Page 32 of Luck of the Devil
Around seven, I woke to light streaming through the window’s wooden blinds. Malcolm was slumped in the armchair, asleep. His feet were propped on the coffee table, his ankles crossed, and his head leaned to the side.
The lines around his eyes seemed softer, and he looked less jaded.
Less dangerous.
It made me wonder what life choices he’d made to get to this point. You didn’t wake up one day and decide to become a crime boss, or at least, I didn’t think someone like Malcolm did. Most people did it for money or power, often both. Had that been his motivation? Fenton County was poor, one of the poorest in the state. Maybe he’d seen it as a way out of poverty.
When I sat up, my head swam, so I rested my elbows on my thighs and leaned my forehead into my hands. My head and muscles ached like I was recovering from an illness, but I was a hell of a lot better than I’d been last night.
I turned my head to look at Malcolm and saw his eyes had cracked open.
“She lives,” he said with a tight smile.
I sent him a grim smile in return. “For another day.”
“You feel up to drivin’ to Jonesboro?” he asked, still slouched in his seat.
“I’ve felt better, but it doesn’t change my plans. We need to go by my mother’s house first. I can take a shower there and then we can head out of town.”
He gave a slight nod and stood. “Let’s not waste any time.”
I felt a little queasy as we drove to my mother’s house, but Malcolm snuck a glance at me and silently handed me his flask. I unscrewed the lid, then took a swig, the warmth of cheap whiskey sliding down my throat. Taking the sip still felt wrong, but I’d forced myself to accept that it was the only way I could make this trip, let alone investigate my mother’s death.
When Malcolm pulled into my driveway, I headed for the back of the house and found the poorly hidden spare key in the fakest looking rock I’d ever seen.
“You don’t have a key?” he asked in surprise.
“Not until a few weeks ago,” I said as I walked over to the door and inserted the key. “And that one is up in my apartment. This was faster.”
I pushed the door open and he followed me inside. I headed for the kitchen counter, where my mother kept her address book, then flipped it open to the L section. I’d already gotten the address from the internet, but it wasn’t a bad idea to get confirmation. My grandparents were listed at the top, Gary and Shirley Langford, with the address I’d already found.
I closed the book and set it on the kitchen table. “We’re bringing this with us. We might need it later.”
“Okay,” he said, still standing by the back door.
I gave him a long look. “I’m surprised you didn’t just start searching the house.”
“It seemed rude to barge in and start rifling through things.”
I scoffed, realizing he was probably waiting for me because I knew where things were, not out of respect for me or my mother’s house. Her laptop was on the kitchen table, but I bypassed it to head to my parents’ bedroom. I’d already checked out my father’s office last week, looking for anything that might link him to Hugo Burton and J.R. Simmons, but he’d cleared his things out. If he had a paper trail for his financial information, he’d likely kept it in his home office and taken it with him, but I knew Mom had kept some papers in her bedroom.
I walked into her room, catching the faint whiff of Estée Lauder perfume. She’d worn it as long as I could remember, and the scent stopped me in my tracks. My heart wrenched, and I wondered why losing her hurt so much. I’d spent most of my life without her, rarely giving her a second thought. How could you grieve someone you had mostly written off? Had she slipped through my defenses with her neediness over the last few weeks? Or was I mourning the mother I’d always wanted?
“You okay?” Malcolm asked in a hushed tone behind me.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice gruff. I shoved my feelings down as I took a few more steps into the room. “Mom kept some papers in her dresser. She might have some of my father’s financial documents there.”
“You don’t think he took them?”
I bent over to open the bottom drawer of her dresser. “The chances of them being here are fairly small, but it’s worth a quick look.”
There was a stack of documents, but a quick search through them revealed about five years’ worth of electric and water bills, car and house insurance premiums, and their personal bank statements. I pulled out the entire stack, closed the drawer and stood upright. “I doubt anything useful is here, but I’ll bring it with us and go through it on the drive.”
“Could they have kept financial statements anywhere else?” Malcolm asked.
“It’s possible, but this is where she always kept her bills and paperwork. If you want, feel free to search the rest of the house while I go check out her laptop.”
His brow rose in surprise. “You don’t want to keep an eye on me?”
