“Takes one to know one!”
And so, laughing, we raced into the day, but I was coming to think that our days as a couple were numbered.
• • •
A few hours later, I picked up my cell phone and called Leese.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay? How’s your sister?”
“It’s a long story.” She gusted out a sigh. “And I don’t think there’s a short version.”
None of that sounded good. “When I told you I was a good listener, I meant it, so if you want to talk, just say the word. I can stop by tonight even.”
“Do you mean it?” Her voice cracked.
“Of course. Even if you don’t cook anything.”
She managed a laugh. “You give the worst hints of anyone I’ve ever met. How do you feel about jambalaya?”
“I’ll bring salad,” I said promptly, and pulled into her driveway at six o’ clock straight up. I grabbed the container of salad bar salad I’d assembled in the grocery store’s deli section, knocked on her back door, and went in.
“There’s nothing worse than a guest who’s on time.” Leese glowered at me as I came up the steps.
“Then it’s a good thing I’m a friend with refrigerator privileges and not a guest, isn’t it?” I smiled at her brightly.
“What are you talking about?”
I opened the door of her fridge, put in the salad stuff, grabbed a pitcher of what I assumed was water, and shut the door. “Like this, see?” I held up the pitcher. “Having friends with refrigerator privileges means it’s okay that they take stuff out of the fridge without asking because you know they’re considerate enough not to take the last diet soda.”
“Gotcha.” She nodded. “I’m sorry for being so crabby. It’s just . . .” She shifted her gaze, looking away from me but not at anything in particular, unless the blank wall held some special meaning for her.
“We’ll talk later,” I said. “After we eat, if that’s okay with you.”
“Very okay. I’d love to talk about something normal.”
Normal, of course, was a moving target, but after she’d shown me around her house and I’d expressed jealousy over the handmade quilt she’d put up as a wall hanging in her office (“My grandmother’s work,” she’d said proudly), we’d sat down to eat and were discussing our all-time favorite movies when we heard car doors shut. Three of them.
Leese half stood to look out the window, then dropped back into her chair. “I am so sorry,” she said heavily. “I had no idea they’d stop without calling.”
“Who is it?” I asked.
The back door banged open. “Leese!” a high-pitched woman’s voice called as multiple sets of feet tromped up the stairs. “We need you to talk some sense into your sister.”
“My stepmother,” Leese said, sighing. “Carmen. And Brad and Mia. Carmen’s . . . okay, just a little . . . intense.”
Interested, I got to my feet as the trio made it to the top of the stairs. Carmen, brassy-haired and exceedingly thin, was holding the young woman I’d seen at the sheriff’s office by the arm. Behind them trailed Brad, who, in spite of being a big, bearded guy, looked a lot like his stepsister. He also looked as if he’d rather be anywhere rather than where he was.
“Hello,” I said pleasantly and introduced myself.
Carmen’s gaze raked over me and went to latch itself on to Leese. “I can’t believe you invited a stranger over for dinner on a night when your family needed you.”
“Oh, Momma, leave her alone.” Brad Lacombe stuck out his hand. “I’m Brad. Nice to meet you.”
“Minnie?” The waiflike Mia stared at me. “You were the one with Leese last week when . . . when . . .” Large tears started to drip down her face.
“That’s right.” I turned my chair toward her. “Do you want to sit?”
“We’re interrupting your dinner,” Mia murmured. “We should leave.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Leese handed her a napkin. “Dry your face and all of you sit down. I made jambalaya and there’s enough to feed half an army.”
In short order, she’d spooned out healthy servings of the rice-based dish and set the mounded bowls in front of us. I used my refrigerator privileges to add a few Leese-owned ingredients to make the salad stretch to five, and our hostess forbade discussion of anything serious until the food was gone.
Mia did more playing with her food than eating, so it took some time, but the five of us were drinking decaf coffee and digging into small bowls of ice cream as the sun started to slide down below the tree line.
“Okay,” Leese pronounced as she watched a final spoonful go down Mia’s throat. “Now.”
The three of them all started talking at once and Leese held up her hands to silence them. “Let me summarize,” she said. “Minnie came over to hear about the last twenty-four hours and I hadn’t even begun when you three showed up.”
At this, Mia looked at her lap, Brad grinned, and Carmen, between sips of her coffee, said, “Family doesn’t need to call ahead.”
Leese shot me a glance—which I interpreted as, See what I ended up with in the family lottery?—and didn’t reply to her stepmother’s comment. “Here’s what I know,” she said. “Mia, you went to the sheriff’s office yesterday and confessed to killing Dad. No, let me finish, Carmen. I want Minnie to hear the order in which this all happened.”
Her stepmother sighed dramatically, but otherwise kept quiet.
“Thank you,” Leese said. “After Mia made her statement, she was arrested. Somewhere in there she was read her rights and I showed up to represent her, at least for the time being.”
She stopped and this time the ticking of the refrigerator was the noisiest sound in the room.
“Right.” Leese looked at Mia. “Today, you were released from jail because it didn’t take the detective very long to determine that you were at an IT conference in Florida last week and that dozens of people could give you an alibi. Time-wise, it was impossible for you to fly home, kill Dad, and fly back to Florida.”
“I know,” Mia whispered.
“Then why did you confess?” her mother shouted, crashing her mug down on the table. I cringed, but no one else so much as blinked. “Why on earth did you do that?” Carmen demanded. “How could you be so—”
“Let her answer,” Leese cut in firmly.
Brad stood, went around to the back of Mia’s chair, and started kneading her shoulders. “Talk to us, Mee. It’ll be okay, okay? Just tell us why.”
Though Leese’s napkin had stanched the earlier tears, it was not going to be able to handle the flood I could feel coming.
“It was my fault,” Mia said so softly the words barely got past her teeth. “It was me, it was my fault.”
“We heard you the first hundred times,” her mother said. “It’s bad enough that your father is dead without this little problem. You said you’d explain when we got to Leese’s house. Well, we’re here, so tell us.”
Mia looked at Leese, who nodded. The younger woman bent her head. “Dad and I,” she told the table, “had this big fight when he drove me to the airport. A huge fight.”
This fact didn’t seem to faze the other three at the table. I couldn’t recall the last time my mild-mannered engineer father and I had argued about anything other than the importance of fiction in the universe. In spite of his ridiculous opinion that reading fiction was a waste of time if there was nonfiction at hand, I couldn’t imagine having a knock-down drag-out with him. Clearly, this wasn’t the case with the deceased Dale Lacombe and his offspring.
“What was it this time?” Brad was still working on her shoulders. “Your hair or your tattoos?”
His younger sister reached up and pulled at a loose strand of jet-black hair. “He kept saying over and over again that I was wasting my life, that if I ever wanted to meet a man who might actually want to marry me, I had to quit working a man’s job.”