“You had no way of knowing. We still don’t know anything. Until we do, we should refrain from speculation.” She flung the egg-laden bread on the griddle.

  “I hadn’t met the Gladwells back then. I just assumed Lucia had found a more exciting life.” He rubbed his scruffy jaw and realized he must look like hell. But they needed to have this discussion now, while it was still raw on their minds.

  Pris flipped the bread, then refilled his coffee cup. She’d apparently already showered because she smelled of gardenias, and her hair was slicked back. He liked it better when the curls formed around her face. And he had no right noticing.

  “Last night. . . ” She hesitated and nervously ran her hand over her hair, as if sensing his interest. Which she might. Dante shut down his thoughts so she could continue. “After Lucia spoke through Evie, she entered my head. I heard her speak only to me. No one else. That’s never happened. I’m not a medium. I don’t talk to ghosts.”

  “Yeah, right, and I don’t see things on hairbrushes either,” he countered. “I’m convinced Lucia last touched that brush when the twins were infants screaming bloody murder. I saw the image of the babies and picked up a mix of love and fear and something I can’t really name, but it wasn’t good.”

  Her glare dissolved at that admission. “I won’t ask how you got into her toiletries, but I really did hear a voice speak. The message I received—and let me be clear, I don’t guarantee I didn’t just have a brain aneurysm—said to tell Dante about the artifacts. That’s all I got. I think she went in search of the twins then.”

  “Artifacts?” He rubbed his temple. “That means nothing to me. Lucia had no interest in archeology. For her, it was all about the farm. What artifacts?”

  Pris slid the bacon and French toast on a plate and set it in front of him. “If we want to speculate, which I know you told me not to do, if her life was the farm and the last time she was seen was at the farm. . . What are the chances the artifacts are on the farm?”

  Dante almost choked on the bacon.

  Leo had found a gold Etruscan cuff on the farm—in the tunnel, the one that had collapsed when he’d tried to explore it.

  Twenty-nine: Evie

  Shoving her cold hands into the back pockets of her jeans, Evie studied the burned-out bistro. Beside it, the boutique still stood, although the bricks were scorched on this side and the cracked front windows had been boarded up.

  A skinny Black woman in a police uniform stopped beside her. “People like that don’t belong here anyways.”

  “People like what? Italians? Beautiful people?” Even old school pals could be bigots, she supposed.

  “Both.” Philomena Marquette crossed her arms and glared at the blackened buildings. “Foreigners bring trouble. They ain’t hiring or selling to locals. Did you see any Black folk in there?”

  “Well, I only went in when it was empty, so I can’t say.” But she had a point. Evie had seen boutiques like this. Their market generally geared toward beautiful—wealthy—white people. Sexism, classism, and racism all rolled into one and called marketing to a niche audience.

  But it was reverse bigotry to call them foreigners and object to their differences. Her ADHD mind regularly revolved around subjects like this without forming a verdict.

  As far as she could determine, KK and Lucia hadn’t been wealthy, just white and beautiful. Did British qualify as foreign? She preferred that everyone be considered a citizen of the world, but people were still fighting the Civil War. Different happened, and that apparently equaled foreign.

  “You don’t think Pris poisoned the owner because of this dump, do you?” Evie asked to avoid a headache and because the rumor annoyed her. “She didn’t want the building. It’s too big.”

  “Ain’t big now. Bet Larry’ll give your cousin a good deal on what’s left.”

  That was insulting to Larraine’s chosen name, but the mayor had grown up here as Larry, and it rolled naturally off the tongue. And it wasn’t as if Philomena was trying to be PC.

  “’Course, if everyone thinks Pris poisoned the owner, she ain’t likely to have many clientele, is she?” Philomena cackled.

  “Now I remember why I pushed you on the playground.” Growing up in a small town wasn’t all people helping each other like in Hallmark movies. Small towns and small minds often went together, along with long memories of past transgressions.

  “Yeah, well, you were a little snot, and I got you back good, so I reckon we’re even. Here comes Larry. I better get goin’ or he—she’ll—have my ass.” Philomena marched across the street and out of sight.

  “That Till’s little sister you talking to?” the mayor asked. Today, the fashionista wore what was probably an Italian suit of cream silk with gold buttons down the side of the slim, knee-length skirt. Larry looked good in heels.

  “Yeah, Phil and I went to school together. But she has a point—why did you buy this building for strangers? You had a whole town full of people who could have rented it.”

  Larraine swung her little gold purse and studied the ruined building. “I met them at a grand opening of the boutique on Hilton Head. I’m afraid I name dropped and said I’d met Dante, the Conte Armeno here visiting family.”

  Ah, so that was KK’s interest in Afterthought. And how Dante was connected, sort of. “They knew Dante?”

  “They said they did, anyway. Of course, that was before I realized that even if their products were Italian, Katherine and Matthew were English. Oops. They said they were expanding into small towns in the south. I said Afterthought was a small town just outside Charleston and Savannah, and maybe we could do something with my fashions and their skin care. And they showed up. What else could I do?”

  Evie wondered if it was the opportunity offered or Dante’s name that had drawn Katherine here. “Why small towns, I wonder? I mean, Hilton Head, yeah, a small rich town might make sense. But most small towns in the south. . .”

  “Don’t have enough money for more than Walmart, right.” Larraine rubbed away a frown between her eyes. “I didn’t give it much thought. I wanted to thumb my nose at the bigots and naysayers who said I’d never make mayor. These folk were proper English and all that. It sounded good at the time.”

  “So you just rented it to them without any financials?”

  “They had a big glossy boutique in Hilton Head! Who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? I had visions of sidewalk cafés and Beverly Hills shops and. . .” Larraine gave an unladylike sigh. “Delusions of grandeur.”

  “Well, they looked pretty grand there for a while. But it’s beginning to sound like they had the world’s worst accounting department—or they were running a scam. A pity we can’t feed Lawless Jane some really tasty tidbits so she’d quit gnawing on the targets of her prejudice and work on real clues.”

  “Lawless Jane.” Larraine snorted in derision. “I’m agonna sue that bitch’s camouflage pants off. I’m talking to Jax next. I want him to tell me what the libel and slander laws are all about. This job is a lesson in lawyering, for sure.”

  “Don’t talk like that in front of your constituents,” Evie advised in amusement. “You’ll lose your cool cred.”

  Larraine pointed at her. “If I do nothing else, I’m making all the changes I can before they vote me out two years from now. You need to get your air-headed cousin to start a restaurant and hire all colors of folk and ugly people. We’ll start a trend.”

  “Licensing laws,” Evie reminded her. “How will you keep your council from keeping out anyone they don’t like?”

  Larraine grinned evilly. “Because I know how to dig dirt. We need zoning laws to keep them in line, but that council ain’t touching nothing without me.” The mayor sauntered off on her high heels before Evie could tell her that Pris hated restaurants and would be a really lousy restaurant owner.

  Ugly people? As contrasting to Beautiful People, right. A market of real people instead of upscale ones would suit Afterthought. A Citizens of the World Café!

  Once that empty lot was cleared of debris. . . it would make a lovely outdoor café and green space to counter the gothic courthouse and Victorian office buildings on the next block.

  And the school was right down the street. A bakery, maybe? A bakery school—for real kids. Pris could do that.

  Not if people thought she had poisoned KK.

  Jane the Blogger Bigot needed to be muffled or pulled into the fold. What made her tick? Could Jane have set that fire? Why? It didn’t make sense. Of course, none of this made sense.

  Evie pulled out her phone and called Pris. “Let Jax handle Larraine’s problems. We need to tackle yours. Be ready to go to the hospital when I get back there.”

  Pris hung up on her, but she’d see the light eventually.

  “Miss Lawson hasn’t had many visitors. She’ll be delighted to see you.” The nurse looked Dante up and down, apparently equally delighted to see him, as well she should be. He was wearing his professorial duds of tweed coat, elbow patches and all, and still looked like a hunk out of a fashion magazine.

  Pris decided the woman wasn’t worth kicking. Any female in her right mind would drool over Italian shoes.

  Feeling invisible beside the conte and his giant bouquet of mums and carnations, Pris stayed in his shadow as they were led down the hospital corridor. She gave Evie the evil eye as they passed her in the waiting room, but her cousin was spaced out, communing with the dead. Pris shuddered. The hospital was probably full of ghosts.

  Stiff and in obvious discomfort, Dante swung along on his crutch, holding the flowers in his free arm. Pris grinned and screened out his mental cursing. She didn’t know if he was deliberately thinking obscenities for her sake, or if he wasn’t aware that his thoughts escaped when upset. The very proper conte had an expressive vocabulary.

  As they approached Jane’s door, Evie jumped up and began asking the nurse questions about another patient. Pris wasn’t about to inquire how her cousin knew who else was here. Distracting the nurse allowed Dante and Pris to enter Lawson’s room without anyone catching the patient’s reaction to her visitors.

  “For me?” the patient asked in surprise, sounding girlish instead of surly—obviously seeing only Dante.

  “A gift from La Bella Gente, signora,” Dante said, as coached. He even threw in his best Italian accent for good measure.

  “Why?” Jane immediately became suspicious. That’s when she spied Pris. “You! Are you here to murder me too?” She reached for her call button.

  Setting the vase on the stand, Dante moved the button out of reach. “Miss Broadhurst is innocent. She’s here to find the real killer now that you’ve driven Bella out of town.”

  Pris waited with interest to see how Jane reacted to being the hero of her own story. She’d been the one to suggest this approach. To her amusement, the blogger’s limited mind almost literally froze. She emitted no coherent thoughts, only panic.

  “I was right. You disconnected her narrative.” Just a little proud of herself, Pris nudged Dante toward a chair. “Let me take it from here. Find a way to put up that foot.” She settled on the bed’s edge so he wouldn’t do the gentlemanly thing and insist that she take the chair.

  He narrowed his eyes and growled at her—which she found damned sexy. At the same time, he brushed against every object within Jane’s reach, practicing his little used psychometry.

  “Evidence,” he reminded Pris.

  Right. Reading Jane’s mind and proving her thoughts were two different things. Pris signaled Evie, who sauntered in while the would-be journalist was still hyperventilating.

  “No wonder you blog, Jane,” Evie said as she rearranged the flowers and pulled out a bent one. “It must be frustrating to be speechless just when you have so much to say.”

  Pris bit back a chuckle. “She’s getting angry. Keep it up.”

  Her cousin propped herself on the other side of the bed. “I was there, Jane. I told the sheriff that the fire spread after you left through the kitchen. What happened? Did you forget to leave the route to the door clear and had to turn back? The accelerant went the wrong way?”

  “You’re crazy. You’re both crazy,” Jane finally sputtered. “Your whole family is crazy.”

  “Well, as we used to say as kids, it takes one to know one.” Pris patted the covers over the patient’s legs. The blanket stopped short of her bandaged feet. “Now Dante over there is perfectly sane. Should we let him talk?”

  Dante grunted and watched them skeptically as he propped his injured foot on the bed rail. “Miss Lawson, we know your parents died of cyanide poisoning from a mattress company fire that you barely escaped as a teen. We’ve also seen the fire department’s report on the arson that caused that fire. We could ask the sheriff to open your juvenile record from that period. We’d rather not.”

  Evie chuckled. “Muddy red in her first chakra and a scary yellow in her third. You did well, Dr. Watson. She’s both scared and angry.”

  For Dante to have spoken that much—he had to have “seen” something on the objects he touched. Pris’s stomach clenched. Jane had accidentally killed her parents. Had she been driven to kill again?

  “I was just a kid and didn’t know better!” Jane protested. She glanced frantically at the nightstand as if searching for a weapon, but they had her surrounded. “It was cold in that warehouse.”

  Pris had read the history. Jane’s parents had been reported to social services on several occasions for abuse. People damned well ought to be licensed before allowed to have children. After the fire, Jane had ended in foster care and therapy. No one ever proved that the fire she’d started to keep warm had been intentionally set to burn down the factory with her parents inside.

  Pris removed the cell phone on the stand and handed it to Evie, then pushed the landline out of reach. “We really aren’t interested in your juvenile record, although if you continue slandering me, it may get mentioned to appropriate persons.”

  They’d only guessed about the cause of the bistro’s kitchen fire, but for Dante to use a veiled threat, he must have seen enough on some object to confirm her guilt. That still wasn’t evidence.

  Evie’s schoolteacher sister read mysteries and claimed that detectives in stories insisted confession was easier than hunting evidence. Pris could see why. Only she didn’t have a persuasive bone in her.

  “What has us curious is why you would set fire to the bistro.” Evie twirled the flower she’d removed from the vase. “You are a person who acts out her anger with words. If, instead, you burned out everyone you hated, you’d have done more damage by now than General Sherman.”

  Good line. Pris admired Evie’s glibness, while attempting to focus on Jane’s mental reactions. She hated doing this. The bigot’s mind was a cluttered labyrinth of fear and negativity. But when it came to herself, Jane was quite clear.

  “I didn’t do anything,” the blogger protested.

  “She thinks Rhonda knows more than she’s saying,” Pris reported.

  “About KK’s death? The money? The fire?” Evie asked looking like a playful genie with her orange curls brushing the shoulders of her bright yellow sweatshirt.

  No one had introduced Evie, but Jane apparently recognized her. She scowled and didn’t reply.

  “I’m seeing jewelry.” Puzzled, Pris tried to work out Jane’s convoluted fears.

  “That’s what I thought I saw,” Dante said in surprise. “But it’s an ancient pendant, so I thought it was just me.” He studied Jane. “If you saw what I’m seeing, and it’s genuine, it’s worth a fortune on the black market. Are you trading in stolen artifacts? Were you trying to frighten Rhonda?”

  The expression of shock on Jane’s face made this whole painful exercise worth every second.

  “It’s okay, Janey,” Evie said reassuringly. “All we want is KK’s killer. Tell us what you know, and we’ll go away, and you’ll never see us again.”

  The police might, but Jane’s fear won over common sense.

  “All I wanted was an interview with Lady Katherine. I went down to Myrtle Beach when she opened that store.” With a sigh, Jane reached for her water glass. Her bandaged fingers made it difficult. Pris held the glass for her to sip at the straw.

  Satisfied, Jane pushed the glass aside. “No one would talk to me. My blog and my column in the paper have an enormous audience, but I wasn’t important enough. At the time, I thought the store was Italian, and I wanted the dirt on the foreigners.”

  Which proved Kit-Kat might have been smarter than anyone thought—if she kept the columnist out because she recognized her bigotry. But Pris accepted that Jane’s version was probably right. With her self-cut hair and camouflage attire, Jane always looked like a frumpy homeless person. KK and company were snobs.

  The blogger looked self-righteous as she added, “I found a back door to the boutique.”

  Pris winced at Dante’s mental contempt over breaking and entering.

  Unfazed, Evie patted the patient encouragingly. “Good investigative reporting. Did you go through the trash?”

  Jane nodded. “And then I heard them arguing about a necklace Lady Katherine was wearing. I didn’t know who she was at the time, but it was that stuck-up clerk, Rhonda, who said they needed the cash for inventory, not to go around her neck. That snot knew something. I thought I could force her into talking. The door into the boutique shouldn’t have been locked.”

  Excellent reason to start a fire, right. How often had the insane blogger used that technique to make people talk? When Jane grew silent, Pris held out the cup for her to sip again.

  “You saw the necklace?” Evie continued as if they were just gossiping, but her eyes seemed to be following an agitated ghost.

  Pris wished she knew what KK had to say about all this.

  Jane muttered in reply, “The necklace was in a photo of Lady Katherine in the Charleston newspaper. Ugly old thing.”

  Pris lost patience with Jane’s crabby opinions. “So what happened in Myrtle Beach after you heard them argue?”