Maggy's Child (44 page)

“He had a cellular phone. He always preferred to use it,” Maggy said, remembering. At the time, she hadn’t thought a thing about it. Lyle’s constant use of the cellular phone, where every call was billed by the minute, had seemed perfectly normal. So had a lot of things. She had been blind.

“Yeah, well, they’re checking records on that now.”

“Are you in trouble, too?” Maggy asked.

Link shrugged. “They haven’t chewed my ass out yet, if that’s what you mean. I think the official line on this is that I can’t be held responsible for my little brother.”

“Is he at the farm?” She badly wanted to see Nick. Last night, he had held her as if he would never let her go—and then he had disappeared. But Link said he had been ordered to stay away. Knowing that gave her renewed hope. Maybe he was over his anger at her. Maybe he understood and was ready to forgive what she had done.

Link shrugged and slid off the desk. “I really couldn’t say. Come on, Magdalena, let me walk you to your car. Before the powers that be see me talkin’ to you and come down on
me.
”

Maggy nodded and stood up. She didn’t want to get Link in trouble, too. Link took her elbow, and though Maggy insisted there was no need, escorted her down the elevator and out to her car. It was a tan four-door Volvo, one of many cars on the estate, and Maggy had driven herself to the meeting in it. The experience had been enjoyable despite everything, and had given her a glimpse of what life was going to be like without Lyle. At last, after twelve years of always having to do as he wished or suffer the consequences, she was free.

“Thanks, Link. Tell Nick—tell him …” Maggy said as Link ceremoniously opened her door for her and ushered her inside.

“Tell him yourself,” Link said, grinning, and shut the door. Maggy was so surprised by his answer that she frowned out the window at him. Something large and dark in the seat beside her moved, catching her peripheral vision. She jumped, and her head whipped around as fear clogged her throat.

“You really ought to check out the inside of your car
before
you get in it,” Nick said dryly.

“Nick! You scared me to death! What are you doing
here? Link said you were in trouble, that they’d told you to stay away from me until this is all over.”

“Yeah, well, they did. And I told them that until I actually see Forrest’s body, I planned to stick to you like glue. If they didn’t like it, they could fire me.”

“And did they? Fire you, I mean.”

Nick shrugged. “I didn’t give them a chance to say. I walked out and headed downstairs just in time to see you and your relatives being ushered into the head local yokel’s office. I told Link to keep an eye out for you, and I came out and got in your car. The parking attendant was very helpful in pointing it out, even told me you drove in alone. I tipped him five bucks, which I consider money well spent.”

“You don’t think Lyle’s dead, do you?” A cold frisson of fear ran along Maggy’s spine.

“I didn’t say that. Everything points to the fact that he’s dead. But there’s always that chance, that outside chance, that he’s not. He tried to kill you, Magdalena. I think he’s psychotic. If he’s not dead, there’s a slight possibility that he may come back to finish the job—or to get the boy.”

That last possibility had never occurred to her.

“David …” In a sudden panic to reach her son, Maggy started the car, shoved it into gear, and whipped out of the parking space with a squeal of tires. “I sent him to school. I thought he’d be better off sticking to his normal routine. Instead of worrying—and grieving.”

“Whoa! Slow down, would you please?” Nick grabbed at the armrest on the passenger side door as her maneuver jerked him forward. “David’s covered, all right? Adams isn’t stupid, just in love with rules and regulations. With him, everything has to be by the book. But when I pointed out to him that his ass would be on the line if Forrest wasn’t dead and did come after the kid, he agreed to put protection on David. There’s a man on duty now, at the kid’s school.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“I don’t mean to. Like I said, the likeliest scenario is that Forrest is dead. If he’s not, and he’s smart, he’s running for cover. And he is smart. One of the smartest assholes I’ve ever come after.”

“Oh, God.” Maggy shut her eyes, only to have them fly open again when Nick yelped and jerked the wheel.

“Watch where you’re going, would you please?” Considering the fact that they had almost run into one of the concrete pillars that held up the parking garage’s four levels, Nick sounded surprisingly calm. “Look, Magdalena, pull over. Let me drive.”

Maggy took a deep breath and shook her head. “No. I’m all right. And I like to drive. I haven’t driven myself much of anywhere for years.”

Nick grimaced, muttering something under his breath. To her he said, “So drive. Just don’t kill us, okay?”

“Okay.”

Nick was silent as Maggy maneuvered out of the garage, paid the parking fee, and headed down Second Street toward the river.

“Are you hungry?” Nick asked as she turned onto River Road.

Maggy shook her head. Her hands were clenched so tightly around the wheel that her knuckles showed white. From the way she felt, she guessed her face was as pale as her hands. For a little while, a few precious hours, she had felt free. Now, with the notion that Lyle might be alive given credence by Nick, she was afraid again. Desperately afraid.

“Have you eaten?”

Maggy shook her head a second time.

“Then you’re hungry. Pull in up here at Kingfish and we’ll get a sandwich.”

“David gets out of school at three thirty. He rides home with a friend, but I need to be home no later than three forty-five.”

“You will be. Don’t worry. There’s nothing for you to
worry about, understand?” A sudden grin flickered over Nick’s face as he glanced at her. “Just consider me your bodyguard, okay? You’re not getting out of my sight. I’ll keep you safe.”

“And David?” Maggy was too worried to reply to that grin.

“And David,” Nick echoed, his grin fading. The very way he said their son’s name told Maggy that the wound she had inflicted on him had not miraculously healed. She glanced over at him as she pulled into Kingfish’s parking lot.

“Nick,” she began when she had stopped the car, “about David …”

“Save it,” he said, the words brusque, as he guessed from her tone the subject she meant to address. “Until this situation cools down, I don’t think either of us can afford the kind of emotional discussion that we’re bound to have if we start talking about David. The last time you got me upset, I walked out on you and Forrest got you back and you nearly died because of it. Right now, I don’t want anything happening between us that could affect my judgment again. So let’s just keep things kind of impersonal, can we? Until this is over.”

Then he opened the door and got out of the car.

W
henever Maggy thought back over the three weeks that followed Lyle’s death, events seemed pieced together like a collage, with little bits of memories jumbled on top of each other in no particular order. Most vivid was the sight of
Tia
Gloria’s bruised and swollen face when Maggy visited her in the hospital. Tipton had had to hurt her badly to pry from her the reason for Maggy’s visit, and to get her to uncover the secret hiding place where the tape was concealed. Though
Tia
Gloria was remarkably upbeat, considering her ordeal—her little group of friends was already gathered around her bed, prophesying a hideous end for the man responsible for the attack—her doctor confirmed that she would be in the hospital for some time. Promising to visit daily, Maggy also agreed to care for Horatio. Nick’s first act, as her self-appointed bodyguard, was to move the bird, cage and all, into Maggy’s bedroom at Windermere. Nick’s expression as he gingerly transported the indignant parrot was one of the few bright spots in those dark days.

Another vivid memory was of the memorial service, a week after the accident, that Virginia insisted be held whether Lyle had been found or not. Everyone who was anyone in the community attended. Business leaders, politicians, society blue bloods, journalists, all turned out to pay their last respects to one of their own. Maggy felt like a complete fraud in her black widow’s weeds as people
kissed her cheek and murmured their condolences and exclaimed over how very brave she was being under the circumstances. Behind her back, there was other talk: about the ten days she had spent with Nick, including speculation that Lyle’s death was actually a suicide fueled by his wife’s blatant unfaithfulness. Others were sure that Lyle had been in a rage, again over her unfaithfulness, when the accident had happened, and had therefore taken the curve too fast. Only a few maintained that perhaps he was simply careless and his death was no fault of Maggy’s at all. A tiny minority whispered that drugs had been involved, but the consensus was that that was ridiculous. Not Lyle Forrest! He simply wasn’t the type.

No matter to what cause it was ascribed, Lyle’s death was the talk of the city. It gave an added fillip to the Derby festivities, in which, for the first time in living memory, none of the Forrests took part. Maggy got the sense that a lot of the regret her women friends expressed at Lyle’s passing was really over the cancellation of Louisville’s social event of the season, the Diamonds and Pearls Ball—and that what they really wanted to ask about was Nick. Most of them were too well-bred to do so, but they certainly ogled him, and her, and the two of them together. Maggy guessed, when they were out of her presence, that what they said about her would have singed her ears if she had heard it. As the self-proclaimed leading authority on Maggy’s childhood romance with Nick, Buffy was much in demand at all the many parties of the busy social season. This Maggy heard from another of her friends during the course of a condolence call.

Another piece of the collage was Virginia’s sunken, bloodless face. Lyle’s mother was grief stricken, and it was a relief when her physician insisted that she get completely away from the scene of her loss. After the memorial service, Sarah took her grandmother to the Drummond home in Texas, for an indefinite visit. Lucy and Ham stayed on in the guesthouse, insisting that they were
needed at Windermere until “things” were settled. Maggy assumed they meant the estate’s finances. There was no reading of the will, because Lyle was not yet officially declared dead. The lawyers seemed to think that in the absence of a body, an official declaration of death might take years. In any case, everyone knew how things stood. Everything Lyle owned at the time of his death went to David, except for the one-third portion of the estate that the law required should go to Maggy as Lyle’s wife. But the DEA investigation complicated matters: How much, if anything, would be confiscated in the end? And the IRS was nosing around.… It was a mess, and Maggy was perfectly willing to let the lawyers handle it.

Maggy’s most pressing concern was David. The boy cried only once, at the memorial service, and then only when his grandmother broke down. He had occasional nightmares, though he claimed not to remember what they were about when his cries brought Maggy running. Once, after a particularly bad dream, he asked to sleep with her. Maggy knew then that, whatever the dreams were about, they must be scaring him to death. She took him into her bed and held him close, and like that he was able to sleep through the rest of the night. When he was home during the day he stayed physically close to her, as if he was afraid to let her out of his sight. He seemed happiest at school, or at a friend’s house. Maggy had to make a determined effort to overcome her morbid fear of letting him go. With a police escort whom Maggy described to her son as a chauffeur hired to replace Tipton, he went to school, played with his friends, did his homework, went to sleep in his own bed. Maggy couldn’t do anything about the escort, but otherwise she worked hard to keep things as normal as possible, for David.

During that time Nick was everywhere, shadowing her every footstep. When she attended Lyle’s memorial service, he sat discreetly in the rear of the church, but he was
there. He was never out of shouting range, even staying in the house at night, in one of the guest rooms. When Lucy remarked that the way Maggy was carrying on with Nick was an open scandal and said that in her opinion it was
sinful
for Maggy to move her lover into Lyle’s house when Lyle was scarcely cold, Maggy replied that since it was her house now, she would do as she damn well pleased. Lucy crimsoned but shut up. Apparently the thought that Windermere now belonged to Maggy and David and not to the original Forrests had not, until that moment, sunk in. After that exchange of pleasantries Lucy left the house in a huff and didn’t come back. Maggy saw her only at a distance, usually when her sister-in-law was entering or leaving the carriage house. Ham she did not see at all, which suited her just fine. Now that Lyle was gone and there was no one to force her to be polite to him, her inclination was to cut Hamilton Drummond dead. Nick, she was afraid, had harsher aspirations, but for the time being, while Nick was preoccupied with her safety, he seemed prepared to let the matter ride. At least, as long as Ham kept out of his way.