by Tegan Maher
Moira smiled at her and nodded her thanks, and I couldn’t help but notice the shadows under her eyes. She had her own set of gifts, but the coolest one was that she could, in essence, make herself invisible by manipulating the light in her own space so that it refracted and reflected off the space around her. She faded right into the background, becoming pretty much invisible as long as she stood still. I was a little jealous.
“Hey ladies,” I answered. “How was the drive?” They lived in Eagle Gap, which was almost an hour away.
“Not bad, except I’m exhausted,” TJ said, slumping onto a step. “There’s this spirit who just won’t leave me alone. She talks all night about finding her crock. I have no idea what she’s talking about, but it’s driving me nuts. Sometimes it’s like she can’t even hear me; she just mutters to herself about how important it is.”
And that was why she needed Camille’s help to tune them out. Nutty little old dead ladies wandering around in your bedroom just wasn’t okay, no matter how important her crock was to her.
CHAPTER 13
THE NEXT MORNING DAWNED gray and dreary—perfect weather to go pilfering through a dead woman's house. I’d slept like crap the night before, my dreams a mix of weird and sad. I’d dreamed of my dad again, which bugged me. I hadn’t even thought of him except in passing in years, but I wrote it off to making the mental comparison between him and Felix the day before.
Of course, that only explained one of the nights I’d dreamed of him. Things had been crazy though, with lots of other people’s family skeletons rattling around, so that may be it. Or maybe all my long-buried daddy issues were bubbling to the top. Lordy, would that be a mess.
I made it to the shop early, stopping just long enough at Brew4U to drop off the pastries I’d baked and grab a coffee. Usually, I enjoyed coffee time at the shop, but for once, I wasn’t in the mood for company. Rae’d noticed something wasn’t right, but I’d passed it off as a headache and added an extra shot of espresso to my coffee. By the time Rose arrived out front, I was feeling normal, more or less.
I set the TV to Lifetime for Erol and set out a few crackers for Norm and Sammie just as Rose pulled up. When I ran out to the car, the smell of sulfur was in the air and I knew it wouldn't be long before the skies opened up. I climbed in and pulled the door shut behind me.
"Morning," I said as I fastened my seatbelt.
"Yeah, it is,” she said, her voice heavy. “That's about all I can say about it though." She looked like a woman heading to the gallows.
"Sorry," she sighed, a ghost of a self-deprecating smile curving her lips in profile. "It's been a rough couple days and I didn't sleep that well last night. Daddy and his new wife came over to check on me, and it ended up feeling more like she was checking on the status of the house.”
“Hunter told me he’d gotten remarried,” I said. “When did that happen?”
She heaved a sigh. “In the last few weeks, apparently. I can’t believe he didn’t even tell me he was gonna do it."
I shook my head, deciding not to tell her Coralee’d seen them in town the morning her mom was killed despite what he’d told her. I figured there was no reason to add any more stress if it turned out to be nothing. "Some people. What do you think of her?"
"Personally?" she said, brows raised. "I think she's lookin' for a man to take care of her and she saw Daddy's boat at the tournament and made a serious miscalculation."
Her dad had managed to come away from the divorce with his boat, something he'd saved long and hard for, and it was a nice one. I can see how somebody who didn't know him would think he had money.
I glanced at her profile as she pulled off down the driveway. "You really think that?"
She pulled in a breath. "I don't know, to be honest. Maybe I'm not willing to give her the benefit of the doubt because nobody will ever be good enough for Daddy as far as I'm concerned." She smiled a little again. "Hell, mama wasn't good enough for daddy."
It struck her a second later that she was talking bad about her dead mom, and guilt flushed her cheeks.
"Hey," I said. "None of that. One of the things I learned is that you can't canonize somebody after they die. It's not healthy and it's not honest. Cherish the good memories, but don't forget about the warts, too. They were just as much a part of her as the good stuff." Maybe more in her case, I thought, but kept the opinion to myself.
I did, however, figure she should know what Anna Mae had told me. "You know Millie's from here, right?"
She turned toward me, surprised. "No. She said she met Dad when she was down from Atlanta for the tournament."
I relayed what Anna Mae'd told me but skipped the speculation about the house being a motive for murder. The last thing I wanted to do was rock her boat some more, especially since she seemed about to tip over already.
It was only a ten-minute ride to her mom's place, but when she pulled up in front of the house, she stared out the windshield at her childhood home and her eyes got glassy. She pulled in a deep breath then blew it slowly out.
"Now or never, I guess, right?" she said, glancing at me. Dread laced her gaze, but she squared her shoulders as she reached for the door handle. "Let's do this."
I gave a sharp nod. For some reason, I wasn't too anxious to go in there myself, but if she could do it, I sure could. "Alrighty, then. Let's do it."
The house had an abandoned feel to it, like a place does when somebody's moved out. That was in direct opposition to the way it looked, though. The teakettle was on the stove, and a dishtowel was draped over the oven handle, just slightly askew. A shiver ran through me when I realized Ida had left her house thinking she'd be back shortly after a quick trip to the grocery store, only she hadn't. And she never would.
Rose must have had that same thought, or one similar to it, because she sagged a little. I could tell it was taking everything she had to maintain control, and I patted her on the back.
"Let's get the paperwork first," I said, thinking it would be much less personal than going through her mama's closet. I remembered well how agonizing that had been for me when Addy’d passed.
Everything in her bedroom had still smelled like her. Her hairbrush had been on her dresser, strands of hair clinging to it, and the towel she'd showered with that morning was slung over the shower curtain. It had been a punch in the gut, and I figured that was a chore best saved for last.
"So what, exactly, are we looking for?" I asked as we entered a room her mom had obviously used as an office.
"Her will and the deed to the house, to be sure, and anything else that looks important. She didn't believe in lawyers or safe-deposit boxes, so everything should be right here. I’m hopin’ she left an insurance policy, because if she didn’t, I don’t know how I’m going to afford to bury her. I know she wasn’t hurting, but I don’t even know how much money she really had. I’m not sure how that works. Can I just call the bank?"
I thought for a minute, but didn’t want to give her supposition. “To be honest, I’m not sure. Addy had my name added to all the accounts when Uncle Calvin died just in case anything happened to her. Not that there was much in there when she passed, but at least I had direct access.”
“I don’t think Mama did that because I never signed anything, but I guess we’ll find out.” She pulled two huge file boxes off the top shelf of the closet. "Unless I miss my guess, everything’ll be in here somewhere. She saved the desk drawers for the day-to-day stuff like bills."
I took one of the boxes and sat cross-legged on the floor, and she plopped down beside me. The top was covered with dust, and I sneezed.
Rose grinned. "If Mama saw that, she'd die all over again of embarrassment."
"She was a stickler for cleanliness, that's for sure. This place makes the farm look like an absolute pigsty."
"Yeah, my place too," she said as she blew the dust off the top of hers. "She was always on me about it, but the first thing I did when I moved into my own place was leave a dirty glass in the sink ove
rnight, just because I could."
She laughed and shot me a sideways look. "Then I got up and had to wash it because it was haunting me, or more accurately, Mama's voice in my head was. It took me a while to get over that. I always loved coming to the farm. It was clean, but it was lived in. It was okay to sit on the furniture and pull your feet up or have clothes hanging out of the hamper a little."
I snorted. "You mean overflowing 'til Addy forced us to do laundry because we were out of underwear."
"Yeah, that's exactly what I mean," she said, grinning. "I couldn't even imagine being that comfortable in my own house." She looked down as her fingers walked through the first few files in the box. "It's a shame to think that, but it's the truth. After daddy left, I never did feel like this was my home. It was just the place where I lived. Your place was more home to me than here."
Not sure what to say to that, I just let it float there while I flipped through the files in my box. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, I found a file labeled American Life and pulled it out.
"I think I found something," I said, handing her the file because I was loathe to go through it myself. It felt too much like looking in her purse or somebody’s medicine cabinet. Though I had been guilty of the latter on a couple occasions, I'm ashamed—sort of—to admit.
She took it and flipped it open. When she did, her eyes grew round. "Holy shit, Noelle." She flipped through to the end, where checks were stapled. "She had a life insurance policy for half a mil, with me as the beneficiary, and right here's this month's premium payment."
Thinking about all the rules and riders that went hand-in-hand with insurance, I asked her how old it was.
She flipped back to the end of the contract. "She took it out almost eight years ago."
That was well past the time limits most riders imposed for certain causes of death. "Sweetie," I said, grinning, "lunch is on you."
She smiled. "I think I can handle that."
Rose was a graphic designer who owned her own business and worked from her house. She was better than good and made decent money, but not so much that half a mil wasn't big bucks to her, especially if her mortgage was as big as Belle and Coralee said it was. She stuffed the policy back in the file, set it to the side, and kept digging.
"So what's up with you lately?" she asked. "I never get out of the house and have zero friends that aren't just screen names. I mean, I know who they are, but I’m not close to any of them and I've never met them." She huffed out a disgusted breath and curled her lip. "Kevin got all our friends in the divorce since he knew them first, and when I moved back, I'd lost track of everybody I’d been close to."
I tried to put myself in her place, and realized we were two sides of the same coin. I’d lost many friends because they’d moved away, and she’d been one of them. "That must have sucked. Did you like them? The friends in Atlanta, I mean?"
She drew her brows together and thought about that for a minute. "You know, now that you mention it, I didn't. They were all a bunch of shallow, entitled snobs, just like he was. I mean, we had lunch and cookouts—excuse me, dinner parties—at each other’s houses, but I wasn't actual friends with a single one of them. If you told one of them something, you may as well tell them all. I had nobody to talk to during the divorce because I didn't want my dirty laundry to be public fodder."
I grinned at her as I stuffed a file back in the box. "Then you didn't lose much after all, did you? And now you're home."
Smiling, she leaned over and nudged me with her shoulder. "Thanks, Noe. I needed that. You're right—when I put it in that perspective, I didn't lose nearly as much as I’d thought."
"Happy to be of service," I said, glad we'd reconnected. She'd been fun to hang out with in school—when she was allowed, anyway—and it made me sad that she felt so isolated in her own hometown.
"You know, I only live like fifteen minutes from you,” I said. “Now mind you, we're heathens—we have cookouts where we run barefoot, drink cheap wine, and eat hotdogs that aren't all beef. We've even been known to call on the three-second rule, but you're always welcome to come slummin' if you want."
She grinned, her eyes sparkling. "Now that's my kind of dinner party."
I found a folder with an investment portfolio in it, and since neither of us could make heads or tails of it, she set it aside to take with her to her attorney. From what we could decipher, though, Ida had been wise with her money and had a nice nest egg that, combined with the life insurance, assured that Rose would have a comfortable retirement.
A few minutes later, she found the will. Since it was dated the previous spring and notarized by Peggy Sue, we figured it was the most recent one. Not surprisingly, she'd left almost everything to Rose with the exception of ten grand, which she left to the library.
"That's weird," Rose said as she flipped through the pages, then laughed when she saw the stipulation. "To be spent specifically and wholly on proper cleaning and upkeep."
"Not so weird, then," I said, huffing out a laugh but shaking my head.
Still, the library could always find a way around such a vague rule. Upkeep could be anything from a new porch to a weekly maid, or even replenishing a section of the library with books. And they were in need.
I was almost to the end of my box when I came across a file labeled simply House Stuff. The deed was there along with annual tax receipts, so I handed it to Rose.
Rather than read it page by page, she gave it a cursory glance then stuffed all of it back in the file, put it with the other three on the floor beside her, and shut the lid on her file box.
"Okay, now to pick out the clothes," she said as she stuffed the boxes back in the closet.
The way she said it sounded more like Okay, let's go rip my heart out and set my hair on fire, and my heart bled for her because I knew how she felt.
With a deep sigh, she squared her shoulders and headed for the stairs.
CHAPTER 14
PICKING AN OUTFIT DIDN't take as long and didn't appear to be nearly as painful for her as I was afraid it would be. On the way out, she paused and went back to the kitchen, straightening the dishtowel on her way past.
I followed her and was amazed when she opened the pantry. It had the standard supply of dry and canned goods, but bottles of wine took up half of one of the shelves. There had to be at least a dozen bottles of wine from several different makers.
I looked at Rose, brows raised.
"Mama was a member of a monthly wine club. Every month, they'd send her like eight bottles of wine."
"Oh, did she just become a member?" I asked, thinking she probably drank a bottle or two a month, then it got ahead of her and she just forgot to cancel her order for the month.
"Meh,” she said, lifting a shoulder. “Seven or eight years, probably."
Suddenly, that didn't look like such a large amount of wine after all.
She stepped forward and started pulling them out, and I glanced at her, head tilted in question.
Putting the bottles on the kitchen table, she said, "That tart my dad's married to may be movin' into this house, but damned if I'm leavin' it stocked with wine for her."
I smile and grabbed an empty cardboard box from the floor. It had Wembly's Wine of the Month Club scrawled in flowery script across the side and there were dividers inside to separate the bottles.
"Apparently she just got a shipment," I said as I started putting the bottles in the box. I stuffed as many bottles as I could into it, laying two of them across the top. I noticed one of them was from the Bluegrass Winery and hoped the other brands were of higher quality.
"Must have," Rose agreed, picking up the last three bottles. "Good. I'd hate for a shipment to come the day after that gold-diggin' tramp moves in."
It was nice to see city life hadn't taken out that tad bit of hillbilly all of us country girls carried inside, just in case we ever needed it.
"So let me ask you something," I said. "There's no good way to put this, but you're
gonna have to answer it soon, anyway. You may as well take the time to roll it around in your head awhile and think it through."
She blew out a breath and gave me a sorrowful look. "You're going to ask if I think Daddy did it. Or Whatsherface."
Feeling a little guilty, but not enough to deny it, I replied, "Well, yeah."
She sighed as she folded the flaps of the box closed. "I've asked myself the same thing. It was one of the first thoughts that flitted through my head when I heard she was poisoned."
Meeting my eyes, she continued. "The honest answer is that I don't think so. Do I know beyond a shadow of a doubt he wouldn't? I'd like to be that sure, but I'm not. And especially not with the new wife. And I don’t know anything at all about her, so who knows. I mean, somebody did it, right?"
Indeed they did. I hoped for her sake it wasn't her dad, but the odds weren't in her favor.
After we loaded everything into the car, Rose decided to go back in for the jewelry and a few things she held close to her heart. After all, with Ida dead and her lifetime rights to the house relinquished, Rose's daddy and his new gal pal could technically move in whenever they wanted. Rose hadn't had a chance to talk much with him, so she figured she'd better get the valuables—both monetary and sentimental—while the gettin' was good.
When she dropped me back off at the house, I was surprised to see it was almost noon. At some point, I had to pick up Justin—Bobbie Sue and Earl's boy—to bring him to the farm for the night. His was another long story that I won't get into here, but suffice it to say, he’d lived with me for bit before Bobbie Sue and Earl adopted him, and we sort of shared him.
Gabi was home when we got to the farm, but Shelby was gone. I invited Rose to come inside, where we spent an hour reminiscing. Gabi was another high school friend who had drifted away until a few months before, and it was nice to drift back to more carefree days.
An hour later, I glanced at my phone. "As bad as I hate to, I gotta scoot," I said. "I want to grab something to eat while I'm there, then I have to go to Walmart. I'm out of sugar, and Rae's gonna need more pastries tomorrow."