Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [94]
Meredith laughed and grabbed Kylie’s hand, holding up her stained fingertips.
“Duh,” she snorted. “That’s an easy one.”
“You want me to do something harder?” Butts asked, regarding her through half-closed eyes.
“Uh—sure,” Meredith answered, and Kylie nodded.
“Then stick around,” Butts said. “I’ll come up with something when you least expect it.”
“Okay,” Meredith said. “Can I be your assistant?”
“I don’t see why not,” Butts replied.
“Me too!” Kylie chimed in. “Can I be your second assistant?”
“Okay. You can both be my assistants.”
Lee was pleased to see how sweet the burly detective was with the girls. He would not have guessed Butts had a soft spot for kids, but he had learned that people are often surprising.
“Okay,” Lee said. “Shall we go find Fiona?” “Oh, she’s with Stan,” Meredith said, poking Kylie in the ribs.
Stan Paloggia was Fiona’s boyfriend, or, as she called him, “my ha-ha boyfriend,” insisting she was too old to be dating anyone. Stan didn’t share her view—he was doggedly faithful, following her around like a trained seal. Fiona took frequent breaks from his devoted companionship, and refused to marry him, though he had had asked her half a dozen times. For instance, she hadn’t invited him to Kylie’s birthday dinner, which was typical of how she treated him.
“Is he your grandmother’s boyfriend?” Butts asked.
Meredith lopped off the top of a honeysuckle bush and waved the plucked sprig under her nose, inhaling deeply. “Stan loves her.”
Kylie grabbed a honeysuckle branch of her own and yanked, but it was too thick and wouldn’t come off. Lee leaned down and broke it off for her. The honeysuckle this year was wild, rampant, growing everywhere with heedless promiscuity. He loved the smell, but Fiona hated it—she waged a continuous war against “those cheeky weeds,” as she called them. Fiona wasn’t enamored of flowers of any kind. As far as she was concerned, if you couldn’t eat it, it wasn’t worth growing.
When they arrived at the house, Fiona insisted they stay for iced tea and lemon cake. Lee was about to protest, but when he saw Butts’s eyes light up at the mention of lemon cake, he acquiesced. They went out to the front porch, where the girls volunteered to set the table.
Fiona pointed to a round wrought-iron table with a glass cover.
“My latest estate sale acquisition. How do you like it?” “Very nice,” Butts remarked, settling his bulk into the nearest chair.
“It’s late nineteenth century,” she said, flicking away a few stray twigs from its polished surface. “I don’t want to scratch it…. Let’s see, what can I use? Oh, yes!” She turned to Lee. “Last week I came across straw place mats I’d completely forgotten about…. Where did I see them?” she said. “Oh, I remember—they’re in the closet where I keep the Christmas ornaments.”
“I’ll get them,” he said.
He went inside and climbed the stairs to the second-floor landing, where there was a built-in closet in the hallway. He opened it and began to look among the boxes of ornaments, wrapped in crumpled bits of tissue paper, faded and brittle with age. Fiona never could stand to throw anything away if it could be at all useful. That included old tissue paper, so the ornaments were carefully wrapped in the same ragged, yellowed bits of paper year after year.
At the back of the closet, he saw the edge of what looked like a green leather book of some kind. He pulled it out carefully—he had never seen it before. On the front, in gold script, the word SCRAPBOOK was embossed. He opened the cover and carefully leafed through the yellowing pages. There were many photos of himself and Laura as children—playing with cousins, opening Christmas presents, dressing their fat yellow tabby cat in baby clothes, squinting into the sun in front of their aunt’s swimming pool. There were even a few photos of Fiona herself, though none of his father. Lee didn’t know what she had done with all the pictures of him after he left—perhaps she had burned them.
As he reached the middle of the album, a piece of paper fell out. He bent down to pick it