by June Shaw
We followed her into a house with a dark look and old musty smell that made me imagine food fried in reused cooking oil sitting on my tongue. She took fast steps and stopped and turned so quickly I had to hold myself back to keep from running into her.
“Let me guess,” she said and pointed at one and then the other of us. “You’re Eve, and you’re Sunny. Am I right?”
“You are,” I said.
“I usually am.” Her smile looked so genuine it was hard to dislike her, even with that little bit of bragging. She kept speaking while she resumed her fast walk. “As you can see, this is an old house, and that’s okay. This living area is big so a lot of people will fit in here. We’re going to have a house warming for our families to see the place, so I just mainly want a little done to spruce up this kitchen.”
The room we sped through was nothing fancy, but it was spacious. I only had time to scan the overstuffed sofas and rugs and pictures of magnolias on the cypress walls. A shelf held many small framed photographs. I stepped toward one.
“Who is this?” I pointed to the elderly woman.
“Oh, that’s my grandmother. She is the sweetest lady.”
I glanced at Eve and forced myself not to frown. “We’ve seen her. She’s at the manor.” She was anything but sweet. She was the woman I spoke with who sat to eat two tables before the one for Adrienne Viatar.
Cherry lifted the picture and kissed the woman’s face. “She’ll be coming here for the first time when we have the party.” She set the picture down and swept off out of the room into a hall. “I go see her almost every day.” She stopped moving in a fairly small room I saw was the kitchen. I paid little attention to it except for the more pronounced odor of rancid cooking oil since my mind remained with what she’d just said.
“So as you can see, not much had been done in here.” She kept speaking and sweeping her long arms toward walls and spaces, and I wanted to focus on remodeling but could not.
“Do you know Andrew Primeaux or his niece Jessica?” I asked before her words wore down.
“Yes. I met them awhile back when they were visiting at the manor while I was. They really are sweet.”
Maybe sweet was her favorite descriptive word for a person.
Eve gave me a look with wide eyes, like What are you doing? And then she swung her eyes toward some cabinets like trying to remind me of what we were here for. Of course we were supposed to do a job, but finding a killer was most important. It was for Eve, too, but she seemed able to focus on two things at the same time better than I could.
“What about Mrs. Wilburn?” I said, “Clara Wilburn.”
“Sure, I met her one time she went to the manor. She seemed real—”
I blanked my mind out from the next word she would use. “Did you ever see her and Andrew Primeaux or Jessica there at the same time?”
She placed her long index finger across her lips while she thought and moved the tip of it back and forth against them while the toes of her right foot tapped out a marching rhythm on the white ceramic floor. It was as though the woman could not keep all of her body still at one time. What did she do in bed? Surely she had restless legs and probably her whole body jumped around all night. Her lowering chin let me know the answer before she lifted it and said, “Yes.”
I was ready to ask more questions when something in the room buzzed.
“Oh, that’s my timer.” She stepped across the floor and made the noise stop. “That’s to remind me I need to get going to my meeting. Look, here’s an idea of what I might like done in here.” She handed Eve a two-page section that appeared to have been removed from a magazine. It showed an attractive modern kitchen done up in a teal color I liked. “So just take this and see what you think you can do with what I’ve got in here.”
“I’ll snap a few pictures real quick, okay?” Eve said, lifting her phone while our hostess did her head-bobbing thing.
With pictures snapped, Eve and I followed behind Cherry, who scurried to her front door. “Y’all are so good for coming on such short notice,” she said and clasped my hand. “And your mother was right. You are so good at noticing things—like recognizing my sweet grandmother in that photograph.”
Once the door shut behind us, I kept still and sucked in a large gulp of air. “Good grief.”
Eve let out a long sigh. “I know.”
It was as though both of us needed to stand in one place. For a long moment, we kept silent. I didn’t even want to look at the moving moss when we rode past the oaks on our way out of her yard and had an idea I would never look at this place as serene again. The woman inside would scramble my mind and make my insides feel jumpy.
“So what do you think?” Eve asked.
I needed a new deep breath. “I’ll have to look at the pictures you snapped to know exactly what her kitchen looks like since I was so distracted. We’ll need to study the picture of what she has in mind to figure out what we can do with what she already has. But I’m most interested in her grandmother and people who visited the manor.”
“Right. This isn’t a good time to go there, but let’s go check it out tomorrow.”
“Yes, indeed.”
She faced the road ahead. “You know who I’ve also been thinking about?” I smiled and waited for her to mention her new grandchild. Instead, she said, “Dave,” making my emotions again swing around.
“I’ve thought about him a bit, too,” I admitted.
She grabbed her large leather purse from the seat and handed it to me. “Get my phone and call his company, would you? They’re listed in my contacts.”
“Do you think they’ve gotten more information from the police than we have?” Our information counted as zero.
“Let’s find out. Put the phone on speaker so I can hear, too.”
Somehow, I didn’t want the speaker on. I would have preferred my conversation with anyone connected to Dave to be private. I found that a strange idea but then determined it was caused by wanting a personal relationship with him. Of course, first I wanted him out of jail.
I speed dialed the number.
“Downtown Alarm Systems,” a cheerful voice answered. “This is Alana. We would like to take care of your home’s needs.”
“Hi, Alana. Listen, I don’t really need any alarm systems now.” I heard what sounded like a small sigh of disappointment. I knew that feeling. “This is Sunny Taylor. Your company did some business for my sister, Eve Vaughn.”
“Right. She isn’t having any more trouble with her unit, is she?” This time her voice sounded almost panicked.
“No, it’s fine,” I rushed to assure her and could hear what seemed a relieved sigh. “Actually, it never really had a problem.” The difficulty, we’d realized, was me and my pride. “Alana, my sister and I are concerned about Dave. Have y’all gotten any information about him?”
After a pause, she spoke. “What do you want to know?”
“Sweetie, we were with him when he found that lady’s body.” Saying the words brought back horrible memories of that moment and sent a shiver along my thighs. “We haven’t been able to find out anything about him. Have the police let y’all know something?”
“No.” Her tone dulled. “They won’t tell us anything, either.”
Both of us took a moment to let out a long sigh. “What about business there?”
“Absolutely nothing. Ever since news got out that he was arrested for murder, nobody wants to do business with us. We’ve been getting calls cancelling all the jobs that were scheduled.”
“He didn’t do it,” I assured her.
“I know. He’s not the kind of person to do something like that.”
I kept nodding. “Correct.”
“Of course, you never know what a person will do. Look at all the stuff you see in the news all the time.”
Okay, she did not know her boss well if she believed him capable of such a thing. I felt a frown tighten on my face. “Thank y
ou, Alana. If you do learn anything about him, I’d appreciate it if you’d let us know. You could call back at this number.”
“All right. But who knows? This place might not even be open much longer. And then I’ll be out looking for another job.”
Eve and I exchanged looks that expressed our unhappiness with this girl and Dave’s plight. “Good luck,” I told her and clicked off. I slid Eve’s phone back into her purse without saying a thing.
Back on Eve’s street, I was relieved not to see any sign of Royce outside. Eve pulled into her garage, shut it with the automatic control, and we walked into her kitchen.
“We’d better look at this first.” She sat at her table and took out the picture of what the constant mover wanted for her kitchen.
I gave her a look that told what I wanted to check into first.
She lifted a hand. “I know. I know. I’ll want to learn things about Cherry’s grandmother and the people who went to visit there and try to figure out what connection they might all have to Mrs. Wilburn’s death, but right now, let’s try to focus on this project. I thought you were almost desperate to earn money.”
I sat. “I am.”
“You know I want Dave out of jail more than anyone.” Her words made me ready to protest. I didn’t. She gripped my hand. “I want what’s best for you, Sis. You need money much more than I do, so let’s work on getting you some.”
The outer edges of my eyes warmed. I squeezed her fingers. Yes, I still had this sibling. She and our mother were the most important people in my life. For the moment, I did need to concentrate on gaining immediate income.
The magazine layout of what Cherry wanted her kitchen to resemble looked appealing. I liked the colors and shapes and extra touches. I hadn’t paid close attention to what hers looked like but had a strong notion it wasn’t anything like the one facing us from Eve’s table.
“Okay, I need to show you these, and we’ll see what we can do.” Eve opened the picture app on her phone, handed the phone to me, and I scrolled through snapshots she had taken.
I rolled my eyes toward her and began looking at them again, this time checking them slower and enlarging each one for a closer view of what was available and a thought about what might be possible to change or fix. The homeowner hadn’t told Eve exactly what she expected we might do or what she’d want to spend. Since she lived in that home with a doctor and mentioned she would pay us double our usual price if we could start now and do it fast, she wanted whatever we could accomplish in a short time.
Eve and I checked out pictures and discussed what we might accomplish. Since she was more proficient with reading, she made the lists. Once we had put together various suggestions, she phoned Cherry to offer them. I watched Eve’s hand—the one not holding the phone—swirl around as though she were painting her descriptions of what we thought about doing with the room, her expression brightening while she spoke. Hope grew inside me while I saw what might have been almost a castle taking shape in Eve’s descriptions. She kept eye contact with me and nodded, her smile becoming one of the widest I’d ever seen.
“Well, thank you. We will,” Eve said and clicked off her phone. “Yes!” She punched the air to accentuate her excitement.
“Which of our ideas does she want us to do?”
“As many as we can manage.”
“Wonderful.” We sat poring through more ideas for what might work best in the space she had in her kitchen, my physical limitations, and our time constraints. Our thoughts, as usual for work, were in sync. We hoped they would work. Lumberyards and a couple of big box stores in towns along these bayous were few, and their wares limited. Most could order items we might want to use. We made some calls and found out it would take longer for a couple of those items to come in than we had available.
Through online searches, we discovered products that would satisfy our needs in different establishments in New Orleans. We shopped locally whenever we could, so our first order of business the next morning would be to jaunt around town, gathering things here.
“Okay, now I need to do this.” Eve placed her fingers over mine. When my lifted eyebrow asked the question, she said, “You’ll see.”
I watched while she slid her hand away and leaned back in her chair, hopeful eyes staring off into where she hoped someone in a certain place would soon answer the call she was placing.
“Mom,” a voice on the other end said, Eve obviously using speakerphone so I could hear, “how are you?”
A satisfied smile relaxed on Eve’s face. “I’m wonderful, sweetheart. And y’all?”
“We’re all good. I just fed him.”
Warmth spread through my chest. I knew it did the same to Eve’s.
“He’s up on my shoulder. I’ll put the phone by his ear, and you can talk to him while he’s waiting to burp.”
Two seconds later my sister was babbling and cooing and calling out his name as though she were speaking to a baby doll. She used a finger to call me to get closer to the phone. Noah couldn’t speak yet, of course, but just knowing that tiny bundle of flesh and small fingers and ears was at the other end of the line brought with it remembrance of the warmth of him in my arms while I’d rocked him.
“Hello, Noah,” I said at the edge of Eve’s mouthpiece.
“Oh, hi, Aunt Sunny,” Nicole called to me.
“We miss y’all,” I said. “Tell him I love him.”
The loud explosion of gas he expelled could have shaken the lines. Eve, Nicole, and I all laughed.
“He said he loves you, too,” Nicole said.
We all laughed again, the good hearty laugh that sooths the ribs.
Noah started to whine. “Oh, he’s jerking his legs up and getting ready to wail. I’d better go. Love you both.”
We assured Nicole of our love for her and her husband and baby and sat smiling at each other. “That was a great phone call,” I said, and Eve kept her lips spread wide with her nods.
This wasn’t a time to be concerned about planning work. “I can take you home now, and we’ll get together in the morning,” Eve said, and I concurred. “You know we might need to use your truck to run around and get some of those supplies.”
I nodded. I dreaded what my truck would sound like and how much negative attention we would get inside it, but couldn’t afford to have all the work it needed done yet. I hoped that would work out after our next job was complete.
We sat in Eve’s luxury car. I felt totally at ease in it while it barely whispered as she backed it out of her garage, and it slid to her driveway.
Racket from behind shattered our serenity. A rider wearing a mean-looking black helmet revved up the motor of his mean-looking motorcycle behind us, making the air reek and blocking us from getting out to the street.
Chapter 17
“What’s wrong with him?” Eve slammed her brakes so hard our heads bounced forward. She had almost backed into this person. We looked back, waiting for him to move.
He didn’t. Instead, he revved up his annoying clatter and remained in place. Why? The stench of his exhaust grew worse. When we turned our upper bodies to look behind, he pulled up the part of his helmet that had covered his face. It was easy to recognize his sneer, the one he had given both of us, but especially me, when we’d gone over to express condolences.
“Royce bought a motorcycle?” Eve asked.
“And he won’t let us leave.”
He kept revving his motor, his furious face a threat.
I’d had enough of him. I grabbed the knob of my door, shoved the door open, and stood beside Eve’s car. “I did not murder your mother and neither did my sister or our friend Dave!” I yelled.
He might not have heard all my words because of the racket his bike was making, but while I hollered, he slowed the noise to an idle.
I thrust my index finger toward the street. “And if you don’t hurry and get that thing out of our way, my sister will slam back against it and then
we’ll see how much of a bike you have left!”
Plunging myself back in the car, I punched the door lock and strapped myself in. We might be in for a bumpy ride. Only then did I glance at my sister. Her mouth was wide open, her face white with shock from my outburst. Had I put her in a precarious position?
“All right, Sis.” She lifted her hand and slapped her palm against mine. Eve raced her motor that previously purred, giving Royce’s bike motor envy.
Faces toward each other, we then looked back.
Royce slammed his face shield down and roared away, leaving a rooster tail of smoke in his wake.
My huge exhale felt great. So did the exhilaration of telling him off, even if we’d certainly had no intention of running him over. Poor baby, he had just lost his mother. And if he had stayed there two minutes longer, Eve might have pulled her car up, and we’d have slammed ourselves into her garage and locked ourselves inside her house, not tried to hurt him or his bike.
I kept my gaze lowered as we rode away from her street and hoped no one around had witnessed my outburst. After all, the only thing Royce had done was sit on his motorcycle right behind Eve’s driveway.
“He seems to have unlimited funds now,” Eve said. “He’s gotten a new car and now a top-notch motor bike.”
“Right. I doubt that all of his gambling in Vegas suddenly paid off and delivered him a windfall. He’s surely getting his money from his mother’s funds.”
It didn’t take long for us to ponder his new wealth before we rounded the street and turned onto mine. When Eve pulled her Lexus behind my wounded truck, I felt the air suck out of my chest. I needed cash to repair that soon.
“Okay, thanks. I’ll get you in the morning,” I said and hopped out of her car with a jaunty air I didn’t feel. “Eve, be careful out there. Look around before you open your garage door.”
“I will. I’ll be fine,” she assured me, and I knew she hoped her words would be true. I only hoped that her neighbor would be riding his new motorcycle far away by the time she got home.
