Forgotten Pieces

“Yeah,” she answered, walking out to meet him in the hall. His eyes were wide. Something had happened. “Was that the sheriff?”

“No, Detective Ansler. But we do have some new information.”

Again, Maggie searched his expression. It was troubled. The cold knot that had formed in her stomach earlier started to expand.

“And I’m guessing it’s not the answers to all of our questions.”

Matt shook his head.

“CSU reported in,” he started. “Your prints and Dwayne’s were found on the bat. A partial print was found on the inside of the screen door near the handle. And that’s it.”

Maggie felt her eyebrow rise.

“What do you mean that’s it?”

“I mean those are the only prints in the entire house.”

Her eyes widened.

“And that’s not normal.”

Matt shook his head. Again, he didn’t like what he was saying.

“No, that’s not normal for a lived-in residence,” he replied. “Unless Dwayne has a serious case of OCD, that house should have been covered in his prints at the very least. Which means one of three possibilities.”

Maggie held up her index finger, much like the sheriff had done earlier in the hospital.

“One, that Dwayne wiped down the entire place after he was beaten into unconsciousness.” Maggie held up another finger. “Two, I wiped the place down before I did my own unconscious dance.”

Matt held up his finger in lieu of her ticking off her third.

“Three, whoever attacked both of you wiped the place down, erasing any evidence linking him or her to the house. And to you and Dwayne.”

That cold in the pit of Maggie’s stomach was starting to unravel to the point of becoming flat. She had no sarcasm or joke to replace it. There was no denying she was caught in the middle of something.

And she needed to figure out what that something was fast.

Maggie gave the detective one decisive nod. He must have seen the intent in her eyes. Ever so slightly he tilted his head to the side. The human way to silently question something that was a mystery.

Under different circumstances, she would have liked to have been a mystery that the handsome Detective Matt Walker tried to solve, but now she was afraid the question mark she had been branded with was dangerous.

“Okay, then we only have one option.” She brushed past the man and headed for the living room. He followed her, his stare burrowing a hole in every step she took. He kept quiet as she grabbed her purse and dumped its contents on the floor next to the couch. “Let’s figure out what I did yesterday.”

His eyes didn’t leave hers for a moment. Then he nodded.

“I agree. I also want to call in CSU to dust for prints here. They’re still working on the partial, but considering how quickly you appear to have left yesterday, maybe if you did have company, we can at least find out who it was.”

“Good idea.”

Maggie was still trying to ignore how freaked out it made her feel to know someone or something had spooked her enough to run from her own home. Her eyes started to skirt over the various pieces of her life that had made up the inside of her purse when she realized Matt wasn’t moving.

Maggie looked up and met his eyes.

Trying to solve another mystery.

But not one that had to do with her.

“After I make this call you’re going to answer a few questions before we do anything else.” His voice was cold. She could almost swear she felt its chill from where she sat on the floor. He wasn’t going to let her off the hook this time. She’d run out of wiggle room.

“Sounds fair.”

Matt pulled out his phone but kept his eyes on her when he spoke again.

“And we’ll start with why you think my wife was murdered.”

Chapter Six (#u8fa25e4c-ec79-5818-8fd1-6c1d0da32fbf)

Erin Walker had been walking out of a three-story parking garage when the truck popped the curb and hit her. She was a tall woman and her height was the only reason she went over the top of the truck instead of under it. Though that stroke of luck wasn’t enough to save her. She was gone before she hit the ground.

Maggie had been working for the Kipsy City Chronicle at the time. She’d been gunning for the news editor position that was about to open up when she heard the accident over the police scanner. Wanting to get the scoop before another reporter who’d shown interest in the promotion did, Maggie had grabbed a notepad and pen and drove like a bat out of hell to get to the parking garage. The drive hadn’t been a long one. She arrived before any patrol officers, just after the EMTs.

That was when she saw Erin for the first time. From a distance she looked like she was sleeping. Like she’d decided, instead of going wherever it was she had started to go, that she’d lie down on the side of the street, wrapped up in her long blue coat and ready to fall asleep beneath the stars. Then the rest of the details had begun to filter in. Erin hadn’t been the only hapless victim. An older man who’d had the misfortune of being on the side of the road next to the opening of the parking garage had also been struck. He, however, was surrounded by EMTs. His name was Lowry Williams. He survived for two days before he succumbed to his injuries. According to everything she discovered, he was a good man.

And also the reason Maggie didn’t let go of what happened.

“Lowry Williams passed away before he was able to talk to anyone other than the emergency responders and hospital staff,” Maggie started. She really didn’t need to remind Matt about that. The detective might not have believed her back then or even now, but he’d done his due diligence and learned every angle of what had happened. Or so he thought. “Except that he did talk to someone. Me. Lowry didn’t have any family so I pretended to be a friend. I’m not proud of the lies I had to tell to convince a nurse to let me see him but it worked. He let me slip in to see him before he was wheeled out to surgery. It was the last time Lowry was conscious. Afterward the nurse realized I was a reporter and, to cover his hide, told me to leave. I imagine he never mentioned me to anyone else to, again, save his hide.”

Matt’s expression was blank.

“And what did Lowry say?” he asked, voice void of any notable emotion.

“He was in a lot of pain,” she reminded him. “He spoke in broken thoughts and I can’t even be sure my questions were understood by him. But there was something he said twice that stuck with me after I asked what happened. ‘She waved at him.’”

Matt’s body shifted. He dropped his hands to the top of his belt.

“She waved at him,” he repeated. “Who waved?”

“He was in so much pain but I assumed he meant Erin.” Maggie wanted to look away from the detective, to give him privacy with his thoughts at the mention of his late wife, but she had to press on. She had to make her point now that he was willing to listen to her. Even if it was only because it might be dangerous not to know. “It was such an odd statement that I couldn’t let it go. I went back to the parking garage and tried to track down the security footage from either the parking garage camera or the one across the street. But the parking garage tape had already been taken by the police and the one across the street had a ticket in for repairs.” Maggie cut her gaze downward for an instant. The detective might not like her next admission. “So I decided to take a closer look into Ken Morrison to try to find a connection.” Matt’s body tensed enough that Maggie knew just saying the name of the driver who had killed Erin was dangerous. Even if Ken was no longer living.