from her husband to the psychologist. “Are you trying to get me committed?”
“Of course not.”
“Good, because just so you know, I don’t need to be on any suicide watch!”
“No one said a thing about—”
“You didn’t have to, Wyatt. Okay?” She was on her feet and out the door. “Where is he?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Great.”
She left him and the damned doctor to talk about her state of mind, or lack thereof, and walked through the formal dining room and butler’s pantry to the kitchen, the big warm room painted in shades of yellow, with the scent of coffee and baked goods always lingering in the air. The black-and-white tile floor was worn at the door to the back hallway, and the white cabinets were desperately in need of a new coat of paint, but this was, without a doubt, the cheeriest room in the house. Off to one side was a family area, with a couple of worn sofas, a flat-screen television, and toy box stuffed into a corner. This evening the air was thick with the warm scent of baking bread and the tangy aroma of Virginia’s clam chowder, Manhattan style.
Aptly named, Sheriff Biggs sat on one of the chairs tucked around a cracked marble-topped table. Spilling over the edges of the woven seat, he’d already accepted a cup of coffee from a grudging Virginia, who now was elbow-deep in dishwater and trying to appear as if she wasn’t interested in eavesdropping on the conversation about to ensue between her employers and Biggs, who just happened to be her ex-brother-in-law and Khloe’s uncle.
As ever, Virginia was wearing a plain housedress over her heavy frame, and a wildly colored apron was tied across her rounded abdomen and heavy breasts. Scuffed tennis shoes and dark tights completed the outfit. Ava had rarely seen her in any other attire, even years ago, before she’d been hired here, when she was just Khloe’s mother. How they’d all gotten entangled since those grade-school years . . .
“Hello, Ava.” Biggs stood and extended a hand, which she shook with more than a hint of trepidation. They’d met a few times before and never had it been under anything but tense circumstances.
“Sheriff.” She nodded and pulled her hand back. Hers was clammy; his was irritatingly cool.
“I heard you ended up in the drink,” he said, reseating his bulky form and cradling his cup. His eyes narrowed suspiciously as he stared up at her. Then again, she and Biggs had never been friends. Especially not since her brother, Kelvin’s, death nearly five years earlier. “Wanna tell me about it?”
“It’s not a crime, is it?”
“To go for a swim?” he asked. “Naaah. ’Course not. But the folks here, they were concerned.” His face was fleshy, his cheeks showing a few capillaries that had burst, his deep-set eyes intense but not unkind. He motioned to the other people in the room. “They seemed to think maybe you were having a spell of some kind, or sleepwalking.”
“I called Joe,” Khloe piped in as she walked in from the porch, the new hire, Austin Dern, following after her.
Dern had changed, too. His dark hair was wet and slicked back from his face, and he wore a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, faded and dry. He caught her gaze with eyes the color of slate. Again, she felt as if she’d seen him before, in that weird déjà vu way, but try as she might, she couldn’t place him.
Khloe added, “I, uh, I thought we needed help.”
“So this is unofficial?” Ava asked, since Joe Biggs was Khloe’s uncle.
Biggs kept his eyes on Ava. “I just swung by ’cause Khloe called.”
“I was worried, that’s all,” Khloe interjected as Virginia, spying through the open door, scowled, grabbed a towel, and wiped her hands, then pulled the thick door to the porch shut forcefully, as if she were keeping in the heat and making sure whatever lurked outside didn’t get the chance to slip in.
Just swung by on a damned county-issued sheriff’s department boat on a foggy night? Because a relative called? Oh, sure. Ava wasn’t buying it. Even Virginia, now at the sink again, cast a disbelieving look over her shoulder.
Khloe seemed a little less prickly as she said, “Come on, Ava, if the roles were reversed and I ran outside in the middle of the night and jumped into the bay in November, you would have panicked, too. It’s not like when we were kids and snuck out to go skinny-dipping in the damned moonlight!”