by Patti Larsen
Right, like I hadn’t heard anyone hand me that line before.
For now, I had a sense of him and that was what I needed. “I’ll be in touch for a more formal interview,” I said. “Down at the station.” I smiled then, knowing it would grate on him and wondering why I was feeling so petty. “I’ll expect you to make yourself available.”
He dropped his gaze and nodded, finally lurching away while I let regret surface. I’d just bullied him, hadn’t I? And privately laughed while the Jones sisters did the same. Okay, just Mary, but still.
Guilty as sin in a church basement? Time to go before lightning struck.
I said my goodbyes to the Jones sisters, with hugs and promises to catch up, knowing I’d likely lose track of them again and sighing as I exited the church after a search for Dominic Twigg turned up nada.
Instead of chasing him down (while chasing my tail), I headed back to the office in the late afternoon sunset, since home was out of the question still. I was just climbing behind the wheel of my car, looking up from a message I’d sent to Jill about my chats with suspects/witnesses when I spotted Vivian French driving by in her crystal white SUV. She traded in her sporty red convertible every November for the flashy giant monstrosity she favored for snowy roads. Not that I blamed her, we lived in the mountains, and that beast was much more practical in winter conditions. But it wasn’t the sight of the vehicle itself that caught my eye, but the fact Vivian wasn’t alone in the front seat.
A woman sat in the passenger’s side, a blonde who spoke with great enthusiasm if her hand gestures were any indication.
Curious. And, like I needed another mystery to solve, telling myself I needed to talk to Vivian about making me sheriff, I made an impulse decision and followed her. All the way to her big, white house. By the time I parked in the curve of her circular driveway, Vivian and her guest were already inside, the door closing on their heels. I hesitated only a moment before heaving myself out of my car and trudging through the skiff of snow to the steps, the front door, pressing the bell and listening to the chime go off inside while I asked myself several times why the hell I was even here.
Vivian wasn’t going to talk to me. This was useless. I really should have just gone back to the office or Crew’s or Mom and Dad’s. Instead of standing in the chill evening air on the Queen of Wheat’s front step shivering from more than just the cold.
The door whipped open and, after a surprised moment, the woman on the other side beamed at me, pulling me into a hug, closing the way behind me as she kissed my cheek.
“Darling Fiona,” Clara French said in her faint British accent that reminded me I still needed to talk to Dominic Twigg. “How lovely to see you again.”
I hugged Vivian’s aunt in return, just as happy to see her. She and Vivian’s grandmother had not only been friendly to me the last time I’d been here, the latter had, in a moment of dementia, called me Iris and asked me about the doubloon. Telling me she knew about the treasure. I’d never had the opportunity to question her or find out what she knew. Vivian kept the older ladies too cloistered. For their protection? Maybe. Whatever her reasons, it meant the only way I could question Martha French was to sneak into Vivian’s house.
Well, she’d finally given me a reason to come here, a legit one that had nothing to do with the treasure and everything to do with the position she’d put us both in. So there.
Yes. I could justify anything.
I opened my mouth to respond in kind, but someone’s high-pitched, “Whoo-whoo!” and clickity-clack of heels on the marble floor of the foyer silenced me. I stared in surprise, knowing I had to look shocked, as an older and carefully preserved version of Vivian tottered toward me on shoes far too tall for comfort, her body elegantly sheathed in a dress tailored to the last itty bitty detail as if she’d been sewn into its deep blue fabric.
“Oh my goodness gracious and all the stars in the sky,” she practically sang as she hurried to me and air kissed both of my cheeks, her augmented lips shining, makeup carefully applied to hide her age but doing little at such close proximity. “This can’t be dear little Fiona Fleming?”
And I knew in that instant exactly who this was, even before Vivian appeared, fury barely contained behind her icy glare. Not aimed at me. Nope.
“Rachelle,” I breathed. The woman simpered, twirled, then patted my cheek like I was some sweet pet she’d forgotten all about until now.
Vivian was unamused.
“That’s enough, Mother,” She said.
***
Chapter Sixteen
I could tell Vivian was going to try to shut things down and kick me out of the house, but her mother was a force to be reckoned with, apparently. Even as the Queen of Wheat inhaled to either a) tell me to leave or b) deliver some kind of scathing comment about her mother (if her disdainful and angry expression that overwhelmed the typical tight control she held was an indicator) or c) explode/implode/lose her marbles, Rachelle French, her overgrown fingernails biting into my arm despite the thickness of my coat, grasped firmly onto my person and practically dragged me through the fancy foyer and into the faintly rose-scented sitting room, her mouth running the entire time.
I shrugged an apology I didn’t mean at Vivian on the way by, propelled by the chatty and, from the martini in her hand, alcohol fueled passion of the mayor’s formerly estranged mother.
“Do come in, Fiona dear, how lovely of you to visit, and how is that darling and adorable mother of yours? And your father, still a handsome and dashing devil, I bet. And I hear you’re getting married yourself, how lovely, my dear, Vivian, sweetness, Fiona’s getting married, isn’t that delightful?” Rachelle finally paused for a breath—and a sip of her martini—before rushing on as she planted me in a wingback chair in the stuffy sitting room despite the massive ceilings and towering windows, all shielded from the outside world by thick, velvet curtains in a remarkable shade of blue. “I’m certain you’ll be having wee little Flemings before long, Fiona, my love, and they’ll just be adorable with that lovely red hair of yours and I hear your fiancé is quiet the dashing and yummy young man himself, I just bet he is.” Her eyes, pale amber instead of Vivian’s ice blue, twinkled at me over the rim of her glass, her lips twitching as her gaze flickered to her daughter. Vivian sat, rigid and clearly unhappy, across from me, hands firmly folded in her lap, ankles crossed, her perfect poise all the indication I need she was on the edge of her temper as much as she was her seat. And I recognized, in that chattering ramble of words her mother tossed out so casually there were clear and present barbs aimed directly at her daughter, cuts so thin as to go unnoticed to the casual ear, but more than likely only reopening wounds unhealed and flayed wide through time and careful application of pressure.
Vivian was unmarried, with no prospects that I knew of, and unlikely to have kids at this point. And that was just for starters, bits and pieces I was able to personally glean from all the commentary. What else was hidden inside what I now could only guess wasn’t a trackless ramble but a deliberate attack that had history so long and well seeded it was no wonder Vivian was the way she was.
I’d felt empathy for her before, especially after I realized she’d lost Victor, and that we’d been friends once. But this was the first time I actually felt real and honest compassion, that I wanted to defend her, to tell her holding onto beautiful on the outside but hideous on the inside mother to shut up already.
Rachelle snapped her fingers at her sister-in-law. “Fiona, will you have a martini with me? Clara, fetch one, be a dear.”
I shook my head while Clara hesitantly started to rise. Since when was her sister-in-law relegated to being Rachelle’s servant? “I’m fine, thank you. I’m on duty.”
“Duty?” Rachelle made a big deal of that word, lips twisting as she leaned back. “Don’t tell me you’re actually sheriff after all, dear. How horribly pedestrian. Vivian, darling, how could you foist such a terrible job off on this lovely girl.” Rachelle leaned toward me, whispering
though everyone could hear her, including Martha who sat with a quilt over her, watching me. “Honestly, Fiona, what dreadful business, all that death and aren’t you just frantic you’ll have nightmares?”
I didn’t bother telling her this was my twelfth victim, shrugging instead. “Daughter of a sheriff,” I said. “I’m actually here to talk to Vivian.” I half-rose, meeting her eyes. Was that gratitude there?
But before she could stand and take the out I offered, Rachelle’s hand grasped my arm and jerked me down into my seat again. She didn’t seem to do so with spite in her intent, but she started talking again and I found myself grinding my teeth at her incessant speech giving, wondering how anyone could put up with her for any length of time and what, exactly, had led her back to Reading.
If she was here to spend Christmas with her family, and I was Vivian, I’d be switching religions.
“Surely such terrible business is more suited to a male officer.” Wow, she didn’t actually say that out loud, did she? “I always left anything that meant disruption to Ranier. He took care of all the details so I didn’t have to.” She said it so casually, as if her departed husband was going to be home any minute and I wondered if part of her act was a ruse to hide her grief. Except Vivian’s reaction to her mother’s comment told me otherwise. Nope, just another way to torment her only remaining child, apparently. “You know, I often thought he would have made an excellent lawyer or secret agent or something of that nature, all dashing and tuxedo wearing, you know. The spy type.” She winked at me. “He was so handsome and such a gentleman and I just know Victor would have turned out to be the spitting image of his father. Just like Vivian did of her mother. Isn’t that right, darling?”
So, there are definitive moments in our lives when things come into crystal clarity. The type of events that seem to have giant flashing signs built around them, huge billboards of THE TRUTH that were impossible to unsee and kind of took your breath away.
This was one of those moments. Never in my life had I seen anyone as clearly as I did Rachelle French. The vindictive, spite-filled and empty shell of a woman who had zero redemption available to her. She might have had a chance to rebound once, but she’d chosen hate, embraced it, wallowed in it and allowed it to suck out her soul and slither into its place, her disguise a razor-thin skim of scum over a seething black pond of sludge ready to destroy anyone who allowed it the tiniest opening.
She was evil incarnate. With all of that nastiness aimed at the one person she hated the most in the world, likely because she only really had her daughter left to blame.
Vivian surged to her feet as the image flashed out and I was simply staring at Rachelle French again. The mayor grasped her mother’s hand and, as the older woman squealed in protest over spilling her martini, dragged the elder French out of the room.
I sat there a moment, swallowing bile, stomach churning from what I’d seen. When I met Clara’s eyes, she looked sad, worried, then leaped up and ran from the room the way Vivian had gone.
Leaving me alone with Martha.
The old woman had held still the entire time I’d been there, silent with half-lidded eyes and a rather vacant expression that made me worry something horrible had happened to her since I saw her last. I knew she suffered from dementia, perhaps even full-on Alzheimer’s at this point. But the moment Clara ran from the room, Vivian’s grandmother surged forward, shedding her quilt, and almost leaping on me. Her rock-hard fingernails left half-moon indentations in the back of my hand when I squeaked protest at her quick return to mobility.
“Iris.” She hissed my grandmother’s name, winking, grinning, old lips wrinkled, moisture creeping into the lines around her mouth, her faded blue eyes sparking with some old secret while my heart pounded and I nodded.
Going to hell myself, apparently.
“Take it.” She stuffed something into my hand before settling back into her seat again. “I can’t use it, not now. And I know he would want you to have it. All of it.”
“Who?” I didn’t dare look at what she’d given me. The old lady was cracked, that much was obvious. Okay, not a nice way to talk about someone who had an illness that would claim her life at some point, as it had clearly taken her mind.
Martha giggled like a girl, hands covering her mouth before she winked at me.
“You know who,” she said. “Alistair.”
Wait. What? “Alistair Markham?”
She inhaled quickly. “You know he always had a thing for you, Iris. Why do you think he worked so hard to find the…” she leaned in again before hissing, “you know?”
This was almost too much. Was Crew’s grandfather in love with my grandmother? And, as my mind skimmed over possibilities, did that mean I needed to somehow be worried about my marriage? But no, I knew my grandfather, right? And Dad looked just like him, didn’t he? I swallowed more bile, panic subsiding while I wriggled with discomfort in my chair.
Please, don’t let Crew be my half-cousin or something equally creepy or I’d seriously be finding a nunnery and joining the cloister.
“Doesn’t matter now,” Martha sighed, leaning back once more. I fetched her quilt and draped it over her legs, tucking the soft bundle she gave me into my coat pocket. “He’s married, you’re married, unrequited love is a bitch.” She cackled a laugh then and I exhaled in shaky relief just as she caught my hand and brought me so close to her I could smell the stale peppermints on her breath. “He gave it to me to give to you but I was jealous.” Tears stood in her eyes then. “We all wanted him for ourselves, even Marie.” She shook her head. “But he loved you, Daniel loved you. They all did.” She seemed to fade then, lips parting as she stared at the floor and sighed. “Now you have what you need, and I’m done of it, Iris.”
I wanted to ask her specific questions, so many, but she was clearly worn out, suddenly unresponsive for real and, as I sat back in my chair, hand going to my pocket and whatever it was she gave me, I heard the side door slam open and stood to find Vivian storming toward me.
“Come with me,” she snapped. “Now.” And kept moving, back toward the foyer exit.
I knew where this was going, had been ushered out in the past. Not like this wasn’t what I’d been expecting. Except, as I paused to touch Martha’s cheek, she looked up at me and smiled, squeezing my fingers.
“Hello, Iris,” she said in a little girl’s voice. “I didn’t know you were here, dear. Would you like to play with my dolls?”
I left her there, picking at the hem of her quilt, humming softly to herself an old nursery rhyme while I felt my heart constrict and begged the powers that were out there in the wild beyond to please take me long before I could become like her.
***
Chapter Seventeen
I was surprised, then, when Vivian didn’t stop at the front door after all but kept going, leading me past the exit and toward the other side of the grand main entry. She opened a tall, elaborate doorway and stepped through, leaving it open for me to follow and I found myself, a moment later, standing on thick, dark carpeting in the midst of a huge study with a roaring fire in the massive fireplace. Books lined the walls, more library than office, though the giant leather wingbacks and the tall portrait of a handsome man over the mantel told me this had to be Ranier’s room once upon a time.
Vivian was clearly using it as her own space, with files and recent documentation piled on the desk next to what looked like one of her handbags. She hadn’t redecorated, the dark interior more masculine than her typical off white designs, so her father still meant something to her, didn’t he? I guess I was getting good at this detective thing after all.
She stopped beside one of the chairs but didn’t sit, one hand resting on the back and I wondered if that was Ranier’s seat, if she somehow drew strength from being in her father’s space. Okay, now I was just ascribing fantasies, but still. It wasn’t hard to do so, not when it was obvious she chose this room for a reason.
“What are you really doing here?” She did
n’t meet my eyes. I shut the door behind me and closed the gap, enjoying the heat of the fire about thirty seconds before feeling myself start to sweat inside my winter coat and boots.
“Nosy,” I said, admitting to it.
She looked up then, and a faint smile pulled at her lips. I guess my honesty caught her off guard.
“I told you to trust me,” she said. “You don’t have to be here, or ask me questions. I’m handling things. As long as you take care of your end.”
“That’s really obnoxiously obtuse,” I said, knowing I’d matched her dry tone perfectly. Again with the lip-twist. She didn’t argue so I went on. “Thing is, it’s a two-way street, Viv. I’ll trust you the second you start to trust me.”
She physically flinched, like I’d hurt her. “I am trusting you,” she said, her instant look of hurt smothered by an attempt to hide it. “Why else would I have made you sheriff against the Pattersons?”
So I’d been right, not a big shocker. “Geoffrey wasn’t very happy with you. You tipped your hand, Viv. Are you ready for the consequences?” Like I even knew what I was talking about. But it felt like the right thing to say and, as she nodded slowly, sinking at last into her father’s chair—it had to be—grasping the arms in both hands, leaning forward like a Medieval queen about to have me killed or sent on a quest.