abby Ruth helped her yank up the tarp and hold it level with hers and Sera’s.
Just in time too because the storage door opened and someone clomped in. A man, by the sounds of his mutters to himself. “Clamps, soapstone and solder.”
While Maggie stood behind the shelf with her shaking thighs pressed together, the man wandered around the space, apparently gathering items. At one heart-stopping point, he pulled something off the shelf right in front of her tarp-covered face. Then he shoved it back into place so hard, the hunk of metal popped her in the nose. When she felt a trickle on her upper lip, it was all she could do not to sniff.
By the time the guy had done what he came to do and clicked the storage door shut behind him, the trickle was dripping onto Maggie’s brand spanking new shirt. When the outer door closed as well, they all dropped their tarps. But Maggie was too frozen to squeeze her way out of their hiding spot.
Sera came around to Maggie’s side and tugged her from behind the shelf. “Are you okay?”
“Imb nob sure.” She tilted her head back, cracking it against the wall.
Abby Ruth shined her penlight directly into Maggie’s face, half blinding her.
“Oh, no. Your nose is bleeding.” Sera snatched up one of the abandoned tarps and pressed it against Maggie’s face. “Keep your head back and apply pressure.”
A stream of blood trickled down the back of Maggie’s throat. “Ugh.”
“Sera,” Abby Ruth said, “did you get a look at the guy?”
“Definitely Murphy Blackwood, the shop teacher.”
“Any idea what he took?”
She glanced around. “All the items he was reciting to himself, plus a canister of gas.”
“Mighty suspicious, if you ask me,” Abby Ruth said. “We need to follow him.”
“Maggie, are you up to it?”
Heck if she’d let a little bloody nose stop her. “Yeb.”
The three of them raced out of the portable building toward the parking lot, but whatever the shop teacher had been driving was nowhere in sight. Sera leapt into the back of the truck and Abby Ruth fired it up. Maggie slid the back window open and called to Sera, “You okay back there?”
“Yeah.” Sera pulled out her phone and started tapping buttons. “Got to love the internet. You can find everything on h
ere.” She flashed her phone in their direction. “Got it.”
Murphy Blackwood lived just a few blocks away.
“Let’s go,” Maggie said. “I know where that is.”
A few minutes later, they were cruising past the address at a slow rate of speed. Sure enough, a truck was parked in the driveway. Sera jumped out of the back of Abby Ruth’s truck and peeked into the bed of the other truck. She gave the girls a thumbs-up, indicating the welding supplies were in the vehicle.
They parked a block down, waited for a looong three hours, but it looked like whatever he was doing with all those welding supplies, he wasn’t up to it at his house. And they couldn’t stay here until morning.
“We’ll have to set up another stakeout later,” Maggie said. “If we’re not home when Lil wakes up, we’ll have to explain ourselves.”
“Things were easier before we had a keeper,” Abby Ruth commented.
True, but it would be so disloyal for Maggie to admit it aloud. “I’m tired down to the marrow of my bones,” she said instead. “Sera might be young enough to stay out until dawn and get up with the chickens, but I’m not.”
“Sugar, that doesn’t even make sense seeing as roosters crow at sunup.” But Abby Ruth started up the dually and pulled away from the curb.
When they entered Summer Haven’s drive, Abby Ruth cut the lights and crept up the driveway, being mindful not to rev the gas. Maybe she had learned some discretion over the past few months.
Turned out, it didn’t matter how discreet Abby Ruth was. When they tiptoed in the front door, Lil was sitting on the velvet divan in the parlor. She was dressed in her favorite cotton waffle weave robe, with her arms clamped across her chest as though she was trying to keep her anger from leaping out. “And where, pray tell, have the three of you been?”
Maggie forced herself not to wince or hunch. “We went out for a little…”
“Fresh air,” Sera improvised.
“Drink,” Abby Ruth said at the same time.
Maggie could feel the strain of her small smile. “A little al fresco cocktail.”
“Until midnight?”
“Champagne is best sipped in the dark of night,” Sera said.
Her shoulders back like a queen, Lil stood and stalked over to Maggie. Then she stuck her face close and sniffed. “Only thing Maggie smells like is sour perspiration.”
And blood, Maggie thought. But she wasn’t about to add that tidbit to the mix.
“So why don’t you tell me where you really were?”
“We’re just trying to wrap up this thing with Colton Ellerbee,” Maggie told her.
“I thought we agreed you would drop that silliness.”
It wasn’t silliness, but apparently Lil didn’t want them digging into any situations that weren’t directly related to her wellbeing. That hardly seemed fair. Or neighborly. “No, Lil,” Maggie said as evenly as she could. “You may have expressed your opinion, but that doesn’t mean we agreed. Colton gifted us with a beautiful nativity scene—”
Abby Ruth coughed and patted her chest.
“—and hired Abby Ruth’s daughter as his agent. He’s been good to this family.”
Lil’s face drooped, little jowl pockets quivering. “This family? I thought I was your family, Mags.”
Oh. Oh, no. Surely Lil wouldn’t be so petty or cruel to pull the pout card. “You are my family. A part of my family. But, honey, whether you like it or not, life had to go on while you were away. Abby Ruth and Sera are very important to me. The Summer Shoals community is too. And if I’m called to help someone I care about, I’m sure as shooting going to step forward.” Sure as shooting? That was straight from Abby Ruth’s dictionary. Maggie had changed, and for the better, since she’d made new friends. For the first time since George had died, she felt alive again.
“So where were you out investigating tonight?” Lil said investigating as if she was spitting out sour milk.
“Just the high school,” Sera offered up.
Lil made a show of checking her wrist even though she wasn’t wearing a watch. “I didn’t realize they were offering night classes. Not just night, but midnight classes.”
The evening of excitement and fear finally caught up with Maggie, and she staggered over to the piano bench and sank down on it. “Let’s not snipe at one another, Lil. Get whatever you have to say off your chest.”
“You cannot tell me that whatever you were doing at the high school was on the up and up. If you were on the property, it would be a minimum of a trespassing charge.”
Goodness, Lil really had learned some things in prison, hadn’t she? Next Maggie knew, Lil would be quoting the penal code to her. “We were very careful.” And no way in heck was she breathing a word about their close call with the shop teacher or how they’d staked out his house. Lil would scream stalking.
“We were just looking around,” Sera said.
Lil leveled her gaze back on Maggie. “You do realize everything you do reflects back on Summer Haven. Back on me. Have you considered that if I’m associated with any illegal activity whatsoever, they could decide to toss me back in prison?”
Lord, Lil was as paranoid as a cat in a roomful of hunting dogs. Prison had done a number on her, but Maggie could not, would not, give up this investigation. Not only because they needed the money, but because it was exhilarating.
A little trespassing isn’t half as bad as being put away for fraud, Lil. Besides, you wouldn’t have a secret if it hadn’t been for us. Why are you so worried about my allegiance to you when I’ve done nothing but protect your secret?
Maggie didn’t rightly like this side of Lil, but she simply said, “We’ll surely keep that in mind.”
Chapter 18
After her little chat with the girls last night, Lillian felt much more at peace. The next day dawned with beautiful streaks of pink over the Georgia sky. A perfect morning for her to take the Tucker Torpedo out for a spin. Probably best to do it by herself since her driving skills were no doubt rusty.
Before heading out to the garage, Lil glanced at the newly relocated coffeemaker. She sure could use a cup of coffee, but decided not to risk it. That chicory stuff would have to go before she would trust anything brewed in that machine. Maybe the Piggly Wiggly should be her first stop.
She reached for the car keys on the hook by the door only to find they weren’t there. Why couldn’t all her things be where she’d left them? When Maggie woke, they needed to have a talk about all the disarray in the house.
For now, Lil checked the long skinny drawer she used to keep stocked with postage stamps, a notepad, and a matching pen and pencil set. Now it was filled with Maggie’s neatly arranged rubber bands, stapler and pen. Lil’s favorite Mont Blanc pen was missing.
She took a settling breath. Later. She’d deal with all that later.
When she couldn’t find the Tucker’s key ring, she checked the file drawer and withdrew the spare she kept stashed under T. Everything in its place. Just the way she liked it.
As she headed for the garage, Lil hummed a happy tune to herself. This was a new day, and she would find a way to get through to Maggie. She twisted the garage handle and pulled to raise the manual door.
But the garage was absolutely empty.
Where in God’s name is Daddy’s car?
Her chest tight, Lil hurried back into the house, moving faster than she had since before Martha told her about the whole compassionate release thing. She stomped her way upstairs and banged on Maggie’s door with enough force to bruise her knuckles. “Margaret Evelyn Stuart Rawls, where in the name of Pete is my car?” She didn’t wait for Maggie to respond but turned the knob and walked directly inside.
Maggie pulled herself to a sitting position on the side of the bed. She was blinking like a medicated owl and the entire right side of her hair stuck out at wild angles. “Huh?”
This was what happened when someone Maggie’s age stayed out half the night. More than half the night. “The Tucker. I
t’s not in the garage.”
Abby Ruth must’ve been woken by the ruckus because she was suddenly hovering in Maggie’s doorway dressed in her nightclothes and wiping sleep from her eyes. If this was their normal schedule, rising after nine in the morning, it was no wonder Summer Haven looked worse for the wear.
Maggie shot a look at the woman standing behind Lil. Lil didn’t know exactly what the silent exchange meant, but it felt horrible to be excluded. She was on the outside in her own home. How was that fair after spending all these months away? “Well?”
“Sugar,” Abby Ruth drawled. “You caught us.”
Fear missiled through Lil’s heart. What had they done?
“Maggie’s such a horrible friend that she made the extra special effort to send your daddy’s precious car to be detailed from tire to roof.”
“But…but…” But she needed it back now. “I missed it so much and wanted to tootle around in it today. Mags, if you’ll get dressed, you can drive me into town to pick it up—”
“No can do,” Abby Ruth interrupted. “We took it to a real special place near Atlanta and paid an arm and a leg because these folks specialize in these old, valuable cars. You wouldn’t want just anybody to gussy up your daddy’s car, now would you?”
“No, but—”
“Good, that’s settled then.” Abby Ruth turned to walk down the hallway.
“Nothing is settled.” Angelina expected Lil to hand over the car by High on the Hog, only a week away. But Lil wanted time to drive it again. Lord, what had she gotten herself into this time? The way things were going around here, Daddy would be haunting her in no time flat. “I didn’t ask you to do this. I need you to go pick it up. Clean or not. I need it back today.”
When Abby Ruth turned back, there was something in her gray eyes—a little cold and a lot stormy—that made Lil feel as if she’d just shoveled down the prison cafeteria’s meatloaf. Bloated and uncomfortable. “I may not be a guest at Summer Haven on your invitation, Ms. Fairview, but I know every one of us has done things for you that you never asked us to do. I didn’t know you from Adam, but I lied to Teague Castro for you. And I’ve known that boy since he was knee-high to a flea. Maggie has busted her behind not only to watch over a house and car you apparently care more about than you do your friend, but she’s also protected your secret so you could protect your reputation. I think what you need is to be grateful.”
In High Cotton Page 15