Chapter 8 Maggie
Chapter 8
Maggie
A late-night intruder alert was almost never a good thing.
Maggie had spent so long working in the shadow of crisis that her nerves were permanently attuned to the first hint of trouble, and the beeping perimeter alarm made her surface straight from deep sleep into wakefulness. Moonlight glowed through the bedroom curtains. The digital clock on her nightstand read 12:07. The intruder alert kept beeping on her phone, set off by someone—or something—that had tripped her alarm. She sat up, her pulse already galloping, and reached for the cell phone to view the video feed from her surveillance camera.
Now the doorbell rang, the chime echoing throughout her farmhouse. Not a stealth attack after all, but someone openly announcing their arrival. Squinting at the video feed on her phone, she saw her neighbor Luther Yount standing at her front door, his hair a wild halo of silver, his face jittery with agitation. Callie was her first thought. Oh no, something has happened to his granddaughter.
Maggie had no children of her own, but she was as frantic as any parent as she scrambled out of bed. She didn’t bother to pull a robe over her pajamas, but just shoved her feet into slippers and headed downstairs, flipping on lights as she went. By the time she reached the foyer, Luther was banging on the door, and when she yanked it open, his fist was still raised to bang it again. He was a giant of a man with an unkempt beard, and anyone who did not know him would find him a frightening sight, standing in the gloom of the porch.
“Luther, what’s going on?” she said. “Is Callie all right?”
“She’s fine, she’s fine. I’m sorry it’s so late, but I had to wait for her to go to sleep. I don’t want her to know anything’s wrong.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, but ...” He sighed. “Jesus, I think I’m in trouble.”
Trouble, she could deal with. She’d spent her career responding to trouble. Relieved that nothing had happened to Callie, she stepped aside. “Come in. Let me get dressed, and I’ll make coffee.”
Ten minutes later, Luther was sitting at her kitchen table, and she was filling two mugs with industrial-strength Colombian. The kitchen always seemed like the safest space in a house, and Luther looked like he was in need of such safety. He might have been a retired MIT professor, but tonight he looked every bit the farmer, dressed in his usual baggy blue jeans and frayed flannel shirt. Anyone who encountered him on a dark city street might well assume he was a panhandler in need of spare change and a warm bed. They would only have to spend five minutes talking to the man to realize Luther was neither down on his luck nor in need of charity. He dressed this way because he simply didn’t give a damn how he looked, or what strangers thought of him.
He rubbed his face and groaned, “This is a goddamn mess.”
Maggie set the mugs on the table and sat down across from him. “Talk.”
“There’s this girl who’s gone missing. She’s one of the summer people staying on Maiden Pond.”
“Yes, I heard about it.”
“How?”
“My friend Ingrid Slocum monitors the police radio, and she alerted the rest of us.” Maggie didn’t have to explain who the rest of us meant, because Luther had met Maggie’s tight little group of friends. He didn’t know the details of how the Martini Club had become friends, or where they’d acquired their unusual set of skills—skills that had aided in rescuing his kidnapped granddaughter this past winter. There was a great deal Luther did not know about Maggie and her fellow retirees, and he was wise enough not to ask too many questions.
“The missing girl’s name is Zoe Conover,” said Luther. “She’s fifteen years old.” His voice wavered. “Just a year older than my Callie ...”
“Ingrid told us the girl was last seen around noon.”
He nodded. “That’s when I dropped her off at the boat ramp.”
Maggie stared at him. This information she had not heard. “How did you happen to drop her off?”
“Callie and the girl met at Maiden Pond this morning, when they were swimming. I guess they hit it off, because when I picked up Callie around ten, both girls came home with me. They hung around the farm for a while, played with the animals. Then I drove Zoe back to the pond.”
“And what happened then?”
“That’s it. I drove on to Augusta to run a few errands; then I got home around seven. Callie and I were both getting ready for bed when Jo Thibodeau called. Asked if Zoe was with us.” He clawed fingers through his hair, shoving greasy strands off his face. “Oh, Maggie. I shouldn’t have done what I did next.”
“What did you do?”
“Callie was all upset that her friend was missing, and I—I just wanted to help. I kept thinking about last February, when Callie was taken. How I would’ve done anything to save her. I thought the family needed all the help they could get, so I went to see them. They’re staying in that big cottage on Maiden Pond. Moonview, they call it. I thought I should explain exactly what happened, what I did. But when I got there, it all went straight to hell.” He looked down at his dirt-stained fingernails. “I guess I should have cleaned up first, should have put on a fresh shirt, but I wasn’t thinking. That family, they took one look at me and ...” He shook his head. “They didn’t much like the looks of me.”
No wonder. Even at sixty-nine, Luther Yount was big enough and strong enough to overpower most men, not to mention a teenage girl. She could guess what the owners of Moonview thought when they saw this bearded creature with his farm-stained clothes. A savage. And he had Zoe in his truck.
“I told them I dropped off the girl at the boat ramp. Since that’s the last place I saw her, I said they should start by searching the pond. It’s the logical place to look, isn’t it, when a kid goes missing near the water? But they didn’t want to hear me out. They just stared like I was some kind of monster. Then Jo Thibodeau, she asked if she could search my truck, and I gave her the keys. Told her to knock herself out, let the crime lab go over it with a goddamn microscope. I was trying to show them how cooperative I was, handing it over. Her officer, Mike Batchelder, had to give me a ride home.”
“That was not a good idea, Luther. Going to see the girl’s family.”
“I know that now.”
“You should stay away from them. Let the police handle this. Don’t give them any reason to think you’re a threat.”
“They already think that. And Callie, she’s all shaken up about her friend going missing. If she hears the police think I might have done something—”
“Jo Thibodeau won’t jump to conclusions. She’s a good cop, you know that.”
“Yes, but that family—the Conovers. They’ve got their eyes on me. If the girl isn’t found, I’m the one they’re going to blame.”
“Why? Just because you drove her back to the pond? It shouldn’t take long to prove you’re in the clear. The police just need to confirm your movements after you dropped off the girl. Establish that you have an alibi.”
He stared down at his coffee, which he had scarcely touched. In the silence that followed, the hum of the refrigerator seemed unnaturally loud. With every second that passed, her sense of alarm deepened.
“Luther? You do have an alibi, don’t you?”
He sighed. “Nothing that can be confirmed.”
“What happened after you left the girl at the pond? You said you had errands to attend to.”
“In Augusta.”
“Can anyone verify where you went in Augusta?”
“No.”
“What were you doing there?”
He stared at his coffee. “I, uh, checked out some new tractors. Farm equipment.”
“Did you talk to anyone? A salesman?”
“No. I just walked around the lot. Looked at what they had.”
“Did you go anywhere after that?”
“It’s not important.”
“It is important. You know you can trust me. Just tell me where you went.”
At last, he met her gaze. “Right now, Maggie, I’m asking you to trust me . When I left that girl at the boat ramp, she was alive and well. I don’t know what happened after that. All I know is, I didn’t touch her. Not a hair on her head.” He sat up straight. “And that’s the God’s honest truth.”