Page 66 of Deadly Little Scandals
“You didn’t grow up in the city,” came the reply. “Accent gives you away. You have to work to lose it, and you haven’t.”
Neither had she.
“I don’t mean to be forward,” Boone said politely, “but holy shizzballs, this was not how I pictured this conversation going.”
The doppelgänger across from us stared at him. Hard. Hard enough that the dog at her feet jumped up, ears back, and gave a token growl.
“Boone’s socially awkward,” Sadie-Grace said helpfully. “It’s part of his charm.”
The old woman snorted, and the dog’s ears came back up. With one glance back at his mistress, he took a few steps forward and flopped down at Boone’s feet, exposing his belly. Boone gave it a scratch.
“Don’t go getting a big head,” one of the gun-toting women told Boone. “He’s a softy. Loves everyone.”
“And very especially me,” Boone added.
“Last name,” the woman in charge barked. It took me a minute to realize that she was talking about Boone—asking about him.
“His last name is Mason,” I answered, but then I got a suspicion about what she was really asking. “His grandfather is Davis Ames.”
“Thought so,” came the reply. “Davey was always the same way—skinny as hell, always tripping over his tongue or his feet.”
“Are we talking about the same man?” Boone asked, suddenly serious. “The single scariest, most demanding individual to ever walk this planet?”
The woman let out a cackle of laughter. “I guess we all change.” She paused. “Davey changed more than most, after my sister left him high and dry to chase after that rich grandfather of yours.”
That part, clearly, was addressed to me.
“He wasn’t the only one she left high and dry,” Sadie-Grace said suddenly, her voice earnest and sympathetic. “Was he?”
It was hard, once you knew Sadie-Grace, to hold anything she said against her. Her intentions were always good, and she was the kind of empathetic that had her crying at coffee commercials.
But this woman didn’t know that, and despite the fact that she had Lillian’s face—give or take some wear and tear—the sound of another round of earsplitting screams reminded me that Boone, Sadie-Grace, and I were in a precarious position.
“Don’t you go feeling sorry for me, girlie,” my great-aunt ordered Sadie-Grace. “I’m the one who told my sister to stop coming around here. I’m nobody’s charity case, least of all hers.”
Another scream.
“We should go,” I said.
“You shouldn’t have come here in the first place,” the woman countered. “Now I have to deal withthis.”
“Thisas in a trio of promising young people with an impeccable sense of discretion?” Boone asked hopefully.
“This as inus,” I corrected. I didn’t have time to consider my next move as carefully as I would have liked. “Sadie-Grace’s stepmother is the one in there with your Beth.” That, at the very least, complicated the calculation on their end. “We already knew that Greer wasn’t actually pregnant, and we’re not the only ones who know that.”
“Andsheinsisted on secrecy fromus,” one of the gun women muttered.
“Hush.” The doppelgänger’s tone was mild, but the way that one word sucked the oxygen out of the air told me that she was the kind of dangerous I’d once attributed to Davis Ames.
“What do you propose we do about all of this?” That question, just as mild, was addressed to me.
“Nothing,” I told her. “This is Greer’s problem, not yours. Let her deal with it.”
“It’s not that I don’t want a little brother,” Sadie-Grace blurted out, one of her feet starting to beat back and forth around her other ankle. “I do. I really,reallydo. I just want Greer to tell Daddy that the baby’s adopted, because if she doesn’t, I might have to, and if I’m the one who tells him, he might not ever forgive me, and he might not ever forgive her, and, worse, he might not go through with the adoption at all.”
It’s not an adoption,I thought. Adoptions—legal ones—went through the state. Adoptions didn’t inspire the parties peripherally involved to press a shotgun into the small of a potential witness’s back.
“It’s illegal for Greer to pay Beth for her baby,” I said, knowing the risk as I said it. “Paying you on a purportedly unrelated matter is more of a gray area.” I let that sink in. “Does Beth evenwantto give up her baby?”
