A Southern Promise. Jennifer Lohmann

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СКАЧАТЬ She wasn’t under arrest.

      She banged harder this time, imagining her hand bursting through the glass until it struck the cop in the back and he had to give her his attention. Had to tell her something about Binnie, what was happening and why she was locked up in this car.

      Even with the AC on, the heat from the sun had piled on itself, and the car grew warmer and warmer until it turned into a low-rent torture chamber. And if the heat wasn’t enough to make her blood boil, thinking about her situation and the lack of information she was getting sure did. She had thousands of questions, and not a single one had been answered.

      The police milling about the street had also had questions. Not lots of them, and the fool leaning against the window with his back pressed against the glass hadn’t had any intelligent ones but, grammatically, they’d been questions. What are you doing here? Why do you need to go to that house?

      If one of them had let her see her aunt, Julianne would have answered any question they posed to her, which she had said to them. In response, the dim-eyed fool standing guard had actually asked, “You the kinda person who doesn’t respect authority?”

      Her reply, a “Let me see my aunt” screamed at the “authority” with her hands outstretched, had received a politely phrased response: “Ma’am, have a seat in the car and I’ll get the detective in charge of the investigation. He’s the only person who can give permission to enter the crime scene.” The offered opportunity had folded Julianne’s anger in half, and she’d folded herself into the back of the car in response. It felt as if that had been hours ago.

      She would definitely be calling the mayor about this.

      Before Julianne could finish composing the threat in her head, Officer Manipulative Blockhead moved, and the car door popped open. A man in a boring white golf shirt and an even more boring pair of khakis slid into the seat next to her. But the man made up for his sartorial shortcomings by having soft waves in his hair and round glasses that reminded Julianne of an absentminded professor. Aunt Binnie would probably love to pinch his cheeks and call him honey. She’d always lavished attention on men—a habit Julianne’s mama said had only gotten worse since her husband died.

      Who she was registered on his face in a flash of annoyance, followed by resignation. The gold wire frames of his glasses didn’t hide either expression. “Ms. Dawson, I’m sorry Officer Henson stuck you in here like this, but we can’t have anyone in Mrs. Somerset’s house just yet.”

      “Officer...” she said.

      “Detective Howie Berry.”

      She ignored the correction. She’d known he was a detective by the plain clothes and the gold badge hanging at his waist. But if she had to suffer the indignity of sitting in a hot patrol car while waiting for her aunt, he could take being called by a lower rank.

      “I’m afraid you can’t get in the house until we’ve finished up in there,” he continued, but Julianne was staring at the way one curl at the back of his neck brushed up against a strong jaw. Soft and hard. She set her hand in her lap before she reached out and pulled the curl straight.

      “Detective,” she said, her attention shifting from his hair to his impossibly long eyelashes and how they brushed against the inside of his glasses when he blinked. He was cute. She was stuck in this damned patrol car with a cute detective while her aunt was facing her worst nightmare.

      It was all too much. Julianne squared her shoulders, straightened her spine and finished in a haughty voice she’d learned from her mother, “If I don’t get answers now, and get to talk to my aunt, I’m calling the mayor.”

      Disgust flickered over the detective’s face, but she wouldn’t back down or soften her words. Being spoiled rotten was better than being nice. Nice had gotten her nothing over the years, so Julianne had washed her hands of nice.

      “Ms. Dawson.” The formal words came out of his mouth carefully, as if he was doling out expensive chocolates. “I regret to inform you, especially here and like this, that Mrs. Somerset is dead.”

      “But she was alive yesterday,” she said, not able to bite her lip fast enough to keep the idiocy from escaping. First spoiled rotten and now stupid. Worse was the realization that even while sitting in a cop car, even the second after learning her favorite aunt was dead, she wanted the detective to think well of her.

      She blinked against the slow buildup of liquid in her eyes.

      Insecurity, not pride, had her worried about what the detective thought of her, even now. Julianne was proving to the detective—and to herself—that she was more concerned about other people’s opinions than about who she was or who she wanted to be.

      Not that Aunt Binnie’s death was a surprise. Honestly, once the shock and grief wore off, relief would follow. Julianne and her mother wouldn’t have to argue about when to put her in a retirement home. And she was ninety—they’d all expected this day would come. Hoped it would be later rather than sooner. And Julianne had hoped to be sitting by the old woman’s bedside, holding her hand when her life passed out of her.

      “I’m sorry,” Detective Berry said, his eyes and voice soft with sincerity. “I’m sorry this is how you have to find out.”

      “Did you find her while investigating the other crime?” For a brief moment, Julianne wondered if the shock had killed her aunt.

      “For the other crime?” The detective’s face had changed from initial disgust to sympathy and then to confusion, his features hardly shifting through it all. It was as if he could communicate a thesaurus of emotions with one twitch or another of his lips.

      Magic lips to go with his fanciful hair.

      “The one all the cop cars are here for.” Julianne waved her hand in the general direction of the commotion outside. “And the police dogs. I assume they’re here for a murder. Or something else terrible. The death of an old woman, even Aunt Binnie, wouldn’t require police dogs.”

      Maybe there was some sort of frequent-caller program Julianne didn’t know about. Call the police station over a thousand times and get a handsome police dog to stand over your body while someone pronounces you dead. If so, Aunt Binnie had collected frequent-caller points like traveling salesmen collected airline miles.

      “Ms. Dawson.” The slowness of his words was more than mere formality. He was treating her as if she was staring at a neon sign flashing Enter Here and asking where the door was. “Your aunt was murdered. That is why Henson couldn’t let you into the crime scene and why he kept you in the car.” Kindness in his voice caressed the reality of what he said, wrapping up the truth in sticky sweet syrup so she could swallow it without gagging, even if she had to gulp several times.

      Julianne took a long, deep breath and stared into the detective’s light brown eyes. They had a ring of chocolate around the edge. For all his silly hair, the detective seemed like a steady man, holding her gaze and allowing her time to gather her dignity around her shoulders and adjust it so that it lay properly. She blinked, several times, fast enough to make the detective’s form waver, but not fast enough to hold in the tears. But she didn’t turn away from his face. If he was going to give her this news while she sat in the back of a patrol car, he could watch her cry. Neither she nor the detective would get the relief a trip to the bathroom to splash some cold water on her face would provide.

      Detective Berry didn’t flinch. He knew who she was. He’d just told her that her favorite aunt was dead. Murdered. But СКАЧАТЬ