Page 22 of Luck of the Devil
“My grandparents. My mother had been estranged from them since my sister’s death, but my dad said that he thought she’d been in contact with them in recent years.”
“Why were they estranged?”
“Honestly? At the time, my mother and I weren’t talking, so she never told me why they were no longer part of our lives, and I was buried too deep in my own guilt and depression to really notice. I thought it was strange we weren’t seeing them around the holidays, but when they didn’t come to my high school graduation, I finally asked why. My dad wouldn’t talk about it, and my mother said they wrote us off years ago. But on the phone call with my dad, he said they’d stopped talking to us because they needed someone to blame for Andi’s murder.”
Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. “Why blame him?”
“I asked,” I said. “At least my mother’s reasons for blaming me for what happened had some merit.”
“Bull-fucking-shit,” he grunted, “You were not to blame, and any real mother would have comforted her daughter instead of blaming her.”
His outrage on my behalf caught me off guard. He’d known about my mother’s reaction to Andi’s murder since our first case together, but while he’d insisted it wasn’t my fault before, he’d never sounded this pissed about it.
“Well, maybe so,” I admitted, “but there’s no changing what’s done. All I’m saying is that she had some basis for her resentment. I was with my sister when she was kidnapped, and I let her be taken.”
“You were a child.”
“I could have tried to stop him. If we’d both fought him, if we’d?—”
He leaned closer, his face inches from mine. “Stop.”
Surprisingly, I did, my breath coming in rapid pants.
“Goin’ down that path won’t change what happened,” he said with surprising gentleness. “You’re only beatin’ yourself by doin’ it.”
He had a point, but maybe that was exactly why I kept at it. I sucked in a slow breath before saying, “My father had absolutely nothing to do with my sister’s death.”
His brow cocked. “You sure about that?”
I eyed the half-full bottles lining the back wall, my palms itchy with the need to hold a glass of whiskey. A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck and my stomach churned. But I forced myself to focus on his question.
“Sure that my father had nothing to do with her death? I don’t see how he could have been involved. My sister was randomly targeted. It had nothing to do with him.”
“And nothing to do with you,” he asserted.
But I let him take her.
He shook his head as though reading my mind but remained silent.
“In any case,” I said, with more force than necessary. “My father didn’t tell my grandparents about my mother’s death, and I think I should inform them in person. It’s the least I can do, and maybe I can find out why they stopped talking to her.” Then I added, “And if my mother was in contact with them again.”
He leaned back, resting the palm of his hand on the edge of the bar. “I’ll take the day off. We’ll go together.”
My lips parted in shock. I knew he’d planned on helping me investigate, but I hadn’t expected him to take this road trip with me.
“I’m not going to hide anything from you,” I said, meaning it. “I’m not trying to protect my father, if that’s what you're afraid of. I’ll tell you everything they say. I’ll even record the conversation if you like.”
He studied me so closely, I was sure he could see the blackness swirling in my soul. He didn’t flinch. Maybe he saw something familiar. “So you say, but I’m goin’ anyway.”
“Why?”
He started to say something, then stopped, a hard look filling his eyes. “Because while you claim you intend to keep me in the loop, past experience proves otherwise. Besides, your car’s in the shop and you’re too poor to rent one. I’m goin’. End of discussion.” Then he carried the beer to the other end of the bar and placed it in front of a patron.
This nicer version of Malcolm had me on edge. Sure, he’d practically called me a liar, but in the past, he would have told me to fuck off. What was with this softer version? Was he playing me? No, not playing me. But he clearly thought my mother’s death played into his grand scheme somehow. Maybe I should be warier, but as far as I was concerned, as long as he helped me, then I could help him. It had worked for us before. I really did intend to tell him anything I learned from them. Sure, he hadn’t reciprocated, but that didn’t matter. My best chance of finding the person or persons behind my mother’s murder was by teaming up with Malcolm. He could do whatever he wanted with the information we dug up.
I’d come a long way since last February. When my investigation to find Ava Peterman, Vanessa’s eight-year-old daughter, kept crossing paths with the notorious James Malcolm, I’d expected he’d shoot me for crossing him. I sure hadn’t expected him to suggest we pool resources.
That had been the drunk, sloppy version of me. What would Detective Harper Adams, the strict, by-the-book detective I’d been before last October think of what I was doing now? She would have bitterly denied that she could become someone who let a man get away with literal murder.
