The Almost Sisters(36)

“You mean flat-out lie,” Frank said, regarding me gravely.

“Yes. Hell yes,” I said, vehement but still very, very quiet. The house was full of teenagers holed up someplace whispering about their own concerns and exhausted little old ladies having naps. My Birchie was ninety years old and grievously ill. Whatever she knew or witnessed or was party to, I forgave her. If she even needed forgiving, which I wholeheartedly doubted.

“Morality aside, that story won’t wash,” Frank said. “The trunk was locked shut when they tried to run off with it. Martina Mack saw you break that lock out in the yard, and she was trumpeting the fact so loudly I suspect they know it over in Georgia.”

“So what do I tell people?” I asked.

The lawn and the street in front of the house were clear for now, but I knew Birchville. All over town, hot chicken casseroles and Bundt cakes were being assembled, and soon neighbors and members of First Baptist would be standing on the porch bearing food, hungry for information.

“Nothing,” Frank said. “Less than nothing. Don’t lie, for God’s sake, just keep your mouth shut. Don’t let your niece or Miss Birchie or Miss Wattie talk either. Tell everyone who shows up here that you aren’t allowed because it’s an ongoing investigation. I’ve already told Hugh and Jeffrey not to yak on pain of death or fifty hours of yard work, whichever they’d hate more. We’ll let it play out. See what Chief Dalton does next.”

“Do we need a criminal attorney?” I asked Frank. I thought we might, but Frank shook his head.

“Not yet, I don’t think. I’ll tell you if we get to that point.”

I found this answer reassuring.

The doorbell rang, but I stayed in my seat. I was exhausted, and all this week I’d had a new kind of pregnant hungry that seemed to start in my very bones. I’d finished the roll, but I still felt like I had nothing in my stomach. Neighborly mac and cheese and avid curiosity were waiting for me on the porch, and I was almost willing to brave the latter to get to the former. Almost.

“Fucking fuck,” I said, and buried my face in my hands.

Frank stood up. “I’ll tell whoever it is that Birchie’s asleep and to come back later. Can you find Hugh and Jeffrey and point them toward their gramma’s house? They’re late already, and I don’t want to give Jeannie Anne an excuse to text me.”

“Deal,” I said, happy to exchange problems. “But if whoever that is has brought a casserole, please bring it in. I want to stress-eat about half of it.”

Upstairs, I heard young voices, pitched low, coming from the tower room. The door was shut, and the tower room was technically Lav’s bedroom. Not cool. Worse, I heard only two people talking. Lavender and one boy or another. They were being too quiet for effective eavesdropping, and I didn’t want to be a sneak with my niece anyway, but I heard Lavender say the word “daddy” as I came to the door. So they were bonding over their newly smashed families, sitting in a closed room with a bed in it. Not cool at all. I knocked once and threw the door open immediately after, hoping I’d find Jeffrey.

It was Hugh, of course, who had broad shoulders and was almost capable of growing a mustache. Poor Jeffrey was still downy-cheeked and sliver thin. Hugh and Lav were pressed close, side by side on the neatly made daybed, heads bent over my laptop. They looked up as I came in, but they did not move away from each other.

“Where’s your brother?” I asked Hugh, casual.

“I sent him to Gramma’s. Mom texted. She’s pretty freaked about . . . you know, the . . . um, you know,” Hugh said.

So the news had already left the square and spread to the very edges of the town. Super.

“Yeah, well, maybe you should head on over, too,” I said, stern enough to make Hugh rise.

“Yes, ma’am,” Hugh said as Lavender set the laptop aside. “Bye, Lefty.”

As soon as we were alone, I said, “Hey, Lefty, how’s about you don’t close the door when you have a fella in your bedroom.”

“It’s not like that. We weren’t doing anything,” Lavender said, and then she changed the subject. “Is Mom making me come home?”

“Of course she is,” I said. No way Rachel was leaving her in a house where a body had been unearthed. Or untrunked, as it were.

“Aunt Leia, no! You were supposed to talk her out of it. It’s stupid. It’s not like we found a pile of freshly murdered teenage girls under the stoop. I’m not in danger.”

I sat down in the overstuffed reading chair, pulled a throw pillow into my lap, and hugged it to my Digby tummy. “Sorry, Lav, but it’s a done deal.”

Lav said, “This is probably the single most interesting thing that ever happened to me, and I don’t want to go before we even find out who got murdered.”

“Don’t say ‘murdered,’” I warned her instantly. “No one said anything about a murder.”

Lavender looked at me, fond and skeptical and patronizing all at once, the way I used to look at her when she was eight and still reverently setting out baby teeth for the fairy. I’d been almost sure that at that point she was in it for the money. But only almost.

“Come on, Aunt Leia. Hugh says unmurdered people get regular buried. Not stuffed up into attics,” she said, and damn, but the kid had a point. Worse, if Hugh had already come to that conclusion, what was the rest of Birchville thinking? Most of the town loved Birchie, but not like I did, and I could only imagine the bile spewing out of Martina Mack’s smug face. “Do I really have to go home?”