Dana Marton - Broslin Creek 05 - Broslin Bride (15 page)

He put the pen away and picked up his fork, ate in silence, but a few moments later, the fork stilled in his hands. He had the look of a man who’d just thought of something important.

Luanne leaned forward. “What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about something on the drive up here. Have you ever met Mildred and Harold’s son?”

She sucked her bottom lip in as she thought back. “Heard about him, but no. I don’t think he’s ever come into the motel. Why?”

“He’ll be receiving the proceeds from the sale of the motel. Mildred told me she and Harold had given money to their daughter a few years back so she could buy a house. To be fair to the son, they promised to give him the money that would result from the motel’s eventual sale.”

She nodded. “I knew that.” Then suddenly cold spread through her chest.
Wait.
“Maybe he thought his parents would sell if something horrible happened.”
 

“They
are
selling.”
 

Luanne’s stomach clenched. “I don’t even remember what his name is.”

“Greg Cosgrove.”

The air got stuck in her lungs. “Gregory,” she whispered.

“Could be something, or could be just coincidence.” Chase pulled out his phone and dialed. “Hi, Leila. Could you please do me a favor? Could you ask Mildred and Harold Cosgrove to e-mail you a photo of their son? Their number is on a sticky note on the top of my desk. And then could you please forward the picture to my phone? Thanks.”

Luanne stared at the food, trying to wrap her mind around the idea that Mildred and Harold’s son was trying to kill her. “Now what?” she asked Chase.

“Now we wait.” He pushed the pulled pork toward her. “Might as well eat while we do that.”

She shook her head. She’d suddenly lost her appetite.

“You think you’ll ever go back to college?” he asked out of the blue.

Took her a moment to figure out what he was doing. He was trying to distract her from her troubles. Another couple of seconds passed before she could reroute her thoughts. “If I win the lottery on the twins’ eighteenth birthday.”

“I heard you were good. Minus that one test you failed.”

Advanced statistics. Her mother had just been diagnosed. Luanne hadn’t been able to focus. She knew that she’d be leaving her classes anyway. “Hey, my grades are my private business,” she said with mock outrage. She didn’t want him to think that she was stupid.

He gave a one-shouldered shrug and flashed a sheepish look. “Everyone knows everything about everybody else in Broslin. It’s the small-town curse.”

“Not everything.”

“All right.” A slow smile tugged up his lips. “Tell me something about yourself that I don’t know.”

“So you can use it against me in court? If this is some fancy interrogation technique, I can see right through you, buddy.”

His smile widened. “Tell me your middle name.”

She hesitated. He could have asked worse. Like, ‘do you fantasize about me naked?’

Before he could get there, she quickly said, “Lucinda. After my Polish grandmother.”

His right eyebrow slid up his forehead. “Luanne Lucinda Mayfair?”

“Call me Lulu and die.” That’d been her mother’s nickname for her, and she’d hated it all her childhood with a red-hot passion. “I have a black belt in swinging spray bottles.”

“That’s threatening a police officer.”

“Glad you got that. Would hate to have to explain.”

He laughed a deep belly laugh that for some reason filled her with warmth. He raised a hand, palm out. “Hey, who am I to judge? My middle name is Mortimer.”

She’d just taken a sip of her drink and promptly spewed it half across the table. “Mortimer?”

“Don’t say it,” he warned morosely. “We’re not ever going to mention each other’s middle names again.”

As she mopped up the water with her napkin, she bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh.

He edged the pork toward her. “You should really have some more of this.”

The man was more stubborn than a red-wine stain. “Only because I think wasting food is a sin,” she said tartly.

“Yes, it is,” he agreed with all seriousness.

They ate and talked some more, about his work and about the girls. Somehow, for a while, he managed to scatter the cloud of stress that had been floating around her.

They took home the leftovers, plus the extra servings of salmon cake Chase ordered to bring back for all of them for dinner.

Mia and Daisy were just waking up when they got back.

They both greeted Chase politely, but Mia gave up on the ladylike restraint right after that and ran over. “Are you going to play with us?” she demanded.

“Potty first.” Luanne took them to the bathroom while Aunt Hilda thanked Chase for dinner delivery. They talked about the diner for a minute, apparently Uncle Albert’s favorite, then about family.

“My father was a lawman. Deputy sheriff.” Luanne heard through the door. Then the girls were done, running back out and begging for attention.

Chase looked at Luanne, then back at Mia. “What do you want to play?”

“Horse race,” she said and ran for her horses in her overnight bag.

Daisy, always a ready accomplice, followed to help. The two girls lined up the horses in front of Chase, and he got right down on the floor to play with them.

Luanne went to sit next to Aunt Hilda, who was back in her recliner. “Thanks for watching the girls.”

Aunt Hilda looked at Chase playing with the twins. She was smiling as she turned back to Luanne, but her smile was bittersweet. “He’s here to take you back home.”

“Yes,” Luanne said after a moment.

“Not tonight?”

“No.” She wasn’t up for another four-hour drive today.

While Chase had the girls distracted, Luanne told her great-aunt about the developments in the case, finishing with “I still want to help out around the house. I’d love to get to know you a little. Give the girls a chance to get to know you. They never had a grandmother.”

Tears flooded Aunt Hilda’s eyes. “I’d like that. But you don’t need to work while you’re here. Take a break.”

“I don’t know if I know how to do that.” Luanne gave a rueful grin. “Truth is, I’m not comfortable if I’m just sitting down. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Aunt Hilda patted her hand. “I used to be like that. Then my knees went. I put off things around the house, thinking I’ll do them when I got better, but I never got better. Can’t walk without the cane. Sure as anything can’t bend to lift anything.”

“I bend and lift two thirty-five-pound girls a dozen times a day,” Luanne reassured her. “I’m a champion at lifting. And boxes don’t even wiggle. Easy as pie.”

After a long moment, Aunt Hilda nodded. “If you’re sure. Maybe we’ll find the photo albums, and I can show you the rest of the family.”

“That would be lovely. And, yes, I’m sure.”

Chase laughed at something Mia said, a throaty, relaxed, warm laugh that reached all the way to Luanne’s heart.

Aunt Hilda was looking at him too. “He likes you more than a little.”

The declaration left Luanne speechless.

“Well, he didn’t come to arrest you,” Aunt Hilda reasoned. “A man doesn’t drive hundreds of miles just to say howdy doody.”

Luanne filled her lungs. “I had some near misses at home. Accidents.” She hadn’t mentioned that before, didn’t want Aunt Hilda to worry. “He wants to stay to protect us.”

“What accidents?” Hilda’s gaze snapped to her, sharp for the first time.

“Car almost hitting me on the road, that kind of thing.”

Aunt Hilda pressed a hand to her chest. “You think someone wants to hurt you?”

“It’s possible.”

“Chase is welcome to stay here. I have plenty of linen for another bedroom.”

“I’m sure he meant to go to a hotel.”

“Nonsense. He can’t protect you from a hotel. He’ll stay here.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Chase said quietly from across the room.

And Luanne flushed to her roots, wondering if he’d heard everything, even the part about him coming after her for more than a howdy doody.

Before she could wish for a hole to sink into, his phone pinged. He glanced at it, brought it over. The picture of a slightly balding man in his late thirties filled the screen. “Is that Gregory?”

Her heart sank. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. Doesn’t look like the police sketch.” But he kept holding the phone out for her. “Are you a hundred percent sure? That’s Mildred and Harold’s son. Are you sure he wasn’t the guy at the bar?”

“I’m sure.”

And just like that, they were back to square one. They had absolutely nothing.

* * *

Next time he took a load of garbage to the dump, Chase called his mother from the car. “I’m staying the night in Virginia,” he told her.

“Why?”

“To help out a friend.”

“A woman?” Her voice immediately filled with dismay.

“Yes.”

“How do you know a woman in Virginia? Are you doing this to me on purpose?”

“It’s Luanne Mayfair. She’s visiting her great-aunt,” he said before his mother could have a coronary.

“Oh.” A small pause. “Didn’t you just arrest her for murder— Never mind. She’s such a lovely girl. Local.”

Chase grinned. Apparently, in his mother’s view, being local was more important than criminality. “She didn’t do it,” he said, just to be clear.

“A hard worker, that one. Betty and I were talking about that when the arrest report was printed in the paper. And raising those two sweet little babies.” She practically cooed the words.

The last thing he wanted was visions of grandbabies dancing before his mother’s eyes, so he interrupted with “I might stay a couple of days.”

Normally, his mother hated when he was out of town. But now she responded with “Take your time. You just make sure you help Luanne with whatever she needs.”

He intended to, Chase thought as he ended the call.

And that wasn’t all he intended.

Seeing Luanne again, spending time with her. The more they were together, the more he got this funny feeling that something had gotten interrupted between them years ago, something wasn’t quite finished yet.

He was an investigator. When he had a funny feeling, he investigated.

Chapter Eight

For reasons she couldn’t fully, or even partially, explain, after a pretty exhausting day, Luanne didn’t seem to be tired. In fact, she found sleeping impossible.

Her insomnia could have had something to do with the fact that Chase was right next door. He’d come after her and stayed.

What did that mean?

The gesture didn’t seem like a cop thing. It seemed like a friend thing. He was staying to help on his own time. Of course, he’d been telling her all along that he was her friend. Why?

At the diner, he’d said she bamboozled him. Bamboozled seemed more than friends.

Bamboozled.

In a good way or a bad way?

Luanne groaned and squeezed her eyes shut. She refused to regress to a teenager. She was
not
going to spend all night thinking about Chase Merritt.
 

And then, of course, she did.

Since she didn’t fall asleep until toward dawn, she woke late the next morning, which was okay, because the twins slept in too, exhausted by the previous day. She took care of them first before going downstairs for coffee, bleary-eyed, dressed in old sweatpants and a faded T-shirt.

Aunt Hilda was already in the kitchen. Chase was just coming in with rolls of garbage bags under one arm, a big box of bagels under the other, plus carrying a department store bag too. The bagels were all made-up, Luanne saw when he set the box on the kitchen counter and opened it—some with eggs and ham, others with cream cheese.

“Good morning,” he said, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. “I figured we shouldn’t waste time on cooking. We have plenty to do today.”

Mia and Daisy raced to the table, where Aunt Hilda was setting out paper plates.

“What’s in the other bag?” Mia wanted to know.

“Got myself a change of clothes.” He dropped the bag by the stairs. “Those bagels are still warm. Better eat up.” He glanced at Luanne.

She narrowed her eyes at him. He was definitely feeding her. Maybe it was some weird fetish. What did she really know about Chase Merritt anyway?

“Thank you.” She moved the box to the middle of the kitchen table. “How about I get everyone drinks?”

“Thank you, dear.” Aunt Hilda thumped onto her seat with relief.

Luanne poured milk for the girls, water for the adults, as requested, then sat next to Chase. Only five chairs surrounded the kitchen table. The sixth sat in the corner, piled high with newspaper. Something she meant to take care of next.

She put a cream cheese bagel on her plate, then dropped her hands on her lap and linked her fingers. “What do we do?” she prompted the girls.

They snapped their backs straight and chanted in unison, Mia at the top of her lungs, Daisy a little quieter. “God is great! God is good! Let us thank Him for our food. Aa-men!”

Aunt Hilda reached out to pat their little heads with a shaky hand. “You girls are treasures.”

Of course, they both beamed. They ate up attention.

“Aunt Hilda said we’re a treasure,” Mia bragged immediately. “Can we go outside after breakfast?”

Luanne bit into her bagel. The backyard was fenced. “What are you going to do out there?”

“Look for ants.” Mia always had a ready answer for everything.

Daisy thought for a moment before whispering, “I’d like to sing with the grass.”

Daisy was more of a contemplative child with ideas that often confounded Luanne. When Luanne and Mia used to play the “what does the cow say,” “what does the dog say,” “what does the rooster say” game in their younger years, Daisy had always wanted to know what the turtle or the butterfly said.

Neither Aunt Hilda nor Chase batted an eyelash now at her latest unusual comment, for which Luanne was grateful.

“I’ll go with them,” Aunt Hilda offered.

“Sounds like a great idea,” Luanne agreed immediately. If her aunt stayed inside, she’d insist on helping like she had the day before, and she really needed to be sitting down and resting.