by Donna Fasano
“You think she might be there now?”
“She only cleans on Saturdays.”
Dammit, Luanne. “Call me if she gets in touch with you. It’s pretty important to get her back here before things get out of control.” She had to show up for her court date.
“Of course I will. I’ll keep calling.” Jen pressed her lips together. She clearly thought Luanne was making a mistake.
Chase couldn’t agree more.
He was halfway to his car when Jen called after him. “Wait! She has a great-aunt.” She stepped out onto the front stoop. “Aunt Hilda or Tilda or something like that. She lives somewhere near Richmond, Virginia.”
“You don’t know exactly?”
Jen bit her lips. “Sorry.” She shook her head. “They don’t have a relationship. Nothing beyond exchanging Christmas cards. That’s why I didn’t even remember it at first. Luanne never really talks about her.”
“Thanks.”
He went back to Luanne’s place and looked around one more time, hoping to find an old-fashioned address book that might hold information on the great-aunt, but he didn’t come across anything like that. He checked around for the Christmas card too, a slim chance having that still lying around in the middle of June. He searched anyway, but found no trace of that either.
He called Leila at the station. “Do you remember June Mayfair’s maiden name?” He knew about half the town. Leila knew at least three quarters.
“Luanne’s mother? Let me think.” A moment of silence. “June Desiree.”
“Thanks. I need an address for a Hilda or Tilda Desiree near Richmond, Virginia.”
“How near?”
“Don’t know.”
She grumbled something about the amount of work that was going to take.
“Or I could ask Robin to look into her crystal ball,” he suggested, tongue in cheek.
Robin was their part-time dispatcher, Leila’s nemesis, currently off at a psychic conference in Lily Dale, New York.
Leila promptly hung up on Chase at the mention of her name.
He drove to Jackie’s house next and asked for the blue Ford pickup’s license plate number, but he didn’t call in a three-state APB. For one, Luanne wasn’t officially wanted. She hadn’t skipped bail. Yet. Leaving the state didn’t look good, but maybe she’d come to her senses, call him, and explain herself.
He tried her phone again, got the number unavailable message, so he drove back to the station.
“Anything on Hilda Desiree?” he asked Leila as he walked in.
She looked up from her computer. “Not yet.” She picked up some printouts from the counter and held it out for him. “But we just got the report from the medical examiner.”
“Thanks.” He read it on his way to his desk, didn’t even sit down, turned around and strode straight to Bing’s office, stopped in the doorway. “The ME report is in. According to the coroner, the vehicle that hit Earl was going at least fifty miles an hour. That’s the speed that would be consistent with the external and internal damage to the body.”
The captain raised an eyebrow. “Luanne was gunning for him?”
“Not Luanne,” Chase said, and explained about her memory loss, her suspicions of the date-rape drug, which he fully believed. “At first I figured Gregory was just rolling into the back alley for a quiet moment, ran Earl over by accident, panicked, and ran.”
“Fifty miles an hour doesn’t sound like rolling. It sounds like whoever was driving the car might have been gunning for Earl.”
Chase nodded. “Maybe Earl saw them. Maybe Gregory didn’t want a witness.”
Bing thought for a second. “And Luanne remembers nothing?”
“Nothing after Gregory bought her a drink.”
Bing considered all that, then flashed him a level look. “You and Luanne have history.”
Chase winced. Oh Jezus, did everybody know? “Not a problem.”
“If she’s the perpetrator, she’s the perpetrator. We can’t twist things around just because we like her.”
“She’s not the perpetrator.”
Bing rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you have the lab results on the clothes she wore the night of the murder? The killer dragged the body to the side and covered it in garbage bags. There ought to be residue.”
“No results yet.”
Leila walked up in a pair of dazzling purple sandals that had silver horns, and handed Chase a sticky note with an address on it, then hurried back to her desk, calling back, “There’s a Hilda Millman, maiden name Desiree, in Petersburg,” before she picked up the ringing phone.
“Who’s Hilda Millman?” Bing asked.
“Luanne’s great-aunt in Virginia.”
“How is she involved?”
“Luanne might have gone to visit her.” Chase explained the near accidents, his neck muscles tighter by the minute when he thought how badly she could have gotten hurt.
Bing’s eyes narrowed. “Is she thinking about skipping bail?”
“I’d like to drive down and talk to her about that. If you don’t need me here.”
Bing watched him, his expression growing unhappier by the second. “You go and talk her into coming back.”
Chapter 7
By lunchtime, Luanne was seriously rethinking whether she’d made the right decision. The girls had slept through most of the long drive, so they were on a tear, full of energy, racing through the narrow tunnels of Aunt Hilda’s town house. For them, the maze of stacked-up boxes and newspapers was a playground.
A diminutive woman in her mideighties with natural white hair, Aunt Hilda sat in her overstuffed recliner, wearing a pink sweat suit with white sneakers, her four-pronged fancy cane close by her side. Enough furniture crowded her living room to fill a whole other house. Or two. Or three.
She had Luanne’s straight nose and brownish eyes. So weird. The twins inherited their father’s darker coloring. How strange to suddenly have a visible connection with someone. Luanne liked this newfound link very much. But she didn’t like the realization that her great-aunt was a hoarder.
Aunt Hilda ducked her head when she caught Luanne looking around again. “I haven’t been able to clean much since the knee replacement.”
The dust was the least of the old woman’s problems. She wasn’t a completely out-of-control hoarder who would have required a TV-type intervention—no leftover food or bugs or anything like that. The floor was still visible, but only in carefully created pathways.
Furniture occupied every available space, not to mention stacks of papers and boxes, packed knee-high or even higher. A very orderly mess—everything squared away, no threat of avalanche, or Luanne wouldn’t have let the twins out of her sight, but a giant mess nevertheless.
“Where did all the furniture come from?” she asked.
“Some came from the farm when it went under. Then, well, your uncle was the youngest of four children,” Aunt Hilda said. “His father had a brother who never married. When that brother died, he left everything to his nieces and nephews. My Arnold got his share.” She rubbed a hand over her knee. “Then Arnold’s parents died and they left behind more to divide among their four kids. Arnold’s oldest brother never married. When he died, everything went to the three remaining siblings. Arnold’s sister died of breast cancer. Her husband went before her. All their possessions went to Arnold and his middle brother. Then Arnold died.”
She paused and stared at nothing in particular for a moment. “Then Arnold’s middle brother died. His two girls asked me if I wanted to take any of the family picture books, furniture from the grandparents.” The old woman shook her head. “It didn’t seem right to throw out all that history. Madison lives in a tiny apartment in New York City. She couldn’t take a thing. Ursula doesn’t even have a place. She travels for business. Right now she’s in Japan. She’ll be there for at least a year. After that…” Aunt Hilda sighed. “Wherever the company will send her.”
Luanne hoped she’d meet Madison and Ursu
la someday, two brand-new relatives she’d never even heard of before. “Is anyone still around on the Desiree side?”
“Dead or moved,” Aunt Hilda said in a depressed tone. “After the farm was auctioned off, the family pretty much scattered.”
“Mama used to talk about the farm. How she met my father.”
Aunt Hilda narrowed her eyes. “My sister, your grandmother, was none too happy about that. Her only daughter running off with a farmhand. Your mother was after that boy from day one. First, he wanted nothing to do with her. But she kept after him, got pregnant on purpose so he’d take her with him when he moved back up north. She wanted to see the world.”
Luanne stared. Her mother had always blamed her for having to marry her father. So she’d gotten pregnant on purpose, had she? For some reason, it felt strangely liberating to know that.
“So everyone’s gone?” she asked, to be sure.
Aunt Hilda nodded.
Cripes. No Desiree homestead, no abandoned cabin in the hills where Luanne hoped to hide from whoever was trying to kill her, gain some time to figure out how Earl had really died and clear her name.
Aunt Hilda gestured at the crowded room. “All I have left of the family is what you see here.”
Generations’ worth of possessions. Luanne shook her head, more than a little stunned by the aggregate results. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this.
“I have to do something with it now,” Aunt Hilda said weakly, clearly upset over the prospect. “I’m not going to be able to take care of myself much longer. I haven’t been upstairs since the knee surgery last year. Even going down the front steps is a struggle. I need to go into a home. I’ve had the house listed for almost a year, but nobody wants to buy it.”
Luanne could see why prospective buyers would be wary. They probably took one look from the front door and fled.
Her life was a giant mess that needed some serious figuring out. But Aunt Hilda needed some quick solutions too.
Luanne drew a deep breath. “What if I helped?”
Aunt Hilda stared at her with surprise and disbelief. “Help how?”
Good question. “I’m a professional cleaner. And I can list stuff on eBay like nobody’s business.” Saturday afternoons she cleaned the library, but Saturday mornings she scavenged garage sales for things she could sell on the Internet. In a lucky month, she could make an extra hundred bucks that way. “We could start by listing the furniture online, so people can start looking at that while we’re dealing with the rest.”
Hilda shook her head. “I asked the mailman about that. Burt says furniture is too big to ship. I’d pay more to the post office than what I’d get for the pieces.”
“You can mark items for local pickup only. And then there’s Craigslist.”
Aunt Hilda still looked uncertain, small and lost in the oversize chair. “If you’re sure.”
A sudden, overwhelming sense of connection rushed Luanne. They’d never seen each other before, but the old woman was family. Luanne looked at the twins sitting on the floor in the kitchen now, playing with some antique wooden blocks. They needed these kinds of connections, the sense that they weren’t alone in the world.
So she nodded, with a lot more certainty than she felt. “I’m sure.” She glanced at the old computer on the antique desk in the corner. “Do you have Internet?”
“I do. Ursula talked me into it. Sometimes she sends e-mail from Japan. Last time she visited, she showed me how to find recipes and knitting patterns.”
“Mind if I look around?”
“Of course not. Go ahead.”
Luanne told the girls to stay where they were, then quickly checked through the house. The downstairs consisted of living room, kitchen, a dining room that had been converted into a bedroom for Aunt Hilda, and a handicap-accessible bathroom, all overcrowded.
The upstairs situation was better. The narrow stairs and the turn in the stairs had probably prevented larger pieces of furniture from being dragged up there. Three small bedrooms and a bathroom, lots of dust, but not a hoarder’s nightmare.
She came downstairs. “Would it be okay if we stayed a couple of days?”
“You would?” A stunned expression rounded the old woman’s eyes for a moment before they welled up with tears.
Luanne hurried over and hugged her. “Hey. Everything’s going to be just fine. I can handle this.” Keeping busy would leave her less time to obsess over her own situation.
Aunt Hilda sniffed and hugged her back tightly. “I know I’m a mess.” She pulled back and smiled through her tears. “You’re an angel.”
Not really. More of a suspected murderer, but that wasn’t something Luanne wanted to discuss within hearing distance of the twins. “Let me start snapping pictures.”
She opened the windows for fresh air, then found a feather duster in the laundry room and got the girls involved. Of course, they wanted to be in every picture. They were both hopeless hams. Luanne took two photos of each piece of furniture, one with the girls for Aunt Hilda for later, then one without the girls to post online.
They stopped for a midafternoon snack of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches from her stash that she’d brought from home. Her aunt supplied the milk.
Then Luanne finally put the girls down for their very late nap, toe to toe on the living room couch. Normally, they slept after lunch, but the long ride had messed up their schedule. Still, they had to sleep now, or they’d be overtired by dinner, whining and fighting over every little thing.
Luanne settled in by the computer to upload what she had so far. Aunt Hilda came to sit by her to help with the description of the furniture. She knew more about styles and the age of the pieces. She had no idea about prices, however, so Luanne looked up similar items to get a feel. They were both surprised that the pieces were worth a lot more than they’d expected.
Luanne entered the twenty or so items she’d photographed so far, local pickup only. “Now we wait.”
Aunt Hilda patted her hand. “You made that look easy. Wish I knew ten years ago how this worked.”
“Never too late.” Luanne turned to her aunt and took her frail hands into hers, glancing at the sleeping twins, then back to the old woman again. “There’s something I need to tell you. We didn’t exactly come here on the spur of the moment. I mean, it was spur of the moment, but I did have a reason.”
Aunt Hilda watched her, nothing but kindness on her lined face.
“I’m kind of in trouble. With the law.” She explained what happened. “I didn’t do it. Somebody set me up. Are you sure you still want us to stay?”
“Of course, I am.” Aunt Hilda squeezed her hand. “You’re family.”
Luanne’s heart warmed from the simple words. “Thank you. Okay, more disclosure. I’m not a fugitive at the moment, but I might become one. I don’t know if I’m going back for a trial. I can’t go to prison and leave the twins alone. We’ll leave before it comes to that. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
Hilda waved off the words. “I’m an old woman. They ain’t gonna take me out of here in shackles. I’ve seen most of the local officers run around in diapers.”
Luanne was pretty sure that didn’t mean immunity. She’d seen Chase naked, and that hadn’t stopped him from arresting her. She didn’t tell that to Aunt Hilda.
Instead, she said, “Thank you.” And gave the old woman a good, long hug before she stood. “I should go upstairs and clean a room and the bathroom for us up there.”
“There’s linen in the hallway closet.” Hilda glanced toward the girls and smiled, looking genuinely happy to have them in the house. “Those sheets have been in there for a while. You might want to wash them to freshen them up a little.”
“I’ll start with that.” Luanne went upstairs to open the windows up there too, grabbed the bedcover, then went for the linen.
The doorbell rang just as she was coming from the laundry room, having turned on the washer.
Her he
art thumped. Whoever was trying to kill her couldn’t have tracked her down already, could he? She’d kept an eye on the rearview mirror on the whole drive. She could swear they hadn’t been followed.
Doubts sliced into her nevertheless. Instead of taking the girls someplace safe, had she just dragged her aunt into danger too?
“I’ll get it.” She didn’t want Aunt Hilda to have to get up. She wiped her hands on her pants as she hurried to look out the peephole, her cell phone in her hand, ready to dial 911 if she saw Gregory’s face on the other side.
Chase?
Her heart, already racing, galloped a little faster. If she just ignored him, would he go away? Face stern, shoulders squared, he didn’t look like he would. He looked pretty damned determined.
She opened the door slowly, reluctantly, to a gap. “Hi.”
Instead of his usual detective uniform of dress pants, shirt, and tie, he wore blue jeans and a plain black T-shirt. He gave her an assessing look, his body language wound up like she’d never seen him, his muscles tight, his gaze darkening. Uncharacteristic anger simmered just below the surface. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting Aunt Hilda.”
He made her nervous, embarrassed—because she couldn’t not think of their one disastrous sexual encounter every time she saw him. But he also somehow strangely grounded her. He had that kind of presence. He made her feel…a lot of things, but right now, mostly conflicted. The little pointer in her brain that was supposed to tell her how to feel, what to do, spun around, like when you put a compass on top of a magnet.
“Family visit?” He raised an eyebrow, his voice tight as he asked, “You didn’t think maybe you should tell me?”
“You didn’t say I couldn’t leave town.”
“I didn’t think I had to. Imagine my surprise when I walked through your empty house that looked like you all might have been kidnapped.”
Oh. Had he worried about her? Warmth spread through her chest unbidden. It’d been a really long time since she had anyone to worry about her. She caught the thought and bit back the groan that followed. Oh God, was she needy or what? Was she actually glad that somebody thought she’d been kidnapped? What was wrong with her?
