“Can I just ask you if you’re a criminal? It won’t change anything. Were those police?”
“They weren’t police, and I’m not a criminal,” he told her.
“Are you lying?”
“No.”
She leaned in. “Was that the mafia boss whose wife you helped?”
He laughed. “No. That was someone else.”
One side of her mouth lifted, not in a smile but in alarmed dismay, like she was about to ask something but hesitating. Finally, she asked, “How many people are trying to kill you?”
Maxence laughed. “I don’t even know. A month ago, I would have said essentially no one, just the usual random rabble who chose kidnapping for ransom as a career path, but nothing personal.”
“And what changed?” she asked, still watching him.
Everything.“If I tell you that, you’ll know everything about me.”
“Well, so don’t be specific, then.” She sat on the couch and eased her boots off. “Is it something you did?”
“No. Let me say this: a relative is dying. There are inheritance issues.”
“Oh!” Dree said, her eyes lighting up. “When my grandma died, my mom and her brother had a falling-out like you wouldn’t believe. Grandma gave each of them half of her property, which is adjacent to our sheep farm. Uncle Marny lives over in Cayuga Valley, so what was he supposed to do with half a parcel of land far away from where he farms chile peppers? Momma wanted us to buy it at the going rate, but he asked forfive times thatbecause it was the only plot of land for sale for five hundred milesandit was adjoining their property. They finally came to a price, but Momma and Daddy still won’t speak to Uncle Marny at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Is it like that?”
Max had listened to her recitation with growing amusement. Her question bumped him out of his passive listening. “Um, yes. Yes, it’s exactly like that.”
Give or take a billion dollars.
Chapter Nine
Peaceful Transitions
Dree
While Dree was telling Augustine the story about her Uncle Marny, her phone logged back into the hotel’s Wi-Fi and started buzzing in her pocket like a baby rattler had crawled in there, and they do.
When you grow up on a sheep ranch, you learn you’ve got to watch out for baby snakes in the spring and shake out your shoes before you put them on, but you should always do that anyway because of the scorpions.
She sneaked a surreptitious peek at her phone screen while Augustine went back over to the door and fiddled with the locks again.
The screen read that she’d had an incoming DM text from Sister Ann.
Dree pressed her finger to the back of her phone and swiped to find the text, which read,There is something wrong with Peaceful Transitions Hospice.
That was where Francis worked. He’d been working there ever since she’d met him, and he’d said that he’d been working there for five years before that.
Indeed, that was how she’d first met Francis Senft.
Another DM text was from Caridad Santos, a friend of hers from work, which read,Are you okay? Why aren’t you picking up your phone? The police came around and were asking questions about you. I wasn’t sure what to tell them, so I didn’t say anything.
Dree would have to buy Caridad some high-quality French chocolate before she went back to Phoenix.
She felt weird about sitting on the couch and ignoring Augustine while she texted these guys back about this stuff, so she excused herself and went to the bathroom.
She’d seen the bathroom earlier when she’d showered, but the gigantic, freestanding marble bathtub in the middle still shocked her. She’d never been in a tub that big. She made a note to add soaking in it to her bucket list on the napkin.
The two sinks were on one wall with ornate framed mirrors above. The shower stall was completely separate, as was the little toilet room with a door that closed, a bathroom within the bathroom.
