Page 18 of The Aura Answer
“I figure now that their dad is gone, the boys are raising pot out there.” Evie tried to see the face of the woman sprawled stomach down over the Corvette hood, but it wasn’t clear. Bertie had apparently been more interested in her rear end in those Daisy Duke’s. “The hounds are their early detection system.”
The room grew oddly silent. What had she said now? Evie glanced over at Loretta, who was engrossed in the Count of Monte Cristo and not paying the adults a bit of attention. She wasn’t eating asparagus either.
“What?” Evie demanded. “It pays better than cotton.”
“Hey, Loretta, want to help me finish up dinner?” Pris asked, distributing her uneaten asparagus tarts to the tray with the crackers and cheese. “We can play hide the asparagus in the potatoes.”
Loretta jumped up carrying her book and obediently followed Pris out. Evie knew she’d been listening and wouldknow everything by nightfall, but let the protective idiots pretend otherwise.
“Pot, my dear dimwit.” Jax leaned over and kissed her hair. “Pot, drugs, farm, Bertie, addict.”
“Nope, not making any sense. Bertie did opioids, not pot. Taken in moderation, pot isn’t any more dangerous than alcohol. Toby was probably out there making the Shepherds ante up for his frog-saving environmentalists. No telling what Turdy Turlock was doing except showing off his Corvette. Maybe he financed their operation.” Evie thought about that for half a second. “Although Turdy is a bully who wouldn’t let Bertie near his sporting goods store. Huh.”
“Have R&R look into the Turlocks,” Jax suggested. “If Turlock Sr. was his attorney, Block may have been holding something over his head to keep him on his case once he ran out of land to sell. Could be why Turlock is sending Toby an outrageous bill.”
Evie pondered all the possible crimes Block could have blackmailed his lawyer with and decided Jax knew way too much about human behavior to make that probably correct assumption. She calculated the same could be said of the Shepherds. Pot-selling farmers were easy blackmail targets.
“What about this Verity Janus person?” Gracie asked. “The name sounds familiar. Has anyone looked her up?”
Evie pried her phone out of the pocket of her leggings, punched a few buttons, and handed it to her sister. “Charleston artist. Paper just ran an article. She’s a tree hugger like Toby. Her mother owns a gallery. Want to visit?”
“Not particularly, no, I can’t read auras. Why are we even looking into Bertie anyway? We can assume he overdosed. No one murdered him. Shouldn’t you be looking at who wanted Mr. Block dead?” Her sister handed back the phone and returnedto arranging her books in some order Evie could never hope to understand.
“A lot of people wanted Block dead once he was of no use to them,” Jax said.
“Not everyone would step over Bertie’s rotting body to do it,” Evie countered. “Not everyone knew that canister light had been removed unless they’d been up there earlier. What are the chances our drug dealer and murderer are the same person?”
No one had a good answer for that.
Nick knewnothing about small towns or killers or detecting. Evie’s Sensible Solutions team had put his distant cousins in jail for murder, theft, kidnapping, and fraud over the boutique business Nick had stupidly thought genuine. All he’d ever done was promote the product, then hire Jax to force the insurance company into coughing up enough money from a fire to pay off the employees and shut down the stores. He’d never expected to end up as a witness to more criminal acts than it seemed possible for anyone short of mafia to commit.
Well, it was possible his cousins were mafia. He’d been living in York, unaware.
So he was completely useless in determining who might have killed a mayor no one except a redneck mob appeared to like. But he had made his host’s family happy by removing an ugly eyesore and trading it for some truly brilliant wall sectionals. The American market lent itself to modern pieces more than the UK. He now knew how to make himself useful while he camped out in their cellar.
Jax’s energetic young ward had known exactly where in the attic to find the missing desk portion of the art nouveaumahogany secretaire. So after dinner, he located a rusted dolly in the carriage house. With Evie’s permission, and a little oil on the dolly, he hauled the old desk to the huge empty space that could have been a garage, had anyone used it. But carriage doors were too clumsy to open without servants.
He didn’t have much in the way of savings, but he had his last paycheck now that the fire insurance proceeds had come through. The supplies for a basic surface touch-up should be easy to find.
Hank’s Hardware was only a few blocks from Evie’s house. Nick ambled in and perused the stock while the old man behind the counter served another customer. He assumed this was Hank, the owner and city council member who Evie had declared an honest but disagreeable Block supporter.
Nick didn’t know how he felt about everyone’s belief that his hostess possessed some psychic voodoo for ghosts and auras. But she seemed to have good people instincts. He’d roll with that.
“What can I do fer ya, young fella?” Barely reaching Nick’s shoulders, the old clerk had combed his circle of white hair over his freckled head. But he seemed spritely and muscled enough to handle his heavy stock.
“I’d like to restore a few antiques. But lacking professional equipment, I should like to see what you might carry for the task.” Nick studied the cans in the likely area of interest, but he was unfamiliar with the American labels.
“You’re one of them boarders Evangeline has taken in, ain’t you? Her grandmother would roll in her grave if she knew about the sorts living there now. Never would have happened back in the day, but times are tough.”
Nick had a suspicion that the old man didn’t refer to the Italian count but to Reuben and Roark, one black, one brown, both tattooed and occasionally metaled. But this wasn’t hisargument, and he bit back any retort. Old people were set in their ways.
With a gnarled hand, Hank took down a couple of colorful cans and handed them over. “You got brushes?”
Nick took the cans and shifted to the brush selection. “I shall assume Evangeline has nothing that isn’t fifty years old. Brushes, sandpaper, the works, please.”
“Ain’t from around here, are ya?” Hank sorted through his stock for what appeared to be the right tools.
“Just visiting.” Nick agreed amicably. “Thought small town life might be more agreeable than the city, but crime knows no boundaries, I see.”
