Mad Love: Madison (29 page)

“This is probably a long shot, but would you
recognize him if you saw him today?” Ethan asked.

Roger looked thoughtful. “Probably. I spent some
time with him when my computer broke down one time. It got infected with some
sort of virus. I took it down to the computer repair shop but they couldn’t do
anything with it, so I took it to Alex.”

“Why him?” Madison asked.

“Todd told me that there was nothing that Alex
couldn’t do with a computer. Todd was always talking his brother up, telling me
how smart he was. How funny he was. I don’t know about any of that, but he was
right about Alex’s computer skills. Alex got it up and running again within a
few hours. Saved everything I had lost too.”

“So,” Ethan said, “you got to know him pretty
well then.”

Roger laughed. “He got to know me, maybe, since I
did all the talking. Alex barely said a word to me the entire time. I doubt he
would have even helped me if his brother hadn’t insisted. Todd had all the
personality. But you know what? Alex could be just as friendly as his brother was
when he needed to be. A few weeks after my computer broke, he asked for my help
with something—don’t really remember what,” he said scratching his head.
“Anyway, he was so nice and polite and talkative. Friendly as could be. It was
like I was dealing with a completely different person. Then as soon as I helped
him, he dropped the act and went back to ignoring me.” His brow furrowed. “He
was just so strange. Made me nervous. I was relieved when he disappeared.”

“When did he disappear?” Ethan asked.

Roger lifted his gaze to the ceiling as he
thought. “About nine or ten years ago. The same day Natalie Abbott died.”

Madison shifted around in her seat. “Who’s
Natalie Abbott?”

“Todd’s wife,” Roger and Ivy said at the same
time.

Ethan and Madison exchanged a surprised look. “I
didn’t know he had been married before,” Madison said.

Roger took a cookie off the plate and took a
bite. When he was done, he shook the cookie crumbs off his hands. “He married
Natalie right after they graduated from high school.”

Ivy stood up suddenly. “Hang on a minute; I have
a picture of them. Be right back,” she said, bustling from the room.

“They got married at the hotel.” Roger smiled
proudly. “I got to be in the ceremony. Someone else backed out at the last
minute and I fit the tux.”

Ivy walked in holding a leather bound family
album. She leafed through the pages for a second until she came across a
picture of Todd standing in front of a preacher. A pretty girl with dark
flowing black hair and a long white dress held his hand.” Ivy turned the page.
A close up of Todd and the girl appeared.

“He definitely had a type,” Ethan said out of the
side of his mouth.

Ivy tilted her head as she peered at Madison. She
turned to her husband. “Who does she look like to you?”

Roger squinted his eyes as he examined Madison
with a frown. “No one I know.”

His wife scowled at him. “What do you mean? She
is the spitting image of Barbara.”

“Oh, you’re crazy. Barbara was much taller.”

“Who’s talking about height? Look at her face.”

The old man tilted his head the other way before
shaking his head.

She turned back to Madison. “He doesn’t know what
he’s talking about. You look just like Todd’s mother.”

“No, she don’t,” her husband pronounced.

Exasperated, his wife said, “She had long black
hair just like this girl.”

“So does our grandson,” Roger said with a cackle.
“Don’t mean they look alike.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Ivy said with a dismissive
wave of her hand. “He’s got cataract surgery coming up. He can’t see anything
right now. You look like her.” She sat down again next to her husband. “Natalie
kind of resembled her too.” She quivered in disgust. “Sick if you ask me. I
never liked that boy. There was just something wrong about him.”

Madison couldn’t agree more. “How did Natalie die?”

“Someone stabbed her,” Ivy said with a sad shake
of her head. “It was awful. Such a pretty girl too.”

“Did Alex kill her?” Ethan asked.

“No one knows,” Roger said. “We just know he
disappeared right around the time she died. They ended up arresting some
drifter who was hanging around the train tracks, but I know it wasn’t him. I
even testified at the trial that I thought it was Alex, but no one believed me.”

Ivy’s lips pursed together. “They called him a
liar.”

“Now, they didn’t call me a liar,” her husband
protested.

Ivy pursed her lips together into a tight line. “Oh,
yes, they did.”

“Who?” Madison asked.

“The Abbotts,” Ivy said. “They all said that Alex
hadn’t been living at the inn and they hadn’t seen him since he was a kid. They
perjured themselves one after another to protect that kid.”

Roger patted his wife’s hand. “They weren’t
protecting Alex. They were protecting themselves. Allison and Neal were
scared.”

“They weren’t the only ones,” Ivy said with a
shiver. “We slept with a gun next to our bedside table every night since, but
Roger still did the right thing and testified as to what he knew. Don’t tell me
fear kept them from telling the truth. They were protecting their reputation.”

“What sort of evidence did the prosecution have
against the defendant—the drifter?” Madison asked.

Roger folded his arms across his chest. “Allison
and Neal testified that they saw the guy following Natalie around right before
she was murdered. I don’t believe that for a second. They didn’t even know he
was hanging around until I mentioned it at the funeral. He got life, but he
appealed the case. They let him out on some kind of technicality a few years
back. Spent five years in prison. It’s too bad he spent that much time in
prison since he was innocent.”

“What makes you think Alex was the murderer?”
Ethan asked.

“He hated Natalie,” Roger said solemnly. “Right
before she died, I heard her tell Todd that she didn’t want him hanging around
his creepy brother and that he was going to have to make a choice. They started
getting into it and then she told him that she was leaving him. Well, that made
Todd mad, so he hit her and told her that he’d kill her before he let her leave
him. She started to fight back and then that’s when he began to choke her. It
took both me and Neal to pull him off her. I’d never seen Todd act like that
before.”

Ivy crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I had.
He could go from zero to sixty just like that,” she said snapping her fingers.
“Allison and I were in the garden when we heard the men yelling at each other.
As soon as I heard the ruckus that was going on, I called the police and they
hauled Todd off to jail.”

“About an hour later,” Roger said, “I found Natalie’s
body by the train tracks. Well, it was pretty obvious she had just been murdered,
so I started looking around and there was Alex standing at one of the windows
upstairs looking down at me. Never saw Alex after that. I hope I never have to
see him again.”

 “If I were you two,” Ivy said, “I’d go talk to Allison
and make her tell you where Alex is. I bet she knows.”

Roger made a face at his wife. “Allison’s not
going to talk to them. She’s too proud. You know the way Todd turned out—going to
prison for trying to murder this girl,” he said gesturing to Madison, “—it embarrassed
Allison. She’s not going to want to be reminded of it.”

“She ought to get over herself,” his wife
grumbled. “Everyone in town knows what happened. Pretending it didn’t won’t
wipe out anyone’s memories.”

“No, it sure won’t,” Roger agreed, “but she still
won’t talk about him or his brother.” He turned back to Ethan and Madison. “Neal
might, but you have to get him away from Allison first.” He leaned forward a
bit conspiratorially. “There’s a pool hall about a block from here. Neal likes
to sneak off around about five and go down there to have a few drinks so his
wife doesn’t know.”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “Allison would have to be blind
as a bat not to know that. He comes stumbling home around midnight every
night.”

“He don’t come stumbling home at midnight,” Roger
argued. “He’s not that bad.”

Ivy grumbled something unintelligible.

“Go talk to Neal,” Roger said to Ethan. “I doubt
he’s kept in contact with Alex, but you never know.” His eyes softened as he
looked at Madison. “I hope you find Alex, Miss. I really do. There’s just
something not right about him.”

4:30
P.M.

Madison
sat on the bed and balanced her computer on her knees. After speaking to Roger
and Ivy, they had found a nice little restaurant near the interstate, had
dinner, and talked to some of the locals. Only a few had known Todd and no one
admitted to knowing Alex.

So, after dinner they returned to the inn with
the hopes Neal would be more willing to talk about Todd and Alex than his wife was.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, Allison must
have forewarned Neal about Madison and Ethan’s presence. While polite, he made
sure to change the subject whenever Alex’s name was brought up. It wasn’t until
Allison joined them that Ethan finally threw in the towel and they retreated to
their room.

Less than ten minutes later, a note addressed to
Ethan slid under their door.

According to the hastily scrawled message, Neal wanted
to meet Ethan at the pool hall in ten minutes.

Deciding that Neal might be more willing to open
up to another man about his nephew’s problems, Madison decided to stay back.

She looked down at her laptop with a grimace. There
was absolutely nothing on the web or in any of the legal databases that she had
access to about Alex Sampson or Alex Abbott. She doubted she’d be able to find
much about Alex’s juvenile record since those types of records were always sealed,
but she had hoped something more recent would turn up.

It was becoming clear that he had a nasty habit
of leaving a trail of dead bodies wherever he went, but surely, he had been
arrested at some time
,
she thought with a sigh as she stared down at the screen.

When she didn’t find anything in the legal databases,
she decided to search for his name through news articles. The only ones that
appeared, however, had to do with his parents’ murderers and most of that
information they had gotten from Pearl the night before.

She leaned her head back against the headboard
and closed her eyes for a moment to rest. She had just started to relax when
she heard the sound of someone scraping something along the wall behind her
head.

Her eyes flew open and she turned to look over
her shoulder as the scraping sound returned. She followed the sound as it ran
from one end of the wall to the other.

Wondering what it was making the noise, she
leaned her head closer to the wall, but jerked back when she heard a loud thump
as though someone had hit the wall right next to her head.

She slid the computer off her knees and
cautiously glanced toward the connecting door between her room and the next.

The scraping started again, setting Madison’s nerves
on edge, as it went from the window to the connecting door and then stopping.

Madison curled her hands into fists as she waited
for whoever was in the other room to make another noise.

It’s not him
, she thought to herself.
He doesn’t
know I’m here. Even if his aunt called him, he couldn’t have gotten here by now.

Madison unclenched her fists and started to relax
as everything went quiet. She was just about to return to her computer when
there was a knock on the door.

She stared at the door for a moment before
cautiously approaching it and looking through the peephole.

Roger stood on the other side waiting for her.

Breathing a sudden sigh of relief at seeing a
friendly face, Madison opened the door. “Hi, Roger.”

He gave her a big smile. “I think I may have
found a picture of Alex. A current one too.”

Madison’s smile matched his. “That’s wonderful,” she
said holding out her hand.

Roger shook his head. “I don’t have it, but I
know someone who does. Zach Winters says he’s got one. Taken about six months
ago. I had no idea Alex was in town, but apparently he was here for a couple of
days before taking off again. Anyway, Zach says he’ll let you see it.”

“Oh, I could kiss you.”

“Aw, don’t get too excited just yet.”

“Why not?”

“Zach’s a bit of a pain in the…” He paused
stumbling over his words. “Pain in the neck I guess would be the polite way of
phrasing it. He’s the type that likes to cause trouble just for the sake of
trouble. That’s probably why he and Todd were as tight as thieves growing up.”

Madison crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“How much money does he want?”