Bookshots Thriller Omnibus Page 10

  “Thirteen months and three weeks,” Maggie replied. She looked at the woman’s neck now. More red marks around her throat, subtler, but still visible. Maggie made out what might be the pattern of fingers. All these marks would inevitably bruise.

  “So cute,” the woman said again, and then she wobbled.

  Maggie rushed forward and caught the woman before she stumbled off the curb. Up close she smelled alcohol and perfume in equal measure. “Busy night?” Maggie asked her.

  “I can’t keep up like I used to,” the woman said. She dropped her clutch purse.

  Maggie picked it up. “Maggie Denning,” she said. “My husband and I are kind of new. I’ve never even been down this street before.”

  “Denning? Oh. Oh, I’m Holly,” the woman said. Maggie noted a slight puffiness around the woman’s eyes and in her cheeks. It went with the territory when blood flow was interrupted.

  They shook hands. Holly had hardly any grip. “You should probably get some rest,” Maggie suggested.

  Holly laughed brightly and a little too loud. “I think that’s a great idea. Nice to meet you, Maggie. Bye, little ones!”

  The twins gabbled back. Holly walked away, unsteady on her heels. At the front door of her house, she struggled with her keys, but she managed to get in anyway. Maggie watched her go, and wondered if Holly was pay to play or strictly recreational.

  Either way, it was none of her business.

  Chapter 2

  She’d put Holly out of her mind by breakfast the next morning. She got up early while her husband, Karl, was still asleep, juiced a half-dozen oranges and made omelets with cheddar and ham. She slid the food onto plates at the moment Karl entered the room, still putting on his tie. He hadn’t donned his jacket yet, and his badge and weapon were visible at his waist. Maggie tried to shake the wistful feeling she got when she saw them. It never went away. “Morning,” he said.

  Maggie laid out the feast. She put a handful of plain Cheerios on each girl’s tray to chase and eat. “Morning,” she replied. She kissed Karl on the cheek. “I should say, ‘Morning, stranger,’ because I haven’t seen you awake for two days. What kind of schedule does Collins have you working?”

  “The busy kind. He’s not a nice boss like you were.”

  “Maybe I should come down there and tell them I’d like to see my husband once in a while. I saw you more when we were on the job.”

  “Yeah, I know. It was a late one last night and we have briefings this morning I can’t skip, otherwise I’d stick around and help you with the laundry. That pile is as big as I am.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  They sat and ate. Karl looked at his plate while he chewed, and he slurped the juice. “Coffee?” Maggie asked him.

  “My blood is half caffeine at this point, but I probably should. I don’t know how long this day is going to last. If I miss dinner again tonight, I apologize in advance.”

  Maggie poured the coffee. Her husband slurped that, too. He was a noisy eater, and he snored, too. They’d been married four years. “Gardening club tomorrow,” she said by way of conversation.

  “Isn’t everything frozen?”

  “If we don’t start the community garden now, it’ll be too late. We have ten volunteers this year.”

  “That’s my wife, from chief of detectives to Mother Nature’s assistant.” Immediately his expression changed. He had brown eyes she found soulful, and an earnest face. He reached across the table to put his hand on hers. “I’m sorry. That was a dumb crack. Put me on the shittiest case you can find.”

  Maggie nodded to shake the sting. “It’s a black mark in your file, Detective. It’s not going to look good when it’s time for your review.”

  “Is there anything I can do about it, boss?”

  “Tell Collins to lighten up. When he took my job, I didn’t think he’d take you, too.”

  Karl squeezed her hand and tried a smile. “I’ll tell him the woman who gave him his detective’s shield said so.”

  “That’ll get him where it hurts.” She smiled back, though she didn’t feel it.

  “In the meantime, can you keep from going crazy at gardening club?”

  “Sure. It’s something to do, right?”

  He looked at her then. “I know it wasn’t your idea to be a stay-at-home mom, but it’s for the best. You put in your twenty and you don’t have to go back to that. Besides, if you were on the job, you’d never see Lana and Becky and before you know it they’d be eighteen and out the door. Right?”

  Maggie nodded slowly. “Right,” she said without enthusiasm. “I just need to forget what it was like to accomplish anything.”

  Karl’s smile faltered. “I know you think it should have been me who stepped back.”

  “No. You have room to grow. Collins’s job will be yours. You want to be C of Ds? You have to stay.”

  “Are we going to be okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Karl squeezed her hand again. “Really okay?”

  “Really okay. Now finish up and go to work. You have bad guys to catch.”

  Her husband drained the last of the coffee. He snagged his jacket off the back of an empty chair. “I promise if I can get home early, I will. I’ll even pick up from that Italian place and we can eat in front of the fire. It’s still cold enough for a fire.”

  Maggie didn’t smile. “Be careful out there.”

  “Always.” He bent over the girls to kiss their heads. Lana giggled and Becky spit out a slimy Cheerio.

  Chapter 3

  She waited until she heard his car start in the driveway before she got up to clear the table. She washed the plates and the pan by hand and wiped them down before putting them on a rack to dry. Everything in the kitchen was in its perfect place. It had been her mother’s doing, from the furniture to the towels. It looked like a model home and sometimes it felt that way, too.

  When the girls were done playing with their food, Maggie took them to the front room, where they could frolic on the floor with their toys. Sometimes when they played Maggie tried to read a book, but she’d only ever gotten about two-thirds of the way through a page before some diaper or crying or toy emergency put an end to her reading time. She’d had more free time to read books as chief of detectives than she has as a mother. The book she’d been trying to read, two-thirds of a page at a time, was called IQ, a Sherlock Holmes–inspired comedy about a brilliant man in Los Angeles who took on the cases the LAPD couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Maggie appreciated it as fiction, but she knew that if she had found a civilian poking around in police business under her command, she would have brought the hammer down so quickly the vigilante detective wouldn’t know what happened.

  The curtains were pulled back from the bay window at the front of the house, and the street was visible through it. The first police car passed almost before Maggie had a chance to catch the flicker of its lights. She looked up and a second followed closely behind. She heard no sirens, but the lights were unmistakable.

  Her heartbeat picked up. She put down the book and walked to the window. She stepped on a Duplo block and cursed out loud before putting her hand over her mouth. The girls didn’t seem to have heard. Maggie looked up and down the street. A third police cruiser came along, red and blue lights also flashing, and passed as silently as the others.

  A few minutes passed without another car appearing. Maggie didn’t leave the window, staring the way they’d come as if to will something new into happening. It didn’t. Maggie caught herself chewing her lip. She stopped.

  The phone rang in the other room. Maggie glanced down instinctively, but the girls weren’t bothered. Maggie hurried into the hall and deeper into the house to find the phone. She answered.

  “Maggie?” asked a woman on the other end.

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “It’s Helen. Helen Spirra. From the gardening club?”

  Maggie saw Helen in her mind. Younger, dark-haired, and tan-skinned. She had a boy about the girls�
� age. “Oh, right. Is everything okay? I mean, is there a problem?”

  “I’m calling because I got a call from Julie Rhodes. She’s calling all the ladies in the phone tree to tell them the news.”

  “What news?” Maggie heard Lana laugh in the front room.

  “It’s right on Julie’s street. There was a murder.”

  Chapter 4

  Whenever there was a dead body, there was a crowd. It was as true in the Parish as it was in the city, and though there were only a dozen onlookers it was enough to require a couple of uniforms to hold them behind the line of yellow crime scene tape and maintain order.

  Maggie brought the girls in their stroller, and felt slightly ridiculous rolling up behind the rubberneckers with twin children in tow. She’d taken directions from Helen on the phone, and when she turned onto Julie Rhodes’s street, she realized she’d been there the morning before. This was the street where she met Holly, the partier. And when Maggie saw the house cordoned off by the uniforms, it was Holly’s. Her breath quickened.

  Most of the people watching the proceedings were women, and most of them were familiar to Maggie from the gardening club. They came from mid-thirties to mid-fifties, no one too young and no one too old. Maggie tried to approach quietly, but Lana made a noise and one woman turned to look.

  Carole Strickland was tall and blond and fortyish. She lived two blocks over from Maggie. She stepped away from the watchers and met Maggie halfway. “Isn’t it crazy?” she said by way of a greeting.

  “They said it was murder,” Maggie replied.

  Carole moved close to Maggie and kept her voice down. “They say the husband came home this morning from a business trip and found his wife dead. Murder for sure. You see? Oh, look, the crime scene people are here. It’s just like TV.”

  Maggie kept her encounter with Holly to herself. She watched the crime scene investigators’ van pull up to the yellow tape. Two men and a woman got out and gathered equipment from the back. They were quick and efficient. Maggie appreciated that.

  “There’s the husband,” Carole said, and she pointed.

  The man sat on the front steps of the house. He was in a suit, his jacket unbuttoned and his tie askew. His face was in his hands, and it was difficult to tell whether he was crying. Maggie thought not. His posture was right, but his shoulders didn’t move. He seemed tired, but not distraught.

  “And there’s one of the detectives.”

  A black man stepped out of the open front door. He was tall and broad through the shoulders, and it was possible even from a distance to see how his hair was shot through with white. Maggie stiffened at the sight of him. “I need to get over there.”

  “I know, I want to see when they bring the body out, too.”

  They joined the crowd. Maggie watched the detective talk to the husband and make notes with a tiny pencil on a small pad. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she was right about the husband: he had a resigned look, but lacked sorrow. A third of women were killed by an intimate partner.

  The crowd was in a steady murmur, theories bouncing back and forth, and new flurries of noise whenever the crime scene investigators came out to gather some new piece of equipment from their van.

  “Will you watch the girls?” Maggie asked Carole.

  “What? Oh, sure. What’s happening?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She pushed her way to the tape. A uniformed cop was only a few feet away. Maggie caught his eye and beckoned him closer. A frown creased his face. “May I help you, ma’am?” he asked in a distracted voice.

  “May I speak to the detective?”

  The cop glanced over his shoulder. The detective and the husband were still in conversation. “He’s interviewing a witness.”

  “May I speak to him anyway?” Maggie asked, and her tone hardened.

  The cop blinked, but didn’t say no. “Do I know you?”

  “Maybe. May I speak to the detective?”

  “Hold on a minute,” the cop said. He stepped away. He looked back once, his brows knit. He conferred with the detective. The detective looked up and Maggie saw his face change when he recognized her.

  When the detective came for Maggie, a fresh stir passed through the rubberneckers. Maggie tried to ignore them. Once she and the detective were face-to-face, Maggie tried a smile. “Hi, Mike,” she said.

  “Chief, what are you doing here?”

  Another murmur around her. The word rippled out from Maggie and the detective. Chief.

  “It’s my neighborhood,” Maggie said. “Kind of hard not to hear.”

  “Does Karl know you’re out here?”

  “No. Does he have to find out?”

  The detective cast a look toward the house. His name was Mike Cooper, and they’d known each other fifteen years. “He won’t hear it from me, but you need to make yourself scarce. Where are the girls?”

  “Over there. It’s okay, someone’s watching them. Tell me what’s happening.”

  Mike frowned at the people around Maggie. “Let’s talk somewhere else.”

  They walked down the line of tape until they were alone. Maggie looked toward the house. The husband watched them. His face was drawn, but that was all. Maggie got the impression he was examining her, though for what reason it was impossible to know.

  “You know these people?” Mike asked.

  “No, but I’m pretty sure I met the victim. Holly?”

  “That’s right. Holly Gibbs. That’s her husband, Bryant Gibbs. Husband does a lot of work out of town, owns his own business. Wife’s a stay-at-home. You say you saw her yesterday?”

  “In the morning, about ten. She came in a limousine, all dressed up for a party. I got the feeling…”

  “What?”

  “The husband was away?”

  “He was. Got back this morning. Why?”

  “She had party all over her. Smelled of liquor, marks on her wrists and neck.”

  Mike made a note. “Into the rough stuff?”

  “Husband seem like the type?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Hard to tell. You see the driver?”

  “Yeah. Mid-thirties, about five ten, white, clean-shaven. Dark hair, but I couldn’t tell you if it was black or brown.”

  “Think you could recognize him if you saw him again?”

  “I do.”

  “Okay, listen, I’m gonna—”

  Maggie interrupted him. “Oh, shit.”

  They looked together. Karl was on the steps with Bryant Gibbs. He saw them when they saw him, and his expression turned dark. “You better go,” Mike said. “I’ll hold him off.”

  “No, let him talk.”

  When Karl was within earshot, he said, “Hey, Mike, can I talk to my wife for a second?”

  The tone was cheerful, but the darkness remained. Mike cast a warning look toward Maggie. She waved him off.

  “Why are you here?” Karl asked her once Mike was gone.

  “News travels fast.”

  “No, I mean, why are you here? You’re not a murder junkie. The rest of the people, I can understand, but not you.”

  “I wanted to see what was going on. I didn’t even know you’d be here.”

  Karl’s jaw set. “Well, I am here. And Mike’s here. And so are a lot of other people, and one of them might say you were poking around, which means I get my ass chewed out.”

  “I’m not poking around. Everyone else is here, and it would be strange if I didn’t show.”

  “Do you even have the girls with you?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Maggie returned. “Of course I do.”

  “Look, you have to go. Take the girls and go home. Don’t talk to anyone about this. As far as I’m concerned, you were never here.”

  Maggie felt a stab of anger. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, Detective.”

  “Yes. Detective,” Karl said, and he tapped the badge on his belt. “Detective. As in official business. You’re not the assigned inve
stigator. You’re not the supervising detective. And you’re not the chief of detectives. You do not belong here, and if you want to fight about it, we can fight at home, but it’s not happening right now.”

  “My neighborhood,” Maggie said.

  “But not your problem,” Karl replied. His tone softened. “Just go. Go home.”

  “Tell me this: do I have to be worried?”

  Karl didn’t hesitate. “No.”

  He walked away without a good-bye. Maggie watched him go. Hot feelings stirred around inside her. She saw him stop to talk to Mike and the husband on the steps, and then all three went inside. She was aware of people in the crowd watching her. Her hands were in fists at her sides.

  She made herself go.

  Chapter 5

  Karl didn’t come home that night. He called, but Maggie ignored it. He left a voicemail and two texts. She didn’t respond to either of them. She put the girls to bed, made herself dinner, and then slept restlessly all night. In the morning she did the rote tasks she’d come to hate: laundry in the washer and beds made and sinks scrubbed. Karl offered her a maid once. She’d turned it down.

  Lunchtime and there were no calls, no texts. Maggie had another meal with the girls, and played with them in the front room while they played and she thought about her book. When the clock ticked over to one, she gathered Lana and Becky, dressed them for playtime outside, and made the four-block walk to the community garden.

  The garden was meant to be mostly flowers, taking up the space of one of the Parish’s huge houses. There would be a few vegetables to liven things up, all chosen for their color and not their popularity. It was maintained by the club with money from the homeowners’ association, which claimed three hundred dollars every month. A half-dozen women were already there, including Julie, who lived on Holly Gibbs’s street, and Helen, who’d told Maggie about the killing. Maggie had her jeans on and the weather was crisp, but not cold. The sun dazzled from a perfectly blue sky without a cloud.

  Lana and Becky were not the only little ones. Three other children, none older than four, crawled or scampered on the green grass while one of the ladies from the club supervised. The women took turns at this duty. Last week it had been Maggie who sat and minded while the others toiled.