the feeder in the cart next to her Coke. She could always take it with her when she sold the place. She’d bought the house as an investment. She was one woman. One woman did not need two homes, but she supposed there was no hurry to sell.
Carleen Dawson stood in the dog food aisle shelving collars and leashes and talking to a woman with long black hair. Maddie smiled as she wheeled her cart past and Carleen stopped in midsentence.
“That’s her,” she heard Carleen say. She kept on walking until she felt a hand on her arm.
“Just one minute.”
She turned and looked into a pair of green eyes. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck tingled as if she should know her. The woman wore some kind of uniform as if she worked in a restaurant or diner. “Yes?”
The woman dropped her hand. “I’m Meg Hennessy and you’re writing about my parents.”
Meg. That’s how she knew her. From photos of Rose. If Mick was the image of Loch, Meg looked a lot like her mother. The tingles on the back of her neck spread down her spine as if she were looking into the eyes of a killer. Her mother’s killer, but of course Meg was as innocent as she was herself. “That’s right.”
“I’ve read your books before. You write about serial killers. The real sensational stuff. My mother wasn’t a serial killer.”
Maddie didn’t want to do this here. Not in the middle of a drugstore with Carleen looking on. “Perhaps you’d like to talk about this somewhere else.”
Meg shook her head and her dark hair swung about her shoulders. “My mother was a good person.”
That was open for debate, but not in the middle of Value Rite. “I’m writing a fair account of what happened.” And she was. She’d written some hard truths about her mother that she could have easily glossed over.
“I hope so. I know Mick doesn’t want to talk to you about this. I understand how he feels, but you’re obviously going to write this book with or without our input.” She dug around in her purse and pulled out a pen and a silver gum wrapper. “I don’t get why you think my parents’ deaths are worthy of a novel, but you do,” she said as she wrote on the white side of the gum wrapper. “But call me if you have questions.”
Maddie wasn’t easily shocked, but when Meg handed her the wrapper, she was so stunned that she didn’t know what to say. She glanced at the telephone number and folded the paper in half.
“You’ve probably talked to that waitress’s relatives.” Meg shoved her pen back inside her purse and her black hair fell across her pale cheek. “I’m sure they told you lies about my family.”
“Alice only has one living relative. Her daughter.”
Meg looked up and pushed her hair behind one ear. “I don’t know what she could tell you. Nobody around here even remembers her. She probably turned out just like her home-wrecking mother.”
Maddie’s grasp tightened on the handle of her shopping cart, but she managed a pleasant smile. “She’s as much like her mother as I imagine you are like yours.”
“I’m nothing like my mother.” Meg stood up straighter and her voice got a bit more strident. “My mother killed her cheating husband. I divorced mine.”
“Too bad your mother didn’t consider divorce a better option.”
“Sometimes a person is pushed too far.”
Bullshit. Maddie had heard that excuse from every sociopath she’d ever interviewed. The old “she pushed me too far so I stabbed her a hundred and fifty times” excuse. She slid the gum wrapper into her pants pocket and asked, “What was it about your father’s affair with Alice Jones that pushed your mother too far?”
Maddie expected the same response she’d got ten every time she asked that question. A shrug of the shoulders. Instead Meg got busy digging in her purse once more. She pulled out a set of keys and folded her arms across her chest.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head.
“Only three people know what really happened that night. My dad, my mom, and that waitress. They’re all dead.” Meg stuck one finger through the ring and closed her fingers around the keys. “But if you want to know the truth about my mom and dad’s life, call me and I’ll clear things up for you,” she said and turned to walk away.
“Thank you. I will,” Maddie answered even though she wasn’t a bit fooled by Meg’s eagerness to help, and she doubted that she’d get the entire truth about Rose and Loch’s life. She’d get Meg’s version, which Maddie was sure would be shaded and glossed over.
She pushed her cart to the checkout line and put her items on the counter. Mick had mentioned that his sister could be difficult. Did she suffer the same mental instability as Rose? Maddie had felt Meg’s hostility and resentment toward Maddie’s mother and even herself. Meg had refused to even say Alice’s name, but she knew something about that night. Maddie was sure of it. Whatever it was, Maddie would find out. She’d extracted secrets from people a hell of a lot smarter and with more to lose than Meg Hennessy.
When Maddie walked into the house after being gone all day, the carcass of a dead mouse greeted her. Last week, Ernie’s Pest Control had finally made it out and laid bait. As a result, Maddie kept finding dead mice all over the place. She set her Value Rite bags on the kitchen counter, then tore off some paper towels. She grabbed the mouse by its tail and carried it outside to the garbage cans.
“What’re you doing?”
Maddie looked over her shoulder, into the deep shadows created by towering ponderosas, and her gaze landed on two boys dressed up like mini-commandos.
She held up the mouse. “Throwing this in the trash.”
Travis Hennessy scratched his cheek with the barrel of a green Nerf gun. “Did its head pop off?”
“Sorry. No.”
“Bummer.”
She dropped the carcass into the garbage.
“My mom and dad are going to Boise,” Pete informed her. “’Cause my aunt had her babies.”
Maddie turned and looked at Pete. “Really? That’s great news.”
“Yeah, and Pete is spending the night at my house.”
“My dad’s taking us to Travis’s in three shakes. He says my uncle Nick needs a drink.” Pete loaded his plastic camouflaged rifle with an orange rubber dart. “The babies’ names are Isabel and Lilly.”
“Do you know if—”
Louie called for the boys and interrupted Maddie. “See ya,” they said in unison, then turned on the heels of their sneakers and took off through the trees.
“’Bye.” She replaced the garbage can lid and walked back into the house. She washed her hands and disinfected the floor where she’d found the carcass. It was after seven and she threw a chicken breast on her George Foreman Grill. She made a salad and drank two glasses of wine with her meal. She’d had a long day, and after she ate and put the dishes in the dishwasher, she changed out of her clothes and into a pair of blue Victoria’s Secret lounging pants with the word pink printed across her butt. She zipped up a blue hooded sweatshirt and pulled her hair back in a ponytail.
