While other dramas and hopes for the future played out, Megan Decrux had a more "secretive" evening as she returned to the home that Detective Miles Lukasky lived in. It wasn't something she had planned on or wanted, but the events that had played out the previous Halloween had brought out actions that she genuinely feared and had struck very close to where she lived. The death of her mother, Alice Decrux, had come at the tail end of her last efforts to try and have her "revenge" against men for being disloyal. It was a bitter scheme that Megan had always opposed when she was able to understand it, but had also been something that Megan had never been able to talk her mother out of. And to some degree, Megan had hoped that people actually understood the differences and disagreements that Megan had had with her mother, particularly when some of those arguments had been in front of witnesses.
But, her mother had remained on that path and in the course of messing with the newly arrived Jenkins family, had ended up dying in a car crash trying to flee Moon Lake when her car went off a cliff north of the town. The death did depress Megan a bit, as she'd long hoped to try and get her mother to see sense, and surprised her in that her mother had left practically everything to her, but it then brought its own form of terror. It started with a call late in the night after her mother's death and included a threat against her, with a gunshot being played into the phone call. It then escalated when someone had boobytrapped her car and it exploded when she hit a button on her key fab to unlock the doors. Were it not for Lukasky and his partner, she might have been killed and that frightened her greatly in that someone with a vendetta against her mother, or her mother's memory, could get that close and could have killed her had circumstances been different.
It scared her and frustrated her in many ways. The scary part was that someone was out to kill her and had been able to pinpoint her down. The frustrating point was that the potential killer was still out there and her job running the campus bookstore couldn't just let her not show up. The business was tied to the college, and she knew that the dean often could be quite accepting for various odd circumstances, but he wouldn't be that involved with regard to the college bookstore. That would go to the personnel and business management offices first before the dean would even see any notice of it. Thus she had sneaked out, on foot, after Detective Lukasky began his shift with the Moon Lake PD and then sneaked back to where he figured she would be safe from the one trying to kill her.
"You doing okay?" Lukasky asked as the two of them ate from a set of TV dinners that had been heated up in the microwave.
It wasn't what Megan preferred. She didn't eat fine food or anything like that, in this the simple menu that they offered wasn't the problem, but Megan had generally preferred to actually cook the food and not to heat what was cooked already. However, the detective was busy and had much longer hours than she did, and thus didn't always have time for a full meal and with no wife there was no one else to cook for him. Megan didn't offer as she didn't want to intrude or do anything that would make her appear like her mother.
"I'm fine... just nervous on all of this," Megan answered, "that someone would want to kill me and would not only look up my number but pinpoint my car to bomb it..."
"It's something to be concerned on," Lukasky answered with a nod, "particularly given that such things don't happen that often here... at least not on the scale that has happened."
"No... the things here are more often crimes of passion or coming from emotion," Megan sighed and looked down, "from a college student developing an unhealthy obsession with her married professor to my mother... seducing men for years. And now, I'm to pay for HER sins."
"My partner and I will do all that we can to catch the guy who's doing all this," Lukasky answered, "your mother's sins your mother's not yours."
Megan only quietly chewed on that for a moment. She was grateful for the detective's help and his offer to house her. Other than the nightmares that might connect her to her mother, things had been quiet and there were no one in the neighborhood had seemed to either notice her or draw any negative attention to her. It was something that reassured Megan in a way that the police detective would volunteer so much for her, even if there were some things where she had to be a bit more rebellious on to keep her job and her own personal responsibility. In some ways it reminded her of her normal neighbors at the apartments she normally lived in that had been kind to her and her coworkers at the college bookstore that also knew her personally.
She even remembered a run in with a young man that seemed open to offering help or comfort, even though she had no real knowledge on who the young man was. That was polite and friendly, but a part of her also felt that the young man hadn't heard the stories about her mother yet, and often it took some explaining to help newcomers understand that she wasn't like her mother. Some, like the new weretiger Harold Jenkins, accepted Megan's explanations while others didn't, and even those who did accept her explanation didn't suddenly jump toward becoming "best friends." Megan was also concerned that the young man she met was also a normal human entering college, and thus was well younger than her. Though it was his being a normal human that was the bigger concern, particularly while she was looking over her shoulder for a potential assassin. The attempt to blow her up in her car would have killed her, and that displayed a willingness to take life, and Megan didn't want anyone to get hurt over squabbles and issues that came back to her mother's issues.
"Eventually, Megan finished chewing and looked across the table to the Moon Lake PD detective, "can you at least tell me on what you've found out so far? You and your partner? Anything about where this guy is from or who he might be?"
"I can share some things..." Lukasky answered slowly, "though for the moment we don't have much... or at least not much that would be definitive, as a lot of this would involve a bit of digging into family history..."
"That the one that's tried to kill me is a half sibling or someone my mother wronged and turned getting revenge for what my mother did," Megan looked down.
"That's the prime motive that we have," Lukasky nodded, "as there were plenty that have at least been frustrated with the things your mother did, and because you kept her surname, didn't leave Moon Lake, and because your mother did at times call you when she had legal trouble... they would be willing to go for revenge."
"And between the men my mother turned and those she half siblings raised... there would have to be a long list," Megan put her head in her hands.
"We actually don't think that all the men your mother seduced would be involved," Lukasky answered, "as the number of potential Statue 1A cases are rather limited, and based on what you've told us and what we've found from the security footage from your apartment complex... the one who is your threat is a male, which limits the number of potential suspects that would be half siblings of yours by a bit. The list we have is decent... and it'll take some time to arrange the meetings to interrogate them all, but we think have things in hand enough to start on that project."
"And that's with the prime suspects?" Megan asked.
"Yes," Lukasky answered, "given that this started AFTER you were made aware of your mother's will... we had some concern that your mother's lawyer might have set things up to try and cash in on the will. But he struck us as rather professional and turned over the records his firm has had regarding the payments your mother made to him. Your mother was his only client in Moon Lake, BUT by his records, she's never jilted missed any payments and from some of the communications he also shared with us... it confirms to us what he stated when we asked... that the relationship between your mother and her lawyer was purely professional and that he had no wish for financial gain from her."
"So there's no sinister plan to get the money and things my mother left me... and largely stuff I don't want," Megan sighed, "too much of a connection to things I tried to get my mother to correct..."
"The plot may not be complex," Lukasky warned, "but it can still be serious. We'll try to track down and find who called you and who planted the bomb on your car. But you'll have to patient and to stay here where it'll be safe for you. For this guy won't try something that would risk bigger charges than what he's facing already."
"Uh-huh," Megan sighed, "and how long do you think that'll take?"
"We can't be sure right now," Lukasky answered, "and that's about all I can say for the moment."
Megan only sighed to that and then nodded.