Maggie and the Empty Noose Page 10

  "Lauren doesn't know anything either. There's nothing to know. Not until after we execute the search warrant on Cassidy's apartment."

  She grinned but didn't say anything.

  "You just tricked me into telling you that, didn't you?"

  "Maybe," she said.

  "I need to get off the phone before you get me to confess to the murder."

  She laughed and they hung up.

  Jasper sat there with his tongue sticking out and a disgusted expression on his face.

  "Well, what did you expect it to taste like? Ice cream?"

  That afternoon, Maggie sat on the porch with Reese's mom and Jenny Tibbets for a while, while Reese slept away his withdrawal in the little bedroom upstairs.

  Jenny was a dark-haired woman nearing forty, with a curvy figure, a rosy complexion from spending a lot of time outdoors, and dark eyes framed by long natural lashes.

  She was Frank's wife, and Maggie seemed to remember she'd been Reese's first girlfriend before he ran off and became a star at the age of fifteen.

  She asked Jenny about it, and she laughed. "Yup. We went to the junior high prom together." She smiled fondly at the memory. "He wore a white suit with a baby blue bow tie."

  "Oh, dear," Maggie said.

  "He was a total nerd. But he was so handsome nobody noticed."

  She was knitting a woolen cap in an elaborate intarsia pattern of white snowflakes on a red ground.

  Reese's mom had an ereader in her lap, but she was just sitting, rocking in the chair and looking out at the fields.

  Maggie worked on her bead project. She'd been spending a lot of time on it, sitting and thinking while her fingers busily worked on the repetitive pattern.

  Shane came out of the house and sat on one of the wicker chairs facing them. "What's that going to be?" he asked Maggie.

  "A bracelet," she said.

  "For an elephant?" he asked.

  She held it up. She hadn't stopped to measure, and the spiraling rope was about as long as her forearm. "It is getting a bit long, isn't it?" she said. "Maybe it's going to be a necklace." She picked up another set of the blue beads to do another row. If she stopped now, she'd have nothing to work on, so "definitely a necklace," she said.

  "Where's Jasper?" Shane asked.

  "He's right—"

  She looked down at her side, where he'd been the last time she'd glanced that way. "Jasper?" she called out.

  The others on the porch hadn't seen him leave, either. He never left her side. She put down her project and started frantically searching. "He can't have run away."

  She called his name again.

  Shane went into the house and called him. Then he came back out again.

  "Grandpa showed me mountain lion tracks yesterday," Shane said softly.

  Maggie felt a lurch in her stomach. "No. He's got to be right here." She shouted Jasper's name again.

  She ran down the porch steps and began sprinting toward the field, calling Jasper's name. Shane followed, soon outpacing her on his long legs.

  She skidded to a stop on the gravel driveway when she heard a familiar sound.

  Jasper's bark, which had always been so overwhelmingly, annoyingly, ridiculously loud, sounded natural out here in the wide-open spaces.

  He barked again, and she followed the sound out to the big field next to the barn.

  Shane ran ahead of her, and climbed up on the white rail fence to perch on top. "He's okay!" Shane shouted. "He's playing!"

  The boy jumped down on the other side of the fence just as Maggie got there.

  Maggie climbed up onto the fence so she could see what was happening.

  Jasper met the boy in the field, and happily bumped and pawed at him, and barked again.

  And he wasn't alone. There were about a dozen of the calves with him, and Jasper kept dodging between them, bumping them sideways, and barking his fool head off.

  "You figured out you're a herding dog!" she called to him, and he barked happily at her. Then he cut a calf out of the herd and led it over to the fence where she was. Shane followed them.

  "Is this the one you kissed?" she asked, and Shane looked at her funny. "Not you," she explained. "Jasper. He kissed a calf this morning, and now I think he's in love."

  Jasper barked again, and the calf bent its head toward him to plant some drool on his fur.

  "Time to stop playing and come out of there," she said to the dog. "Jasper, Come."

  Jasper poked his head under the fence where there was a low spot in the ground. He wiggled under and came up on her side, all covered in dirt.

  Shane climbed over the more conventional way. The boy was laughing, and that was good to see. "You've got a girlfriend," he teased the dog, and Jasper feinted and ran around him, all excited.

  When they got back to the porch, Shane went into the house with his grandmother to have some lemonade.

  Jenny was still sitting on the porch, knitting, and Frank had showed up while Maggie had been off chasing the dog.

  "Dad wants me to help him move the pivot in the back field," he explained to them.

  Maggie had no idea what a pivot was, so she just gave him a friendly nod when she sat back down in her wicker chair and picked up her beadwork project. Jasper flopped down by her chair and went to sleep.

  Frank waved goodbye and headed out across the field to meet his father.

  "It's a kind of sprinkler," Jenny said as they watched him go.

  "Oh," Maggie said. "Thanks. I suppose I seem like a dumb city slicker."

  She smiled. "Nah." She looked fondly after Frank. "We just grew up in the country, that's all."

  "You've known the Tibbets boys a long time, haven't you?" Maggie asked.

  Jenny gave her a wise look. "You know about the song?"

  Maggie nodded. "I guessed." Deep Creek's first hit, Girl, You Rock Me Right, was about a girl named Jenny, and the boys in the band never said who she was. Just a girl from back in their hometown. Maggie had realized as soon as she met Jenny Tibbets that she must be the girl from the song, all grown up now.

  "I think I went out with every boy in the band once," she said with a wistful smile. "We were all so innocent. I didn't even kiss any of them. Reese and I were maybe thirteen, fourteen at the time."

  "You went out with all four of them?" Maggie asked.

  "Yeah." She switched her needles around for the next part of the pattern she was working on. "But I dated Stanley the most." She laughed. "I think we went out three whole times."

  She glanced sideways at Maggie. "It wasn't like I was so irresistible. It was just that it's a really small town. Stanley wasn't the love of my life or anything. I thought he was the cutest and he thought I was the cutest, and so we dated. But I was the cutest in my class of thirty kids, and he was the cutest in the world."

  "You're pretty cute." She was. Homecoming queen riding on a hay wagon in the parade kind of cute. Now a bit rounder and with laugh lines around her eyes, but still, one of the prettiest girls in town. "He might have been better off if he'd stayed in Deep Creek and married you," Maggie mused.

  "No way," Jenny said. "He would've been a miserable husband. He wanted something else. He didn't want to stay here and marry me and live on the farm. He wanted to be bigger than that, to do something important."

  "An astronaut," Maggie said.

  "Yeah. That was his first dream. An astronaut. Or a millionaire, or—"

  "—a rock star, or a movie star," Maggie finished.

  "It would have been an unhappy marriage."

  "But with Frank?" Maggie asked.

  "Yeah. Frank was the guy. I didn't notice him much back then—nobody did. Who could even see him with Stanley glowing the way he does, taking up all the oxygen in the room? But in the end, Frank came back home. He figured out what he really wanted."

  "You."

  "And this life." She took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air, then let it out. Her hair ruffled in the breeze, and they sat for a bit, the creak of the chair
s and the soft rustling of some leaves across the gravel driveway the only sounds.

  "There's something to be said for this life," Maggie said softly.

  "I wouldn't trade it for all the success in the world," Jenny said. "I guess that makes me dumb."

  "Smart," Maggie said. "It makes you smart."

  Maggie noticed that Jenny was still watching Frank's back as he walked away from them across the green field. He was way off now, practically a dot in the distance.

  "He's having a hard time," she said quietly. "He was real upset when he heard Olivia died. He knew her, too. Back then. And I think he was scared to death of what his brother might have done. He didn't sleep at all after he got the news."

  "How well did he know Olivia?" Maggie asked. "I don't mean to pry, but I'm just trying to figure out why someone did this, and any detail about her past life might help."

  "You can ask him. I don't care about his past. But I wouldn't be surprised if they had an affair, if that's what you're asking. They were all so wasted I don't think he knows if he slept with her or not. You know what I mean?"

  "I know."

  "Everybody talks about Stanley," she said softly. "But he wasn't the only one who suffered."

  Maggie coiled up the spiral rope and put it in the carrying case. "Frank was an addict, too, wasn't he?"

  Jenny nodded. "That poison they put in their bodies—" She shook her head. "I'll never understand the desire for fame and money. The groupies. The drugs. It all seems so pointless to me."

  "It is pointless," Maggie said.

  "You're in show business, too, though?"

  Maggie shook her head. "Not me. I used to be married to a movie producer. But the drugs and fame were never part of my life." She snapped the lid shut on her project case. "I guess I didn't really think about what happened to Frank in all this."

  "Nobody did. He was always in the background. Playing drums. He didn't do the interviews. He didn't stand in front. He didn't get all the attention like Stanley did."

  "He wasn't the star."

  "No," Jenny said. "Not the star. Thank God. But it hurt him just the same. Frank almost died too. Everyone talked about Stanley—about Reese—about how he tried to kill himself after the car crash. It was in all the papers. But Frank was almost destroyed by it. He still has nightmares."

  "Nightmares? That's terrible."

  She nodded. "He wakes up sometimes and tears off his clothes."

  "His clothes? I don't understand."

  "From eleven years ago. He remembers waking up that last morning, in his apartment. He was hung over, and he had blood all over him."

  Maggie remembered the accident scene photo. The white upholstery with the red all over it, and the palm tree covering the body in the back seat like a shroud.

  "He didn't have any idea what had happened until he turned on the TV," Jenny whispered. "When he found out, he got in his car and he drove back home here. Left it all behind. He's been stone-cold sober since then. Never been back to LA. It's like he shut the door on that life."

  "He left everything behind?"

  "He came home with just the clothes on his back. The same clothes with the blood from the accident still on them." She looked out at the lush field, where Frank had walked out so far he was no longer visible from the porch. "So now he flies up in the sky and tries to forget," she said. "He goes as high as he can and he never looks down. I think he'd stay up there forever if he could."

  Chapter Sixteen

  That afternoon, Maggie drove the Tibbets's pickup to town, bringing it lurching to a stop under a shade tree on Main Street.

  "The shocks need replacing," Reese said. "Or you need driving lessons."

  "You wanna drive it?" she asked, but he shook his head. Of course he didn't. He never drove with passengers in the car.

  "Leave the windows down," Reese said. "The car will be cooler."

  "Is it okay to do that?" she asked doubtfully.

  "Why not?" he said.

  "What about car thieves?"

  Reese raised an eyebrow at her. "Car thieves? In Deep Creek?"

  She glanced around. There were three cars on the street: two blue pickup trucks, and a convertible that was apparently built out of rust and baling twine.

  "No car thieves?" she asked.

  "No. No strangers here. If you stole a car, everybody would know before you hit the stoplight on the way out of town."

  Reese smiled at the sight of the rusted convertible. "Old Mr. Sampson pulls that thing out of the barn every summer and tools around town in it. He's been doing it since I was a kid. It must be fifty years old and looks like it's still running."

  He wandered over to check it out, and Maggie followed.

  Reese took her hand and they stepped up onto the boardwalk that ran all along the storefronts. They walked slowly, their shoes rapping on the wooden sidewalk as they passed an auto parts store and a saddle maker, until they came to the grocery.

  "Mom wanted me to pick up hamburger buns, too," Reese said, opening the screen door to the Deep Creek Market and ushering her inside.

  He came into the store after her.

  Everything froze. There were about ten people in the market, and they became statues when he stepped inside.

  The room was dead-silent, with the sound of the screen door slamming shut behind them loud as a gunshot in the stillness.

  Maggie was reminded of how people reacted back in Hollywood, when Reese Stevens walked into a party and everyone tried to keep their cool, while at the same time jockeying to get close enough to meet him.

  Now he walked into the Deep Creek Market and the same thing happened.

  But there was a different edge to this. Surprisingly, given her stereotypes about simple country folk versus sophisticated city people, the reaction here seemed more cynical, somehow. She tried to put her finger on the weird undercurrent in the store.

  Sure, the man who had just entered the store was tall, and good looking, and had on gold mirrored Ray-Bans that emphasized his blond hair and sun-bronzed skin. And that would be enough to make people stop and notice a stranger.

  And he wasn't a stranger. Not anywhere. He was Reese Stevens, and everyone had seen him in a movie, on TV, or long ago on MTV playing with his band.

  But it wasn't even that.

  Here he shouldn't have been a stranger at all. He should be Stanley Tibbets. John and Mary Tibbets's son. Frank Tibbets's brother. From the Beanpole Dairy at the edge of town. Brother-in-law of Jenny Conners Tibbets, the pretty local girl who'd taught kindergarten for a few years before marrying Frank.

  He should have been the hometown boy made good. The man who had paid off the family farm. Who had made his brother rich enough to buy an expensive cropdusting plane with cash. Who had given his parents enough money to buy the new roof for the elementary school last year.

  Maggie expected a different reaction than the one he got.

  People looked him over, assessing him, trying to decide whether he was someone they wanted to say hello to, or not. Everyone deciding that no, they didn't want to say hello.

  So he said hi to the closest one, an older man in a battered cowboy hat with a six pack of Coors in his hand.

  The man tipped his hat and mumbled a hello back.

  But even that didn't break the ice.

  Reese didn't seem to notice. He just nodded to the left. "The hamburger buns are there."

  So she went and got two packages, then came back and stood next to him as they waited in the heavy stillness of the room for their turn to check out.

  She couldn't figure it.

  Reese Stevens could walk into a market in Shanghai or Paris and people would stare at the movie star in their midst. They'd giggle, maybe. Or come rushing up and grin and shake his hand and ask for an autograph. Or even shyly turn away, a bit intimidated by the real-life sight of someone they thought of as almost a fictional character.

  But this was different, these pitying, wary looks, and the alienating silence. And l
ike any puzzle placed before Maggie, she felt the need to solve it.

  When Reese got to the front of the line, he took the hamburger buns from her and set them on the counter, then asked the clerk for two packs of cigarettes.

  "Oh," Maggie said. "If there's pie, should I get some ice cream?"

  Reese shook his head. "Mom's gonna teach Shane how to make homemade ice cream this afternoon."

  The clerk took in a breath suddenly.

  Reese didn't look up, but Maggie did, and saw the clerk, a sweet-looking older woman, had tears in her eyes.

  But when Maggie's shock showed on her face, the clerk looked away. "That'll be $28.73, Mr. Stevens," she said formally.

  Reese put two twenties on the counter, as if he didn't want to force her to take it from his hand.

  She made change and returned it the same way, setting it on the counter.

  He scooped it up and tossed it into a charity bucket next to the cash register.

  "Thank you, Mrs. Conners," he said, and they left.

  He put the bag of groceries in the bed of the pickup.

  "Do you know what all that was about?" she asked.

  "Sure," he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. He hunched over, lighting up a cigarette.

  "I've seen people react to your fame, Reese. But this was—I don't know—"

  "Hostility," he said blandly.

  "Is it? Is that really what it is?"

  "Of course."

  "But why? You're one of them."

  He shook his head. "I'm not one of them."

  "Is that why? That you dared to leave? Do they hate you for that? I mean, Nora made it sound like Deep Creek was a paradise."

  He stared down the dusty street. "It is."

  "Then why are they so angry with you?"

  "Come on," he said. He opened the pickup's driver-side door. It came open with a shriek of hinges. He handed her up into the cab.

  Reese went around and got in the passenger seat. She started the truck, which came to life with a rumble like a prop-engined plane.

  She headed the truck down the street.

  "At the next cross street," he said quietly, "take a left."

  "Where are we going?" she asked.