Black Thursday (12 page)

“At least my kids are older,” I said, which sounded weak even to me. The truth was, a single day didn't go by where I didn't wonder if they were doing okay with all the upheaval, past and future.

“Maddie, Frank acted like a royal turd, but he does love you and your kids more than anything.” Barb said. “When you think about it, it's not the worst idea in the world to let him keep proving it to you over and over.”

I shook my head. “This is all so—”

“Anti-feminist and hard to swallow?”

“For starters.” I took a deep breath. “Even if I could see myself forgiving or at least moving on with Frank, this whole notion of him showering me with guilt gifts for the rest of our lives is not only a little hard to fathom, it's hardly an option given our current—”

“
Current
being the key word,” she broke in.

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“My brother seems to have a way of always landing on his feet, is all.”

“Maddie!” Eloise appeared in front of us, pointed to her cell phone, and sighed dramatically. “It's like almost nine and if I don't get out of here in the next half-hour, I'll miss everything and then I leave tomorrow and I will hardly have gotten to hang out with my friends this break and then we'll probably be moving by the time I come home again and—”

“I'm pretty much ready to go,” I said.

“I'm ready now,” Barb said. “I'll grab the girls. If you can drop us off, you'll have the car and everyone else can say their goodbyes and come home in the rental car without rushing.”

“You don't mind?” I asked.

“My feet are killing me and it's already way past their bedtime.”

“Thanks, Aunt Barb,” Eloise said to both of us as I tossed her my keys.

“No problem.” Barb winked. Before she headed over to corral her girls, she whispered into my ear, “And don't cause yourself any more problems when you don't have to.”

_____

It turned out everyone else was ready to leave anyway, which was great, as my feet were also killing me by the time we started across the mall toward the second car.
Not to mention my head.

“Cool wedding,” Trent said.

“Commitment ceremony,” FJ said. “Animals, particularly those of two different species, don't exactly have equal rights under the law.”

“Do you think they should?” I asked, tongue-in-cheek, of course, but with a mind toward FJ, who'd always had a generally more sensitive nature.

He shrugged. “If you want to get married, you should be able to get married.”

“Especially if you're going to have a wedding like that,” Trent said. “The mall chicks were hot and those rainforest-themed appetizers rocked.”

“The deviled eggs with the seeds or whatever on them were really good,” FJ said.

“So were the fried bananas.”

“I have a question,” I said as Gerald and Joyce strolled ahead of us, hand-in hand and just out of hearing range. “About the opposite of marriage.”

“Oh jeez,” Trent said. “Here it comes.”

“Seriously,” I swallowed hard. “How do you guys feel like you're holding up in all this?”

“Well,” FJ said. “This divorce thing totally sucks.”

“I'll admit I kinda hate that you and Dad are splitting up, and I really hate that we're selling the house,” Trent said.

“But we get it,” FJ said in an octave slightly too high to be truthful. “I mean, what choice do we really have?”

We walked in silence past Macy's, Things Remembered, and PacSun while I fought the urge to cry and the boys thought whatever else they were thinking but weren't willing to say.

“You okay, Mom?” FJ finally asked as we exited the doors to the north garage.

“Fine,” I said, even though I wasn't.

I was even less fine when I reached my car.

_____

Eloise handed me a neon green sticky note. “This was on your
windshield.”

Clearly she'd already shared it with Joyce, Gerald, and Barb, who all seemed frozen in place, their eyes huge and awaiting my reaction.

Joyce's face was the Botoxed equivalent of a terrified question mark.

I read the handwritten, all-caps message and knew there could be no doubt it was intended for me:

I'M STILL ALIVE, BUT IF PUSH COMES TO SHOVE AGAIN, SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT NOT BE.

SOMEONE LIKE YOU.

seventeen

I stood beside Detective
McClarkey as one officer dusted for prints and another dropped the Post-it into an evidence bag.
Never mind that pretty much everyone in the Michaels family had already handled the note.

“And you say you got that email from this CC person, when?” he asked.

“Yesterday,” I said, scrolling through my phone until I located the email and handed it to him to see. “Exactly forty-five minutes after I got home from the police station.”

“
All's well that ends well
,” the detective repeated, reading the message.

Gerald nodded in seeming agreement.

“I told you that CC person was dangerous,” Joyce said.

With my car currently at the center of a CSI investigation, any hopes I'd had of speaking to Detective McClarkey out of the earshot of an opinionated audience vanished. I'd barely been able to convince Joyce that a discreet call to the police station was preferable to dialing 911 and having the police cars arrive with sirens a-blazin'. There was no convincing anyone (particularly Eloise, who insisted that none of them were going to leave my side) that it really was okay to squish any, much less all eight of them, into the rental car that seated five and go on home.

“We'll make sure she's safe.” Detective McClarkey said, looking at me. “I'll personally make sure.”

“I should hope so,” Barb sniffed.

I should have been furious at the detective for dismissing me the way he had yesterday, but he looked so contrite and even worried now that I couldn't help but feel ever so slightly gloaty.

“I'm sorry, Maddie,” he said rubbing his hands through his graying crewcut. “There's little doubt
this
was an accident.”

“It was all by design,” I said. “At least according to Alan Bader.”

“Meaning what?” McClarkey asked.

I hated having to unload the whole story when Alan hadn't even wanted to go to the police, but a Post-it with a death threat counted as solid proof for me. Considering the killer decided to leave the message on my windshield while I was chauffeuring a car full of relatives, it wasn't like I had much of a choice, either.

“At first, I was sure Alan was insane or at least profoundly sleep deprived, but he really thinks the accident was engineered by a corporation determined to devalue Bargain Barn and take him over.”

“Murderous corporate raider?” Joyce asked.

“Sick, huh?” Trent said.

“You knew about this?” Eloise looked that much more distressed.

“Mom asked us to do a little bit of cyber-snooping for her,” FJ added. “We found out that CC was writing from different email addresses.”

“You boys did a nice job,” Detective McClarkey said before anyone else could chime in.

“The whole idea that a corporation would mastermind something of this nature still seems outlandish to me, and I'm not saying I buying it entirely, but after we realized the emails weren't coming from the same place …”

“This whole situation is really freaking me out,” Eloise said, her voice husky with the threat of tears.

“It's okay, honey,” Gerald said, putting his arm around her. “It's okay.”

“Not if Maddie's in danger, it isn't,” Barb added.

“I presume you'll be providing a security detail for her from here on out?” Joyce asked.

“Folks,” Detective McClarkey said holding up his hand. “I know you're worried and concerned, and I assure you I'll do everything in my power to make sure Maddie is taken care of, but I need to hear the whole sequence of events first so I can determine exactly what needs to be done.”

“Of course,” Joyce said.

“From her,” he clarified. “In fact, since they're about done looking over the vehicle—”

“Doesn't it need to be impounded or something?” Trent chimed in as another police car pulled up and a detective in Dockers and a sport coat stepped out to join us.

“I think we have what we need,” Detective McClarkey said, with a patience belied by the annoyance in his face and body language. “And now that Detective Ross, who headed up the Bargain Barn investigation, is here, we do need that detailed statement from Maddie, so I'm going to ask the rest of you to take the cars and go on home.”

“Should one of us hang back?” Joyce asked. “Just in case?”

“No.” McClarkey managed a tight smile. “That won't be neces
sary.”

_____

What was necessary was a full retelling of the whole story for the lead detective, starting with CC's snarky comments on my blog and working my way to the note left on the car.

Detective McClarkey stepped in with the details about my visit to the station, again apologizing to me and re-explaining his motivation to not make me look suspicious for no reason.

When I'd finished, Detective Ross nodded, put his pencil and pad away, thanked me for the thoroughness, assured me they'd keep me out of harm's way, and (no doubt based on my history) asked me to please do the same.

In addition, I agreed not to discuss the case beyond filling in my family, but as the detectives conferred for a few minutes, I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Alan, who I felt also deserved to be updated.

Someone left a note on my car while i was at the Piggledy wedding at the mall.

Which said?????

I'M STILL ALIVE, BUT IF PUSH COMES TO SHOVE AGAIN SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT NOT BE. SOMEONE LIKE YOU.

Oh, lord! Are you okay?

Yes, but i'm afraid i had to call the police.

There was a delay. Then he replied,
Of course.

At least the police believe us now.

It's a start.

I'm sure they're going to want to talk to you.

I'm sure you're right.

Alan, I really am so sorry about all this.

“Maddie,” Detective McClarkey said, heading back in my direction.

Alan texted back.
Maddie …

Before I could read the rest, there was a screech of tires on pavement as a Mercedes came around the corner and pulled up beside me.

Frank's Mercedes.

He jumped out of the car.

“Maddie!”

eighteen

Before I knew it—
and
to the consternation of Detective McClarkey, who appeared to be interested, if not eager, to make up for yesterday by escorting me home—I was sitting in the passenger seat of Frank's car.

I was also nursing a headache that felt a lot more like a whole-body ache.

Somehow the reality—that there really was a killer, and that he/she/it knew where I was and what kind of car I drove—began to hit me in full force as we made our way home.

And apparently it was also hitting Frank, who made a point of thanking the detectives, assuring them that we lived in a gated community so there was no need to post an officer right outside the house, and going so far as to actually snap me into my seat belt.

“Let's get you home,” he said.

Without questioning me about how I was feeling, what I was thinking, or otherwise demanding anything out of me conversationally or otherwise, he patted my leg and started the car.

We drove in an oddly peaceful silence all the way home.

The silence was crushed the second we stepped into the house and entered the family room to find the entire Michaels gang seated on the L-shaped sectional, waiting for us like a news-hungry press corps.

“Have they figured out who left the note?”

“Do they have a cyber team assigned to CC yet?”

“Are there officers posted outside the house?”

“How soon do you think there'll be an arrest?”

“The police are in the process of reevaluating Cathy Carter's accident in light of the note,” Frank announced. “And we're not supposed to talk about anything we do or don't know to anyone but each other.”

“What about Maddie's safety?”

“I'll make sure of it.”

“But—”

“But Maddie's exhausted,” he said firmly.

“Probably starved though too,” Joyce said. “Can I make you a sandwich, honey?”

“I think I'm okay,” I managed before Frank put his hand on my back.

“We'll debrief more in the morning,” he said. “She needs rest.”

With that, he waved off the family and directed me toward the front hall and up the stairs.

“I'm just going to make sure everything's secure in here,” he said following me into the master and heading toward the bank of windows on the east wall, where he began to check the locks.

“I'd like to take a shower,” I said.

“Go ahead,” he said. “I'll be right out here.”

“Okay,” I said, more meekly than I intended, continuing on toward the bathroom and closing the door behind me.

When I emerged nearly a half hour and a hot shower later, Frank was not only still there, as promised, but he'd turned down my side of the bed.

“Let's get you tucked in,” he said, reaching for my hand.

For the briefest of seconds, I flashed back to a time not so long ago when heading to bed with my husband was a pleasant, mundane, utterly normal part of my daily routine. “Frank, I—”

“I like the pajamas, by the way,” he said leading me over to put my phone on the charger and slip under the sheets.

The pajamas, black with white polka dots and purchased on clearance at Macy's using a 20%-off coupon and a $20 customer loyalty rebate, had cost a total of $4.99. Given Frank's preference for nightgowns on me, they not only represented a true Frugasm deal-wise, but my newfound freedom to wear whatever I wanted to bed.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You're welcome.”

I pulled up the covers. “I'm good, now. I think.”

“Great.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “But I'm not going anywhere.”

“Frank,” I sighed. “I really do appreciate every thing you're doing, but—”

“But now you're in danger,” he said.

“Not here, not in the house.”

“Look, Maddie. I know you way too well to think you'd even consider trying to work things out with me without a lot of thought and consideration, but I can't live with myself if I don't do everything in my power to make sure you're safe and sound while you're thinking about it.”

“This feels awkward,” I said. “I feel awkward.”

He smiled his charming crooked smile. “Just think of me as your bodyguard.”

For the briefest of moments, I allowed myself to remember what it was like when we did share the bedroom. How safe and protected I'd felt with him beside me in the bed at night. I couldn't help but muse about how much easier it might be to just give in and give Frank another try. Righteous anger or no, my future would be that much less up in the air. And the kids would certainly be happier.

Wouldn't they?

I took the deepest of breaths.

“Can I take that as a yes?”

“It's an, I'm thinking about it.”

“Good,” he leaned forward and kissed me gently on the forehead. “Because I'm not taking no for an answer. Not tonight, anyway.”

As I rubbed absently at the spot where his surprisingly cool lips met my skin, he stood, took a few steps and sat down in the overstuffed chair beside the bed.

“Maddie,” he said, pulling a throw from the arm of the chair over himself. “I really am just so, so sorry for all of this.”

“I know,” I said.

“Time for some rest,” he said, leaning his head against the back of the chair and closing his eyes.

Somehow, despite how tired I was, I couldn't get settled in, much less sleep.

Instead, I grabbed my cell phone. Not allowing myself to check Mrs. Frugalicious or the associated email account, I remembered that I hadn't read the addendum to Alan's last text.

It simply said:

No need for apologies.

As Frank began to snore softly, I wondered how many times he would have to apologize and how long it would take before I could finally forgive him.

While I feared the answer was never, the events of the evening, starting with Joyce's startling admission and suggestion, definitely had me thinking I had to at least give it a try.