Seven Sisters - Earlene Fowler [101]
“I was just saying hello to Mrs. Brown. We met the other day at the wine tasting in Eola Beach.”
The woman peered at me suspiciously and said, “She’s not up to visitors today.” She’d obviously been warned that people might come by and quiz her charge. She fiddled with the knitted throw in Mrs. Brown’s lap, then pushed her out of the room without another word to me.
I stood there for a moment, contemplating what Rose Brown had just told me. Her husband had sent Eva Knoll away. Why? Had she been involved with the death of the babies? If so, why hadn’t he turned her over to the authorities? I tried to sort out the things I’d learned. I had to find Eva Knoll, if she was still alive, and talk to her. But how? Then an idea formed.
Before going to the Sheriff’s Department to tell the detective what I’d learned, I stopped by my friend Amanda Landry’s law office to beg the use of her very capable investigator, Leilani, to locate Eva Knoll.
Amanda’s office was above the Ross store downtown. It was located up a set of narrow, steep marble stairs. Inside the small reception room, Muddy Waters played gut-aching blues from a small stereo hidden behind a bushy green fern. Though I’d known Amanda for only a short time and we definitely rooted for different college teams—she was a die-hard’Bama fan—we’d become good friends. A faithful, dyed-in-the-wool Crimson Tide Alabaman, she’d followed her husband to San Francisco, and when that didn’t work out, decided she loved the wild and woolly west enough to make it home. She’d worked for years as a prosecutor for both San Francisco and San Celina, but had sometime back started her own practice with an inheritance she’d acquired from her father, a rich Birmingham judge who wasn’t famous for his honesty, integrity, or marital faithfulness.
Luckily Amanda inherited her late blues-singing mother’s honesty as well as her weakness for down-and-out musicians.
“He’s the best I ever had,” she told me as I sat in her office, decorated in deep crimson and dark blue. Leilani was in her adjoining office using her numerous contacts and CD-ROM programs to get a lead on Eva Knoll. “I’m in heaven. I’ll never give him up. Never.” Her antique oak chair creaked when she leaned back. With the tip of a yellow school pencil, she scratched a spot in her thick head of auburn hair.
“We’ll see,” I said, having heard this song and dance before.
“I’m serious,” she said, giving me her Mississippi-wide smile. The same gorgeous smile that won her almost as many cases as her spur-sharp intelligence. “He’s perfect. Doesn’t miss a thing. I go to bed happy every night.”
“He’s a musician. You know how reliable they are.”
“He calls me Miss Mandy,” she said, her eyes twinkling.
“And you let him live? He must be good.”
She sat forward in her seat and pointed the yellow pencil at me. “I’m telling you, cowgirl, my house has never been cleaner. Did you know that place on your stove, where those little round things are?”
“You mean the burners?” Cooking was not one of Amanda’s many talents.
“Did you know the thing they sit on, that whole top of the stove, lifts up? You should see what was under there. Disgusting! But, bless his blues-lovin’ heart, he’s thorough. He cleans everywhere,” she said, heaving a big sigh. “He’s not cheap, but, heavens to Dixie, he’s worth it.”
“Just don’t get romantically involved with him,” I warned, “or you’ll be out a great housecleaner.”
“Never,” she declared. “Boyfriends come and go, but a good housecleaner, that’s hard to find.”
Within the hour, Leilani found the information I was seeking.
“She’s still alive,” Leilani said, her brown, fashion-model face as sober as a prison guard’s. “Or at least someone who is signing her name and collecting her Social Security checks is.”
“How do you find out things like that, Leilani?” I asked. “I mean, isn’t it illegal or something? Privacy laws and stuff?”
“Never ask