Remote Consequences (12 page)

What did I really know about this man? He claimed to be a Brooks, but I'd found no reference of him online. I'd never heard of him even though he was only a few years older than I was. In a town this small, and with as big of a deal as the Brooks family was…I found it more than a little odd that he'd been kept completely secret. There had to be some record of him. I made a plan to do a little research—as soon as my schedule allowed.

"Any idea who moved him or where?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I was watching the house, but somehow I still missed it. I don't know how I could have missed it. That's not like me."

He seemed both pissed off and sad at the same time. He was too close to this case. Even someone with specialized training, and the obvious ability to come and go like a ghost, could get emotional when the case involved a loved one. I knew this from my medical training. The worst patients in the world were doctors themselves. I figured that the same rules applied here.

"Look, you know as well as I do that the Mills have a lot of friends in this town. Who knows how they get away with half the crap they do? Let's just play by the rules and let the police take care of this. Ty said that he believes me and that the attic floor was recently swept and cleaned up. He's suspicious now, and on the case. Let's give it a few days and see what happens. I'll do some snooping around with some of the town gossips and see if I can dig up anything meaningful. I'm already beginning to suspect Amika—the housekeeper. I think she was following me yesterday. And Mrs. Mills, she looked ready to kill someone tonight when the cops were searching the house."

My best effort at a pep talk met steely blue-turned-gray eyes. He seemed to be studying me, and I seemed to be failing to make the grade.

He lowered his chair legs and stood, all in one swift motion. "I'm tired of waiting. I'm ready to bring down that family once and for all."

Uh-oh.

"Colin…wait." I stood and took a step in his direction. "Ty said that they are going to reopen your father's missing persons case."

He was already moving toward the door. I'd said the wrong thing. I didn't know exactly what that wrong thing had been, but I'd screwed up somehow. I was suddenly overwhelmed with grief for him. I had, after all, lost my father too.

He stopped and turned to face me. "Why would they do that?"

"Uh…oh…well, I might have mentioned something about the possible identity of the body."

He raised his eyebrows. "Did you tell them how you made the connection?"

I scratched my left arm and felt goosebumps under my nails. "Not exactly. I didn't tell them about you. I'm not sure why—but I didn't."

He studied me with a blank expression. It made me nervous, to say the least.

A loud series of knocks erupted from the other side of the door.

"Yoo hoo! Mandy! I've brought an apple pie and good news." Ms. Lanier's unmistakable voice graced our ears.

"Just wait in the den. I'll get rid of her."

He didn't respond, just headed toward the back of the house without another word.

I opened the door. This house was busier than a supermarket this evening. Who else should I expect?

"Hi, Ms. Lanier, I was meaning to come by and chat with you."

She pushed past me and set the tin-plated pie on the table. My nostrils flared at the scent of fresh-baked apple pie, and Pickles lifted his head off the tile in response.

"Looks like you girls just finished dinner. Perfect timing."

I closed the door and cast a furtive glance toward the living room. No sign of Colin, and nothing from Paget since she'd disappeared down the hallway with her chopsticks delivery.

"Yes. Thank you for the pie. I can't visit right now, though. I need to get Paget ready for bed."

"Oh, yes, well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. About taking care of Paget."

A brief image of the tall football player from Paget's hospital room came into focus.

"Is this about Adam…?" His last name escaped me.

"Yes. Yes. Adam Owens. Did Paget tell you about him?"

I ran my fingers up the back of my neck and squeezed. A pinch-like pain had started to visit more often in this region of late.

"Not really. No. He was in her hospital room this afternoon when I went to pick her up. He indicated that he had some kind of job…" I had the sudden clarity of what was transpiring here. My conversation with Ms. Lanier from last night followed by Adam's news.

"Oh, good. Isn't he the nicest young man?"

I busied myself by clearing the table and surveying the leftovers. Paget needed to eat something before she went to bed.

"Uh, yeah, he seemed nice. Paget seems to like him, but if you were considering him for—"

"Listen." Ms. Lanier grabbed my lower arm and squeezed, pulling my attention away from my task at hand. "I know this is unusual, but you have an unusual situation here. You may feel uncomfortable with Adam looking after Paget, but she's crazy about him, and I just know that he'll take good care of her."

I pulled my arm loose and began to toss empty boxes into the trash bin in the cabinet under the sink. "I appreciate your thoughtfulness in setting this up, but I can't have a teenage boy watching Paget—unsupervised."

Ms. Lanier made a "tsk tsk" sound with her tongue. "I knew you'd say that. That's why they'll stay at my house, and I'll keep an eye on them."

I wiped my hands on the yellow-striped kitchen towel as I considered her offer.

"I can't ask you to do that."

"You didn't, dear. I offered."

I looked back at her. She stood there in her pajamas and pink house shoes that were worn through at the toe on one foot. Her hands were on her hips, and her wrinkled neck swayed slightly as she inhaled.

"But why Adam? What made you think of this? Because Paget has a crush on him?"

"No. Not entirely. But don't you think that she'd be much more likely to hang around if he's there? Maybe we'll put a stopper in some of these running-off episodes she's been having."

The plan had its merits. But still…

"What if he takes advantage of her?"

Ms. Lanier nodded. "I thought of that, and I don't believe he would ever hurt her."

"How do you know?"

"Because he loves her, dear. He loves her."

I pursed my lips and then squished them together. "Love? What are we talking about here?"

"Adam had a little sister that was…well…she died at a young age. She and Adam were watching a movie together while their mother was taking a shower. She managed to get outside and fell in the pool. She drowned."

I'd seen many cases like this come through the ER when I was on emergency rotation. It was heartbreaking.

"I'm sorry that happened, but what does this have to do with Paget?"

Ms. Lanier opened a nearby drawer, removed a pie cutter, and started to slice into the steaming pan of ecstasy. "He's always felt responsible for it. He took it really hard. And he's just developed a sort of protective nature. When he met Paget a couple years ago at Vacation Bible School, he just took her under his wing. And things have just sort of progressed from there."

"But you said he loves her. Does he have romantic feelings for her?" I wasn't prepared to deal with teen love right now. I didn't even know how to have a love life of my own these days.

She served up a piece of pie on a plate and then moved to the fridge. I hoped she was in search of milk to go with the pie.

"I'm not exactly sure about that. But I know he loves her and she thinks he hung the moon. What can be wrong with someone who cares about our girl that much? Why wouldn't we give him a chance to help her?"

She had a point, but I wasn't totally convinced that this was the way to go.

"I guess we can give it a try on a temporary basis. But I'll have to pay you to supervise them. I can't ask you to do this for free."

She filled a glass with milk. Moving about the kitchen and serving me dessert as if this was her own kitchen.

"Oh, hogwash. I don't need any of your money, Mandy. I just want you and Paget to be happy. I'm not sure just yet what I can do for you, but I can do this for Paget. Patty would have wanted me to. Just let me do this. It will make her happy."

I wasn't sure which she was talking about. Paget or Patty. Or…both? But I didn't exactly have a game plan in motion with such short notice, and it seemed that she'd already offered this to Adam and he'd agreed.

"Okay. Okay." I acquiesced and she left as quickly as she'd arrived. But the pie stayed with me.

*  *  *

It had been another long day and I needed to wrap things up with Colin and get Paget fed and to bed. I had to be at work early. Another day of paradise at the delightful Flicks Vision.

"Colin?" I spoke his name softly as I entered the living room.

No reply.

"Colin?" A little louder now as I tiptoed down the hallway to see if he had made a pit stop in the bathroom. The door was open, the room dark.

"Where did you go?" I stood there waiting for his response.

"Who are you looking for?" Paget's voice sounded from the end of the hallway, and I jumped. She waited just outside her bedroom door. Her right index finger twiddled a lock of hair near her face.

"That friend of mine from earlier. The one who gave you the chopsticks. Where did he go?"

Paget shrugged.

"Are you hungry?"

Another shrug.

"Let's go to the kitchen and see if we can find you something. Then we need to get you to bed." I spoke with a soft tone to my voice, not wanting to upset her further. Maybe Colin had left through the front door while I was in the kitchen with Ms. Lanier.

"I tried to make it, but I couldn't. I'm sorry, Mand."

It took me a minute to follow her train of thought. My eyes followed her frown down to her legs. A wet circular pattern stained the upper thigh area of her jeans. She'd wet her pants…again.

"Don't worry, Page. Just go get into some dry clothes and bring me the wet ones. I'm about to start a new load of laundry anyway."

She stood there, shuffling from foot to foot. The fingers entangled in her hair moved quicker now. She tugged them out of her hair, pulling out a strand or two as she went.

"Don't do that, Paget. You'll hurt yourself."

"I don't mean to," she said. Her eyes brimming with tears.

"I know that." I walked to her and reached out. I tickled her belly with my fingertips. Just like old times. But this time she turned away, and I withdrew my hand.
I don't know her anymore. I don't know how to take care of her anymore.
I started to bite my lower lip.

"That man—with the chopsticks…"

"Yes?"

"He said to tell you something…"

"Okay. What was it?"

"He said to tell you…"

I waited. She stopped twirling her hair and seemed to be drifting away from the conversation.

"Paget? What did he say?"

"There are exactly fifty-eight sets of chopsticks in that box. One hundred sixteen if you pull them apart."

"Paget…what did the man say?"

She turned to look at me. Her eyes were blank. Absolutely expressionless.

"What man?"

If you meet a red-haired woman, you'll meet a crowd. –Irish Proverb

Main Street in Millbrook is the ebb and flow of the community. Like most small towns, it hosts City Hall, a small structure sitting on the corner with a neatly trimmed lawn and wooden picket signs along the edge of the road. This week's sign was for the upcoming Back to School Bar-B-Q Festival. If I wanted to enter my homemade camp stew recipe, I might win cash or prizes.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a homemade recipe, but the smell of Aunt Patty's cooking whizzed through my sensory memory as I drove past the sign. Also, the image of Mayor Mills sitting behind his big ornate desk inside City Hall did a dance through my mind's eye.

What was he hiding? What had he done with that body, and was he responsible for murder? If not him, then was someone else in his family to blame?

As I drove the requested thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit, an unexpected horn blared at me, and a white blur flashed by me on the left.

What the heck?

I had turned and caught sight of the profile of Matson Mills as he sped by and then cut in front of me, leaving barely enough space between his shiny new car and my old classic.

Jerk-o-rama
.

Did he drive like this all the time, or did he know who I was? I had a suspicion that Matson had no clue who I was and didn't give a flip. I had an idea that he was on his way to his next adventure and that I was simply an obstacle that was in his way. I was not in his world and therefore was as insignificant as the average mosquito.

Nonetheless, I wondered where he was going this early in the morning, and in such a hurry. My curiosity gave me a fluttering sensation in my stomach. In response, I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and eyed the time. It was six fifteen. I had forty-five minutes until my shift started at Flicks. I'd planned on grabbing a breakfast burrito at the Back Porch—they made one with hash browns inside—but now I had the sudden inexplicable urge to tail him.

Tail him?

Who did I think I was all of a sudden? Cops at my door. A mystery man claiming to be a spy who arrives and vanishes from my house in the blink of an eye. A dead body. A star witness. What had my life become these days?

Thoughts raced through my head, and my car raced through the streets of town. Soon we had crossed over the county line and into neighboring Prattville. We sped down busy Cobbs Ford Road and then back out and away from the shopping and dining by fields of cotton as we cruised down Highway 82. Soon, brown signs indicating Cooter's Pond and the boat ramp came into view. I hung back, but I could see the white blur of Matson's car up ahead. Just before the public park, he turned down a dirt road. I pulled over and cut the engine.

I didn't need to follow him down the road to know where it went. Everyone knew that the mayor's riverfront home was through these woods. In fact, everyone in town had been to this home at some point. Because the mayor held all his political parties here, as well as every spring's hosting of the annual high school graduation shindig. It was a local thing. Sort of a rite of passage for townsfolk. Graduate from high school and get to attend a huge party in your honor on the river. Food. Sun. Swimming.