Megan Decrux lived in a rather small apartment on the east side of Moon Lake and had been woken up by a steady pounding on her door. She stretched and yawned as she climbed out of bed, wondering what it was. She wasn't completely isolated in Moon Lake, but she hadn't exactly had the greatest of lives, mostly due to her mother. She understood her mother's reasons for what her mother did, but Megan also knew that those actions had consequences and that the actions themselves weren't the greatest. Sadly, no matter how many times she'd tried to get her mother to put the past behind her and move on, the more the two had ended up arguing. It was one of the hard things that had come with the name "Decrux" and at times it was frustrating.
She donned a robe that she pulled over her nightgown and made her way to the door to her apartment where she found a uniformed officer from the Moon Lake PD standing there. He stood there rather nervously, but was relatively still and that wasn't a great sign. Usually something like that meant that her mother's attempts to get revenge on the male gender had gotten the attention of the law, and it was assumed that Megan was hiding her mother somewhere.
"My mother isn't here, officer," Megan said slowly.
"Actually... I'm not here looking for your mother, Ms. Decrux," the officer said slowly, "I'm afraid... I'm afraid I must be the barer of bad news."
That made Megan stop moving to shut the door. The officer didn't flinch and stood quietly for a few moments with a small frown on his face, which only made her feel a bit nervous. She knew her mother and her feelings had the potential to get her into trouble, and that trouble was something she'd tried to prevent and had caused some of their arguments, however, that didn't mean she didn't love her mother. While Alice Decrux was well known through many Moon Lake circles for her seducing men, turning them into wereraccoons and becoming pregnant as a result, she hadn't necessarily been a bad mother to the children that she'd bore. Alice did raise them and sent them to school and so on, and Megan did respect that much, and she did love her mother for caring for her.
It was only once she got into high school and wanted to know more about her father, whom she'd never seen, that Megan had begun to learn more about her mother's actions and "revenge" against all men for the actions of one jerk. It made for an embarrassing meeting with her biological father, who felt used by her mother and wanted nothing to do with her and then meeting the man's wife who's opinion of Alice Decrux wasn't any better. Alice, of course told Megan her side of the story, but while Megan could understand her mother's reasoning over what had happened to Alice in high school... that didn't justify what she'd done to earn the reputation she had. But still, her mother had raised her and that had to count for something, which had lead to Megan's own hopes to get her mother to try put the past behind her.
So far, that hadn't worked and her mother was up to her old tricks with the Jenkins family that had just moved to Moon Lake. She remembered talking to Harold Jenkins and sensing his anger and frustration at the fact that Alice Decrux had gotten the were he loved, or at least was attracted to, as part of the latest scheme to get even with all the men Alice Decrux had thought were like the jerk that left her high and dry in high school. On some levels, Megan felt her own frustration at not being able to get through to her mother. She then sighed and stepped back from the door.
"Come in, officer," Megan offered, "I'm still in my sleepwear and I'd rather not flash it to my neighbors."
The officer nodded and took a few steps in. It looked to be a two room apartment with a bedroom and a hybrid living-room/kitchen/dining room. There was probably a bathroom that was inside the bedroom and walled off, but he couldn't see that. He heavily noted that the spaces were rather Spartan in design. The walls were all a dull gray and there was a low bookshelf along the far wall, which was mostly full of romance novels from what he could tell.
"Would you like some coffee, officer?" Megan offered as she shut the door and then made her way toward the kitchen area.
"No," the officer said slowly, "I'm afraid I do not have the time."
Megan slowly nodded and ready her own coffee for the morning. Something didn't quite sound right with what was going on, but a part of her felt it was more likely that her mother had pulled some stunt and was expecting to be bailed out, just as had happened with regard to her fight with Virginia McCoy. In this, there was the time to ready a breakfast and figure out what she could do to convince her mother to reform herself. She'd tried therapy, but her mother had always refused.
"So... what's happened?" Megan eventually asked to the officer who nervously followed her and watched as she picked out her favorite coffee mug.
"I... I don't know how to say this... but... your mother... your mother is dead," the officer said slowly.
There was a silence for a moment, and the ceramic mug slipped from her fingers. The sound of it hitting the floor and shattering was the only sound that Megan heard for a few moments.
"What?" Megan began, her eyes widening and her mug shattered not even registering in her mind.
"Your mother has passed on," the officer repeated and looked down, "I'm... I'm sorry."
There was some nervousness on the officer's part. Truth be told, he'd heard plenty of the related stories on Alice Decrux and wasn't particularly fond of the woman, but Megan Decrux and her various half siblings from the actions that Alice Decrux had engaged in didn't have Alice Decrux's reputation. In fact he remembered when he went through college, Megan Decrux worked in the college bookstore and had been most polite to him, and there were some reports of arguments between Megan and Alice Decrux over the years. In that he was sorry for Megan Decrux in that dealing with Alice Decrux's shenanigans couldn't be easy.
"How... how did it happen?" Megan asked, fighting back tears.
"From what we have, she somehow smuggled her Love Potion Number Nine into the High School Dance yesterday," the officer said slowly, "We don't know for sure how man people were drugged, and by now that's not the issue. The issue is that it was in volition of the terms she was let out of jail with regard to her fight with Virginia McCoy and the attempted drugging of Harold Jenkins."
"I can understand that," Megan frowned, though more at the fact that the officer was bringing up things she was already fairly aware of, or at least with regard to the fight that lead to Harold Jenkins becoming a weretiger and that her mother had supposedly sent Love Potion Number Nine laced candy to him. She had no clue about the Halloween Dance.
"Anyway," the officer continued, "some time in the night, she decided to leave Moon Lake and drove north out of town. The officer assigned to monitor her and make sure she did arrive for her court hearing gave pursuit and the chase began from there."
Megan slowly listened and thought over the description. So far, she couldn't see any reason for her mother to have been killed, but then with the exception of the three circular streets that made up the inner rings of Moon Lake's wagon wheel shaped layout, the small connecting roads on the college campus that lead to the parking lots for the dorms and various buildings, the small level road that lead toward the campgrounds north of the lake for which the town was named, and some of the other small roads that lead to properties that were technically outside the city limits, all of Moon Lake's roads went in straight lines. Even Main Street and North and South Avenue ran in straight lines through Moon Lake. Of course, that was only within Moon Lake itself, which had been specifically engineered that way. Outside of Moon Lake, those roads would eventually have to make turns, particularly when it related to dealing varying parts of topography.
"He didn't shoot her, did he?" Megan asked, making sure that the police didn't do anything that would be improper.
"No," the officer answered with a heavy sigh, "the chase went outside Moon Lake's city limits and actually went several miles north of town. Eventually the road curved and she either lost control or over corrected for something and went off the road and down a ravine. The officer in pursuit found her dead at the scene."
Megan sighed and looked down for a moment. The death would be an accident in that case, but at the same time the things her mother had done over the years ran through Megan's mind. She'd tried to get her mother to see the err of her ways and change them for the better. And now that wouldn't ever happen at all. That was possibly the biggest problem that Megan wouldn't get the chance to find a way to heal her mother now.
"I'm sorry," the officer said to her.
"It's okay," Megan sighed, holding back tears, "Do you know when the body will be released?"
"That I don't know," the officer said slowly, "I think the chief is talking with her lawyer on that sort of thing right now."
That was finally what broken Megan. She broke into tears and came forward before pulling the officer into a hug and half pounded on his chest.
"I'd tried to get her to turn away from all this!" Megan declared, "Get her to see things right and go straight! If she didn't keep up with all this..."
Unsure on what to do, the officer only hugged her back as the woman cried into his shoulder.