Maddie poured German chocolate cake bubble bath into the running water and set a tube of chocolate-cake-scented body scrub on the side of the tub. She might not care about matching underwear or the brand name on her shoes, but she loved bath products. Scented potions and lotions were her passion. Give her a creamy scrub and body butter over designer clothes any day.
Naked, she stepped into the tub and lowered herself into the warm scented water. “Ahh,” she sighed as she slid beneath the suds. She leaned back against the cool porcelain and closed her eyes. She owned every scent imaginable. Everything from roses to apples, espresso to cake, and years ago she’d made peace and learned how to live with her inner hedonist.
There’d been a time in her life when she’d binged on almost anything that gave her pleasure. Men, dessert, and expensive lotions had featured high on her list. As a result of all that bingeing she’d developed a narrow view of men and a large behind. A very soft and smooth behind, but a big butt nonetheless. As a child, she’d been overweight and the horrors of once again hauling a wide load had forced her to change her life. The realization that she needed to change had happened on the morning of her thirtieth birthday when she’d woken up with a cheesecake hangover and a guy named Derrick. The cheesecake had been mediocre and Derrick a real disappointment.
These days she was still a hedonist at heart, but she was a nonpracticing hedonist. She still overindulged on lotions and bath products, but she needed those to relax and destress and to stave off dry, flaky skin.
She sank farther beneath the water and attempted to find a little peace for herself. Her body succumbed to the bubbles and warm water, but her mind wasn’t so easily quieted and continued to roam over the past few weeks. She was making real progress on her timeline and notes. She had a list of people mentioned in her mother’s last diary, the few friends she’d made in Truly and people with whom she’d worked. The county coroner from 1978 had died, but the sheriff still lived in Truly. He was retired, but Maddie was sure he could provide valuable information. She had newspaper accounts, police reports, the coroner’s find ings, and as much information on the Hennessy family as she could possibly dig up. Now all she had to do was talk to anyone connected to her mother’s life and death.
She’d discovered that two women her mother had worked with still lived in town and she planned to start with them tomorrow morning. It was past time she talked to people in town and unearthed information.
The warm water and scented bubbles slid over her stomach and the bottom swell of her breasts. Reading those diaries, she could almost hear her mother’s voice for the first time in twenty-nine years. Alice wrote about her fear at finding herself alone and pregnant and her excitement over Maddie’s birth. Reading about her hopes and dreams for herself and her baby had been heartbreaking and so bittersweet. But with the heartbreaking and bittersweet discoveries, she’d learned that her mother wasn’t the blond-haired, blue-eyed angel she’d created in her child’s head and heart. Alice had been the sort of woman who had to have a man in her life or she’d felt worthless. She’d been needy and naive and eternally optimistic. Maddie had never been needy, nor could she recall a time when she’d been naive or overly optimistic about anything. Not even as a child. Discovering that she had absolutely nothing in common with the woman who’d given her birth, nothing that tied her to her mother, left her empty inside.
Early in life, Maddie had developed a hard shell around her soul. Her tough exterior had always been an asset while doing her job, but she didn’t feel so tough today. She felt raw and vulnerable. Vulnerable to what, she didn’t know, but she hated the feeling. It would be so much easier if she tossed the diaries and wrote about a psychopath by the name of Roddy Durban. She’d been writing about the nasty little bastard who’d killed more than twenty-three prostitutes right before she’d found the diaries. Writing about Roddy would be a hell of a lot easier than writing about her mother, but the night that Maddie had taken the diaries home and read them, she knew there was no turning back. Her career, while not always carefully calculated, had not been random. She was a true crime writer for a reason, and as she’d pored over her mother’s overly feminine handwriting, she knew the time had come to sit down and write about the crime that had left her mother dead.
She turned off the water with her foot and reached for the body scrub on the side of the tub. She squirted the thick sugar scrub into her palm and the scent of chocolate cake filled her nose. With it came the unbidden memory of standing on a chair next to her mother and stirring chocolate pudding on the stove. She didn’t know how old she’d been or where they’d lived. The memory was as tangible as a wisp of smoke, but it managed to deliver a punch to the lonely place next to her heart.
Bubbles clung to her breasts as she sat up and lifted her feet over the side of the tub. Obviously, she’d failed to find the calm and comfort she usually found in her bath, and she quickly exfoliated her arms and legs. When she was through, she got out of the tub and dried off, then she rubbed chocolate-scented lotion into her skin.
She tossed her clothes in the hamper and walked into her bedroom. Her three closest friends lived in Boise, and she missed meeting them for lunch or dinner or impromptu bitch sessions. Her friends Lucy, Clare, and Adele were the closest thing she had to a family, and the only people to whom she would consider giving a kidney or loaning money. She was fairly certain they would return the favor.
Last year when her friend Clare had discovered her fiancй with another man, the other three friends had rushed to her house to talk her off the ledge. Out of the four women, Clare was the most kindhearted and easily hurt. She was also a romance writer who’d always believed in true love. For a time after her fiancй’s betrayal, she’d lost her faith in the happy-ever-after until a reporter by the name of Sebastian Vaughan came into her life and restored her faith. He was her very own romance hero, and the two were getting married in September. Maddie had to drive to Boise in a few days to be fitted for her bridesmaid dress.
Once again she was allowing one of her friends to deck her out in a ridiculous dress and make her stand up at the front of a church. The year before she’d been a bridesmaid at Lucy’s wedding. Lucy was a mystery writer and had met her husband Quinn when he’d mistaken her for a serial killer. Long story short, he hadn’t let a little thing like homicide stand in the way of his pursuit of Lucy.
Out of the four friends, that left herself and Adele still single. Maddie pulled on a pair of black cotton panties and tossed the towel on the bed. Adele wrote fantasy novels for a living, and although she had her own man troubles, Maddie figured it was a lot more likely that Adele would marry before she would herself.
Maddie fit the large cups of her bra over her breasts and fastened it in back. In fact, she just didn’t see herself getting married. She wanted a kid about as much as she wanted a cat. The only time a man came in handy was when she needed someone to do some heavy lifting or when she desired a warm naked body next to hers. But she owned a sturdy hand truck and big Carlos, and when she had need of heavy lifting or sexual release she reached for one of them. Admittedly, neither was as good as the real thing, but the hand truck went back in the garage when she was through, and big Carlos got shoved back into her bedside table. Both of them stayed put and didn’t give her crap, play games with her heart, or cheat on her. Pretty much a win-win.
She stepped into a pair of jeans and then shoved her arms through the sleeves of her most comfortable hooded sweatshirt. She just didn’t have the same burning desires, or instincts, or clocks that drove other women into matrimony and childbirth. Which wasn’t to say that she didn’t get lonely sometimes. She absolutely did.