Alex took a pristine white linen handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Maureen, who was now comforting her mother.
Maggie noticed that Maureen was allowed to do that. How silly she'd been, to try to step out from her typecasting. But, with a new clarity that had come from somewhere, Maggie wondered if that was her problem—or her mother's. And, if it was her mother's, then the woman had to be going nuts knowing that her husband, safely in his assigned "role" all these years, had suddenly stepped out of character.
"The victim's name?" Alex said, frowning. "I don't know that I have that, actually. Give me a moment to confer with Sterling."
He was back in a less than a minute, smiling slightly. "Sterling is now a junior detective, Maggie. He showed me his badge."
Even with her mother beginning to fall apart—a phenomenon Maggie could not remember ever witnessing—she had to smile as she glanced toward Sterling, who was proudly holding up a plastic badge. "Isn't that cute? I'm guessing they give them to all the kids," she said, waving and nodding at the lovable Sterling Balder. "So? The name?"
"Yes, of course. The deceased is one Walter Bodkin."
"Bodkin? There's a name for you," Maggie said, and turned back to her mother. "Mom? Do you recognize the—hey now, how about we sit you back down, okay? You're looking a little pale. Alex?"
Alex immediately guided Mrs. Kelly back down onto the bench, even as Maureen subsided beside her, also looking faintly sick.
"Mom?" Maggie asked again. "You knew this Bodkin person?"
Maureen giggled inanely, then burst into sobs.
Mrs. Kelly blinked, then blinked again. "My God, he did it. He killed him. And it's all my fault." She reached up blindly, grabbing for Alex's hand, clutching it tightly. "You're always involved in something scandalous, aren't you? You and Maggie? You and Maggie have to do something. You have to fix this. You have to help Evan. He killed him, and it's all my fault."
"Jeez Louise, Mom, why don't you say that a little louder—I'm not sure the cop at the desk heard you."
"But he did it, Margaret. Evan killed Walter. He did it for me."
It was like bad soap-opera dialogue. Maggie half expected the scene to freeze in front of her and then fade to black as the network went to commercial.
"Maureen," Maggie commanded, grabbing her wrist and giving it a shake. "Fall apart later, okay? Help me get Mom out of here before some cop hears her and wants to take a statement. Alex? Talk to the blonde and find out how I bail Dad out of this place. Mom? Come on, Mom, up an' at 'em. That's the girl. Let's walk you outside and let Maureen get you home ..."
Chapter Eight
Saint Just perched at his leisure beside Maggie on the arm of the chair in Alicia Kelly's large and rather floral living room, observing.
It had been more than two hours since he'd last seen Mrs. Kelly, and the woman seemed to be back under control. Which probably had gone far in reassuring Maggie that the entirety of her world hadn't turned upside down at the moment of her father's arrest for murder.
Just ninety-nine percent of it.
They'd seen Mrs. Kelly off with Maureen, and then rejoined the others in the police station, Saint Just more than willing to take charge of the situation. After all, that was why he was here in the first place, on this plane of existence. To be a supporting prop to his beloved Maggie.
Who, as it turned out, hadn't seemed to need him at all.
He smiled now as he remembered how she'd employed her walker to cut Cynthia Spade-Whitaker effectively from the herd, asking pertinent questions and then efficiently handling the phone call to the bail bondsman. She'd not so much as blinked when the attorney then named her exorbitant fee for services, promising to have funds transferred to the woman's firm the day after Christmas.
No, she hadn't even blinked. Maggie, parting with huge sums of money without an obvious show of pain. Truly an amazing sight to behold. One he should probably treasure, as he doubted it was something he'd see again any time soon.
But she'd gone beyond that, daring to push at the sergeant behind the main desk, badgering him until she was allowed to write a note to her father, inform him that he would soon be released.
She'd told Tate to go back to the house because their mother would probably want to see him, and then ordered him to stop somewhere and find some donuts and coffee for everyone, as they'd probably be awake the rest of the night.
She'd called their mutual friend, Manhattan police lieutenant Steve Wendell, and told him to take off his skis and get himself to Ocean City, because she needed him to get some of the Ocean City cops to talk off the record about the details of the alleged crime.
Her cell phone stuck to her ear seemingly forever, Maggie had also called Bernie, to warn her that Evan's arrest was bound to hit the newspapers within a few days' time, and that they could unfortunately count on Channel 5's Holly Spivak to make the connection between Evan Kelly and Maggie Kelly. And oh, yes, by the way, she'd also seemed to have won three million dollars, and that would probably make the newspapers, too.
A second warning call went to Tabitha Leighton, Maggie's literary agent. That one took longer, as Tabby and Maureen seemed to share a similar affection for tearful hysterics. Tabby had cried for "poor Evan." Then cried again at Maggie's jackpot win. The woman was an equal opportunity crier. Although, as she was first and foremost an agent, she had rallied enough to begin tossing out plans to somehow capitalize on the jackpot win—perhaps with an appearance on Letterman?
Maggie had called Socks, their friend and doorman, telling him they'd be extending their stay in Ocean City indefinitely, so could he please make sure to feed the cats as well as Sterling's mouse, Henry, and watch out for the package from Tabitha. Tabby always sent fresh fruit, always mailed it too late to arrive for Christmas, and she didn't want the box put in a warm room so that the condo smelled of overripe grapefruit when she got home.
Her attention to detail fairly boggled the mind. But she was, as the saying went, running hard on all cylinders, and he had never been quite so proud of her.
General Kelly, commanding her troops. She didn't ask anyone. She told them. She had been short, none too sweet, and to the point.
In precisely sixty-eight minutes, Evan Kelly was walking toward them via a doorway at the back of the small police station, blinking at the bright overhead lights and looking small, older than the last time Saint Just had seen him, and infinitely bemused.
He wore baggy mud-brown slacks that looked as if he regularly slept in them, and a gray sweater with patches on the elbows, buttoned up over the collar of a garish yellow shirt. His left shoe was untied. His left sock was blue. His right sock was black. His mostly gray brown hair stood up straight on the back of his head, as though he'd been sleeping. He carried an unfortunate-looking wool tweed coat over his arm.
If this was what two hours of incarceration had done to the man, clearly he could not be allowed to be returned to prison. Although that was still no excuse for the man's inexorable taste in clothing. "Batching it," as the man had been doing for the past nearly two months, since his separation from his wife, clearly had taken its toll. Perhaps Alicia Kelly had formerly laid out his clothing for him each morning.
Maggie had seen him, closed her cell phone on the conversation she'd been having with Lieutenant Wendell, to whom she'd been giving directions to Ocean City, and crossed the room to embrace her father.
She'd cried as she'd hugged him, audibly sobbed, but then quickly stepped back, wiped at her eyes, took a steadying breath, and got back down to business.