explained the exhaustion.
“But how do we get from grief and mourning to a Lexus-wielding ghost?” he asked. “Are you sure your brother’s dead? That you didn’t…uh—”
“No, Mr. Latham,” she cut in, her green eyes bright with indignation. “I didn’t imagine my brother’s death. I could never have done that. Besides, I have plenty of evidence of his passing.”
“I didn’t mean that you might have imagined his death.” David shifted his weight from one to the other foot. “That evidence you mentioned would be…?”
“The usual,” she countered. “I have a death certificate, the obit from the newspaper, the tasteful gravestone I had to order, a casket and fresh burial plot, the unending funeral bills I still have to pay and none of those is even the most heartbreaking bit of proof you could ever want. I have a grieving five-year-old nephew who only wants to know where his daddy went.”
David’s gaze dropped to the boy. The tears in Mark’s large green eyes, so like those of his aunt, filled him with guilt. “I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t be asking these questions with…ah…him here.”
“You shouldn’t be asking them period,” she said.
“Amen,” added Radford.
Although their objections didn’t have the same meaning, David got where they were coming from. He shot the cop an apologetic glance, but then his attention flew back to the woman and child in the blink of an eye. “Maybe you shouldn’t be talking ghost stories, either.”
To his satisfaction, she glanced down at the boy, and frowned. “You’re right. I’m going home.”
“Not so fast, lady,” Radford said. “I need your name, address, telephone number, and the full name of that maybe-dead, maybe-not-so-dead brother of yours.”
David didn’t let his gaze stray as Lauren responded. But then, when she got to her brother’s name, a touch of recognition tickled the backside of his memory.
Ric DiStefano.
He knew the name. But he couldn’t quite place it. Not right away, at any rate. He’d have to think about where he’d heard it, how he came to know it.
Then, to his surprise, after Radford’s okay, Lauren walked to the large, three-story brownstone mansion two doors from the corner, unlocked the door and slipped inside. She lived there and she complained about funeral bills?
Something still didn’t add up.
While he stared at the double mahogany doors, someone tugged on the back of his shirt. He turned around and groaned.
“You okay, Davey?” his grandmother asked.
Oh, boy. Was he ever in trouble now! His grandmother at the scene of a crime.
“I’m fine, Gram. What are you doing here?”
“Sure you’re fine?”
“Yes, I’m sure. So why are you here?”
At nearly six feet of statuesque height, Dorothea Stevens Latham rarely looked anything but her usual competent, eccentric self. Right now, though, under the weak glow of the streetlight at the other corner, his grandmother looked shaken.
Guilt filled him. He opened his arms wide, and she stepped into his hug. He felt her shivers in the deepest corner of his heart.
“Aw, Gram,” he said as he patted her sturdy back. “You shouldn’t’ve worried. I’m fine. It’s just that I witnessed a hit-and-run.”
Then she shuddered, took a deep breath, and stepped away. “And just how was I supposed to know that, David Andrew Latham?”
Now this was more like it. “Because I called you and told you Dan would pick you up. Then I bet he told you the same thing.”
She tossed her head of snow-white spiked hair. “Well, Davey dear, I like Danny just fine, but he’s every bit as much of a spook as you are. How’m I supposed to know when he’s telling me the truth and when he’s feeding me Bureau gobbledygook?”
“Ahem,” said the alluded-to spook. “I’m not given to lying, Grandma Dottie.”
David’s friends all wound up adopting his grandmother as their own. The world’s very own professional grandmother turned to Dan Maddox. Her canary-yellow full-length wool duster coat swirled around her.
“Maybe not, Danny, but you’ll be the first to bend the truth to cover for Davey or any of your other fellow agents. And you can’t deny it.”
Dan met David’s gaze. The two men exchanged a knowing look. There wasn’t much either could say to the older woman. She knew them too well.
“So I’m right, then,” she continued. “Not only did I have to come see that you really were in one piece, but I also had to check to make sure you hadn’t cooked up a goofy excuse to not come and pick me up. I don’t know what you have against my friends. They’re such lovely gals.”
Now she’d started in with her guilt-inducing poor-me deal. “Hey, Gram, give it up. You may as well quit while you’re ahead. I’m not buying that ‘what you have against my friends’ stuff. You know I don’t have a thing against your friends. I just have a problem with your devious ways. I can find my own dates, you know.”
She snorted. “Well, you’re doing a lousy job of it, if you ask me. And I know some swell girls.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Ask you.”
Gram stuffed her fists in the pockets of her outrageous coat and pushed out her bottom lip.
Now, really. Who else wore nearly neon-yellow in December?
Who else wore nearly neon-yellow at any time?
She lowered her head.
Anyone else would’ve thought she was contrite. Not David. He knew she was busy scrambling in her troublemaker brain for another plan of attack.
It was time to deflect the skirmish. “Well, listen—”
“So did you get the pretty blonde’s number?” she asked.
Without thinking, David said, “Her name, address, phone number…”
At the gleam in his grandmother’s brown eyes, David let his words die a merciful death. She’d tricked him well and good.
“Is there any reason to think this rises to the level of a Federal situation, Latham?” Radford asked.
David had forgotten the officers. “Ah…no. I doubt it.”
Sherman nodded. “Then we’ll take it from here. As a courtesy, we’ll let you know if we learn anything different than what we know now.”
“That’s fine. And thank you for your quick response. I appreciate it.”
Radford chuckled. “At least someone does. It doesn’t look like Ms. DiStefano thinks much of us.”
David glanced at the expensive house down the street. “Don’t take it personally, Officer. It strikes me that she doesn’t think much of law enforcement period.”
“I’m with you,” Sherman said.
“D’you mean that pretty girl?” his grandmother asked. “Are you boys saying she’s a crook?”
Her disbelief struck David as somewhat naive, but he didn’t have much to go on. “No, Gram. We have no evidence that she’s anything but what she says she is—a grieving sister who’s been left to raise a miserable little orphan boy.”
“So where’s the but?”
Nothing much got past her. And she wouldn’t let up on him until she learned what she