Maggie and the Empty Noose Read online

  "I don't know if I'll like it there," Maggie admitted. She glanced down at Jasper sitting at her side. "Maybe Jasper will enjoy the great outdoors. But I'm not much of a country girl myself."

  Nora laughed. "Neither am I, anymore." Then she shook off the wistful feeling and was back to her usual no-nonsense self. "I'll leave the Bug parked at the far end of the parking lot. When you're ready to come back, day or night, you can just call for the jet to pick you up, and then drive back to town from here. You'll be home before the paparazzi even figure out you've returned."

  She held out the car key and Maggie took it.

  "But how will you get home from here?" Maggie asked.

  Nora smiled and nodded toward the blue Mercedes that had just pulled up next to the orange Beetle. "Quinn's picking me up." Then she added gruffly, "Hey, Maggie, take care of my boy."

  Maggie gave her a quick hug. "I will. I promise." She headed up the steps into the waiting jet, Jasper at her heel.

  The dog whined a little when the plane took off. It was clearly not a sensation he was comfortable with, so Maggie patted him, and then let him climb up on the plush leather seat next to her.

  He stuck out one bony leg so he could rest his paw on her lap. She ran her fingers through the feathers along the back of his leg, and he sighed, then closed his eyes.

  She pulled out her bead project, a left-twisting peyote stitch rope bracelet, and started to work on it. The gold beads would form a curving spine against the deep blue seed beads, once she got past the first few rows that tended to curl up into a big knot. It was a simple, repetitive pattern, a perfect project to work on while she thought about things.

  And she had things to think about. She was still determined to figure out who had murdered Olivia. Reese may be off the hook, but she was determined to see the real criminal brought to justice.

  But there were too many suspects, and at the same time, too few. If almost everyone had been home asleep with no witnesses to confirm their alibi, that meant anyone in town, and particularly anyone in the 43 houses along The Row, could be a suspect. But no one in particular stood out.

  Olivia had been on the beach, which meant that, most likely, her killer had come that way, too. Technically, the beach in front of The Row was public land, and anyone could walk there. The tabloid hack who had come up the beach steps to bother the Zimmer children yesterday was proof of that. But it wouldn't be easy to get there. Casablanca was in the very center of the string of beach houses, and she guessed it would be about a half-mile from the nearest public access point to get to that spot. It wasn't that easy to walk on sand, especially at night, in thick fog.

  So it was safe to say Olivia's meeting with her killer wasn't a random encounter with some stranger who was just wandering around on the beach. It had to be planned. That didn't narrow it down too much, since the killer had gone to a lot of effort to stage the scene. A murderer that determined would not be deterred by a strenuous beach walk. So she was back to thinking it could be anyone who was in Carita at the time.

  Olivia's rental house was at the far end of The Row, a good half-mile from Casablanca. Shane had noticed nothing amiss when he walked over from Olivia's house to Casablanca that morning, so there couldn't have been any obvious signs of a struggle on the beach, though that kind of proof would be hard to find in the constantly changing sands. And the fog had still been thick.

  She would have to leave that kind of forensic sifting of evidence to the professionals. But her instincts told her Olivia had gone walking on the beach deliberately around midnight on a fog-bound night, and that implied she had gone to meet someone.

  So that narrowed the suspect list from anyone in Carita, to anyone in Carita who knew Olivia. That didn't help much.

  But it did most likely eliminate all the people she normally worked with or hung out with—she could meet openly with all of them and no one would notice. This had to be a secret meeting of some kind.

  Could it be an affair? There were a lot of married men on the row. But Olivia wouldn't have had any moral qualms about messing around with a married man, and probably wouldn't care if her son knew it. She was that kind of person. And a romantic encounter on a damp, foggy beach seemed pretty uncomfortable. Why didn't she just meet the man at her own house? Shane didn't even know if his mother had a boyfriend, so she was probably used to hiding any relationships from him. No. This was something secret.

  And that made her think of the drug angle. Now that was something Olivia would be ashamed for Shane to see. Where had Olivia gotten her oxy? Maggie had asked Lauren about it this afternoon, and Lauren told her the prescription bottle was a fake. The drugs must have been purchased illegally. And that meant there was a drug dealer out there who knew Olivia.

  Maggie went through the people on The Row in her mind. That was useless. Nora couldn't be the killer. She cared too much for Reese. Maggie's mind briefly went to Nora's husband Quinn. The younger man had a source of income from somewhere. He'd never said where his money came from. Could it be drugs?

  She shook that off. It was impossible to believe Nora and Quinn could have anything to do with this. She would have to look elsewhere.

  She needed to find out how many people on The Row had conflicts with Olivia. A lot, probably. Olivia was a greedy, selfish person. But it had to be something more than a minor conflict. The man sitting opposite her had been a target, too. Or perhaps he had been the main target, and Olivia had been only a means to an end? The end game might have been ruining Reese, not killing Olivia.

  The crime of destroying Reese's sanity felt, in some way, almost worse than the murder. Inflicting mental torture on a man who had struggled so hard to get himself clean was evil.

  She watched out the window as the jet purred its way up into the sky. Seeing the city lights from above used to give her a thrill, but now she only thought of them as a danger to the man in the seat across from her, who was fidgeting like a junkie.

  The cities meant the press hounding him. It meant the drugs available any time he asked for them. It meant the possibility of Reese losing his still-tenuous hold on sanity and sobriety.

  Which was why she was taking him home. To the little country town he'd come from. Where his family waited. With Shane. A place so far away he might find enough peace of mind to start over.

  She said that aloud to him, trying to convince him it was possible.

  He shook his head, the ever-present cigarette resting in his fingers. Unlit this time, since he couldn't smoke on the plane. But still there, cupped in his hand, for comfort. "I don't know how to start over," he said.

  "You just do," she said.

  "I had 4234 days of sobriety. Every single morning, I told myself how many days. I don't have that anymore."

  "Sure you do," she said. "Tell yourself you have one day."

  "One day," he whispered. He looked out the window at the retreating city lights. "I have one day."

  They landed in the little airport that was as small as Nora had described it.

  The Carita executive airport had been surrounded by artichoke fields, with neat rows of green thistles to the horizon.

  The Deep Creek airport was surrounded by the dusty high desert. The lights of the airport runway showed dry pastures all around, with the looming shapes of cattle punctuating the short-cropped grassland.

  They got out of the plane and their luggage was unloaded.

  "I don't suppose we can rent a car here," Maggie asked, looking around at the empty pavement.

  "Nope," Reese said. He nodded toward a blue pickup truck heading their way. It came to a stop right next to them, and a middle-aged woman got out. He went to her, and they stood in the truck's headlights, with her brushing his hair with her fingers and drinking him in with her eyes.

  He put an arm around her and turned to Maggie. "This is Maggie McJasper, Mom. Maggie, this is my mom, Mary Tibbets."

  Maggie put out her hand to shake but Reese's mom enveloped her in a big hug. "Welcome, Maggie."

/>   He had his mother's eyes. Those pure blue eyes that betrayed a whip-smart intelligence at work beneath all the prettiness. She saw way more than a former Miss Cattle Queen would be expected to. What was in the water in Deep Creek? Nora had also been Deep Creek's Miss Cattle Queen back in her day, and she, too, was an iron-willed, ambitious force of nature wrapped in a pretty shell. Maybe Maggie needed to reconsider her stance against eating beef.

  Maggie introduced Jasper, and Mary Tibbets, just like Reese and Shane, immediately knelt down on the pavement and gave the dog loads of hugs and kisses. Reese must have gotten his love of dogs from her, too. After making friends with Jasper, she chatted about how their elderly dog had died last year, and how she was hoping to convince Reese's dad to get a new pet soon.

  "Where's Shane?" Reese interrupted, and Maggie heard the longing in his voice.

  His mom pointed up at the sky. "Frank took him up. He goes flying most nights, and he thought it would help Shane deal with…," she stopped there. "With things," she finished.

  Maggie had forgotten all about Reese's older brother Frank. She'd never met him, since she only met Reese after his band had broken up and he became an actor. Frank Tibbets had been the drummer for the band Deep Creek. He had been part of the foursome of small town boys who'd burst on the scene as teenagers, topping the charts before descending into rock star decadence and drugs.

  Frank had left LA after the band broke up, and the brothers' lives had gone in completely different directions. She wondered if they were still close.

  She didn't have long to wonder.

  They soon heard the rumble of another plane coming in. While they were chatting, the hired jet had taxied off to the side to refuel, and soon Frank's plane landed.

  It was a bright yellow crop duster he'd bought with his rock star earnings, his mom explained. She said it was a two-seater, so he could use it to train new pilots. Apparently that was how he spent his days now: dusting crops in the high desert valley, and teaching others how to fly. It was a long way from passing out in hotel rooms, high on heroin.

  As soon as the plane came to a stop the door opened and Shane flew into his father's arms.

  They hugged for a long time, and Reese whispered to Shane, words the others couldn't hear. But Shane's shoulders shook as he cried into his father's chest. Reese held him, and patted his back.

  Then the pilot of the plane got out.

  She knew what Frank looked like. His picture had been on the Deep Creek posters, too. He had been tall and good-looking, too, as he had stood in the back of the pictures, holding his drumsticks, and being almost, but not quite, as handsome and as famous and as successful as his younger brother.

  Finally Shane let go of his dad. His face was all red, but he looked like the burden he was carrying had been lightened a bit. Reese's T-shirt was all wet on the front, and Shane brushed it with his hand, joking that he'd ruined it. Reese smiled at his son.

  Then Frank came up. "Hello," he said, putting out his hand to shake.

  Reese took it, and they stood there, shaking hands like strangers and acting just a bit wary, like distant acquaintances who weren't quite sure they could trust each other.

  "This is Maggie," Reese said, and Frank nodded politely at her, then looked away.

  Mrs. Tibbets was smiling, though. "I have my boys home now," she said, and the catch in her voice showed that beneath her strong exterior she, too, was feeling the strain. "Let's go home."

  After a bit more awkward conversation, Frank excused himself to take care of his plane before heading back to his own house in town.

  So the rest of them piled into the pickup. They hooked Jasper's leash to a ring in the bed of the pickup truck, and he rode home with the luggage. Shane insisted on joining him back there, and so Maggie ended up sitting awkwardly in the middle of the truck's bench seat between Reese and his mother.

  No one said much on the way. The sky through the windshield was astonishing, velvet-dark and filled with more stars than Maggie had ever seen. The Milky Way itself was visible, an arc of thousands of glittering stars streaking across the sky overhead. She felt like she had landed on another world.

  Like someone had said, a million miles away from home.

  Chapter Thirteen

  They pulled in under a sign that read BEANPOLE DAIRY. Mary Tibbets explained that Reese's father had been nicknamed Beanpole in school, because he'd been so tall and skinny, so when he took over the failing Tibbets farm he'd relaunched it as Beanpole Dairy, an organic farm producing fresh milk and cheese for the region.

  White fences marched along in the darkness, and what she first took to be huge boulders in the field were sleeping cattle, she was told.

  They stopped at the house, which was big, but simple in design, a farmhouse with a wraparound porch and white-painted siding.

  Off to the side was a big red barn. "It looks like a Hallmark movie," Maggie said, and Reese's mom laughed.

  "I guess it does," she said.

  "Sorry," Maggie said. "I'm a city girl. I've never been to a real farm."

  They got out. Reese lifted Jasper out of the back of the truck, and Shane jumped down and immediately went to his father.

  "Is it okay if I walk the dog around for a while?" Maggie asked. "He needs to do his business before going inside."

  "Of course," Reese's mom said. "Just don't go into the field; Ferdinand is loose."

  "A bull?" she asked, and his mom nodded. "He's a nice bull, we bottle-raised him. But you don't want to startle him in the dark."

  "No," Maggie said, staring at those lurking shapes behind the fence. "I wouldn't want to startle him."

  The others headed inside, but Maggie took Jasper's leash and let him lead her on an exploration of the grounds.

  After sniffing all around, Jasper led her to the barn. A side door was open, and light spilled out. They went inside.

  A man with ruddy skin and gray in his hair, but still looking like the tall, skinny beanpole he had been in his youth, was sweeping the cement aisle between stalls. There were cows in the stalls with the tiniest baby calves. She hadn't realized just how big a cow was. They were huge.

  "Is it okay if we come in?" Maggie asked, trying to hold Jasper back.

  "Sure," the man said. "The clean room for milking is behind that far door, but out here dogs are totally welcome." Then he did that thing that was apparently a Tibbets trait: he got down on his knees on the cement and hugged Jasper and made a big fuss over him.

  Jasper licked him, bumped him with his hip, and smacked him in the face with his bushy tail. And the man loved every bit of it.

  He stood up again, a big smile on his face. "What a great dog." He held out his hand and she shook it. "John Tibbets," he said. "You must be Maggie."

  "Reese told you I was coming, too?"

  "Shane told us about you," he said. "Stanley doesn't…." The smile disappeared, and he paused for a moment. "Stanley doesn't tell us much."

  "I'm sorry," she said. "He's been having a really hard time." She was referring to the last couple of days, but the way his dad worded it made her wonder. Was Reese estranged from his parents, too? "He's a good man," Maggie said.

  A faint smile touched his lips. "I know that. But I'm glad to hear you say it. I'm glad he has friends out there who feel that way about him."

  "He does," she said firmly. "He's a good guy. You can be proud of him."

  "I'm proud of both my sons. Always have been. I make no apologies. They're survivors. but I wish...."

  "What?"

  He shook his head. "We never should have gotten that piano."

  She patted Jasper. "I understand," she said. "I sometimes wish he could have been an astronaut, like he dreamed about when he was a kid."

  "You know about that?" he asked. "You're close to him."

  She thought of her own father's question about whether she loved Reese. "We're friends," she said. "I care about him a lot. It's hard for him to open up to people. But he's been doing well," she added, feeli
ng the need to reassure his dad. "I mean personally. He's been pretty happy and healthy. Until this happened. And of course he's doing well in his career, too."

  "I know how successful he is," he said. He gestured to the immaculate barn, the fat, healthy cattle sleeping away in the stalls, the big house outside, and the acres of lush field beyond. "He paid for all this, you know."

  "I didn't know."

  "Yup. I didn't want to retire when the boys became rich. They told me I could just go lie on a beach somewhere." He shook his head. "Not for me. I wanted to do something. So he bought the whole thing for us. No mortgage, no debt. But—" He began sweeping again, gathering stray wisps of hay into a neat pile. "I'd rather they were poor farmers, like I was, than go through what they did."

  Then he shook it off, throwing his head back proudly in the same way she'd seen Reese do a hundred times. "There's no going back to the past. I'm just glad they both made it through that phony world and came back."

  "You talk about it like it's a foreign country."

  "It is. Compared to here. But they made it back home. And for that I'm glad." He gave her an assessing glance. "And I'm glad they found women worthy of them."

  "Oh," she said quickly. "We're not—I mean—we're just friends—we're not—"

  He laughed, the same laugh that his son had made famous in a dozen movies. "Sure, Maggie. Sure."

  He looked down at Jasper. "He's a herding dog. Would he like to meet the cattle?"

  "I have no idea," she said. "I haven't had him long. But I doubt he's met too many cows."

  "Let's find out."

  It didn't take long to find out that Jasper had definitely not been a working dog in his past. He took one look at the thousand-pound cow, and turned tail and ran to the far end of the leash, where he sat, whining.

  "No?" she asked him. "What would Lassie say?"