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“I’m pretty sure Alec Scurlock will take it on,” Calvin said, and I felt my eyes widen slightly.
“I thought he only worked on cases connected with the tribe.”
“No,” my husband replied. “That is, work for the San Ramon Apache and our indigenous groups around the area makes up the bulk of his caseload, but he takes on outside cases if they’re interesting to him. I’ll give him a call after we talk to Chloe’s parents. I’d want them to sign off first before I reach out to him.”
That sounded like a sensible way to approach the problem. Chloe nodded, saying, “I’m sure they’ll be fine with whoever you choose. We don’t know anyone in the area.”
And that was one of the awful things about this whole mess. No, my little sister wasn’t on her own, not when she had Calvin and me and my mother and Tom to support her — not to mention her parents — but she was still in unfamiliar territory, wouldn’t be surrounded by the kind of support system she would have had if Jack’s murder had occurred in Southern California.
For all I knew, that was part of the reason the killing had taken place here.
As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I wanted to dismiss it. Why on earth would anyone need to make sure that Jack Speros was murdered specifically in Globe, of all places? It didn’t make any sense.
But then, none of this did.
Calvin talked a little more about Alec Scurlock, explaining how the attorney had defended him when he was a suspect in Dillon James’ tabloid-titillating death, and how he’d been on contract with the San Ramon Apache for almost ten years now. I could almost see my sister relaxing as my husband spoke, letting her know she’d be in very good hands…if her parents agreed that hiring Alec was the smartest thing to do.
I reached over and touched my husband’s hand, not much more than a brush of my thumb against his, letting him know how much I appreciated the way he was doing his best to reassure Chloe, to let her know we’d all be with her every step of the way. At the same time, though, I couldn’t quite keep my thoughts from rattling along, poking at the little I knew about Jack Speros’s death.
Why here? Why now? Was Chloe a mark, or an innocent bystander?
I needed to find out why someone would want to do such a thing to Jack…and, by extension, to her.
My mother returned then, laden with so many bags that I wondered if she planned to feed the entire gang dinner and breakfast as well. Tom excused himself to help her with her purchases, leaving Calvin and Chloe and me alone in the sitting room.
“I’m really sorry about all this,” Chloe said then, and I blinked at her.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” I said, fixing her with a steady gaze so she’d know I wasn’t going to allow her to argue with me about this. “We know you had nothing to do with Jack’s death, and we’re going to do whatever we must to prove that.”
Her lips parted as if she wanted to protest, but then she closed her mouth again, apparently realizing I was in no mood for arguments right then.
Just as well, because my mother and Tom came back in with the rest of her shopping bags, and there was some cheerful chaos for a while as she got the dining room set up for our group and Chloe and Calvin volunteered to go into the kitchen and cut up fruit and help with some other meal prep.
Leaving me alone in the sitting room, but that was fine. These days, I was used to being left to sit while the more mobile members of my party went on with their work.
Then the doorbell rang. Since I was much closer to the door than everyone else, I pushed myself to my feet and waddled over to open it.
Standing on the porch was a tall man in his fifties with graying dark hair, and at his side stood a woman I guessed was probably a few years younger, plump and pretty, blonde and with striking gray eyes nearly the same shade as her daughter’s.
Now that the moment had come, I found myself almost dizzy.
Or maybe I’d just stood up too quickly.
Despite my disorientation, I managed to find a smile and slap it on my face.
“Hi, there,” I said, marveling a little at how normal I sounded. “Come on in.”
Chapter 8
READY OR NOT
Jordan Fairfield also seemed to handle the moment fairly well. He returned my smile, then said, “Hi, Selena. This is my wife Heather.”
Since she was looking a little uncertain…it was probably hard enough to be confronted by your partner’s long-lost biological child, let alone one who looked like she was about to give birth at any moment…I immediately extended a hand. “Hi, Heather. I’m Selena. Come on in.”
I stepped out of the way — a lot out of the way, as my distended belly took up so much space — and let them into the house. Judging by the way they glanced around at the museum-perfect interior with widened eyes they were doing their best to hide, I had to guess they hadn’t been inside too many houses like this.
Which was fair enough. There were some gorgeous historic homes in Southern California, but I didn’t think many of them were located in the San Fernando Valley.
