Uncle Jamie from joining the fight just by standing in his way and being big. The other man didn’t even try to get past him. Dev moved between us and Aunt Bertie, moving us physically back from the almost-fight. None of us told them to stop; I think they were more afraid of what we might do if the fight spread than the other way around.
Jamie yelled around Nicky, ‘You are the devil’s blood whore!’
‘Can I hit him, just once?’ Nicky called out.
‘No!’ I said, and made sure my voice carried.
‘Is he calling Micah the devil, or Jean-Claude?’ Nathaniel asked.
Dev moved Micah, Nathaniel, and me farther back from the fight. Micah’s mom and stepdad, Aunt Jody, Aunt Bobbie, Aunt Bertie, and Uncle Jamie were all screaming at one another. Juliet, Essie, and the rest of us watched like innocent bystanders at a train wreck. It’s sort of awful, but you can’t look away.
I put my mouth close to Micah’s ear and said, ‘Can’t wait to hear what your family Christmases were like.’
‘I’ve never seen them this bad,’ he said.
Juliet and Essie came to stand near us. Essie gave quick covert glances at Dev and Nathaniel, and even Micah. I was suspecting a childhood crush that still had some life in it.
Juliet spoke above the shouting, ‘Do you remember Ginger Dawson?’
‘I remember the Dawson farm; it was next door to ours.’
‘Do you remember the oldest daughter? The one who went away to the army?’
‘Vaguely,’ Micah said.
‘She and Aunt Jody have been living together for about five years.’
‘Living together, how?’ Micah asked.
‘What did you call cutie here? Your live-in partner?’
‘His name’s Nathaniel,’ I said, automatically.
Micah said, ‘Yeah.’
‘They’re living together like that.’
We all looked at one another. Micah said, ‘I had no clue.’
‘None of us did,’ Juliet said.
Aunt Bertie screamed, ‘You’re bringing up your children with your two catamites!’
‘I do not think that word means what she thinks it means,’ I said.
‘Bertie’s gone crazy,’ Juliet said.
Essie was hunching in on herself, trying to look like she didn’t know any of these people. She muttered, ‘I’m so sorry, Mike.’
He patted her arm. ‘It’s okay, Essie, your parents were never your fault.’
She flashed him adoring blue eyes, and he missed it completely as he watched his mother and aunts fight. Nathaniel looked at me; he hadn’t missed it either.
‘You contaminated one son,’ Bertie yelled. ‘Look what he brought home to you! Stop living in sin before you contaminate your other children!’
The three of us, and Dev, all exchanged looks. He said, ‘I think they mean Nathaniel, but …’
Bertie got a handful of Bea’s hair and the fight was on. Hospital security arrived as the two sisters got down to some serious hair-pulling, fingernail-using girl fighting. It was kind of embarrassing, not that it was Micah’s mom, but that they fought like girls. I’d have to teach Bea how to throw a punch.
15
Morgues aren’t usually my favorite places, but it had been a choice of the morgue or helping Micah talk to the hospital security and police about not having his mom and aunt hauled off to jail. Frankly, I’d have let them take Aunt Bertie if it wouldn’t have sent his mom to jail, too. Richard Zeeman’s mom, my other almost-mother-in-law, had also had a temper. What was it with the men that I loved having moms who were such … live wires? Maybe they both liked women just like dear old Mom? In Micah’s case, I was a cop like his dad, so he got a two-for-one deal. It was all too weird and Freudian for me.
I stared down at the first plastic-edged corpse and wasn’t happier here with the dead than up trying to figure out the living, but I was less confused. I had felt guilty leaving Nathaniel with Micah and the mess of the living, but he couldn’t come with me. Dr Rogers had barely gotten the okay from the local cops for me to see the first three victims. Including my boyfriends would have been asking too much, and besides, I didn’t want either of them to see the horrors I saw in my job, especially not if this was what would be happening to Rush Callahan. Previews are a bitch. I pushed away that last thought and looked down at the body.
There would be paperwork somewhere that told me her name, maybe even her background. Had she had a family? But I didn’t need, or want, any of that right now. The only way to stay sane was to