Morning Glory Circle (30 page)

“I’m sorry, that was mean.”

“No, you’re right. It happened to me and he’s made it all about him, per usual.”

“Are you doing okay, really?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Except when you’re not.”

“Yep, that just about sums it up.”

“Newton’s wife and daughter arrived today. They’re staying at the bed and breakfast.”

“Poor them. I wonder how old Connie is doing.”

“Aunt Delia said something cryptic about Connie,” Maggie said. “I guess they worked together at Pine Crest Manor in March 1984, and Delia is not a fan.”

“Oh, really? Pine Crest Manor in Fleurmania, where the deer and the Fleurmaniacs roam? When are you going, then?”

“First thing tomorrow morning. Want to join me?”

“I can’t. I promised Drew I would assist him on some house calls and surgeries.”

“Ew.”

“No, it’s not. It’s really very interesting and scientific.”

“Digging around in dog and cat guts? Please.”

“It’s my kind of thing, not yours, so shut up.”

Everyone seemed to wait until the last minute to arrive, but right before the service started, the room filled up with people. Ruthie and Lily brought Enid in a wheelchair, and it was sad to watch her look at her daughter in the coffin, and then weep throughout the service. Maggie’s mother and Hannah’s mother both sat up front with Enid. Scott came in late, and inched around to sit in the seat next to Maggie. Sarah came in after he did, and stood by the door.

‘If looks could kill,’ Maggie thought, as Sarah glared at her.

Afterward, Maggie sat in Scott’s SUV with him and waited for the parking lot to clear.

“So, Newton killed Margie and then killed himself?” Maggie asked him.

“I’m still working on that,” Scott said. “I still have some suspicions Connie’s involved somehow.”

Maggie considered telling him what she was planning to do in regards to investigating Connie on her own, but decided not to. He’d just tell her to stay out of it, and then they’d fight.

“You want to talk about it?” she offered.

“No, I need to think it through some more first.” he said. “I saw your new little nephew, by the way, and he looks just like Timmy.”

“Thank you for facilitating that.”

“Your mother greased all the wheels; I just made sure the legal processes got followed. Every person who needed to be involved to make things happen turned out to have some close connection to your family, the church, or both. Your mother is like some Celtic mob boss.”

“She’s using her powers for good, though.”

“God help us if she ever turns evil.”

“Now Ava has the baby, and that’s the important thing,” Maggie said. “Say what you like about her, she’s a terrific mother. He couldn’t be in better hands.”

“I though for a minute there your mother and Ava might arm wrestle for him.”

“I heard Bonnie blackmailed her into taking Brian back if he turns up.”

“Not when I was there,” Scott said. “All I heard was that she had to give him a fair hearing.”

“You just don’t speak Bonnie’s language. Ava is not related to that baby by blood. If Brian turns up, he holds all the cards where the baby’s concerned. If the birth mother or Brian can’t be found, Ava doesn’t have any real rights to that baby except through Bonnie. That makes Bonnie the boss of Ava in this particular situation.”

“Your mother would force Ava to take Brian back using the baby as leverage?”

“Have you met my mother? Remember the Celtic mob boss?”

“That’s amazing. All that went right over my head.”

“Of course it did; you’re a man. Speaking of mothers, where’s yours?”

“She’s visiting my sister in Winchester for a couple weeks.”

“Ah, I wondered why she wasn’t in church.”

“Would you like to join me for a pizza and some beer tonight? Say around 8:00.”

“I really wish this town would get some Mexican or Chinese food, but yes, I’d be delighted.”

“I want to tell you about how I kicked Sarah Albright out of my station this morning.”

“You did not!”

“Oh, I did. I may live to regret it, too.”

“I wish I could have been there. Did it feel as good as you hoped it would?”

“You would have been so proud. It wasn’t as dramatic as you throwing Gwyneth out of the bookstore, but I like to think it had a charm all its own.”

“I tell you what,” Maggie said. “I’ll come for dinner, and I’ll bring my toothbrush.”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“I’m not kidding. I think heroic behavior like yours should be rewarded.”

Scott leaned over and kissed her, and the driver in the car behind them honked his horn.

“Ignore it,” Scott murmured, and kissed her again.

Hannah went from the funeral to the homes of some of her scanner grannies. She wanted to make sure they were doing okay and to gather any new gossip she could get. The truth was, she was in no hurry to go home, where Sam was fast brooding himself into a major depression. When Hannah finally got home later that evening, there was a suitcase sitting by the door. Sam had his wheelchair pulled up to the kitchen table, where he was writing something.

“What are you doing?” Hannah asked him. “Where are you going?”

“I was just writing you a note.”

“You’re leaving me?”

“There was a breach of security at a government contractor’s company in Boston, and I have to go.”

“Since when? Don’t you pay people to do the technical part?”

“They want me. It’s my company’s name on the line and I have to go.”

“Just like that.”

“It happens, Hannah. It’s the nature of my business.”

“Samuel Harold Campbell, you are lying to me.”

“I’m not. Why would I lie?”

“Because things just got tough here in Marriage Land. Because I found a dead body and you made it all about you, and you know you were wrong, and feel guilty. Because you don’t know how to be anything but the selfish schmuck that you are, so you run off instead of staying here and working it out with me. Then you’ll come back pretending nothing happened. It’s what you always do, you big jerk.”

“That’s really nice, honey, I’ll miss you too.”

“You can go to hell,” Hannah said. “Chicken shit bastard.”

“Thanks, I will have a safe trip. I’ll call you when I get there.”

“Don’t bother,” Hannah said. “I won’t answer the phone.”

Hannah went to their bedroom and slammed the door behind her. She waited until she heard the van crunching up the driveway before she came back out. Both the dogs were sitting by the bedroom door, looking concerned.

“He’s left us again,” Hannah told Jax and Wally, and began to cry. “That son of a bitch has left us again.”

Jax and Wally both licked her hands and whined.

Maggie walked into the station at 8:00, and found a candlelit table set for two in the break room.

“Isn’t this against some sort of policy?” she called out, “or health code?”

Scott came out of his office flourishing a paper towel over his arm as he offered her a plastic bottle of root beer.

“I trust the vintage will be to Madam’s liking,” he said.

“Mmm, my favorite.”

“I also asked them to leave off the onions and garlic, as a courtesy.”

“Fine Italian cuisine from ‘Casa P and J’ I see.”

“Only the best for you, my dear.”

“You know,” Maggie said, “this wasn’t exactly how I pictured this romantic evening in my mind. The setting, for one thing, doesn’t really put me in the mood.”

“What do you mean? We’ve had a couple of really hot moments in this station,” Scott said. “What about the time I almost arrested you and threatened to lock myself up with you in the cell all night?”

“I will never forget that, it’s true.”

“Did you bring your toothbrush?”

“It’s in my purse, but if you think I’m staying here…”

“Not to worry, I have plans for that later.”

After the pizza dinner, Scott turned up the radio for some romantic dancing. The trouble was neither of them could dance. They twirled and bobbed around the break room, giggling, until Scott’s romantic dip ended up with both of them laughing in a heap on the floor.

“We can have romance anywhere,” Scott said, “as long as you and I are together.”

“Listen to you, getting all squishy,” Maggie said. “It’s almost sickening.”

“I would love to get all squishy with you,” he said, and kissed her in a way that proved it.

“I seem to remember that couch in your office being sturdy,” Maggie said, when they finally came up for air.

“If it isn’t, the desk is,” Scott replied.

Scott jumped up and helped Maggie up, and embraced her with a long, lingering kiss.

Maggie’s cell phone rang.

“Ignore it,” Scott said forcefully. “That is a command from the Chief of Police.”

“There’s too much going on for me to ignore it,” Maggie said. “You know that.”

Maggie opened her phone and said, “Hello, this better be good.”

Scott watched her, praying it was nothing, and that they could get back to what they were doing.

“I’ll be right there,” Maggie said, and closed her phone.

“Nooooooo,” he whined.

“Sam’s left Hannah,” she told him.

“No way.”

“That’s what I think too,” Maggie said. “But she’s beside herself and insists that he has. I have to go out there.”

“Then take the Explorer,” he said. “Unless you want me to come too.”

“No, it better be just me, I think,” Maggie said. “I will take you up on the offer of your vehicle, though.”

“I’m running a tab for you, but eventually you will have to make all this up to me.”

“It’s a deal,” she said. “This is probably how it will always be, though; someone calls or pounds on the door, and then you or I go running.”

“As long as you know that when you call, I will always come running,” he said, hugging her tightly, and breathing in the scent of her hair.

“I am so glad of that,” she said.

“I love you,” he said. “You do know that.”

“I love you too,” she said quietly, so quietly he thought he might have imagined he heard it, and then she left.

Caroline flopped down next to Drew on the bed in the master suite at the lodge, and he put down the book he was reading.

“I don’t understand this book at all,” he said. “Something about the heart diamond sutra and how everything is an illusion.”

“When you’re ready the information will be clear to you,” Caroline said. “My legs feel like limp spaghetti.”

“They don’t do anything for themselves, I’ve noticed,” he said. “If they drop something, by accident, say, they just keep on walking.”

“They’re holy men,” Caroline said. “They raise the consciousness of the whole planet just by using their energies for that purpose. They can’t be bothered by lower plane, corporal issues like cleaning and cooking and picking up things.”

“Look at you, though, you just came back from South America for a rest, and you’re exhausted. You can’t keep this up, and I have to go back to Rose Hill in the morning. I have my own work to do.”

“Please, can’t you just stay here another day? I’ll have the routine down by tomorrow night.”

“I can’t stay, I have appointments. And look here, it’s too much for even two people to do. You need someone to buy groceries, someone to cook, someone to clean up after each meal, someone to pick up after them and do the laundry.”

“But who?”

“Aren’t there other people who volunteer like you do who could come and help you?”

“No one who’s currently speaking to me,” she said.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “It seems unreasonable for this group to just descend upon you and expect to have all their needs tended to with no compensation.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “It’s a privilege to enable them to spend all their time meditating.”

“So you’ll get huge karmic points in the next life or something?”

“I don’t do it for a reward; I do it because I am meant to do it. They came to me for a reason, and although I don’t know what that is yet, eventually it will become clear. I keep waiting for the universe to guide me, to show me what to do, or to bring help, but my guides are silent.”

“Your guides?”

“It’s all this sex we’ve been having. I’ve lowered my vibration to the point that I am all down in my body, in my second chakra, and my crown chakra is blocking out the messages from my higher self.”

“You’re what is what?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said. “You’re fixed earth and I’m mutable air.”