“That’s all? You didn’t talk to anyone about her? Get some information from someone?”
“It was a dream!” She heard her voice rise.
“Just a dream. Out of the blue?”
The question made her want to open the door, jump out of the car and run down the road to get away from her interrogator, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t get very far. Mack would catch up with her and drag her back.
Instead, she raised her chin. Struggling to keep her voice steady, she said, “I used to have bad dreams when I lived in Gaptown. I’d have a nightmare and it would turn out to be true.”
Before he could demand an example, she went on quickly. “It started when I was nine. I dreamed that Peggy Wickers, a girl in my fourth-grade class, was in an automobile accident. I woke up crying, and my mother came in to calm me down. She was angry that I’d gotten her up in the middle of the night. She told me it was just a nightmare and to go back to sleep. I lay there the rest of the night, thinking about it. Then in the morning, Peggy didn’t come to school and the teacher told everyone about the accident.”
She stopped to catch her breath, then went on. “I’d have dreams like that off and on. Sometimes one every six months, sometimes it wouldn’t happen for a year. It was always something bad, and it always turned out to be true. It stopped when I moved to Baltimore, and I thought I was over it. Then last night, it happened again. I think it’s because it was happening here.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you saying you don’t believe me?”
“It’s a pretty strange story.”
“Why would I come up with something so weird if it wasn’t true?”
“You tell me.”
She exploded with an unladylike curse. “I told you everything I could.”
“Why did you call the Light Street office in the middle of the night?”
She wasn’t going to tell him that she’d awakened wishing her husband were lying beside her in bed. Instead she said, “I was upset when I woke up. I was hoping to talk to Jo. She wouldn’t have put me through the third degree.”
“She would have been remiss if she hadn’t questioned you.”
“She wouldn’t have acted like I was part of a murder conspiracy!”
Mack sighed. “Okay.”
“So you finally believe me?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Jamie heard herself saying words she thought she would never utter. “Why don’t you drop me off at my mom’s house. I’ll catch a ride home on my own.”
“We can visit your mom, but then we’re going to try and figure out what happened to Lynn Vaughn. Where’s the house?”
Feeling trapped, she gave him the address. Maybe she could slip out the back door and call one of her old friends in town while he was having a nice chat with the family. That thought made her bite back a sharp laugh. Yeah, Mom and Clark were going to charm the pants off Mack.
She felt her stomach knot as Mack put the address into his GPS. Apparently going to see Mom was as threatening as being questioned about a murder.
The place was at the south end of town—the low-rent district—and she gave the familiar location a critical look as they pulled up in front of the one-story bungalow. The lawn and shrubbery were scraggly, the porch sagged and paint was peeling from the wooden siding. Home sweet home.
Embarrassed that one of her friends from Baltimore was seeing this house, she climbed out and headed up the cracked sidewalk with Mack right behind her.
She thought about him as a friend, she realized. Maybe associate was more accurate. Or maybe they were playing detective and suspect.
At the front door, she stopped and knocked. From the corner of her eye she saw a curtain move in the dirty front window and guy with a ruddy face and thinning hair look out.
Clark Landon. Too bad Mom’s boyfriend was there.
He opened the door and stared at Jamie.
“What’s the Princess of Baltimore doing here?”
“Mom asked me to visit.”
“But that’s no reason for you to stop by, is it?” he shot back.
Mack cleared his throat. “I asked Jamie to show me around Gaptown.”
Clark took notice of the man standing behind Jamie and straightened his shoulders. “And who the hell are you?”
“Mack Steele. A friend of Jamie’s.” He didn’t say, “Nice to meet you.”
If Mack hadn’t been right behind her, she might have turned and left, but now she was trapped by her own bad idea.
“Hey, Gloria, you won’t believe who’s here. It’s your hoity-toity daughter.”
He stepped aside, and Jamie and Mack walked into the living room, which was cluttered with two beat-up sofas, an old-style clunky television set and beer cans on the maple coffee table. The brown carpet had turned several shades darker since Jamie had been home last. To the right, in the kitchen, the sink was piled with dirty dishes. The house smelled like cabbage that had been cooked a week ago and left out.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, wondering how she could have brought Mack here.
As they stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, Clark grabbed a corduroy car coat from a hook beside the door.
“I’m going down to Louie’s,” he said, then stepped out the door, slamming it behind him.
“Friendly,” Mack muttered.
“He and I never got along.”
“He’s not your father, right?”
“Mom’s longtime boyfriend.”
She closed her mouth abruptly as Gloria Wheeler shuffled into the living room. Jamie tried to see her from Mack’s point of view and took in a woman in her late fifties with graying hair dyed black-cat dark, a ruffled yellow blouse and beige polyester slacks, the outfit finished off with scuffed red slippers.
No hug. No kiss. And she didn’t invite them to make themselves comfortable.
Mom just stood with her hands on her hips and gave Jamie a long look, then switched her gaze to Mack.
“I wasn’t expecting you to drop by, and Clark sure didn’t warn me that you had someone with you,” she said in an accusing voice.
Jamie wondered what difference that made. Would Mom have rushed around cleaning up? Would she have had the table set so she could offer them tea and cookies? Or maybe she’d have changed her clothes and put on real shoes before coming out here.
“We were in town,” Mack said, “and Jamie mentioned that she wanted to stop by.”
“In town for what?”
“I’m a private detective on a case. Since Jamie’s from here, I asked her to show me around Gaptown, Mrs.…?”
“Wheeler,” she supplied as she looked Mack up and down, then switched her gaze back to her daughter.
“You’ve taken up with another detective?”
Jamie answered in a rush. “I haven’t taken up with him.”
“I was a friend of Jamie’s husband, Craig,” Mack said.
Mom’s knowing smile made Jamie cringe. What did she think? That they were sleeping together?
“I guess it was a bad idea coming here,” she said.