At the Stroke of Madness (14 page)

Tuesday, September 16

M
aggie picked up her keys, badge and cellular phone from the airport security conveyor belt while shoving the plastic basin aside and trying to grab her laptop off the oncoming tray all at the same time. She pushed several buttons on the cell phone and tucked it between her neck and shoulder while she slid her laptop back into its case. She should be an expert at this by now, but still she struggled with the Velcro straps that held the computer in place.

“Hello?” said a voice in her ear.

“Gwen, it’s Maggie. I’m glad I caught you.”

“Where in the world are you? It sounds like you’re calling from the bottom of the Potomac River.”

“No, no. Not the bottom of the Potomac. Worse. Airport security at National.” She smiled when she saw one of the security officers scowl at her words. The woman wasn’t amused. She waved Maggie to the side with her wand. “Oh, shoot, hold on a minute, Gwen.”

“Arms at your sides and out,” the woman barked at Maggie. She set her laptop case on a nearby chair, the cell phone on top, and followed the instructions she knew by heart. It never failed. She was always getting pulled aside. And as usual she immediately set the security wand chirping. She dug her keys and badge out of her pocket and tossed those on the case, too.

“Sit down and remove your shoes, please.”

Maggie slipped off the leather flats and held up the soles of her feet for the wand. The entire time she still smiled at the woman, who refused to return the gesture. With only a nod of release, she left Maggie and went back to the trenches to capture the next potential terrorist or the next wiseass.

Maggie picked up the cell phone. “Gwen, are you still there?”

“You’ll never learn, will you?” her friend started the lecture. “You’re an FBI agent. You of all people know how important airport security is, and yet you insist on egging them on.”

“I don’t egg them on. I just don’t understand why I have to check my sense of humor with my luggage at the ticket counter.”

“I thought you were taking some time off. Where’s Cunningham sending you this time?”

“I’m going to Connecticut.”

Silence. Such a long silence that Maggie thought she may have lost the connection.

“Gwen?”

“You found something out about Joan?”

“No, not yet.” Maggie searched for Gate 11. Of course, it was the one with the line already boarding. “I thought I’d go check on her myself. Who knows, maybe I’ll find her at the Ramada Plaza Hotel’s pool, drinking piña coladas.”

“Maggie, I didn’t expect you to do that. I just thought you might be able to make a few phone calls. I didn’t mean for you to go to Connecticut, especially on your vacation.”

“Why not? You’re always telling me I need to get away.” Where had she put her boarding pass? Usually she slid it into her jacket pocket.

“Yes, get away and go on a real vacation. When was the last time you took a real vacation, Maggie?”

“I don’t know. I was in Kansas City last year.” She started to search her computer case’s many pockets. Somewhere she knew she had a boarding pass. Maybe Tully’s disorganization was rubbing off on her.

“Kansas City? That was two years ago and it was for a law enforcement conference. That’s not a vacation. Do you even know what a vacation is?”

“Of course, I know what it is. It’s that thing where you sit around on a beach somewhere, getting drunk on piña coladas with those little pink umbrellas and ending up with a miserable sunburn and sand in places where I really don’t like to have sand. That’s just not something that interests me.”

“And looking for a missing person on your vacation does interest you? You know, if you’re going to Connecticut, maybe you could finally look up a certain man in the vicinity?”

“Here it is,” Maggie said, relieved to find that the boarding ticket must have slipped behind her laptop when she was mastering the Velcro straps. She ignored Gwen’s comment about “a certain man,” knowing full well she meant a certain assistant D.A. in Boston. “Gwen, if there’s anything you haven’t told me about Joan Begley, now would be a good time.”

Her friend was silent again.

“Gwen?”

“I’ve faxed you everything I could.”

She noticed Gwen’s careful choice of words.

“Look, Gwen, before you hear about it on the news, there’s something you should know. Yesterday morning a woman’s body was found outside of Wallingford in a rock quarry.”

“Oh, my God! It’s Joan, isn’t it?”

She hated hearing the panic in her friend’s voice. This was a woman Maggie always looked to for strength.

“No, I don’t know that. I wouldn’t have even told you, but it’s made the national news already. They haven’t identified her yet. I’m trying to get in touch with the sheriff who’s heading the investigation. He’s supposed to be calling me back, but I’m sure I’m on the bottom of a very long list.” Maggie tucked the phone into her neck again as she prepared her ID and ticket for the attendant. “Look, my flight’s boarding, Gwen. I’ll give you a call as soon as I know something, okay?”

“Maggie, thanks for doing this. I hope it’s not Joan, but I have to tell you, I just don’t have a good feeling about this.”

“Try not to worry until it’s time to worry. I’ll talk to you later.”

She shoved the phone into her pocket just as the attendant reached for her ticket.

On board, Maggie unzipped pockets, searching—why was she suddenly so disorganized?—for the paperback she had bought in the airport bookstore: Lisa Scottoline’s latest legal thriller. Past titles had succeeded in keeping her mind off being 38,000 feet above control. With the paperback came the envelope she had shoved into the side pocket at the last minute while deciding to leave the file folders behind.

She slid her case into the overhead compartment and squeezed into the window seat. A small gray-haired woman fussed and fidgeted into the seat next to her, and Maggie opened the paperback to read but, instead, stared at the envelope.

Maggie knew Gwen had meant Nick Morrelli when she asked if she would attempt to see “a certain man in the vicinity.” And why wouldn’t she? Nick was in Boston, probably only an hour’s drive from the middle of Connecticut. Whatever had started between Nick and Maggie several years ago while they worked on a case together in Nebraska had fizzled out during Maggie’s prolonged divorce. She had refused to start a relationship before her divorce was finalized, not so much out of legalities or principles, but perhaps because she couldn’t risk the emotional drain. Quite honestly she had never trusted her feelings for Nick—too much heat and intensity. What they lacked in common interests, they made up for in chemistry. It was the exact opposite of her relationship with Greg. Maybe that’s what had attracted her to Nick in the first place.

Then last year, sometime before Thanksgiving, she had called Nick’s apartment, except a woman answered, telling Maggie Nick couldn’t come to the phone because he was in the shower. Since then, Maggie had kept the distance between them, increasing it by increments with shorter phone conversations replaced by missed phone calls and then never-returned voice messages. She hadn’t expected Nick to wait for her to be free. And, though she had been surprised—and yes, a bit hurt—to discover that he had moved on, in the days that followed, she felt an unexpected sense of relief that only galvanized her decision. It was better to be alone, she had decided. At least for a while.

The flight attendant interrupted her thoughts with preflight instructions, something Maggie politely ignored. The woman beside her seemed frantic to find the laminated guide in the seat pocket in front of her. Maggie took out her own and handed it to the woman, who thanked her quickly as she searched with an index finger to catch up.

Maggie opened her paperback again and began to read, using the envelope as a bookmark.

L
illian Hobbs carried an armful of paperbacks and gently placed them on the front table where Rosie had started setting up the new display. Rosie had another excellent idea, only Lillian’s mind was off somewhere. How could she concentrate with a different media van driving by almost every half hour? It was much more exciting than her regular view of the gray, bleak headstones peeking up over the brick fence from the Center Street Cemetery.

This morning they had served half a dozen out-of-town reporters while watching
Good Morning America
on their new portable TV. Maybe it was only a matter of time before Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson showed up at their little coffee counter. In fact, Lillian was certain she recognized the reporter ordering a double espresso. She had seen him on Fox News, but she just couldn’t remember his name.

She sorted through the books, keeping one eye on the front store window. Rosie had suggested they do a table display with murder mysteries, maybe even a serial killer novel or two. It certainly fit the current atmosphere, although a bit macabre, perhaps. Rosie considered it a business opportunity. Lillian worried that someone might find it offensive, until she realized that she would be able to showcase some of her favorite suspense-thriller authors.

For Lillian, so much of what she saw in real life reminded her of something she had read in a book. This mess at the quarry was no different. Besides that, it truly sounded like it had been concocted by the imagination of Jeffery Deaver or Patricia Cornwell. Fiction Lillian could grasp, like a puzzle with pieces waiting to be fit together or simply sorted through, usually leading to an exciting climax and a neat and tidy conclusion. Or if not neat and tidy, then, at least, one that made sense. Real life, however, wasn’t as easy to figure out and oftentimes made no sense at all. Wouldn’t it be nice if real-life situations could be summed up in a two-to three-page epilogue?

She stopped arranging the paperbacks and thumbed through the top one. She knew all the characters in this series by heart. Knew the major plots and the killers’ MOs. She could even quote some of her favorite lines. But these murders out at the quarry were strange. Lillian shook her head. Truth really was stranger than fiction. She realized she was treating these brutal findings much as she did a new mystery novel—especially by a new and unfamiliar author. She found herself reading, looking for and gathering as many clues as possible and putting the pieces of the puzzle together. She had even started to create a profile of the killer, using images and details, personality traits and deviations she had learned from the masters. Yes, the masters, meaning Cornwell, Deaver, Patterson. Anyone else might think it silly, which is why she hadn’t shared her findings with even Rosie. Instead, she casually pumped Rosie for information, any tidbits her husband, Henry, may have mentioned.

Lillian stacked the paperbacks, making a creative pyramid, then chose a half dozen to stand up, using some of the innovative new plastic stands she had convinced Rosie they needed. She sandwiched the stark white and ice blue of Dennis Lehane’s
Mystic River
between the black and red of Jan Burke’s
Bones
and the black-and-white, hard-to-find copy of
The Prettiest Feathers
by John Philpin and Patricia Sierra. This would be an excellent opportunity for her to prove to Rosie that her compulsive buys were wise financial moves, after all.

The store’s front door chimed and she looked over her shoulder. Her brother, Wally, gave a one-finger wave. Lillian returned the wave, then stiffened when she saw Calvin Vargus following behind. Immediately, Calvin seemed to fill the store with his wide shoulders, thick neck and booming laugh. He patted Wally on the back, more of a slap with a hand that looked like a racket. Lillian returned to her display. She didn’t want or need to know what the private joke was between the two of them. There was always something. And she hated watching her brother take Calvin’s abuse. Of course, Wally would never call it abuse.

Her brother and his business partner had a strange relationship. Calvin had grown up to be a bigger and meaner version of the bully he was when the three of them knew one another in junior high school. Wally, the eternal nerd, seemed content, almost pleased to have the bully now on his side, despite the ramifications or the cost. Lillian gave her glasses a quick, nervous nudge and shook her head. She wasn’t the only one who noticed the men’s strange arrangement. Why else would they have been anointed with the nickname Calvin and Hobbs after the comic strip of an imaginative and sometimes strange little boy and his pet tiger? A tiger that came to life only in Calvin’s presence.

Lillian Hobbs watched the regular performance of the bully and his willing patsy. Only today it wasn’t just with distaste. Today she watched with embarrassment. Embarrassed that her brother was weak. Embarrassed that he didn’t seem to mind. No, it almost appeared as if he enjoyed the attention, attention at whatever the cost. Why else would he put up with it? Or had it been all those years of training? All those years of growing up with a mother who bullied and praised, often in the same sentence.

Maybe it wasn’t embarrassment she felt. Perhaps it was regret, regret that as the older sibling she should have also been her brother’s protector. But how could she? It wasn’t as though their mother had spared her from the same ritual. Lillian, however, had found solitude in books. She had learned how to escape to her own world of imaginary friends and fantastic places. But Wally. Well, he hadn’t been so lucky. Funny how a murder could dig up such things. Dig up! Oh, dear, what a pun. But it made Lillian smile.

Calvin was bragging about how he had found the first body, bragging and telling. How many times had it been? And in only a matter of twenty-four hours. Yet, each time the story became more elaborate with new details added, ones he seemed to have forgotten in the original telling.

“I knew right away that she was dead,” Calvin boomed to a new audience, waiting for every gruesome detail. “I could see that her fucking skull had been bashed in. There was blood all over. Still spilling out of the barrel. Buckets of it. Good thing ole Wally wasn’t with me. He’s such a wuss, he would have upchucked a week’s worth of breakfasts. Ain’t that right, Wally?” Calvin tousled Wally’s hair with that huge hand that made Wally look even more like a child.

Lillian rolled her eyes just as she noticed her brother watching her. Despite his partner’s abuse, Wally remained perched at his side by the coffee counter, with a stupid, lopsided grin.

“Our own coffee house entertainment,” Rosie said, coming up beside Lillian and pulling out a couple of paperbacks from the shelf behind them.

“Should we ask them to leave?” Lillian asked, then felt her stomach flip when she realized Rosie might ask her to do it.

“Nah, don’t bother. People are hungry for details. Look at them.” She pointed to the growing crowd around Calvin and Wally. “Not such a bad thing for our little bookstore to be the place to come to for the latest gruesome details. It doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“No, of course not. But won’t Henry mind?”

“It’s not Henry’s store,” Rosie said abruptly, and Lillian knew she shouldn’t have said it. “Besides, maybe if they have someplace to go for information, they’ll stop hounding Henry.”

Lillian decided not to mention that it might be false or fabricated information from Calvin Vargus. She saw Rosie’s face suddenly soften into a smile. The concern of the last twenty-four hours had already started to show in new lines around her friend’s mouth and in her forehead. Whenever Lillian studied her partner’s face, she was immediately reminded of how beautiful the woman had been. She could see the remnants of the high school prom queen. Rosie was still an attractive woman—even the lines made her face interesting, not marred.

Then Lillian realized what had softened her partner’s expression. Her big, strapping, good-looking John Wayne of a husband had walked in the door. All the attention shifted to Henry as he fielded questions while trying to make his way to the coffee bar.

“I better go rescue him,” Rosie said with a smile.

As she watched Rosie greet her husband, Lillian noticed her brother, Wally, sneaking out the bookstore’s back entrance. And he hadn’t even had his daily bear claw and glass of milk.