Читать книгу A Southern Promise - Jennifer Lohmann - Страница 13
ОглавлениеAS SOON AS Julianne stood to her full height outside the car and felt the breeze across her face, anger swept through her, momentarily shoving grief out of the way. It felt ten degrees cooler outside the car than it had inside. Sure, the air-conditioning was on full blast, but the detective had shut all the doors—no wonder she’d felt heat burn through her body sitting next to him. It wasn’t just the shock of her aunt’s death that had caused her to feel faint; it had been the blasted heat and confinement.
But it was definitely not the attractive cop who’d put his hand on her head.
Maybe the damned patrol car hadn’t been a torture chamber, but the detective had made it an interrogation room, and his eyes had been soft with concern while he’d done it. He’d even given her food, like she’d seen cops offer coffee to suspects on those TV shows. Not that she’d needed it to spill secrets about her brother and cousin. The heat in the car had loosened up her tongue just fine.
She hoped that ability to lie with his eyes made him a good cop, and that he didn’t use those powers on the woman in his life.
Was there a woman in his life? He was attractive and employed, which was enough for most women. But Julianne didn’t know how anyone could trust a man with such good control over his features. Even if Aunt Binnie had trusted him.
She shook the distracting thoughts from her head and started her car.
Rather than driving back to her apartment, Julianne drove to her mother’s house. Even blasting the AC the entire way, she would arrive at the house hot. The pit stains in her cotton dress were becoming fast friends in the middle of her chest and reuniting between her shoulder blades.
Aunt Binnie was dead. Not just dead—she’d been murdered, brutally if the detective’s intimations were to be believed. The realization swung at her like a large open hand. A door flying open when you don’t expect it. Walking in on your husband with another woman, hitting you in the head and the gut at the same time, buckling your knees and bringing you to the ground with a whimper.
She glanced quickly in the rearview mirror and winced at the streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. Maybe the handkerchief in her purse was still damp enough from tears that she could clean off her face. Not that it mattered; her mother would comment on the sweat stains regardless. As if sweating was something people should be able to control, even when they were sitting in a hot car. Hell, it was probably something her mother could control.
Only once Julianne could remember her mother looking disheveled. Because when Ruthie Somerset cried, she did so with light sniffles and no streaky mascara. Ruthie had no patience for a good snotty sobbing. After the dissolution of her marriage and her return home, Julianne had learned to sob by herself in her bedroom. Or at Binnie’s.
At least now she had an apartment where she could let the facade drop and be the imperfect person she wanted to be.
She turned onto her mother’s street and spun her mind back to her pit stains before tears could obscure her vision, sending her crashing into the neighbors’ playhouse—a miniature version of their actual house—which they’d built on their front lawn. She would control her driving. And how she broke the news to her mom. Aunt Binnie was dead and Julianne had crawled onto the lap of the cop who’d broken the news—big mistake. She was enough of a Somerset to know that how she responded to the death would matter. Somewhere deep in her brain was a memory of hearing her mom tell her father about the importance of managing the press all through the horrible investigation into Uncle Winston’s death. The words had stuck in her head, even though she hadn’t understood their meaning at the time. Since that time, she’d had years of instruction on keeping the family’s name out of the mud. How the right smile could hide secrets and the wrong smile could give them away. How to set your shoulders and walk as if nothing was wrong at home. How to talk to the press and give enough information that it sounded like detail but was really just a whitewash of the truth.
These skills had been mixed into each and every meal like fluoride mixed into the drinking water. Most of her life she’d followed her mother’s guidelines, even as she felt as if they were a straitjacket. Now that Julianne was trying to build a life for herself in Durham and turn around the family name, she finally understood why keeping the family’s name out of the mud mattered. She wanted the Somersets to be associated with the new Durham, not old tobacco. And not with another unsolved murder.
If the investigation into Aunt Binnie’s murder got out of control, investors and participants might lose the interest in her business incubator. More important, the family must respond to the death appropriately in order to keep Aunt Binnie’s memory pure. And Julianne would hop into the ring and wrestle any reporter to keep Aunt Binnie’s memory from being tainted by any mention of her phone calls. Her aunt had been so much more than a simple crazy lady. She’d been dedicated to making the world a better place. While they had disagreed about how to go about it, that essential optimism was something they’d had in common.
That and fighting for a lost cause. Tenacity had kept Aunt Binnie calling police departments week after week after week, and it had kept Julianne in a marriage long after grass had grown over its grave.
Aunt Binnie’s murder wouldn’t go unsolved like Uncle Winston’s had. Despite her irritation with the detective for locking her up in the patrol car and baking answers out of her, she respected that he’d been willing to do that. And that he’d not backed down from her and her name. With his strong hands and his intelligent eyes, Detective Howie Berry seemed like the kind of man who would get the job done.
There was kindness there, too. Whatever his reasons for giving her the squashed energy bar, it had ultimately been a kind gesture. Intelligent eyes, messy hair and kind gestures probably went a long way to keeping people from noticing that he was roasting them alive.
Not that the detective’s eyes or hair mattered in the end, because Julianne would dog the man’s feet to make sure he didn’t lose focus, ignoring the way her heart beat a little harder at the memory of his hand on the back of her head.
Better to think about the money she could put up for a reward.
Despite the blasting air-conditioning and her pep talk about the detective, Julianne flushed with fear of the consequences of this murder investigation. The Somersets, Aunt Binnie included, had entire cemeteries of secrets and some of them held nothing but shallow graves. No matter how much everyone would want her aunt’s killer found, the thought of those secrets crawling out of their graves was probably enough to scare many of her family members’ mouths shut.
Wasn’t that one of the reasons Uncle Winston’s murderer had never been caught? He’d been shot in the warehouse Julianne was presently converting into a start-up incubator. The cops had been certain Uncle Winston had known his killer and that he had been taken by surprise, but not a single person had come forward with any useful information.
Not even when Aunt Binnie had begged. Secrets and protecting their own had been more important than the tears of a widow. Even Julianne’s mother had lied to the cops about that night thirty years ago.
In the driveway, Julianne stopped her car and rested her forehead on the steering wheel, hoping to regain her composure. But the sun’s rays blinded her through a break in the trees and drove her out. Perhaps she could pretend the sun was responsible for the redness in her eyes. Once inside the house, the extreme air-conditioning nearly knocked her flat before she could store her purse in the coat closet. Then she went in search of her mother.
Her mother sat on a bar stool in the kitchen and didn’t seem to hear Julianne walk into the room. The radio was on in the background with a brief report of a murder in Duke Park. Aunt Binnie’s murder. Julianne waited in the doorway until her mother glanced up, her cell phone pressed against her ear, one pair of glasses on the counter and another perched on top of her head.
“Did you hear on the radio? There’s been a murder over by Binnie’s and she won’t answer my calls. She’s probably on the phone with the Juneau Police Department with a tip.” The frustration in her mother’s voice stabbed wildly into the air. “Didn’t you just come from there? You should have stayed and cut the old woman’s phone lines.”
Julianne slid onto a bar stool next to her mom. “Mom, can you put down the phone?”
“Not until Bin answers.” Her mom lowered the phone long enough to redial, irritation on her face as she lifted it back to her ear. “If I keep calling, I’ll catch her before she calls every police department she can look up online. A murder, so close by. It’s only going to make her worse.” Worry seeped through the exasperation. “It’s not possible to put more locks and alarms on that house. Maybe we can use the danger of living by herself to get her to move into a retirement home. Security will be at the top of my list when I talk with her about it. She’s never been willing to give up her independence, but there’s also never been a murder in her neighborhood before.”
Then her mother turned her face, put on the pair of glasses that had been on the counter and looked, really looked, at Julianne. And she didn’t say anything about the pit stains or the mascara. “Maybe she would come live with me. It’s not as if I don’t have the space, and I would feel better knowing she wasn’t living alone.”
Julianne tossed the knowledge that she’d underestimated her mother onto the pile of painful feelings in her chest.
“Mom, you’re not going to get through to her.” Was there a part of her mom that—like Julianne—would be a tiny bit relieved to know Aunt Binnie was dead? Not that her mom would wish a violent death on her aunt, but her mom didn’t want Aunt Binnie living in this house any more than Aunt Binnie had wanted to live here. And once, when Aunt Binnie had been having a bad day, calling every phone number she knew looking for Julianne because some crook needed twenty thousand dollars for a home-protection scheme, her mother had openly wished Aunt Binnie out of existence.
Love had added a sharp, hurtful edge to the anxiety they had all felt about Aunt Binnie’s occasionally erratic behavior.
Her mother lowered her hand to look at the screen and dial again. Taking advantage of the moment, Julianne grabbed the phone out of her hand.
Her mother added the second pair of glasses to the top of her head. “That was rude.” Ah, hidden there in the snap of her voice was the woman who had raised Julianne.
“Mom, you can’t call Aunt Binnie. Aunt Binnie was murdered.” She regretted the bluntness of her words as soon as they were out, but she didn’t know how to get through to her mom any other way.
Her mother snatched the phone back. “She’s probably just not answering the door. Mrs. Carr is a terrible gossip and almost always wrong.”
Her mother dialed Aunt Binnie’s number again, this time waiting through her aunt’s long voice-mail message before finally saying, “Binnie, pick up. It’s Ruthie. Binnie, pick up.”
Sorrow settled in Julianne’s stomach, pushing an acidic taste up her throat and onto her tongue. Her mom wasn’t ignoring her or dismissing her news. She was trying to pretend it wasn’t real. The strain at the corner of her mother’s eyes—which had the wise, evenly spaced crow’s feet someone would add into a digitally enhanced picture of a mature, attractive woman—gave away the incredible effort her denial was costing her. Sometimes the truth was too horrible to accept.
The phone made a soft thud when Julianne’s mother set it on the countertop. They stared at it together in silence until the sound of soft weeping echoed through the large kitchen. Teardrops landed on the granite. When her mom stood and wrapped her arms around her, Julianne leaned into the softness. Together they sobbed, even her mother. Not the uncertain, fearful tears Julianne had cried in the patrol car, but the snotty weeping that elbows its way through crowds, leaving bruises and sore muscles behind. The kind of hot, heavy grief Julianne hadn’t been certain her mom was even capable of.
After their sobs quieted to simple tears, Julianne pulled away just enough to breathe some fresh air. Her mom kept her arms around her, her manicured fingernails skipping over Julianne’s scalp as her hands caressed her hair. Soft strokes lulled Julianne into believing in safety, and she closed her eyes, hoping to fall deeper into the lie. To land in a place where nothing horrific could have happened to Aunt Binnie. To a time before Lewis, before Uncle Winston’s death, to when she still believed that a hug from her mother could erase all hurts.
Her mom’s hand got slower and the hand got heavier, but the movements were still comforting. Her mother’s shoulders relaxed under Julianne’s head.
When her mother finally pulled away, cool dry air filled the void between them, raising goose bumps on Julianne’s arms. All good things end. Soft, gentle pats. Mother’s hugs. The lives of loved ones.
“And they’re sure it’s Binnie?” Her mom picked both pairs of glasses out of her hair, laying them together on the granite. “Not just someone else found in that house because they were... I don’t know what they would be doing.”
The desperation in her mom’s voice pinged through Julianne’s heart and echoed deep in her soul. Not just the sadness, but the realization that Aunt Binnie had often been a problem they had wished away. With her death had come a tinge of relief, and with that relief came a flood of guilt. Because they hadn’t really wanted her gone.
“The detective—” such a bland word to use for the man who’d sat next to her in the car “—I talked to was the one she called every Wednesday. He seemed to know her.”
“And he seemed competent, this detective?” One unsolved murder in the family had caused enough pain. “I could call Tamara and ask for the best detective the police department has.”
“There’s no reason to call the mayor’s wife over this. The detective will be fine.” His hands... Well, if you could judge a man by the strength in his hands, then there was no man more competent for the job than the detective. He’d even gotten her to rat out her brother and his financial problems, which had felt like the right thing to do at the time, with Howie’s handkerchief stretched out on her knee.
Now, in the bright light of her mom’s kitchen with pictures of her niece and nephew on the fridge, the confession felt like a betrayal. “He spoke, um, sympathetically of Aunt Binnie, but not pityingly.” If he’d even hinted that he’d ever made a crazy sign at his temples, Julianne would have called up the police chief herself to insist the case be reassigned.
“Your brother will need to be told, if he doesn’t already know. And I suppose we’ll have to tell Rupert.” Distaste gave her mother’s words elbows. Rupert didn’t know he’d been written out of his grandmother’s will. He would raise a stink to accompany the slime that followed him everywhere.
“We’ll need a statement for the media,” her mom said. “And we should start funeral arrangements.” The act of planning straightened her mother’s back and lowered her shoulders. “Bin bought that space next to Uncle Winston and I think she’s got a whole plan prepared.”
Resignation and sorrow danced together on her mother’s face. She gave Julianne one last pat on the shoulder and then they retreated into the comfort of work and lists and plans, knowing the pain would be still be waiting for them when they were done.
* * *
“HOW WAS THE old lady?” Kia asked when Howie returned from the patrol car. Kitting himself out to tour the breakfast room where Mrs. Somerset’s body lay gave him something to concentrate on besides the uneasy realization that he’d been attracted to the woman he’d been questioning in the back of a patrol car.
Julianne Dawson—wealthy, spoiled heiress to a tobacco fortune and niece of the deceased. He wasn’t sure which one of those facts made sniffing her hair worse.
“Mrs. Somerset’s niece is not an old lady.” Even though Kia hadn’t been with the unit for very long, they’d found a good rhythm. Without so much as a nod, Kia led the way to the wall opposite the kitchen and near the entry from the dining room to the living room. “Mrs. Somerset’s grandniece is Julianne Dawson.”
He should hand in his badge and confess to being a shitty-ass detective for not putting together Somerset and Somerset and getting Julianne. But Somersets were a dime a dozen in this part of North Carolina—he hadn’t realized that Mrs. Somerset was from that branch of the family.
Of course, what had he known about Mrs. Somerset other than that her husband had been murdered and that she called in crime tips? By the time she’d been passed to his care, her calls and the department jokes about them had become background noise and he hadn’t even bothered to look into her husband’s murder and realize that she was the widow of the victim of the most infamous unsolved murder in Durham’s history. A murder for which Julianne’s father had been the prime suspect.
He should walk right into his sergeant’s office and turn over his badge and gun, then walk out with his head hung so low he developed a permanent curve to his neck. Hell, he hadn’t even known how deep Mrs. Somerset’s obsessions ran. He’d been in her house some, those times when she’d been particularly upset on the phone. Yet he’d never stopped to look at the photographs on the mantel or to notice that one of the women in the photographs was Julianne Dawson, who’d been in the local papers since she was a child, tagging along behind her father. Somehow the fact that he’d had his beautiful daughter dressed like a princess and with him all the time was supposed to make his employees feel better when the mills closed and their jobs disappeared. As though Julianne’s angelic presence would make up for the day when a strong wind would blow and the downtown no longer smelled like bright-leaf tobacco.
Whenever her photograph had been in the papers in Oxford, his mama had pointed it out, saying, “You should be next to your daddy like this.”
His relatives in Durham probably looked at those pictures and saw their lost jobs and their struggles to learn new skills. Every time Howie had seen one of those pictures or heard the name Somerset, the memory of being abandoned by his father twisted in his gut. Because Howie was supposed to have grown up in a world of privilege like Julianne, not just brush against it.
He was old enough now to understand that the story his mother had told him wasn’t the real story. David, his father, hadn’t promised his mother anything but a good time. He hadn’t abandoned Howie, either, but had sent regular child support checks and requested visits. But David had been a Somerset Tobacco vice president and resentment had started young with Howie, etched deep, contorting all his expectation of Somersets and the careless way wealthy people discarded others. He should probably hand the damned case over because he was biased against the entire family.
But he wanted a chance to sit next to Julianne again. Not that continuing with this investigation would lead to that. Any further questioning would be done at a physical distance, and it would not involve Julianne climbing onto his lap.
“Nicely done, Henson, nicely done. Only he would stuff local royalty in a squad car like that.” Kia’s comment brought Howie’s attention back to a couple points of interest around the room. He was an old pro at blocking out the unwelcome so that he could continue with his work.
Before they moved on to the next yellow marker—this one near a blood splatter on the cushion of a dining chair—she asked, “Did you talk her out of calling the chief and pulling our badges?” Her lips were pursed together, not quite hiding a smirk. She’d be impossible if she knew that Howie had hoped Julianne would forget to give back his handkerchief. “Though, honestly, I don’t care if Henson gets pulled into chief’s office and bent over a desk. Cosmic justice for his crimes prior to cuffing Julianne Dawson—he’s a bully and gives all of us a bad name.” Kia pointed to some blood splatters on the wall, along with a hole in the drywall. “CSI’s already got photos of everything,” she said.
“She may still call the chief.” The Somersets probably donated enough money to various police department charities to get a special “insulted rich person” ringtone that meant their calls were always answered. Durham didn’t really have society, but what it did have was represented by Julianne’s family. Not only was she related by blood to all the families who’d donated their names to streets surrounding downtown, but the Somerset money had survived the ups and downs of Durham’s economy, so she was on a friendly first-name basis with the fortunes being made in the Research Triangle Park. If the mayor didn’t listen to her because of who her parents were and who her grandparents had been, he would listen to her because she was buddies with the owner of the ballpark and had recently been quoted in the Wall Street Journal about innovation and start-ups in the Triangle. If the brief snippets in the Herald-Sun, Independent Weekly and News & Observer were anything to go by, the mayor and the city council were falling all over themselves to make the business incubator happen. The articles all referenced the idea that a Somerset was bringing jobs back to Durham. Conveniently, none of them mentioned the thousands of jobs that Somerset tobacco had cost Durham back in the 1980s, including Howie’s mother’s job.
Shifting back to the matter at hand, Howie remembered hearing a rumor from the Herald-Sun’s crime reporter, who’d heard it from her editor, who’d gotten the information from the business reporter—a chain of gossip long enough to be highly suspicious—that Don Somerset had spent through all of his inheritance and was living off his wife’s money. After questioning Julianne about it, he could almost believe it. And soon he’d probably be able to prove it.
The official story was that Julianne was funding the venture and Don was providing tech know-how and contacts. The water-cooler story was that Julianne was doing everything. She’d worked as a development officer for one of the big art museums in New York and was putting those skills to work in the recruitment of start-ups and investments. As far as Howie could tell from the many rumors floating around, Don’s main contribution to the venture was tech-savvy vocabulary.
If the idea of money equaling influence left a sour taste in Howie’s mouth, the thought of someone who’d spent all his wealth made him need to spit the taste out before he choked. Still, must be nice to have that kind of influence, even in a small city like Durham.
“But...”
“But Ms. Dawson and her brother stand to inherit Mrs. Somerset’s money. She claims she doesn’t need it and hinted that her brother might.” More than hinted. That flick of a tongue between her lips was a clear sign of nerves. And while there were many reasons she might have been uncomfortable sitting in that patrol car, she hadn’t flicked her tongue until she’d started talking about her brother.
“Mrs. Somerset also has a grandson hoping for a windfall. He makes Ms. Dawson uncomfortable, and apparently made Mrs. Somerset uncomfortable, too.” The initial forty-eight hours in any investigation was exhausting—and crucial. No one could be ruled out as a suspect, so the list of people to investigate got longer and longer. But if they didn’t narrow down their options to one best bet in the next couple days, the chances of solving the case at all edged quickly to zero. In some investigations, zeroing in on a main suspect was like searching for a needle in a haystack when you couldn’t move the hay out of the way.
This seemed as though it would be one of those investigations. At least a stabbing suggested the murderer was known to Mrs. Somerset.
They stepped over a trail of blood to look at another wall, this one more splattered than the last. Howie looked back at the old woman lying dead on the floor. Mrs. Somerset had been thin, with a shock of bright white hair that was always styled. And he’d never seen her in anything more casual than a pair of slacks and a blouse, though she had made a nod to her age with the beige shoes sold in secret old-people stores—the kind AARP didn’t give you the password to until you turned seventy-five. If asked to describe her, he would have said spry, but frail. She’d still had her license and hadn’t had any incidents that would make her family take her car away. Her heavily wrinkled and just as heavily made-up face had been kind.
Julianne had been lucky to have her for an aunt.
“She put up one hell of a fight.” Between the trail of blood and obvious defensive marks on Mrs. Somerset’s hands and arms, she’d fought a whole lot longer than he would’ve thought she could. “She was stronger than she looked.”
“Aren’t we all?” Kia said, but she only raised her eyebrows at him when he invited her to elaborate. “Learn anything else?”
“Mrs. Somerset’s commitment to—” he hesitated, but Julianne’s word was the best he could come up with “—justice went further than any of us on Chapel Hill Street gave her credit for. She called multiple police departments, but she was also a significant donor to Julianne Dawson–approved charities like the Brady Campaign.”
“Not just interested in catching the killer, but also in preventing crime.”
“It would seem.” He looked back to the woman lying on the floor in a pool of blood. He’d underestimated her. She had been nuts, but there had been a method to her madness. “Ms. Dawson claims she’s going to donate the bulk of her inheritance from Mrs. Somerset to those charities.”
“And you said they were Ms. Dawson approved?”
“Not surprisingly, Mrs. Somerset and her passions attracted the attention of scammers. Apparently Julianne has been managing her money for a couple years.”
Kia whistled. “So she’s Julianne now, is she?”
Sitting in the car, her warm body pressed up against him, he’d wanted to call her Annie.
He didn’t say that of course. He opened his mouth to defend himself, snapping it shut again before he said something else incriminating.
Naturally she noticed and smirked. “You don’t think Julianne—” she said the name in a singsong voice appropriate for a twelve-year-old “—had anything to do with her great-aunt’s murder?”
Even tear streaked and sobbing, the woman in the car had been graceful and elegant. He imagined that she was the kind of woman who would speak softly and have the world falling all over itself to do as she asked, no big stick needed. Not that his impressions meant Julianne couldn’t have killed her aunt. Howie had been a cop long enough to trust his instincts, but long enough to know that rich, white, elegant women committed murder, too.
Though Julianne Dawson seemed too tidy to make such a mess of the business. And there was something wholly decent about her that Howie couldn’t put his finger on.
But none of this was any of Kia’s business, so he said only, “This level of violence? No.”
“She could have hired someone.”
Maybe the near faint she’d had when Howie had touched on the violent way Mrs. Somerset had died had been a surprised reaction to what was supposed to be a clean push down the stairs...
“If she hired someone, she would’ve paid top dollar for a cleaner kill,” he said, trying to cover up his inner battle with nonchalance. “Plus, it’s a stabbing, so it’s almost certainly personal, and I don’t see Ms. Dawson slicing up her aunt and then showing up later as if for a casual lunch.”
“Her brother, then? A sibling team?”
“Maybe, but I’m still not feelin’ it.” People could fake tears. They could lie without a tell. They could simper, flash a set of breasts and oh-so-subtly lick their lip—all designed to distract even the most dedicated cop. But it was much harder to make all the blood drain from your face and turn white enough that Howie had been certain Julianne’s head was going to end up in his lap—and not in a good way.
“Letting her go that easy?” Kia tsked.
“No. She says she doesn’t need the money, but it’s worth looking into her finances.” Money was at the base of most of the nondomestic murders Howie had investigated. “Especially how she was managing her aunt’s money. Maybe Ms. Dawson wasn’t very good at it and didn’t want anyone to notice.” The fact that it was Somerset money would make this a simple inquiry—and everything else in this investigation more of a pain in the ass than it should be.
Kia gave him a sideways glance. “You can call her Ms. Dawson all you like, but I’m still gonna remember the way Julianne rolled off your tongue.”
“You just wish it could roll off your tongue.” As comebacks went, it was weak, but Kia was right about how easily he’d called her Julianne.
She was everything his mother had ever warned him about. She’d been born with a silver spoon in her mouth and fed from a silver bottle. And people like that only understood their own place in this world—they didn’t even bother looking down to see the people who made up the mountain they stood on.
But Julianne appeared to genuinely care for her aunt—if Julianne Dawson had been telling the truth about their relationship. He hoped she was. And not just because he didn’t want Julianne to be guilty, but because he had a soft spot for Mrs. Somerset and he wanted to believe that there had been someone in her family looking out for her.
His thoughts must have been plain on his face because Kia smirked at him again—an expression she’d perfected almost as well as her hard stare. She wouldn’t believe that he was thinking more about the dead woman on the floor than about the elegant Julianne Dawson.
Probably because all of his thoughts related to Mrs. Somerset were now intertwined with everything he thought about Julianne Dawson.
“What’s up with the neighbor?” Kia asked, changing the subject.
“I told Rodriguez to escort her home and wait with her there.” Mrs. Carr had stood there the whole time, pitcher of sweet tea in one hand and the other itching to cup her ear. “I said we’d head over there when we were done here. The rest of the unit and some uniforms are canvassing the neighborhood.”
“Anything more you want to see here before we walk over?”
“No.” Kia was thorough and Durham’s CSI team was good. Anything he’d missed on this initial walk-through wouldn’t be found today. They would need a night’s sleep and a cup of coffee to refocus their eyes.
When they stepped out of the cool house into the shimmering summer sun and were out of earshot of anyone else, Kia asked, “So did she smell nice?”
Howie stopped short. “Who?”
“Julianne,” she sang in that annoying voice she had.
“What do you know about her smelling nice?” he asked, then winced. An indignant “I didn’t get a chance to smell her, I’m working an investigation here” would have been a better cover-up.
Kia was a good detective, so of course she noticed. She smirked then said, “I met her at some Duke function with Tyson.”
“And you remember that she smelled nice?”
“I was pregnant. Stuff either smelled nice or I barfed. I didn’t barf when I met her.”
“Yes, she smelled nice.” Clean and fresh and definitely expensive. Nice enough that her perfume had lingered in the back of his nose, battling the smell of old woman, Lysol and blood that had taken over the air in Mrs. Somerset’s dining room.
They crossed the street with Kia humming that obnoxious “sitting in a tree” song that most people forgot as soon as they graduated from high school. Which was fine. Only one of them had to be professional today—guess it was his turn.
Because Howie wasn’t letting Kia anywhere near the reporters who’d just showed up on the scene.
