Winning Amelia Page 4

  “Oh, right. Sorry about that, sis.”

  “There was more to it than that, Will,” Amelia said. “The main reason I thought of using the painting is because it reminded me of the wall safe Spencer had installed in our condo. It was behind the Kandinsky.”

  “The what?”

  “The painting in our dining room.”

  “You mean the blue and yellow one with the weird zigzags?”

  Amelia nodded. That was one way to describe Wassily Kandinsky’s Expressionist style. Spencer had bought the artwork primarily as an investment. It had turned out to be the most valuable piece in their collection and worth almost as much as the condo. It had nothing in common with the amateurish landscape that had hung in Will and Jenny’s back room, except for its function. “I used Jenny’s painting because I regarded it as the poor woman’s version of Spencer’s wall safe.”

  Will snorted a laugh. “I get it now. That sounds like something you would do.”

  “I thought I was being clever,” Amelia said. “It was a stupid idea.”

  “Water under the bridge. What’s done is done.”

  She knew they were disappointed. Who wouldn’t be, after the way she’d gotten everyone’s hopes up? Because of her, the whole family had been on an emotional roller coaster. It had been a brief ride, one sudden climb followed by an equally sudden drop, yet Jenny and Will were taking the reversal of fortune in stride. Hiring someone to search for the ticket had been Amelia’s idea, not theirs. They felt it was a lost cause. They preferred to accept what they couldn’t control and get on with their lives.

  They’d been the same way when she’d arrived on their doorstep six months ago, divorced, flat broke and unemployed. There had been no words of recrimination. They’d helped her carry the few possessions she’d saved inside, and then Jenny had fixed her a cup of herbal tea while Hank had dug out extra bedding for the futon.

  Jenny patted her hand. “I think that carrot’s done, too.”

  A quick glance showed her the carrot was turning into a matchstick. She passed it to her sister-in-law. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. There’s less to chop.”

  She had to admire Jenny’s glass-half-full attitude. Life probably would be simpler if she could master it herself. “Going back to the subject of paintings, I believe it’s safest not to tell Hank about the ticket, so I’d appreciate it if neither of you mentioned it to him.”

  “Why?” Jenny asked. “You can’t be thinking he’d steal it?”

  “People have been tempted by far less.”

  “But you signed the back of the ticket, didn’t you?”

  She grimaced.

  “Amelia?”

  “There was a long lineup at the Min-A-Mart when I bought the ticket on Thursday. By the time I got here I was in a rush to put away the groceries I’d picked up on the way home, so I just tucked the ticket straight into the painting. Once it was out of sight, I forgot about signing it.”

  Will whistled. “That means anyone could cash it.”

  “I know. Stupid move number two.”

  “But Hank would be working for you,” Jenny persisted. “It would be against the law if he tried to keep that ticket for himself, whether he could cash it or not. You could take him to court...” She stopped. “Oh.”

  “Right. Been there, done that, and couldn’t afford to buy the T-shirt. The law doesn’t stop anyone from taking what they want if they think they can get away with it. And the only people guaranteed to make a profit in court are the lawyers. I know mine certainly got rich off me.”

  “She’s got a point,” Will put in. “It might be best to keep Hank in the dark.”

  Jenny carried the cutting board to the stove and scraped the mound of diced carrots into the stew pot, then handed Amelia an onion. “You’re not being fair, either. You’re suspicious of Hank because of Spencer.”

  Well, duh, Amelia thought. She picked up a small knife and jabbed the tip into the base of the onion. “You know what they say about once burned.”

  “They’re two entirely different people.”

  “So? They’re both male.”

  “Hey,” Will said. “What am I?”

  “You’re my brother, so you’re an exception.”

  “Spencer Pryce was a lying crook,” Jenny declared. “He took advantage of your innocence.”

  “You mean my gullibility.”

  “You’ve known Hank since you were kids,” Jenny continued. “I think you should trust him.”

  “I can’t. I used to think Spencer was a nice guy, too. We all did.”

  “But—”

  “Being fooled once was bad enough.” She pulled off a layer of onion peel. “I don’t intend to trust a man around my money again. Ever. Except for Will, of course,” she added.

  Jenny pursed her lips. “Hmph.”

  Amelia flinched again. This time it was from guilt. She realized it might be unfair to tar Hank with the same brush as Spencer, yet she had little choice. It wasn’t only men she couldn’t trust, it was her own judgment. “Our mother used to make that sound a lot, too. Do you learn it during childbirth, or what?”

  Will snorted another laugh.

  “Well, I think you’re making a mistake,” Jenny said. “There’s no excuse for lying.”

  “Depends on the circumstances,” Will said. “Sometimes it’s the best way to handle a situation.”

  “Don’t listen to your brother,” Jenny said. “He’s a bad influence. You owe Hank the truth.”

  “She doesn’t owe him anything,” Will said. “Not after the way he treated her.”

  Amelia sighed. So this was what lay at the core of her brother’s attitude toward Hank and his business. She should have expected it. Will could be as protective of his sister as he was of his wife. “That’s ancient history,” she said. “We were kids.”

  “He hurt you.”

  “Ancient history,” she repeated.

  “Maybe, but I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Try, okay? The past is irrelevant. My only concern is the painting, and Hank’s probably going to want to interview both of you.”

  Will opened his mouth to respond when he paused and tipped his head toward the hall. Timmy’s voice drifted down the stairwell. It sounded as if he was rattling the sides of his crib. “Nap time’s over,” Will said. “I’ll get him.”

  Jenny waited until they could hear Will’s footsteps pound up the stairs. She put her head close to Amelia’s and spoke quickly. “We made more than five hundred dollars from the yard sale.”

  “That’s great.”

  “You can use it.”

  “What? Jenny, I can’t take your money. You need it.”

  “It’s to pay Hank. I meant to give it to you this morning but you left before I could.”

  Her eyes stung. She put down the onion. “You’re incredible. How can you be so generous?”

  “I feel responsible because I sold that painting.”

  “Please, don’t. You couldn’t have known.”

  “I should have noticed the ticket!”

  “No one would unless they knew where to look. It was folded up and tucked pretty deep inside the edge of the frame. And thank you for the wonderful offer, but I’ve got some money put aside in my first-and-last fund,” she said. She was referring to the money she’d been accumulating in order to pay the deposit on an apartment rental when she moved out. It was only a little over three hundred and fifty dollars, which wasn’t much—it would scarcely cover an hour of her former lawyer’s time. “And I still have my job. Besides, I’ll have plenty to give Hank as a reward once he finds the painting.”

  “Didn’t he want a retainer?”

  “No.”

  “What if he doesn’t find it? How will you pay him then?”

  “He, uh, said he doesn’t want any money.”

  Jenny stepped back to study her. “He’s working for free?”

  She nodded.

  “Then I was right! He’s still got a thing f
or you.”

  “It’s your pregnancy hormones talking, Jenny.”

  “Hmph.”

  Amelia covered her flinch by checking her wrist, then glanced at the clock on the stove. “And speaking of money, I’d better get going or I’ll be late for my shift.”

  * * *

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Amelia pulled open the back door of Mae B’s. A haze of kitchen smells rolled out to greet her. It was a potent mix: onions from the soup of the day, which was always onion on Mondays, fat from the deep fryer, fresh rolls, stale coffee, plus a trace of mustiness that seeped from the brick walls of the old building in humid weather. Her empty stomach rolled. She braced one hand on the doorframe and turned her face to the breeze. She could have grabbed a sandwich before she’d left her brother’s place, but one of the few perks of working for Mae was a free meal.

  A petite woman jogged toward her along the alley from the parking lot. Shaggy, purple-streaked brown hair bounced against her neck and a small pink knapsack swung from her arm. She couldn’t have been much past her teens. “Are you on your way in or out?” she asked breathlessly.

  “In,” Amelia said. “Can I help you?”

  “Please, tell me it’s not four-thirty yet.”

  Amelia shook her head. “My guess is it’s not past four.”

  “Thank heavens,” she said. She dug into her knapsack and pulled out a frilly, pea-green apron. She nodded toward the doorway Amelia was blocking. “Excuse me, I need to get past.”

  Evidently, Mae had hired a new waitress. Amelia’s stomach did another lurch, but this time it had nothing to do with the kitchen smells. She stepped aside, then followed the woman along the back hallway. “My name’s Amelia. I work here, too.” At least, she hoped she did.

  “I’m Brittany.” She switched her pack from hand to hand as she shrugged into the apron, then fumbled to tie the apron strings behind her back.

  “Hold still, I’ll get that,” Amelia said.

  Brittany stopped so quickly her hair fell over her eyes. She flicked it back with a jerk of her head. A row of metal studs adorned the rim of her ear. “Thanks!”

  “You can put your pack in the storeroom.” Amelia secured the apron with a neat bow. “It’s the door on the right.”

  “Could you do it for me?” she asked, pushing the pack into Amelia’s hands. “I can’t be late on my first day.” She laughed nervously and headed for the dining room. “I seriously need this job,” she said over her shoulder.

  Amelia ducked into the storeroom. The hook where her own apron usually hung was bare. She didn’t need a detective to tell her the apron had been given to Brittany. She dropped the pink pack on the shelf beside the ketchup cans and went in search of her boss.

  Ronnie was jabbing toothpicks into a BLT when she reached the kitchen. He greeted her without meeting her eyes. At her question, he nodded his head toward the corner beside the freezer where they had set up their computer. Mae was peering at the screen while she held a cell phone to her ear. From the sound of things, she was blasting someone about a late delivery.

  Amelia waited until she had finished her call before she spoke. “Hello, Mae.”

  Mae swiveled on her chair to face her. She wouldn’t meet her gaze, either. “I meant to call you earlier, Amelia, but things have been busy.”

  “Do I still have a job here?” she asked bluntly.

  “That’s what I wanted to call you about.”

  “I was wrong about winning the lottery. I told you that as soon as I found out.” In fact, she had been too dazed to think of phoning Mae until Sunday evening. It was only after she’d had no luck going door-to-door questioning her neighbors that she’d remembered her dramatic exit from the restaurant and had attempted to do damage control. “You said it was okay.”

  “I reconsidered.”

  “You said you understood yesterday. You told me I could come back.”

  Mae gave her a tight smile. “I’m sorry, Amelia. We’ve already found someone else.”

  “How? It’s only been a day. You wouldn’t have had time to advertise.”

  “Ronnie called her. She’s his niece, and he knew she needed the job. She’s putting herself through college.”

  “I need the job, too.”

  Mae’s expression hardened. She rose from her chair. “You don’t need it as much as Brittany does. She’s trying to better herself. You’ve already got a degree. You had your shot at a career.”

  “Sure, but—”

  “You know as well as I do that you’re overqualified for this job. You weren’t happy being a waitress, Amelia. While I don’t have any complaints about your work here, I realized it wouldn’t last.”

  “Quitting was a mistake.”

  Mae shook her head. “The reason you quit might have been a mistake, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. We knew it was only a matter of time before you moved on to something better. I have to do what’s right for my business, and I need waitresses I can count on.”

  Amelia took a deep breath, prepared to argue further, when she realized she had nothing to add.

  Mae was right. This would have happened eventually, winning lottery ticket or not.

  Unfortunately, her final financial safety net, flimsy though it might have been, was now gone. Worse, she was pinning her hopes for the future on a man she wasn’t sure she should trust.

  For someone who had vowed she wouldn’t let history repeat itself, this was beginning to seem far too familiar.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HANK HAD LEARNED that Tuesday evening was usually the best time to find people at home. It took into account anyone who might have gone away for a long weekend or might have needed an extra day to recover from a busy one. It was usually too early in the week for people to host dinner parties or pay social calls. There were variables like soccer games, or shift work, and with kids home from school for the summer, there were unforeseen, random events like emergency visits to the hospital to get a broken bone set or a split lip stitched, but on average, Tuesdays were good.

  He left his car near the corner of the street where the Goodfellows lived and began with the house at the end of the block. Despite the pleasant breeze that had come up as the sun lowered, the front window was shut tight. The flowers in the bed beneath it had gone brown and the lawn was in bad need of a haircut. Even from the sidewalk he could see a raft of advertising flyers sticking out of the mailbox beside the front door.

  Tuesday or not, the owners likely were away, and judging by the condition of the flowers and the lawn, they’d probably been away for more than a week. Still, Hank believed in being thorough. That’s why he was canvassing the neighbors even though Amelia said she already had. He knocked on the door, waited a full three minutes, then moved to the next house. This set of homeowners was in, but they told him they had been at their cottage all weekend, as their sunburns and mosquito bites attested.

  He had no better results as he worked his way along one side of the street. It wasn’t until he reached a tidy bungalow in the middle of the other side that his luck changed. No one answered his knock at the front door, but the front window was open and lace curtains stirred in the breeze. A minivan with a Ducks Unlimited bumper sticker was parked in the driveway. Hank stepped around a bed of petunias and followed the smell of burning charcoal to the back of the house. A white picket fence enclosed the rear yard. He stopped at the gate.

  A stocky, middle-aged man stood in front of a round-bottomed barbecue where a row of hamburger patties sizzled on the grill. He had a beer bottle in one hand and a spatula in the other. Close to the house there was a picnic table on a patio made up of square paving stones. A teenage boy with earphone wires trailing past his neck drummed the edge of the table with his index fingers. Seated across from him, a woman with startlingly blond hair waved flies away from a stack of plates and a bowl of what appeared to be potato salad. She was the first to spot Hank. She raised her eyebrows. “Hello?”

  Hank put on his most affable smile. “
Sorry to disturb you folks.”

  The man turned toward him. His round face was bisected by a sharp-beaked nose. “Whatever it is, we don’t want any.”

  “I’m not selling anything.” He pulled the folder with his ID from his jeans and flipped it open. “My name’s Hank Jones, and I’m hoping you could answer a few questions for me. It won’t take long.”

  The boy stopped drumming and regarded Hank warily. He had a younger version of the man’s round face and prominent nose. “Are you a cop?”

  “Policeman, Jacob,” the woman said softly. “Mind your manners.”

  The boy shrugged. “Yeah, whatever.”

  The man hooked the spatula on the barbecue. He started to lift his hand, as if to take a swig of his beer, but awkwardly halted the motion. “What’s this about, officer?”

  Something else Hank had learned, like finding people at home on Tuesdays, was that allowing people to believe he was connected to the law wasn’t a good idea. For one thing, it was illegal. For another, it didn’t necessarily lead to better results. A lot of individuals tended to watch their words more carefully than they normally would if they thought they were talking to the police. Above all, it was a lot simpler to tell the truth, because lies could get hard to keep track of. “I’m not a policeman, sir,” he said. “I’m a private investigator.”

  “A private investigator,” the woman repeated. She surreptitiously fluffed her hair. “How interesting. I’ve never met a private eye before, Mr. Jones.”

  He returned his ID to his pocket. “It’s not anywhere near as exciting as on TV, ma’am. I’m just helping out the Goodfellows. Do you know them?”

  “Not real well,” the man said, apparently speaking for his wife. “I know them to see them. They’re in the white house with the black shutters down the block.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Were any of you here on Sunday morning?”

  “Sure, we all were.”

  “Hey, is this about that painting?” the boy asked, pulling out his earphones.

  Hank rested his forearms on top of the gate, striving for a relaxed pose despite his prickle of excitement. “Painting?”