“Last night... ” She hesitated and nervously ran her hand over her hair, as if sensing his interest. Which she might. Dante shut down his thoughts so she could continue. “After Lucia spoke through Evie, she enteredmyhead. I heard her speak only to me. No one else. That’s never happened. I’m not a medium. I don’t talk to ghosts.”
“Yeah, right, and I don’t see things on hairbrushes either,” he countered. “I’m convinced Lucia last touched that brush when the twins were infants screaming bloody murder. I saw the image of the babies and picked up a mix of love and fear and something I can’t really name, but it wasn’t good.”
Her glare dissolved at that admission. “I won’t ask how you got into her toiletries, but I really did hear a voice speak. The message I received—and let me be clear, I don’t guarantee I didn’t just have a brain aneurysm—said totell Dante about the artifacts. That’s all I got. I think she went in search of the twins then.”
“Artifacts?” He rubbed his temple. “That means nothing to me. Lucia had no interest in archeology. For her, it was all about the farm. What artifacts?”
Pris slid the bacon and French toast on a plate and set it in front of him. “If we want to speculate, which I know you told me not to do, if her life was the farm and the last time she was seen was at the farm...What are the chances the artifacts are on the farm?”
Dante almost choked on the bacon.
Leo had found a gold Etruscan cuff on the farm—in the tunnel, the one that had collapsed when he’d tried to explore it.
Twenty-nine: Evie
Shovingher cold hands into the back pockets of her jeans, Evie studied the burned-out bistro. Beside it, the boutique still stood, although the bricks were scorched on this side and the cracked front windows had been boarded up.
A skinny Black woman in a police uniform stopped beside her. “People like that don’t belong here anyways.”
“People like what? Italians? Beautiful people?” Even old school pals could be bigots, she supposed.
“Both.” Philomena Marquette crossed her arms and glared at the blackened buildings. “Foreigners bring trouble. They ain’t hiring or selling to locals. Did you see any Black folk in there?”
“Well, I only went in when it was empty, so I can’t say.” But she had a point. Evie had seen boutiques like this. Their market generally geared toward beautiful—wealthy—white people. Sexism, classism, and racism all rolled into one and calledmarketing to a niche audience.
But it was reverse bigotry to call them foreigners and object to their differences. Her ADHD mind regularly revolved around subjects like this without forming a verdict.
As far as she could determine, KK and Lucia hadn’t been wealthy, just white and beautiful. Did British qualify asforeign? She preferred that everyone be considered a citizen of the world, but people were still fighting the Civil War.Differenthappened, and that apparently equaledforeign.
“You don’t think Pris poisoned the owner because of this dump, do you?” Evie asked to avoid a headache and because the rumor annoyed her. “She didn’t want the building. It’s too big.”
“Ain’t big now. Bet Larry’ll give your cousin a good deal on what’s left.”
That was insulting to Larraine’s chosen name, but the mayor had grown up here as Larry, and it rolled naturally off the tongue. And it wasn’t as if Philomena was trying to be PC.
“’Course, if everyone thinks Pris poisoned the owner, she ain’t likely to have many clientele, is she?” Philomena cackled.
“Now I remember why I pushed you on the playground.” Growing up in a small town wasn’t all people helping each other like in Hallmark movies. Small towns and small minds often went together, along with long memories of past transgressions.
“Yeah, well, you were a little snot, and I got you back good, so I reckon we’re even. Here comes Larry. I better get goin’ or he—she’ll—have my ass.” Philomena marched across the street and out of sight.
“That Till’s little sister you talking to?” the mayor asked. Today, the fashionista wore what was probably an Italian suit of cream silk with gold buttons down the side of the slim, knee-length skirt. Larry looked good in heels.
“Yeah, Phil and I went to school together. But she has a point—why did you buy this building for strangers? You had a whole town full of people who could have rented it.”
Larraine swung her little gold purse and studied the ruined building. “I met them at a grand opening of the boutique on Hilton Head. I’m afraid I name dropped and said I’d met Dante, the Conte Armeno here visiting family.”
Ah, so that was KK’s interest in Afterthought. And how Dante was connected, sort of. “They knew Dante?”
“They said they did, anyway. Of course, that was before I realized that even if theirproductswere Italian, Katherine and Matthew were English. Oops. They said they were expanding into small towns in the south. I said Afterthought was a small town just outside Charleston and Savannah, and maybe we could do something with my fashions and their skin care. And they showed up. What else could I do?”
Evie wondered if it was the opportunity offered or Dante’s name that had drawn Katherine here. “Why small towns, I wonder? I mean, Hilton Head, yeah, a small rich town might make sense. But most small towns in the south...”
“Don’t have enough money for more than Walmart, right.” Larraine rubbed away a frown between her eyes. “I didn’t give it much thought. I wanted to thumb my nose at the bigots and naysayers who said I’d never make mayor. These folk were proper English and all that. It sounded good at the time.”
“So you just rented it to them without any financials?”
“They had a big glossy boutique in Hilton Head! Who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? I had visions of sidewalk cafés and Beverly Hills shops and...” Larraine gave an unladylike sigh. “Delusions of grandeur.”
