A Southern Promise. Jennifer Lohmann
light sniffles and no streaky mascara. Ruthie had no patience for a good snotty sobbing. After the dissolution of her marriage and her return home, Julianne had learned to sob by herself in her bedroom. Or at Binnie’s.
At least now she had an apartment where she could let the facade drop and be the imperfect person she wanted to be.
She turned onto her mother’s street and spun her mind back to her pit stains before tears could obscure her vision, sending her crashing into the neighbors’ playhouse—a miniature version of their actual house—which they’d built on their front lawn. She would control her driving. And how she broke the news to her mom. Aunt Binnie was dead and Julianne had crawled onto the lap of the cop who’d broken the news—big mistake. She was enough of a Somerset to know that how she responded to the death would matter. Somewhere deep in her brain was a memory of hearing her mom tell her father about the importance of managing the press all through the horrible investigation into Uncle Winston’s death. The words had stuck in her head, even though she hadn’t understood their meaning at the time. Since that time, she’d had years of instruction on keeping the family’s name out of the mud. How the right smile could hide secrets and the wrong smile could give them away. How to set your shoulders and walk as if nothing was wrong at home. How to talk to the press and give enough information that it sounded like detail but was really just a whitewash of the truth.
These skills had been mixed into each and every meal like fluoride mixed into the drinking water. Most of her life she’d followed her mother’s guidelines, even as she felt as if they were a straitjacket. Now that Julianne was trying to build a life for herself in Durham and turn around the family name, she finally understood why keeping the family’s name out of the mud mattered. She wanted the Somersets to be associated with the new Durham, not old tobacco. And not with another unsolved murder.
If the investigation into Aunt Binnie’s murder got out of control, investors and participants might lose the interest in her business incubator. More important, the family must respond to the death appropriately in order to keep Aunt Binnie’s memory pure. And Julianne would hop into the ring and wrestle any reporter to keep Aunt Binnie’s memory from being tainted by any mention of her phone calls. Her aunt had been so much more than a simple crazy lady. She’d been dedicated to making the world a better place. While they had disagreed about how to go about it, that essential optimism was something they’d had in common.
That and fighting for a lost cause. Tenacity had kept Aunt Binnie calling police departments week after week after week, and it had kept Julianne in a marriage long after grass had grown over its grave.
Aunt Binnie’s murder wouldn’t go unsolved like Uncle Winston’s had. Despite her irritation with the detective for locking her up in the patrol car and baking answers out of her, she respected that he’d been willing to do that. And that he’d not backed down from her and her name. With his strong hands and his intelligent eyes, Detective Howie Berry seemed like the kind of man who would get the job done.
There was kindness there, too. Whatever his reasons for giving her the squashed energy bar, it had ultimately been a kind gesture. Intelligent eyes, messy hair and kind gestures probably went a long way to keeping people from noticing that he was roasting them alive.
Not that the detective’s eyes or hair mattered in the end, because Julianne would dog the man’s feet to make sure he didn’t lose focus, ignoring the way her heart beat a little harder at the memory of his hand on the back of her head.
Better to think about the money she could put up for a reward.
Despite the blasting air-conditioning and her pep talk about the detective, Julianne flushed with fear of the consequences of this murder investigation. The Somersets, Aunt Binnie included, had entire cemeteries of secrets and some of them held nothing but shallow graves. No matter how much everyone would want her aunt’s killer found, the thought of those secrets crawling out of their graves was probably enough to scare many of her family members’ mouths shut.
Wasn’t that one of the reasons Uncle Winston’s murderer had never been caught? He’d been shot in the warehouse Julianne was presently converting into a start-up incubator. The cops had been certain Uncle Winston had known his killer and that he had been taken by surprise, but not a single person had come forward with any useful information.
Not even when Aunt Binnie had begged. Secrets and protecting their own had been more important than the tears of a widow. Even Julianne’s mother had lied to the cops about that night thirty years ago.
In the driveway, Julianne stopped her car and rested her forehead on the steering wheel, hoping to regain her composure. But the sun’s rays blinded her through a break in the trees and drove her out. Perhaps she could pretend the sun was responsible for the redness in her eyes. Once inside the house, the extreme air-conditioning nearly knocked her flat before she could store her purse in the coat closet. Then she went in search of her mother.
Her mother sat on a bar stool in the kitchen and didn’t seem to hear Julianne walk into the room. The radio was on in the background with a brief report of a murder in Duke Park. Aunt Binnie’s murder. Julianne waited in the doorway until her mother glanced up, her cell phone pressed against her ear, one pair of glasses on the counter and another perched on top of her head.
“Did you hear on the radio? There’s been a murder over by Binnie’s and she won’t answer my calls. She’s probably on the phone with the Juneau Police Department with a tip.” The frustration in her mother’s voice stabbed wildly into the air. “Didn’t you just come from there? You should have stayed and cut the old woman’s phone lines.”
Julianne slid onto a bar stool next to her mom. “Mom, can you put down the phone?”
“Not until Bin answers.” Her mom lowered the phone long enough to redial, irritation on her face as she lifted it back to her ear. “If I keep calling, I’ll catch her before she calls every police department she can look up online. A murder, so close by. It’s only going to make her worse.” Worry seeped through the exasperation. “It’s not possible to put more locks and alarms on that house. Maybe we can use the danger of living by herself to get her to move into a retirement home. Security will be at the top of my list when I talk with her about it. She’s never been willing to give up her independence, but there’s also never been a murder in her neighborhood before.”
Then her mother turned her face, put on the pair of glasses that had been on the counter and looked, really looked, at Julianne. And she didn’t say anything about the pit stains or the mascara. “Maybe she would come live with me. It’s not as if I don’t have the space, and I would feel better knowing she wasn’t living alone.”
Julianne tossed the knowledge that she’d underestimated her mother onto the pile of painful feelings in her chest.
“Mom, you’re not going to get through to her.” Was there a part of her mom that—like Julianne—would be a tiny bit relieved to know Aunt Binnie was dead? Not that her mom would wish a violent death on her aunt, but her mom didn’t want Aunt Binnie living in this house any more than Aunt Binnie had wanted to live here. And once, when Aunt Binnie had been having a bad day, calling every phone number she knew looking for Julianne because some crook needed twenty thousand dollars for a home-protection scheme, her mother had openly wished Aunt Binnie out of existence.
Love had added a sharp, hurtful edge to the anxiety they had all felt about Aunt Binnie’s occasionally erratic behavior.
Her mother lowered her hand to look at the screen and dial again. Taking advantage of the moment, Julianne grabbed the phone out of her hand.
Her mother added the second pair of glasses to the top of her head. “That was rude.” Ah, hidden there in the snap of her voice was the woman who had raised Julianne.
“Mom, you can’t call Aunt Binnie. Aunt Binnie was murdered.” She regretted the bluntness of her words as soon as they were out, but she didn’t know how to get through to her mom any other way.
Her mother snatched the phone back. “She’s probably just not answering the door. Mrs. Carr is a terrible gossip and almost always