BOOK TWO:
SUPPOSE: Suspected of murder, Lillian Dove fights to prove her innocence and avoid the mafia don who wants her dead.
In this enticing second installment of D. J. Adamson’s Lillian Dove Mystery series, big city problems wind up in a small town in the Midwest threatening not only the safety and integrity of the community, but bringing imminent danger to the life of one woman who is just trying to move beyond her rocky past and navigate toward a more positive future.
Trying to get your life back on track may be a little tricky when you’re a recovering alcoholic five years sober, and you’ve just inherited a house and the local AAA Discount Liquor Store. Here in Frytown, Iowa, Lillian Dove is clearly aware that “life has its ironies,” but she’s determined to make the best of recent circumstances. With her cat Bacardi, she’s been residing at her mother Dahlia’s condo in Lake’s Edge Senior Residential Complex, while the feisty woman is in a nearby convalescent home hell-bent on getting out.
Lillian’s also been involved with the local Frytown Police Chief, a man she felt offered love and security, though unfortunately he also happens to be married. While sobriety and the unexpected new business acquisition have boosted her spirits, Lillian is haunted by the suicide of her best friend Cressie, a former addict who forced Lillian to face her own issues.
Suddenly, Cressie’s onetime ne’er do well boyfriend is threatening to blackmail Lillian, claiming to have video proof that she was responsible for Cressie’s death. Lillian knows his demands are bogus, but when his dead body is discovered at the condo, she’s determined to uncover the truth and clear her own name.
Within this well-crafted storyline, the murder investigation is linked to a border-crossing drug operation that stems from a multi-million-dollar Chicago firm, and a CEO involved in illegal money laundering. As Federal Agents and the local Police Department unite to catch the criminals, Lillian finds herself in harm’s way when she’s unwittingly dragged into the high-risk probe. From murder and a suspicious flash drive to vandalism, kidnapping, and surprise revelations, Lillian embarks on a winding, roller-coaster ride.
For those unfamiliar with Adamson’s evolving mystery series, a passing mention of Lillian’s having been a prior witness to an arson case that resulted in near dire consequences for both Lillian and her mother, helps bring readers up to speed and also confirms Lillian’s seemingly magnetic draw to trouble.
While chapter/segment titles indicate this story plays out over a short span of a few days, Adamson broadens the platform with a full range of characters and action. From the local mayor being accused of bigamy and a dispatch operator who equates to “Town Gossipedia”, to the ghost of Lillian’s benefactor assuring her that “everything will be fine” and the pirate-costumed nurse just trying to keep the ornery senior patients in line, all add engaging humor and lightness to the narrative in contrast with the greater tension and drama.
Like all good mysteries, Adamson creates a tale riddled with questions. Intertwined with bantering dialogue and heated conversations, Lillian’s self-imposed ponderings about recent events help draw us into the heart and mind of the central character. As a soul-searching individual coming to grips with the past, Lillian’s dream states offer a glimpse of her lost childhood and her fractured life. Adamson clearly has an eye for detail. Whether exposed in the sharp visuals of a crime scene, or revealed in the aromatic constants of a nursing home environment perfumed by the fragrance of “urine, unwashed bodies, and the Wednesday night meatloaf special,” the writing paints a colorful, and vivid picture.
Through the character of Lillian Dove, readers are introduced to a flawed, but tenacious female heroine who is genuinely likable. Suppose is a mystery filled with small-town heart, yet big city edge, unexpected excitement, and a touch of humor. Together they prove a smart, and winning combination.
Suppose won First Place in the 2017 CIBA M&M Awards!
Praise from Readers
"The author leaves you never knowing what will happen on the next page...taking you for a ride you won't want to get off, at least not until you finish the book."
-Cheryl, Reader
"Recommends to for Humor Loving, Stephanie Plum Fans."
-SS, Reader
I like the way alcoholism is treated in this account. The times you laughed so hard, everyone around the room asks, "what novel is making you laugh?"
SUPPOSE, CHECK IT OUT!
-Mxgrls, Reader
"The author leaves you never knowing what will happen on the next page...taking you for a ride you won't want to get off, at least not until you finish the book."
-Cheryl, Reader
"Recommends to for Humor Loving, Stephanie Plum Fans."
-SS, Reader
I like the way alcoholism is treated in this account. The times you laughed so hard, everyone around the room asks, "what novel is making you laugh?"
SUPPOSE, CHECK IT OUT!
-Mxgrls, Reader
EXCERPT:
“Where the hell was she?” His voice hit me, and I twisted around at its impact. Leveque charged out of the kitchen. Wearing jeans, a shirt, and a leather jacket, his badge was clipped noticeably to his shirt.
I disregarded him, dark-cherry-colored tracks on the carpet taking my notice. They came from the kitchen. They looked like thin wheels. Dahlia? Wheelchair? Had she done something to Bacardi? She hated cats. Any animals for that matter. She never allowed us kids pets, said she didn’t need another mouth to feed.
“Where were you?” he barked.
Why was he barking at me? What the hell had gone on here?
But paramedics wouldn’t be called for a cat. Had someone thought she’d run over me?
In a haze of trying to connect the dots with all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, I gave him a truthful answer. “I was asleep in my car.”
Charles came out of the kitchen. “Slept in your car? I dropped you off last night at about midnight. Why were you in your car?” He was dressed in uniform and was wearing disposable gloves. His voice was insistent, but his tone was even-keeled.
I glanced at Leveque’s hands. He was also wearing gloves.
“Lil,” Charles called, grabbing my attention again. “I thought you came home to go to bed.”
Davenport, blackmail, Candlelight, Kenny, Cressie dead? Charles, paramedics. Dahlia, alive? Empty gurney. Leveque,? APB? No connections. My mind was spinning.
While Charles and I have a “past”, however short, he keeps business and personal separate. “I was going to,” I began explaining, “but I figured I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I went back to the store to start cleaning up.”
“That still doesn’t explain sleeping in your car?” Leveque snapped.
Okay, I wasn’t appreciating Leveque’s adversity. After all, why was he so wound up? It wasn’t his store that had been ransacked. His condo that had been torn up. His mother was a pain in the backside.
I ignored him and said to Charles, “I tried to clean up, but it was too hard. Everything’s ruined. So I came back, and I was going to go to bed and try to face it all later. But I couldn’t get in.”
“What time was that?” Charles questioned.
At the same time, Leveque growled, “You expect us to believe that?”
Leveque might be wearing a shield, but his tone definitely told everyone within hearing distance that he didn’t like me. The reason wasn’t only because I refused his unsubtle advances or because Charles negated his own policy of officers not fraternizing with staff. I’d stepped on his toes with the arson case last summer by proving I was right. Edgar Pike was the horrible, murderous man I’d thought he was. I just hadn’t put together the other person involved. But neither had Leveque.
My upping him took him down a peg with the other guys at the station. Flattened his ego. After all, he was the detective.
Charles wasn’t addressing Leveque’s tone because whatever happened would become Leveque’s case. And while I didn’t hold his abilities to any professional level, Charles never once showed anything but a high regard for Leveque’s investigative talents.
“I’m not sure of the time,” I said to both. “Maybe an hour later. About one?” I had questions of my own and changed the subject from me. “Did the same person who broke into the store do this?”
“Maybe you can tell us,” Charles said. He began to back-step into the kitchen.
Leveque stopped me from following him. “Why couldn’t you get in?”
Did he think I was lying? Did he think I came into my own place, tossed it, just to ruin his day? Yeah, he would. Leveque would just love to hear how my own mother locked me out of the place where I’d been living.
I told Charles, “The locks had been changed.”
Leveque’s next question dumbfounded me. “If you couldn’t get in, then how did he get in?”
My eyes went again to the dark red tracks. He wasn’t talking about Bacardi.
At that very moment Dale Buck, coroner for Frytown, came out of the kitchen. Leveque and Charles went over to him. I caught fragments of their conversation, “lividity,” “six to eight hours.”
“I’ll walk you out, Dale.” Charles gave me a “don’t worry” smile and said to Leveque. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”
My security blanket was being led away.
As soon as Charles was gone, Leveque moved purposefully back to me. “So far, nothing you’re saying is adding up? You’d better start explaining, and fast.” He headed inside the kitchen, paused, staring at me as if waiting for me to follow him, and then moved to the side of the doorway as my invitation.
I choked seeing the dark tracks on the carpet transform into a bright red on the white linoleum floor where lay a man’s lifeless body. His eyes bulged, mouth open. His tawny brown hair matted wet and red, darker on the back of his head. And something else, in his hair and in the puddle where his head lay, a grey curdled matter.
“I’m going to be sick.” My legs went limp. My stomach did a loop-t-loop and fell to my bowels. I retched.
“Don’t you dare puke on my crime scene.” Leveque jerked me upright. He pointed. “Who is this?”
He was still wearing the blue flannel jacket. Keds.
“Kenny.”
“Do you have a last name?”
“Liky.”
“You know him?”
Again, my stomach looped. I turned my head away but not without catching sight of the red paw prints moving across the white linoleum floor to an upturned food bowl, kibble scattered.
Leveque stood inches from my ear. “Where have you been in the last six hours?”
“Get out of the way.” I pushed him aside.
I ran into the bathroom. Having not eaten for over almost twenty-four hours, there was little in my stomach. I heaved, retched yellow phlegm.
Someone squeezed my shoulders. Rubbed. “Are you all right, Lillian?” It was Nelly.
“No.” I was suddenly cold. “Yes.” Freezing.
“Is he a friend of yours? We found him when we got here this morning.” She got no further in her explanation.
“Get it together, Lillian,” Leveque ordered.
I heaved again. Laid my head on the toilet seat and glanced back finding Leveque squared in the doorway. His curly hair was longer than regulation, the back coming just short of his jacket collar, but Detective Jacque Leveque didn’t always hold to the rules. His voice lowered, yet still a hint of a growl. “Tell me again, where you were?”
Surely he didn’t think I’d done this. “I told you. I was sleeping in my car.”
I went to get up, and as I did, the image of Kenny flashed in my mind, and again my legs weakened. But I was damned if I was going to sit at a toilet bowl with Leveque bearing over me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Nelly asked.
No, I wasn’t sure. I nodded. “Thanks, Nelly.”
At her leaving, I took a deep breath. Steadied myself. I moved over towards when Leveque stood, saying calmly, rationally, “The locks had been changed, so I slept out in the garage in my car.”
I’m not sure it was the confident tone of my voice or my breath that made him take two steps back. I also didn’t care which. “When the sirens woke me, I thought something happened to my mother. She has a weak heart.”
He spat back, “Why did you think your mother would be here?”
I returned his irritable glare, hoping mine projected the same annoyed countenance. “Dahlia’s as bullheaded as they get. She got it into her mind that she was good as new. She thinks she’s moving back in.”
He rubbed his forehead, moving his fingers through his dark curls. He glanced over his shoulder toward the living room, then asked, “That still doesn’t explain why would she have changed the locks.”
“Exactly.” Point made.
He shook his head, stepped into the corridor. I took the opportunity to move past him. “Has anyone seen my cat?”
“Miner,” Leveque barked, following me. “Check the parking structure. Find Lillian’s junk of a car. No one’s to go near it until forensics gets here. And I want the entire area taped off, both parking structure and entrances. No one comes or leaves without being escorted until the investigation’s finished.”
Without losing a measured beat, he returned his agitation back to me. His voice dripping with sarcasm. “You want me to believe this story?”
“I don’t care what you believe, Leveque. Ask Garth. He saw me coming from that direction.”
He ignored the suggestion. “Can you explain then why the door wasn’t locked when your mother and Ms. Crow got here? They stated the door was open.”
What was he implying? I made a logical guess. “Someone broke in.”
“No signs of a break-in,” he returned.
I searched for Dahlia, finding her in the same place as when I first entered, only this time, she sat a little higher in her chair, intrigued with the drama going on around her.
As if she’d been given her cue, she called for Nelly’s assistance. Nelly and she exchanged words. Nelly shook her head. Dahlia put her hands to the chair’s wheels and began to move forward. Knowing she was probably incapable of stopping her, Nelly got behind her chair and maneuvered it through the scatter on the floor.
As soon as she was close, I directed Dahlia to tell Leveque she’d changed the locks so I couldn’t get in. If Leveque was ridiculous enough to believe I had something to do with Kenny’s death, I needed to set him straight.
He respectfully squatted next to Dahlia’s wheelchair so he could be on an equal eye level. His voice changed to a softened, subdued tone. “You must be very upset by all of this, Mrs. Dove, but it would be helpful if you can confirm whether your daughter had access to this condo between the hours of ten last night and eight this morning. I would also like you to reconfirm the door was open when you arrived.”
She tilted her head slightly, eyes cowed, and in a small, quiet voice, she said, “I never saw someone dead before.” She grimaced. “Except for my husband, of course.”
Dahlia was a little bothered about anything in life. And why would she bring my father into the conversation? She made it sound as if he’d been found in a comparable situation. My father died in a hospital from cirrhosis of the liver.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Leveque quickly apologized. Dahlia gave him such a feeble, hurt, grieving expression, anyone watching would think she was a vulnerable widow. “If I can, I have a couple more questions for you, and then you can return with Ms. Crow back to the home.”
She blinked. “Home?” Her expression soured. She pursed her lips. “I am at home.”
Leveque said patiently, “I meant, I’ll let you go back to where you’ve been living. You won’t want to stay here. Not after this.” He reached out and put his hand on top of hers.
The move might have been received as a sign of sympathetic affection. By anyone other than Dahlia.
She jerked her hand out from beneath his. “Don’t be telling me what I want and what I don’t want. I have a mind of my own.”
“Of course you do.” Leveque looked quizzically to Nelly, as if not understanding how he’d warranted the reaction.
Nelly immediately tried to appease both parties. “The police are not going to let you move back in now, Dahlia. Not until they figure out what happened.”
Dahlia’s lips smacked together.
“That’s what I meant,” Leveque corrected himself, seeming grateful for having himself clarified. “The investigation is going to take a couple of days. And you’ll want to have a cleaning company come in.” He paused, looked helplessly to Nelly as if seeking whether his mentioning the cleaning of the kitchen might have been too much for her elderly charge.
Again Nelly offered her assistance by suggesting to Dahlia how she would bring her back to the condo as soon as the police gave word. But I knew Nelly. She was only making the gesture as a means of getting Dahlia to leave. When they got back to Oaks, Nelly would use what happened as reasoning why it wasn’t safe for Dahlia to come back to the condo to live. She’d remind Dahlia how lucky she was that the person hadn’t broken in while she was living by herself. And, how she needed to stay living where she was.
Leveque must have felt he was on safer ground. “Can you affirm your daughter hasn’t been able to get into the condo?”
Single-minded, Dahlia grabbed both arms of her chair. “I’m going to stay right here.”
As if she had senior dementia, he hinted again at what was in the kitchen. “You won’t be able to take possession until the investigation is closed. That will be at least a couple of days.”
“Don’t be telling me what I can and cannot do.” She twisted around. “Nelly, get a mop. We’ll do some cleaning up right now.” She almost knocked Leveque on his butt as she grabbed her wheels and rolled in my direction, stopping right in front of me. “Lillian?” She scooted to the edge of her chair as if she was going to stand, put her hands on her knees, pushing herself up slightly, almost rising out, as she said, “What did you do?”
“Where the hell was she?” His voice hit me, and I twisted around at its impact. Leveque charged out of the kitchen. Wearing jeans, a shirt, and a leather jacket, his badge was clipped noticeably to his shirt.
I disregarded him, dark-cherry-colored tracks on the carpet taking my notice. They came from the kitchen. They looked like thin wheels. Dahlia? Wheelchair? Had she done something to Bacardi? She hated cats. Any animals for that matter. She never allowed us kids pets, said she didn’t need another mouth to feed.
“Where were you?” he barked.
Why was he barking at me? What the hell had gone on here?
But paramedics wouldn’t be called for a cat. Had someone thought she’d run over me?
In a haze of trying to connect the dots with all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, I gave him a truthful answer. “I was asleep in my car.”
Charles came out of the kitchen. “Slept in your car? I dropped you off last night at about midnight. Why were you in your car?” He was dressed in uniform and was wearing disposable gloves. His voice was insistent, but his tone was even-keeled.
I glanced at Leveque’s hands. He was also wearing gloves.
“Lil,” Charles called, grabbing my attention again. “I thought you came home to go to bed.”
Davenport, blackmail, Candlelight, Kenny, Cressie dead? Charles, paramedics. Dahlia, alive? Empty gurney. Leveque,? APB? No connections. My mind was spinning.
While Charles and I have a “past”, however short, he keeps business and personal separate. “I was going to,” I began explaining, “but I figured I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I went back to the store to start cleaning up.”
“That still doesn’t explain sleeping in your car?” Leveque snapped.
Okay, I wasn’t appreciating Leveque’s adversity. After all, why was he so wound up? It wasn’t his store that had been ransacked. His condo that had been torn up. His mother was a pain in the backside.
I ignored him and said to Charles, “I tried to clean up, but it was too hard. Everything’s ruined. So I came back, and I was going to go to bed and try to face it all later. But I couldn’t get in.”
“What time was that?” Charles questioned.
At the same time, Leveque growled, “You expect us to believe that?”
Leveque might be wearing a shield, but his tone definitely told everyone within hearing distance that he didn’t like me. The reason wasn’t only because I refused his unsubtle advances or because Charles negated his own policy of officers not fraternizing with staff. I’d stepped on his toes with the arson case last summer by proving I was right. Edgar Pike was the horrible, murderous man I’d thought he was. I just hadn’t put together the other person involved. But neither had Leveque.
My upping him took him down a peg with the other guys at the station. Flattened his ego. After all, he was the detective.
Charles wasn’t addressing Leveque’s tone because whatever happened would become Leveque’s case. And while I didn’t hold his abilities to any professional level, Charles never once showed anything but a high regard for Leveque’s investigative talents.
“I’m not sure of the time,” I said to both. “Maybe an hour later. About one?” I had questions of my own and changed the subject from me. “Did the same person who broke into the store do this?”
“Maybe you can tell us,” Charles said. He began to back-step into the kitchen.
Leveque stopped me from following him. “Why couldn’t you get in?”
Did he think I was lying? Did he think I came into my own place, tossed it, just to ruin his day? Yeah, he would. Leveque would just love to hear how my own mother locked me out of the place where I’d been living.
I told Charles, “The locks had been changed.”
Leveque’s next question dumbfounded me. “If you couldn’t get in, then how did he get in?”
My eyes went again to the dark red tracks. He wasn’t talking about Bacardi.
At that very moment Dale Buck, coroner for Frytown, came out of the kitchen. Leveque and Charles went over to him. I caught fragments of their conversation, “lividity,” “six to eight hours.”
“I’ll walk you out, Dale.” Charles gave me a “don’t worry” smile and said to Leveque. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”
My security blanket was being led away.
As soon as Charles was gone, Leveque moved purposefully back to me. “So far, nothing you’re saying is adding up? You’d better start explaining, and fast.” He headed inside the kitchen, paused, staring at me as if waiting for me to follow him, and then moved to the side of the doorway as my invitation.
I choked seeing the dark tracks on the carpet transform into a bright red on the white linoleum floor where lay a man’s lifeless body. His eyes bulged, mouth open. His tawny brown hair matted wet and red, darker on the back of his head. And something else, in his hair and in the puddle where his head lay, a grey curdled matter.
“I’m going to be sick.” My legs went limp. My stomach did a loop-t-loop and fell to my bowels. I retched.
“Don’t you dare puke on my crime scene.” Leveque jerked me upright. He pointed. “Who is this?”
He was still wearing the blue flannel jacket. Keds.
“Kenny.”
“Do you have a last name?”
“Liky.”
“You know him?”
Again, my stomach looped. I turned my head away but not without catching sight of the red paw prints moving across the white linoleum floor to an upturned food bowl, kibble scattered.
Leveque stood inches from my ear. “Where have you been in the last six hours?”
“Get out of the way.” I pushed him aside.
I ran into the bathroom. Having not eaten for over almost twenty-four hours, there was little in my stomach. I heaved, retched yellow phlegm.
Someone squeezed my shoulders. Rubbed. “Are you all right, Lillian?” It was Nelly.
“No.” I was suddenly cold. “Yes.” Freezing.
“Is he a friend of yours? We found him when we got here this morning.” She got no further in her explanation.
“Get it together, Lillian,” Leveque ordered.
I heaved again. Laid my head on the toilet seat and glanced back finding Leveque squared in the doorway. His curly hair was longer than regulation, the back coming just short of his jacket collar, but Detective Jacque Leveque didn’t always hold to the rules. His voice lowered, yet still a hint of a growl. “Tell me again, where you were?”
Surely he didn’t think I’d done this. “I told you. I was sleeping in my car.”
I went to get up, and as I did, the image of Kenny flashed in my mind, and again my legs weakened. But I was damned if I was going to sit at a toilet bowl with Leveque bearing over me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Nelly asked.
No, I wasn’t sure. I nodded. “Thanks, Nelly.”
At her leaving, I took a deep breath. Steadied myself. I moved over towards when Leveque stood, saying calmly, rationally, “The locks had been changed, so I slept out in the garage in my car.”
I’m not sure it was the confident tone of my voice or my breath that made him take two steps back. I also didn’t care which. “When the sirens woke me, I thought something happened to my mother. She has a weak heart.”
He spat back, “Why did you think your mother would be here?”
I returned his irritable glare, hoping mine projected the same annoyed countenance. “Dahlia’s as bullheaded as they get. She got it into her mind that she was good as new. She thinks she’s moving back in.”
He rubbed his forehead, moving his fingers through his dark curls. He glanced over his shoulder toward the living room, then asked, “That still doesn’t explain why would she have changed the locks.”
“Exactly.” Point made.
He shook his head, stepped into the corridor. I took the opportunity to move past him. “Has anyone seen my cat?”
“Miner,” Leveque barked, following me. “Check the parking structure. Find Lillian’s junk of a car. No one’s to go near it until forensics gets here. And I want the entire area taped off, both parking structure and entrances. No one comes or leaves without being escorted until the investigation’s finished.”
Without losing a measured beat, he returned his agitation back to me. His voice dripping with sarcasm. “You want me to believe this story?”
“I don’t care what you believe, Leveque. Ask Garth. He saw me coming from that direction.”
He ignored the suggestion. “Can you explain then why the door wasn’t locked when your mother and Ms. Crow got here? They stated the door was open.”
What was he implying? I made a logical guess. “Someone broke in.”
“No signs of a break-in,” he returned.
I searched for Dahlia, finding her in the same place as when I first entered, only this time, she sat a little higher in her chair, intrigued with the drama going on around her.
As if she’d been given her cue, she called for Nelly’s assistance. Nelly and she exchanged words. Nelly shook her head. Dahlia put her hands to the chair’s wheels and began to move forward. Knowing she was probably incapable of stopping her, Nelly got behind her chair and maneuvered it through the scatter on the floor.
As soon as she was close, I directed Dahlia to tell Leveque she’d changed the locks so I couldn’t get in. If Leveque was ridiculous enough to believe I had something to do with Kenny’s death, I needed to set him straight.
He respectfully squatted next to Dahlia’s wheelchair so he could be on an equal eye level. His voice changed to a softened, subdued tone. “You must be very upset by all of this, Mrs. Dove, but it would be helpful if you can confirm whether your daughter had access to this condo between the hours of ten last night and eight this morning. I would also like you to reconfirm the door was open when you arrived.”
She tilted her head slightly, eyes cowed, and in a small, quiet voice, she said, “I never saw someone dead before.” She grimaced. “Except for my husband, of course.”
Dahlia was a little bothered about anything in life. And why would she bring my father into the conversation? She made it sound as if he’d been found in a comparable situation. My father died in a hospital from cirrhosis of the liver.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Leveque quickly apologized. Dahlia gave him such a feeble, hurt, grieving expression, anyone watching would think she was a vulnerable widow. “If I can, I have a couple more questions for you, and then you can return with Ms. Crow back to the home.”
She blinked. “Home?” Her expression soured. She pursed her lips. “I am at home.”
Leveque said patiently, “I meant, I’ll let you go back to where you’ve been living. You won’t want to stay here. Not after this.” He reached out and put his hand on top of hers.
The move might have been received as a sign of sympathetic affection. By anyone other than Dahlia.
She jerked her hand out from beneath his. “Don’t be telling me what I want and what I don’t want. I have a mind of my own.”
“Of course you do.” Leveque looked quizzically to Nelly, as if not understanding how he’d warranted the reaction.
Nelly immediately tried to appease both parties. “The police are not going to let you move back in now, Dahlia. Not until they figure out what happened.”
Dahlia’s lips smacked together.
“That’s what I meant,” Leveque corrected himself, seeming grateful for having himself clarified. “The investigation is going to take a couple of days. And you’ll want to have a cleaning company come in.” He paused, looked helplessly to Nelly as if seeking whether his mentioning the cleaning of the kitchen might have been too much for her elderly charge.
Again Nelly offered her assistance by suggesting to Dahlia how she would bring her back to the condo as soon as the police gave word. But I knew Nelly. She was only making the gesture as a means of getting Dahlia to leave. When they got back to Oaks, Nelly would use what happened as reasoning why it wasn’t safe for Dahlia to come back to the condo to live. She’d remind Dahlia how lucky she was that the person hadn’t broken in while she was living by herself. And, how she needed to stay living where she was.
Leveque must have felt he was on safer ground. “Can you affirm your daughter hasn’t been able to get into the condo?”
Single-minded, Dahlia grabbed both arms of her chair. “I’m going to stay right here.”
As if she had senior dementia, he hinted again at what was in the kitchen. “You won’t be able to take possession until the investigation is closed. That will be at least a couple of days.”
“Don’t be telling me what I can and cannot do.” She twisted around. “Nelly, get a mop. We’ll do some cleaning up right now.” She almost knocked Leveque on his butt as she grabbed her wheels and rolled in my direction, stopping right in front of me. “Lillian?” She scooted to the edge of her chair as if she was going to stand, put her hands on her knees, pushing herself up slightly, almost rising out, as she said, “What did you do?”