Worst Laid Plans (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 1) (10 page)

No doubt he did. How else could he lure people in to ferret out their dark—innocent—secrets? I was onto this detective with the smile that softened his jaw and creased into his dreamy gray eyes.

I had a list a mile long, but the yellow crime scene tape jumped the queue. “The toxicology report came back?” I said, more of a demand than a question. “Was Ms Daggon poisoned? Is Hollow House a crime scene now?”

“How do you know about the toxicology reports?”

Uh oh
.

The smile went out of his eyes as he rubbed his jaw, studying me. Maybe drawing lines from me to my best friend Jenna to her new boyfriend Jack. Nothing I’d divulged during that interview was sacred, and unfortunately I’d divulged just about everything.

Detective Bishop turned his shoulder on me and called down the passage, “Sanders!”

A uniform popped his head out from around the bend in the passage.

“I’ll be upstairs, starting with Ms Storm’s room,” the detective informed him. “Send Jeffers and Manderson up when they’re done in there.”

“Wait just a minute,” I blurted out.

He cocked his head at me, brow raised.

“I haven’t given you permission.”

“I don’t need it, remember?” he said, moving toward the foot of the staircase in a determined stride. “You’re welcome to come along and watch or stay down here. Your choice.”

I scurried after him, staring daggers into his back and bristling at the seams. My legs were still a bit rubbery, my lungs still starved of oxygen from my mad dash. The stairs were killing muscles I never knew I had.

At the top, I bent double to rub a cramp from my calf, clawing at the railing and breathing heavily. It wasn’t just the long drop from my adrenaline high. It was the swirl of anger and frustration, the cop invasion, the realization that Ms Daggon had likely been murdered one floor below while I slept.

I felt like I was spiraling out of control.

Detective Bishop stopped his striding to turn and watch my imminent collapse. His suit jacket hitched open as he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “If this is a delay tactic, Ms Storm, it won’t work.”

I glared up at him from my tilted position. The blasted man was about to go sniffing through my underwear drawer. Why on earth would I delay the inevitable when I wished it were already over?

“No one,” he explained to my genuine expression of cluelessness, “is
that
unfit.”

“Believe me, detective,” I said in what was meant to be a waspish tone but merely came out sounding like a woman in the final stages of labor, “I’m this unfit.”

“You wouldn’t think so to look at you,” he drawled, a grin melting into the ridges and dips of his jaw while his look grazed every inch of me from head to toe.

Then he was off again, striding down the long hallway until he came to my bedroom. “It’s this one, right?” he said, glancing back at me. “Mr Burns indicated it was right at the end.”

I straightened and nodded, and stood there a moment longer to regain my lost composure. When I finally slipped inside my bedroom, Detective Bishop was rifling through the cherry wood bachelor chest.

I leant against the wall just inside the door, wrapping my arms around my waist. If this were a movie, he’d pluck out a dainty piece of lace and dangle it with a leery gleam in his wicked eye. I almost wished he would. There was something too real about the way he methodically opened and closed each drawer with cool detachment.

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“This is an ongoing investigation, Ms Storm.” He left the chest of drawers and crossed to the wardrobe. “I can’t disclose that information.”

“But it’s okay to disclose everything I told you and use it against me,” I lashed out. “Funny that, I don’t remember you reading me my rights.”

“You weren’t arrested,” he said, his head hidden behind the wardrobe door. “What am I supposed to have used against you?”

“Not directly, maybe, but you hauled Mrs Colby in for questioning based on what I told you and don’t bother trying to deny it.”

“I’m not denying anything.”

“I told you those things in confidence,” I said. “I assumed it was off the record.”

“I’m not a journalist, Ms Storm, I don’t do off the record.”

“What about protecting your sources?” I was pretty sure even the FBI followed those rules.

He popped out from the wardrobe with my suitcase, regarding me with a concerned look as he brought it over to the bed. “You need protection?”

“I didn’t need to be ratted out,” I shot back. “Mrs Colby knew you’d gotten your information from me.”

“I don’t usually,” he said. “Mrs Colby denied any animosity toward Ms Daggon, swore the incident with her dog was an unfortunate accident. I was trying to get to the truth and I went too far.”

He looked at me, not smiling, not trying to win me over onto his side. “I’m sorry, Ms Storm. This is a small town and I realize that can make things awkward.”

An apology was the last thing I expected.

I didn’t even know what to do with it.

My blood was high and suddenly I had nothing left that needed fighting.

He seemed to take my stunned silence as an acceptance for his apology and went back to the task at hand, flicking the catches of my suitcase, flipping the lid open.

Something about his paws all over my battered suitcase cracked me, the suitcase that had taken me from this place and brought me back full-circle.

Everything hit me at once.

It wasn’t just Mrs Colby and Mrs Biggenhill.

My room was being searched. I was a suspect in a murder investigation. Joe had cheated on me. A stranger in my room, a detective rifling through my life for incriminating evidence, had the sensitivity to apologize for making my life awkward while the man who was supposed to love me forever and forever, the man I’d handed my heart over to, had callously crushed my life while I watched.

My legs gave way and I crumpled, sliding down the wall.

I curled into a ball, hugging my knees, my head buried. My throat closed, swollen with silent sobs that racked through me.

“Ms Storm?”

I peered up to see the detective hunched before me.

“I meant it,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”

I tried to talk, but couldn’t get a word out. I stared at him, but it wasn’t his rugged face I saw. My head had filled with the static picture of Joe and Chintilly caught in the throes of passion. Then the image dissolved and suddenly I was looking at what lay trapped behind Joe’s betrayal. The man before the fall, the one I’d wanted to grow old with. The Joe who’d always looked at me as if I were the most beautiful, most special woman in the world to him. I’d had no tears for the cheating scumbag, but this Joe, well…

The hours we’d spent lost in each other, chatting about everything and nothing. The warmth of Joe wrapped around me. The love etched into every smile. The promises etched into every look.

Joe had hurt me, but he’d also loved me and that made it a hundred times worse. How could he have been so stupid, so careless with our love? Why couldn’t he be a man I’d have no trouble hating?

I put my head down as the sobs erupted, great big chunks of grief ripped straight from my heart.

“Ms Storm?” A hand landed on my shoulder. A wad of something soft—toilet tissue—was crammed into my fist. “Maddox, I’m done here. Okay? You’re not a suspect. Hell, I never considered you one, you know that, right? This is just routine.”

I shook Detective Bishop off and buried my head deeper into my arms.

“Is there anything I can do?” he said. “Someone I should call?”

“I’m fine,” I sobbed. “Please go.”

He went.

I stayed there in my ball, remembering every minute of everything I’d had and lost, feeling the loss to my bones, sobbing until I choked and then sobbing some more.

The next thing I knew, Jenna was at my side, throwing an arm around my shoulder, pulling me close. “Oh, Maddie Mad, I know, I know.”

“What are you doing here?” I blubbered.

“Detective Bishop swung by The Vine and said you needed me.”

For some silly reason, that just made me cry harder.

SEVEN

I have this to say about psychotic breakdowns. They cleanse the heart, purge the soul,
blah blah blah
, but they also leave you empty. I felt like a hole had opened up inside me, too big to ever fill.

Not that I didn’t intend to try.

I’d woken with a craving for a stack of Patty’s pancakes dripped in hot banana sauce.

The breakfast hour was long gone. The sun sat high in a pale blue sky and my weather app promised record temperatures for this time of year, but I had a chill wrapped around my bones that wasn’t letting go. So I pulled on jeans, my snuggly cable sweater and a pair of sneakers.

Noticing a missed call and a bunch of text messages from Jenna, I called to thank her for taking care of me yesterday.

“It’s what we do for each other, Maddie Mad,” she said softly. “You okay?”

“I will be,” I assured her and I meant it.

I’d sobbed through most of yesterday. Judging by my sodden pillow, I’d sobbed while I’d slept. It was all very well to cry my heart out over all the good times I’d lost, but it was the bad times I had to live through now. Joseph McMurphy didn’t deserve any more of my tears.

“I’m on my way to Patty’s for pancakes,” I told Jenna, then talked her out of meeting me there. “I kept you away from The Vine most of yesterday. I’m done crying, I promise.”

“You may want to sneak down the backstairs to avoid Mr H,” she said with a little laugh. “He was in a foul mood when he got home last night.”

“Because of the search warrant?”

“He said he felt violated.”

“Didn’t we all,” I sighed.

I grabbed a pair of over-sized Jacki-O sunglasses on my way out to hide my bloodshot eyes and puffy skin. If Hollow House had backstairs, I didn’t know about them, so I took the main stairway one slow, stiff-limbed step at a time. Apparently my calf muscles had suffered some kind of seizure during the night. Whoever said exercise was good for you clearly hadn’t met my body yet.

Burns was slumped behind the reception desk, chin bobbing on his chest, but he peeped open one eye when I neared the bottom. “Feeling better, Ms Storm?”

Not knowing what Jenna had told him, I popped on my sunglasses and kept it vague. “Very much, thank you, Burns. Where is Mr Hollow?”

“Taking tea on the terrace.”

I headed on through the lounge to the French doors that opened onto the terrace, walking like a person with a stick shoved up their…you know.

The outside furniture was woven cane, deep-seated armchairs and low box tables. There were four separate arrangements spread along the terrace, only one of which was currently occupied by Mr Hollow.

Given the excellent condition of the cane, I surmised Burns brought them all out in the morning and packed them all up at night. Why he’d bother was anyone’s guess. Unless we actually had bookings for today.

A thought I voiced aloud after greeting Mr Hollow.

“Not that I’m aware of,” he grumbled. “Damned slow month.”

Damned slow year, I thought, but kept that to myself.

I didn’t sit, went to stand behind the chair across from him instead. “How are you doing, Mr Hollow? I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“The bastards had a search warrant, Maddox.” He shook his head, his mouth pressed to the lip of his teacup, his gaze going out over the lake. “Nothing you could have done about it. This whole business with Ms Daggon is vile. If I’d known she’d get herself murdered, I’d never have invited her into my home.”

I knew it was terrible of me, of both of us, but I couldn’t suppress a tiny smile.

Mr Hollow turned his grim-faced scowl on me. “Did that detective say anything to you? About what might have happened, that is?”

“Not really.” I could have left it there, but didn’t he deserve to know? This was his house, after all. “There’s a possibility, I think, of poison.”

“Sweet Mary, not rat poison, was it?”

“I honestly wouldn’t know.” I shrugged. “Is rat poison worse than any other?”

“Maybe not for poor Ms Daggon,” he said, his voice lowered to a miserable rasp.

A knot tightened between my shoulder blades. “Please tell me you don’t keep a box of rat poison in the pantry.”

“I’m not a simpleton.” He sipped on his tea.

A sigh of relief escaped me.

“I store it in the locker at the foot of my bed,” he continued.

I coughed and spluttered, “Whatever for?”

“The rats,” he said. “That’s when the rats come out, in the middle of the night.”

This conversation had just gone from bad to worse. “We have rats?”

“Not since I started using the poison.”

“No more poison.” I planted my palms on the back of the chair and leaned in. “If the rats come out again, we get the exterminators in. Are we in agreement?”