Maggie Dove Read Online Free

told her Noelle didn’t give a Christmas tip, a fact that Maggie wished she didn’t know and tried to put out of her head, without success. Such details one learned when one lived in a small town. That, and she knew one of the daughters had lice and it kept coming back, although Noelle told the school nurse otherwise. And now she knew that the widow wanted to dress up to see her husband’s body, and that she hadn’t come out of the house when Maggie yelled for her, though maybe because she was afraid of Maggie.
    Peter was right, she thought. She should call her best friend, but getting hold of Winifred was problematic. Her friend lived in an adult community, and they didn’t allow phone calls late at night. But there had to be a way to reach her.
    Maggie remembered then that one of the nurses had given her a card some time ago. Had told her to feel free to call if she ever had concerns about Winifred’s care. They were kind there and recognized the value of friendship—the only question was, what had she done with the card?
    Probably put it in her desk, which was at the far end of the living room. Her one attempt at organization; if you put all stray things in one place, you have a shot at finding them later. She pulled open the top drawer. Alone among all the furnishings in the house, the desk was not an antique. She’d made it herself, following instructions from a catalog, before she wrote her first book. Had she been able to carve her own pen, she would have done that too. She wanted the act of creation to be as much under her control as possible. So she had a handmade Shaker-style desk that wobbled when she leaned on it too hard, but it was her own, and she imagined that the very wobble had influenced her writing. That she had stayed away from longer words because the desk could take only so much pressure; perhaps she would have had a more literary bent with a stronger desk.
    Miraculously she found the card, right next to three for chimney sweeping. She called and got a startled-sounding nurse, who eventually remembered who Maggie was, and when she explained to her what had happened, hearing herself the tremor in her voice, the nurse said not to worry. She’d find Winifred and let her use her cell phone. Just wait a moment, the nurse said, and she’ll call back. So Maggie sat quietly, waiting for her friend to call, listening to Joe Mangione hollering on her front lawn, visualizing the nurse going through the halls of the home, finding Winifred, who would be in bed this time of night. Propping up the pillows, punching in the number.
    The phone rang and Maggie grabbed it.
    “Are you all right?” Winifred asked. Her voice was shaky, but Maggie knew a forceful lady was behind it. Sixty-two years old, with a beautiful figure that she was unable to display, much to her aggravation, because she couldn’t walk. The Parkinson’s was going after her with all it had, though Winifred was giving the disease a heck of a fight.
    “You must have been frightened,” Winifred said.
    “It seemed so unreal I didn’t have time to be frightened,” Maggie answered. “I must have sat alongside him for fifteen minutes and I didn’t think anything about it, but now I keep seeing him in my head.”
    That dark, curly hair, the lips pulled back in alarm. A moment of sharp pain before crashing onto her front lawn; a stab of fear but nothing more. A quick way to die, the only trace of violence the blood on his lip that must have been from when he fell down. On a rock, perhaps. She thought of his reflector vest. He’d intended to go for a run; was there anything more tragic? A run to improve your life, that ended in death. A run on her lawn. By her tree.
    “Do they know who killed him?” Winifred asked.
    “Killed him? He had a heart attack.”
    “Heart attack? Is that what Young Sherlock says?”
    She heard Peter outside, talking to his boss. Thank God.
Yes sir. Yes sir.
A whiff of honeysuckle blew in through the window, a