Page 10 of Ground Truth

Flint figured the bristly attitude was just for show. If Scarlett were really angry with him, she’d do more than complain about the dog.

“I’ll be home soon. Why? What’s up?”

“A couple of things that you’ll be interested in,” Scarlett said. “You asked me to chase down whatever we could find on Bette Maxwell’s death. Looks like she died of old age, honestly.”

“You’re sure?”

“I mean, I don’t have a crystal ball and she’s not talking to me from the great beyond or anything,” Scarlett said sardonically. “But there’s nothing we can find to suggest any kind of foul play.”

Flint closed his eyes and leaned back in the lounger.

He was light-years away from Bette Maxwell’s foster care home at the moment, in every conceivable way. The orphanage where he and Scarlett grew up might as well have been on a different planet from this floating palace in the Mediterranean Sea.

Both Scarlett and Flint had left Bette Maxwell’s place behind long ago. When a case they worked on brought their foster mother back into their lives, Flint viewed it as a gift.

Scarlett preferred to leave the past in the past where, she said, it belonged.

But then Bette died, and the death seemed unexpected to Flint. He’d asked Scarlett to put an investigator on it. Not because he really expected to find anything particularly suspicious.

Bette was as old and dry as the dirt she lived on. She’d told him she didn’t expect to live much longer, and she’d been right.

But Flint felt he owed it to Bette to be sure her death actually resulted from natural causes. Her no-account husband and good-for-nothing sons stood to inherit Bette’s farm, such as it was, along with the mineral rights that had finally provided a decent income for Bette in her later years.

Flint couldn’t let the ne’er-do-wells inherit if they shouldn’t have. Bette deserved better than that from him and Scarlett and everyone else she’d helped along the way.

“Okay, well, I guess that’s the end of it, then,” Flint said because he didn’t want to continue this particular conversation now. “Thanks for handling the due diligence.”

“There is one thing, though,” Scarlett replied. “Bette left a box of stuff with your name on it in one of the bedroom closets. One of my guys went out there and picked it up because her sons are selling the place.”

“A box?” Flint asked, puzzled. “What’s in it?”

“Bunch of papers, newspaper clippings, stuff like that. Most of it is about you and your exploits. Guess she must have paid more attention to you after you left than she paid to me,” Scarlett said, as if she might have been jealous or something.

Which Flint knew was total hogwash. Scarlett didn’t have a jealous bone in her body. Nor did she have any reason to be jealous of anyone or anything.

“What about the rest of the contents?”

“An envelope stuffed with materials about Marilyn Baker,” Scarlett said quietly.

Flint had investigated Marilyn Baker thoroughly when he’d first learned she’d existed. When Bette Maxwell suggested Marilyn Baker was Flint’s biological mother.

After he’d looked into it, Flint agreed. Bette was probably right.

But that didn’t mean Flint wanted to go any further with the matter. And he’d explained that to Scarlett in no uncertain terms.

Which she seemed to have ignored.

As she often did.

Scarlett said, “I’m calling now only because it looks like Marilyn Baker’s grave is being moved. Which means the body will be exhumed.”

“What? Exhumed? Why?” Flint said, kneading his forehead.

As far as he knew, Baker had lain in the same grave for more than thirty years. She had no living relatives, unless he counted himself. Who would bother with her after all this time?

“If Marilyn Baker’s body is exhumed, you could get a DNA sample, which could be subjected to the right tests and might prove Baker was your mother. Or not,” Scarlett explained slowly, as if he were a dimwit.

The option to have the body exhumed had always been there. Flint hadn’t decided whether he wanted that or not.

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