Chapter Fifteen

I made it out to the hallway and then to the stairs. I didn’t see or hear my mother, but that didn’t necessarily mean she wouldn’t dive-bomb me at any moment.

I was at the bottom of the steps, ready to go up to my apartment one more time, when she snuck up behind me. “Thanks for handling that nasty man, dear, first of all. But second, you’re in and out a lot. What’s going on? I heard about that dead girl over at Astercromb mansion. Wasn’t she your friend?”

I almost said yes, then really had to think about the answer. Was she my friend? I barely knew her, judging by what I had learned about her. And I had certainly not learned much about her that showed her in a good light. In fact, she had been trying to take my clients and had perhaps been trying to take over my queen of Squeegeedom crown.

“I knew her, but I wouldn’t have called us friends. I’ve found out all kinds of stuff that I didn’t know before that has changed my opinion of her.”

“Oh, Tallie, you’re not investigating this one, too, are you? Daddy is not going to be happy about that.”

Daddy didn’t have any say in what I did, and I hated when she called Bud Graver that. It was useless to try to get her to stop, though, because she had almost forty years of calling him that under her belt.

“Dad hasn’t said anything to me, and I’d rather he didn’t. I’m only helping Burton if I hear something. No vigilante here.”

“Well, okay. I won’t say anything to Daddy, then, but please be careful. I don’t want you hurt, and as much as Burton can irritate me, he’s a good guy and knows how to do his job.”

“I don’t doubt that, yet sometimes he doesn’t know how to get the info that I can.”

“So you are investigating.” She gripped my arm. “You know we talked about this. I’m just going to put it out there now that you are not going to go join the force or anything. I can’t handle having a cop to worry about over and over again. It’s bad enough that I have to worry about your brother out there with a weedwhacker, which could cut his leg off at any point.”

I was not successful at keeping my eyes from nearly rolling into the back of my head at that comment, but at least my mom didn’t see it. I would have been lectured for days. “I’m sure Dylan is very good at using his equipment. He’s been doing this for years and has had only a few nicks and cuts. He’s never come close to hurting himself like that.” Or at least I didn’t think so. There were those years when I had been married to Waldo and hadn’t been around, but I was pretty sure that even I would have heard if he’d done something that devastating to himself with a mower or a tree trimmer.

“Anyway, Mom, I have to go. I need to talk to Max.” And to find Burton, to share my theory.

“Oh, sweetie, I’m so happy he’s going to be here for a whole month. What a pleasure that will be. I’m going to set up a big family dinner this weekend, and we’ll celebrate him being here and show him what it would be like if he was here all the time.” She beamed at me, and I choked.

I knew for certain that if Max lived here, we would not be having dinner with my parents all the time. We did so monthly now, and this particular dinner she was planning would be okay as a special one, but I was not committing to more than that.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“And then we can figure out how to get him to stay. I’d really rather he lived up here, instead of three hours away. Anything could happen in that big city of his, and we’d never know. But if he was here, he’d be much safer, and happier, too, I bet.”

There was not going to be any way I could get around her on that one. Max had a job in DC, which I couldn’t ask him to leave, but if I told her that, then she might jump to the conclusion I’d already come to—that I’d have to move down there—and I just wasn’t ready for that argument yet.

“Okay. Heading upstairs now. I’ll see you later.”

“Oh, I have to go, anyway. I have special dog and cat treats on order for those precious pets of yours. I figure since they might be the only grandchildren I ever have, I should spoil them rotten when I can.”

This time I groaned, and she giggled as she passed me by.

I took the steps up to the first landing and was about to turn the corner when my phone rang in my pocket. Well, it vibrated, not rang, since that would have broken the rules of Graver’s Funeral Home. It was bad enough I had the phone in my pocket, even though I was supposed to leave it up in my apartment, according to my dad. I had been a popular person lately.

But I was glad I had it on me, because it was Letty. As I answered, I had a flash of hoping that things were going well and no other bodies in carpets had been found.

“What’s up?”

“Are you still working through the info I gave you earlier?” she asked, with something in her voice that I couldn’t quite identify.

“Um, yes, but only as a concerned citizen.”

“Right. Anyway, my nephew called me again after we hung up, and this time he was in tears, and I thought there was info I should give you.”

“Why give it to me? Why not call Burton?”

“First, because I trust you to look into this without pulling the poor guy in. Caleb is distraught and can’t think straight right now.”

Because he was the one who’d actually killed her, and the guilt was eating him alive, despite his supposedly ironclad alibi? Maybe my theory was wrong. I didn’t have proof, and if her nephew’s alibi wasn’t as solid as he’d led everyone to believe, then I’d have to go down a whole new avenue. I, of course, didn’t want to ask Letty about the alibi. Instead, I waited for what she’d say next.

“Second, because I trust you to do the right thing, and some of this has been sitting on me for some time. I just can’t keep it to myself anymore.”

Okay, now I was confused. Did this have to do with the nephew or the murder or something else? I had a momentary panic that she was going to leave me with a crew I didn’t know, and was going to tell me she was walking to do something else, like wash cars or be a receptionist or go back to school to be a lawyer. I just couldn’t take it. I gulped. “Just spill. I can’t take the uncertainty or the angst I’m feeling in my head right now.”

Letty snorted. The brat. “It’s nothing like what you’re probably fretting about. Just hear me out, and then we’ll go from there.”

That didn’t sound good, so I sat on the second to bottom stair and gripped the carpet just in case.

“For one thing, Caleb told me that he and Audra were not doing well. He was actually going to the mansion on the day Audra’s body was found to find out why she was going around town with a ring on her finger. He didn’t propose.”

“No proposal? But she was so quick to flash that beauty around.”

“And he has no idea where she got it. She either bought it for herself or was engaged to someone else. But it definitely wasn’t him. He’d just found out that she had been seeing someone else, or had been seen around town with someone else, but he couldn’t figure out who it was. For such a small town, it’s surprising what people can keep under wraps if they want to.”

“No doubt about that. So Caleb did not propose, and the rosy stories she told about her boyfriend were either not true or were about a different boyfriend?”

“Did she ever say it was actually Caleb?”

I tried to think back, and I realized that all Audra had ever said was that her boyfriend had given her the ring. I had taken that to mean Caleb, since that was who I thought she was dating. Could it have been someone else? “Not that I can recall,” I answered after a few seconds.

“Exactly. He was going to confront her about the rumors, because she wasn’t returning any of his calls. He knew where she was supposed to be, because she had texted him that she got the job at the mansion, just like she had told him she would.”

“So she thought all along she was getting the job, even though it’s a smaller property than she was used to and we were both in the game? I told everyone that the best person would win and that this was fine with me.”

“That is not what she was telling everyone. Apparently, she was super confident that the job would be hers. Several people have said that she very blatantly and vocally wondered why they had even let you compete for the job, because they had known they were going to give it to her from the beginning.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I just said, “Huh.”

“Which then leads to the next part . . .” Letty allowed that to hang there for a moment, one in which I gripped the staircase tighter. Was she going to leave me?

“I’ve been hearing from clients for the past few weeks that she was approaching them about taking over their cleaning.” She blew out a breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I wasn’t sure what to do, and since no client left us, I figured it would be okay to just keep this to myself, instead of burdening you with something that wasn’t a real issue.”

That was a lot of words with no breath, but I understood, because I’d held mine the whole time she was talking. Now I let out my breath. “So you’re not leaving me?”

“What? No! Why would you ever think that? You’re the best boss I’ve ever had, and you totally don’t micromanage. Plus, you’re always so supportive. I would never leave you as long as you want me around.”

“Phew! I was worried there for a moment that you were going to decide to go out on your own.” I released my grip on the stairs and stood up. I could go to my apartment now that I knew I wasn’t going to be hit by the two-by-four of being left behind.

“You’re so silly, Tallie. I don’t know what I’d do without you, and I can’t tell you how thankful I am that you saved me from Darla. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise?”

“Pinkie swear. Now, what do you think about the Audra thing? I’m sorry for not telling you sooner.”

“Meh. Don’t even worry about it. I actually heard the same thing from Mama Shirley earlier, and I got over the anger pretty quickly. Audra might have been trying to get in the door, but she wasn’t having any luck.”

“You know, your clients actually like you a lot and were nervous about telling you about Audra. They told me because they didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

That statement caused me to sit back down on the stairs. Fortunately, it wasn’t far to go, since that had rocked my world. “Really? I thought it was all just a game to them to see me brought low.”

“Maybe at first, but in the end they think you do a great job, and really like having you there. Most often I hear that they can trust you and don’t have to worry about anyone stealing the silver or leaving the house half done, because they have something else they’d rather be doing than keeping a close eye on their possessions.”

“Huh.” I wasn’t particularly proud of the fact that I seemed to have lost my ability to say actual words, but I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the fact that all the people who had hired me to come clean their houses respected me and cared enough about me not to want to hurt my feelings. I was sure there were a few who didn’t feel that way, but those didn’t count. The ones who stuck around and worried about hurting me were the ones I was going to concentrate on. So strange, but in a really nice way.

“I feel bad now. You’re at a loss for words,” she said.

“Oh gosh, no. Please don’t worry about it. I’m just stunned. I really thought I was just being tolerated as the swan-dive survivor that they wanted to watch flounder in their own homes. Since they have the cash, I just thought they were willing to pay money to see it happen. I never really considered that they liked me.”

“You need to get over that. Now. You’re valued by a lot of people. More than you know. Max, me, Gina, Mama Shirley, your uncle, your dad, your brothers, your mom. Even Burton values you, though he’ll probably never say it.”

And yet he had. And that was a big list of people.

But Letty wasn’t done. “And far more people than that, but I don’t have time to list all of them. Except you are also valued by those who have died and no longer have a voice to tell us who did it or how. I get that you don’t want to be a vigilante or interfere with Burton, but I also think you have a knack for finding things out and piecing them together in a way no one else does.”

“My head is going to expand to the point that I can’t get out the door,” I said, laughing.

“Well, let’s not go too far, but I think it’s time you looked at what all you have going for you, instead of always looking for that something else you could be doing.”

Okay, a little bit of a smackdown, but that was allowed and wouldn’t burst my bubble. “So what am I looking at as far as Caleb? He said that he didn’t put a ring on it, but he doesn’t know who did? Does he at least have any ideas?”

“I don’t know. Oh . . .” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Mrs. Petrovski just walked in, and she does not look happy. You might want to come down here and use your valued talent to talk us out of a bad situation. Like now. Bye.”

I had wanted to find Burton, but it wasn’t a choice at this point. Letty needed saving, and she was more important. Burton would still be there when I had time. And if I could approach him with real proof, I’d much prefer that over a theory.

Time to be the boss.