“Can I ask how you know that?”
“I pay attention, that’s how. I got clippings from back when it happened, and some have her picture. She didn’t age well since, but I saw who she was.”
“Did you talk to her, or anybody else about that?”
“Why would I?” With a sad shake of her head, she looked back at Reed. “She was just trying to live her life, to get by. I had a son go bad on me. He didn’t kill anybody, as far as I know, but he went bad all the same. I’ve got another son and a girl who make me proud every day. I did my best by all of them, but I had a son go bad. She was a sad, troubled woman.”
“Were you friendly with her?”
“She wasn’t friendly with anybody. She just holed up in there, went off to work, came back, and shut herself in.”
“Any visitors?” Reed prodded.
“The only person I ever saw go inside would be her daughter. She’d come by now and again, stay awhile. She’d bring groceries every couple weeks. Saw her bring flowers this past Mother’s Day. Did her duty.”
Patricia Hobart, Reed remembered. JJ’s younger sister. “Did you ever talk to the daughter?”
“Ayuh, a time or two. Polite, but closemouthed all the same. She asked me if there might be a young boy willing to cut the grass, shovel snow, and that sort of thing, so I told her to ask about Jenny Molar, two doors down there. She’s a good girl, helps me out when I need it—and more reliable than most boys. Jenny, she told me the daughter paid her what she asked, and told her not to bother her mother. How she wasn’t real well, and shy with it. So the daughter did her duty by her mother, no more, no less.”
He caught the tone. “No more?”
“That’s how I see it, but I have high standards.” She smiled, then looked back across the street. “Shame about the house. It wasn’t much, but it could’ve been better. The man who owns it isn’t worth a half bucket of spit, so he didn’t mind having it rented out to somebody who wouldn’t dog him about repairs. I guess he’ll collect his insurance and sell off the plot.”
While Reed considered that, she gave him another long study. “My grandson’s a police. Officer Curtis A. Sloop.”
“Seriously? Come on. I know Sloopy.”
She tipped down her glasses again. “Is that so?”
“Yes, ma’am. We went to the Academy together, and were rooks the same year. He’s good police.”
“He’s trying to be. If you talk to him before I do, you tell him you met his granny.” She offered a hand, small and delicate as a doll’s. “Mrs. Leticia Johnson.”
“I sure will, and I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Johnson.”
“You go be good police, young, good-looking Reed Quartermaine. And maybe you’ll come by and see me sometime.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He left her rocking, hunted up Michael. Found him talking with Essie.
“Your case?” he asked her.
“It is now.” With her hands on her hips, she studied the wreck and rubble. “The arson investigator’s already in there, so we’ll see. Official ID of the body’s going to take awhile.”
“I hear the landlord isn’t big on repair and maintenance.”
Essie slanted him a look. “Is that what you hear?”
“Mrs. Leticia Johnson—her grandson’s on the job. I know him, he’s solid. She’s sitting on the porch across the street. You’ll want to talk to her. Chloe and Rob, from the house next door, were awakened by their dog barking about three a.m. Rob got up, as the barking woke up the baby in the baby thing beside the bed. He saw the fire, got his wife up, grabbed the phone to call it in while they headed out. The explosion came next, shattered their bedroom windows.”
Essie’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ve been busy, Officer.”
“Well, I was here anyway. She lived alone, didn’t socialize, didn’t have visitors except for the daughter. The daughter came by occasionally, brought groceries every couple weeks, hired a local kid to cut the grass, shovel snow in the winter.”
“You bucking for a gold shield, Officer Quartermaine?”
He smiled. “Next year.” He turned to Michael. “Do you think arson?”
“I can’t say. I can say it looks like two points of origin—kitchen and living room, and my best guess would be curtains. It wasn’t a gas leak, most likely gas from the stove. Actually, the explosion was fairly contained, and that’ll help the investigators determine cause.”
“My partner’s talking to the neighbors. I think I’ll walk over and have a chat with Mrs. Johnson. Officer Quartermaine?”
“Detective McVee.”
“I’m requesting you be assigned to this investigative unit.”
“Hot damn.”
“Start by canvassing the block. Write up your notes.”
She walked across the street, leaving him grinning.
*
Simone broke under relentless, benign family pressure. While her father conceded his dream of his oldest following in his lawyer footsteps wasn’t to be, the change of tack worked.
She would focus her studies on business management. She’d had her scattershot period, her parents told her, and now she had to buckle down. A degree in business management would keep her focused, open doors, forge a future.
She tried. She pushed herself so hard in the next semester even the responsible Mi urged her to ease off, take some breaks.
She ended the year with grades that made her parents beam, and spent the summer working as an assistant to the assistant of the manager of the accounting branch of her father’s firm.
By the end of June, she was back in therapy.
In August, plagued with headaches, ten pounds underweight, with a wardrobe of suits she hated, she thought of the girl she’d been, the one who’d called for help, then hidden in a bathroom stall.
The one who’d feared she’d die before she’d lived.
And realized there were other ways to die.
She chose to live.
On the night before she left for New York, she sat down with her parents and Natalie.
“I can’t believe both our girls are heading off to college,” Tulip began. “What are we going to do, Ward, with our empty nest? Natalie off to Harvard, and Simone off to Columbia.”
“I’m not going back to Columbia.”
“We’re just so … What?”
Simone kept her hands gripped together in her lap. They wanted to shake. “I’m going back to New York, but I’m not going back to college.”
“Of course you are. You had a brilliant third year.”
“I hated every minute of it. I hated working in the law firm this summer. I can’t keep doing what I hate, what I’m not.”
“This is the first I’m hearing about it.” Ward shoved up, stalked across the room to mix himself a drink. “Your evaluations were glowing. Just as Natalie’s were in her internship. We don’t quit in this family, Simone, or take our advantages for granted. You disappoint me.”
It stung. Of course it stung, as he’d meant it to. But she’d prepared herself for that.
“I know I do, and I know I might always disappoint you. But I gave you a year of my life. I did everything you wanted me to do, and I can’t do it anymore.”
“Why do you have to spoil everything?”
She spun around to face Natalie to take some of the burning sting out on her sister. “What am I spoiling for you? You’re doing what you want, what you’re good at. Go do it, be good at it. Be the perfect white sheep to my black.”
“Your sister’s mature enough to understand she needs a foundation, she needs goals, and she has parents who’ve given her a foundation, and support her goals.”
“They match yours,” Simone told her mother. “Mine don’t.”
“Since when have you had goals?” Natalie muttered.
“I’m working on it. I’m going back to New York. I’m going to take some art classes—”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Tulip threw up her hands. “I knew this was CiCi’s doing.”