Patti Standard - His Perfect Family

Dear God. She’d had no idea.... “We’ll talk about this later, okay?” Adrianne flicked an eye toward Cutter, who’d crossed his arms over his chest and watched them all from under those hooded eyes, unnaturally still and tense. “Now, why don’t you —”

“No. I want to know what that man was getting at. He said —”

“Lisa!” Blanche’s voice was shrill, matriarch in outrage, center stage. “This is neither the time nor the place to be discussing such things.”

Lisa glared at her grandmother, mutinous. She started to protest, then snapped her mouth shut Her shoulders slumped. “No, it never is, is it?” She spun on her heel and stomped from the room.

Cutter saw the way the color had drained from Adrianne’s face at the mention of the money. She was still pale, standing with a pan of lasagna clutched in her hands.

“Adrianne. Darling.” Blanche reached for her. “I just meant —”

“Not now with the theatrics, Mother,” Adrianne said. She pulled away from the offered hand to open the oven door and slide the casserole onto a rack.

Blanche’s voice lowered to a barely discernible murmur, her head bowed close to her daughter’s, and Cutter slipped from the room, following Lisa upstairs.

He found her at the computer, strawberry blond hair swinging forward to block her face from view. He rapped at the open door with a knuckle.

“Lisa? I need to know what height you want the counter on the vanity.”

Her stubby fingers worked the mouse like a virtuoso, and brightly colored images flashed across the screen. She shrugged, not looking up. “I don’t care. Whatever you want.”

“Look, this is your bathroom.” He stayed by the door, giving her space. “Some people like the counter a little higher so they don’t have to bend over so far — but it’s whatever you want.”

“Yeah, whatever I want. What a joke.” She swiveled her chair around to face him, flipping her hair back with an impatient motion. “You know what I want?”

“No.”

“Well, neither do I.”

Her smile was bitter; his was gentle. “That’s typical for your age.”

“Nothing about me is typical.”

He thought that was probably true.

“I mean, how many girls do you know who have an embezzler for a father?”

She glared at him defiantly, but he could see the hurt—and the fear. Her freckles stood out in blotchy spots, and her eyes were beginning to redden from held-in tears. He’d have to be very careful. She wasn’t the mark—she was a child. “What are you saying, Lisa?”

“Hey, that man wasn’t exactly subtle. He asked if I’d gotten any new clothes or expensive stuff lately. Asked me if I’d seen my father’s briefcase the day he died. Stuff like that.” She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “It didn’t take a genius to figure out he thought Dad had ripped off this client.”

Cutter didn’t have to ask for a description of the man who’d questioned her. Someday — soon — he was going to choke the very life out of Jonathon Round. He said, “And what do you think?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know. Daddy was gone so much....” Tears welled up and spilled over. “You know, sometimes I can’t even remember what he looked like. He’s only been dead six months, and sometimes it’s like he was never here at all.”

He didn’t go to her. He was a stranger. He had no comfort to give her. “I think I’ll make that counter a little higher.”

Lisa nodded. “Okay.” She twisted her chair back to face the computer screen, and her fingers began to move again, holding on to the mouse like a lifelike.

He paused on the way downstairs. The house was arranged so he could stand out of sight on the stairs yet still hear every word coming from the kitchen.

Blanche was saying, “This is going to be so hard—raising Lisa by yourself. At least you were out of high school before your father died. I don’t know what I would have done without him all those years when you were growing up.”

“I don’t remember him being a very involved parent,” Adrianne said dryly.

Blanche immediately protested. “Maybe not in the touchy-feely way men are supposed to behave today, but he always provided for us. He was a good man. A good father.”

A drawer was shoved in place, a sharp crack of wood slamming against wood. “He was a drunk.”

There was a long silence, and Cutter shifted uneasily on the stairs.

“Well, I’m going to be late for supper if I don’t get going.” Blanche’s voice was crisp and businesslike. “I don’t want to keep Samuel waiting. We do a lot of work with his title company.”

“All right, Mother.” Adrianne sounded resigned, as if she’d expected Blanche’s nonresponse. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Cutter made a show of coming down the remaining stairs, turning the corner into the kitchen just as Blanche headed toward the front door.

“Goodbye, Mrs. Munro.”

She nodded and smiled pleasantly, her heels clicking briskly across the vinyl entryway. Lord, that was one tough cookie, he thought as she let herself out. A drunken husband, an embezzling son-in-law, yet not a hair out of place. Reality wasn’t going to come along and mess up her plans. No sir.

Adrianne was another matter. She stood at the counter, a knife poised over the now frosted cake. Yet she made no move. Her back was stiff with tension, and as he came quietly up behind her, he could see her knuckles were white around the metal handle.

He reached out and laid a hand on the back of her neck. Little wisps trailed from the knot of hair on top of her head and curled over his fingers. Internal alarms rang a warning, told him to back off, hands to himself. But her skin was soft, smooth and warm, and he told himself this was all part of the job, gaining her trust, working the mark. “What is it?” he asked, keeping his voice soft, soothing.

For a moment, it seemed as if she pressed back, toward the contact, but then she shifted imperceptibly away, and he dropped his hand.

“It’s nothing, really.” She sliced into the cake. “It’s just Mother and I have such different memories of some things. It’s weird. I was there, she was there, yet it’s like we were in one of those Star Trek parallel universes or something....” She gave a little allover shake. “Anyway, why don’t you have a piece of cake with me? Comfort food.” She reached into the cupboard above her head and took down two plates. “We can spoil our appetites together.”

He took the plate she handed him with a huge piece of chocolate cake leaning in the center, and sat down at the table. If she knew anything about the money, he had to take advantage of these opportunities to talk with her. But if she was going to ply him with food every time, he’d be loosening his tool belt a notch by the time he found it. And he damn well better start thinking with what was above that belt, not below it.

Adrianne sat across from him and picked up her fork. She poked absently at the frosting with the tines, marring its smooth surface with four evenly spaced creases. “I guess you’re wondering what that was all about—with Lisa, I mean.”

“It’s really none of my business. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Tell ’em not to talk, and most people couldn’t wait to start. He tried to ignore the guilty twinge in his gut as she raised those fragile, golden brown eyes to his.

“It’s all blown over now, thank God,” she said. “It seems one of Harvey’s clients had some money siphoned from an account, twenty-five thousand dollars, actually, and naturally they questioned everybody they could think of. Since they couldn’t ask Harvey, they had to ask me, of course, but how could I help? Harvey was a one-man office — he didn’t even have a secretary. He kept his own books, made his own appointments, filed his own files....”