A Murder Among Friends

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Maggie looked skeptical as she quoted her best friend. “It’s a very small town, Tyler. She orders it, it’s stored in her cabin, but it’s still delivered here. So give me a break, okay?”

Fletcher smiled quickly, but wiped it away with his hand. “But sometimes she doesn’t really drink. Like tonight. She wasn’t really drunk.”

Maggie watched him closely. “How did you know?”

“Because it’s my job, Maggie. She has the act down, but not the other signs, the stuff a cop would notice. Why does she pretend?” Shifting uncomfortably on the step, Maggie looked out, her eyes unfocused. When she didn’t answer, Fletcher prompted quietly, “Scott?”

Reluctantly, Maggie nodded. “He hates it, so he stays away from her when he thinks she’s…which is what she wants…” Her voice trailed off. This wasn’t anyone’s business.

Fletcher took a deep breath. “Tell me about their fight, Maggie. Tell me about finding Aaron. And this time don’t leave anything out.”

Maggie hugged her knees to her chest and closed her eyes, remembering and saying a quick prayer for guidance. She really didn’t want to relive that moment.

“Lily and I had been cleaning the kitchen. We do that almost every night, just to have some time together. Aaron had been at dinner, his usual arrogant, jerky self. He’d been drinking.”

“Green Label Jack Daniel’s.”

Maggie looked at him then nodded. “It hurt. He told me he’d been trying to stop lately. I thought he was serious about quitting. I hadn’t seen him drink for a long time, and he acted…weird, even for Aaron. He’d berated Scott and Patrick for slacking off. I didn’t get it. They are two of his favorites. Then he started in on Lily.” She shifted, the memory still burning, a vision of a red-faced Aaron shoving Lily backward, snatching the champagne bottle out of her hand.

“This trash will kill you, girl!” Aaron’s open hand aimed for the side of her head, but Lily turned into it and his palm landed on her cheek and lips, drawing blood.

Lily fell to her knees with a short screech, but she scrambled up, diving for Aaron. “Like you’d know, old man!” she bit back, grabbing for the bottle with her right hand as her left raked its nails over his neck, drawing blood.

His hand closed on the young actress’s blouse, and he pulled her face up close to his, raising her up on her toes, his voice low and hoarse. “You cat! You have no idea. I’m the one person who does know.”

“Stop it!” Maggie yelled, shoving her way between them as Aaron pressed his palm to the scratches Lily had left. “Look what this is doing to you! You’re acting like children, the both of you. Stop drinking!” She faced her boss, who literally towered over her. “Go home, Aaron. Sleep this one off.”

Aaron’s glare shook her all the way to her toes, but she tilted her chin up as he raised his hand again, her eyes narrowing to thin slits. “Don’t you dare,” she whispered sharply. “Don’t you even think about it.”

Maggie paused and took a deep breath, forcing her eyes to meet Fletcher’s. “Anyway, no one stayed around after dinner, not like tonight. At first he acted like he was in pain, but then he just got belligerent. No one wanted to be around him. Then he started in on Lily and me, and I called his bluff and told him to go home and sleep it off. He acted as if he was going to hit me, and I stood him down. He laughed, making a comment that I would never take it from a man like Lily did—”

“Scott hits her?” Tyler demanded.

Fletcher looked up at him. “Pay attention, Tyler. Or does your mother not go to the local beauty shop to keep up with what’s happening around town?”

Maggie almost laughed, and she looked at Fletcher, grateful. He smiled briefly and nodded his encouragement. She continued with a sigh. “Scott only hit her one time, but it’s left her skittish. It’s made things very tough for them, for us. So when Aaron hit her, I can understand why she went after him.” She looked up at Fletcher, her eyes pleading. “I thought the blood was from the fight, but I knew how it would look!”

Fletcher was back under control and merely nodded at her. “Keep talking.”

She shrugged. “Lily left, and Tim went to bed. I was going to take out the garbage and go to my office to work for a bit. That’s when I found him. He was just…there. Lying on the steps with that look. No life in his eyes.” Maggie stopped, staring up at the bright stars, which were blurry through her tears. Are You listening, God? Are You watching? Am I doing the right thing? The relief she felt from the release of the information was tempered by doubts about Lily, about Fletcher. About herself.

Fletcher took her hand, folding it in the warmth of his. “Go on.”

Maggie sniffed back the tears, relishing the comfort of his grasp. “Tim got up to go to the bathroom and realized all the lights were still on. That’s when he found me.” She paused. “Us.”

Fletcher squeezed her hand. “No, Maggie. Before that. What did you do?”

Maggie looked at him, puzzled.

“How did you react?”

She lowered her eyes and tried to call back the memory. “I…I…dropped the trash bag. I remember it spilling all down the steps as I went to him.”

“Who cleaned it up?”

Maggie suddenly felt confused. She didn’t remember. She looked up at Tyler, who shook his head. “There was no trash when we got here.”

“Then Tim must have picked it up before you got here. Or Scott.” Maggie racked her brain. “I don’t remember anyone else being around.” Why can’t I remember?

Fletcher tugged on her hand. “When did you find the bottle?”

Maggie stared at him. “This morning, just before you and Korie got here. I didn’t know how it got there, and I realized how it looked…Lily’s bottle close to where he’d died. The blood. Everyone was already saying it wasn’t an accident, that the body had been moved.”

“So how do you know it had not been in the trash after all?”

“I guess I don’t.” Maggie studied Fletcher’s face. His gaze was distant; she could almost see him processing what he’d been told. You don’t believe me, do you?

Tyler shook his head. “No. MacAllister, I know we’re just a small-town department, but we would have noticed a bloody bottle at the crime scene. There was no trash at all when we got here.”

Fletcher nodded. “No doubt. So it had to have been placed afterward. Either to look as if it had been an overlooked piece of your trash…”

“Or to implicate Lily,” Tyler finished. “I still don’t understand why the bottle didn’t break from such a blow.”

Fletcher spun on his toe and headed back to the trash can.

“Other brands might have,” Maggie said, “but the Dom’s bottle is pretty…” Her voice trailed off as Fletcher started digging through the trash, coming up with the bottle she had tossed earlier that evening. “What are you doing?”

Fletcher paused, looked from her to Tyler, then with a sudden jerk, he slammed the end of the bottle down on the ground, the thick glass burying itself several inches into the dirt.

Maggie gasped, then closed her eyes, burning tears leaking through the slits.

“That wasn’t necessary,” Tyler said softly.

Fletcher crossed to Maggie and leaned over her. “He didn’t deserve this,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper. “Help me. Don’t hinder me.”

Maggie opened her eyes. “Please stop. I can’t do this.”

Fletcher looked into her eyes a moment, then nodded, emotion giving way to business. “We’ll finish tomorrow. Nothing is going to get solved tonight. I’ll talk to the other residents in the morning. Tyler will get the analysis done. There’s a good chance our killer left more than fingerprints on that bottle. We can get elimination prints from everyone here, if they’ll cooperate—”

“My fingerprints will be on that bottle.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“I didn’t kill him. Neither did Lily.”

Silently, he stood up, pulling her up with him, then he put his hand on her elbow as she climbed the stairs. They were almost at the door when a memory sparked in her brain—just a flash, but it might be important. Maggie turned abruptly at the door, to speak to Tyler.

The pain slapped into her face almost at the same time she recognized the sound of the gunshot in the distance. There was a moment when she wondered where the pain was coming from, almost as if it were not a part of her. Then everything shifted into a slow blur. She felt remote, pulled out of her body, and she heard herself screaming. She was falling, then not, then there was the solid wood of the deck beneath her. At once, the pain hit in full force, a thousand shards of glass against her skin. Then Maggie’s vision faded, and with the darkness, relief. She closed her eyes, embracing it.

FOUR

Work was his passion, and Judson pursued it with a relentless sense of perfection. His personal standards were tougher than the department’s, and he went through a number of partners before finding one suitable. “My partners,” he once told his captain, “keep forgetting that it is the work that you are involved with, not the crime victims.”

He watched her breathe, his eyes tracing over every contour of muscle and bone, every bit of pale flesh. Every bruise. Every bandaged wound.

It was his mistake, and she had almost paid the price for it. If she had not turned so abruptly—

The bullet had grazed her scalp and blown apart the wooden door frame, embedding a half-dozen shards of wood in the side of her face, near her hairline. Sometimes Fletcher thought he could still hear her screams. Maggie had fallen against him, then to the deck, as Tyler had bounded into the woods after the shooter. The screams had brought out Lily, who surprised Fletcher by taking charge of her sister and yelling at him to go, go!

But he and Tyler had not found so much as a shell casing in the dark, and Fletcher had returned to the lodge, his anger barely under control, to find that Lily had called 911, pulled the first-aid kit out of the kitchen and removed most of the wooden slivers. She had stopped the bleeding with pressure bandages, directed the arriving officers into the woods and helped the ambulance attendants load Maggie. Maggie had only remained unconscious a few moments, and it had been Lily who had calmed her, trying to ease the panic with a soothing voice. As they had watched the ambulance leave, Lily had spoken evenly. “Who’s going to take me to the hospital?”

Fletcher never took his eyes off the flashing lights. “You’re not drunk at all, are you?”

“I am…” Lily had said, with an exaggerated pause for effect “an actress.”

Fletcher had nodded. “One of the officers will take you. I have to stay here.”

“She’ll be disappointed.”

Fletcher had looked down at her, frowning. “What?”

She had smiled. “Never mind. I’ll snag an officer. You’d better stick to Tyler. He looks a little out of his element.”

Fletcher had watched as Lily sauntered off. A smile, a flirt and a coy squeeze on the arm later, and she and an officer were headed for the hospital in Portsmouth. Maggie had been treated and kept overnight for observation. She was released this morning, sent home doped up on the appropriate painkillers.

Now, he watched her breathe.

“Not my usual type, is she?” Aaron asked him, as Maggie had headed for the ladies’ room.

Fletcher had noticed. He was so used to seeing far too many perfect, rich, trophy-wife candidates on Aaron’s arm that Maggie’s difference shone—her soft but out-of-control curls, her light use of make-up. He tilted his head as he watched her walk away. There was a slight awkwardness to her gait, a faint limp that Aaron had explained was left over from a childhood accident, but the sway of her hips still made men turn and look. Nice legs.

He looked back at Aaron. “She’s not your typical airheaded beauty queen, no.”

“But she’s smart. And sasses me back like no one ever has. She’s got spunk.”

Fletcher took a sip of his coffee. “Yeah, I noticed.”

Aaron laughed, his voice muffled by his raised glass. “I like it when you two fight. I like the way she tries to defend me.”

“You would. Don’t you ever fight with her?”

“Only about one thing, my dear Fletcher, and eventually, I promise you, I will win.”

Fletcher looked at Maggie, who had taken a quick sidestep to avoid a waiter loaded down with dishes. She had to be the most determined women he’d ever met. “You may have met your match this time.”

“Never, me boyo. No woman bests Aaron Jackson.”

“You know, Aaron, your humility is one of the things I like best about you.”

Aaron had scowled. “Humility is a much overrated virtue, usually touted by those who have nothing to be humble about.”

Fletcher studied his friend’s face. “Why are you so intent on this?”

Aaron was quiet for a few moments, then said evenly, “Because if I lose this one, I lose the girl.”

And he had. Aaron and Maggie had called it quits a few months later, and Aaron had gone on to a series of lovelies, all of whom bored him within a few weeks. Korie had latched on, and Aaron had married her quickly, as he had told Fletcher shortly after the wedding, “out of attrition.” Were you still in love with him, Maggie?