Demon Hunting with a Dixie Deb - Lexi George Page 0,63
Baldwin County. She treated her servants—in fact, most of the planet, including her husband—like poop. And plenty of people at the club dressed well and lived w-a-a-y beyond their means.
Susan Harwood could be a black widow spider, a seductress who married older men for their money, then killed them off. Or maybe she had a taste for younger men, expensive younger men who drained her dry. Or she could have lost a fortune at the tables in Monaco. Stranger things had happened. The Suttons back home had lost everything in a Ponzi scheme. Low-cost fuel out of beets, the investor had promised, and they fell for it. The flimflam guy and their money were vacationing somewhere in South America. Permanently.
Predators circled the murky waters of business. Daddy Joel had taught Sassy that. She had a moral responsibility to Trey and the community to find out more about Susan Harwood. If that meant she’d have to spend more time in Hannah . . . well, that was an added perk. Mama, of course, would have a fit at the delay, but Mama would have to wait. Sassy had a moral imperative to find out more about Susan Harwood. She was on a quest. How exciting! She’d hire a detective to do a background check on Mrs. Harwood, but first she’d do a little investigating of her own.
Sassy turned up her charm a notch. In her experience, most people underestimated the power of pleasant, something Sassy had used more than once to her advantage. Smile, listen, and learn. Let your adversaries think you’re a ditz, then leave them reeling.
“Do you live in Hannah, Mrs. Harwood?” Sassy asked in her most agreeable manner.
“Call me Susan.”
“Susan.” Sassy gave her a megawatt smile. “And I’m Sassy.”
Her vivacious persona always affected people in a positive way. Not this time. Sassy got a big fat nothing from Susan Harwood.
“I know,” Susan said, calm as an eggplant. “Clarice and I stayed in touch through the years. She spoke of you often.”
Sassy held on to her smile with an effort. “My grandmother spoke of me? How interesting. We weren’t close.”
Close? They were rarely, if ever, in the same county.
“Blake ruled Clarice with an iron fist,” Susan said in a tone that said she wouldn’t have tolerated such nonsense. “All the same, she found a way to keep tabs on you.”
Color her skeptical. Sassy’s grandmother had not once contacted or visited her. What little Sassy knew about her grandmother, she’d read in the papers. Clarice Peterson had been a big deal in the Hannah social set, a generous contributor to her church and the community, and a supporter of the arts.
“Mrs. Harwood hasn’t been to Hannah in fifty years. We’re thrilled to have her home.”
Mr. Marvin announced this bit of news with the awed enthusiasm usually reserved for royalty or rock stars.
“I’m thrilled to be here, James.”
The silver-haired lawyer flushed. “Your aunt’s a real cosmopolitan. She speaks five languages. She’s lived all over the world.”
Oh, snap. Mr. Marvin had a baby crush on Susan Harwood. Old people were so cute.
“Sounds glamorous,” Sassy said. “Guess that’s why I never heard of you.” That and the whole family dysfunction thing. “Was Granddaddy Blake your older brother?”
“Younger by two minutes. We were twins.”
“Having a built-in playmate must have been Fun City.”
“Hardly.” Susan’s eyes darkened from purple to black. “Blake and I saw little of one another. I was shipped off to a Swiss boarding school when I was eight.”
Sassy’s sensory cilia waved in alarm. There was a visible crack in the older woman’s bland façade. On impulse, Sassy touched the velvet pouch Mose had given her and received a shock. Red, black, and sickly green bands of emotion twisted and coiled around Susan’s aura, an aura that leaked dark energy, like antifreeze seeping from a punctured radiator.
Bunny rabbits, she’d wanted a reaction out of the woman. She’d gotten one.
“So young?” Sassy said, managing to hide her reaction. “Weren’t you homesick?”
“I missed my mother.” The pulsing loops surrounding Susan writhed like snakes. “My father didn’t have much use for girls.”
Ooh, somebody had major daddy issues.
“You must allow me and the missus to host a little get-together to celebrate your return, Susan,” Mr. Marvin said. “My wife will skin me for a purse if you say no.”
“That would be lovely.” Susan turned toward the office, the cloud of dark energy trailing in her wake. “Let’s get down to business and sign the papers. I have another engagement.”