(Blood and Bone, #2) Sin and Swoon(71)
She nods but her eyes don’t leave the badge. “I’m Amanda.” She opens the door wide for us. There are kids’ toys on the floor, and the TV is blaring. It’s like a normal home for any middle-to-lower class family. “Come on in; ignore the mess. The kids are home for Christmas break now.”
I had forgotten about Christmas. It dawns on me that I have to go to the South for Christmas with the in-laws.
Henrico gives me a look. “I’ll wait out here. Keep an eye out.”
I nod and close the door. “My name is Jane. I’m with the FBI.” I hold up my badge for her. It’s never had as much use as it has on this file.
“How can I help you?” Her face is no longer friendly and sweet.
“We found your father’s cabin and the cells below.”
Her eyes dart to the right. She winces and nods. “You’d better sit down.” She sits too, looking at the kids I didn’t even see on the couch against the wall. “You guys go clean up that basement, now.” Her tone is nervous, but I think they take it as angry. They scramble without making much fuss. When they’re gone she turns back to me. “Now you listen here, I’ve worked long and hard to forget about all that. I don’t need some media bullshit and scandal involving me or my kids.”
“That won’t ever happen.”
“Good. Because that man is not my family.”
My stomach drops. “So you were never one of the kids to him?”
She shakes her head. “I was never anything but a burden to her, something he wanted and she didn’t. They didn’t need to adopt; they had two kids. But he wanted—” She pauses. “Like I said, I have moved on. But I want my share. I have earned it.” Her voice shakes a little.
“Yes, you have.” I look down, hating that I have to do this. “Did the other kids know, your brother and sister?”
She nods once.
“And the wife, your adoptive mother?”
She nods again, less sharply. “It started when I was fifteen. I never understood why he wanted to adopt me until my fifteenth birthday. He took me to the cabin for my birthday. We skied and snowmobiled, and for the first time he was nice to me.” Her eyes glaze over, and I am grateful she spares me the details.
“When did you leave the family? Your family?”
She sighs. “When I was seventeen, I ran away. I lived on the streets for a while, did some drugs. Then I met a priest who does an outreach program in Bellevue. He helped me. Got me off the streets, got me a job and some counseling. I met my husband and never looked back until that lawyer came. Roland Guthrie. He had a partner who wanted to take my case, wanted to help me get the money I was owed.”
“Lawyer?”
She nods. “Yeah, he and his partner, Sven Kelpie, have made the case for me. They said I should have my third; I was legally adopted, and I was owed. Said it would take some time. All they wanted was the cabin. No commission, just the cabin and the land.” She laughs bitterly, and I nearly wrinkle my nose.
“They must have known about the cabin.”
She gives me a look, and I feel about one inch tall. “Everyone who is anyone knew about that lodge. You think you can have a fun lodge like that and not share it with all the successful important people in the world? Of course they knew, but if they wanted that nasty pit as their payment, I was fine with it. I just needed to win my share first. I earned it.”
“Wait, so the will was never changed to take you out, you just were never in it?”
She nods again. “That’s right. He could have sex with me and torment me, but he couldn’t let me have my share of the money. I slept in a cell for a month once. Growing up, my bedroom was in the basement next to the boiler room.”
“Of the house in Queen Anne?”
She shakes her head. “No, our main house was out on the water. It’s not part of the will because it was gifted directly to my brother and sister before he died. The bullshit story about me being cut out was done by the media, leaked, but I don’t know how. I can’t imagine anyone who would benefit from such a move. All I know is there was no deathbed change to the will.”
“What’s the address on that house?”
She shakes her head but writes it down. “You are not going to like that house at all.”
“Is it as bad as the cabin?”
She shakes her head. “Worse. The cabin was just to train the girls to work the lodge. They would suffer there, learning how to be women of the night, as he liked to call them. Then he would take them to the lodge, and they actually would be grateful. No more cells and starving and shitting in those nasty toilets. No more bugs and sickness. No more Old Dick teaching them how to be a woman.”