Tangled Up In You

Chapter 7

Maddie tossed her overnight bag on her bed and unzipped it. She had a slight headache, and she wasn’t sure if it was due to her lack of sleep, drinking too much with Adele, or listening to her friend’s stories about her fractured love life.

After she’d had lunch at Café Olé, she and Adele had gone back to her house in Boise to catch up. Adele always had really funny stories about her love life-although she sometimes didn’t mean for them to be quite so entertaining-and like a good friend, Maddie had listened and poured the wine. It had been a long time since Maddie had been able to reciprocate with funny and entertaining stories of her own, so mostly she’d just listened and offered occasional advice.

Before leaving Boise, she’d invited Adele to spend the following weekend with her. Adele agreed to come and, knowing her friend, Maddie was sure she’d have several more dating horror stories to share.

Maddie took her dirty clothes from the bag and tossed them into her hamper. It was just after noon and she was starving. She ate a chicken breast and some celery with cream cheese while she checked and answered her e-mails. She checked her answering machine, but there was only one message, and that was from a carpet cleaner. No word from Sheriff Potter.

Later, she planned to find Mick and tell him who she was and why she was in town. It was the right thing to do, and she wanted him to hear it from her first. She figured she could find him at one of his two bars, and she hoped he was working at Mort’s tonight. She really wasn’t looking forward to walking into Hennessy’s, although she would have to at some point. She’d never been inside the bar where her mother had died. To her, Hennessy’s wasn’t just another old crime scene. One she had to visit for her book. She would have to go to note the changes and observe the place. And while she certainly wasn’t afraid, she was apprehensive.

As she rinsed her plate in the sink and put it in the dishwasher, she wondered exactly how angry Mick was likely to get. Until her friends had mentioned it, she hadn’t thought of packing her Taser when she told him. While he seemed perfectly nonviolent, he had shot Hellfire missiles from helicopters. And of course his mother had been a nut job, and while Maddie liked to think she had a special psycho radar, honed after years of meeting with them while they’d been chained to a table, it never hurt to err on the side of caution and a really good pepper spray.

The doorbell rang, and this time she wasn’t surprised to see Mick standing on her porch. Just like last time, he held a business card between two fingers, but there was no mistaking that the card was hers.

He stared at her from behind the blue lenses of his sunglasses, and his lips were set in a flat line. He wasn’t wearing a happy face, but he didn’t look too angry. She probably wouldn’t have to hose him with the pepper spray. Not that she even had it on her.

Maddie lowered her gaze to the card. “Where did you get that?”

“Jewel Finley.”

Crap. She really hadn’t meant for him to find out that way, but she wasn’t surprised. “When?”

“Last night at Travis’s T-ball game.”

“I’m sorry you heard about it like that.” Maddie didn’t invite him inside, but he didn’t wait for an invitation.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked as he brushed past her, six feet two, one hundred and ninety pounds, of determined man. Trying to stop him would have been as futile as trying to stop a tank.

Maddie closed the door and followed. “You didn’t want to know anything about me. Remember?”

“That’s a bunch of bullshit.” Light from outside flowed in through the large windows, over the back of the sofa and coffee table and across the hardwood floor. Mick stopped within the spill of light and took off his sunglasses. Maddie had been wrong about his anger. It burned like blue fire in his eyes. “I didn’t want to know about your old boyfriends, your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, or who you sat next to in the second grade.” He held up the card. “This is different, and don’t pretend that it’s not.”

She pushed her hair behind her ears. He had a right to be angry. “That first night at Mort’s, I went there to introduce myself and to tell you who I was and why I was in town. But the bar was busy and it wasn’t a good time. When I saw you at the hardware store and on the Fourth, Travis was with you and I didn’t think it an appropriate time then either.”

“And when I was here alone?” He frowned and stuck his glasses on top of his head.

“I tried to tell you that day.”

“Is that so?” He slid the card in the pocket of his black Mort’s Bar polo shirt. “Before or after you stuck your tongue down my throat?”

Maddie gasped. Yeah, he had a right to be angry, but not to rewrite history. “You kissed me!”

“An appropriate time,” he said as if she hadn’t protested, “might have been before you glued yourself to my chest.”

“Glued? You pulled me in to your chest.” Her gaze narrowed, but she wouldn’t allow herself to get angry. “I told you that you didn’t know me.”

“And instead of you telling me the important shit like you’re in town to write a book about my parents, you thought I would be more interested in knowing that you’re ‘kind of sexually abstinent.’” He rested his weight on one foot and tilted his head to one side as he looked down at her. “You weren’t planing to tell me.”

“Don’t be absurd.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “This is a small town and I knew you’d find out.”

“And until I did, were you planning to fuck me for information?”

Don’t get mad, she told herself. If you get mad, you might get out the Taser. “There are two problems with your theory.” She held up a hand and raised one finger. “That I need you to give me information. I don’t.” She raised a second finger. “And that I was planning to fuck you. I wasn’t.”

He took a step toward her and smiled. Not one of his nice, charming smiles either. “If I’d had more time, you would have been flat on your back.”

“You’re dreaming.”

“And you’re lying. To me and to yourself.”

“I never lie to myself.” She looked into his eyes, not in the least intimidated by his size or anger. “And I never lied to you.”

His gaze narrowed. “You purposely hid the truth, which is the same damn thing.”

“Oh, that’s rich. A morality lesson from you. Tell me, Mick, do all the women you sleep with know about each other?”

“I don’t lie to women.”

“No, you just bring mousetraps thinking that will get you into their pants.”

“That isn’t the reason I brought you the trap.”

“Now who’s lying?” She pointed toward the door. “It’s time for you to leave.”

He didn’t budge. “You can’t do this, Maddie. You can’t write about my family.”

“Yes, I can, and I’m going to.” She didn’t wait for him but walked to the door and opened it.

“Why? I’ve read all about you,” he said as he moved toward her, his boot heels an angry thud across the hardwood. “You write about serial killers. My mother wasn’t a serial killer. She was a housewife who’d had enough of a cheating husband. She flipped out and killed him and herself. There’s no big villain here. No sick bastards like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. What happened to my mother and father is hardly the sensational sort of stuff that people want to read about.”

“I think I’m a little more qualified to determine that than you.”

He stopped on the threshold and turned to face her. “My mother was just a sad woman who snapped one night and left her children orphaned, victims of her mental illness.”

“All this talk of you and your family, you seem to forget there was another innocent victim.”

“That little waitress was hardly innocent.”

Actually, she’d been talking about herself. “So you’re like everyone else in this town and think Alice Jones got what she deserved.”

“No one got what they deserved, but she was screwing around with a married man.”

Now. Now she was truly good and angry. “So your mother was perfectly justified in shooting her in the face.”

His head jerked back as if she’d slapped him. Obviously he hadn’t seen the photos or read the report.

“And your father may have been a cheater, but did he deserve to be shot three times and bleed to death on a barroom floor while your mother watched?”

His voice rose for the first time. “You’re full of shit. She wouldn’t have watched my father die.”

If he hadn’t told her she was full of shit, she would have spared him, no matter her own anger. “Her bloody footprints were all over the bar. And she didn’t get up and walk around after she shot herself.”

His mouth clamped shut.

“Alice Jones had a child too. Did she deserve to lose her mother? Did she deserve to be made an orphan?” Maddie placed her hand in the center of his chest and pushed. “So don’t tell me that your mother was just some sad housewife who’d been pushed too far. She had other options. Lots of other options that didn’t involve murder.” He took a step back out onto her porch. “And don’t come here and think you can tell me what to do. I really don’t give a damn if you like it or not. I’m going to write the book.” She tried to shut the door, but his arm shot out and kept it open.

“You do that.” With his free hand, he took his sunglasses from the top of his head and slid them in place, covering the anger in his blue eyes. “But you stay away from me,” he said and dropped his hand from the door. “And you stay the hell away from my family.”

Maddie slammed the door and pushed her hair from her face. Damn. That hadn’t gone well. He’d been angry. She’d gotten angry. Heck, she was still angry.

She heard him start his truck, and out of habit, she locked her front door. She didn’t need him or his family in order to write the book, but realistically, it’d be nice if she had their cooperation. Especially since she needed to get into the lives of Loch and Rose.

“Well, that sucked,” she said and walked into the living room. She would have to write the book without their input. Her mother’s photograph sat on the coffee table. She’d been so young and filled with so many dreams. Maddie picked up the photo and touched the glass above her mother’s lips. It had been sitting on the table the whole time while Mick had been there, and he hadn’t noticed.

She’d planned to tell him that she was more than just an author interested in writing a book. That his mother had left her an orphan too. Now he wanted nothing to do with her, and who she really was just didn’t seem to matter anymore.

Mick pulled his truck to a stop in front of the Shore View Diner where Meg worked five days a week waiting tables and pulling in tips. He was still so angry he felt like hitting something or someone. Like picking Maddie Dupree up by her shoulders and shaking her until she agreed to pack up and go away. Like forgetting she’d ever heard of the Hennessys and their messed-up lives. But she’d made it really clear she wasn’t going anywhere, and now he had to tell Meg before she heard it from someone else.

He turned off the truck and leaned his head back. His mother had watched his father die? He hadn’t known that. Wished he didn’t know it now. How could he possibly reconcile the woman who’d killed two people with the mother who’d made him peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches, cut the crusts off, and sliced the bread at an angle just as he’d liked it? The loving mother who bathed him and washed his hair and tucked him in at night, with the woman who’d left footprints in her husband’s blood all over his bar? How could that even be the same woman?

He rubbed his face with his hands and slid his fingers beneath his sunglasses to rub his eyes. He was so damn tired. After Jewel had given him Maddie’s business card, he’d gone to his office in Hennessy’s and locked himself in. He’d searched the Internet for information about Maddie, and there’d been a lot. She’d published five books, and he’d discovered head shots of her and photos of her at book signings. There was no mistaking that the Maddie Dupree whom he’d been planning to get to know better was the woman who wrote about psychotic killers. The Madeline Dupree who was in town to write about the night his mother had killed his father. He opened the door to his truck and stepped outside. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop her.

From as far back as he could remember, the Shore View Diner had smelled the same. Like grease and eggs and tobacco. The diner was one of the last places in America where a person could have a cup of coffee and a Camel or Lucky Strike, depending on his or her poison. As a result, it was always filled with smokers. Mick had tried to talk Meg into working someplace where she wasn’t likely to get lung cancer from secondhand smoke, but she insisted that the tips were too good to work anyplace else.

It was around two in the afternoon and the diner was half empty when Mick entered. Meg stood behind the front counter, filling Lloyd Brunner’s cup of coffee and laughing at something he’d said. Her black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a bright pink blouse beneath a white apron. She looked up and waved at him.

“Hey, there. Are you hungry?” she asked.

“No.” He took a seat at the counter and pushed his Revos to the top of his head. “I was hoping you could get off early.”

“Why?” Her smile fell and she set the coffee carafe on the counter. “Has something happened? Is it Travis?”

“Travis is fine. I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

She looked into his eyes as if she could read his mind. “I’ll be right back,” she said and walked into the kitchen. When she returned, she had her purse.

Mick rose and followed her outside. As soon as the door to the diner swung shut behind them, she asked, “What is it?”

“There’s a woman in town. She’s a true crime writer.”

Meg squinted against the bright sun as they walked across the gravel lot to his truck. “What’s her name?”

“Madeline Dupree.”

Her jaw dropped. “Madeline Dupree? She wrote In Her Place, the story of Patrick Wayne Dobbs. The serial killer who killed women and then wore their clothes under his business suit. That book scared me so much I couldn’t sleep for a week.” Meg shook her head. “What is she doing in Truly?”

He slid his sunglasses down to cover his eyes. “Apparently, she’s going to write about what happened with Mom and Dad.”

Meg stopped. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Why?”

“God, I don’t know.” He raised a hand, then dropped it to his side. “If she writes about serial killers, I don’t know what she finds so damn interesting about Mom and Dad.”

Meg folded her arms across the front of her apron and they continued to walk. “What does she know about what happened?”

“I don’t know, Meg.” They stopped by his truck and he leaned a hip into the front fender. “She knows Mom shot that waitress in the head.” His sister didn’t bat an eye. “Did you know that?”

Meg shrugged and bit her thumbnail. “Yeah. I heard the sheriff tell Grandma Loraine.”

He looked into his sister’s eyes and wondered what else she knew that he didn’t. He wondered if she knew that their mother hadn’t killed herself right away. He supposed it didn’t matter. She was taking the news better than he’d expected. “Are you going to be okay?”

She nodded. “Is there anything we can do to stop her?”

“I doubt it.”

She leaned back into the driver’s-side door and sighed. “Maybe you can go talk to her.”

“I did. She’s going to write it, and she doesn’t care what we have to say about it.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Everyone is going to start talking about it again.”

“Yep.”

“She’ll say bad stuff about Mom.”

“Probably about all three of them. But what can she say? The only people who know what really happened that night are dead.”

Meg glanced away.

“Do you know something that happened that night?”

She dropped her hand. “Just that Mom had been pushed too far and she killed Dad and that waitress.”

He wasn’t so sure he believed her, but what difference did it make twenty-nine years later? Meg hadn’t been there. She’d been home with him when the sheriff had arrived at their house that night.

He looked up at the clear blue sky. “I’d forgotten that the waitress had a little girl.”

“Yeah, I can’t remember her name, though.” Meg returned her gaze to Mick. “Not that I care. Her mother was a whore.”

“That wasn’t the girl’s fault, Meg. She was left without a mother.”

“She was probably better off. Alice Jones was cheating with our father and didn’t care who knew. She flaunted their relationship in front of the whole town, so don’t expect me to feel sorry for some nameless, faceless orphan girl.”

Mick didn’t know if there’d been any flaunting, and if there had been, he figured their dad had to take the majority of the blame, since he’d been the married one.

“Are you going to be okay with this?”

“No, but what can I do about it?” She adjusted her purse on her shoulder. “I’ll survive, just like I did before.”

“I told her to stay away from you and Travis, so I don’t think she’ll be bothering you with questions.”

Meg raised a brow. “Is she going to be bothering you with questions?”

There was more than one way a woman could bother a man. And don’t come here and think you can tell me what to do. I really don’t give a damn if you like it or not. I’m going to write the book. She’d been mad and obstinate and sexy as hell. Her big brown eyes had gotten kind of squinted at the corners just before she’d slammed the door in his face. “No,” he answered. “She won’t be bothering me with questions.”

Meg waited until Mick’s truck pulled out of the parking lot before she let out a breath and raised her hands to the sides of her face. She pressed her fingers into her temples and closed her eyes against the pressure building in her head. Madeline Dupree was in town to write a book about her parents. There had to be something someone could do to stop her. A person shouldn’t be allowed to just…just ruin lives. There should be a law against snooping around and…digging into someone’s past.

Meg opened her eyes and stared down at her white Reeboks. It wouldn’t be long before everyone in town knew about it. Before they started talking and gossiping and looking at her as if she were liable to go off at any time. Even her brother sometimes looked at her as if she were crazy. Mick thought he was so good at forgetting the past, but there were some things even he’d never been able to forget. Tears clouded her vision and dropped on the gravel by the instep of her shoe. Mick also mistook emotion for mental illness. Not that she really blamed him. Growing up with their parents had been an emotional tug-of-war ending in their death.

A second truck pulled into the parking lot and Meg raised her gaze as Steve Castle opened the door of his Tacoma and got out. Steve was Mick’s buddy and manager of Hennessy’s. Meg didn’t know much about him, other than he’d flown helicopters in the army with Mick, and there’d been some sort of accident in which Steve had lost his right leg beneath the knee.

“Hey, there, Meg,” he called out, his deep voice booming across the lot as he moved toward her.

“Hey.” Meg hurriedly wiped beneath her eyes, then dropped her hands to her sides. Steve was a big guy and shaved his head completely bald. He was tall and broad-chested and so…so manly that Meg felt a little intimidated by his size.

“Having a rough day?”

She could feel her cheeks get hot as she looked up into his deep blue eyes. “Sorry. I know men don’t like to see women cry.”

“Tears don’t bother me. I’ve seen tough Marines cry like little girls.” He folded his arms across the dogs playing poker on the front of his T-shirt. “Now, what’s got you so upset, sweetheart?”

Meg usually didn’t share her feelings with people she didn’t know, but there was something about Steve. While his size intimidated her, he also made her feel safe at the same time. Or perhaps it was just because he’d called her “sweetheart,” but she opened her mouth and confided, “Mick was just here, and he told me that there’s a writer in town and she’s going to write about the night our mother killed our father.”

“Yeah. I heard about that.”

“Already? How did you find out?”

“The Finley boys were in Hennessy’s last night talking about it.”

She raised a hand and chewed on her thumbnail. “Then I think it’s safe to assume the whole town knows, and everybody is going to be talking about it and speculating.”

“Nothing to do about that.”

She dropped her hand to her side and shook her head. “I know.”

“But maybe you can talk to her.”

“Mick tried that. She’s going to write the book no matter what we think about it.” She looked down at her shoes. “Mick told her to stay away from me and Travis.”

“Why avoid her? Why don’t you tell her your side of things?”

She looked up into his eyes and the sunlight bouncing off his shiny head. “I don’t know if she’d care about my side.”

“Maybe, but you won’t know that unless you talk to the woman.” He unfolded his arms and rested one big hand on her shoulder. “If there is one thing I know, it’s that you have to confront something head-on. You can get through anything if you know what you’re facing.”

Which she was sure was true and very good advice, but she couldn’t think past the weight of his hand on her shoulder. The solid feel and the warmth of his touch spread to her stomach. She hadn’t felt warmth from a man since her ex-husband. The men in town talked to her and flirted with her, but they never seemed to want more than a coffee refill.

Steve slid his palm down her arm and grasped her hand. “I’ve wondered something since I moved to town.”

“What’s that?”

He tilted his head to one side and studied her. “Why you don’t have a boyfriend.”

“I think the men in this town are half afraid of me.”

His brows lowered over his eyes and then he burst out laughing. A deep booming laugh that lit his face.

“It’s not funny,” she said, but at that moment, surrounded by Steve Castle’s laughter, it was kind of funny. And standing so close, with her hand in his, was kind of…nice.