LITMIR.BIZ

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doesn’t live here.” He glanced behind him, as if he were afraid of imparting a huge family secret.

      “He said his grandmother lived here. Should I wait outside?”

      This really threw him off. He clearly didn’t know what to do with me. After a hesitation that lasted long enough to embarrass us both, he finally stepped from the gloom onto the porch. “I’m not sure if I should have you come in. The family’s here.” He tossed another glance to the still open door.

      I got my first good look at him. He definitely carried the Purcell gene for attractiveness, even with his dried-up appearance and mannerisms. His eyes were gray-blue and his hair was thick and lustrous, only shot sparsely with gray. If he’d given any thought to physical fitness, which by his stooped posture and generally soft appearance didn’t seem possible, he would be one good-looking man. I pegged him somewhere in his late fifties but it was hard to tell. He could have been much younger. He just seemed old.

      His worry about “the family” was starting to amuse me. Or, maybe it was just relief that I didn’t have to go inside without Jazz. I leaned forward and whispered, “Should I wait in my car, then?”

      “Yes…yes…maybe…”

      “James!” a female voice called from the gloomy bowels.

      James started as if he’d been goosed. “That’s Dahlia,” he murmured.

      So, I was looking at James Purcell the fourth and waiting for his sister Dahlia to appear. I did a quick recap in my head. James was a bachelor. Dahlia was married to…Roderick…that was it. She had given birth to two children. A son and a daughter. I couldn’t recall the son’s name but the daughter was christened Rhoda before she died in infancy from SIDS.

      Dahlia clomped onto the porch. Where her brother was slight, Dahlia was large. Everything was—her body and her features. She had huge eyes and lips and there was a wave to her ash blond hair that kept it about a half-inch off her skull, all over. Where James resembled a handsome professor gone to seed, Dahlia was a stevedore whose only real physical attribute was a set of even, white teeth.

      She fixed her gaze on me through eyes that were a pale blue like a sky filled with white clouds. I almost felt sorry for her. She’d so clearly missed out on the family’s good looks.

      “Who the hell are you?” she asked in a melodious voice that surprised me enough to leave me momentarily speechless.

      “Jane Kelly.” I held out my hand.

      She shook it firmly. “Yes? And what do you want?”

      “She’s here to meet Jazz,” James put in. He’d taken several steps away and was gazing toward the edge of the property.

      “What for?”

      I suddenly didn’t want to say. Dahlia narrowed her eyes at me, but before I had to confess my reasons, there was a commotion deep inside the house and the sound of voices greeting a newcomer. Dahlia whipped around and headed back the way she’d come without another word. James cast me a worried look and followed. I didn’t wait for an invitation and just took up the rear, hoping to high heaven that Jazz had arrived.

      He had. And he had a boy with him. His son, no doubt. Logan, I remembered.

      “You have a guest,” Dahlia said in a tight voice.

      Jazz saw me and broke into another brilliant smile. It was enough to make me catch my breath.

      “You went around to the front door,” he said, coming toward me. “Hey, Logan wait…”

      Logan, who’d been making a beeline for the stairs, reluctantly slowed, turning on one designer basketball shoe signed by an NBA player outside of my limited knowledge of the sport. “Yeah?”

      “This is Jane Kelly. Jane, my son Logan. Jane’s here to see Nana, so why don’t you wait downstairs with Aunt Dahl—”

      “She’s here to see Mother?” Dahlia demanded. “Why?”

      We were standing in the entry hall, which rose two stories. A gallery ran overhead between the two wings. Exclamations of surprise or disgust, or both, shot from the open doors to the main salon. Jazz glanced to his left, his expression carefully neutral. I stepped forward and looked inside the salon. A group of people were headed my way. The middle-agers. And, I guessed, Cammie.

      They collected in the doorway to the entry hall and gazed at me with varying degrees of alarm. It wasn’t what I would call a warm welcome.

      I turned to Jazz expectantly. Instead of explaining my presence to them, he seemed flummoxed by the question. He shot me a “rescue me” look. My heart suddenly went into overdrive. What was this?

      “Jazz asked me to meet Orchid,” I said slowly.

      “Who are you?” a male middle-ager demanded. I pegged him as Garrett Purcell. He, too, possessed the extraordinary good looks, but he’d let himself go and now was paunchy and soft. An overriding belligerence, which seemed to be a part of his makeup, also took away from his appearance. A few more years and his attractiveness wouldn’t even be an issue. He would just be an older man with an attitude problem.

      “I’m a private investigator.”

      The man actually reared back. He glared at Jazz. “What the hell are you doing, man?”

      “Jane is here to see about Nana’s sanity.”

      At least he’d come back to the point, but now all the Purcell gang regarded me with flat-out suspicion. “So, when do private investigators determine someone’s sanity?” another man asked in a really snarky tone. I figured he must be Roderick, Dahlia’s husband.

      “I guess when Jazz asks them to,” Dahlia answered, equally snarky.

      “Why don’t we all go in and sit down?” Jazz gestured toward the room they’d just exited, and we all trundled back inside.

      The salon was furnished in fern green and gold. The Purcell clan took their seats as if they’d been choreographed, apparently reclaiming the ones they’d just vacated. I stayed standing alongside Jazz. Logan flanked him on the left, but it was clear he didn’t want to be anywhere near any of us. I sympathized.

      “I know we’ve all been worried about Nana,” Jazz said as an opening salvo.

      “You’ve been worried,” the bullish man corrected. He had a barrel chest, a pugnacious chin and salt-and-pepper hair. “The rest of us know what’s wrong with her. Dementia.” The woman seated beside him on the green and gold striped divan—his wife, I was sure—stiffened at the word. Her head was bent and she seemed intent on her fingernails. I watched her play with them. Her hair was coiffed in that flippy style so beloved by Ann Landers, if you could still believe the picture. It was dyed an unnatural black, the scary kind that seems to absorb all light.

      “I’m Garrett,” he added, rising again to extend his hand. Steely blue eyes searched my face. “That’s my wife, Satin. Jazz said that you’re…?”

      “Jane Kelly.” We shook hands. His grip was one of those crushers. He squeezed my fingers and kept his gaze on my face, watching. I managed to keep my eyes level with his and luckily didn’t tear up from the pain. Abruptly, he released his grip and turned away.

      Geez, Louise.

      “I’m Roderick,” the other man said with a nod. He was lean with hair an even brown tone that spoke of coloring as well. I smiled at him in acknowledgment, all the time wondering when I could get the hell out of Dodge.

      “And this is Benjamin,” Roderick said, gazing at a young man who sat apart from the group, flipping through a magazine. Benjamin’s head stayed bowed. There was something about his slouched posture and desire to be alone in a crowd that made me think he was a teenager, but when he deigned to look at me I was surprised to see he was closer to my age. He alone of the Purcells possessed brown eyes, a light shade, close to my hazel color, a gift from his father.

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