A Southern Promise. Jennifer Lohmann

back for several seconds before going to speak with Mrs. Somerset’s niece. Informing the woman about her aunt’s death, dealing with her justified anger at how Henson had treated her and providing an open ear and a handkerchief—all those things would build trust between them, which Howie would need in order to learn more about Mrs. Somerset’s life.

      Yet he wanted to stay with Mrs. Somerset. The very thing she had been most paranoid about had happened to her, and Howie thought that the detective directing the investigation of her mortal remains should be the one person on the police force who hadn’t used the word crazy as an insult toward her. Mrs. Somerset had died frightened and alone. The part of Howie that remembered what it was like to care in a deep, painful way about the last few minutes of a victim’s life roared back to life. It wasn’t dead, like he had thought—hoped—it had been. Not dead at all, but dormant, and still useless after all these years.

      Howie stared at Mrs. Somerset’s shredded body for several more infinite seconds before turning back to the front of the house and walking away to do his job.

       CHAPTER TWO

      SITTING IN THE back of a police car, Julianne Dawson wasn’t taking the time to rank all the terrible moments in her life. She didn’t need to. This afternoon was surely near the top. The phone call from her mother telling her that her father had died was in position one, tied with the awful morning she’d come home to find her husband—now ex—having sex on their couch. The sudden dissolution of her marriage probably occupied the number two spot, with “becoming a cliché” solidly ensconced in spot three. A year of therapy hadn’t managed to extinguish that last feeling of failure, even if it had dimmed it to embers.

      Now she wondered who had died. All of the cop cars blocking off Washington could only mean something serious, even though when she’d been ordered to a stop, the local NPR station hadn’t been reporting anything about anything.

      As Julianne sat in the middle of the bench seat in the back of a police car—her shoulders hunched far past the position where her mother would have come up behind her and yanked her back tall and straight—she knew that Aunt Binnie would be looking for the police scanner Julianne had hidden in the attic the last time she’d visited. During that visit, Aunt Binnie had been the epitome of genteel Southern lady until Julianne had mentioned meeting her brother for lunch. The Southern lady had promptly disappeared and an anxious, delusional old woman had burst forth, fear radiating from her eyes.

      Over dinner the next night, Julianne had talked with her mother about finding Aunt Binnie a place in a retirement home, one with progressive facilities for dementia and good mental health care. They’d argued, not about the need for Binnie to have more structured care, but over whether or not to get Binnie out and moved by Thanksgiving. Her brother, Don, had said they should try for earlier.

      Her mother had argued that it would be their Christmas gift to themselves. A similar feeling of anticipated relief had expanded through Julianne’s chest like a blowfish and just as poisonous—though the poison was most dangerous to Binnie. Yet sadness and guilt had made her argue against the idea.

       Not over the holidays, Mom. That’s cruel.

      As if there was ever a good time to manipulate a crazy old woman out of the house that she’d lived in with her husband and into a retirement home. There was death in such places, no matter that they called it a retirement home and not a nursing home. Or, even worse, an old folks’ home.

      Now, with nothing to occupy her mind but her anxiety and the hot summer sun heating up the car, Julianne argued with herself. Not about how she had turned into a limp piece of dough as the cop had directed her to get into the back of the patrol car, which she’d done of her own accord. No, that foolish decision had been made and she was waiting out the consequences. But Aunt Binnie’s future was yet to be decided. And maybe, just maybe, Binnie was holding herself together enough for Julianne to get the retirement home move pushed back to January. Maybe even mid-February.

      Not that it would feel less wrong, but Christmas lights wouldn’t be hanging from the guilt, flashing to the rhythm of “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

      Julianne leaned against the cushions of the seat, and then sat forward again when the pressure torqued her shoulders. Police lights flashed all around her and, if she turned her head to the side, she could see a cop with a dog plodding through one of Binnie’s neighbor’s backyards.

      Aunt Binnie must be dying at all this activity. The more the lights flashed and the longer the cops trampled around looking for clues, the more gusto Aunt Binnie would put into rummaging through open closets and strewing the contents of boxes around the guest bedroom, looking for that damned police radio. Her great-aunt’s monsters were ax murderers striking when you least expected it. Men with pistols who robbed convenience stores. Teenagers with automatic weapons who shot their classmates.

      Who was Julianne kidding? Binnie wasn’t going to be handling all this police activity well. Julianne banged on the window with the side of her fist. The back of the cop twitched, but the man didn’t turn around and offer to let her out. She banged harder, trying different patterns, seeing if there was a frequency that would register with the cop’s cold-blooded heart. She needed another chance to explain about mental illness and grief and the crazy old relative that every good Southern family had. Turn on her Southern charm, throw her family name around, anything to get past the line of cops and to Binnie’s side. God, she’d buy the police league youth basketball team new uniforms for a phone and a chance to call Binnie again.

      If that didn’t work, she’d threaten to sue. Maybe actually sue, because she didn’t know why she was locked up in the back of a patrol car in the first place. There had to be a law against keeping her here. She wasn’t under arrest.

      She banged harder this time, imagining her hand bursting through the glass until it struck the cop in the back and he had to give her his attention. Had to tell her something about Binnie, what was happening and why she was locked up in this car.

      Even with the AC on, the heat from the sun had piled on itself, and the car grew warmer and warmer until it turned into a low-rent torture chamber. And if the heat wasn’t enough to make her blood boil, thinking about her situation and the lack of information she was getting sure did. She had thousands of questions, and not a single one had been answered.

      The police milling about the street had also had questions. Not lots of them, and the fool leaning against the window with his back pressed against the glass hadn’t had any intelligent ones but, grammatically, they’d been questions. What are you doing here? Why do you need to go to that house?

      If one of them had let her see her aunt, Julianne would have answered any question they posed to her, which she had said to them. In response, the dim-eyed fool standing guard had actually asked, “You the kinda person who doesn’t respect authority?”

      Her reply, a “Let me see my aunt” screamed at the “authority” with her hands outstretched, had received a politely phrased response: “Ma’am, have a seat in the car and I’ll get the detective in charge of the investigation. He’s the only person who can give permission to enter the crime scene.” The offered opportunity had folded Julianne’s anger in half, and she’d folded herself into the back of the car in response. It felt as if that had been hours ago.

      She would definitely be calling the mayor about this.

      Before Julianne could finish composing the threat in her head, Officer Manipulative Blockhead moved, and the car door popped open. A man in a boring white golf shirt and an even more boring pair of khakis slid into the seat next to her. But the man made up for his sartorial shortcomings by having soft waves in his hair and round glasses that reminded Julianne of an absentminded professor. Aunt Binnie would probably love to pinch his cheeks and call him honey. She’d always lavished attention on men—a habit Julianne’s mama said had only gotten worse since her husband died.

      Who she was registered on his face in a flash of annoyance, followed by resignation. The gold wire frames of his glasses didn’t hide either expression.