A Southern Promise. Jennifer Lohmann
required him to keep that thought front and center, though it didn’t stop him from resting his chin on the crown of her head and filling his lungs with her rich smell.
Howie sat up straight, distancing himself from her. He didn’t quite push her away, but he didn’t pull her along with him, either, as he leaned out the door and asked Henson to turn up the AC. Even after Henson moved away, Howie kept his face to the open door, letting the breeze blow away any preconceptions he had about Julianne Dawson and her family.
The only thing that mattered was whether the woman curled up in his arms had killed her aunt. Instinct told him no, but instinct was also a fool who’d encouraged him to lean over and sniff her hair.
Once he could feel tendrils of cooler air work their way into the backseat, Howie leaned back into Julianne, easing her upright and pulling the door closed again. The movement seemed to be the jolt she’d needed to stop crying. She pushed his left arm. When he released her, she scooted away from him, her face a mess of tears and some emotion Howie couldn’t put his finger on. Something buried under her grief. Embarrassment, maybe? From the other side of the patrol car, she reached out, offering the handkerchief back to Howie. He shook his head. “You might still need it. And you needn’t return it to me today. We’ll be talking again.”
She nodded, and it looked as if the movement hurt. She held herself stiffly, as if any movement might hurt. Or maybe she was afraid. Her arm was still extended out between them, rigid, to match the tension in her face, while the white cotton hung lazily.
Howie wanted to pull her back into his arms and comfort her. He wanted to know her well enough to have a pet name for her—Annie maybe. But neither was possible. While her eyelids blinked rapidly, his mind skimmed through all the reasons she had to be afraid, stopping at the ones that involved her aunt’s death and picking over them. He didn’t stop until she drew her arm back and his desire to grasp hold of her hand dimmed.
“I’ll be happy,” she said, then choked on the word, folding her hands in her lap, worrying the fabric with her fingers, “to talk with you at your convenience.”
“If you’re up for it, I’d like to ask you some questions now.” He said the words gently, but he could tell by the widening of her eyes that they both knew he was going to ask her questions, whether she was up for it or not.
For a split second, defiance flashed over her face. He knew the look, had seen it a million times in his job. She was about to insist that she be allowed to call the mayor. Insist that she be allowed to go home and schedule this meeting at her convenience, on her turf. Insist on privileges owed to her because there was a line between citizen and public servant, and she was on the right side of it.
Then her features settled back into grief and resignation. “Of course,” she said, twisting the square of cotton. Despite the temptation to save his handkerchief, Howie didn’t snatch it out of her hands. He was banking on her telling him enough useful information that losing his handkerchief—or its being returned in pieces—would be a minor loss.
“When is the last time you saw Mrs. Somerset?”
The concentration of thinking halted Julianne’s hands. She must have noticed the lack of movement in her body because she looked down at her lap with a bit of surprise, then smoothed the fabric across her thigh and folded it into a neat, damp square. Seemingly satisfied that she’d put this small piece of her life back together, she answered him. “Last Wednesday, when she... Well, when she called the police department.”
“You were the voice in the background when Mrs. Somerset called me last week. You were always the voice in the background.” The suspicion he was trying to keep hold of slipped as an image of the callous woman he’d imagined her to be wavered in the light.
If he worked at it, he could tighten his fingers around his distrust, imagine all sorts of reasons for her to try to control a wealthy, elderly aunt.
In the end, he let his suspicions remain loose about him, neither falling completely into the warmth of her chocolate-brown eyes nor holding so tightly to it that his knuckles whitened under the pressure.
“And you are the detective she always called. Thank you for always being polite and respectful, even though...”
Julianne didn’t say the words. She didn’t need to. They could both fill in the blanks with what other people had said about Mrs. Somerset. Even though she was a crazy old lady.
“Of course.” Then he added as an afterthought, “Ma’am.” This was just like any other murder case.
Neither of them said a word for several seconds. The car’s engine chugged along and the air conditioner puffed, though it couldn’t keep up with the heat from the sun pounding through the windows.
He needed to finish the interview, get out of the car and away from this woman. Even though she was sitting at the opposite end of the car now, he could still smell her shampoo, as if it had seeped into his nose hairs and he’d never be rid of it.
“When was the last time you talked with her?” he asked, breaking the buzz of the ambient noise around them and the tension in his head.
“Yesterday. I talk to her on the phone every day and try to visit her once a week. That’s why I was coming here today. She prefers Wednesday visits.”
“Did she seem agitated? Upset? Was there anything different about your conversation?” Howie had put his hands on the seat between them, palms up, to invite her to share more. He’d ask her these same questions again, maybe a hundred times over the course of the investigation, pulling at small threads of memory until he knew everything there was to know about Julianne’s relationship with Mrs. Somerset, and everything Julianne knew about Mrs. Somerset’s relationships with everyone else.
And, because murder investigations crushed the privacy of everyone involved, he would know everything there was to know about Julianne.
“Aunt Binnie was often agitated.” She stared out the window past him for a moment, the sadness in her eyes touched with something like regret. “She used the internet and papers to keep herself agitated.”
“Her crime tips.”
“Yes.” Her fingers twitched around the handkerchief still folded on her leg and her gaze followed the movement. She clenched the fabric until it bunched, then smoothed it back along the bare skin of her knee. When she looked at him again, her face was flat, her emotions under control. “She wrote letters and emails about crime rates. Gun violence. Underfunded or poorly managed crime labs. The wrongly accused. Incarceration rates that were too high, and the privatization of prisons.”
Howie tried, without success, to control his surprise. Julianne noticed his failure. Though to her credit, she didn’t look away. Instead, she caught his surprise in her gaze and held him there until he regretted every time he’d thought Mrs. Somerset was crazy, even if he’d never said it.
“She was consistent in her passions,” Howie finally said.
“She wanted justice for her husband and a world in which murders didn’t go unsolved. It’s not so crazy. In fact, I hope you want the same things.”
“I do. And you’re right—it’s not so crazy.” The men back at the station would likely continue to think Mrs. Somerset was nuts, and Howie really hadn’t changed his mind about it. But he did have a new layer of respect for the women. The sadness he felt over her death remained; the pity he’d felt over her life was gone. “Was there anything new she’d been upset about?”
Defending her aunt must have focused her mind because Julianne seemed able to reflect without turning back to his poor handkerchief. “Crime, always crime. There was the mass shooting in Wyoming. She was donating money to the Brady Campaign—she always did after mass shootings. Anyway, her grandson...”
Howie noted Julianne didn’t say “my cousin” even though she called Mrs. Somerset her aunt.
“...moved to North Carolina a couple years