Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(49)
Butch was quiet for several moments after that. Joanna decided he’d probably dropped off to sleep, but then he spoke again. “Leon was right, you know.”
“About what—changing his beneficiary?”
“That yes, but also about it being unlikely he’d get a fair shake in any kind of custody dispute. Biological fathers get screwed over in divorce proceedings all the time. As an adoptive father who also happened to be a stepfather, I don’t think he would have stood a chance in a court of law, no matter what kind of high-powered lawyer Lyndell Hogan was footing the bill for. And now, no matter what kind of mother Madison Hogan is, her kids are stuck with her.”
Moments later Butch started snoring while Joanna tossed and turned. Murder was bad enough, but this was an even worse outcome than usual. It seemed likely that Kendall and Peter Hogan would be raised by a woman who might well get away with their father’s murder.
Chapter 19
With Peter asleep below her, Kendall lay on the top bunk and listened to the voices coming from the kitchen, where Grandma Puckett was having what she called her “nightly cocktail” and Mommy was drinking beer. No doubt they were both smoking cigarettes. Mrs. Baird said smoking was bad for people’s lungs, but maybe Mommy and Grandma Puckett didn’t know that.
Tonight Kendall had left the bedroom door cracked open. That meant cigarette smoke drifted into the room, but it also meant she could hear what was being said.
“How can it be there’s no insurance?” Grandma Puckett demanded. “I thought Leon had a big life-insurance policy where he worked.”
“He did, but I don’t get any of it,” Mommy said, “not a dime. He changed the beneficiary arrangement a few weeks ago. He did it behind my back, without saying a word about it. He left all the proceeds to the kids in a way that cuts me out of it completely. It’s supposed to be held in trust for them until they’re of age.”
Kendall didn’t know what insurance was, and she didn’t understand what that b-word was or what “of age” meant either, but whatever those things added up to, they had made her mother furious. She’d been on the phone earlier in the afternoon, talking to someone else about those very things—especially insurance and the b-word. Once Mommy got off the phone, she started yelling and throwing things every which way. There’d always been a picture of Daddy in his army uniform, hanging on the wall in the living room. Mommy had torn that down and smashed it into a million pieces. Then she turned to Kendall.
“Clean that up,” she’d ordered, pointing at the mess she’d just made. “Get rid of that broken glass before one of you kids steps on it and cuts a foot.”
Kendall had used a broom and a dustpan and cleaned up the mess as well as she could. There were lots of tiny pieces of glass on the floor. She didn’t know if she’d gotten all of them. She hoped so. As for the picture itself? If Daddy was gone, she didn’t want to forget how he looked, so she slipped the photo out of its frame and smuggled it into the back of her closet, where she hid it away along with the rest of her treasures.
About that time Grandma Puckett had shown up after driving down from Casa Grande. Randy had been there hanging around during the phone call, but the moment Grandma Puckett arrived, he’d taken off. She didn’t like him, and he didn’t like her. Kendall thought that was just fine, especially if it meant Randy would make himself scarce.
By then it had been getting on toward dinnertime. Grandma Puckett had taken one look in the fridge, found it to be mostly empty, and announced that she was taking everybody out for dinner. For Kendall that was very good news. At breakfast that morning, she’d emptied the last crumbs of Lucky Charms into two bowls, one for her and one for Peter. Once she took a bite, though, the milk tasted funny, so she’d ended up dumping out both bowls, and they’d eaten toast with peanut butter on it for breakfast.
If they’d gone to school that day, they would have had both breakfast and lunch. But they weren’t going to school right now, so for lunch they’d had another marshmallow sandwich on the floor of their bedroom. For dinner at Denny’s, though, they had a true feast. Both of them had Grand Slams, and not kiddie Grand Slams either. Peter had the Slugger with pancakes and hash browns, while Kendall ordered her favorite, the one with French toast, both of them accompanied by milk shakes.
“Don’t you ever feed these kids?” Grandma Puckett asked. “They act like they’re starving.”
She smiled when she said that—like she was making a joke or something, but Kendall didn’t think it was funny. Sometimes it felt like she and Peter really were starving.
On the way home from dinner, they stopped off at Safeway and Grandma Puckett bought more groceries than Kendall had seen since Daddy moved out of the house. There was fresh milk and bread and eggs, boxes of cereal, packages of sliced luncheon meat and cheeses. There was even a bottle of orange juice. It had been a long time since they’d had orange juice at home.
Full for a change and relieved to know that Randy wasn’t just down the hall, Kendall was about to doze off when the sound of a ringing doorbell roused her. Grandma Puckett must have gone to the door. A moment later she returned. “It’s Lyndell and Isabella Hogan,” she said. “They’re waiting outside. They’re staying at the Copper Queen in Bisbee, but they were hoping to see the kids tonight.”