by Nancy Bush
“Okay.” Her mother leaned back against the counter, surveying her daughter, chin thrust outward. “Maybe you’d rather I left.”
“No! Grandma, don’t leave!” Evie cried.
“Your mother wants me to—”
“Mom! God,” Lucy cut in. She was so tired of Sandra’s games. “Do whatever you want!” Furious, she stalked out of the room, up the stairs to her bedroom, and flung herself on the bed, hating herself for acting like a teen drama queen, unable to stop herself. Her mother’s passive-aggressiveness drove her insane.
She lay there for a moment, hot face buried in her pillow, knowing she was racked with fear over the future and that it was making her irrational, crazy, nothing like her usual self, yet she couldn’t contain her emotions. She wanted to have a complete shit fit, and with that in mind, she lifted her head and thumped her pillow furiously with her fist.
And Dallas Denton . . . didn’t . . . even ... remember ... her.
Was that it? Was that the cherry on top of this whole awful sundae? She couldn’t get him out of her head. Yes, she’d wanted to go see him. Had let Layla’s crazy plan unfurl with a certain amount of hope. Had looked forward to the meeting, even while she was frightened to the soles of her feet. She’d had some insane idea that seeing him again would help. A bright spot in the otherwise dark void that had become her world.
Not. So.
Knock, knock.
Lucy inwardly groaned but sat up on the bed, pressing her palms to her hot cheeks for a moment before saying, “It’s open.”
Her mother looked in. “I shouldn’t have pushed. You’re under a lot of stress, and I’m stressed, too. That policeman asked so many questions. . . .”
“Detective Pelligree. He just wanted to know what happened.”
“It’s worrisome.”
Lucy nodded. She knew even better than her mother how it felt to be interviewed like you were a suspect. Not that Pelligree, a good-looking black man in cowboy boots with a pleasant demeanor, had done anything to intimate that the questions were more than routine, it was just ... John had been poisoned.
“But I am going to leave,” Sandra added. “You need it. I need it. We all need to get back to normal somehow, and now that you have a lawyer to defend you, you’ll be taken care of. But I’m not sorry for what I said about your father. And watch Lyle. He’s under Abbott’s influence, and that’s not good.”
“You’ve never liked Lyle.”
“Untrue. I don’t like his mother. Lyle’s fine.”
That was debatable, but Lucy let it pass. “I know Lyle and Dad aren’t being totally transparent.”
“I just want what’s best for you, Evie, and Layla. Watch out for your sister. I know that right now everyone’s trying to help you, and they should, but you’re the strong one, Lucy, you know that. You always have been. And—” Her brow furrowed a little. “And Layla’s . . . flighty.”
“I don’t feel like the strong one.”
“Oh, you are. You just don’t know it.” Her lips twitched a bit, a smile fleeting. “Even the strong have bad days ... or weeks.”
“Or months? Or years?”
“Yes. Look, you know Layla’s not that great at decision-making. Right?”
“Yeah—I guess.” Lucy nodded.
“Don’t let her do something stupid for the greater good.”
“She knows better than to marry Neil.”
“Does she?”
Catastrophe, Lucy thought, keeping that thought to herself under her mother’s sharp eye.
* * *
Layla looked at the staging of the house in Portland’s West Hills and thought, Cold. Everything was in grays and dark browns and whites. It was one of the newer homes, a midcentury modern built in the 1960s, and it had been completely renovated, but there wasn’t a pop of color anywhere. Layla hadn’t been asked to do the original staging, but Mary Jo wanted her “magic” now.
“That couch has got to go,” Layla said. “And the bedrooms need a theme. They’re just so blah. They would be better if one leaned feminine and one leaned masculine. Teenage boy. Young miss . . .”
“We wanted it to be swank, like the sixties,” Mary Jo defended herself.
“I see that.” Layla wisely said nothing more. She rarely defined rooms by gender herself, but this house needed warmth, a family to view themselves in it. What the original stager had put in place clearly wasn’t working. “I’ll come up with something.”
“Do it fast. Tomorrow’s another broker’s open house and I want it to pop!”
“I’ll get you a few pillows and some art, but that’s about all I can do on that short notice.”
“Fine,” Mary Jo sniffed.
Half an hour later, Uber dropped Layla off outside Easy Street Bistro. She went inside and ordered a cup of coffee from a friend. Though she tried to concentrate on adding pops of color to the house being staged. She needed to find the right items because she needed to be paid for her work. More than ever, she could use the money.
And if you marry Neil, money won’t be an issue....
She slammed her mind shut on that thought. She’d never been particularly motivated by money and she didn’t intend to be now. But if marrying Neil could get her both Eddie and a way to help Lucy . . .
Layla walked the few blocks to her apartment, hurrying up the stairs to her floor. There just weren’t enough hours in the day any longer. Time had sped up since the benefit and everything in her life was moving at warp speed.
She’d barely closed the apartment door behind her when her cell jingled, the ringtone she’d selected for Neil because it was slightly annoying. Yes, his change of direction toward her was too fast. Something had clearly happened. Something she didn’t understand. But she was rolling with it, waiting for clarity while she pretended to go along. She’d told Dallas Denton she intended to marry Neil. She’d let Lucy think the same thing. She wanted Eddie, and if that was what it took to have him, maybe she would marry Neil; she didn’t know for sure at this point. But what she did know was that she didn’t want to marry him. It was just an option.
She slid the scarf from her neck, tossing it over her coat, which she’d hung by the front door. Her mind skidded around another thought, one she didn’t want to even have in her head, but there it was: Did Jerome Wolfe scare you so much that marrying Neil seems like a safe option?
Scare wasn’t quite the right word. She’d been disgusted and alarmed at his actions, understanding even though she didn’t like it that she was some kind of pawn in both his dealings with her father and in some undefined battle with Neil. A hand-over-the-end-of-the-bat thing.
But, along with all that, there was the vista of dating nothing but trolls like Wolfe for years and years. Guys who were just waiting to take advantage of her, and that was truly frightening. Seeing Ian after her encounter with Wolfe had somehow only made the whole thing worse. Ian was a nice guy at heart, but he was a slacker. If she were yoked to him in marriage he would be a dead weight.
What do you really want?
She’d asked herself that question so many times, she had a mental vision of it written on a ragged piece of paper with one word: Eddie. She wanted Eddie, and beyond that, nothing else.
Her cell rang, those annoying notes again, and she yanked it from her purse to examine the caller ID. Sure enough: Neil. She sent the call directly to voice mail. She wasn’t ready to make decisions about him just yet. She wondered what Courtney had done to so thoroughly turn him off her. Something to do with the baby?
Layla made herself a cup of tea. Her apartment had a lingering scent of vanilla from the candle she’d lit that morning, after her breakfast of a piece of buttered toast. She hadn’t eaten anything since and she was hungry. She’d lost weight, enough that people had commented on it, and she’d wondered briefly if there was something wrong with her. To that end, she’d had a complete physical and learned what she’d already known: she was stressed out. And that was before John died. She couldn’t imagine what
Lucy was going through, what her stress level must be.
She glanced at the blank black screen of her cell. Jerome Wolfe had called her twice since that lovely ride home. She’d ignored him as well. She’d told anyone who would listen about what he’d done, how he’d come on to her, how he’d kind of frightened her, believing in full transparency. True to form, her father had been put off and a little angry with her.
Really? Well, of course. Abbott was Abbott.
Her brother had stared at her blankly, maybe with a little bit of fear in his eyes. What the hell was his problem anyway?
And then there had been her sister-in-law. Kate hadn’t been able to believe Layla’s accusations about the wonderful Jerome Wolfe, but then, she was always dazzled by money and good looks.
Only Lucy had understood.
The phone rang. She glanced at the screen, though she knew it was Neil again. Calm, Layla. Be calm. She drew in a slow breath, exhaled even more slowly, then answered. “Hi, there.”
“Are you at home?” he asked.
“Just got here, but I’m going out.” Not that it was the truth, but she just couldn’t stand being at his beck and call.
“I wondered if you wanted to see Naomi.”
Not what she’d expected. Layla sank onto one of the two barstools around her small counter. Yes, she wanted to see Naomi. She’d called her twice, but Naomi was always busy, breathless, couldn’t talk. She’d wondered if that was because of something Neil had said to her about Layla, but maybe it was simply the truth.
“Right now?” she asked.
“I could come pick you up.”
“It’s dinnertime. You sure it would be all right?”
“I’ve talked to her, Layla. I’m in your neighborhood. I’ll be up in a minute.”
He clicked off, and she was left with the feeling this was a setup. Another Neil trick.
He knows Eddie’s your weakness.
She braced herself.
When the knock came, Layla almost didn’t answer it. She sensed she was on a dark path. She shook that off and answered the door. Neil was bundled up against the rain. He wore a dark hat and a raincoat, and for a moment, she inwardly panicked, but then he smiled and swept off the hat, placing it and his coat on the rack beside Layla’s.
He looked . . . odd, she thought. A bit shrunken?
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
He laughed, a short, bitter bark. “I should never have gotten mixed up with Courtney. She’s a fucking nutcase.”
“What happened?”
He waved that away. “She’s gone. Back home, or wherever she came from.”
“What about the baby?”
“There is no baby. She lost it.”
Is that what this is about? Layla wondered.
He gazed at her tenderly, in a way he never had before. Almost apologetically. She had the distinct desire to run. Run away. Get away from him.
“You need to eat something,” he said. “I’m taking you to dinner, and then we’ll go see Naomi.”
“I can’t marry you,” she heard herself say. “I’ve thought about it, and I want Eddie, but I just can’t do it.”
“I don’t want to share custody. I don’t want to shuttle back and forth between my home and your apartment. If you won’t marry me, move in with me.”
Was that worse or better? Layla didn’t like either option. “If we’re living together, you won’t fight me for custody?”
“I don’t want to fight you at all. I’ve done this all wrong. When I saw you at the gallery, I just ... fell for you. Layla Crissman. I should have offered to marry you then. Right at the start.”
He sounded nostalgic and sad, not like Neil at all. She peered closely at him, almost to make sure he was the same man. “What happened, Neil?” she asked him. “Something’s happened. You’re not yourself.”
She saw his eyes were red-rimmed when they looked up at her. “I have an empire for my son and no woman. Without you, he’ll be raised by nannies, other women, like I was, and I don’t want that.”
You should have thought of that before. “I don’t understand how you can have such an about-face. You get that, right?”
“You and I started fighting about things. It just wasn’t working.”
“We were always supposed to share custody,” she reminded him. Neil was the one who’d turned it into a war.
“We were supposed to be together,” he corrected. “We still could be. I want that. Don’t you? Don’t you want to be a family?”
The pull was great. The family part. But with Neil as the centerpiece? “I want my baby more than anything,” she admitted.
“Then let’s give it a try. No prenup. Everything I have is yours.”
Layla exhaled slowly. “You make it sound very attractive, but ... there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“I’m being completely honest.”
“Honest, maybe. I can believe that. But completely? No. Tell me what the big turnaround is, Neil.”
“I made a big mistake with Courtney. I was angry with you. You wanted to fight all the time.”
“You wanted to control every aspect of my life,” she reminded him.
“I got involved with her and we decided to have a kid, but she’s nuts.”
“You brought her to the benefit.”
“She met me there. Knew I was going. Came in her own car and waited for me. I just let her because . . .” He trailed off.
“You wanted to hurt me,” she realized. He was embarrassed to tell the truth.
“When I saw you there, in that jumpsuit . . .” He smiled faintly at the memory. “I don’t know ... I just wanted to start over. But you were cold, and Courtney was there, and I said some things I didn’t mean. I’ve thought about it ever since. I don’t want it to be this way between us. Let’s start over.”
He looked up at her, his face pale.
“What did Courtney do?” Layla asked, aware she was digging to the heart of it, also aware he was holding something back.
But Neil just shook his head. “Come on. Let’s go put some meat on your bones and see Naomi.”
Chapter Twenty
September pulled up in front of the Linfield house and watched the rain fall in sheets. April showers in the last few days of March.
She had no business being here, yet she was going for it.
Earlier, Wes Pelligree had called her about the Linfield case and asked her about the benefit. She’d told him the little she knew, and he, in turn, had explained about the Wharton County sheriff’s call, the results of the autopsy, and the fact that he’d followed up with the sheriff to find out who the tipster had been about the poisoning.
“An unidentified caller reached one of the deputies and told him to tell the sheriff that it was Amanita ocreata poisoning. Call was traced to a burner cell bought for cash at a convenience store in Glenn River. Cameras in the store are pretty much for show, not actually working, so there’s no video record of the sale.”
“The caller knew that,” said September.
“That’s my guess.”
“What’s your theory on that?”
“Someone knows something. Whether it’s the poisoner or someone else, don’t know yet. The call was made from the Portland area.”
He went on to tell her that if John Linfield had ingested the mushrooms at the benefit, it likely would have been early on, not long after he’d arrived. “Either that or he ate them before he got there.” Just before the end of the conversation, he added, “His wife drove him to Laurelton General’s ER that night, but she didn’t bring him in. One of the orderlies thought they were arguing. He asked her if she was coming in, but she drove off. His feeling was Linfield wanted to see a doctor, but the wife wasn’t interested.”
It was that comment that convinced September she needed to do something, for she had a very different view of Lucy Linfield. “I don’t think that’s accurate,” she told Wes.
September had just about decided to d
o some investigating of her own when Gretchen had called, sounding rather stressed, which was totally unlike her, and demanding they meet. So, two nights earlier, September had met her at Lucille’s, a diner not all that far from the station, sliding into the red faux-leather booth opposite her.
Gretchen looked harassed, her tightly curled black hair wilder than usual, her blue cat eyes serious.
“What?” September asked.
“D’Annibal’s out. Transferred, maybe. No one knows. And his replacement’s a woman, a captain. The chief ’s basically retired. He’s been old since forever, you know that, so now we have her.”
Gretchen struggled with women. Actually, she struggled with everyone. “Okay, well, maybe give her a chance.”
“Pelligree’s quitting. Got a job with Portland PD.”
“What? When? I just talked to him.”
“Next week, or the week after next. Maybe he’ll get to work with your brother.”
“What about the Linfield case?”
“What about all Pelligree’s cases? He’s got two other ones he’s working on. You think Skinny’s going to step up?”
Skinny was a much nicer nickname than lard-ass, one of Gretchen’s favorites for George, though George still had a ways to go to fit the moniker. But she was right. No way George was taking on more work. “What are you saying?”
“Put your damn résumé in. Maybe she’ll hire you. We’re going to have a spot open. Unless she wants her own people,” Gretchen added darkly. “Maybe I should leave, too.”
Gretchen handled adversity so well most of the time, and she was known for liking the weird, wacko cases, especially the bloody ones, that September had a hard time digesting this new persona.
“What’s her name?”
“Captain Boob Shelf.”
“What is it really?”
“Captain Calvetti. But I’m not kidding about the boob shelf. She comes in the door and all you see are breasts, and not in a good way. She could lose a few pounds. Not as many as George, but definitely some. She’s got all kinds of ideas. Wants us to clock in and out when we go in the field. Not a problem for George. He just rides his chair, although with the Jeannie thing, he’s been on the phone more and moodier. Maybe Calvetti will get after him about it.” A slow grin spread across her lips. “Now that would be something to look forward to.”