Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Nash read back through his own notes on Voss before he finally set the notebook down on the porch rail and let Tank’s head rest heavy against his knee.
He was still turning all the details over in his mind when a figure appeared between the trees.
Wren.
His breath caught. Part of him hoped he might see her today.
For investigative reasons, of course. There was nothing personal about this—and there couldn’t be.
“Everything okay?” He kept his voice level even as his pulse climbed.
“Everyone’s fine.” Wren stepped toward him, a pensive look on her face. “I need to ask you something.”
His shoulders tightened as he wondered where this was going. “Okay, I’m listening.”
“I want to find out more about Roy’s death. I know the police are investigating, and I don’t want to get in their way. I just need some answers, and I don’t want to wait for an official report.”
“Is that right?” He knew the response was lame, but he needed to buy himself some time before giving her a definitive response.
“I don’t know how to do this the right way,” Wren continued. “I don’t know who to talk to or what questions matter or what’s going to make things worse instead of better. But you do. You used to do exactly this for a living.”
As her words settled, he realized what a bad idea this would be. If there was a killer out there, Wren could get herself seriously hurt. It was too risky. “Wren—”
“I know what I’m asking.” She held his gaze. “I’m asking you to help me. Not do it for me. With me.”
Nash studied her and saw all the emotions that had come with this request—as well as the courage it had taken her to ask for his help. This hadn’t been easy for her. But everything was riding on the answers she might find.
He would do the same thing in her situation—and at least she was asking for help.
“Okay.” He offered one simple nod.
Her shoulders came down an inch. “Okay?”
“Okay.” He nodded again.
Finally, she nodded as if reeling with surprise. “Okay. Great. I . . . I know Roy’s niece, Paige. She’s an acquaintance. I thought we could start with her. She lives about fifteen minutes away.”
“Let’s do that then.” He stood. “But you should know going in—once we start pulling on strings, we don’t get to decide how far it unravels.”
Wren held his gaze. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Wren sat in Nash’s truck outside Roy Callahan’s house with a bouquet of carnations sweating through its plastic sleeve in her lap.
She’d made a couple of calls and had learned that Paige moved into her uncle’s house a few months ago to help him out after his diabetes got bad.
Wren and Nash had stopped at a gas station on the way out of town because she couldn’t make herself pull into the driveway empty-handed. Now she had an eleven-dollar bouquet of flowers and no idea what to say to a woman she’d barely seen in years.
The house was a low brick ranch with an attached garage. The yard had been cut recently, close and even, except for a strip along the sidewalk where the grass had gotten away from somebody.
Wren climbed out before she could talk herself into staying put. Nash quickly joined her, and they walked toward the door.
“You know what you’re going to say?” Nash asked.
“No, I’m going to wing it.”
“That sounds like a terrible—”
Before he could finish his statement, the door flew open.
“Wren Loveless.” Paige said her whole name, the way people did when they’d known you as a child.
Paige had gotten heavier and grayer in recent years, and she appeared to still be wearing yesterday’s pale blue blouse. The collar had a crease in it from being slept in and a small coffee stain on the front. Her eyes were red and puffy.
“Paige,” Wren started. “I’m so sorry.”
The next instant, Paige fell into her arms, carnations squashed between them, and she started sobbing.
Wren waited for Paige to let go first. She pulled back and wiped beneath both eyes with the heel of her hand as she tried to pull herself back together.
She turned to them and sniffled. “Come in. I don’t have a thing to put those in. I’ve gotta be honest—I don’t think my uncle ever owned a vase in his life.”
“We’ll find something,” Wren told her.
Inside, the smell of food hit them. The aroma reminded Wren of their church-basement during a potluck: chicken and cream of mushroom, breadcrumbs, and pasta.
Underneath that scent, the house smelled like Roy.
Wren hadn’t expected to recognize the scent.
She was pretty sure it was coffee, Old Spice, and dust.
Paige’s gaze traveled over Wren’s shoulder, and she remembered Nash was with her.
“Excuse my manners,” Wren murmured. “This is Nash. He’s my neighbor. He offered to drive me here.”
“Ma’am.” Nash stayed a step back and didn’t put out his hand. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Paige, please. Ma’am makes me feel like my mother.” She motioned for them to follow. “Kitchen’s back here. Excuse the boxes.”
The hall was lined with photographs, four and five high, in frames that didn’t match. Quartets in matching jackets on flatbed stages. A church sign with movable letters. Roy at thirty, maybe, his arm slung around a man in a white suit as they both squinted into the sun.
Wren paused by one. It was her father. He was in a photo on the third from the end, low, in a cheap black frame.
The picture showed her dad at the mic with his sleeves rolled to his elbows and her mother behind him at the piano.
Roy stood off to the side of the platform with his arms crossed and his chin up, watching them like a man watching something he’d built.
Wren studied the image. She’d never seen it before.
“My uncle never took even one of them photos down,” Paige said from the kitchen doorway. “He loved your family.”
Wren forced a smile, unsure how to react, and continued walking into the kitchen.
This room was where the last two days had piled up.
Casserole dishes lined the counter, three of them still taped with a name and cooking instructions on masking tape.
A stack of mail teetered precariously. A legal pad sat in the middle of the table with a list on it—funeral home, church, bank, mow. Half the items had been crossed out.
“Sit anywhere,” Paige instructed. “Move anything you need to move.”
Wren lifted a folded church bulletin off a chair and sat there. Nash sat in a chair beside her.
Meanwhile, Paige ran water into a plastic pitcher, put the carnations in it, and set the bouquet in the middle of the table where the legal pad had been.
She stood back and gazed at the flowers a second. “That’s the first thing anybody’s brought that wasn’t food.”
“I didn’t know what to bring.” Wren shrugged.
“Nobody does.” Paige lowered herself into the chair across the table and laid one hand on the wood. “I guess you heard they found my uncle yesterday.”
“I did. I’m so sorry. I just wanted to check on you and make sure you were okay.”
“I’m glad you came. You were always a good listener, even when you were little. You’d stand there at that merchandise table with your daddy and let old women tell you their problems, and you never once looked at the door.”
Wren forced a smile. She remembered those days well.
Somewhere nearby, a phone buzzed, then stopped. Then it started again.
Wren waited for Paige to answer, but she didn’t move.
“You’re not going to get that?” she finally asked.
“It’s the funeral home. Or the insurance man. Or somebody calling to ask what I need.” Paige pressed her eyes closed as if the thought of answering was too much to bear. “What I need is for the phone to quit.”
“That makes sense,” Wren said. “I know this is a lot.”
“Uncle Roy didn’t leave a will,” Paige said. “Sixty-eight years old, and he never once thought he’d be the one going. I’ve had my gallbladder out and my knee done and a scare in 2011, and that man acted like I was the one on borrowed time.”
That sounded like Uncle Roy.
“Are you handling all of it alone?” Wren asked.
“I’m all there is.” Paige shrugged one shoulder.
“Mama’s been gone nine years, and she was his only sister.
I have some cousins in Ohio who’ll send a card.
” She reached over and squared a casserole dish to line up with the one beside it.
“I’m back on the register Tuesday. Whatever doesn’t get done in the next two days doesn’t get done. ”
Paige worked at the local grocery store, so Wren saw her on occasion. Maybe she should have reached out more. But it was too late for that now.
“My uncle should have driven out to your daddy’s place and tried to make things right with him. It was such a shame to see their friendship ruined like it was.”
Wren’s breath caught. Was this her opening? Her chance to find answers? “I don’t even know what happened between them.”
“Neither do I, honey, and I asked him more than once. He always told me the problem wasn’t mine to carry. Which is about the most Roy Callahan thing a person could say.”
Yes, it was, Wren mused. But that also meant she wouldn’t find any answers quickly.