Makhi looks briefly surprised by the ginger ale and painkillers she places in front of him, and I wonder at the relationship they have with each other. A long time ago, I thought Nance was just the housekeeper. But she’s more than that. She seems to care about them all.
“Sorry I called you an old bird that one time,” Makhi says, pulling the tab on the can of ginger ale with a boyish smile.
“And the other times?” Nance asks dryly.
Makhi groans. “Have mercy on a man who drank too much whiskey and killed off more brain cells than he can afford to lose, Nance.”
Vonn’s cell phone vibrates loudly across the wooden table, and he grabs it. After scanning the screen, he sets the phone down on the table, his shoulders more relaxed than when I first walked into the kitchen.
“Nash’s attorney is leaving his house now,” Vonn explains as Nance wanders over to the refrigerator and pulls out eggs and bacon.
“But what if the sheriff interviews him now? Could he push Nash into saying something that incriminates himself?” I ask.
I have no clue about who he’s supposed to have killed, and I’m hesitant to ask in case it involves a certain missing gardener who tried to sexually assault me.
“Nash knows not to say anything without his attorney, so we should be good until Otto gets him out,” Vonn explains with a reassuring smile. “His attorney lives a couple of towns over, so it’ll take him an hour to get to the sheriff’s department. It’s probably not a good idea for us to go down there, but I’d still like to see Nash. Make sure he got there in one piece.”
So would I.
I try not to be too hopeful. “You say that as if getting Nash out of jail for murder is an easy thing.”
“Nash didn’t kill anyone,” Makhi says, taking a small, hesitant sip from his ginger ale.
He eyes the can warily as he waits for a second, then his expression relaxes and he follows up the sip with a bigger one. I take it as a sign that the ginger is settling his stomach, and he’s not about to throw up over the dining table.
When Nance also relaxes from where she’s watching him closely from the stove, she must be more relieved than I am not to be cleaning puke from a gorgeous wooden table. I’d have helped her, but I would not have appreciated the task—or Makhi—afterward.
“How can you be sure he didn’t kill anyone?” I ask Makhi.
“Because I did,” he announces.
I freeze.
Vonn releases a frustrated sigh. “Don’t listen to him, Byrdie. He didn’t kill anyone.”
“But there was talk in town of a murderer under this roof,” I say. “The grocery store owner warned me not to come here.”
“Therewasa death in the house,” Nance says, removing cooked bacon from the skillet and pouring beaten eggs into the same pan. “Naturally, that leads suspicious minds to gossip.”
“Who died?” I ask.
“Nash’s dad,” Vonn explains.
“How did he die?” I glance between Makhi and Vonn, thinking one of them must have done it.
“He fell off the roof,” Vonn says, and when Makhi avoids my gaze, I know he must be thinking of how he found me standing on the edge last night.
My eyes fly to Nance. “You warned me not to go up there.” When I first started working as a maid, Nance made it clear she didn’t trust me. I was pleased to prove her wrong by not being lazy and for sticking around. The other maids they’d hired never lasted long.
“Because it’s dangerous,” Nance says. “There’s no railing along the edge. I imagine it gets slippery in the inclement weather. It would be easy for anyone to fall, especially while drunk, and he was very drunk that rainy, thundery day.”
My eyes widen. “You were here.”
“Of course I was here,” she says, meeting my eyes. “I’ve been a housekeeper here since Nash was a baby. The scream as he fell was really quite terrible. Most of the staff left afterward because of it.”
“I think they left because they believed someone had given the old guy a nudge over the side,” Makhi says dryly.
“One of you?” I ask, my eyes shifting between Vonn and Makhi.
