storage unit. Some place where Bobby Daniels could have stored his trophies all these years until the day he got out.
“Let me have the bag,” Maggie said. A thrill ran through me. Maggie had put it all together, too. She and I were starting to think as one.
Daniels handed her the duffel bag, and she began running her fingers around the edge of the inside bottom and checking the zippered pockets. “Got it.” She produced a small brass key.
“I don’t know what that is,” Bobby said, panicked.
“It’s okay. I believe you. Just take a deep breath.”
“How did you know it would be there?” Bobby asked.
Maggie sounded surprised. “I don’t really know. I just thought of it.”
“What’s it for?”
“I don’t know that, either.” Maggie stared at the key. “Don’t tell anyone about this, Bobby. You got it? First I’m going to find out what it’s for.”
“Are you sure?” he asked her.
“I’m sure,” she said.
She was thinking the same thing I was—that someone had tried to frame Bobby and they’d wanted the fake evidence to be found with his body after they had killed him.
It was the kind of stupid, obvious plan that only a drunk like Danny could have dreamed up and thought he would get away with. But the only one who could have had access to Alissa’s yellow sundress was her real killer. Which meant Hayes had been in on it with Danny—and that he had killed Alissa and was probably planning to kill Danny, too.
I wondered who really would have been implicated in Alissa’s death. Hayes could just as easily have been setting Danny up.
Oh, Danny, I thought. You are in way over your head. How could you have agreed to help Alan Hayes? Didn’t you realize what that dress meant?
“I don’t get it,” Daniels said quietly. “What did I ever do to anyone?”
Maggie started the car and pulled away from the Double Deuce. “You just got in someone’s way,” she explained quietly. “That’s all you ever did. And we need to make sure you stay out of their way from here on out.” She glanced at Bobby. “I’m going to take the dress. Tell no one about it. And I want you to lock yourself in your room tonight.”
He evaded her eyes. “I’ll be okay. I’ve learned how to take care of myself pretty good. At least when I know someone is coming for me.”
Chapter 26
It was deep into the night by the time Maggie delivered Bobby Daniels back to the halfway house and decided for herself that the supervisor knew nothing about the plan to kill Bobby Daniels. She knew him from way back, it turned out, and he was appalled at the injury to Bobby, embarrassed at being tricked, and relieved when he learned Maggie intended to keep the whole thing quiet.
All he could offer was that the caller had been a man. “I should have known better,” he said. “I’ve had people try all sorts of scams. Calling up pretending to be parole officers. You name it. But Daniels is a free man. Why would anyone pull a stunt like that?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Maggie told him. “Can you just check on him tonight, take a look at that cut in the morning, and make sure he’s delivered to his parents in one piece?”
“You bet I can. He’ll be safe with me.”
I believed him. The guy was close to six and a half feet tall and well muscled. Bobby would be safe under his care, especially now.
Maggie made a phone call as soon as she returned to her car, despite the lateness of the hour. “It’s me. I’m only a few minutes away.” She paused. “Thanks. I’ll be right over.”
So, I thought, she has a lover after all. And though sexual desire had disappeared, apparently the desire for possession had not. I felt a stab of jealousy and brooded all the way to a house on the edge of a middle-class neighborhood. I recognized the block. I had once been called out there to chronicle the death of a young boy who had been hit by an ice-cream truck.
My god, had Danny and I really joked about that one? Danny had said to me in the car afterward, “If you’re a kid, that’s the way to go. It’s like me getting hit by an Old Crow delivery truck!” And I had actually laughed.
How had I been so lost?
Maggie sat in the front seat of her car for a moment after we reached the house,