Maggie Dove Read Free Page B

the course of Halloween night, the whole village would stop by and grab a hot dog and talk and laugh.
    “Here’s some fortification, Dove,” Peter said as he walked in, carrying a tray loaded with tea and cookies. He set it in front of her, and then perched on the edge of her coffee table. That boy never sat down on a chair like a normal person.
    “Do you need to take a statement?” she asked.
    “No. He had a heart attack, that’s all. Don’t you worry. Even Campbell can’t make more of it than it is.”
    “You’ll call him, right? I don’t want you to get fired over this.”
    How he struggled to graduate from the Police Academy. Every course a challenge, except for guns and weapons, which he loved.
    “You won’t do anything foolish?” she asked.
    He laughed.
    “When have I ever been foolish?” he said, but now he jumped back to his feet and peered out the window.
    “Go,” she said. “Do your job. Don’t worry. I’m fine.”
    “You sure?” He looked at her so urgently.
    “Yes.”
    “We’ll be here a little longer. The widow wants to see him, but first she wants to dress appropriately. Why don’t you call Winifred?”
    He stood up, started to go to the door, then stopped to look at the very thing she’d been hoping he’d miss.
    “Hey, Dove. What are you doing with a rock by your window?”
    So he had noticed. She should have known; he was so much smarter than he ever liked to let on.
    “I was planning on throwing it at Bender,” she said, and he laughed.
    Why do people always laugh at the truth? she wondered.

Chapter 4
    Her house felt smaller after Peter left. Which made sense, Maggie supposed. Love expanded, hate contracted. She could hear Joe on her front lawn, the familiar caw of his voice. He always sounded like he was announcing a baseball game. Mr. Cavanaugh’s little dog was snarling. He acted so much bigger than he was. The dog, not Mr. Cavanaugh. She felt off-kilter. She paced around her living room, not certain what to do.
    Had she liked Bender, she would have wept. In the days and months after her daughter died, while other people assumed she was rudderless, she was, in fact, perfectly focused, which gave her days a rhythm. She grieved. That was all she had to do; didn’t need to eat, write, love, talk. In some ways she was more focused on her daughter after her death than before, because before there had always been the distraction of real life. But Bender was different; she couldn’t mourn him. Yet she couldn’t ignore him either. Couldn’t turn on the TV, or listen to music. Couldn’t eat. Would not do to have the smell of broiled steak floating over her lawn. Even she could not bring herself to be so coldhearted.
    Her heart pounded. She hoped she wasn’t having a stroke. A man was dead on her front lawn. A man she’d hated. She remembered then the feeling she’d had of being watched. The creaking twig. Her house was on a quiet street, the neighbors all a good distance from one another, excepting Bender, who had encroached. But between the trees and the darkness and the Van Dornes being preoccupied with themselves, the street was very quiet. Maggie shivered as she thought about someone standing there, watching her, judging her. Thinking about how cruelly she had treated that man. He had a wife, who was even now getting dressed before she viewed his body.
    What would she wear?
    What did she even look like? Maggie wished she could remember. She must have met Noelle Bender. They’d lived in that house for more than two years, after all. Yet she couldn’t conjure up any strong memory of her. Bender was so vivid that anyone standing alongside him would have paled. All she could envision was light brown hair and bare feet. She didn’t like to wear shoes.
    All Maggie really knew of Noelle Bender was that she wasn’t much of a gardener, nor much of an environmentalist. The lights in their house were on all the time and they didn’t recycle. And Tim Harrison, the garbageman,