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She let them in with her key and poked her head around the door. The house was silent.
“Hello?” she inquired cautiously. No answer.
Maggie took a few more steps inside and shouted a greeting once more, this time with a little more oomph. Still no answer. In fact, the house was as silent as a grave. Good. It seemed that Cain had left with his friend Mackenzie after all.
Her shoulders relaxed as she dropped her cooler and turned to her son. “You know the drill, buddy.” She nodded toward the back of the house, where the kitchen was located. “Grab an empty bag and collect the garbage.”
Michael scampered off, his sandals squeaking along the ceramic tiles.
Maggie cleaned Lauren’s house every Friday. It was too large to do the entire place in one visit, so the job was broken down into parts. The main floor and kitchen were done every week, but she alternated the bedrooms upstairs with the finished basement on each visit.
She headed to the laundry room. It was located on the main floor, just off the garage entrance. She peeked into the garage first—Lauren’s black Mercedes was gone—before proceeding down the hall.
Today there were no linens; however, a pile of freshly laundered towels was folded on the dryer. Maggie scooped them into her arms, left the set of blue ones near the stairs leading to the basement—they belonged to the small guest bath down there—and carried the rest to the upper level. There were three bedrooms up here: the master, located straight ahead, and a guest room on either side of the stairs.
Maggie put away Lauren’s towels and spent the next half hour cleaning her bathroom. When she was done she moved to the guest rooms. One of them would need cleaning for sure. Her son had smelled like a damn brewery.
The room to her right hadn’t been used. The bed was undisturbed and the connected bathroom spotless. She gave it a quick dusting and moved on, shouting down to Michael to bring up the vacuum.
She stepped inside the second guest room and looked around in surprise. It too was spotless. A quick check of the adjoining bathroom told her the same thing. Neither one had been used. She shrugged. Maggie had no time to ponder the mystery of where Cain Black had laid his head the night before. For all she knew, he’d left or had gotten a more interesting offer.
From what she’d observed, the man had garnered the lion’s share of attention at the Edwardses’, even though he’d spent most of the evening outside with his friends. The women had been gaga over him. She’d heard the comments about his looks, his somewhat racy past, and his newly single status.
Who’s to say someone hadn’t dropped by after she let him off?
Maggie was willing to bet that a man as good-looking and charismatic as Cain Black didn’t sleep alone too often.
She grabbed the vacuum from Michael and instructed him to dust the blinds on the main level while she finished up.
“Are you sure you don’t mind being here with me today?” she asked suddenly, before he’d cleared the stairs. “What did Tommy have planned?”
Michael smiled, a dimple puncturing his right cheek. “It’s all right, Mom.” He shrugged. “They all left for sleepover camp anyway.”
He ran down the stairs, and Maggie stared after him, a twinge of sadness tightening inside her heart. She wished that Michael could go to sleepover camp and play hockey or have the latest Xbox game or whatever it was the kids were into these days. But her reality was such that it wasn’t happening anytime soon.
It was a good thing that her lack of funds bothered her much more than it did her son.
After she vacuumed, Maggie headed downstairs and attacked the kitchen with vigor. Michael settled in to watch TV in the family room, and they chatted during the commercial breaks.
It was nearly three thirty when she finished, and Maggie was hoping they’d be able to catch the four o’clock bus. They had a good fifteen-minute walk to the bus stop, since it didn’t come as far as Lauren’s house, so they’d have to get cracking. She pocketed the envelope left for her and hung the damp rag over the gooseneck faucet to dry.
She turned and spied the blue towels sitting near the basement steps. “Michael, I’ll be right back. I’m just going to run something downstairs.”
Maggie scooped up the towels and headed down. It was dark and cool. She shivered as the air rushed along her damp skin. The basement was a huge open space with a pool table and bar located at the far end and a sitting area to her left that featured the largest flat-screen television she’d ever seen.
Lauren had once confessed she never watched the damn thing and only kept it because it had belonged to her deceased husband.
Maggie smiled wryly. Typical. What was it with men and the size of their toys?
She hurried ahead toward the last door on the right, which led to a small office with an adjoining bath. The handle turned beneath her fingers, and she stepped inside. There were no windows in this particular room, so it was pitch-dark. She bit her lip and squinted. Usually a night-light illuminated the room.
Crap. Where was the light switch?
Her fingers crept along the wall to the right but came away empty. Maggie didn’t clean the room often, because it didn’t get used unless Lauren was entertaining, but she knew the bathroom was to her left.
She stepped forward, and her foot landed among a tangle of something on the floor. Shoes, maybe? She tried to balance, but her other foot got caught as well. A curse slid from her lips as she fell, and her hands reached blindly for anything to grab hold of. But there was nothing, and she cried out, twirled crazily, and went down hard, a loud crack echoing inside her head as her skull glanced off something sharp and unyielding.
She rolled to the side and took a second to get her bearings. Her eyes blinked rapidly, and her lungs grabbed for the air that had been knocked from her chest as she hit the floor. Maggie groaned. Pain splintered along her head, and her fingers touched the tender spot near her temple. She felt something wet and knew it was blood.
