Look For Me (Detective D.D. Warren #9)(33)

Nancy shook her head.

“What about her fellow nurses, doctors?” Phil pressed.

“Everyone liked Juanita. She’s solid under pressure, not one to complain or whine. And she has a wicked sense of humor. Night shift, you need these things.”

“She seeing anyone?” D.D. asked.

“You mean hospital staff? No. She was committed to Charlie. They were good together.”

“Any problems on the home front? Money troubles, relationship woes?”

“Money’s always tight.” Nancy shrugged. “Welcome to health care, where we can’t afford to help patients or pay the staff. Which is why Juanita worked nights instead of staying home with her kids. But I know things were tighter before she moved in with Charlie. She considered him a real godsend. Stable, hardworking guy, good with children, content not to party or drink. In the past year, she considered life to be looking up.”

“He didn’t drink?” D.D. asked, because Hector had implied that Charlie had had his own partying ways.

“No.” Nancy uttered the word firmly. “Juanita would never have stayed with him if he did. She’ll tell you, sobriety still isn’t easy for her. But she loves her kids. For her kids . . .”

“She works a crazy schedule and stays clear of the booze.”

“Exactly.”

“And she and Charlie were happy?”

“Wednesday night, she had nothing bad to say. You work graveyard, Detectives?”

“Back in my younger days,” Phil assured her. “Now it’s more of a twenty-four/seven gig.”

“Then you know what it’s like. There’s a bond that comes with being the only people alive when the rest of the world is sleeping. Juanita’s been working graveyard for the past three years. A lot of things come out during that amount of time.”

“You ever meet Charlie?” D.D. asked.

“Sure. If he was up and out to job sites early, he’d swing by with breakfast for Juanita. He seemed like a good guy. God knows I wouldn’t mind a handsome contractor dropping off a breakfast burrito for me at six A.M.”

“What about the kids?” Phil changed gears. “Roxanna’s sixteen, right? Not easy to have a teenage daughter.”

“Roxy? Hell, I’d adopt her. Organized, responsible. That girl is sixteen going on sixty, and Juanita knew it. Of all the things . . . I think Juanita regretted the toll her drinking took on Roxy most of all. After Hector left, during the dark days, as Juanita called them, Roxy took over care of her younger siblings. She fed them, did the laundry, got them off to school. If anything, Juanita was trying to figure out how to get Roxy to relax a little. Especially with Charlie around, Roxy could go back to the business of being a kid. But I don’t know if you can rewind the clock like that.”

“What about other family? His, hers?”

“As for Charlie, I don’t know. Juanita has a sister, Nina, with four kids. But they live in Philadelphia. When Juanita hit bottom and the state took her kids away, they were sent to foster homes because Juanita’s family was ruled as living too far away. Plus, I can imagine, having four kids of her own, Nina wasn’t crazy about taking in three more.”

“So, locally speaking . . .”

“I only hear about her, Charlie, and the kids. Oh, and Rosie and Blaze, of course.”

“Is Roxanna intense?” Phil interjected. “Maybe puts a lot of pressure on herself? We’ve heard she hasn’t been sleeping.”

Nancy paused, seemed to consider the question. She took another sip of coffee.

“Juanita’s been asking some questions,” she said at last.

“Some questions?” Phil asked, exchanging a look with D.D.

“It started with Lola, the younger daughter. She’s always been a handful—rebellious, unfocused, impulsive. Not to mention hanging out with the wrong crowd. But in September there was an incident. She was in trouble with a male teacher for not turning in her homework. He was lecturing her on how bad her grade would be, this was no way to start off the school year, et cetera. Apparently, Lola responded with some suggestions for how she could improve her grade. Some very explicit suggestions . . .” Nancy looked at them. “There were other kids in the classroom at the time, all of them, who then watched Lola reach down and . . . touch the teacher in places she shouldn’t have been touching.”

D.D. blinked her eyes. Beside her, Phil had gone wide-eyed, but he spoke first. “This September? Lola’s thirteen? We’re talking eighth grade?”

Nancy sighed heavily. “The principal told Juanita this wasn’t the first time Lola had come off as inappropriate—last year there had been some red flags, but nothing this serious. The principal was concerned that the behavior had started about the time Juanita had moved in with Charlie.”

“The principal thought Lola was being abused by Charlie,” D.D. stated.

“Juanita swore it wasn’t Charlie. In her opinion, Lola’s behavior had started before Charlie was ever in the picture. She thought something had happened while the girls were in foster care. Roxy and Lola were placed together. Lola won’t talk about those days. And even Roxy doesn’t say much. But according to her, Lola’s been different ever since Juanita got her back.”

“So Juanita’s been investigating the girls’ foster care placement?”