A Charmed Place (7 page)

Embers. Would they ever be extinguished? Maddie sighed. How did you get over a murder when the murderer was still out there somewhere? She shuddered, then resolved not to think about it until she was done packing up the study. It was such an impossible goal that it ended up being possible: Maddie simply shut down all of her brain except the part needed to match boxes with contents. Heavy books—strong box. Unbound papers—shallow box. Paperbacks—beer box. Awards and citations—the seat of the chair.

Late in the afternoon, Tracey phoned for permission to go miniature golfing after the movie. By the time she got home, Maddie had made a noticeable dent in the orderly chaos of her father's private world.

"Did you have a good time?" she asked her daughter, intercepting her on the way upstairs.

"Sure."

"What movie did you end up seeing?"

Tracey snorted. "Something PG, you'll be glad to know. Dad was afraid to take me to a PG-13."

"Tracey, I never said you couldn't go to a—"

"Yes, you did! You always do!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way, honey. I think you're being unfair."

"I'm
being unfair!" Tracey rolled her eyes melodramatically and raised her arms shoulder high, then slapped them against her sides. "Fine.
I'm
being unfair. Fine!"

Without waiting for a response to that—and Maddie had none—the girl burst into tears and ran the rest of the way up the stairs to her room.

Sighing, Maddie tried to convince herself that Tracey's reaction was just another example of hormones gone amuck. She went back into the study, determined to work off some of her frustration over her daughter. But something had changed. Maddie's thoughts, having been interrupted, were not her own to control anymore. She actually began paying attention to what she was packing.

And what she was packing made her snap to attention.

It was a slip of paper, tucked too completely in the leather side pocket of the desk blotter to have been visible before. If Maddie hadn't stood the blotter on end against the wall, the corner of the paper would not have dropped into view. She pulled out the folded slip and read, in her father's handwriting, an hour and a date: 10:00, April 6.

There was no year, so it could have been any April 6, she supposed. But that didn't explain the pounding of her heart. On April 6, her father had disappeared. It was too uncanny to be coincidence.

She turned the paper over. Nothing. It was maddeningly cryptic.

It was easy to see how the police had missed the note, despite several passes through her father's effects. Maddie hadn't seen it, either, when she'd searched the room during the agonizing days before and after they found him.

Her first thought was to phone Detective Bailey about the discovery. She had his home number in Millwood and she had his assurances to call anytime. But those assurances had been given long ago; by now the detective's priorities had moved on.

It was late. Maddie decided to call him in the morning. It would give her time to consider whether the note was significant or not. But the night brought her no comfort, only a thousand dark corridors of possibilities. She wandered down every one of them before waking up tired and none the wiser.

She dreaded having to tell her family about the note. If her father
had
had an appointment on April 6, none of them knew about it. The police had questioned each of them thoroughly, as much to establish their alibis as to find out anything helpful regarding her father's whereabouts.

All that the family knew was that Edward Timmons had planned to spend the day "bumming around
Cambridge
," which he did regularly. His typical routine was to visit the
Harvard Coop, buy a book or two, have coffee, take in the scene, and pick up pipe tobacco.

As always, he'd left
Sudbury
at six in the morning so that he could get a jump on traffic. No one had thought to question him thoroughly before he left. No one had thought they'd need to know.

And now this.

The disturbing note sat propped up against a
Nantucket
pepper grinder on the kitchen table while Maddie cooked up a batch of hollandaise sauce for eggs Benedict, Tracey's favorite breakfast. Every once in a while she'd glance at the slip of paper. Was it a clue—or wasn't it?

When the juice was poured, she yelled up again to her daughter. "Trace! Last call for breakfast!"

She heard the toilet flush and Tracey's voice come drifting down the hall stairs in a moan.

"I can't, Mom. I'm sick, really sick. I think I ate something funny yesterday."

Surprise, surprise. It was one of Tracey's favorite excuses for avoiding meals. "Shall I come up and take your temperature?" Maddie asked, knowing the answer full well.

"No
... that's all right. I'll be okay in a little while."

Right. As soon as you hear the dishes being done.

Maddie sighed and went back into the kitchen to eat alone. Short of feeding her daughter intravenously, she had no real idea how to get food into her. There was a time when Maddie would have told herself to relax, that Tracey wouldn't let herself starve.

But she didn't necessarily believe that anymore. Two of Tracey's girlfriends were undergoing treatment for anorexia, and most of the rest were obsessed with being thin. Food was all they talked about, always in terms of how to avoid it.

It was sad and dangerous and all so wrong. What had happened to the outgoing little girl who used to play ball like a boy and had built her own treehouse? Overnight she'd turned into a melancholy bundle of anxiety. Granted, it could have been because of the slaying. But most of her friends shared the same mindset. What was their excuse?

Maddie's own mournful thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the kitchen door. She hadn't heard a car; the visitor must have come on foot. Outside the morning was cool and foggy, hardly the weather for a stroll. Something in Maddie went very, very still as she hesitated with her hand on the doorknob, then pulled it toward her.

"Ah. Good morning."

"Hi."

She didn't ask why Michael was there again; her face, she knew, showed the question.

He held up a brown grocery bag with its top rolled closed. "I was going through the condo storage bin and found this," he said with a sheepish smile. "I don't know how long it's been there, but I remember the uproar when Tracey thought she'd lost it."

He handed the paper bag to Maddie, who opened it and peered down into it. "Mr. James!"

She took out the scraggly teddy bear by one of its resewn arms and went suddenly teary-eyed, remembering the sweet sorrow Tracey had felt when she had discovered him gone.

"I found him in an Igloo cooler. You know how she took him everywhere. He probably got left there after a picnic. Do you think Tracey cares anymore? She seems so grown up."

"To you, maybe. The jury's still out as far as I'm concerned."

Michael grinned. "
Mr. James will be glad to hear it. Maybe she still has room for him at the foot of the bed. He's very depressed, you know," he added with a whimsical smile. "It's no fun being cooped up in a plastic box for four years."

"Not that long, surely," said Maddie.

He said softly, "We've been apart four years and two months. And one, two... three days."

"Oh
... then I guess you're right."

"Time flies when you're havin' fun," he added with a sad, droll look.

He stood respectfully on the stoop, obviously waiting to be asked inside. Maddie had completely mixed feelings about inviting him in again, but she did. He was her one open line of communication with Tracey. It was amazing, it was infuriating, but it was true. Maddie had to be able to put her pride to one side in order to hear what Michael could tell her about their child. She wasn't going to find out anything from their child on her own.

"Are you hungry?" she asked him. "I have a plate of eggs Benedict going untouched. Tracey claims to have a stomachache from yesterday."

Michael threw up his hands in mock self-defense as he stepped over the threshold. "Don't blame me. I took her to Bingham's Family Restaurant, and she ordered mashed potatoes and roast chicken. That's as down home as it gets."

"She ate that?" Maddie was amazed. Bingham's served massive portions, laden in gravy and fat.

He shrugged as he took a seat and said, "I didn't pay much attention. We were too busy gabbing."

Gabbing. It seemed inconceivable that Tracey ever gabbed with anyone old enough to be out of school, much less a blood parent. Not for the first time, Maddie wondered about her daughter's Jekyll and Hyde personality. How could she gab with her father and yet so despise her mother? Was it because Maddie was the stern one? Because Maddie was the one who made her make her bed and be in by nine?

Or was it—it had to be—because the divorce had been Maddie's idea. Maddie had never said a word about Michael's chronic faithlessness. She'd tried, maybe too well, to explain the breakup to Tracey in vague terms of incompatibility.

She might as well have said that she and Michael had split up because they couldn't agree on a color scheme for the living room. Tracey would never forgive her for divorcing so arbitrarily; Maddie could see that now. She sighed with frustration. Maybe she should've told Tracey the truth, poisoned her mind, and been done with it.

Michael had been following Maddie's "eat—it's getting cold" command. But he stopped in the middle of his second egg and said, "Why are you angry? What did I do?"

He'd always been able to read her mood down to the smallest nuance, and now was no exception. She shied at having been caught feeling jealous and hostile again—it felt too much like the old days—and said quickly, "My fault. I have a lot on my mind today. More coffee?"

"I'll get it," said Michael, pushing his chair back.

"No, that's all right."

Maddie got up for the pot and when she turned around with it, Michael had the note in his hand. She saw at once that he recognized the date on it. His fair skin was flushed with distress and his blond brows were drawn down hard over his green eyes.

"What's this?" he asked.

"I found it in Dad's desk blotter when I was cleaning out his study."

"It's in his handwriting."

"Yes. It is."

"Good lord." He ran his hand through his moussed hair, which ended up taking an odd little turn away from his temple.

"So you think it's that April 6?"

"What else could it be?"

Maddie came over and sat back down in her chair. "I haven't told anyone about it yet. Mom would go all to pieces again, and George
... well, you know George."

"Yeah. More likely than not, he'll blame you for bringing the whole thing up again."

"Exactly. But I plan to call Detective Bailey after breakfast and see what he says," Maddie said, taking the note back.

"He'll want to examine it," said Michael. He lifted it out of her hand for another look.

"Why? It's not as though he's going to carbon date it."

"Hmmm? No," he said, staring fixedly at the slip of paper. "But maybe they can tell something we can't."

Maddie watched his eyebrows twitch down a little harder as he turned the note over just as she had, then read the date again, just as she had. His lashes were light, giving him a look of wide-eyed innocence—very effective with coeds away from home for the first time.

He turned those artless green eyes on her again. "Income tax? Could he have planned to see someone about income tax? The timing would've been right. There's an H & R Block in
Cambridge
."

"Dad did his own taxes. You know that."

"Maybe he wanted them to check it over. Had he filed by the sixth?"

"No. The returns were sitting on his desk when—"

"That could be it, then!"

"What could be it, Michael? The returns were on his desk."

"He could've taken a copy with him."

"No, there weren't any... when they found him he didn't have any income tax returns on his
.
... No."

"Maddie, you're doing it again. Closing yourself off to a possibility."

She said stonily, "I'll see what Detective Bailey says."

"Sorry," he said, his voice dropping suddenly soft and low. "I was barging. I do that. You know how good I am at it. Will you allow me to apologize one more time this weekend?"

He looked so genuinely sorry that Maddie found herself saying in a reassuring voice, "No, you're right. You've always been more intuitive than I, and usually, well, often—sometimes—you're right." She sighed and said, "This could be one of those times, I suppose. I'll leave it up to Detective Bailey."

"Do you want me to take this up to him?"

"No, that's okay," she said with a wan smile. "Finish your breakfast. Now it really is cold."

On an impulse she reached over and straightened the hank of hair that had gone awry on his head. She did it not so much because it bothered her, as because she knew how much it would bother him if—when—he looked in a mirror later.