Anyone else might have added a mocking tone to it, throwing my own words back in my face. My mom simply sounded relieved.
I’d have preferred her to mock me. The relief in her voice irritated me the way the boy who sat behind me in school did when he’d put a finger less than an inch from my face and chant I’m not touching you. The temptation to deny it was almost more than I could handle.
But I didn’t want to lie to my mom as well just for spite. “There’s a lot about being a lawyer that I miss.”
That didn’t make any difference, though. I could miss it all I wanted. I’d still never be good at it. I could speak in front of a judge because he or she was a single person. As soon as you added a jury and a courtroom of spectators, though, no amount of Toastmasters and practice had been able to keep me from sounding like I had a speech impediment and a memory issue.
And a prosecutor needed to be able to speak in a crowded courtroom the same as a defense attorney.
My mom studiously avoided eye contact as if I was a feral cat that she was afraid of spooking. “They’re not all guilty, you know.”
My dad had once told me the opposite. During the case where he’d been defending my boyfriend for killing his wife, I’d confronted my dad with evidence that Peter had, in fact, killed her.
They’re always guilty, he’d said.
I’d found out since coming to Fair Haven that wasn’t true. Sometimes innocent people were accused of crimes they didn’t commit. They needed someone to protect them and advocate for them. But I couldn’t be that person any more than I could be a prosecuting attorney for the very same reasons. I couldn’t work alone. I needed someone who could eloquently argue a case in court.
My fingers ached from gripping my steering wheel. “Would you pay someone a salary to sit around and wait for the innocent ones?”
My mom didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
No one would hire someone like me. What I wanted didn’t matter. Except for the rare cases when I was able to work with the police, I didn’t have a future in the legal field.
7
When we arrived at The Sunburnt Arms the next day, Mandy’s other employees were waiting for us outside. She kept a small staff, so with Vilsack missing and presumed dead, that left three employees. If The Sunburnt Arms looked half as bad inside as Mandy described, we’d need everyone working hard to get it ready for the guests scheduled to check in tomorrow.
Mandy’s cook—who I’d learned from Mandy the night before also took care of the lawn and gardens—was a middle-aged woman who wore her long brown hair in a strict bun that always reminded me of a giant cinnamon roll stuck to the back of her head because of the way the silver streaks played through it.
She paced the porch as we came up, despite the fact that we were ten minutes ahead of when Mandy asked everyone to arrive. “At least the guests won’t be here for breakfast tomorrow,” she said without stopping her energetic march. “Based on the pictures you sent me, we’ll need to clean the whole place to meet health and safety standards.”
Not for the first time I wished for the Cavanaugh ability to arch an eyebrow on command. I looked in Mandy’s direction. “Pictures?”
The expression on her face bore a remarkable resemblance to a child who’d stolen a handful of cookies and lied about it. “I only took a few to show everyone here how much work we had.”
Show everyone else around town who asked, more likely, but it wasn’t my place to reprimand her. She wasn’t a guilty child. Her wrinkles bore testament to it.
Mandy unlocked the front door, and Susan—the cook—whisked her and my mom straight back to the kitchen. Which I couldn’t help but smirk at. My parents had a housekeeper clean their apartment. My mom hadn’t scrubbed anything in years.
The smile faded from my lips. A desire to hug my mom replaced it. We might not agree on how to run a business, but I couldn’t fault her for her work ethic. If scrubbing a floor was what it took to do our job for the police, she’d do it. Whether it was a genetic trait I’d inherited or a learned quality they’d taught me, I owed my parents a thank you for instilling the values of hard work and doing what was necessary.
Tim followed them inside and headed straight for the front desk computer. Presumably, when Mandy called each of them, she’d given them their instructions. She’d forgotten to give me mine, but first on my own to-do list was to get to know the one employee I hadn’t met yet.
Mandy’s “cleaning girl” turned out to be in her mid-twenties, maybe five years younger than me. She had a way of standing with her shoulders tucked forward that made me think she wanted to go unnoticed.
She turned to follow Tim inside. I scurried up the steps and touched her arm to get her attention.
She flinched and spun back toward me.
“I’m Nicole.” I extended my hand and almost faltered.
She’d done a good job with her makeup, but it couldn’t completely cover the long, thin double scar that ran in parallel lines down her left cheek.
I made a point of looking her in the eyes. I suspected many people had a hard time doing that rather than staring at her cheek.
She accepted my hand. Slowly. “Becky.”
Ideally, I needed to work somewhere with her or Tim long enough to be able to naturally slide Vilsack into the conversation. I motioned toward the door. “Mandy forgot to tell me where I should start. I thought you might be able to help me.”
She tucked her hair behind her right ear, but not her left, as if she wanted it to hang down and hide as much of the scar as possible. “Based on the pictures, every room’s going to need cleaning and straightening. Maybe you could start by vacuuming the lobby while I take a better look upstairs?”
Even though her voice gained a little confidence as she spoke, she still managed to turn the last part into a question.
Vacuuming in the lobby was the worst possible assignment. It wouldn’t give me a chance to talk to her or to Tim because no one would be able to hear me well enough over the noise. But if I questioned her, I had the sense she’d shut down so tightly I wouldn’t get another chance.
I smiled like a thousand-watt lightbulb. “I can do that.”
And I would…just not right away.
I waited for her to head up the stairs and then beelined for the janitor’s closet under the stairs that I was a little too familiar with from my earlier stay here.
It wasn’t anything like it had been that time. The police had pulled everything out, probably looking for potential murder weapons.
Next to the vacuum rested a bucket with cloths and furniture polish. The front desk would have been dusted for prints, which meant it’d need polishing, and that would put me directly next to Tim with a quiet job.
By the time I returned, Tim had printed something out and had papers spread across the front desk. It looked like the employee schedule.
I sprayed polish on to my rag. “Could you lift those for me for just a second?” I dangled the cloth in front of him.
