A Deal to Die For (4 page)

“Whoa. Where’s the fire?” he asked.

“Sorry,” she said. She stepped back. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. He smiled at her, and she liked the way his blue eyes crinkled
in the corners. “You looked like you were going to roundhouse me. Sort of reminded
me of the days you’d get all miffy on the playground.”

“I did not get miffy,” she protested. She turned back around and resumed her walk
to Dr. Franklin’s. “I was plain old mad at you, and if I clobbered you, you had it
coming.”

“How do you figure?” he asked. He fell into step beside her. His low voice sounded
serious, but Maggie could hear the laughter in it as well.

“You were so mean to me,” she said. “You followed me around and made fun of my red
hair and you got everyone else to do it, too. My only regret is that I didn’t hit
you harder.”

“Maggie, Maggie, Maggie,” he said her name and shook his head. “Don’t you know that
boys only tease girls when they have a crush on them?”

She opened her mouth to respond but found her throat was too tight for words. She
cleared it and tried again.

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “You did not have a crush on me. You just really enjoyed
torturing me.”

She turned down the gravel drive that led to the historic estate that had been remodeled
into an assisted-care facility. To her surprise, Sam stayed with her.

“I did not enjoy it,” he argued. “I just couldn’t help myself when you were around,
but it was hard to tell you that after you broke my nose.”

“I’m sorry about that…mostly,” she said. “But other than to pick on me, you never
spoke to me. You never even noticed me.”

“Oh, I noticed you,” he said.

Maggie felt her heart pound hard in her chest. She glanced at him out of the corner
of her eye. Why was he telling her this now? A few months ago, they had agreed to
try to be friends. Was he just messing with her?

“Morning, Ms. Maggie,” a deep voice called.

Maggie looked up and saw Ray Roberson, the facility’s bus driver, sitting in his bus
with his feet on the dashboard, reading his newspaper.

Ray was an older black man who had been an elementary school bus driver until he retired
to live at Spring Gardens. Since he bought his bus when he retired to have it retire
with him, the management let him live at Spring Gardens rent free in exchange for
being the on-call bus driver.

“Hi, Ray,” she called back. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” he said, studying the two of them over the top of the sports section.
“Not as fine as young Sheriff Collins with the pretty date, but fine nonetheless.”

“Good to see you, Ray,” Sam greeted the older man with a grin.

“You, too,” Ray responded.

They exchanged a look that Maggie found suspect.

She whipped her head from one to the other. “This is not a date.”

“You sure about that?” Sam asked. He grinned at her. “I could take you—”

“Don’t you have some place to be?” she interrupted.

She was feeling slightly panicked at the thought of a date with Sam Collins, and she
wasn’t sure why, except for the fact that if there was unfinished business between
them, she didn’t think she was ready to deal with it just yet.

“Nope, it’s my day off,” he said. He gestured to his jeans and Ravens sweatshirt,
which Maggie noticed emphasized his former-football-player shoulders a little bit
too well.

“What about you?” he asked. “I thought you’d be at the flea market today; at least
that’s what Pete at the coffee shop said.”

“Pete?” she asked.

“Yeah, funny thing, for a new resident here, Pete seems to know an awful lot about
you, like how you like your coffee and how you just bought a shop down the street
from his. In fact, when I was in there earlier, he was telling Tyler Fawkes that he
was thinking of asking you out.”

Ray gave a low whistle and raised his paper as if he could imagine Maggie’s response
to that and that it wouldn’t be good.

Maggie blinked at Sam. Now it was all coming into focus. She scowled and stomped toward
Dr. Franklin’s office on the side of the building.

“What?” Sam asked, following her.

“So, that’s why you followed me,” she said. “That’s why you’re teasing me about boys
having crushes on girls. You think it’s funny that Pete likes me. You’re just here
to tease me
again
. You haven’t changed a bit, Sam Collins, not one little bit.”

“That’s not exactly accurate,” he said. “I did follow you because of what Pete said,
but—”

“Save it,” she said. She put up her hand in the universal sign for
Stop right there, buster
. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Maggie, you’ve got it all wrong,” he said.

“Do I?” she asked. “I know you, Sam Collins. I’ve been the butt of your jokes before.”

“Well, you got one part of that right. You do know me better than most,” he said.
His look was significant, and Maggie felt her face grow hot.

Wasn’t that just like a man? To bring up their brief—
very
brief—time spent in a relationship to see if he could knock her off-kilter. Well,
it wasn’t going to work.

“Let me tell you something,” she said. “It’s none of your business if Pete asks me
out or not, and it’s certainly none of your business if I say yes.”

“Are you going to say yes?” he asked.

“As if I would tell you,” she said. “What did you not understand about my personal
life being none of your business?”

Sam looked like he wanted to argue, but she was too mad to give him the chance. She
turned her back on him and yanked open the door to the office. She took three steps
into the room and stumbled to a halt, causing Sam to slam into her back.

He grabbed her before she fell forward, which was good, because lying on the reception
room floor was Vera Madison, and kneeling over her with a syringe in his hand was
Dr. John Franklin.

“Doc, what’s wrong? Is Vera all right?” Maggie asked. She broke out of Sam’s grasp
and hurried forward, dropping to her knees beside him. Sam crouched down on his other
side.

Dr. Franklin looked pale. His white hair was standing up in tufts on his head, and
his hands were shaking.

“No, she isn’t,” he said. “She’s dead.”

Sam and Maggie exchanged a look over his head. Sam gave her a curt nod and checked
Vera’s vital signs for himself. Maggie watched silently until Sam leaned back and
shook his head.

“What do you have there, Doc?” Sam asked.

Maggie looked down and noticed the syringe that Doc still had in his hands.

“I don’t know,” Dr. Franklin said. “What I mean is, I don’t know what was in it. I
found it on the floor beside her.”

“Wait here,” Sam said. He got up and disappeared into
one of the examination rooms. He came back with a plastic bag. “Let’s put it in here
until we know what it is.”

Sam bagged the syringe and then did a quick visual inspection of Vera. Maggie did
the same. None of her clothes seemed out of place. There were no signs of a struggle
or anything to indicate that Vera had fought off an attacker.

“I don’t like this,” Sam muttered.

Maggie gave him a sharp look. He was in detective mode. She could tell. He scanned
the room as if looking for a bad guy lurking behind the minimally padded waiting room
chairs.

Maggie rested her hand on Doc’s shoulder while Sam checked the office and the waiting
rooms. Maggie’s late husband had been a deputy, so she was familiar with police protocol.
She knew Sam was doing the customary suspicious-activity check. She glanced around
the room, too, but everything was exactly as it always was.

Sam came back and gave Doc a searching look. “I’m going to call the medical examiner’s
office. They’re going to need to send someone out. I’ll be right back.”

Dr. Franklin nodded, but Maggie got the feeling he hadn’t heard him.

She glanced down at Vera. Her face was slack in death, accentuating her high cheekbones
and the aristocratic tip of her nose. Her scrupulously maintained auburn hair was
styled as she’d always worn it, in a top knot on her head. She wore a cream-colored
turtleneck and a men’s pale blue dress shirt over a pair of Sigrid Olsen charcoal
slacks, a perfect outfit for working at the local flea market. She always looked very
Kate Hepburn.

Dr. Franklin cradled her cold hand in his and stared at her face. Maggie wondered
if it was because they were of
an age. As far as she knew, Vera Madison had never been a patient of Dr. Franklin’s,
nor did they know one another socially.

“We should cover her up,” Maggie said.

“No, I’ll sit with her,” Dr. Franklin said. “I don’t want her to be alone.”

There was a tender quality to his voice that surprised Maggie. It was different from
his usual, concerned physician’s voice. It was softer and more fragile somehow. She
studied his face. His pale blue eyes were watery, as if he were holding back tears.
Vera Madison’s death was cutting Dr. Franklin deeper than most.

“All right,” Maggie said. She shifted to sit beside him. “I didn’t know that you and
Vera knew each other.”

“It was a long time ago,” Dr. Franklin said. “St. Stanley is a small town after all.”

Maggie nodded. She saw Sam pacing at the far end of the room while he talked on the
phone. He looked so much like he had when they were in high school together, with
the same single-minded focus and coiled energy. Ironically, the only person who knew
what Sam had once meant to her was Doc. Even Ginger, who was Maggie’s oldest and dearest
friend, didn’t know. St. Stanley was indeed a small town, and Maggie couldn’t help
wondering if Doc and Vera had had the kind of relationship she and Sam had once shared.

Sam ended his call and came over to sit beside them.

“Can you tell me what happened, Doc?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t generally work on Saturdays,” Dr. Franklin said. “In fact,
I was on my way to the country club for a round of golf when I got an urgent message
from my answering service.”

“What did they say?” Sam asked.

“Just that there was an emergency with one of my
patients, and that the patient would meet me at my office,” he said. “Normally, I
would have referred them to nine-one-one, but I have a few patients that I’ve been
monitoring closely here in Spring Gardens, and I thought it was one of them. Besides,
I was only two minutes away.”

He paused as if remembering the events, and Sam asked, “What happened next?”

“When I got here, no one was here,” Doc said. “I thought maybe they were feeling better,
so I called my answering service to see if they’d gotten a follow-up call. I was on
the phone in my office when I heard someone out in the waiting room. I hung up and
ran out front, and that’s when I found Vera.”

He glanced up and looked at Maggie. His eyes were cloudy with confusion, and Maggie
felt a nervous flutter in her belly. Dr. Franklin was well into his sixties, as his
white hair and lined face attested, but he was the smartest person she’d ever known,
with a hawk-like gaze that missed nothing—until now.

“Why was she here?” he asked. “She’s not my patient. She hasn’t been for years. Why
was she here today?”

Maggie shrugged. “Bianca said they were setting up for the flea market and Vera started
to feel ill and came to see you.”

“But she would never…” Dr. Franklin’s voice trailed off.

“Let me help you up, Doc,” Maggie said.

“No, no, I’ll stay with her,” he said. He didn’t let go of Vera’s hand.

Sam was watching Doc with a concerned expression, as if he, too, knew this wasn’t
Dr. Franklin’s typical behavior. “I’m having Deputy Wilson bring Bianca over.”

Dr. Franklin looked up. Maggie felt her chest get tight. In all of the years she had
known Dr. Franklin, which were
many, she had never seen him look as vulnerable as he did right now. It made her heart
hurt.

“I’m going to cover Vera now,” Sam said.

Dr. Franklin shook his head in protest.

“We have to, Doc,” Sam said. “For her daughter, Bianca—to lessen the shock.”

Maggie met Sam’s gaze. The fine lines around his eyes were creased with concern. She
gently took Vera’s cold hand out of Doc’s and pulled him to his feet.

“Come on over here and sit,” she said. “I’m going to have Alice come and get you.
You’ve had quite a shock yourself, and I don’t think you should drive.”

While Sam covered Vera with a plain white sheet, Dr. Franklin sat in one of the unforgiving
waiting room chairs and stared down at his hands, held clasped in his lap.

Maggie hurried over to the water cooler in the corner. She took one of the small paper
cups and filled it with water. She didn’t suppose Doc really needed water, but she
needed to do something for him, ridiculous as it seemed.

She hurried back to his side and handed him the cup. He glanced up without really
seeing her and gave her a grateful nod. More than anything, the devastation on Doc’s
face scared Maggie. She didn’t understand what was happening or how to help, and it
left her feeling useless and powerless.