Free Finding Madelyn by Suzette Vaughn Page A

nightstand. She’d yet to have a visitor stay there but she had to do something with the extra room. It’d sat bare for nine months until she couldn’ t take it anymore. Two doors le d to the guest room, one from the parlor, and one from the hall that led upstairs.
    The only thing up there was her room. It took up the space of half the house. There used to be two small rooms but someone before her had taken out a wall and made it one. She had a large bed, a large closet, and a chair by the window that overlooked the backyard and her dock.
    She hoped that after tomorrow she would still be able to call this home and not a cell in Washington. She would tell Galen everything she dared and find out her fate from there. Either he would believe her and leave it at that. Or he would think she lied and drag her back to Washington. In that case, she would fight him every inch of the way. And she wouldn’t be fighting fair.
    She didn’t rest on the couch long, she still wanted a hot bath and a good book, both should distract her from tomorrow.
    The hot water poured from the ta p . She enjoyed the book in the bath until the water cooled off too much. Then she slipped into her nightgown and continued the book in the chair by the window of her bedroom.
    The phone rang and she stared at it trying to decide if she really wanted to speak to anyone. Frank was normally the only person who called her and she didn’t expect it to be him. Stan was allowing Galen local calls, but he’d already been turned down tonight.
    She put down the book and crossed to her nightstand. “Hello?”
    “Maddy,” Lucien didn’t sound happy. “I need you to come down here and help me out.”
    “Frank drunk , again?”
    “He’s got company this time.” Lucien wasn’t in the same jolly mood he’d been in when talking about the new guy in town.
    She sighed, “I’ll be down in a bit.”
    She slammed down the phone. At least when her father had gotten drunk he’d stayed at home. Of course, the way she’d been treating Frank since Galen got in town she didn’t blame him for letting off the steam. She just wished Lucien wouldn’t call her when he got rowdy at Ray’s.
    She pulled on trousers and a button up over her camisole and undies . No need to be fully dress ed , Lucian wouldn’t look that close and Frank would be too drunk to notice. She pulled the keys to her Buick of f the wall of the laundry room and went out the porch door.
    She didn’t like to drive but sometimes it was necessary to have a car to browse a market that was larger than Roy’s. That was why she’d bought it ; but she’d driven it more on Friday nights getting Frank from the drunk tank than heading out of town.
    She walked north across her property to the barn and opened both doors wide. The car took three tries to crank in the cold weather. Everyone told her to start it every now and again, but she never thought about it. It took a few minutes to warm it up.
    Frank wasn’t a drunk. She wasn’t being fair in the way she was thinking about him. But she didn’t need to worry about him with everything else that had been on her mind. He also wasn’t a mean drunk, not even as surly as her father had been. Still he knew how she’d felt about it.
    Slowly she pulled the car out of the barn . She could have walked but then Frank would be in her guestroom when Galen came over in the morning. And it would be hard to steer him down the road since he was drunk enough for Lucien to throw him in the tank.
    She parked right in front of the jail and walked in. The door hadn’t even shut when two whistles erupted from the cell. Followed immediately by laughter.
    Lucien had said he wasn’t alone this time. She assumed he meant Hollis was with him. Which he was, passed out asleep on one of the cots and half hanging off it. But Galen sat next to Frank with red eyes and a bloody nose.
    “Maddy’s got a car?” 
    “Yeah , but she doesn’t like to drive it. Which would be why she’s a