Page 7 of Immortal by Morning (Argeneau #37)

“I found them!” Abril announced as she hurried into the kitchen, only to slow to a halt as she saw that Delacort was the only

one still there.

“Forensics arrived,” he explained when she peered from him to the empty seat where his partner had been. “Roberts went out

to greet them and explain the situation.”

“Oh.” Nodding, Abril continued forward. She set the papers she’d fetched on the island before him, then reclaimed her seat.

“That’s the contract for the purchase of the house. Their names are Fred and Wilma.”

Detective Delacort’s eyebrows rose, but he pulled the pages closer to glance over them. After a moment, he said, “You are

not kidding, Fred and Wilma are their names.”

“Yeah, I was a little surprised too, at the time.” She smiled faintly. “I mean, I don’t want to be rude, but the only time I’ve ever heard of someone being named Wilma before this was as a kid watching The Flintstones . And his name being Fred? For real?” she asked with a grin.

“ The Flintstones ?” Detective Delacort echoed.

“It was a cartoon,” she explained when he peered at her with obvious bewilderment. “Wilma was Fred Flintstone’s wife.”

“Ah.” Delacort smiled faintly. “I fear I have never seen the cartoon, and it has been much longer than the twenty years or

so that it must’ve been since you were a child since I have heard the name Wilma.”

Abril’s eyebrows rose at the comment. He didn’t appear to be that much older than her. By her guess, the man couldn’t be more

than maybe thirty years old, and that was a bit of a stretch really. He looked closer to twenty-five, but she suspected he

had to be closer to thirty to be a detective. Of course, she could be wrong about that. Maybe it was ageist to think that

homicide detectives would be older. Shrugging that concern away, she asked, “Will you be able to find them? The Bransons?”

He nodded as he perused the contract. “Now that we have their names, we should not have any problem finding them. If worse

comes to worst, we can always contact their Realtor on this sale to see where they bought and moved to after here. The Realtor

for this sale probably handled the purchase of their next home as well,” he pointed out.

Abril nodded agreement, and then bit her lip briefly before saying, “You don’t really think the Bransons are responsible for—I

mean, maybe it was the family who lived here before the Bransons. Or maybe the house was built on an ancient burial site or

something.”

“It is possible the family before the Bransons are responsible for the skeletons Lilith found,” he allowed and then said gently, “But the bones are not part of an ancient burial site. Roberts and I uncovered more of the bones attached to the skull and some material was revealed. Part of a faded blue denim shirt.”

“Definitely not ancient then,” Abril murmured.

“No,” he agreed. “But the forensics crew will do their bit. Hopefully, they will be able to date the skeletons by the clothing

they are wearing. If not, maybe we will get lucky and they will find something else with the bodies to tell us if it was the

Bransons or who they bought the house from who is responsible for their deaths.”

“Like ID,” she suggested. “Learning who they are and when they went missing would help with that. But I’m sure the Bransons

aren’t responsible.”

Delacort closed his notepad and smiled at her sympathetically. “You liked them.”

Abril shrugged. “I never met the kids, but the parents were good people. They even emailed me after Gina moved in to make

sure we found everything all right and didn’t have any questions.”

“Emailed you or Gina?”

“Me,” she answered, and explained, “I’m always the contact for Gina. I was the contact with her lawyer and real estate agent

too.”

“Is that because your boss is difficult to get along with?” Delacort asked with interest.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Abril said carefully, not because it wasn’t true, but because Gina was her boss.

She wasn’t going to insult her boss. In fact, she was always very careful to never paint Gina in a poor light, no matter how irritated she got with her sometimes petulant, tyrannical behavior.

Well, usually, she thought with a pinch of guilt.

Unfortunately, in a moment of camaraderie with Officer Peters as they’d waited by the skeletons.

.. Well, it had been freezing cold, and they’d been chatting to pass the time and she may have mentioned that Gina had a problem holding on to employees, otherwise she’d have someone to take the dog inside for them.

Abril was not going to say that again. Heck, she was more than a little shocked that she’d even said it the once. The cold

must have been affecting her so that her brain had not been functioning properly.

“Peters said you did,” Delacort told her gently.

Abril cursed under her breath and then smiled with chagrin. “Okay, I may have told him that she has a little trouble keeping

employees, but, really, she’s a good person. She’s very creative, very talented, very intelligent, and she can be charming.

Unfortunately, she’s always very busy and has a dearth of patience, which can make her abrasive at times when dealing with

certain issues.”

“Very diplomatically stated,” he told her with amusement and then changed the subject. “So, you are staying here for how long?”

“Until Gina comes back,” she said simply.

“Which is when?”

When Abril hesitated, he asked, “You do have an end date for her vacation, do you not?”

Abril blinked at his turn of phrase. He had a very old-fashioned way of speaking. So did his partner. Neither of them had yet used a single contraction. She found that curious, but didn’t comment on it and sim ply said, “She has a return ticket for two and a half weeks from now.”

“But?” he queried, gaze narrowing on her.

Abril rolled her eyes. She was very aware that her expressions pretty much gave everything away in life. She’d never be a

good poker player, or make her way as a con artist. Giving it up, she said, “But that’s not a guarantee that she’ll be back

two and a half weeks from now.”

Delacort’s eyebrows inched up his forehead a bit. “She does not stick to her plans?”

“It’s more like her plans are a sort of loose guideline,” Abril corrected. “She will set a date and time for things to happen. However, if something pops up to interfere with those plans, she’s open to changing

them.”

“Riiigghht,” Delacort drew out the word, and then asked, “You do not have a problem with being expected to stay here indefinitely

and at her whim?”

Abril smiled faintly at his expression. He was looking almost offended on her behalf. He wasn’t the first one to have that

reaction. But he was the first one to have it so soon after meeting her and before they’d become friends. On the other hand,

she supposed she didn’t normally tell people things like that right off the bat either. Shrugging those thoughts aside, she

let her smile widen. “I mean what’s there to have a problem with? There’s a pool here, a hot tub, a games room, an exercise

room... I mean, it’s kind of like an exotic luxury hotel.”

“Only without the staff to look after you.” His tone was dry.

“Which means I don’t have to tip anyone,” she pointed out lightly.

He smiled reluctantly, and then asked, “You do have your own home, though?”

“Oh, right. You probably need my address for your report, don’t you?” she said with realization. “I have a little studio apartment

in the city.” She rattled off the address and then grinned at the expression that covered his face. It was somewhere between

horror and dismay. Her apartment was actually only a half a block away from the police station, an area that was possibly

the worst part of the city. That was rather ironic to her mind. She would’ve thought that the police station being so close

would mean it was an area where people behaved and crime was low. Unfortunately, it was just the opposite. The area was mostly

populated with halfway houses and drug dens, with a few apartments and a lot of older houses offering rentals. It really was

a bad area. She’d encountered strung-out junkies, passed-out drunks, and countless used needles on her way to her car in the

mornings, and worse while making her way inside at night. But her studio apartment was newly renovated, lovely, and cheap

because it was hard to get tenants there.

Seeing the struggle Delacort was having with the fact that she lived in such a dumpy area, Abril explained, “I used to have

a penthouse in a better part of town, but with the hours I worked, sometimes I didn’t even get home. I would just sack out

on the couch in my office and get up the next day to continue working. In the end, I was paying a lot of money for a place

that I only got to sleep in at the best of times, and sometimes not even that when I have to travel with Gina to deal with

customers and clients.”

“Do you have to travel a lot for work?”

“I probably spend a third of the year traveling for work,” she guessed, and knew it was a conservative estimate, it was probably more than forty percent of the time.

“Anyway, it seemed a waste to pay so much for a place I rarely got to enjoy, so I ended up getting rid of the penthouse and just getting the little studio apartment to sleep in for now. It saves me a heck of a lot of money, which I’ve just been socking away in the bank and investing. ”

Smiling faintly, she told him, “I could probably buy a house right now if I wanted. It would just be a waste of money because

I’d rarely be there.”

“You’re very practical,” he commented solemnly.

“That’s me. The incredibly practical chick,” Abril said lightly, and then her tone becoming more serious she said, “I’m very

detail oriented. It makes for a good executive assistant, but also makes me boring.”

“I do not see you as anywhere near boring,” Delacort countered at once.

Abril was pretty sure her eyebrows flew right up off her face at that point. She managed to pull them back down and act as