“I’ve read your books before. You write about serial killers. The real sensational stuff. My mother wasn’t a serial killer.”
Maddie didn’t want to do this here. Not in the middle of a drugstore with Carleen looking on. “Perhaps you’d like to talk about this somewhere else.”
Meg shook her head and her dark hair swung about her shoulders. “My mother was a good person.”
That was open for debate, but not in the middle of Value Rite. “I’m writing a fair account of what happened.” And she was. She’d written some hard truths about her mother that she could have easily glossed over.
“I hope so. I know Mick doesn’t want to talk to you about this. I understand how he feels, but you’re obviously going to write this book with or without our input.” She dug around in her purse and pulled out a pen and a silver gum wrapper. “I don’t get why you think my parents’ deaths are worthy of a novel, but you do,” she said as she wrote on the white side of the gum wrapper. “But call me if you have questions.”
Maddie wasn’t easily shocked, but when Meg handed her the wrapper, she was so stunned that she didn’t know what to say. She glanced at the telephone number and folded the paper in half.
“You’ve probably talked to that waitress’s relatives.” Meg shoved her pen back inside her purse and her black hair fell across her pale cheek. “I’m sure they told you lies about my family.”
“Alice only has one living relative. Her daughter.”
Meg looked up and pushed her hair behind one ear. “I don’t know what she could tell you. Nobody around here even remembers her. She probably turned out just like her home-wrecking mother.”
Maddie’s grasp tightened on the handle of her shopping cart, but she managed a pleasant smile. “She’s as much like her mother as I imagine you are like yours.”
“I’m nothing like my mother.” Meg stood up straighter and her voice got a bit more strident. “My mother killed her cheating husband. I divorced mine.”
“Too bad your mother didn’t consider divorce a better option.”
“Sometimes a person is pushed too far.”
Bullshit. Maddie had heard that excuse from every sociopath she’d ever interviewed. The old “she pushed me too far so I stabbed her a hundred and fifty times” excuse. She slid the gum wrapper into her pants pocket and asked, “What was it about your father’s affair with Alice Jones that pushed your mother too far?”
Maddie expected the same response she’d got ten every time she asked that question. A shrug of the shoulders. Instead Meg got busy digging in her purse once more. She pulled out a set of keys and folded her arms across her chest.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head.
She’s lying. Maddie looked into Meg’s green eyes and Meg turned her gaze to bags of Purina ONE and Beggin’ Strips. She knew something. Something she didn’t want to talk about.
“Only three people know what really happened that night. My dad, my mom, and that waitress. They’re all dead.” Meg stuck one finger through the ring and closed her fingers around the keys. “But if you want to know the truth about my mom and dad’s life, call me and I’ll clear things up for you,” she said and turned to walk away.
“Thank you. I will,” Maddie answered even though she wasn’t a bit fooled by Meg’s eagerness to help, and she doubted that she’d get the entire truth about Rose and Loch’s life. She’d get Meg’s version, which Maddie was sure would be shaded and glossed over.
She pushed her cart to the checkout line and put her items on the counter. Mick had mentioned that his sister could be difficult. Did she suffer the same mental instability as Rose? Maddie had felt Meg’s hostility and resentment toward Maddie’s mother and even herself. Meg had refused to even say Alice’s name, but she knew something about that night. Maddie was sure of it. Whatever it was, Maddie would find out. She’d extracted secrets from people a hell of a lot smarter and with more to lose than Meg Hennessy.
When Maddie walked into the house after being gone all day, the carcass of a dead mouse greeted her. Last week, Ernie’s Pest Control had finally made it out and laid bait. As a result, Maddie kept finding dead mice all over the place. She set her Value Rite bags on the kitchen counter, then tore off some paper towels. She grabbed the mouse by its tail and carried it outside to the garbage cans.
“What’re you doing?”
Maddie looked over her shoulder, into the deep shadows created by towering ponderosas, and her gaze landed on two boys dressed up like mini-commandos.
She held up the mouse. “Throwing this in the trash.”
Travis Hennessy scratched his cheek with the barrel of a green Nerf gun. “Did its head pop off?”
“Sorry. No.”
“Bummer.”
She dropped the carcass into the garbage.
“My mom and dad are going to Boise,” Pete informed her. “’Cause my aunt had her babies.”
Maddie turned and looked at Pete. “Really? That’s great news.”
“Yeah, and Pete is spending the night at my house.”
“My dad’s taking us to Travis’s in three shakes. He says my uncle Nick needs a drink.” Pete loaded his plastic camouflaged rifle with an orange rubber dart. “The babies’ names are Isabel and Lilly.”
“Do you know if—”
Louie called for the boys and interrupted Maddie. “See ya,” they said in unison, then turned on the heels of their sneakers and took off through the trees.
“’Bye.” She replaced the garbage can lid and walked back into the house. She washed her hands and disinfected the floor where she’d found the carcass. It was after seven and she threw a chicken breast on her George Foreman Grill. She made a salad and drank two glasses of wine with her meal. She’d had a long day, and after she ate and put the dishes in the dishwasher, she changed out of her clothes and into a pair of blue Victoria’s Secret lounging pants with the word pink printed across her butt. She zipped up a blue hooded sweatshirt and pulled her hair back in a ponytail.
A yellow legal pad sat on her desk, and she grabbed it before turning on a few lamps and relaxing on her sofa. As she reached for the remote, she thought about Meg and their conversation in the middle of Value Rite. If Meg had lied about knowing what had set her mother off, she’d lie about other things too. Things that Maddie might not be able to prove or disprove.
Cold Case Files on A&E flashed on the television screen and Maddie tossed the remote on the sofa beside her. She put her feet up on the coffee table and jotted down her impressions of Meg. Then she wrote a list of questions she intended to ask and got as far as “What do you recall about the night your parents died?” when the doorbell rang.
It was nine-thirty, and she looked through the peephole at the only man who’d ever been in her house or stood on her porch. It had been over a week since she’d kissed Mick inside his office at Mort’s. Eight days since he’d untied her dress and made her ache for him. Tonight he wasn’t wearing his happy face, but her body didn’t seem to mind.
A sharp tug pulled deep in the pit of her belly as she opened the door.
“I just talked to Meg,” he said as he stood there with his hands on his hips, all male belligerence and seething testosterone.
“Hello, Mick.”
“I thought I made it clear that you stay away from my sister.”
“And I thought I made it clear that I don’t take orders from you.” Maddie folded her arms beneath her breasts and simply looked at him. The first pale shadows of night painted him in a faint gray light and made his eyes appear a startling blue. Too bad he was so bossy.