“Stop being so fucking weird and sappy and shit. If you love the woman, tell her so.” He slams the car door and rests his hands on the roof. “If you wanna be with her, tell her. If you want to claim her as your own, fucking tell her, man.”
“Ididtell her.”
I push away from the car and head toward the front doors of a large brick building with a sign splayed across the top declaring this to be the Chapel Hill Youth Center. Four basketball courts stretch out on the south side of the building, while gardens stretch to the north.
“I told her all that shit.” I lower my voice. “I told her I loved her, and she never said it back. Now things are complicated. So how about you mind your fucking business and keep your brain on solving a homicide instead of playing matchmaker?”
“Youforceme to focus on you when you refuse to speak to our chief M.E.,” he counters. “Personal shit aside, Arch, she’s an important part of our job, so how about you harden the fuck up and kidnap her until Stockholm sets in, like any other normal lovesick idiot?”
I stop ten feet before the doublewide front doors and turn to my partner. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“What?” His lips quiver with a playful smile. “That’s not how it’s done?”
“It’s illegal,” I grit out. “And not quite what I had in mind for wooing the woman I wanna spend my life with.”
“Shame.” Closing the space between us and the front door, Fletch brings his hand up and thumps on the wood—once, twice, three times. “The Stockholm thing makes for a better story when you’re ninety-seven and telling your great-great-grandspawn how it all went down.”
“You’re a damn mess.”
When the front door creaks open and a little, fat lady looks up at us, I take out my badge and set aside Minka and the vigilante and my relationship with a killer, and instead, slip on my professional front and do the job.
“Hello, I’m Detective Archer Malone. I was hoping to speak to whoever is in charge.”
“Mr. McGregor is in charge.” The woman speaks softly, shakily, and grips the door with fingers that’ve been worked hard over her last fifty or sixty years. “He should be here already, but he’s not.”
She doesn’t know.
“Who is in charge when Mr. McGregor isn’t here?” I take a step forward and discreetly place my foot between the door and the frame. “Miss…?”
“Elenora,” she answers quietly. “Emilie Elenora is my name.”
“What’s your role here at Chapel Hill, Ms. Elenora?”
“I’m…” She clears her throat and slowly opens the door a little further. “Uh… I guess I’m the mother of the pack.”
“The mother?” Fletch asks gently. “How so?”
“Well, I cook and clean,” she elaborates. “I spend time with the children when they want the company, I help them with their homework, I feed them and tidy up after them. And when it’s daytime and they’re in school, I take care of Mr. McGregor.”
Her eyes are aged and milky green. Scared, as she looks from me to Fletch. “What has happened, Detectives? Why are you here?”
“Can we come in?” Fletch places his hand on the door and carefully nudges it forward. “Can we come in and talk, Ms. Elenora?”
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” She drops her hand and takes a step back. Then another. “Whatever has happened,” she turns on her heels and starts away from the door, “it’s terrible. I can tell.”
I follow the woman who can’t stand more than five feet tall through a labyrinth of rooms filled to the brim with things to occupy teenagers and kids: games and televisions, pinball machines, table tennis, pool tables. A staircase leads up on my right, but Emilie continues past it, into an industrial-looking kitchen with long rows of bench seating, and a stove about six times the size of mine.
The kitchen sparkles with cleanliness. The floors are marked and worn, but they’re clean too.
The long island counter is littered with fresh vegetables, as though the woman was preparing to make a giant pot of soup before we interrupted her, and sitting above the fridge is a little box television.
Fortunately, it’s not switched on. If it was, the sweet, old caretaker might already know about her boss’ demise.
As though she’s done it a thousand times, Emilie moves behind the counter and heads straight to the sink to wash her hands. And as directed by a determined flick of her eyes, Fletch and I pull out stools on the opposite side and sit down to watch her work.
“Please tell me quickly.” Switching the tap off, she grabs a hand towel and dries off. “Something has happened to someone I care about, and I cannot stand not knowing. It’s best if…” She brings her pleading gaze to me. “Please tell me.”
Acknowledging her words with a nod, I bow my head, but keep my eyes on her expressions. “I’m sorry to inform you, Ms. Elenora, but Paul McGregor was found dead in his home overnight.”