Close Neighbors. Dawn Stewardson

Anne resisted the temptation to smile. Whatever was troubling Julie, she obviously believed it was serious.

      “So, if I tell you about it, will you figure out what she should do?”

      “I’ll certainly try.”

      “Promise?”

      “Promise.”

      The girl gave her a wan smile, then said, “What happened is—”

      “Julie?” a man called.

      “That’s my dad!” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t tell him what I was saying, okay?”

      “Okay,” Anne said, glancing over at Julie’s father.

      He was tall, his head and shoulders visible above the fence, and she quickly appraised what she could see of him.

      In his mid-thirties, he wasn’t handsome in a conventional way. His nose was a bit too large, his dark hair longish and decidedly unruly, his eyebrows on the thick side. Still, he was the kind of man who seemed comfortable in his own skin, and there was something more than a little attractive about him.

      “Hi,” he said, reaching the fence. “I’m Chase Nicholson.”

      “Anne Barrett,” she told him—thinking he seemed distracted. But he’d probably been wondering where his daughter was.

      “Welcome to the neighborhood.” He smiled, and when he did she had a feeling she was going to like him.

      “It looks as if you were trying to get some work done,” he added, glancing first at her laptop, then at Julie.

      “Oh, I hadn’t really gotten started, so a little company was fine.”

      “Good. But I need her to help me with something.”

      “Right now?” Julie asked.

      “Uh-huh. We’ve got a deadline looming, remember?”

      “My dad designs stuff, and I sometimes help,” she explained.

      Anne glanced at Chase again. “What kind of stuff?”

      “Office buildings, mostly. I’m an industrial architect.”

      “And he has to make models of the buildings,” Julie said. “That’s what I help with, ’cuz he’s got big fingers and for parts of them you need little fingers.”

      She pushed her chair away from the table, then whispered, “Can I come over again? After I finish helping my dad?”

      “Sure you can,” Anne whispered back. She could hardly say no, although she suspected it would have been the wiser answer.

      Things didn’t always occur to her right off the bat, which was one reason she hadn’t been a first-rate P.I. And it hadn’t struck her, until after she’d promised to try to help, that the adults in Julie’s life might not like her turning to a stranger for advice.

      Chase opened the gate, and while he waited for Julie to make her way across the yard he did his best to keep his gaze from wandering back to Anne Barrett.

      A month or so ago, when Rachel had learned who’d bought the Kitchner house—and that she’d be moving in alone—she’d shown him Anne’s photo on the back of one of Julie’s books. To say it didn’t do her justice was an understatement.

      Her dark hair, longer and shaggier than in the picture, framed a face with high cheekbones, big brown eyes, a cute little nose and the sort of lush lips some women acquired through collagen injections.

      She didn’t seem the sort who’d do that, though. She was more the casual, natural type. The type he liked.

      He mentally shook his head, surprised that thought had even crossed his mind. In the past twenty-four hours, he’d discovered that when you had a sister at risk of being arrested for murder, and an extortionist breathing down your neck, you didn’t think about much else.

      “WE’LL HAVE TO BE QUIET,” Chase told Julie as they started up the backstairs. “Rachel’s lying down.”

      “Has she got one of her migraines?”

      “The beginnings of one. She didn’t sleep well last night.”

      “’Cuz she was too worried, right?”

      He nodded. His daughter was no dummy, and now that she’d realized Rachel might be in serious trouble there was little point in trying to convince her otherwise.

      They headed into his office, where the half-put-together model sat waiting for them. Initially, he’d only begun asking for Julie’s help as a way of spending more time with her, but her little fingers actually did make the jobs easier. And she generally concentrated so hard that she didn’t talk much, which was exactly what he needed today.

      As long as he had silence, working with his hands helped him think—and he sure had to do some more thinking about that phone call.

      When he’d hung up, he’d simply intended to tell Rachel about it, then call those detectives. But he hadn’t gone beyond step one, because she’d had a fit at the idea of telling the police. And while she’d made a convincing case against it, he wasn’t sure they’d come to the right decision.

      Of course, if he called now, the cops would figure it was strange that he’d waited until today to phone them. But if he didn’t do that, what the hell should he do?

      “Aren’t we gonna get started?” Julie asked.

      “Uh-huh, I was just thinking about which section we’d work on first.” He reached for a tube of glue.

      “Dad?” she said as he opened it.

      “What?”

      “Do the police really think Rachel killed Graham? Like all those reporters are saying?”

      He slowly screwed the cap back onto the tube, searching for the right words.

      “First off,” he finally said, “that isn’t exactly what the reporters are saying. They’re only suggesting it’s what the police might be thinking. And as I told you yesterday, they speculate about a lot of things when they shouldn’t.”

      “But if the police don’t think it, then how come those detectives were here for so long yesterday?”

      “Because they had to go over every detail of what happened the other night. Maybe something Graham said or something Rachel noticed will help them with the case.”

      “But they were here forever.”

      “Well, I think they’re probably even more thorough than usual when someone on the police force has been killed.”

      Julie nodded slowly. That was something else scary. Graham knew all about bad people ’cuz he’d been a police detective. So if he could get killed, then anybody could.

      She looked at her dad again, thinking he hadn’t exactly answered her question. “But they might be thinking Rachel killed him?”

      “Darling…they didn’t tell her that she was under suspicion. And they didn’t say so when they talked to me, either.”

      “But—”

      “Baby, everything’s going to be just fine. Because she had nothing to do with it.”

      “I know, but…” Julie paused, still not sure whether to tell Daddy she’d heard him on the phone. Or what she’d been talking to Anne Barrett about.

      When she’d seen Anne sitting in her yard, she’d right away thought that going over and asking her for advice was a great idea. That Anne would know how they could make the police see Rachel hadn’t had anything to do with Graham getting killed.

      But now she was thinking how Daddy always said not to talk about family stuff outside the house. So maybe she shouldn’t say she was going next door again