Chapter 10
Margo
Picking out some clothes for the next few days was decidedly easier than our first stop.
Looking at the Ulta across the street, I almost ask to have a few minutes in there.
Between being ostracized by most of my classmates after my parents’ divorce, then being on the swim team in high school and later flight lessons, I never had a close circle of girlfriends to talk about makeup with, so I never really thought about it. Until today’s comments.
After my parents’ divorce, Mom got me every other weekend, which over the next few years became fewer and farther between as her husband’s job took off and she wanted to travel with him. There was always a reason not to include me on their elaborate vacations.
To counter that, Dad tried to share his love of camping with me, but by the time I was thirteen he admitted that there was no amount of bug spray that mosquitos wouldn’t hazard to taste my blood. And eventually, we stuck to visiting his dad.
It was when I started flight lessons during my senior year that Dad started spending more time working toward his goal of becoming a professional nomad. Traveling the country in an RV was his lifelong dream and, to his credit, he started a podcast with a faithful following.
After my graduation, he was able to do that full time and we were both happy, working toward our dreams. Until the David situation.
It’s when we pull up to the sheriff's office that my head starts to spin, suddenly terrified that there’s a warrant out for my arrest or something of the sort.
“What exactly does he want to talk about?” I ask Stryker for the third time, finally allowing him to pop my seat belt loose.
“It’s alright, Go-Go,” he insists, tugging me from the car. “There are going to be lots of questions, but I’ll be right there with you. If you need a lawyer, we’ll get one in here.”
I plant myself on the sidewalk in front of his SUV.
“What happens if…” I stop talking, worried that there might be cameras with audio out here.
“Margo.” Stryker says my name so softly it almost sounds like a hug. “Can you trust me?”
“I barely know you,” I snap back, instantly squeezing his hand as a sort of apology.
“I’m not asking you if you love me. I’m asking you, as the man you met a decade ago, as the man you gave yourself to last night, do you trust me?”
His words, so full of meaning and calmly delivered, gets me looking up at his face and nodding my head.
“You’re always going to be safe with me.” He gives me the same promise he did on the way home from dinner and I feel the fight drain from my body.
“Let’s go,” I say, smiling up at him.
By the look on his face, I’m giving him whiplash, but he isn’t running away, so that counts for something.
Inside the stark looking building, there’s a young man who is vaguely familiar sitting at the desk. He obviously recognizes Stryker and half stands to greet us.
“Howie, I didn’t know that you were working here,” Stryker greets him. “Can you let Clark know that Miss Tucker and I are here for her interview?”
“Yes, sir,” he says, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one is around. “Mr. Tucker is here, and he’s fired up. Best stay over in the corner so he doesn’t see you.”
My jaw drops and I look up at Stryker, trying to make sense of who Howie means by ‘Mr. Tucker’, until the door behind us is ripped open and someone yanks on my ponytail.
“You’re a murderess, just like your grandmother was!”
In my next breath, I’m lying on the tile, staring up at a man I haven’t seen in years, my head feeling like it’s been stabbed with a hundred needles from the force he pulled on my hair.
I know it’s one of my uncles, I just honestly don’t know which one he is.
The boy at the desk starts screaming for help just before Bull—because the man standing over me is the president of a motorcycle club, and not the man who makes my panties wet—steps forward, shoving my uncle hard enough to send him back through the door and onto his ass on the pavement beyond.
“Margo,” Bull growls out the word, his face transforming from anger to concern as he kneels beside me. “Stay where you are, baby, we’ll get you checked out.”
The pressure he puts on my shoulders holds me in place even as he shifts them to wrap around me. “Paint him as the unhinged aggressor,” he whispers in my ear before slightly pulling back to cup my cheek, speaking louder. “Are you alright?”
“My back hurts,” I say, having seen more than my fair share of accident footage on Instagram.
“Miss, stay right there,” the deputy who interviewed me last night says, coming to stand beside us before speaking into her radio, asking for an ambulance. “Mr. Tucker! You stay out there.”
Before I know it, she’s pulled her taser and is standing in front of Stryker and me like she’d take a bullet for us.
“She did it!” he screams back at her while pointing at me. “She manipulated my elderly father and then she murdered him.”
“Now you understand why I wanted you to bring Miss Tucker by,” Sheriff Clark says, standing near the desk. “George’s attorney is on his way in also, even though he’s insisting there was nothing inappropriate in the latest version of the will.”
“I have the only legal will, I tell you!” my uncle yells from where he’s standing on the sidewalk.
I can hear the ambulance approaching, but besides some bruises that will appear in a day or so, I know I’m fine and don’t want to deal with the nuisance of going to the hospital.
“Do you know him?” Stryker asks me.
“I think it’s either Jason or Matt. I’m not really sure,” I answer honestly. “Dad’s not very close to his brothers, but he said he called Jason to let him know.”
Clark, after making sure that I can stand without pain, guides Stryker and me back to a small room, indicating two seats for us.
“Actually, let me get you pillow to sit on,” he says, holding a hand out to stop me from sitting on the wooden chair.
Once I’m comfortably seated, he immediately confirms that it was Jason who attacked me and asks me to tell him what I know about my family.
“Well, besides his wife who recently died, Granddad had the twins, Leo and Mike, with his first wife, then Jason and Matt with his second wife, my dad was next, then his fourth wife and their daughter died in a car accident.”
Stryker nods along, his face darkening when I mention the last two and I realize that he probably would have been running the funeral home by then.
“We found some documentation in your grandfather’s files,” Clark says, consulting a notepad in front of him.
“It seems he was sixteen the first time he got married, so that was before the twins were born. There was a girl born from that marriage, but they got divorced before they were eighteen, seemingly so he could marry his next wife, and he later signed off his paternal rights to another man.”
I shrug, not understanding what that has to do with anything. Until it hits me that I probably have other cousins out there, perhaps with an axe to grind.
“It’ll be another few days before we have any of the DNA evidence back, so right now we’re working on clearing fingerprints.
However, since Jason was outside this building at nine AM, swearing a blue streak about how you changed Mr. Tucker’s…
damn, there’s just so many of them—George’s will and he and Matt are due the lion’s share, I feel the need to go over your statement and ask some additional questions. ”
He looks at me, like he’s waiting for me to say something, while I look at him, waiting for him to ask me a question.
“This is being recorded,” he says and I nod my head, letting him know that I understand.
When the silence draws out, Stryker throws his hand up in frustration. “Ask her something. I swear, she’s not being difficult, she’s just not going to start babbling.”
“Was I supposed to say something? He didn’t ask me anything,” I state, looking at Stryker, wondering if I missed something.
“Mr. Wells,” Clark says, turning to him. “You don’t need to be here for this, especially since you aren’t an attorney nor a family member.”
“Is Margo under arrest? If she isn’t, I’m here as her Old Man,” he says, and I swear Clark’s jaw drops wide open. “Strictly moral support. I’ll stay quiet.”
“Sheriff, can I read over the statement I gave, I’m sorry, I don’t remember the deputy’s name. Last night is a bit of a blur for me. If there’s anything else, I’m happy to answer questions.” That seems to do the trick and the sheriff slides a two-page document in front of me.
It doesn't take me long to scan through it and I look up at Clark again. “There are some things on this that are circled. They were just habits that were part of Granddad’s routine. He’d always close the garage door so that critters wouldn’t get into the dry goods he kept out there.
And once it was dark outside, he’d turn on the lights from the kitchen all the way through to his bedroom, but they were all off when I walked in last night. ”
“Why did he keep them on?” Clark asks and I shrug. “I mean, I know what my electric bill is like, and I turn mine off.”
“I don’t know. I mean, I was raised to turn a light off if you left the room.
When I first moved in, he corrected me a few times if I’d forget.
When I was younger, Dad would say, ‘my house, my rules’.
I just applied that to Granddad and stopped hitting the light switches, other than the ones in my room.
He even had an app on his phone, once he got to bed, he’d turn all the lights off. ”
“Do you have a login for that app?”
“No, sir.”
“You are not obligated to give it and we can try to obtain a warrant, but do you know the password for his phone and are you willing to provide it?”
I recite it to him, wondering where that is going when Stryker shifts in his seat. I bite down on a smile, understanding that while he might know Clark, he’s probably not one to cooperate with law enforcement quite this much.
“I’m pretty sure Granddad wants his killer caught,” I whisper to Stryker before shifting my eyes back to the sheriff. “And I did not do it.”
“I know,” Clark mumbles as he makes notes on the pad in front of him.
“You do?” I ask, wishing I didn’t sound so surprised.
“Miss Tucker, I spent twenty-five years on the force in Chicago and the past ten years out here. I saw and heard you last night. A man you very clearly cared about was taken from you. Just do us all a favor and stop saying it’s your fault he’s dead.
I’m wanting all the boxes checked on this investigation and you saying that, on top of Jason’s screaming, is why I called you in here today,” he says as he takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I am curious to know why your uncle, half-uncle, whatever, is screaming about your grandmother killing his mother, the second, sorry—third Mrs. Tucker. And why he thinks he has the only valid will.”
“I have absolutely no idea,” I tell him, doing my damnedest to keep a straight face. “My dad will be here in the next day or so, but he never mentioned anything about his mom killing anyone.”
“Could you please stay until I’ve spoken to your grandfather’s lawyer? Maybe another hour or so?” he asks, looking between Stryker and myself.
“I need to see to some arrangements at the funeral home,” Stryker says. “Can we leave if I guarantee that we’ll be back in ninety minutes?”
“I’d ask that Miss Tucker stays here,” Clark replies, locking eyes with the man at my side.
“It’s alright, Stryker,” I tell him. “Honestly, I’ll just put my head down on the table and try to sleep a little.”
“If I leave, can I rejoin Margo without any issues?” Stryker asks him next and I give Clark a nod that I want him with me. I’m sure Granddad’s lawyer would sit with me if there was any further questioning, but Stryker keeps me calm.
“I should have the fingerprint report back shortly, if I don’t find anything out of the ordinary there, I’ll permit you to reenter.
Miss Tucker, there’s a couch in my office that’ll be much more comfortable,” Clark replies to us both.
“I will warn you there’s also a camera in the upper corner of the office that records any time there’s movement. ”
“The couch sounds better,” I say, nodding again.
“I have a blanket in the back of the SUV,” Stryker says, squeezing my hand. “I’ll get it for you.”
Five minutes later, I’ve changed rooms. Another few minutes later, Stryker has tucked me in and given me a kiss that has me grinning ear-to-ear.
“Hey,” I call out before he pulls the door shut. “I do trust you.”
“Love you, too, babe,” he says so softly I almost miss his words.