At the Stroke of Madness

CHAPTER 62

Maggie knew she couldn’t wait for Watermeier. Wherever he was he wasn’t responding to any of her phone calls and her cell phone was on the verge of completely dying.

Jennifer Carpenter had to have been killed within the last twelve hours, which meant that the killer was becoming more and more paranoid. If he still had Joan Begley and was keeping her alive, Maggie knew it wouldn’t be for much longer.

She drove slowly on Whippoorwill Drive, in the opposite direction of the rock quarry. Luc sat quietly beside her. She hoped he hadn’t blanked out on her again. At least not until he showed her where Simon Shelby lived.

“Turn up here. In that direction,” he said, pointing with an animated wave of his whole arm. “You can’t see the buildings from the road. The mailbox is one of those big galvanized steel ones that sits on a barrel. You know, one of those big wooden barrels.”

Maggie glanced at him. He had to be kidding. A barrel? But Luc didn’t see the irony.

At the courthouse, the clerk who helped Maggie look up the estate sale records of Steve Earlman told Maggie that Simon Shelby was a very nice young man. “Poor fellow,” she told Maggie without any prompting, “he lost his father when he was just a boy. Loved his daddy. I remember going to the butcher shop and seeing him there on Saturdays, helping Ralph. He had a cute nickname for Simon. I can’t remember what it was, though.

“Simon really was crushed, just crushed when Ralph died. I don’t think Sophie knew what to do with the boy. I think that’s when he started getting sick a lot. We all felt so bad for Sophie. All that worry probably sent her to an early grave. But he’s such a nice young man now.” The woman rambled on and Maggie, who usually hated small talk, simply nodded and listened, noting all the coincidences.

But it was more than coincidence when the clerk said, “He’s working his way through college now, the University of New Haven.”

“Really?” Maggie had said, still more interested in the individual auction items.

“Something to do with bones, of all things,” the clerk told her, and Maggie almost dropped the book of records. “I suppose that makes sense in some way, huh? I mean being the son of a butcher.” The woman had laughed. “Frankly, I think it’s a little morbid myself. But he must enjoy that sort of stuff. He works part-time at Marley and Marley Funeral Home, too. Such a hard worker.”

“That nickname his father used?” Maggie asked the woman, although by this time she had felt certain she already knew the answer. “Was it Sonny?”

“Yes, that’s it. How did you know? Ralph called him Sonny, Sonny Boy.”

Now Maggie saw the mailbox on the wooden barrel before Luc’s arm started waving at it, but she drove past the driveway.

“No, it’s right there,” he said. “You missed it.”

“I’m going to park the car over here.” And she pulled into what looked like a dirt path to a field. “I want you to stay here.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious, Luc. You stay here.” As an afterthought, she pulled out her cell phone and handed it to him. “If I don’t come back in fifteen minutes, call 911.”

He took the phone and stared at it, but seemed satisfied that she was letting him do something to help. Which made Maggie feel more confident that he would stay put, never mind that the cell phone’s battery was dead.