Match Made in Court

With trepidation Linnea got out and went toward the house. Almost immediately, another uniformed officer stopped her, then passed her forward. She was walking up the driveway when the front door opened and her brother appeared, police officers on each side and behind him. With shock she realized that he was handcuffed.

Finn Sorensen was a big, fit, handsome man, his dark blond hair sun-streaked. He had such charisma other people tended to disappear in his presence.

Linnea most of all.

Still wearing dark dress pants and a white shirt, he’d shed the tie and suitcoat, probably when he got home earlier. He was in a towering rage, she saw, storming down the front steps as if he were dragging the two officers behind. In comparison, they were stolid and uninteresting, their faces very nearly expressionless.

Finn was halfway to the street when he saw Linnea. He stopped, his angry gaze making her feel about two feet tall.

“As you can see,” he said in an icy voice, “these idiots have jumped to conclusions. Tell Mom and Dad I’ll call Nunley as soon as I get to the jail. They don’t need to worry about it. I’ll be out before morning and filing a lawsuit against these cretins before they start chowing down their noon fries and burgers.” His tone was scathing, dismissive. The two men listened with no apparent reaction.

“Is—is Tess really dead?” Linnea asked.

“Yes. She fell.” His lips drew back in a snarl. “As I keep trying to explain.”

“I’m so sorry, Finn.”

“You’ll take care of Hanna,” he snapped, as if her obedience was a given, and walked past her with the two men each gripping one of his elbows.

Oh, Lord! Had Hanna seen her father arrested on top of the awful discovery of her mother’s body? Linnea rushed up the steps, stopped inside by a plainclothes officer. He wore a rumpled brown suit, his badge clipped to his belt. She could see that he had a gun in a black holster at his side, too.

“Ms. Sorensen?”

“Yes. I’m here for Hanna.”

“Your niece is upstairs in her bedroom. A female officer is with her.”

Hanna must be terrified.

She bit her lip. “It’s true? My sister-in-law is dead?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said, with surprising gentleness.

“She hit her head?”

“In the course of an argument with your brother. Did they fight often, Ms.—I’m afraid I didn’t catch your first name.”

“Linnea,” she told him. “And it’s true that Finn and Tess had arguments, but that’s all they were. They yelled, then made up. Finn never hit her or anything like that.” At least, she thought privately, that she knew about.

“I’m afraid they won’t be making up this time.”

She went very still. “Is she—her body, um, has she been taken away yet?”

He shook his head, his eyes uncomfortably watchful. “No, but if you go straight upstairs, you won’t see her.”

A shuddery breath escaped her. “All right.” She hesitated. “Do you know … Did Hanna see her?”

“We don’t think so. She says that she heard Mommy and Daddy yelling and she doesn’t like to listen.”

Linnea actually shuddered at the image that conjured. How often had Hanna huddled in her room trying not to listen to her parents screaming at each other? At the same time, Linnea was hugely relieved to know that Hanna hadn’t seen any of the final, violent scene.

“Does she know?”

“That her mother’s dead? Yes, insofar as a child her age can understand.”

“Okay.” She closed her eyes for a moment, girded herself, then started up the stairs.

At the top, she could see into the master suite at the end of the hall. She could make out a corner of the bed, smoothly made. It might be that neither Tess nor Finn had gotten this far; both were workaholics who rarely walked in the door before six or seven in the evening. They might have started arguing the minute they got home.

Hanna’s door was closed. Linnea rapped lightly, then opened it. A uniformed woman sat on the bed. The six-year-old was on the floor, back to the bed, her knees drawn up and her arms hugging her legs tightly.

“Pumpkin?”

Her niece leaped to her feet and flung herself at Linnea. “Aunt Linnie! They said Grandma was coming, but I wanted you!”

They hugged tightly, Hanna’s arms around Linnea’s waist. “I was so scared,” she mumbled.

“I know, honey. I know.”

It was several minutes before Hanna drew back, face wet. Linnea crouched to be at eye level.

Hanna sniffed. “Officer Bab—Bab—”

“Babayan,” the dark-haired young woman supplied.

“She says Mommy is dead.”

Grief clogged Linnea’s throat. She had to swallow twice before she could say, “That’s what they told me, too.”

“That means … she won’t ever come home again?”

Linnea hated having to be the one to make her beloved niece understand how final death was. “No. You remember when Confetti died.”

Hanna bit her lip and nodded. The family’s tortoise-shell cat had been twenty-one when she’d failed to wake up one morning.

“You saw her.”

Another nod.

“Whatever made her Confetti wasn’t there anymore. She’d left her body behind and …” Linnea hesitated only very briefly. She had doubts about what happened after death, but she wouldn’t share them with Hannah. “She’d gone to heaven. Well, your mom has gone now, too. It wouldn’t surprise me if Confetti was waiting there to get on her lap.”

“I want Mommy here!” Hanna wailed. “I don’t want her to be in heaven!”

Linnea pulled her into another embrace. “I know,” she whispered. “I know. Oh, honey, I love you.”

Eventually Hanna recovered enough to ask where her daddy was. Linnea explained that he was having to talk to the police about what happened. Hanna only nodded. Linnea had noticed before that she didn’t go to her father with the uncomplicated trust she ought to feel for a parent. Finn loved his daughter, Linnea didn’t doubt that, but he lacked the patience to be unfailingly gentle even for her sake.

“You’re going to spend the night with me,” she told Hanna. “Let’s pack your suitcase right now. Just in case, why don’t we take enough for you to stay for a couple of days?”