Page 51 of The Sisters of Crimson House

“If I’m so dangerous,” he said softly, leaning toward her ever so slightly, “what are you doing here with me?”

“Trying to get information.” She wouldn’t take the bait. “She said you wouldn’t leave her alone. You harassed her. The theater kicked you out.”

“You need to ask her about Overton Park.”

She blinked at him suddenly, not understanding. “Overton?” she repeated. Her park.

“Yes,” he said. “And why I saw her there at your parents’ old house last month.”

Last month. She felt her stomach tighten, her breath catch in her throat. It wasn’t possible.

You’re not supposed to be here.

The whisper was so close, she felt warm breath on her skin. The lines on her palm burned like they were being cut into her skin anew.

“I need to go home,” she gasped, grabbing her purse and heading toward the door before Sy could process. Wordlessly she ran from the reading room, out the door, and across the historic cobblestones of Beale.

Twenty-Seven

Crimson House was not on fire. Lightning bolts did not pierce it from the sky.

But Charley did not know how to save it from the disaster that was unfolding.

Yellow caution tape ran the length of the porch, highlighting the death trap that they were. She cursed under her breath. She’d meant to repair those stairs. Meant to repair the landing. Meant to do a lot of things. Zavier and Astrid hurriedly met her on the lawn, Zavier carrying a document he thrust in her face.

“Eviction notice?” Charley asked, scanning the letter and looking at them in horror. She shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s not like he hadn’t given them ample warning. It had just never occurred to her that she would lose.

“Bastard had the city come out and do it while we were all away,” fumed Zavier. “Sounds like his style.”

“And now he’s gathered us all here together,” said Astrid, nodding toward the occupants of the house next door as they made their way across the lawn.

“Hello, Charlotte. Howard Lovell,” Howard said with a curt nod, like he was about to press a business card into her hand. He was pink, already sweating even though it was sixty degrees out. “You remember Peyton,” he said, gesturing to his blond, whippet-thin wife, intriguingly barefoot but otherwise perfectly put together in a crisp white oxford shirt and capris.

“I know who you are, Howard,” said Charley. The Lovells had been living next door since Sadie took over matriarch duties from the Great Leo, well before Charley was even born. “Your lawyer run out of those fancy letters to send me, or you hand-delivering them now?”

Howard shifted in his salmon-pink shorts, adjusting his large belly that pushed through his white polo shirt and sagged over a braided brown leather belt. “I’m very sorry about your grandmother, Charlotte, but honestly her passing is why I’m here.”

“Because you were scared to come talk to us when she was alive?” she said, folding her arms defiantly.

“Honestly because I was afraid of what state I might find her in. She hasn’t left the house in what…eight years since…?”

“Since the night my parents died, thanks for the reminder,” said Charley tersely. “We’ve been just fine.”

“You call that fine?” Howard said, a vein in his neck pulsing as he motioned at the tarp flapping in the breeze. “That, I believe, was where your grandmother slept?”

Damn it, thought Charley. She’d forgotten to secure it again. What they all must think of her. This savage keeping Sadie in a cage covered by a plastic sheet.

“You’re so concerned about my grandmother that you waited until she died to come tell me about it?” said Charley.

“You’ve suffered a tremendous loss,” cooed Peyton, putting a warning hand on her husband’s arm. She was the golden-yogi cop to his pulled-pork one. “The neighborhood council is not unaware of your struggles and the, ah, creative means to generate income,” Peyton drawled. Charley willed herself not to look at Astrid and Zavier. “It’s because of our respect for the incredible legacy your family leaves behind that the Friends are still willing to make the same generous offer as before.”

“Which is what,” Charley finally asked after waiting on one of them to fill in the blank.

“Have you read any of our correspondence?” said Howard, his face beginning to take on the same hue as his shorts.

Peyton to the rescue again as she silenced him with a warning look. “Friends is prepared to pay the value of the house before the market bottomed out, Charlotte,” she said with a cool smile. “You’re not going to get a better offer in this economy.”

“Who says I want to sell the house?”