“He must have been obsessed with her. It’s so creepy.”
“She was never involved with him,” he said vehemently.
Maggie said, “Calm down, I know,” but privately, she wondered. She also wondered who it was in bed with Ava in the photo Patrick was studying so closely.
Her sister-in-law Ava was an enigma to Maggie. She was a good mother, a hard worker, a devout churchgoer, and Maggie had never heard her say an unkind word to or about anyone. Maggie did think she often played on other people’s sympathies, especially Patrick’s, as the long suffering, abandoned wife and mother, but she had never done anything Maggie could look back on now and say, “Ah hah! That must have been when she was secretly meeting Theo!”
Ava was rarely away from her bed and breakfast business or her children, and she volunteered at both the church and the grade school with any free time she had. Just because she was gorgeous, and wouldn’t gossip or make fun of people like Hannah and Maggie did, they tended to roll their eyes and call her “Saint Ava” behind her back. Maybe she was just what she appeared to be. Maggie wished she knew.
“I think if I had our brother Brian in front of me right now I might kill him,” Patrick said, as he studied the loan papers.
“You were always saying you wanted to kill Theo and now he’s dead,” Maggie said. “You might want to watch what you say.”
Patrick glowered in response and said nothing more. Maggie didn’t for a moment suspect her brother Patrick of killing Theo. She could more easily imagine Brian doing it, especially now that she knew what he was capable of doing to his own family.
Brian was the first-born, and the apple of their mother’s eye. He had inherited Grandpa Tim’s red curly hair and bright blue eyes along with his ability to charm the pants off just about any female he set his sights on. Grandpa Tim was a good man, but no one could say he was a faithful man, especially when he was a young man.
Ava may have won Brian by being the prettiest and the most tenacious of his girlfriends, but she was not able to tame or shame him into being a good husband and father. Although Brian was her brother, Maggie never liked him, and he’d barely acknowledged her presence as long as she’d known him. He may have chased and bedded the female locals, students, and tourists, and wrapped his mother around his little finger, but Maggie thought he didn’t actually like or respect any woman. To Brian a woman was a plaything to be used and discarded, or a nag to be avoided and placated.
“Where are we going to burn all this stuff?” Maggie asked Patrick.
“You leave that to me,” Patrick said, and they began sorting everything into ‘burn’ and ‘not burn’ piles.
Hannah called and put Sam on the phone.
“Concerning the flammable materials,” Sam said. “I think you should go ahead and burn all of it, and not save any of it. It would be dangerous to leave any of it lying around.”
“Gotcha,” Maggie said, and got tickled in spite of the seriousness of the situation.
Hannah got back on the phone.
“The goose will fly at midnight,” Hannah said before she hung up, and Maggie was relieved to hear her friend’s sense of humor was back.
She looked at Patrick and said, “Sam says burn it all.”
“Let’s hide the stuff we want to keep first,” he said.
Maggie put Sean’s letters in between the pages of a large book of art photographs on her bookshelf, and hid the Knox folder behind some books on the same shelf. Patrick folded up the loan documents and slid them down inside his shirt. Maggie tucked Ava’s baby and childhood pictures into the front of one of her photo albums, where they seemed to belong. The rest went back in the grocery bag, and they left by the back stairs so Maggie didn’t have to disarm the bookstore alarm system.
Maggie felt much safer now that she was with her brother Patrick. Not only was he big and strong, but he also exuded the confidence of someone who always comes out on top in any physical contest. They walked down the alley and up Pine Mountain Road to the Rose Hill Bed and Breakfast, where they found Ava folding towels in the kitchen while Charlotte and Timmy watched television in the small family room.
Patrick swept six-year-old Timmy up in his arms and pretended to throw him out the back door into the snow, while Charlotte, a dignified young lady of twelve, tried not to look as if she wanted to say, “Me next! Me next!”
Patrick swung Timmy down and gave Charlotte a big smacking kiss on the cheek, to which she squealed and Timmy told his Aunt Maggie, “That’s a cartoon kiss.”
Maggie happened to turn and catch Ava looking at Patrick with such tenderness and love in her expression that it felt like an invasion of privacy to observe it.
Patrick spent a lot of time with Ava and the kids after Brian left, and both Charlotte and little Timmy were especially close to him, but Maggie wondered when Ava’s dependence on Patrick had turned into something, well, so romantic? How had she missed that happening?
If it was true her mother would not be a bit happy about it, Maggie was sure. Bonnie still expected Brian to turn up one day with a good excuse for leaving, and for everything to go back to normal. Bonnie’s favorite theory was Brian had been knocked unconscious and had amnesia. No one else was on board that particular denial train, but she held fast to her belief in her son’s innocence despite all evidence to the contrary.
Maggie watched television with the two kids while Patrick took Ava to the front room. After ten minutes or so, they came back, and Ava’s eyes were red from crying.
Patrick said goodbye to the kids, said, “We have some work to do,” to Maggie, and went out the back door.
Ava squeezed Maggie’s hand and mouthed, “Thank you,” to which Maggie mouthed back, “I’m so sorry,” before following Patrick out.
“Wait up!” Maggie yelled, and caught up to her brother at the end of the walkway to the alley. “Where are we going?”
“If you need a fire, you go where the fire experts go.”
“Not the fire station,” Maggie protested, but Patrick ignored her.
Maggie had a lot of questions she would have liked to ask her brother about his relationship with Ava, but she knew from experience he would not discuss anything so personal or private with her. Although they loved each other, and were fiercely loyal, she and her brother were not that kind of close.
Instead of going to the front door of the fire station, Patrick led his sister around behind it, where a large metal barrel used to burn trash sat on the edge of the parking lot. Patrick took the grocery bag from Maggie, put it in the barrel, pulled a flask out of his back pocket, and with a flourish, emptied the contents over the bag.
He then took a metal lighter out of his jacket pocket, lit a receipt he found in one of his other pockets, and said, “Stand back!” in a dramatic way before dropping it in the can as well.
There was a whoosh and Maggie could hear the paper catch fire and start to crackle and burn. Patrick performed a silly dance around the barrel to make Maggie laugh.
They waited until everything burned, and then Patrick threw some snow in to make sure the fire was out.
“And throughout all that no one came out to see what we are doing,” Maggie said, gesturing at the firehouse, which was staffed by local volunteers.
“They’re all sleeping or watching TV,” Patrick said.
“Or drunk,” Maggie said crossly.
“Said Miss Priss,” Patrick said. “Lighten up, why don’t ya
?”
Maggie saw Rose Hill’s only squad car roll slowly down Peony Street, turn in the alley behind the police station, and creep toward them. As it pulled up next to them, a darkly tinted window slid down and Scott eyed them suspiciously.
“What in the world are you two up to?”
“We thought we saw a UFO land in the field over there and we came to check it out,” Patrick said with a straight face.
Scott looked at Maggie and said, “You look guilty. You better come with me.”
Patrick said, “You’re on your own, Sis,” and jogged away down the alley.
Maggie walked around the car and got in on the passenger side. Scott’s scent rolled over her and she fought the swoon, but it was stronger than she was. When he asked her if she would like to go for a ride she said, “Sure.”
The roads were bad, but there were crews out plowing. As they drove slowly around town, Maggie did not ask him how his date with Sarah was. She didn’t trust herself not to throw a screaming fit and fling herself out of the car no matter what his answer might be.
“Caroline called last night,” Maggie said instead, studying Scott’s profile in the light of the dashboard and streetlights. He looked so handsome.
“What did she say?” he asked.
Maggie hesitated. It felt so warm and comfortable between them right then, but as soon as she told him he would be angry. However, she knew from experience if she lied now he’d find out eventually, and would be even angrier.
“Caroline said there was a secret room in the lodge where her great grandpa kept his bootleg booze. She told me where it was, and I thought you might want to go out there and take a look.”
Scott stopped the car, put it in park, and turned halfway around in his seat to look at her.
“Where were you and Hannah today?” he asked her. “I looked everywhere for the two of you and neither of you answered your cell phones.”
“We went out to take care of Theo’s dogs,” Maggie said.
“And?” he asked, eyebrow up.
“And we might have stopped in the lodge to see if we could find the secret room,” she said.
“And?”
“And we might have found it.”
He didn’t look at all amused now.
“What was in it?” he asked.
She
stared at him, wide-eyed.
“What were you and Patrick doing just now?” he demanded. “Burning something?”
Maggie tried desperately to open the door but this was a squad car and he had all the controls on his side.
Scott turned back around facing forward, put the car in gear, and drove a little faster than it was safe to back to the station. Maggie wasn’t sure what he was planning to do. He slid into the parking place in front of the station so hard the tires bumped the curb.
“C’mon,” he said, as he unlocked all the doors and got out of the car.
Maggie crept out of the car as he unlocked the station door. She hesitated, but then followed him inside. Scott flipped on the lights and summoned her back to his office, where he sat down behind his desk and popped a cassette tape in the tape recorder.
“What are you doing?” Maggie asked, from the doorway.
“I’m preparing to take your statement,” he said briskly, and not in a friendly tone. “You trespassed in a secured area, you tampered with evidence in a murder investigation, you may have destroyed evidence, and I’m taking your statement before I decide whether to arrest you or not.”
Maggie started backing out of the office.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Scott said, and came around the desk after her.
He caught her by the back of her coat as she ran through the outer room, and swung her around to face him. Maggie’s heart was pounding. It had occurred to her that Scott would be mad, but it never occurred to her he might do something so official about it. He was holding her by the arms, and although he was angry, there was also that something else that always occurred between them, and it was just as palpable as his anger.
“Let go of me,” she demanded, and to her surprise, he did.
They were both breathing a little heavily, and Maggie backed up to put some space between them.
“I know my rights,” Maggie said. “If you want to arrest me, go ahead, but I’m not making a statement without Sean here.”
“Sean’s a corporate attorney,” Scott said. “What’s he gonna do, draw up a contract?”
“Not another word,” Maggie said, edging toward the door, holding out a hand as if to ward him off. “Arrest me and I call Sean.”
“There’s no phone in the holding cell,” Scott motioned toward it. “And I may lock myself in with you, keep you company all night.”
“Sexual harassment!” Maggie accused as she pointed her finger at him and backed around the reception desk toward the door.
Scott began to walk toward her so she turned and ran out the door, and then slid on the icy pavement all the way to the curb, where she caught herself on a parking meter.
Scott came out the door laughing.
“Stay away from me!” she warned, clinging to the meter.
She looked up the street and saw no one was out, but the door to the Rose and Thorn was open, and she could hear fiddle music, which meant her brother was working.
“Maggie,” Scott said from the doorway, and his tone was softer.
“You go to hell, Scott Gordon!” she yelled at him, and then toward the bar she screamed, “Patrick!”
Scott made a move toward her and she held a hand out toward him to stop him.
“The lodge is Caroline’s and Gwyneth’s house now, and if Caroline asks me to go in it and look for something I can.”
He took another step toward her, hands out, pleading, “Now don’t get all freaked out, Maggie, I was just trying to make a point.”