Page 80 of To Die For

“I can’t think of anyone else.”

“So Glass gave Dwayne and Alice a car and home? They are his family.”

“Dwayne didn’t like Glass. I’m not sure he would have just let the man buy him that stuff. From what we found out they’d been in precarious financial circumstances for quite a long time. So why wait until recently to help them out or have Dwayne reach out?”

“Maybe Dwayne Odom had something on his brother-in-law? Like Rollins did?” suggested Saxby. “Blackmail?”

“Could be. And my same sources tell me that Alice was scared from that moment on.”

“Are your sources the two drug users?”

“Look, they’re actually good guys who mean well. Life just threw them some curveballs.”

“As it does to us all,” replied Saxby, a comment that surprised Devine.

Odom appeared wrapped in a large fluffy towel in the bathroom doorway. Her wet hair lay straight down her back.

“Travis, when did you get here?”

“Just walked in.”

“Let me change and we can talk.”

She rushed to her room, and five minutes later, after they heard a hair dryer running for about a minute, Odom reappeared dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt that were part of the clothes he had brought from her home.

She sat next to Devine and said, “I don’t see why I have to meet with my uncle before the hearing.”

Saxby said, “Just because he requested it doesn’t mean you have to accept.”

Odom looked conflicted. “But if I don’t, he’ll probably be mad.”

Devine said, “That’s his problem, not yours.”

They all sat there in silence for a few moments until Odom spoke.

“Well, he asked me questions when we met. Now maybe I can ask him some.”

“Like what?” Saxby wanted to know.

“Like where I’ll live if he does adopt me. Where I’ll go to school. Whether I’ll get an allowance. Whether he’ll set up a trust for me and put me in his will, and if so, for how much?”

Devine glanced sharply at Saxby. “Okay, you’ve obviously given this some thought.”

Then he remembered her heavily marked up copy ofThink and Grow Rich.

“It ismylife, after all.”

“And while you’re questioning him, why don’t you ask him why he had his sister and brother-in-law cremated so fast.”

Saxby let out a sharp breath. “Devine, do you really want her to go there?”

“Why not? He’ll know that I told her. He’ll blame me, not her. And it’s a natural question. Betsy never even got to say goodbye, right?” he added, looking at the girl.

“I’ll ask him,” she said quietly. “BecauseIwant to know the answer.”

“But the real question is do you want to be adopted by him? The judge will probably ask you that. And you have to have some sort of response.”

“I know,” said Odom, now looking miserable and uncertain.

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