Detective On The Hunt

“South Carolina.”

“And they say Southern women are genteel. Apparently, they never met you.” Georgie snorted before relenting. “You’re right. I never did aspire to be good, just like you never cared about being genteel. And you can call me Miss Georgie. I like the la-di-da sound of that. So what do you want to know about Maura Evans?”

Quint blinked. He’d seen Georgie chew up grown people and spit ’em out. If she’d been a cat, she would have been the sort who tormented the mouse mercilessly before killing it. JJ should have been lucky to walk out of here with her skin intact.

Instead, they both looked smugly satisfied. Like they’d come to some kind of agreement and would now make nice of their own accord. He’d never seen Georgie make nice with anyone outside her family or his.

JJ set her clasped hands on her lap. “Have you met Maura?”

“Of course. I’m not going to let someone move into my own house without getting a good look at her. My granddaughter showed her the house.” Georgie’s faded gaze darted to Quint. “Twenty-three and hasn’t been to jail once.”

“Yet,” he tacked on, making her grin. Truth was, none of her family had been to jail in his lifetime. They’d gotten tamed before he was even born. But they’d still nursed that family animosity toward the law.

“She’s going to be a schoolteacher. Graduates from OSU next December.” Georgie rummaged in the drawer beside her chair and drew out an electronic cigarette. Her smoking had been the nastiest habit under the sun, his mother used to declare, even though Georgie had never smoked in anyone’s house, not even her own. At her age, he figured, she was entitled to a few vices. Smoking, a glass of whiskey before bed and terrorizing the other old folks in the home were all she could manage.

“When Maura decided she wanted the house, I had her come over here to sign the papers. We had lunch, just me and her and that obnoxious little friend of hers. Mel. I hope her real name was something like Mellissandriennalou. That twit walked through the door—” she gestured with her e-cig toward her own door “—took a sniff and said old people smell like death. Like she even knows what death smells like. Rude kid. I should have pinched her ear.”

JJ grinned. “You are like Grandmother Raynelle. I was convinced my right ear was going to be bigger than the left because of all the times she tweaked it.”

“Sounds like you needed it.”

Quint couldn’t quite see JJ as a disrespectful kid. Disobedient, sure. She struck him as someone who acted first and apologized later—sweetly, innocently and even faintly sincerely—if it was necessary. Even in her earlier exchange with Georgie, he suspected she’d already known how the old woman was going to react, so there’d been no real disrespect intended.

“Do you remember Mel’s last name?”

“Wasn’t even polite enough to offer it.”

“What did you think of their relationship?”

With the push of a button, Georgie reclined the chair, stretched out her legs and crossed her ankles, propping hot-pink running shoes on the footrest. “I thought they were family at first. Mel’s hair and eyes were brown, and Maura was a blue-eyed blonde, but other than that, they could have been sisters.

“But you could tell Maura had always had money and Mel never had. Maura was all elegant and confident, and Mel… There was a sort of hunger about her. Not physical, you know, but more as if life had been tough and she’d never known anything better. She didn’t look like money, you know? And telling me I smell. Twit.”

The image that formed in Quint’s mind didn’t create a warm-and-fuzzy feeling. Rude, disrespectful, didn’t know how to behave and eager to trade her tough life for something better. And that was apparently the only friend Maura had had. And then Mel had left her.

As unsympathetic as he intended to be, that thought told him he wasn’t succeeding.

Because that was just damn sad.

JJ tipped her head back and gazed at the ceiling. The mysterious Mel sounded like Maura’s friends back home, except that the Carolina friends mostly came from money, like her. JJ was familiar with some of them because of their run-ins with police that never resulted in consequences, some because of their parents’ friendships with her parents. Most of them she could recognize, maybe even identify by name, but that was all. She couldn’t recall a brown-haired, brown-eyed hard-luck kid who’d infiltrated the Evanston crowd and stuck with it.

The two women could have met in college or on the road. It didn’t seem possible Mel had toured a winter’s full of ice palace hotels in Norway or cruised the Mediterranean, but Maura had spent plenty of time in American cities, as well. They could have run into each other in any number of ways, hit it off and decided to roam together with Maura picking up the tab. She was very generous, Morwenna had said.

Because her companions had let her thoughts wander undisturbed—Quint probably preferred her silence, but as Miss Georgie had said, time was a-wasting—she filled the silence with an absentminded comment. “Your glass is beautiful.”

“It is. That swirly red-and-green one there—that was a Christmas gift from Maura. She brought it when she delivered the December rent. We had lunch together every month when she paid the rent, but after that, I never saw her again. The rent started coming in the mail.”

JJ studied the lamp with new interest. Maura had noticed the collection and taken the time to find a beautiful icicle-shaped addition. For a woman she didn’t really know and expected nothing from in return. That was the kind of thoughtfulness one expected of an Evans a few generations ago, not from the current one. If she made the right friends, fell in love with the right person, would Maura discover something of substance inside herself?

Possibly. But it didn’t seem likely that maybe-Melanie, maybe-Mellissandriennalou was the kind of friend who could anchor Maura in the real world. Instead, she appeared to have been along for the ride, enjoying the luxury until she’d gotten bored and moved on.

Leaving Maura one more loss to cope with.

Her muscles protesting too much sitting, JJ got to her feet. The rocker squeaked as Quint followed suit. “One last question, Miss Georgie. Did Maura say why she’d decided to stay in Cedar Creek?”

A rather sad look claimed Miss Georgie’s features. “She said it reminded her of home. You know, I never saw a person more lost than her.”

JJ felt a little sad, too, as she approached Miss Georgie and offered her hand. The old woman’s skin was dry and cool, marked with what Grandmother Raynelle had called wisdom spots, and her fingernails were painted a sparkly midnight blue.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Georgie.”

“For a copper, you’re not too bad.” The effect of Miss Georgie’s scowl was dampened by her sly wink.

“You’re not half as bad as you think you are.”

Miss Georgie chuckled. “You can come back sometime. We’ll see if I can change your mind about that.”

“I’d love to see you try.” JJ gave the thin hand a gentle squeeze, then turned toward the door.

She was halfway there when Miss Georgie spoke again. “Come over here, Quint.”

There was no doubt it was a command, and no doubt that he would obey it, JJ thought, hiding a grin, because that was the kind of person he was. She waited at the door while he did, indeed, obey and Miss Georgie took both of his hands in hers.

“How are you? Really?” Her voice was a murmur, but JJ shared one thing with the old woman: excellent hearing.

He looked as if he wanted to pull away, rush out the door and let the cold air drive away the flush to his cheeks. He didn’t, though. Instead, he muttered, “I’m okay. Really.”

Okay about what? It clearly wasn’t the throwaway question everybody used a dozen times a day. Something had happened in his recent past that worried the crusty old woman—something he didn’t want to discuss.

JJ turned her back, deliberately tuning out their conversation. She didn’t feel guilty for being curious. She wouldn’t be a police officer if she wasn’t curious about things, and she wouldn’t be a woman if she wasn’t curious about him. But she didn’t stoop to eavesdropping, not unless it involved a case.

After a moment, his footsteps sounded behind her. She opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. He closed the door and stopped beside her, looking to the right, the way they’d come, then to the left, where a red exit sign marked the stairwell. He looked like a man who very much wanted to take the stairs.

“Who’s in 318?”

His scowl wasn’t as fierce as Miss Georgie’s, but it was more sincere. “You noticed that.”

“I’m a copper.” The word made her grin. She might never call herself a cop again. “I get paid to notice things.” Turning 180 degrees, she started toward the stairway exit.

She was pretty sure that was relief radiating off him as he fell into step beside her. No answer was forthcoming, though, so she prompted him. “Family?”

The closing of the stairwell door was muffled by the sound of their boots, hers sharper, his more solid, descending the steps. He didn’t answer until they reached the second-floor landing. “Practically.”

It wasn’t much of an answer, but that was okay. She didn’t have the standing to insist on more. Though they’d spent half the morning together, they were still strangers. His life was his, and he got to choose what he wanted to share.

Besides, it wasn’t his life she wanted him to share.

She had a healthy regard for sex. She was thirty-seven and unencumbered by relationships. She’d come close to marrying once, a decade ago. Ryan had been a fellow officer who moved to Evanston after two years with the Columbia Police Department. He’d been sweet and smart and funny and everything she wanted in a guy…until she made detective before him.