“We’ll talk to the original detective, if we can find him. Take another look at the place your house used to be. Do you have pictures of your family? Your parents’ house? I’d like to get an idea of its layout. Where the doors were. The bedrooms. The kitchen. I need a sense of things.”
She frowned at him. “You really think something from fifteen years ago is relevant to what’s happening at Madeline’s?”
“I have no idea. But unless you have a rival from culinary school that hates you and is determined to destroy you, or you have a vengeful ex, I have to look at what happened to your family. Have to be able to rule it out.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then her shoulders slumped. “There’s no one but Tory Gardner,” she said. “And yeah, I have some family pictures. I can draw you a diagram of the house.”
“Good. Let’s get some breakfast, then we’ll look at the pictures and a diagram. Then we’ll go back to the site.”
Julia stared down at her coffee, then took a sip. Set it back on the counter and nodded. “I still have some bagels and lox from the other day. Is that okay for breakfast?”
“That’s perfect.”
* * *
Julia’s fingers shook as she pulled the photo albums out of the bookshelf. She hadn’t looked at these pictures in a long time. Right after the explosion, when she’d been devastated by the deaths of her family, she’d pored over the photos in their sleeves. Traced her mother Madeline’s face. Stared at her brother Jeff’s. She’d touched her father Steven’s picture, regretting their fights, the shouting matches they’d had. Knew she’d welcome those fights if it would bring her family back.
She’d been sixteen years old. In love with cooking and creating new recipes. All she’d wanted to do with her life was become a chef. And her father had flatly forbidden it.
Brushing her fingers over the burned spots on the album covers, she took a deep breath and filled her arms with them. Carrying them to the kitchen table, she set them down with a thump. “These are all the albums that survived the explosion. The bookcases fell down, apparently, and these slid beneath the couch. It protected them.”
Nico stared at the charred albums, then looked up at her. “I hate to make you relive all that pain.”
Julia smoothed a torn corner of one leather-covered album back into place. “I’ve made my peace with it,” she finally said through the lump in her throat. “Nothing will bring them back. I was fortunate to survive. Do I still miss them? Absolutely.” She smiled, but it felt shaky. “My mom would have been so thrilled with Madeline’s. I named it after her, because she was my cheerleader. She encouraged my interest in cooking. Told me all the time that I’d do great things.”
“What about your father and your brother? Do you miss them, too?”
Julia stared at the albums. “I don’t miss my brother,” she confessed. “Jeff was a mean bully. I was fourteen when he moved back into the house, and I hated having him there. I’d enjoyed the peace without him.” She sighed. “Jeff was moody. Unpredictable. The only positive thing I remember about him is that he took me and a friend for ice cream once.” She glanced down at her hands and straightened the fingers she’d curled into fists. “I think it was because he had a crush on one of the girls working there.”
“Did you interact with him much?” Nico asked.
Julia shook her head slowly. “Only when I had to. I avoided him as much as I could.”
“What about your father?” Nico asked.
Julia shifted on the suddenly uncomfortable chair. “I do miss him,” she said after a long moment. “We’d been fighting a lot in the weeks before he died, and I regret that.”
“What were you fighting about?” Nico’s voice was sympathetic.
She stared at an album, remembered pain slicing through her. “In spite of my passion for food and cooking, my father insisted I go to business school like my brother had.” She froze as a memory she’d buried rose to the surface. “He told me I’d need to take over the family business when I got out of business school,” she said slowly, staring at the back door. “He said Jeff was as worthless as tits on a bull, but it didn’t matter, because he was involved with his own business. That left me to run the business my father had started.”
“He didn’t want you to go to culinary school?”
Julia was shaking her head before Nico finished speaking. “No. He was horrified at the idea. Told me I’d be throwing my life away, right before he said culinary school would be a waste of his money. He told me he wouldn’t pay for college unless I went to a business school.”
She swallowed at the remembered fight. “My mom had told me she’d pay for me to go to culinary school. She’d had some family money when she got married, and my father had used it to start his company. She told me she’d insist my father give me the money.”
“Did your father know that?”
Julia shrugged. “I have no idea. They never discussed it in front of me.”
“So there was tension in the house before the explosion?”
She nodded slowly, remembering the fights between her father and her brother. “I was upset with my father about culinary school. My father was pissed off at Jeff. He’d borrowed money from my father to start his business, and the loan was coming due. Jeff asked for an extension. He didn’t want to liquidate a chunk of the business to pay my father off, but my father said no. I heard them shouting at each other a few times.”
“Do you know why?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “I think it was just who my father was. He started his business from scratch, and he thought Jeff should do the same.” Her mouth twisted. “Dad conveniently forgot that a lot of his start-up money had come from my mother. He didn’t realize she’d told me that. Maybe she told Jeff, too.”