“That isn’t the reason I brought you the trap.”
“Now who’s lying?” She pointed toward the door. “It’s time for you to leave.”
He didn’t budge. “You can’t do this, Maddie. You can’t write about my family.”
“Yes, I can, and I’m going to.” She didn’t wait for him but walked to the door and opened it.
“Why? I’ve read all about you,” he said as he moved toward her, his boot heels an angry thud across the hardwood. “You write about serial killers. My mother wasn’t a serial killer. She was a housewife who’d had enough of a cheating husband. She flipped out and killed him and herself. There’s no big villain here. No sick bastards like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. What happened to my mother and father is hardly the sensational sort of stuff that people want to read about.”
“I think I’m a little more qualified to determine that than you.”
He stopped on the threshold and turned to face her. “My mother was just a sad woman who snapped one night and left her children orphaned, victims of her mental illness.”
“All this talk of you and your family, you seem to forget there was another innocent victim.”
“That little waitress was hardly innocent.”
Actually, she’d been talking about herself. “So you’re like everyone else in this town and think Alice Jones got what she deserved.”
“No one got what they deserved, but she was screwing around with a married man.”
Now. Now she was truly good and angry. “So your mother was perfectly justified in shooting her in the face.”
His head jerked back as if she’d slapped him. Obviously he hadn’t seen the photos or read the report.
“And your father may have been a cheater, but did he deserve to be shot three times and bleed to death on a barroom floor while your mother watched?”
His voice rose for the first time. “You’re full of shit. She wouldn’t have watched my father die.”
If he hadn’t told her she was full of shit, she would have spared him, no matter her own anger. “Her bloody footprints were all over the bar. And she didn’t get up and walk around after she shot herself.”
His mouth clamped shut.
“Alice Jones had a child too. Did she deserve to lose her mother? Did she deserve to be made an orphan?” Maddie placed her hand in the center of his chest and pushed. “So don’t tell me that your mother was just some sad housewife who’d been pushed too far. She had other options. Lots of other options that didn’t involve murder.” He took a step back out onto her porch. “And don’t come here and think you can tell me what to do. I really don’t give a damn if you like it or not. I’m going to write the book.” She tried to shut the door, but his arm shot out and kept it open.
“You do that.” With his free hand, he took his sunglasses from the top of his head and slid them in place, covering the anger in his blue eyes. “But you stay away from me,” he said and dropped his hand from the door. “And you stay the hell away from my family.”
Maddie slammed the door and pushed her hair from her face. Damn. That hadn’t gone well. He’d been angry. She’d gotten angry. Heck, she was still angry.
She heard him start his truck, and out of habit, she locked her front door. She didn’t need him or his family in order to write the book, but realistically, it’d be nice if she had their cooperation. Especially since she needed to get into the lives of Loch and Rose.
“Well, that sucked,” she said and walked into the living room. She would have to write the book without their input. Her mother’s photograph sat on the coffee table. She’d been so young and filled with so many dreams. Maddie picked up the photo and touched the glass above her mother’s lips. It had been sitting on the table the whole time while Mick had been there, and he hadn’t noticed.
She’d planned to tell him that she was more than just an author interested in writing a book. That his mother had left her an orphan too. Now he wanted nothing to do with her, and who she really was just didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Mick pulled his truck to a stop in front of the Shore View Diner where Meg worked five days a week waiting tables and pulling in tips. He was still so angry he felt like hitting something or someone. Like picking Maddie Dupree up by her shoulders and shaking her until she agreed to pack up and go away. Like forgetting she’d ever heard of the Hennessys and their messed-up lives. But she’d made it really clear she wasn’t going anywhere, and now he had to tell Meg before she heard it from someone else.
He turned off the truck and leaned his head back. His mother had watched his father die? He hadn’t known that. Wished he didn’t know it now. How could he possibly reconcile the woman who’d killed two people with the mother who’d made him peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches, cut the crusts off, and sliced the bread at an angle just as he’d liked it? The loving mother who bathed him and washed his hair and tucked him in at night, with the woman who’d left footprints in her husband’s blood all over his bar? How could that even be the same woman?
He rubbed his face with his hands and slid his fingers beneath his sunglasses to rub his eyes. He was so damn tired. After Jewel had given him Maddie’s business card, he’d gone to his office in Hennessy’s and locked himself in. He’d searched the Internet for information about Maddie, and there’d been a lot. She’d published five books, and he’d discovered head shots of her and photos of her at book signings. There was no mistaking that the Maddie Dupree whom he’d been planning to get to know better was the woman who wrote about psychotic killers. The Madeline Dupree who was in town to write about the night his mother had killed his father. He opened the door to his truck and stepped outside. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop her.
From as far back as he could remember, the Shore View Diner had smelled the same. Like grease and eggs and tobacco. The diner was one of the last places in America where a person could have a cup of coffee and a Camel or Lucky Strike, depending on his or her poison. As a result, it was always filled with smokers. Mick had tried to talk Meg into working someplace where she wasn’t likely to get lung cancer from secondhand smoke, but she insisted that the tips were too good to work anyplace else.
It was around two in the afternoon and the diner was half empty when Mick entered. Meg stood behind the front counter, filling Lloyd Brunner’s cup of coffee and laughing at something he’d said. Her black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a bright pink blouse beneath a white apron. She looked up and waved at him.
“Hey, there. Are you hungry?” she asked.
“No.” He took a seat at the counter and pushed his Revos to the top of his head. “I was hoping you could get off early.”
“Why?” Her smile fell and she set the coffee carafe on the counter. “Has something happened? Is it Travis?”
“Travis is fine. I just wanted to talk to you about something.”
She looked into his eyes as if she could read his mind. “I’ll be right back,” she said and walked into the kitchen. When she returned, she had her purse.
Mick rose and followed her outside. As soon as the door to the diner swung shut behind them,
she asked, “What is it?”
“There’s a woman in town. She’s a true crime writer.”
Meg squinted against the bright sun as they walked across the gravel lot to his truck. “What’s her name?”
“Madeline Dupree.”
Her jaw dropped. “Madeline Dupree? She wrote
