Morning Glory Circle (11 page)

“Just Caroline Eldridge’s usual bull crap,” Hannah said. “She does this to Maggie every time. Sets her up as if she’s really Maggie’s friend, and then pulls the rug out from under her. She’s a user.”

Scott was very familiar with Caroline’s lack of dependability and follow through, and it irked him to see her take advantage of Maggie, who had a soft heart beneath a very prickly hide. When Maggie returned to the counter area, he cornered her.

“Let me buy you a pizza for dinner,” he said, and then held his hands up, “and no funny business. I promise.”

Maggie looked at him, rejection on the tip of her tongue, and then surprised herself and everyone else in the room by saying, “Sure, why not?”

She waved goodbye to her astonished audience and left the bakery with Scott.

“Come and see what all we got done,” he said.

They walked down Pine Mountain Road to Marigold Avenue, where they took a right and walked toward the festival grounds. A big banner stretched over the entrance to the festival grounds proclaimed, “Welcome to Rose Hill Winter Festival.” All the vending caravans were in place, with the generators and electrical cords behind them, and the bandstand was being set up in a central location. A group of volunteer firefighters were building the log teepee that would be surrounded by chain link fencing (for safety) and set on fire Friday night. A group of contestants were already working on their entries. “Snow Structure” could be loosely interpreted as any building made of snow, and one contestant seemed to be making a temple or castle of some sort.

“Who’s guarding this tonight?” Maggie asked Scott.

Scott pointed to his deputy, Skip, a lanky twenty-something local boy who was currently attending community college part-time in pursuit of a criminal justice degree, just as Scott had done. Deputies Frank and Skip had conveyed a small prefab shed to a point just to the side of the entrance, and had equipped it with chairs, a table, and a heater connected to a generator outside.

“Skip is officially in charge, but the Whistle Pig Lodge is providing volunteers,” he told her. “It’s really just an excuse for them to stay up all night drinking and playing cards.”

After they fully surveyed the festival site, they walked up Peony Street and crossed Rose Hill Avenue to PJ’s Pizza, where they placed their order. They then cut through the alley behind the restaurant and turned up the connecting alley that separated Sunflower Street and Pine Mountain Road, to Scott’s back door.

Duke was on the back porch, and meowed to be let in.

“I still can’t believe you’re Duke’s new daddy,” Maggie told Scott.

Duke originally belonged to Owen, the vet before Drew. Owen had passed away the previous summer, and when his wife sold the practice to Drew, he also got custody of the large cat. Duke refused to stay inside to the point of viciously attacking anyone who tried to make him. Duke also hadn’t forgiven Drew for mistaking him for a feline blood donor, which he most decidedly was not. When Drew moved into his new apartment, landlord Mamie forbade him to keep a pet, so Scott offered to take Duke. Duke really belonged only to Duke, had several ports in town he called home, and could often be found performing his rodent control service in many of the backyards and alleyways of Rose Hill. When Scott made his rounds late at night, often on foot, Duke kept him company some of the time, trotting along beside him, and looking both ways before he crossed the street.

Scott let Duke and Maggie in the backdoor into the kitchen.

“I’m afraid if I install a flap in the door he’ll bring me a rat for breakfast in bed some morning.”

“He used to bring Drew dead animals all the time. I think Duke sees them more as edible gifts.”

“You need to talk about this Caroline business,” he said to her, taking off his coat as she slid off her own. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“I’m afraid I’ll just sound whiny or jealous if I do.”

“Not to me,” Scott said, and got a couple bottles of beer out of the fridge.

Maggie sat at the kitchen table and picked at the chipped formica at the edge.

“I’m mad at myself for expecting too much, and for being such a bossy boots,” she said. “But I’m also feeling taken advantage of.”

She told Scott about Caroline taking so much merchandise without paying for it, and ditching her for Drew.

“It’s the same way when she calls. She never asks how I’m doing,” Maggie complained. “It’s always all about her and what she’s doing, plus whatever favor it is she wants me to do for her.”

The doorbell rang. Scott opened the front door to accept the pizza from the delivery person on duty, and tipped him three dollars on a nine-dollar pizza.

“My mother would call that throwing away good money,” Maggie said, about the amount of the tip.

“I call that guaranteeing my pizza is hot every time it’s delivered,” Scott said, and sat down.

“You know,” Maggie said, as she opened the box and selected a slice, “this experience with Caroline has made me really thankful for the good friends I do have; the ones who call when they say they will, follow through on their commitments, and appreciate everything I do for them.”

Scott nodded, his mouth full of lava hot pizza.

“Do I take you for granted?” she asked him, causing him to choke a little.

Scott swallowed the mouthful of pizza he had almost inhaled.

“What did you just say?” he choked.

Maggie sat her slice of pizza down and wiped her hands and mouth with a paper napkin.

“Do you feel like I take our friendship for granted or take advantage of you? You know, like when I show up at 2:00 a.m. to borrow the Explorer, or call and yell at you to come and get Gwyneth Eldridge out of my store just before I fling her out into traffic.”

“Well, you did refill my gas tank and air the stink out before you brought the Explorer back, and as far as Gwyneth is concerned, I’d help you toss that witch out on her bony butt anytime.”

“But what do I ever do for you except tell you ‘no,’ ‘go way,’ and ‘leave me alone?’ You continually offer your hand to me and I usually bite it. Why do you put up with it?”

Scott got up and took their empty beer bottles to the sink, rinsed them out, and placed them in the recycling bin before he got them each another one. Maggie recognized the evidence of his mother’s strict housekeeping training. Scott sat back down and handed her a beer.

“Who rescued me from the Roadhouse when I had my last migraine?” he asked her.

Scott had a whopper of a headache in the middle of investigating Theo Eldridge’s murder a few weeks previously. He called Maggie, and although she was on a date with Drew, she came running to get him, and nursed him through a long, painful night.

“Who helped me investigate Theo’s death when no one else cared who killed him, and were all just thrilled he was gone?”

He didn’t bring up the fact that Maggie also interfered in that investigation, and he almost arrested her for tampering with evidence.

“The reason I keep running after you,” he said, “even though you’re hard-headed and stubborn as all get out, is because I know if you ever commit to being with me, I’ll never be bored, I’ll never be lonely, and I’ll always have my best friend watching my back.”

Maggie felt tears well up in her eyes, and she said, “But I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for that, and it’s not fair to make you wait.”

“You let me worry about me, and you work on getting yourself straightened out about what you want. I have faith in you and me, so I’ll be here when you’re ready. I’m willing to wait as long as it takes.”

He smiled at her sweetly and selected another piece of pizza. Maggie smiled back, tenderly, at the man whom she believed really, truly, and finally understood her.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll work on that.”

Duke jumped up on the table, grabbed a piece of pizza, and ran down the hall with it before either of them had time to react. He left a greasy trail of toppings and sauce as he went.

“Clearly my son needs a mother,” Scott said, “so don’t take too long.”

Ava locked the front door of the inn and allowed herself to exhale. All the guests were tucked in and the girls had gone home. They were a little silly together, but were also sweet and friendly, and they would have to do. She needed them to work the next four days so that she could participate in the festival. Her two housekeeping helpers and Delia Fitzpatrick were also going to work, so she felt she had everything covered.

Back in the kitchen, she kicked off her shoes, put on her fuzzy slippers, and sat down at the kitchen island to go over her lists. There was a tap at the back door and when she turned around, Patrick was peeking in.

“No,” she mouthed to him, and firmly shook her head.

He held up the bakery boxes he was carrying, the delivery from his family bakery she had neglected to pick up.

She unlocked the door and let him in, saying, “I’m sorry, Patrick. I completely forgot about that. Thank you for bringing them.”

Patrick sat the boxes down on the counter, said, “Alright then, see you later,” and left the way he came in.

Ava was surprised. She had expected him to at least stay and talk a little bit. It was stupid, she knew, to be disappointed when someone does exactly what you’ve been telling him you want him to do, or in this case, not do. Now that he was complying, how could she complain?

But her feelings were hurt, and she felt rejected in a way she had never been with him. It stung. Something outside caught her eye just then, so she opened the back door, and saw Patrick out in the backyard. She went out onto the porch, and could see he was walking around in the knee-deep snow. Once she reached the steps, in the glow from the streetlight in the alley, through the softly falling snow, she could see what he had actually done. With his feet, shuffling through the deep snow, he had drawn a huge, yard-sized heart, and wrote “AVA” in the middle of it.

After Patrick finished he stood at the end of the walk, looking back at her, but his face was in shadow. She blew him a kiss, not sure if he could see her in the gloom of the porch. He turned and walked on down the alley, and Ava stood on the porch, watching the snow quickly fill the indentations until she could no longer make out her name. The heart shape remained, though, past the point when she got so cold she had to go back in.

Unbeknownst to Ava, someone else had witnessed Patrick’s adolescent declaration of affection. Someone who had been spending a lot of time in the cold, dark shadows of Rose Hill lately, waiting for opportunities to present themselves. This person waited until every light in the back of the bed and breakfast was out, signifying everyone had retired to their beds, before creeping up to the back porch and using the sharp blade of a pocket knife to flip up the flimsy hook and eye latch of the screen door. The locked door on the other side was no obstacle to someone with a key, and that key had just been inserted into the lock when a voice in the alley startled and distracted the intruder. As the town’s police chief walked down the alley behind the bed and breakfast, talking to someone who could not be seen, the lurker slipped off the porch into the shadows of the giant evergreens, away from the house. An opportunity missed, perhaps, but one that would come again soon enough.

Scott parted ways with Duke at the end of the alley, telling him, “Be careful.”

It had become his habit to talk to the cat as if it understood everything that was said, but Scott rationalized that as long as he didn’t imagine the cat responded in any intelligent way there was no harm in it. Scott knew he should be catching up on his sleep while he could, but he was so bothered by Margie’s disappearance and the stories that were coming to light as he asked around town about her, that he decided to take a walk around town just to see if he couldn’t catch her on one of her moonlit forays.

There was no doubt in Scott’s mind that Margie had been threatening to blackmail Tony, and he wondered who else she had threatened. Having her access cut off to the money she’d embezzled, she must have been getting desperate for cash. All those years of prying into people’s mail and sneaking around town at night spying may have provided her with a lot of fodder for blackmail schemes. Scott wondered if she realized just how dangerous a game it was she was playing.

Scott walked down Peony Street past the mobile home park to the entrance to the festival grounds, and checked in with the Whistle Pig Lodge members who were “guarding” the site. Inside the small prefab shed they were deep into their poker game, with money on the table and beers at every elbow. They didn’t even try to hide what they were doing when Scott entered the shack, just greeted him warmly and offered to deal him in. The cloud of cigar and cigarette smoke hung in a haze down to the tops of their heads, and Scott declined graciously as he backed out into the fresh air outside.

Scott continued on down Peony Street to Lotus Avenue, and stood for a long time looking at Margie’s house before continuing down to the end of the block and making a left on Pine Mountain Road. Cal Fischer lived on the corner there, just across the street from the old train depot, and he was standing out on his front porch while his English setter peed in the deep snow of his front yard.

“Hey Scott,” Cal called out, and Scott walked up to his front porch. The dog danced around his feet until Scott gave him a pat on the head.