Kicking feet made a statement of sorts. “Life can suck,” Evie replied, as if Loretta had spoken. “I never got to know my dad. Mavis drove him off before I was born.”
“Where is your mom now?” Loretta asked.
“Wherever her sisters aren’t. Probably at the shop. Saturday is when all her clients come in. But she knows what’s happening and is plotting. So we probably ought to put a net over her head before she floats away.” Evie chewed on her biscuit. She ought to call her mother, but she wasn’t in the mood just yet.
Loretta took this statement without question. Smart kid, given the level of shouting in the house behind them. “Yelling isn’t logical.”
“They know that. But they’re like teapots. They have to release the steam before they can cool off. This land thing caught them by surprise, so they don’t know who to blame. Jax will straighten them out, eventually.” Evie hoped that wasn’t a lie. She was placing all her faith in that burgeoning aura of responsibility she’d detected buried under anger.
“After he finds my parents,” Loretta concluded, rightly.
“Yeah, he’s pretty steamed about that.” She hadtoldhim the Posts were in the pond, but she supposed a lawyer’s rational mindset needed evidence before he could ask the county to drain a big mud puddle. Of course, Jax suspected her and her family of all the wrong things, but that couldn’t be helped. Logical minds did not accept the paranormal easily.
“I want to stay here.” Loretta reaffirmed her goal.
“You will. If you haven’t noticed, we’re a large family. We know a lot of people. We may not be rich like your parents, or most of us aren’t, anyway. But we have lots of friends who know lots of people. It all works out eventually. Once tempers stop flying, anyway.”
“Then they need to stop fighting and start thinking.” Loretta set her plate on the swing, hopped down, and marched back into the kitchen.
“Oh, goddesses above and beyond, help me.” Carrying her plate, Evie followed the Indigo child of Peace just to see what happened. Honey trotted in after them.
Not hesitating, Loretta opened the pocket door and walked straight into the eye of the hurricane. Cards dropped. Birds perched. Honey flopped down by the front door and the Siamese cat joined her. All eyes focused on Loretta.
“Somebody killed my parents,” she announced into the silence. “Aunt Val said material things aren’t important, that we are the earth and sky and water. Doesn’t that mean we can do anything? I want to know why my parents died.”
Mavis chose that moment to walk in the front door. Evie expected her to be carrying her crystal ball. Instead, her mother—the one who ignored tax notices and thought bookkeeping involved libraries—carried a businesslike file folder. Ignoring the silence that greeted her, she dropped the folder on the table where the tarot had been before it went flying. “Goodness, I’m hungry. Do I smell fried chicken?”
She tottered off on her heeled sandals.
Gracie, the schoolteacher, was the one who leaned over to pick up the file. Out of all of them, she was the one who had learned to deal with bureaucracy.
Loretta retreated into the shadows, sitting down beside the cat and dog, presumably considering her task to be done.
“Bank transaction numbers.” Gracie flipped pages. “Copies ofpaidtax bills! Bring the notices here. Let me compare the deed numbers.”
So, that’s why Mavis had gone to visit Bill at the bank. It would make sense that the trust bank account would be local. Sometimes, her mother really could be pragmatic. Although she may have promised Bill free palm reading for life.
Evie sat down beside Loretta and allowed Psy to climb into her lap while her family produced tax notices. She wondered if Val had received a notice on this house.
“The numbers aren’t the same,” Gracie announced in disappointment. “What property has the trust been paying taxes on then?”
Interesting notion that the family owned any property besides the Hill. Evie was guessing that wouldn’t be Jax’s view. More likely, one property, different bills.
“I think,” she addressed the room, “that the past due notices are for theoriginalproperty, before it was put into the trust.” And because she thought in paranormal terms and not practical, she added, “Someone has rendered the trust invisible.”
Eighteen
Exhausted after spendinghalf the night with Sheriff Troy and the state cops explaining why they needed to cordon off the pond on such flimsy evidence, Jax slept late the next morning. A cat leaping on his back jarred him awake enough to realize daylight poured through the striped cotton curtains.
A dog’s cold nose rubbed his hand, and groggily, he opened his eyes. A ragged magenta teddy bear sat on the vanity chair, turned to face the bed, with a postcard attached.
The women must have unloaded Loretta’s boxes from the sedan. Evidently, the kid was making a statement with this toy—while leaving his door open. Good thing he didn’t sleep naked.
Swinging his legs from the bed, he leaned over and detached the note:I want to stay here.
Well, that was clear enough.
Although, if her parents were killed for that land, he couldn’t think Loretta safe in Afterthought.