When they were foster siblings, and in high school, Bryce brought a girl to the house, and Kate actually said out loud, in front of the girl, “I thought you were gay.” Yep, that went over well. She never saw the girl at the house again. Bryce didn’t seem at all offended by her statement, and even laughed.
“If she’s that sensitive, I don’t want her for my girlfriend,” he said, then went to his bedroom and shut the door.
It was the last time Bryce brought a girl home.
“What are you doing in an hour?”
She heard a yawn, and what sounded like stretching. “Sleeping.”
“It’s almost ten o’clock,” Kate said. “Get up and take a shower. I’m picking you up in forty-five minutes.”
Sounding no more awake, Bryce said, “No, you’re not. I’m hanging up now.”
“If you aren’t ready, I’ll drag you to my new house dressed in just your boxers.”
Definitely more awake now. “New house? You didn’t tell me you were house hunting. Now I’m pissed.”
“I wasn’t. And you know I wouldn’t look at houses without you. I’ll tell you all about it when I pick you up. Now go shower. I’m on my way home to take a shower myself. See you in a few.”
Kate smiled as she put her phone in the cup holder of the center console. Times like this were for sharing with best friends. Or in this case, her sort of brother and best friend.
Unlike Kate, Bryce had gone off the deep end. Drugs took over his life. The same vice that put him in foster care would be his demise. It made Kate sad, but she knew nothing she said or did would change his addiction. Eventually, he’d get clean or die.
Not that Kate was innocent by any means; she had her own vices, but not drugs, she’d never go there. She had her share of drunken stupors and one nights stands. In fact, before she married Zane, she preferred one-night stands. No ties, no messiness. She didn’t have to explain herself, and didn’t want to know anything about the guy she just had sex with. In fact, she preferred the walk of shame, because she sure wasn’t taking them back to her place. Then they’d know where she lived. Only once did she see a guy she’d had sex with and later go up and talk to him. Usually she pretended she had no idea who they were if she ran into them again.
Bryce liked his one nighters, too. Only he was stupid enough to bring them back to his place, which happened to be where Kate lived too, at the time. Kate intervened a few times to keep Bryce from going down a rabbit hole. Bryce was a whore, and she loved him for it, because he’d traded in drugs for sex. She’d rather see his nightstand full of condoms than needles. They both had their issues, but they also had each other.
In recent years, Bryce slowed a little. Not because he was getting older, Kate suspected, but because he was getting wiser, and maybe even ready to settle down. She doubted that would last long. Bryce had been a free bird for too long, just like her. The scars of his past might never heal, and she knew it, so she wanted to be sure she was there for him. And even though her scars didn’t run as deep, and she’d escaped the brutality of being sexually molested, she understood Bryce’s behavior as if she had been.
Showered, dressed in faded blue jeans and a thin white tee over a pink camisole, Kate pulled her car up to the curb outside Bryce’s apartment complex. The gray brick building looked cheery with its white window boxes, all planted with some sort of pink and red flowers. Kate had no idea what they were, just that it was a good thing they had a landscape management company keeping them watered and fertilized, because if it were up to Bryce, the plants would be dead.
She checked her phone to see if she’d missed a message from Bryce before honking her horn. She looked at his apartment door, waiting for movement. None. She swiped her phone and called his number. It rang three times and went to voicemail.
“Jerk,” she said to the phone. When she looked up, she saw Bryce pulling his apartment door closed behind him.
Dress in plaid cotton shorts and a skin-tight baby blue tee, she could see every muscle on his scrawny upper body. Drugs had done their number on Bryce, but he tried to compensate by working out regularly. He’d never be in a body building contest, but he was lean and fit like a runner. She always thought his curly mop of red hair made him look perpetually fifteen years old. He always got carded when they went out drinking.
She rolled down the window to tell him to hurry up, and could hear his flip-flops on the sidewalk.
“Really? Flip-flops? We’re going to a really nice place,” Kate said.
“It’s your new house, how nice can it be? You’re a cop, for God’s sake.” Bryce climbed into her car and immediately pulled his phone from his pocket.
Most people would think Bryce rude, but Kate didn’t care that Bryce preferred his phone to conversation with her. Most of the time.
“I’m investigating a murder,” she said.
“Uh-huh,” Bryce said.
Kate shoved him. He shoved her back.
“Did you hear me? I’m investigating a murder.”
Bryce looked at her. “Sure, you are.”
“If you put your damn phone down for half a second, I’ll tell you about it.”
Bryce dropped his phone in his lap. “This better be good. I was texting with Joey.”
Joey worked at the same hospital Bryce did, and they were best buddies. Always texting if they weren’t hanging out. They met in medical school. And even though Bryce hadn’t finished medical school, he continued his path to a career in medicine and became a nurse.
Kate told Bryce about the driver who took off, the accident, and the body in the trunk. The entire time, Bryce stared at her with his mouth open. She was sure he thought she had made it all up.
When she finished, he said, “Yeah, okay, so who was the driver?”
Kate shrugged. “That I can’t tell you just yet. It’s an ongoing investigation.”
“Did the driver kill the guy in the trunk?”
“I can’t say,” she said.
Bryce groaned. “Then why did you even bother to tell me?”
Kate steered onto the ramp to I-30, heading east. “I’m excited. It’s my first murder. And if this goes well, I might get to be full time CID.”
“I’ve heard that before. You’ll be a grandma before you ever get off patrol.” He picked his phone back up. “Where’re we going anyway? Louisiana?”
“Didn’t they deliver the guy to your morgue?” Kate asked.
“Might have. I’ve had a few days off. I went on a bender with Joey. His last, you know.”
Kate glanced at Bryce. “What do you mean? Is he going into treatment or something?”
Bryce grimaced. “He’s getting married, and you know how it is. The girl is already jealous of the time we spend together. When he marries her, I’ll be persona non grata.”
“No way. I’ll bet she loves you as much as Joey. Besides, you’re like a mother-in-law; part of the package.”
“Mother-in-law? Thanks.”
Kate drove a few miles, then exited the interstate, turning left. She drove another three miles when she saw it on the right side of the road. Her new farm.
“You got a hankerin’ for pecans?” Bryce turned up the twang.
“This is my new house.” Kate turned her car into the driveway.
Bryce threw his head back and laughed. “Good joke.” Then he stopped laughing. “I can’t believe you got me out of bed to pull a prank.”
Kate stopped the car, leaning forward to get a closer look. “Not a joke. Apparently, I had a rich grandfather, and he left this place to me.”
Bryce’s head lolled to the right, as if he’d gone to sleep.
Kate told the story of her morning at the attorney’s office as she rolled up to the Lexus convertible parked in the circular driveway.
“Then you might want to get a real estate agent, because you can’t afford this place. And you know nothing about growing and harvesting pecans.”
She didn’t even bother to repeat the part about the trust.
She parked behind the Lexus and got out of the car, not looking back to see if Bryce planned to join her. As she walked up to the Lexus, the front door of the home opened.
“Good morning, Miss Darby. I’m so glad you could make it.” Victor looked at his watch as if she were late.
She looked at her own watch. 10:55. “I’m excited and nervous.”
Victor stepped out onto the porch. “Nothing to be nervous about.”
Kate turned in a circle, taking it all in. To the left of the house; acres and acres of pecan trees stretched further than she could see. To the right, it looked like acres of grass hay. And the building in front of her, an antebellum southern home.
The stark white box-style mansion looked like it belonged in Georgia, with its balcony running the length of the outside edge of the home. Enormous pillars stretched from the ground to the roof, and evenly spaced large windows graced either side of the enormous entrance.
Kate noticed the balcony of the second floor acted as shade for the first floor porch, which also stretched the length of the front of the house. A border of perfectly manicured boxwoods grew along the outside of the deck, along with small, but colorful flowering bushes.
She walked toward the house and ascended the steps of the porch. Victor greeted her at the edge of the steps and shook her hand. “This is the most recent incarnation of the home. And it’s about four times the size of the original structure.”
“Wow. This is a lot of space for one person,” Kate marveled at the twin wooden rocking chairs swaying lightly in the breeze.
“It’s a beautiful space. I’m not sure if I mentioned, you’ll have a weekly cleaning service. It usually takes her eight hours to clean. If she needs more time, like she’s cleaning windows, she’ll come back a second day. Make sure you let her know what time works for you. Right now, she’s coming on Mondays at seven in the morning.”
Kate smiled at the idea of having a cleaning service. “That’s perfect. She can keep the same schedule.”
“Let’s go inside, then I’ll show you around the gardens.” Victor turned and walked back to the front doors.
Kate stepped in behind him, and the sight nearly took her breath away. She felt as if she’d stepped into a smaller version of Tara from Gone with the Wind.
She’d been in the plantation homes in Louisiana, and they looked practical, not like the plantation homes of Gone with the Wind. Small bedrooms, small everything. It was about practicality, not audacity. She had expected the same of this house, until she pulled into the driveway.
The enormous foyer was flanked on both sides with sweeping stairways, both leading to a landing which filled the expanse on the second floor. When she looked up, the light off the crystal chandelier caught her eye.
“This is so not my style,” she whispered, “but I could get used to it.”
“You’ll have to. You can’t change anything. Not even the interior of the master bedroom, which I assume will be yours.”
“I guess I’ll learn to live with it,” Kate said.
Victor smiled. “The family didn’t want to entertain, so there aren’t any grand ballrooms or anything, but the dining room and parlor are quite nice. And a kitchen was added to the main house about twenty years ago.”
Kate frowned at Victor. “What do you mean? They didn’t have a kitchen?”
“Most of the older grand homes didn’t have the kitchen attached to the house. There was a great fear of fire. In fact, the kitchen in this house burned to the ground twice.”
Kate’s eyes went wide.
Victor smiled. “That was almost a hundred years ago. I promise the current kitchen is all upgraded and safe.”
He waved his arm, and Kate followed. Before they stepped out of the foyer, Kate heard footsteps behind her on the wood floor and turned to see Bryce.
He looked like a little boy in a huge toy store who didn’t know where to go first.
“What do you think?” Kate asked.
Bryce gazed around the space, his mouth open in awe, his eyes wide. “As God as my witness, I will never be hungry again.”
“That was my first thought, too.”
Chapter 11
The empty pizza box sat at the foot of the bed at eleven in the evening when Jake awoke. The pizza box there, Kim gone. He bolted up in bed.
“Damn it.” Jake got up to go to the bathroom, then walked down the hall to grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator.
Kim and Tucker sat at the kitchen table with the coffee pot on the warmer in the middle between them. Each had their hands wrapped around a coffee mug.
He walked in on them as quietly as possible, so they didn’t turn around.
“That feels like forever ago,” Kim’s voice sounded sad.
“In a way, it was a lifetime ago. I’m sorry you’ve had it rough, but it’s your own fault for making bad decisions.” Tucker took another sip of coffee.
Leave it to Tucker to not sugar coat the truth. Jake waited for Kim to cross her arms in front of her, or get up and storm out. She surprised him by putting her hand on Tucker’s forearm, and saying, “You’re right. I took what I thought was the easy way out. Turns out it was the toughest road I coulda traveled. And now I got no idea how to get back to where I need to be.”
Tucker looked at Kim and said, “You don’t need to go back. You need to take a hard right, and get off this path of destruction. It’s your decision to make, and you’ll make it when you’re good and ready. I just wish your parents were here to help you get on track.”
“I miss them every day, but I have no excuses. I messed up and they aren’t interested in my bullshit anymore. Tucker, I’m in a shitload of trouble. I don’t want Jake to go down with me, but he picked me up from the jail, and now I don’t know how to tell him he made a huge mistake.” She took a long sip of coffee, then put the mug on the table and crossed her arms.
“Then don’t. Just leave. He’s not in deep. He just picked you up, that’s it. Gave you a ride, a shower, clean clothes, and a few hours of much needed sleep. You tell me where you need to go, and I’ll take you there.” Tucker stood and grabbed the coffee pot off the table.
Jake jumped back around the corner, so he wouldn’t be seen.
He knew this was a mistake, and he was just glad Kim hadn’t robbed them blind while he was sleeping. At least not that he knew of at this point. And Tucker. What would he have done if that had happened? Family heirlooms can’t be replaced, and somehow Jake felt that’s what she would have taken. She still might. Or maybe not.
From the kitchen sink, where Tucker poured the rest of the coffee in his cup, he said, “Let’s go. I’ll take you anywhere you need to go.”
“I don’t want to make Jake mad.” Kim didn’t sound like she really cared all that much.
“Don’t worry about Jake. He’s a big boy, and he’ll be fine. Change your clothes, and I’ll get the car keys. We’ll be out of here before Jake even realizes you’re out of bed.”
Jake rushed back to the bedroom, not wanting his uncle to know he was eavesdropping. He climbed in bed and closed his eyes. Then he waited for Kim or Uncle Tucker to enter the room. He listened for any sounds coming down the hallway.
Kim didn’t come into the room, and a few minutes later, Jake heard two car doors slam, then his uncle’s car start. He willed himself to sleep as he heard the car drive away. Sleep didn’t come easily. Just when he drifted off, he heard his uncle’s car again, and the back door slamming. He laid on his back with his hands behind his head and listened to the sounds of his uncle preparing for bed.
Jake awoke around seven, pissed off and grumpy. His mood had less to do with Kim leaving than how she snuck away in the middle of the night without so much as a thank you. She probably did him a favor. At least he tried to look at it that way. He mentally kicked himself for possibly putting his job on the line for her, only for her to basically spit in his face.
“Morning,” Uncle Tucker said. “I met your houseguest last ni
ght.”
“Oh?” He didn’t want to admit he heard them, and knew what happened.
“We had coffee last night. Then she needed a ride, so I took her where she wanted to go.” He opened the cabinet and pulled out the canister of coffee.
Jake grabbed the pot from the coffee machine and filled it with filtered water from the faucet. “Where’d she want to go?”
“Home, apparently. At least that’s what she said.”
Jake poured the water into the machine. “Okay. Well, thanks.”
“Next time you want to invite a junkie into my house, I’d appreciate you talking to me about it first.” He carefully measured out the grounds into the filter and pushed it into place, then he pushed the brew button. Jake heard no malice in his words, no warning, just relaying his expectations.
“I’m sorry. I was just going to get her something to eat, and some clean clothes. We fell asleep watching TV.”
He shook his head. “You’re a cop. You should know better than to let a junkie in your home unsupervised.”
He damn sure knew better, and didn’t feel like being lectured. He already felt stupid enough for even offering to help.
“Did you check your wallet, your dresser stash, or anywhere else you hide money? Make sure she didn’t rob you blind?”
Jake shook his head.
“You’re smarter than this, boy.”
Jake’s cell phone danced across the kitchen counter.
“I’ve gotta grab this. It might be work.” He snatched the phone up, knowing good and well it wasn’t work, and walked out to the porch.
The morning air still and hot, he could smell the lake in the air. He took a deep breath and swiped his phone screen.
Angry Betty Page 8
