"But you aren't buying it, are you? Not one hundred percent."
"No, I don't think I am. At least not completely. The more I learn, the more I realize—we realize—that the late Walter Bodkin's amorous adventures may have been the worst-kept secret in this relatively speaking small town. There was no real reason to go to the trouble to select your father from so many possible suspects, so many cuckolded husbands. Indeed, if the police would only let go their grip on their conviction that your father is their slam dunk, they would probably have at least two-score names to put on their suspects list."
Maggie sank back against the seat. "So Daddy does have an enemy. That's what you're saying, isn't it?"
"I'm saying, Maggie, that we cannot discount the notion that your father could have been the real target, and Bodkin tossed in as the victim as a sort of two-for-the-price-of-one, thus getting rid of the local lothario at the same time. Even if I can think of only one other person of my acquaintances I would consider less likely to ever cultivate an enemy than your father."
"Sterling," Maggie said, smiling slightly. "You know, I think I must have unconsciously patterned Sterling a little on my dad. Minus the being browbeaten, I mean."
"I would say that we should curtail their excursions about town, except that as long as your father remains the primary suspect, he's probably safe. If the charges against him were to be dropped, however, and he truly does have an enemy who is also already a murderer, we'll have to rethink the situation. In the meantime, I believe we've kept Mrs. Butts waiting long enough."
"Oh, right," Maggie said, reaching over to pull down the sun visor in front of Saint Just and checking her makeup, pushing at her hair. "How do I look?"
"No longer seventeen and vulnerable," Saint Just told her, taking her chin in his hand. "But let's do something about that mouth, shall we?"
Maggie tried to look in the mirror again, even as he held her chin steady. "My mouth? What's wrong with my mouth?"
"I don't think it has been kissed in at least two hours," Saint Just said as he leaned closer, took her mouth with his own. He sucked lightly on her bottom lip, then slanted his mouth as he ran his tongue around the sensitive skin behind her upper lip, smiling against her as she moaned low in her throat and pulled him even closer.
When he moved away from her, it was to see her with her eyes still closed, her mouth soft, moist, and faintly bee-stung. "There. Perfect."
Maggie opened her eyes. "Well, that was interesting," she said, and then sighed.
"Hmm, yes, although you might wish to explain why you taste, delightfully, of sugar," Saint Just told her, taking his handkerchief from his pocket and brushing at the bits of white powder and small particles of sugar littering the front of her coat. "And then tell me why you seem to be decorated with it as well."
"Henry. He gave me donuts when I saw him. I didn't want them, but he forced them on me."
"Held you down and shoved them into your mouth, did he? The unmitigated cad! Do you think I should call him out? Go-carts at ten paces?"
"Aren't you a riot? I'm hunting a killer with a guy auditioning to be a stand-up comic." Maggie pushed his hand away and opened the car door. "We're keeping Lisa waiting, remember?"
Saint Just smiled as he walked around the car to extract the walker from the backseat, and then bowed slightly as he unfolded it and presented it to Maggie, who seemed to feel it was time she checked to be sure that the bicycle horn Bernie had given her still worked.
Oooga-oooga.
"Move it, Romeo. I want to get this over with and get home to Dad, ask him a few more questions."
"Such as?" Saint Just asked her as he followed her up the short brick walkway to the Buttses' domicile.
"I don't know yet. But I'll think of something. In fact, maybe we should take Dad over to Mom's, and sit them both down, ask them both some questions."
"Put them together in the same room? My, aren't you the brave one today. Or is what I'm seeing an example of what I've heard termed a sugar high?"
"You're like a dog with a bone, aren't you, Alex? Yes, I ate two donuts. No, I'm not sorry. Yes, I know I told you I'm still trying to lose those last three pounds I gained when I quit smoking. Okay, four pounds." She stood back as he reached past her to bang the knocker three times, smiling down at her as he did so. "All right, all right, five pounds. I still have to lose five pounds. Happy now?"
"I don't recall ever putting forth the notion that I am unhappy, sweetings. You're soft to the touch, and I like that." He leaned closer, his mouth a mere inch from hers. "I like that very much."
The door opened just as Maggie's lips parted slightly.
"Alex, you're—oh. Maggie? Maggie Kelly? Wow, you've really changed, haven't you?"
Maggie had pulled herself erect on the walker and was now smiling at Lisa Butts. "Well, I got my hair cut, put in a few highlights, you know, and—um ... you haven't changed a bit, Lisa," she said, her smile so bright Saint Just knew that the poor girl was positively cringing inside at what had to be a blatant lie.
After all, Saint Just considered himself to be a connoisseur of the feminine sex, and if Maggie and Lisa Butts were of nearly the same age, had graduated high school in the same year, then something had gone wonderfully right in Maggie's life in the intervening years, while something had gone depressingly wrong in the life of the former chief cheerleader.
Lisa Butts had lines around her eyes, lines that only seemed to accentuate the dark circles beneath those eyes. Her lips, although wide and full, pulled down at the corners, as if they had forgotten how to smile. Her brown hair hung rather limply to just above her shoulders, her body was clothed in a too-large gray sweatshirt and black knit pants that bagged badly at the knees. Her bare feet were pushed into frayed satin slippers that may once, long ago, have been white.
It did not, as Maggie would have said, take a rocket scientist to determine that the years had not been kind to Lisa Meadwick Butts.
The photograph he had seen on the fireplace mantel during his first visit to the house, that of a much younger, immeasurably happier Lisa Butts executing a truly impressive leap into the air while thrusting her arms and some large pom-pom type things high in the air, could also be considered a clue to Lisa's unhappy state.
But Saint Just preferred to think he would have known all of this without also seeing the photograph.
"You want to come in?" Lisa asked, turning away from the door she left open behind her. "I've got fresh coffee on. Just go in there, to the living room, and I'll bring it right in, okay? How'd you break your ankle, Maggie?"
"Foot," Maggie called after her as she maneuvered the walker toward the living room. "I fell out of a tree in Yosemite National Park while photographing a white-breasted nuthatch and ..." she turned on Saint Just as Lisa disappeared down the hallway, whispering, "Holy cripes, Alex. What happened to her?"
"Life happens to people, sweetings. And life, I would deduce, has not been kind to Lisa Butts."
Maggie turned the walker and backed up until her calves were against an overstuffed chair covered in an unfortunate choice of imitation orange leather, and then sat down with a thump, sinking even lower as the sound of air being hissed out of the cushion was the only sound in the small room. "But she was head cheerleader. She married the captain of the football team. She had a charmed life ..."
"Here we go," Lisa said, reentering the room, this time carrying a tarnished silver tray holding the glass pot from a coffeemaker and three thick earthenware mugs. "I hope you take it black, Maggie. I'm out of milk and I can't go to the store until Barry—well, I can't go until later."
Saint Just neatly divested her of the tray and placed it on the table in front of the couch as Lisa smiled up at him, blushing, and sat down.