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Stormy closed her eyes against the hot tears surging up.Dear God!I am on the stand in my own defense all over again.
From the hall came the sound of the children clattering down the stairs. Stormy looked their way, but they passed by, hurrying toward the back of the house.
Her chin trembled.Liane, motherless again.No! she thought. It was one thing for Nina to hurt her, but not Liane. She couldn’t allow that to happen. Once was enough. She raised her head and met Mrs. Lowery’s watchful gaze.
“Nina has been…vindictive,” she began. “She’s taken—or at least I think it was her—all the money Sandy and I have earned at the flea market. I did pawn the television, but it was mine to pawn. I reclaimed it out of my first week’s receipts. The kids were just upstairs watching it. I seldom drink—a glass of wine on occasion. As for Liane, when I first got home from prison, I discovered that Nina often slept in and left Liane to get herself and her cousins off to school.” Stormy’s chin stopped trembling. “Liane did a damned good job of it, too.”
Mrs. Lowery nodded. “When you were first assigned to me, you said you had the money to get your own place. That didn’t happen.”
“No. I had given Nina power of attorney over my share of a small family trust that I expected to be available to me—less, of course, whatever Nina had to use for Liane while I was gone. But I learned she had drawn an advance on it—”
“Milked it, in other words,” Mrs. Lowery put in, nodding.
Stormy thought she heard empathy in the older woman’s voice. It unleashed the courage she needed to ask, “Mrs. Lowery, are you going to revoke my parole?”
“My dear, the recidivism rate for women in my caseload is less than three percent—far below the norm. I do not recommend revocation of parole or probation in the blink of an eye. I work as closely with my probationers as time permits. If there were no such thing as alcohol and narcotics—” She stopped and inhaled. “Well, don’t let me get on that bandwagon.” Her mouth formed a somber line. “One thing I don’t tolerate is anyone trying to undermine a parolee’s best efforts.” She sighed. “I won’t deny I’m a bit angry with you. Had you not been so reticent and simply called me, I could’ve put a stop to this the first time your sister contacted me. As it was, I had no choice but to check things out for myself.” She waved a thin and elegant hand toward Tyler. “Fortunately, this young man has been keeping me abreast of things, so I was not entirely surprised by your sister’s allegations.”
Stormy turned to Tyler. “Tyler? What things? Since when?”
But Mrs. Lowery went on as if Stormy had not posed any questions. “And, Sandy, too, in a roundabout way. She’s determined to regain custody of her children, so she doesn’t make a move without alerting me.”
“You’re Sandy’s probation officer?”
“Noreen and Thelma and Janice are also in my caseload. So you see, my dear, when your sister came to me complaining that you wereconsorting with undesirables, as she put it—”
“Tea, anyone?” Sandy said quietly, entering the room with a tray.
Mrs. Lowery accepted the interruption and gave Sandy a smile. “I’ll have a cup.”
They all heard the front door open and slam. Noreen barreled into the room.
“Stormy? Uh-oh!” she said, spying Mrs. Lowery and skidding to a halt.
But Mrs. Lowery was disposed to smile at Noreen, too. “Ah! Reinforcements, I think. Or perhaps you girls are having your support group meeting here tonight?”
Sandy grabbed Noreen’s arm and hauled her away. “C’mon, I want to show you the candles that Stormy and I made today.”
Stormy still felt likely to fragment at any second. Tyler’s cup rattled in his saucer.
Mrs. Lowery glanced at him. “Would you like to explain to Stormy your part in all this?”
Stormy turned her eyes to Tyler. “Please do.”
“I introduced myself to Mrs. Lowery early on—”
“How early on?”
“While you were seeing your father’s estate manager, actually. I told her I was hoping to enlist your cooperation in finding the stolen money.”
“Cooperation? Is that what you called hounding me?”
“I got more than I bargained for,” he admitted with a faintly amused expression.
I’ll just bet you did, Stormy thought, recalling the brazen way she’d stormed his motel room. She quickly shunted the memory aside, lest Mrs. Lowery read in her face what was on her mind.
“The long and short of it was that after I ran the credit check on your sister and brother-in-law—”
Stormy was on her feet. “You what?”
