Bouquet of Lies (5 page)

“You’re as bad as your sister.” He took a couple of steps closer. Darla winced at his breath. “You think you can do anything you please.” His face was red and twisted. His kind of breakfast had left the eyes bloodshot. Years of it had the nose verging on W. C. Fields bulbous. He licked his lips.

“She wants to help me.” Darla’s voice verged toward a whisper.

“Help herself to your money! Help you chase phantoms like all the ress over the years. I won’t have it. Your mother’s dead. Get that through your sthick skull.”

Darla’s chest heaved. She was angry and scared at the same time. Her mother was alive. She’d seen her and the Reverend Irene backed her up. Before she could stop herself, she shouted at the man who frightened her more than anything in this world. “She’s not dead! I’ve seen her.”

“Aaugh!” He pounded the tip of his cane on the floor with as much strength as his alcohol-bloated body could muster. “You’re still crazy. I’ve a good mind to ship you back to that hospital. Don’t think I won’t.”

Tears broke free and flowed down Darla’s cheeks. She ran past the old man, bumping his shoulder, spilling his drink. She heard him call as she ran up the stairs, “Crazy and stupid, that’s what you are!”

Anger heated Jake’s blood as he stood in the foyer processing the scene he’d just witnessed. With jaw set, his arms hung ever so slightly away from his torso as if he might spring into action and grab Edward by the throat at any second. Darla had raced past so fast, she hadn’t even noticed him.

Edward grumbled words impossible to make out as he hobbled forward, out of the sitting room.

“Hey, slimeball!” Jake’s voice cut the air like a razor.

Edward froze and nearly fell over.

Jake hated this old man like nobody’s business. He’d hated him when he was a child and he hated him now. He hated him for picking on Darla because she was too weak to defend herself. He hated him because it seemed his only mission in life was to make other people miserable. He hated him on general principle.

“Still the same asshole you ever were.” Jake stepped forward.

Edward found his tongue. “Who the devil are you?” He lifted his cane as if he might strike Jake on the head.

Jake snatched it away. “I’m sure that addled, alcoholic brain of yours will figure it out sooner or later. Tell Harper the invoice for the Bentley is in the kitchen. You can also tell him I could have tuned up that car for a quarter the price.”

He tossed the cane at Edward who was too slow to catch it. The silver-tipped stick clattered on the marble floor.

“Pick that up, grease monkey!” Edward demanded.

“Pick it up yourself.” Jake headed out, then stopped. He knew things about the family he probably wasn’t supposed to know. He didn’t want to get his father in trouble for spilling secrets, but he wanted to twist the knife into the old bastard a bit more.

The trusts set up for Darla and Lacey were common knowledge. But was the situation with the house? Edward’s crazy mother had cut her own son out of her will. The house belonged only to Harper, Lacey, and Darla.

Jake nabbed the cane from the floor before Edward’s bent body and shaky hands could take it. Pressing the silver tip to Edward’s shoulder he helped the old man stand erect.

“If something happened to Harper, what do you think would happen to you? Ever consider that? The way you treat your granddaughters, they have every reason to throw you out of this place. And you know what? I’d help convince them they should.”

He shoved the cane into Edward’s hands and was nearly outside before he heard the old man yell: “You come in my house and make threats against my family! I’ll talk to my son about you. He’ll see you’re fired from that garage.”

Lacey sat in the purring Spyder, paused a third of the way up the drive. The movie director had released the extras early and she’d driven straight home. The sight of an unfamiliar car in front of the house had caught her attention, and when she noticed a woman dressed in a kaftan eavesdropping at the front door, she stopped to watch. After a couple of minutes the strange woman got in her car and drove away.

Darla’s latest scam-artist acquaintance,
Lacey thought. She drummed her nails on the steering wheel. Sneaking around, listening at key holes. That’s exactly how a phony psychic would acquire information.

Lacey zoomed into the motor court and found Jake wiping down a custom Harley. It had to be his since no one in the family owned one. She forgot about the phony psychic.

Jake paused to yank off his shirt and returned to swabbing the blue and silver machine. His back and forehead gleamed with moisture. Lacey hopped out of the Spyder and grabbed one of the Harley’s handlebars.

“Nice bike. How long you had it?”

“A while.” He didn’t even look at her.

“Getting it all spruced up. Going somewhere?” She put a hand on her waist and leaned her hips forward.

“Yeah. Probably for good.”

Lacey frowned. “You just got here.”

“Well. It won’t be by choice.” He wiped his brow with the reverse of his hand and stepped back to admire the polished bike.

“Mind explaining that?”

He shoved the rag into a back pocket of his jeans. “I didn’t take my own advice.”

“That’s a hint, not an explanation.”

He turned toward her. “You know. That grandfather of yours is a piece of work.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I always told Darla to ignore him.”

“Good advice. What’d he do now?”

“Chased some friend of your sister’s from the house.”

Darla didn’t have friends. Jake had to be talking about the psychic. For once Edward had done something she approved of. “I would have chased her away myself.”

“Great. But it’s not the friend I care about. It’s Darla. Edward started in on her and I may have over reacted.”

It was still there. That deep protective streak he had toward her sister. She could picture it now. Jake as a kid bristling whenever Edward zapped Darla with his acid tongue.

Jake raked his long hair out of his face. “It’s not even that. It’s what I said. He’ll talk to your dad. I don’t care about me, but my pop. He may be in hot water.”

“Are you kidding?” Laced waved a hand. “Harper doesn’t listen to Edward.”

“Yeah? Because my pop’ll be upset if I get kicked out of here. We’re just now getting back on track.”

“You weren’t on track?”

“Eh, you know. Fathers and sons. Teenage years. Distance.”

Lacey raised an eyebrow.

He frowned. “I was mad. Mom took me out of state and he let it happen.”

“That doesn’t sound right.”

Jake shrugged. “Pop said he fought it. That she had some judge on her side. Maybe it’s true.”

“I’d believe him.”

“I guess I do.” He nodded and after a moment the twinkle in his eye came back. “I should take a lesson from the Lacey Bouquet playbook. Don’t worry about things until they happen.”

She grinned. “I thought you never listened to me.”

“I didn’t. Don’t.” He smiled.

Lacey laughed, then stepped closer and sloughed a bead of sweat from his chest. “So what’s this awful thing you said to Edward?”

Jake frowned. “It doesn’t matter. He thought I threatened him. Maybe I did.” He looked Lacey squarely in the eye. “You’d think someone would have punched that bastard’s lights out by now. He hasn’t changed a bit.”

“Not one iota.”

He looked up at the house. Lacey followed his line of vision and caught a glimpse of Darla watching from the window before she jerked out of sight.

“Still her room, huh?” Jake said.

“Still her room.”

“Won’t come down and say hi?”

“She’s like Rapunzel. Only of her own making.”

His brow creased. “Maybe you should check on her. She was pretty upset.”

Lacey nodded. She would. She always did.

Six

LACEY TAPPED ON Darla’s door and entered without waiting for a reply. She found her sister curled up on the bed, her back to the door, a novel in the crook of her arm. The novel was quickly pulled into a position for reading.

Lacey sat on the bed. “I heard about what happened.”

Darla pretended to read. Lacey snatched the book away. Darla flipped around so they were facing each other. “Give it back.”

“I’m talking to you.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Since when?”

“Since now. I’m reading.”

This was an odd twist. Darla always wanted to talk to her. “You can go back to it when I leave.”

Darla’s face was impassive. Lacey pressed on. “We saw you in the window. Me and Jake.” Darla blushed tomato red. She embarrassed so easily. “He was in the house today and saw Edward chase your psychic out the door.”

“She’s a friend!”

“Darla, wake up. You’ve been running to psychics since you were twelve. They all tell you what you want to hear.”

“They believe me. They support me. They know what’s true.”

“You’re obsessed.”

“I’m not!”

Lacey grabbed Darla’s arms and managed to slide up the sleeves of the over blouse so the inside of her forearms were visible. Ugly, pink, telltale scars marred the skin from the wrists to a third of the way up the arms. “Then what do you call this? You get tired of waiting and decide if Mother won’t come to you, you’ll go to her.”

Darla pulled away and placed her arms behind her back where Lacey couldn’t get at them. “That was two years ago.”

“Not quite.”

“It was before I knew better. Before I realized she was alive. Mom
is
coming to see me again. She is! She came before.”

“You were a child and it was a dream.”

“I was wide awake and so were you. I don’t know why you deny it.”

“Darla, stop. She’s dead.”

They were both silent while Lacey calmed down.

Darla looked as delicate as a pale, pastel flower. Blond-white hair. Fair skin. Ice-green eyes. She was five feet five inches tall and probably weighed all of a hundred pounds. She’d been born too delicate for the world, too fragile for a grandparent like Edward. Was it any wonder she wanted so desperately to believe their mother was alive?

“I’m sorry,” Lacey said. “Of course, I’ve dreamed about Mom too. But I don’t mix fact with fiction.”

“Neither do I.” Darla crossed her arms in front of her.

“Have you ever thought of this? If Mom is alive, that means she abandoned us and maybe that’s worse?”

Darla was quiet for a long moment and then she murmured, “If Mother’s alive then it isn’t my fault.”

“Nothing’s your fault.”

“Grandfather says it is.”

“Edward’s an ass.”

Darla stared at the bedspread.

Lacey patted her sister’s hands. “I just came in to check on you. Jake said you were pretty upset.”

“Is he your boyfriend now?”

“What? No!”

“You’re always talking to him.”

“He just got here and I’ve talked to him twice. He’d talk to you if you’d go say hi.”

Darla’s body stiffened and she reddened again. “I will when I get a chance.”

“What are you scared of? He’s a friend. Go talk to him.”

Darla raised her eyes, a steeliness in her gaze that was new. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Lacey stood up. “I wasn’t. Do what you want.”

“You’re always telling me what to do. But you don’t do it for me. You do it for you.”

“Explain that to me.”

“I don’t have to.”

Lacey nodded and moved to the door. As sisters they’d disagreed, but not like this. How long had this resentment been brewing in her mixed-up head?

Darla narrowed her eyes. “And I’m not moving out of the house with you either.”

That had always been iffy. But to hear her say it with such resentment gave Lacey pause. Maybe Darla was right. Maybe she did want Darla to move with her for her good and not Darla’s. She hated living under the same roof as Edward and it was torture to be around Harper. Darla might be haunted by a dead mother, but Lacey was haunted by a father who was alive and didn’t care. She stared at her sister. She couldn’t move out and leave Darla behind. At least Edward retracted his fangs a little bit when she was around to defend her sister. What would he do to Darla’s fragile psyche if Lacey wasn’t there? A new place to live would have to wait.

“You can go now,” Darla said.

Lacey took hold of the doorknob. Darla’s new attitude made her eyes sting. She cracked the door open and spoke softly. “I won’t make you come to my party. I won’t order that costume I was going to get you.”

“No! I want to come.”

Lacey turned around. “What? You hate parties.”

Darla twisted her hair. “I feel like going. That’s all.”

“Really?” Lacey stared and Darla looked away. “Then I’ll order the costume.”