Center Stage: Magnolia Steele Mystery #1 (23 page)

M
y mother showed
up in my doorway the next morning and banged on the wall. “Time to get up, Magnolia.” She sounded annoyed as she moved closer to the bed. “How did you ever get anything done up in New York without me waking you up every morning?”

I pried my swollen eyes open to look at her, and her brows lifted with surprise.

“You really are sick.”

“No,” I said, my voice groggy. “I’m not. I just have an annoying headache.” I’d spent half the night haunted by dreams of what I’d seen in the basement of that abandoned house.

Momma sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over and reaching for the back of my neck. She began to massage my stiff neck muscles, and I closed my eyes and moaned.

“I used to do this when you were a little girl,” she murmured. “Remember? You’d wake up from a nightmare and have trouble going back to sleep, so I’d rub your neck and you’d drift off after a while.”

“I wished it worked that way now,” I said softly.

“I know I haven’t told you this, but I’m glad you’re back, Magnolia. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too.”

She was silent, but her fingers continued to dig into my neck, coaxing the muscles to relax.

“When this is all settled, we need to talk.” Her tone was so soft, more so than it had been since Daddy left.

Did she plan to press me for the real reason I’d left? What would I tell her? I gave a vague murmur that I hoped she took as agreement.

I drifted off as her fingers worked their magic, and I woke to her hand stroking back my hair.

“Why don’t you skip church and sleep?” she asked. “I’ll call you later, and we can meet for lunch.”

“Okay. Thank you.” She got up and I rolled over to look at her. “I love you, Momma.”

Tears filled her eyes. “I love you too.”

I
awoke
to the sound of rain beating against the window. My body froze, but I reassured myself I was safe. I was in my mother’s house. I was in my own bed. I was behind my mother’s magical door.

I reached for my phone, shocked to see it was almost eleven. I hadn’t slept this late in years. But I also saw I had several missed calls. Three from Belinda, and two from Emily. One voice mail.

I decided to try calling them before listening to the message. Emily’s phone went to voice mail after one ring. Seconds later, I saw a message pop up.

I’m in church. I’ll call you when I get out
. Then, seconds later:
I hope you’re feeling better.

How did she know I’d been feeling poorly?

I tried calling Belinda next, but when she didn’t answer, I decided to check my own messages.

“Magnolia,” Belinda’s tearful voice said. “I don’t know where to begin. I guess I’ll start off by saying that I understand why you didn’t answer. I’m so sorry.” She choked up a little, and I closed my eyes. “We can talk about last night later, if you’re still willing to talk to me. But we really need to talk to Amy . . .” Her voice broke again. “Promise me you’ll be careful.” Then the message cut off. Closing my eyes, I fought off a wave of vertigo.

At least that meant Amy was alive. Hopefully they had a suspect this time and my name would be cleared soon. But if they had a suspect, then why would we need to talk to Amy?

Unless Luke was the murder victim.

I dragged myself out of bed and into my bathroom. I sat on the toilet, leaning forward as I tried to wrest myself out of the haze that had descended on me. I still had vertigo and a throbbing head. I needed ibuprofen, which I found downstairs in the kitchen. Momma had made a pot of coffee, so I warmed up a cup and stood by the breakfast room window, nursing it as I waited for the drugs to take effect.

I grabbed my laptop and sat at the table, then Googled Luke Powell’s name and the word murder. The page was full of news about Max’s death, but at the top was an article about the murder last night. The only two helpful pieces of information it offered were that one, the murder victim was a man and his identity would be revealed after his family had been contacted. And two, Luke Powell was not available for comment. While he technically wouldn’t have been available for comment if he were the victim, his name would have been released by now.

Belinda was right. We needed to talk to Amy.

My fingers hovered over the keys. Part of me wanted to Google my name and find out what everyone was saying, but the sane part of me closed the lid. My fragile psyche couldn’t take any more criticism. I wasn’t sure I could even handle it if my name had been officially linked to Max’s murder.

In this particular instance, ignorance was bliss.

I still had to deal with my memories of
that
night. Maybe I should have told Brady like I’d intended, but any guilt I felt was outweighed by relief. He would have thought I was a crazy person. Who comes forward as a witness to a murder ten years after the fact—and while under investigation for a different murder?

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t do a little digging on my own.

I poured a fresh cup of coffee before opening my laptop again to start the search. The first words I tried were “murder Franklin, Tennessee May 2006,” then expanded it to include Nashville.

But she’d been murdered at the end of May. What if they didn’t find her body until June? I switched out June for May, but none of the results fit what happened to the woman in that basement.

Digging into the past was like poking a beehive with a giant stick. The bees were already swarming, so I might as well satisfy my other curiosities.

I opened Facebook and pulled up Maddie first. I’d looked her up dozens of times since leaving Franklin. While she’d unfriended me, surprisingly she hadn’t blocked me. When I was feeling particularly nostalgic, I used to look at her photos from college and the sorority we’d both wanted to join. It was like looking at photos of the life I’d lost. I’d cry buckets of tears, then wake up with swollen, puffy eyes the next morning, looking like shit and feeling even worse on the inside. After a while, I grew wiser and stopped torturing myself, only giving in to my curiosity when I was drunk and feeling sorry for myself.

I hadn’t looked her up in three years.

But there she was on my screen. Her and her baby. Her with Blake. Now I was certain Blake wasn’t the man in the basement, which meant he wasn’t as bad as I’d spent the last ten years believing, not that I was about to give him a “Mr. Nice Guy” award. But at least I could sleep easier knowing Maddie wasn’t living with a rapist. Or a murderer.

That I knew of, at least.

I looked up Emily next. She
was
single, and over half her photos were of her Maltese, whom she occasionally carried in her purse. She hadn’t posted much, or at least not publicly. When she did post, it was usually to share some silly legal meme.

Enough indulgence.

I Googled Paul Locke, digging through a bunch of puff pieces about his rise to semi-fame. His core audience was teens and tweens—as evidenced by the crowd at the mall yesterday. But there were a few posts about Paul taking his agent—Max Goodwin—to court over a contract dispute involving agency fees. The fees had left him shockingly broke by the time his agent and his label got a share of the pie. Paul Locke had lost.

A month ago.

In my book, that made him a prime suspect in Max’s murder, but it couldn’t be a coincidence that two murders had happened in the same house within a few days. They were undoubtedly connected. I just needed to find out the identity of the newest victim, if Paul had been there that night, and if he’d held a grudge against this guy too.

Yeah, piece of cake.

When I was growing up, Momma used to get
The Tennessean
newspaper. On the off chance it would contain something helpful today, I unlocked the deadbolt to look for the paper in the driveway. Something else caught my eye instead.

A single magnolia blossom.

It sat on the front porch step in a small florist box without a lid.

My heart slammed so hard into my ribcage I struggled to take a breath.
Calm down, Magnolia. It could be from anyone
.

I walked down the two steps and picked up the box, holding it like it might be a ticking time bomb. My shaking legs protested holding me upright, so I sat on the step and put the soggy, rain-soaked box on my knees. The water on the concrete seeped through my pajama bottoms, but I was only vaguely aware as I lifted the flower from the box and found a card underneath, with a single typed line.

I’m still watching, Magnolia
.

My pajamas were thin, and even though the rain was light, the fabric began to stick to my skin. Just like that night.

This flower could have been from anyone, yet my subconscious took over, reminding me of the details of all my worst nightmares.

My chest tightened, and I fought to catch my breath as a heat wave spread across my body. I began to sweat even as my body shivered from the forty-degree air temperature.

Other than in the basement two days before, I hadn’t experienced a full-blown panic attack in years, and I refused to succumb to one now. Tears welled in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I was done with crying. It had never once done me a lick of good. Tears were for the weak and I was strong. I was a survivor.

When I finally got control and felt like I could stand again, I headed back into the house and placed the flower on the kitchen counter before heading upstairs. I soaked under a hot shower, letting the water sluice over my stiff neck and shoulders until it turned cold.

Forty-five minutes later, I had mostly pulled myself back together and restacked the wall that protected my heart. I was sorting through my suitcases, trying to decide whether or not to unpack my things, when my phone dinged with a text from Emily.

We need to talk
.

My least favorite four words in the world.
I’m at Momma’s
.

She called seconds later, sounding even more subdued than usual. “Have you heard about the second murder at the Powell estate?”

“Only bits and pieces. Who was murdered?”

“I’m not sure, but I heard he’s an associate of Luke’s.”

“So this clears my name, right?” I asked. “I wasn’t anywhere near Luke’s estate last night.”

“You haven’t been cleared of anything. While the two murders took place in the same house, it doesn’t mean they’re connected. “

“Well, how was this guy killed?”

Emily hesitated. “He was stabbed . . . in the heart.”

“Emily!”

“It’s up to the police to say you’re cleared—which they haven’t done yet—so consider yourself under investigation. And don’t be surprised if they show up wanting to know what you were doing last night.”

“I have an alibi for last night.” Mostly.

“Yeah, Lila told me already, although I’m worried about the time you spent alone in the shop. How long was that?”

I didn’t dare tell her about my field trip into the woods or my stroll down Main Street with Brady. So I hedged. “I think Colt dropped me off around 8:30, and Momma showed up after ten.”

“Well, crap,” she grumbled. “The murder took place around nine. It sounds like he had another party.”

I closed my eyes. Shit. My visit to see Brady might actually make me look even more guilty. Like I’d killed a man and then went to the police station to confess.

Which meant I needed to find out as much as I could about Paul Locke and any other leads I could find.

I cleared my throat. “Do you happen to know who was at the party last night?”

“No. I only know the facts my police source told me.”

The way she said it made me think she knew about my trip to the police station last night. It occurred to me belatedly that there had to be cameras all over the place there. Even if I’d left without speaking to a detective, I still would have been captured on video.

But Emily divulged nothing, and I had to wonder if she wasn’t using an interrogation method of her own on me.

“Okay,” I said, ignoring the bait. “I’ll see if I can talk to Amy and compare the guest lists. We can figure out who was at both parties. But I also want to do more digging into Paul Locke. He recently lost a legal case against Max involving a lot of money. He definitely had motive.”

“Sounds good. I’ll try to get more details about the murder.”

Emily hung up and I was about to return to my suitcases when my phone rang again. My mother.

“Magnolia, how are you feeling?”

“Much better, and I’m ready for lunch. I’m starving.” Which was true. I only hoped I could choke down my meal while sitting at the same table as my brother.

“Tilly’s eating with us, so she’s gonna pick you up and bring you to the restaurant.”

“Okay. . . . but, Momma, I should probably tell you—”

“That there was another murder at Luke Powell’s? Yeah, Emily told me this morning at church. I don’t even know what this world is comin’ to.”

“I think it’s gotta help my case, Momma. At least I wasn’t there this time.”

“Thank God for small mercies.”

My second mother arrived fifteen minutes later. On a whim, I grabbed my laptop and stuffed it into my purse, hoping to do some investigating after lunch.

I greeted Tilly at the door. “You’ll have to lock up,” I told her. “Momma still hasn’t given me a key.” My tone carried more irritation than I’d intended, but this state of being constantly on edge had made me short-tempered.

“Give her time,” she said, sounding more subdued than usual as she turned the deadbolt with her key. “She just needs to adjust is all. You know how much she hates change.”

We got in the car, and Tilly was uncharacteristically quiet for the first few minutes of our drive to the restaurant.

“Spit it out, Tilly,” I finally said. “Are you upset by what I said about the key?”

She licked her lips, a sure sign she was nervous. “Have you talked to your mother?”

“You’ll have to be more specific than that. I talked to her on the phone a few minutes ago, and we also talked briefly this morning while she rubbed my neck. But I suspect you’re not referring to either of those.”

She cast me a grin. “You always were a spitfire, Maggie.”