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As we were moving toward the sitting room, Chloe came out of the kitchen and hurried over to her parents. They wrapped their arms around her, asking if she was okay, apologizing for not getting here quickly enough.
She disentangled herself from them just enough to say, “You couldn’t have gotten here any faster than you did. And it’s okay — I had Selena and Calvin and Elizabeth and Tom to help me through all this.”
Almost as though her saying their names out loud had summoned them, the rest of the group emerged from the kitchen as well.
“Hey,” I said, figuring I might as well make the introductions now and, with any luck, steamroller over any awkwardness that might have wanted to crop up. “These are Chloe’s parents, Jordan and Heather Fairfield. Heather, Jordan, this is my husband Calvin Standingbear, and my mom Elizabeth and her husband Tom McGill.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help wondering if my mother’s and Jordan’s eyes were going to meet and they were going to exchange some kind of significant glance, the sort of thing that in a film would have been accompanied by hushed chords or at least a bit of slow motion.
This was real life, though, and more than thirty years had passed since the last time they’d seen each other. Both of the involved parties wore a smile that looked pretty natural, all things considered, and it seemed to me they were both just fine with how their lives had turned out.
“Thank you so much for being here for Chloe,” Heather said.
“Oh, it’s the least we could do,” my mother replied, while Calvin and Tom stood a little ways away and appeared glad that at least we’d gotten past the introductions. “Come into the dining room — I have some lunch set out for us, since I figured the important thing to do was for all of us to keep our strength up while we get this straightened out.”
Everyone seemed relieved to have food to focus on, so we all trooped into the dining room and took our various spots around the table. As host, Tom sat at the head with my mother on his left, and I sat next to her with Calvin on my left. Jordan seated himself at the foot of the table, and Chloe placed herself next to him, with her mother taking the chair at her daughter’s right.
For a few minutes, we were all busy with getting everyone the sandwich of their choice and passing around the bowl of fruit and the pitchers of iced tea and lemonade, but eventually, the food and drink had been handed out and it was time to get down to business.
Jordan sent his daughter a searching look. “So…you didn’t have to post bail, Chloe?”
Oops. While I’d known this subject was going to come up eventually, I didn’t think it would be the first thing broached during our meeting. Chloe looked over at me and I gave her a nod, letting her know it was okay to provide her father with a straight answer.
After all, that particular detail would have come out eventually anyway.
“Selena paid my bail,” Chloe said, and Jordan’s eyes widened.
“We would have done that — ”he began.
I shook my head and interjected as gently as I could, “I know. But then Chloe would have had to wait even longer in jail, and we thought the best thing to do was to get her out of there as quickly as we could.”
Jordan’s mouth tightened a bit. It was harder than I thought not to stare at him, to try to see the little details in his face that had come down to me, even though I resembled my mother’s side of the family a lot more.
Those telltales existed, though…something about the lift of his brows and even that slight quirk at the corner of his lips. Not a lot, not anything that most people would probably have noticed.
I noticed, though. Not that I’d ever doubted it, but still, sitting there at the table with him told me in no uncertain terms that Jordan Fairfield was definitely my biological father.
But he was Chloe’s father, too, and she needed him a hell of a lot more than I did.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Calvin said in his deep, calming tones. “Selena will get that money back just as soon as we prove Chloe’s innocence.”
For some reason, neither Jordan nor Heather appeared particularly encouraged by his words. After exchanging a troubled glance with her husband, Heather said, “But how are you going to be able to do that? I mean, we all know Chloe had nothing to do with this terrible mess, but convincing the authorities may be a whole different story.”
No one spoke for a moment, although I noted the way Calvin and my mother and Tom all slipped sideways looks in my direction, as though they felt it was my place to speak since I was the only amateur sleuth sitting at the table.
All right, then.
“Chloe might not have had a chance to tell you this,” I said. “But I’ve had a lot of luck over the past few years solving various murder mysteries around town. I’m feeling pretty confident that I’ll be able to get to the bottom of this one as well.”
Oh, boy…that sounded way too cocky, especially since I was feeling anything but sure of myself at the moment. At least my track record spoke for itself…mostly.
Once again, Heather and Jordan looked at each other. I didn’t know them well enough to catch all their shifts in expression, but I could tell they were sharing the sort of nonverbal shorthand that only a couple who’d been together a long time could usually manage.
“I wasn’t aware you were a detective, Selena,” Jordan said. “Last I heard, you were a psychic or something, right?”
“Or something,” I agreed. “And it’s not like I’m a professional private investigator or anything. I just discovered that I have a gift for figuring out mysteries. Some of it may have to do with being psychic.”
To my surprise, Heather Fairfield didn’t seem put off by any of this. “Like Chloe.”
