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“Joanne died almost a year ago. It’s rough, man.”
“A year?” Mat was so furious he could barely contain himself. “I was told that Mrs. Pressman had been out of the country for a few months.”
“Yeah, man. Way out.” His pitch rose. “She took my bike one day and wrecked it on County Line Road.”
Nell absentmindedly patted Button’s leg. “She was riding a bike?”
“I think he means a motorcycle,” Mat said tightly.
Lucy tried to slide behind the couch, apparently under the mistaken notion furniture would protect her.
“My new Kawasaki 1500. I was really bummed.”
“About the bike or Mrs. Pressman?”
The slacker regarded him with steady eyes. “C’mon, man, that’s low. I loved her.”
Mat wondered why nothing in life was ever simple. He’d never thought to question the authenticity of the note Lucy’d shown him because the stationery had been embossed with the college seal. Also, the handwriting hadn’t looked like the work of a teenager. Fool. He knew how smart she was. Why hadn’t he done some digging?
He asked the question he’d been avoiding ever since Lucy had called the slacker Grandpa. “Who are you?”
“Nico Glass. Joanne and I’d only been married a couple of months when she died.”
Nell seemed to be having as much trouble as he was taking it in. “The two of you were married?”
Nico’s eyes held a hint of challenge. “Yeah. We loved each other.”
Nell made the understatement of the day. “There seems to be quite an age difference.”
“In a lot of people’s eyes, maybe, but not in ours. She was only fifty-three. She was my anthropology professor at Laurents. They tried to fire her after we got involved, but because I was over twenty-one, they couldn’t do it.”
“Laurents?” Nell said. “That’s the college in town?”
“Yeah, I changed my major a couple of times, so it was taking me a while to graduate.”
Mat finally confronted Lucy. He decided it was a good thing there was a couch between them after all because he wanted to do serious harm. “Who forged the letter?”
Her thumbnail came to her mouth, and she took a step away from him, misery etched in every line of her body. He didn’t feel one bit sympathetic.
“This lady I was baby-sitting for,” she mumbled. “And it wasn’t for you! It was for Sandy’s lawyer! I knew he was getting suspicious, so I was going to show it to him next time he showed up, only you came instead.”
He clenched his teeth. “You knew your grandmother was dead. You lied about everything.”
She regarded him mulishly. “I might have known she died, but I didn’t know about the Kawasaki.”
Nell must have realized he was losing it because she put her hand on his arm and gave a light squeeze.
“Look, man. Am I supposed to know you?”
He struggled for composure. “I’m Mat Jorik. I used to be married to Sandy, Joanne’s daughter. This is . . . my wife Nell.”
He nodded at Nell. Button started batting her baby blues at him, and he smiled back. “Cute kid. Joanne was worried when Sandy got pregnant because of her drinking. They didn’t get along too good.”
“Sandy didn’t drink when she was pregnant.” Lucy started working on the other thumbnail.
Button wanted down, and Nell lowered her to the floor. The toddler immediately began waddling around the coffee table, toes pointed outward like a drunken ballerina. Mat needed to get himself under control, so he headed for the framed snapshots sitting on the dusty wooden mantel in the feeble hope that they might tell him something.
The pictures in the front were all of Joanne and Nico. They could have been mother and son, except for the hungry way they looked at each other. Joanne had been an attractive woman, slim and well proportioned, with long salt and pepper hair parted in the center and held away from her face with barrettes. Her gauzy skirts, loose-fitting tops, and silver jewelry bore the indelible stamp of an aging flower child. The proprietary way she leaned against Nico’s bare chest in one photo after another made it obvious that she’d been sexually smitten by him. As far as his attraction to a woman thirty-some years older—that was probably best sorted out on a psychiatrist’s couch.
