Читать книгу Fortune's Woman / A Fortune Wedding: Fortune's Woman - Kristin Hardy, Kristin Hardy - Страница 9

She turned with vast relief to see Ross walking toward them, looking tall and solid and certainly strong enough to help his nephew through this.

The boy’s features hardened. “Did he hurt Mom again? If he did, I’ll kill him this time, I swear. I warned him I would.”

“You might not want to say that too loudly,” Ross said grimly. “Your father is dead, Josh.”

For all his bravado just seconds before, the teenager’s color drained at the words.

“Dead? That’s crazy.” Even as he spoke, Julie thought she saw something flicker in his brown eyes, something furtive, secretive.

“It’s true,” Ross said. “I’m sorry, Josh.”

The boy gazed at him blankly, as if he wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

“What happened?”

Ross cleared his throat. “We don’t know for sure yet.”

“Did he have a heart attack or a stroke or something? Was he hit by a bus? What?”

Ross sighed. His gaze met Julie’s for a moment and she saw indecision there as he must be weighing just how blunt he ought to be with his nephew.

She would have told him to be as honest as possible. Josh would find out all the gory details soon enough. In a town like Red Rock, the rumors would fly faster than crows on carrion. Better for him to hear the news from his family than for them to all dissemble about the situation, which he would probably find condescending and demeaning.

Ross must have reached the same conclusion. “It’s too early to say anything with a hundred percent certainty but it looks like he was murdered.”

“Murdered?” Josh blinked at both of them. “You’re kidding me, right? This is all some kind of a sick joke. People in Red Rock don’t get murdered!”

“I’m afraid it’s no joke,” Julie said, her voice soft with compassion.

“Who did it? Do they have any suspects?”

Ross’s gaze met Julie’s again with a wordless plea for help and she thought how surreal it was that just an hour ago they were wrangling over her purse, and now he was turning to her to help him through this delicate family situation.

It was hard enough telling Josh his father was dead. How were they supposed to tell Josh that his own mother was the prime suspect?

“They’re still investigating,” Ross said after a moment.

Josh pulled off his Stetson and raked a hand through his hair. “This is crazy. I can’t believe it,” he said again. “Where’s my mom? How is she taking this?”

“Uh, that’s the other thing I needed to talk to you about,” Ross said.

Fear leapt into his dark eyes and he turned to Julie with an accusation in his eyes. “You said my mom wasn’t hurt!”

“She’s not,” Ross assured him. “It’s just…Frannie had to go to the police station to answer some questions.”

Josh obviously wasn’t a stupid boy. He quickly put the pieces together. “Mom had to go for questioning? They think she killed him?”

“Josh—”

The color that had leached away at the news of his father’s death returned in a hot, angry flush. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! If she had it in her to kill him, she would have done it years ago.”

If Julie hadn’t worked with troubled youth on a daily basis for the last five years, she might have found his bitterness shocking. Instead, she found it unutterably sad.

“They’re only questioning her. She’s not under arrest,” Ross said. “I’m sure they’ll figure out soon enough that your mom is innocent.”

“What about his girlfriend? Are they questioning her? Or his last girlfriend? Or the one before that? I could give them a whole damn list of suspects!”

“I’m sure they’ll question as many people as they can,” Julie said. Unable to help herself, she laid a comforting hand on the boy’s arm. Though by all appearances he despised his father, her heart ached at the pain she knew still waited for him down the road. Losing a parent was traumatic for anyone, no matter what their relationship.

Josh didn’t flinch away from her touch, but he remained focused on his mother and her predicament.

“I should go to her,” he said after a moment. “She’s going to need me.”

Ross couldn’t seem to look away from that soft, comforting hand Julie placed on his nephew’s arm. There was no good reason he could figure out that the sight should put a funny little ache in his chest.

He cleared his throat. “I promise, the police station is no place for you right now, Josh. You have to trust me on this.”

He, however, needed to get his butt over there as soon as possible to find out what was happening with the investigation. He was torn between dueling obligations, one to his sister and one to his nephew during this difficult time.

“I’ll be eighteen in two weeks, Uncle Ross. I’m not a child anymore.”

“I know that. But I’ve spent most of my adult life in police stations and I can tell you the best place for you is at home. I’ll go check on your mother.”

“I want to see her.”

“She won’t be able to talk to you, son. Not if she’s being questioned.”

“Well, I can at least tell them that I know she couldn’t have killed Lloyd,” Josh answered.

His loyal defense of his mother struck a chord with Ross. It reminded him far too much of the way he used to stick up for Cindy, making excuses to the other kids when she would stay out all night drinking or would bring a new man around the house or, worse, would entirely forget about them all for a weekend binge.

The difference there was that he had foolishly been trying to protect an illusion, while Josh’s efforts were on behalf of an innocent woman.

“Everything’s going to be okay. Trust me. She’s only being questioned. I’m sure she’ll be home in a short time. Why don’t you head on home and get some rest? You’re going to have a lot to deal with in the coming days.”

“I should be with her,” Josh said stubbornly.

Julie again reached out to Josh and Ross saw that once more her quiet touch seemed to soothe him. “The absolute best way you can help your mother right now is to give her one less worry. You were the only thing she thought about as they were taking her in for questioning. She insisted that your uncle watch out for you and that’s just what he’s trying to do. As he said, you have to trust him right now to know what’s best, okay?”

Her words seemed to resonate with Josh. He looked between the two of them and then sighed. “I guess.”

Ross was astounded and more gratified than he wanted to admit that she would come to his defense like this, especially after their altercation earlier in the evening. That encounter and his own honest mistake over the purse had been a fortuitous meeting, he thought now. He didn’t know what he would have done this evening without her.

The thought sparked an idea—a nervy one, sure, but one that would certainly lift a little of the burden from his shoulders.

“Josh, could you hang on here for a second while I talk to Ms. Osterman?”

His nephew looked confused but he nodded and Ross stepped a few paces away where they could speak in relative privacy.

“Look, I do need to get to the police station to see how things are going with Frannie, but I don’t want to send Josh to his empty house alone. This is a huge favor to ask when I’m virtually a stranger to you and you’ve already done so much, but do you think you could stay with him for a while, while I check on my sister?”

As he might have expected, Julie’s soft blue eyes widened with astonishment at the request. “But wouldn’t you rather have someone in your family stay with him? Your cousin Susan, maybe?”

Susan would come in a heartbeat, he knew, and like Julie, she specialized in troubled adolescents. But he hated to ask the Fortune side of the family for anything. It was an irrational reaction, he knew, but for most of his life his particular branch of the family had always been the needy ones.

He didn’t know how many times the Fortunes had bailed Cindy out of one scrape or another, before they had virtually cut ties with her out of frustration that nothing ever seemed to change.

Even though he loved and admired several members of his extended family, Ross preferred to handle things on his own when he could. And when he couldn’t, he much preferred asking somebody who wasn’t a Fortune for help.

“They’re all going to be busy with the last few hours of the Spring Fling. Plus, now they’re going to have to deal with damage control after Lloyd’s murder.”

It was bad public relations for the festival, especially since this was the second time a dead body had been found while the town celebrated. A few years earlier, an unidentified body turned up at the Spring Fling. The town had only just started to heal from that.

Her forehead furrowed for a moment and then she nodded. “In that case, of course. I’ll be glad to stay with Josh as long as you need.”

For one crazy moment, he longed to feel the soft comfort of her touch on his arm, though he knew that was ridiculous.

“Thanks a million. It won’t be long. I’m sure I’ll be taking Frannie home in just a few hours.

He had been far too optimistic, Ross thought an hour later as he stood in the Red Rock police chief’s office.

“Come on, Jimmy. This is a mistake. You have to know that. There’s no way on earth Frannie killed Lloyd.”

“You were on the job long enough, you know how it works. We just want to talk to her but she’s not saying a word. She’s shutting us down in every direction. I have to tell you, that makes her look mighty guilty.”

A white-coated lab tech pushed open the door. “Chief, I’ve got those results you put the rush order on.”

“Excellent. You’re going to have to excuse me, Ross. Why don’t you go on home? There’s nothing more you can do here tonight.”

“I’ll stick around. Somebody’s going to need to drive Frannie home when you’re done with this little farce here.”

Jimmy opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. “I can’t make you leave. But if you really want to help your sister, tell her to cooperate with us. The quicker she gives us her side of the story, the quicker we can wrap this up.”

Ross had been a cop for a long time, trained to catch subtle nuances in conversation. He didn’t miss the way the police chief phrased his words. Wrap this up was a far cry from send her home.

Something about this whole thing gave him an ominous feeling. He suddenly guessed he was in for a long night.