Page 39 of Luck of the Devil (Harper Adams Mystery #3)

I nodded. I couldn’t say I blamed her.

“Plus, she showed no interest in my kids, so that was definitely the end of that. I felt sorry for her after everything that happened to Andi, but after an animal repeatedly bites you, you learn to leave it alone.”

I couldn’t blame her for that either.

She made a face and picked up a piece of bread off her plate, then smushed it together as though considering something. After she took a deep breath, she said in a rush, “Which is why I was so surprised when she called me a few weeks ago.”

My heart skipped a beat. “She called you?”

“She did what ?” my grandmother screeched.

“Do you remember exactly what day?” Malcolm asked, his body tense.

Hannah paused and seemed to consider it. “Two weeks ago. It was a Wednesday night.”

The night the two men broke in and confronted my mother.

My grandmother was still upset. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Hannah ignored my grandmother’s questions and kept her focus on me. “Her call was totally out of the blue, like late on a weeknight. Very unusual for her.”

“When you say late,” I said. “How late?”

“Dang near close to midnight,” Hannah said.

“Your uncle Buster was dead to the world, but I was bakin’ cookies for my Becca’s school fundraiser, which, of course, she didn’t tell me about until about nine o’clock that night.

” She leaned her head toward me and lowered her voice.

“I should have made her stay up and bake ’em herself, but she had a chemistry test the next day, and she’s basically bombing chemistry.

” She stopped, realizing she was getting off topic.

“Anyway, it startled me when the home phone rang. I mean, who uses landlines anymore? But Buster insists we keep it. So I answered, ready to give the person a piece of my mind for nearly wakin’ up my husband, who gets cranky if he doesn’t get a quality eight hours of sleep, when I heard her voice on the line, saying, ‘Hannah, I’m sorry to be callin’ so late. Please don’t hang up.’”

“She didn’t identify herself?” I asked.

She chuckled. “Listen to you, sounding like a cop.”

“Hannah,” my grandfather gently admonished.

“Oh, sorry,” she said with a sheepish look. “I tend to get off track like that. In any case, no, she did not identify herself.” She snickered. “But I’d know her voice anywhere. If she’d called in the daytime when I had more wits about me, I might have hung up, but I admit I was curious.”

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She said she was going to send me something in the mail and asked me to please hang onto to it. She said she knew she had no right to ask, but the thing she was sending was for you.”

“For me ?”

She nodded, then got up from the table and walked into the living room.

A few seconds later, she came back in with her purse and sat down again.

She reached inside and pulled out a cream-colored envelope, which she handed to me.

“I’ve been carryin’ it around in my purse, scared I was gonna lose it. ”

The first thing I noticed was it was heavier than a standard letter. It was addressed to my aunt, and my mother’s name and address were handwritten in the upper left corner. I went to lift the envelope flap but realized it was still sealed. “You didn’t open it?”

Her face stretched with indignation. “It may have my name on it, but it wasn’t mine to open. Your mother made it clear it was yours.”

I picked up my unused butter knife and slid the top open, then pulled out a cream stationary card with gold foil initials—SJA.

While the card was thick, it didn’t account for the weight of the envelope.

I opened the card and found a small silver key attached to the inside with clear tape. Box 172 was handwritten underneath it.

Perplexed, I turned the card so Malcolm could read it.

“Safe deposit box?” he murmured.

“That’s what I’m thinking. It’s the right shape and the number fits.”

Malcolm turned to my aunt. “Did she say why she was sending this?”

“No. I asked her why she couldn’t just give it to you herself, but she claimed she had her reasons. She said not to give it to you unless you came to see me.”

I shot Malcolm a look of confusion. How could she have known I’d come see her sister?

“I confess,” she said, “when I saw that she’d died, I nearly came to the funeral, but I wasn’t sure your father would want me there. The last time he and I spoke, we didn’t end on good terms.” She grimaced. “In fact, it got pretty heated.”

“You and my father argued?” I asked in surprise. I could understand why she’d argue with my mother, but my father made it his business to be agreeable. I could count on one hand the number of people I’d heard him raise his voice to.

She hesitated, glancing at my grandmother before turning back to me. “Your mother’s the only person I told about this, and she definitely didn’t appreciate what I had to say.” She grimaced again. “The saying don’t shoot the messenger obviously came from truth.”

She told my mother something bad about my father? Had she discovered my father was up to something shady?

After she drew in a deep breath, she shook out her hands, then set them on the table.

“After your mother and I had our argument at Andi’s party, I knew I needed to cool down, so I headed to your father’s office to hide until everyone left.

” She shrugged with a resigned look. “I mean, let’s be honest. I didn’t fit in with your mother’s friends.

I was only there because I loved you girls, and I came with Mom and Dad.

I figured the best thing I could do was to get out of her hair. ”

“My father was mad you were in his office?” That seemed strange given his office had never been off-limits.

“Not exactly.” Her cheeks flushed. “Like I said, I’d planned to hide out, so I brought a bottle of wine with me, and I drank quite a bit of it.

I sat in the chair in the corner and fell asleep.

” She squeezed her eyes shut for a second.

“When I woke up, I heard sounds that could have come from a porno movie.” She made a face at my grandparents. “Sorry.”

My grandmother looked too mesmerized by the story to be offended that her daughter had obviously watched porn. “Don’t stop there,” she said. “What happened?”

“It had gotten dark outside, so the room was really dark. When I opened my eyes, I could see two people hovering over the desk. It took me all of two seconds to realize your dad was screwing Sarah Jane from behind on the desk. Only…” Her cheeks pinkened. “It wasn’t Sarah Jane.”

“My father was having an affair,” I said, my heart sinking. If he had a history of affairs, then he very well could have been having one with the woman who showed up at my mother’s door.

She nodded with an apologetic look. “I wasn’t sure what to do.

They obviously didn’t know I was there, and I hated to interrupt them.

Anyway, by the time I had sorted out how to let them know I was there, they’d already finished—she wasn’t very quiet, by the way.

I almost think she wanted your mother to find them, but your father slapped his hand over her mouth to quiet her, not that it slowed them down any. ”

“Hannah Nicole,” my grandmother admonished.

“What?” Her eyes widened with feigned innocence. “It’s all true.”

“Did they ever see you?” Malcolm asked.

She turned to him. “When they finished, they lingered for a few seconds before Paul slapped her ass?—”

“Hannah!” my grandmother cried out. “We don’t need all the details!”

“And then pulled her skirt down. They kissed and they agreed they needed to go out separately. So she left first and your father cleaned himself off with some tissues. It was while he had his dick hanging out of his pants?—”

“Hannah!”

She ignored her mother. “—I said, ‘Not bad, although the conclusion seemed a little rushed. Four out of five.’ He spun around, shoving himself back into his pants, and accused me of being a voyeur. I told him I was there first, and it wasn’t my fault they were so horny they hadn’t noticed the drunk woman sleeping in the corner. ”

I expected my grandmother to get onto her case again, but she just hung her head.

“I suspect he was pretty mad,” Malcolm said.

“Furious, but he also knew I had him. He wanted to know whether I was gonna tell Sarah Jane, and I asked him how long it had been goin’ on.

He told me it was none of my business, and I got up, a bit wobbly, and asked if he knew where his wife was.

Well, he sure surprised me with what he did next.

” She paused. “He pushed me back down in the chair. Hard. Just put a hand on my chest and shoved me down. Then he leaned over my face, veins popping on his forehead, and told me that if I said anything to her, he’d make sure I regretted it. ”

I stared at her in shock. Was she telling the truth? Or an exaggerated version of the truth? I’d never seen my father violent like that.

“Did you tell her?” I asked.

“Not at first, but it wasn’t because I was scared of your father.

Not yet.” She drew a breath. “When he threatened me, I asked him what he thought he could possibly do to me, and he said that I had no idea what he as capable of. I laughed in his face and told him that if he ever touched me again, I’d have him arrested for assault.

He laughed too and said he had the cops in his pocket.

It ended in a standoff, and I stormed out. ”

“You said you were scared of him later,” Malcolm said. “What happened?”

She gave him a tight smile. “We were there for that whole weekend, and I kept a close eye on him after I caught him in the act. I was pretty pissed that he’d shoved me like that, not to mention he was cheating on my sister.

Sure, I was pissed at her too, but I was tryin’ to look out for her.

We had dinner together later that night, and right after we finished, I saw him sneak off into the backyard with his phone.

I followed him. I thought maybe he was gonna call his lover, and I was hopin’ to catch her name.

But he wasn’t talkin’ to his girlfriend.

He was talkin’ to someone named Richard, and he mentioned a guy named Ambrose, saying Ambrose was getting out of control.

He told Richard he needed to rein him in.

I thought that sounded kind of dangerous.

I never would have thought that Paul was capable of hurting someone or paying someone else to do it, but after the way he’d shoved me… ”

She took a breath and shook her head, then gave me a pleading look before continuing.

“I was worried about Sarah Jane and you girls. So I got a subscription to the Lone County paper and started scouring the news, looking for anything to do with a Richard or an Ambrose. I knew it was a long shot, and I hoped I didn’t see anything, but then…

” She took a breath. “About a month later, there was a story about a man named Dale Ambrose driving his car off a bridge into the Red River. They ruled it an accident, but I knew in my gut that your father and that Richard guy had”—her eyes suddenly grew large with realization—“drove his car into the river,” she finished, barely above a whisper.

Two things became apparent. The first, Aunt Hannah had figured out my mother’s accident had been anything but, and second, my father had done this before.

It was looking like my father really had killed my mother. Now I needed to prove it.