Читать книгу A Southern Promise - Jennifer Lohmann - Страница 12

CHAPTER THREE

HOWIE HADN’T INTENDED to offer Ms. Dawson anything but his sympathy and a handkerchief, but somewhere between when the reality about her aunt had sunk in and now, he’d opened up his arms and she’d practically crawled onto his lap, sobbing into his shirt. Which was fine, he guessed, because there was no way the square of cotton she clutched in her fist by his ear would do anything but run away like a frightened hound dog from the amount of tears pouring from her.

He rolled the tips of his fingers along the inside of his collar, which was damp from sweat. He had left the door open, but the slight breeze wasn’t enough to make up for the greenhouse the car had become. Or for the damp warmth of her tears, the heat and softness of her body against his, the spicy, musky scent of her hair so close to his nose.

Christ. One of the first rules of good detective work was that everyone is a suspect until proved otherwise. And that included Julianne Dawson, née Somerset, who had grown up as Durham’s princess. Even though big tobacco had left the city, the Somerset family still owned large swatches of land.

Julianne Dawson was as likely to have murdered her aunt as anyone. A stabbing meant the crime had been personal. And the messiness of it suggested that the person had expected stabbing someone to death to be easier than it was. Durham’s princess probably didn’t have much experience with the force required to break through human skin.

Duty required him to keep that thought front and center, though it didn’t stop him from resting his chin on the crown of her head and filling his lungs with her rich smell.

Howie sat up straight, distancing himself from her. He didn’t quite push her away, but he didn’t pull her along with him, either, as he leaned out the door and asked Henson to turn up the AC. Even after Henson moved away, Howie kept his face to the open door, letting the breeze blow away any preconceptions he had about Julianne Dawson and her family.

The only thing that mattered was whether the woman curled up in his arms had killed her aunt. Instinct told him no, but instinct was also a fool who’d encouraged him to lean over and sniff her hair.

Once he could feel tendrils of cooler air work their way into the backseat, Howie leaned back into Julianne, easing her upright and pulling the door closed again. The movement seemed to be the jolt she’d needed to stop crying. She pushed his left arm. When he released her, she scooted away from him, her face a mess of tears and some emotion Howie couldn’t put his finger on. Something buried under her grief. Embarrassment, maybe? From the other side of the patrol car, she reached out, offering the handkerchief back to Howie. He shook his head. “You might still need it. And you needn’t return it to me today. We’ll be talking again.”

She nodded, and it looked as if the movement hurt. She held herself stiffly, as if any movement might hurt. Or maybe she was afraid. Her arm was still extended out between them, rigid, to match the tension in her face, while the white cotton hung lazily.

Howie wanted to pull her back into his arms and comfort her. He wanted to know her well enough to have a pet name for her—Annie maybe. But neither was possible. While her eyelids blinked rapidly, his mind skimmed through all the reasons she had to be afraid, stopping at the ones that involved her aunt’s death and picking over them. He didn’t stop until she drew her arm back and his desire to grasp hold of her hand dimmed.

“I’ll be happy,” she said, then choked on the word, folding her hands in her lap, worrying the fabric with her fingers, “to talk with you at your convenience.”

“If you’re up for it, I’d like to ask you some questions now.” He said the words gently, but he could tell by the widening of her eyes that they both knew he was going to ask her questions, whether she was up for it or not.

For a split second, defiance flashed over her face. He knew the look, had seen it a million times in his job. She was about to insist that she be allowed to call the mayor. Insist that she be allowed to go home and schedule this meeting at her convenience, on her turf. Insist on privileges owed to her because there was a line between citizen and public servant, and she was on the right side of it.

Then her features settled back into grief and resignation. “Of course,” she said, twisting the square of cotton. Despite the temptation to save his handkerchief, Howie didn’t snatch it out of her hands. He was banking on her telling him enough useful information that losing his handkerchief—or its being returned in pieces—would be a minor loss.

“When is the last time you saw Mrs. Somerset?”

The concentration of thinking halted Julianne’s hands. She must have noticed the lack of movement in her body because she looked down at her lap with a bit of surprise, then smoothed the fabric across her thigh and folded it into a neat, damp square. Seemingly satisfied that she’d put this small piece of her life back together, she answered him. “Last Wednesday, when she... Well, when she called the police department.”

“You were the voice in the background when Mrs. Somerset called me last week. You were always the voice in the background.” The suspicion he was trying to keep hold of slipped as an image of the callous woman he’d imagined her to be wavered in the light.

If he worked at it, he could tighten his fingers around his distrust, imagine all sorts of reasons for her to try to control a wealthy, elderly aunt.

In the end, he let his suspicions remain loose about him, neither falling completely into the warmth of her chocolate-brown eyes nor holding so tightly to it that his knuckles whitened under the pressure.

“And you are the detective she always called. Thank you for always being polite and respectful, even though...”

Julianne didn’t say the words. She didn’t need to. They could both fill in the blanks with what other people had said about Mrs. Somerset. Even though she was a crazy old lady.

“Of course.” Then he added as an afterthought, “Ma’am.” This was just like any other murder case.

Neither of them said a word for several seconds. The car’s engine chugged along and the air conditioner puffed, though it couldn’t keep up with the heat from the sun pounding through the windows.

He needed to finish the interview, get out of the car and away from this woman. Even though she was sitting at the opposite end of the car now, he could still smell her shampoo, as if it had seeped into his nose hairs and he’d never be rid of it.

“When was the last time you talked with her?” he asked, breaking the buzz of the ambient noise around them and the tension in his head.

“Yesterday. I talk to her on the phone every day and try to visit her once a week. That’s why I was coming here today. She prefers Wednesday visits.”

“Did she seem agitated? Upset? Was there anything different about your conversation?” Howie had put his hands on the seat between them, palms up, to invite her to share more. He’d ask her these same questions again, maybe a hundred times over the course of the investigation, pulling at small threads of memory until he knew everything there was to know about Julianne’s relationship with Mrs. Somerset, and everything Julianne knew about Mrs. Somerset’s relationships with everyone else.

And, because murder investigations crushed the privacy of everyone involved, he would know everything there was to know about Julianne.

“Aunt Binnie was often agitated.” She stared out the window past him for a moment, the sadness in her eyes touched with something like regret. “She used the internet and papers to keep herself agitated.”

“Her crime tips.”

“Yes.” Her fingers twitched around the handkerchief still folded on her leg and her gaze followed the movement. She clenched the fabric until it bunched, then smoothed it back along the bare skin of her knee. When she looked at him again, her face was flat, her emotions under control. “She wrote letters and emails about crime rates. Gun violence. Underfunded or poorly managed crime labs. The wrongly accused. Incarceration rates that were too high, and the privatization of prisons.”

Howie tried, without success, to control his surprise. Julianne noticed his failure. Though to her credit, she didn’t look away. Instead, she caught his surprise in her gaze and held him there until he regretted every time he’d thought Mrs. Somerset was crazy, even if he’d never said it.

“She was consistent in her passions,” Howie finally said.

“She wanted justice for her husband and a world in which murders didn’t go unsolved. It’s not so crazy. In fact, I hope you want the same things.”

“I do. And you’re right—it’s not so crazy.” The men back at the station would likely continue to think Mrs. Somerset was nuts, and Howie really hadn’t changed his mind about it. But he did have a new layer of respect for the women. The sadness he felt over her death remained; the pity he’d felt over her life was gone. “Was there anything new she’d been upset about?”

Defending her aunt must have focused her mind because Julianne seemed able to reflect without turning back to his poor handkerchief. “Crime, always crime. There was the mass shooting in Wyoming. She was donating money to the Brady Campaign—she always did after mass shootings. Anyway, her grandson...”

Howie noted Julianne didn’t say “my cousin” even though she called Mrs. Somerset her aunt.

“...moved to North Carolina a couple years ago and was always up to something. Investments, politics, I don’t know. He often needed money and Aunt Binnie never wanted to give him any.”

“You don’t like your cousin.”

Julianne wrinkled her nose, then sniffed. “No, and it’s hard to think of him as my cousin. He grew up in Virginia but didn’t come down to visit his grandmother often, nor was she invited north. Like most people, the Carries think Aunt Binnie is...was crazy.” Her words shuddered and rolled in the wake of her sobs. “Rupert’s parents encouraged him to come see Aunt Binnie when he was looking at colleges. Hoping she would pay for it, my dad said. Which is probably true. Now that he’s living in Greensboro, he still only visits to ask for money.”

“And?” Again Howie opened his palms in invitation.

“And what?”

“And there’s more to how you feel about Mrs. Somerset’s grandson than that he was a gold-digging relative.” Howie purposely didn’t use the word cousin again. He didn’t want to encourage any familial protectiveness where there hadn’t been any before.

“Rupert always made me a little uncomfortable, even as kids. Don was better friends with him than I was.”

Don Somerset would have been the natural person to step in to Somerset Tobacco had the business stayed in the family and in Durham. Instead, he’d gone to North Carolina State University and was doing something at one of the tech firms in Research Triangle Park—no one much cared what.

Still, Cousin Rupert was a promising thread. Not all cops believed in instincts, but Howie did, especially in the “tingle at the back of the neck” instincts that women had about men.

“What about him made you uncomfortable?”

Julianne could play haughty and privileged, but poker would never be her game. Experiences she’d had with Rupert Carrie flickered in her eyes until she settled on one that was especially meaningful. Only, instead of sharing, she shook her head. “He just made me uncomfortable, is all.”

“There’s more to it, isn’t there?” Howie could still see her rolling the experience over in her mind.

A dark pink tongue flickered out between light pink lips. “No.”

She lied with such conviction in her tone—and doubt in her face—that Howie added the question to a mental list to ask again later, and later again if needed. He could approach the question from one hundred different directions if necessary—she’d answer it eventually.

“It sounds as if your aunt donated a lot of money,” he asked as a distraction. “Was she having money problems? Did she give money to the wrong person? Or borrow money from the wrong person?”

“No,” Julianne said with conviction. “Aunt Binnie hasn’t had control of her own finances since I came home.”

Howie raised an eyebrow.

“When I first moved back to Durham, she was giving money to anyone who knocked on her door and said they could lower the crime rate. Politicians. Nonprofits. Companies seeking investment. Scam artists.” Tendons in her neck appeared when she turned her head to look out the window. When she turned back to face him, her long neck was smooth again, and kissable.

Shit. She’s a family member—one that might have killed her aunt. He wasn’t supposed to look at Julianne Dawson—of all people—and want to put his lips all over her.

“Mom didn’t want her giving away any money, so she fought my mom’s attempts to take control. I suggested that I could vet each person, and that we’d agree on a set of nonprofits she could give money to without my signature. That seemed a good compromise.”

“And your cousin? Were you vetting him, too?”

She flushed. “Yes. He had something planned, but he wouldn’t tell me any more than he would tell Binnie.”

Howie didn’t entirely know how his mind managed detective work, but he’d described it to a friend once as if there was a little boy in his head hunting for clues while some jerk played the hot-cold game. Right now, that jerk was saying, “Getting warmer.” But his tone implied he thought Howie might trip and fall on his face before he found something.

Julianne was running her tongue along the bottom of her lip. Howie’s eyes followed it, both because he wanted to and because he’d learned this was a nervous response of hers. And that she clammed up afterward.

“Who inherits Mrs. Somerset’s money?” he asked, approaching the question of money from a new direction.

She sniffed. “My brother and I. She...she and the Carries never reconciled enough for Binnie to change her will.”

Howie figured that was Julianne’s polite way of saying that Binnie’s own family had called her crazy, maybe even to her face, and only found her useful if he needed money.

Was there an expectation there? Rupert expecting Mrs. Somerset to give him money because she had some and he was her grandson? Maybe even expecting that his relationship with her was enough reason for Binnie to leave him something in her will.

And he couldn’t discount what money problems Julianne and her brother might be having. A healthy inheritance wasn’t a guarantee of a financially secure adult. And he knew well that people killed each other—relatives—for far less money than what was at hand here.

“Do you have financial problems?” he asked flat-out.

“I am quite secure.” She didn’t say as you probably know, but he heard the indignation in the way her voice rose at the end of the sentence.

Howie did know some, but he would double-check.

Whenever he’d come across articles about Julianne in the Herald-Sun, he’d always skimmed over them. His general interest in Durham and Durham’s history was enough to make him read the brief reports about Julianne Dawson’s plans to renovate a tobacco warehouse into a tech incubator. Not to mention his memories of Julianne the couple times he’d seen her, there by her father’s side. Those stuck out as much as his mother’s comments about Howie’s biological father, David, and the unfairness of the world as it fell to the haves and the have-nots.

“I read the papers, but the costs of a business venture like yours can grow. Will you have enough when it does?”

“My plan,” she said with a proud lift of her chin, “has always been to give what’s left of Aunt Binnie’s money to the charities she supported.”

Not a full answer to his question, but he let it pass. Banking records would give him what he needed to know. “And your brother?”

Julianne deflated before his eyes, barely recovering enough to respond. “Isn’t this just a robbery gone wrong?” she asked in a sinking voice.

Her question shocked him, until he realized that she was being both disingenuous and completely honest. The way she’d shimmied away from discussion of her cousin suggested that she knew he was capable of harm, but blood was powerful, even if you didn’t like the person the blood connected you to. And now she was acting similarly in regards to her brother...

“We will investigate every possibility,” Howie said as gently as he could. “But your aunt was likely killed by someone who knew her.”

“Oh.” She looked past him, but the blank look in her eyes meant she probably wasn’t seeing any of the activity happening outside the patrol car window.

“Tell me what happened to my aunt.” Julianne whispered the words. He knew her tone and understood the horror uncertainty caused.

“Ms. Dawson, please answer the question about your brother. You can’t help Mrs. Somerset now, but you can help catch her killer.”

“Can I see her?” Her voice was small, tiny compared to the magnitude of her family’s influence on Durham—like the voice of anyone in her situation would be.

“No. Even if...”

He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to. Julianne started shaking as she began to realize the truth of what had happened to her aunt. Her head listed a little to the right. Howie was worried she might faint when her body jerked and her head returned upright. Just when he thought she’d caught herself, her eyelids eased down and her whole body sank into the seat.

He caught her before she fell on him, pushing her both away from him and down, shoving her head between her knees. “Breathe, Julianne.”

Her neck stiffened at the familiarity and life returned to her shoulders. Howie still didn’t remove his hand from her head, though he loosened his grip enough for her to turn and gaze up at him, her silky hair sliding under his palm.

“Don and his wife live exactly at their means,” she said, half to the floor and half to him. “They spend too much money, but I don’t think they have debts. Or not significant ones anyway. Whatever of Aunt Binnie’s they inherit will go to their kids. They spend most of their money on their kids.” She was talking so quietly that Howie had to bend forward to hear her. “But Don wouldn’t kill for more money.” This was said with force.

“Are you sure about that?”

She was still bent over, her head still resting on her knees, her eyes still turned to him. Their faces were inches apart, and when he asked his last question, he could follow the trail of his breath in the goose bumps that traveled up her forearm.

“About my brother? Yes.” Her voice had gone soft again. “Yes,” she repeated, stronger this time. “I’m sure Don couldn’t have done this.”

“Can you sit up?”

She nodded and he loosened his fingers. “Slowly now.” Howie kept a small amount of pressure on the nape of her neck, both to guide her slowly back up, and because he liked the feel of her hair under his hand.

This position, his hand on her head and their faces nearly touching, was more intimate than he’d been with a woman in a while. He’d had to cancel a date for a third time in two weeks because of a murder—summer was the bad season for Durham’s crime rate.

Once back upright in the hottest part of the car, Julianne swayed a bit and closed her eyes, though she didn’t seem at risk of fainting again. Her face was still pale, but when her eyes opened, it wasn’t just the remains of tears that gave them a little brightness.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yes.” She nodded once, as if testing the movement of her head. Then a second time, with more force. Convinced now that she would be okay, he removed his fingers from where they’d mingled with her hair. Once she was fully composed again, her stomach growled and embarrassment turned her fainting spell–pale cheeks into a deep, dark red.

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“Last night, I guess. Binnie was supposed to be cooking me lunch and—” she paused, her eyes rolling up to the ceiling of the patrol car as she considered the question “—I worked late last night and had a meeting early this morning. I’ve had a cup of coffee.”

Between the heat of the car, the shock of the news and a stomach filled only with coffee, it was no wonder she’d fainted. He reached into the front pocket of his Dockers, pulled out the Clif Bar he kept there for long days and offered it to her. “Here.”

She stared at bar, looking both surprised and unwilling to take the gift. Which amused him, because his handkerchief still lay on her knee, and he was pretty certain he was never getting it back. “Take it,” he said. “The Durham Police Department doesn’t want you fainting and running your car into a tree.”

“Thank you.” She was still looking at the bar as if she had never been offered such a thing in her life. And maybe she hadn’t. Maybe industry princesses who lingered around after the dissolution of tobacco empire weren’t offered Clif Bars. Maybe when they needed a snack they pulled little trays of caviar out of refrigerated compartments in their luxury vehicles.

Of course that was ridiculous, he thought as he watched her peel the wrapper off the energy bar and take a nibble off the corner. More likely she hadn’t expected anything about this day, including the Clif Bar.

Howie could tell the moment the food hit her stomach and she realized how hungry she had been. Her color settled into a normal pink. She took a bigger bite. Then another. Then another, until the bar disappeared and she was staring at the empty wrapper in her hand.

“Thank you. I needed that.” She held the empty wrapper out between them and they both stared at it. Howie didn’t take it from her—he had no better place to put it than she did—and eventually she crumbled it up and set it on her knee, on top of the handkerchief.

“I’ll be in touch again soon. Leave your contact information with Henson. And your brother’s. And your cousin’s.” Not that he needed the information, as he could easily find it himself, but this was a good test of Julianne’s sincerity. “Are you okay to drive?”

“I will be. In a minute.”

“Good. Thank you for your time,” he added, even though they both knew she hadn’t had much of a choice. “Here’s my card. Call me if you think of anything else. I’ll be in touch.”

At Howie’s signal, Henson opened the door. He stepped out of the car, giving Julianne time and privacy to collect herself, if she wanted. Which she apparently didn’t because she followed him immediately, so close on his tail he could almost feel her breathing down his neck.

Once she was out of the car and lifting her face to the sky, the fresh air seemed to revive her. Her shoulders lowered as she steadied herself on her feet. Then she turned to him and gave him a dirty look—one she definitely hadn’t learned in finishing school.