Faith, Hope & Charity

A Faith Lehane Mystery

by

STFarnham

AKA Lancer47

Chapter Ten

Xander, Stone and me stood on the sidewalk outside of Charity and Randy's modest bungalow and had a little war conference.

"So whattaya think? Is Charity a killer and is Randy covering for her? Or were they just in the wrong place at the wrong time?" I asked.

Xander said, "I don't trust either one, but I didn't get killer vibes. On the other hand, I've been fooled before."

Stone said, "I don't think either one is entirely innocent, but I also think they're pawns in someone else's game. I agree they don't seem like killers, but you're right, you can rarely tell for sure just by looking and talking to the suspects."

"So what now, Stone?"

"Now we do more research."

Xander groaned, and so did I.

"I take it research isn't your guys favorite activity."

"You'd be right."

Xander said, "I'll see if Willow found anything about Hope."

Stone raised his eyebrows, "Who's Willow?"

"A friend of ours back at the London headquarters," I said. "She's looking into my family."

"Okay. What's this about land in Boston?"

"Oh yeah," I said, "I found that mom had actually owned something, a six acre plot near Logan airport. It looks like it's part of the Metro now, land that got consumed by the Big fucking Dig. But its origin is a complete mystery to me, I certainly never heard of it before. Anyway, somehow or other, Aunt Florence ended up with it in between being owned by mom and the Metro. So I asked Bill Eggars to research it."

"Excellent, I'll call him."

Xander said, "Is it time for dinner yet? I'm really curious about what Jacques is going to serve us next."

I frowned at him. Was he being nice to me, even a little flirtatious, just to eat at my table? Then I thought, 'what the fuck Faithy, what am I thinking?' Man, I've been wealthy beyond anything I ever dreamed for two weeks, and I'm already getting suspicious of peoples motives. But really, Xander? Xander doesn't give a shit about money, never did, and I don't think he ever will, at least not much beyond what he needs to live on anyway.

My phone rang. "Hello?"

"Hi, this Evelyn, we're at the airport, you wanna come get us?"

"Who the fuck are you?"

"I can't say over the phone, you know that! Giles sent us."

"Ah, okay. How many of you?"

"Three: me and Davina who we call Dave, and the squirt, Rikki. And our luggage."

"Hmm, well sure as fuck you ain't gonna fit on my motorcycle, and my lawyer's car isn't much bigger. You can wait until I get back to the house and get a car, or take a taxi."

"I've got the address, we'll take a taxi."

"Okay, see you back at the house."

I looked at Xander, "Your charges are here. They sound like real headaches, I wish I'd never mentioned this idea to Giles."

"Aw, you don't mean that, just think of the fun you'll have with the girls and your sister!"

"Oh fuck me, I can't wait to see what that's like."

"Just as long as they don't make Jacques want to quit."

"Oh crap, we'd better get back to the house. They're just coming from the Sag Harbor airport, they might get there before us. If the girls are anything like I was at that age they'll drive Jacques mad."

"Let's get going then, he's like a national treasure or something."

Stone said, "So when am I going to meet Jacques? Or anyone else who's been working there since before Helen's time."

"You suspect the butler?"

"You have a butler?"

"No, I meant that meta-, meta-for, what the fuckically," I said.

"Metaphorically."

"Yeah. Well sure, come on, follow us and I'll treat you to dinner."

"I'll meet you there."

As Stone drove off, Xander said, "You better call Jacques and tell him to expect us."

"Good idea."

I called Jacques and he seemed quite happy, very much up to the challenge of feeding six people on short notice. I did get the feeling that a little more warning would have been nice.

I got on the bike, Xander behind me, and off we went. I was still a little sore from the morning stabbing, but it seemed to be healing up nicely. When Xand put his arms around my waist I sort of clinched up and hissed softly. Not softly enough as he immediately pulled away. "Hey, don't worry, it was just momentary," I said, "grab on, you won't hurt me."

"Aw that's just your Slayer pride talking, if it hurts, it hurts, I'll just have to be careful and hang on to your shoulders again."

"It's better the other way."

"Really?" Was he reading more into that than I meant? Maybe I meant more than I thought? Maybe I liked him holding me close.

But what was I gonna do about X? I could ignore my feelings, I could tamp 'em down, I could keep it private. But I couldn't fool myself, my feelings for Xand were there. The only real question was whether or not Xander felt the same – that I couldn't tell. And my recent experience with Robin made me kinda untrusting. More untrusting than usual anyway.

We drove up to the house just in time to witness invaders at the front door. My poor secretary was facing three young slayers with a pile of luggage and was gamely trying to keep them out while Stone was just climbing out of his car and trying to preserve the peace. The girls looked like they were about to chop poor Stephanie into pieces – luckily they hadn't actually produced any weapons. I pulled up with a fancy sideways slide, facing the girls.

"Whoa, whoa, what's going on here?" I said as Xand and I got off the bike.

"Ms Lehane, these kids are trying to invade your house!"

"I'm so sorry Stephanie, I didn't mention them to you. It's all right, they're guests."

"Oh," she said, sounding disappointed that she couldn't continue to repel borders. "Then welcome, there are three rooms at the top of the stairs on the right."

"And girls," I said sternly, "this is Stephanie Heliopolis, she's in charge of the house so listen to her and do as she asks. And this is Alexander Harris, or Xander, and he's gonna be your house-mother, um, make that house-father. Anyway..."

"Oh stop it, we know Xander," said Rikki, the youngest. She looked just barely thirteen, a little young for a slayer, I thought, but there she was.

"Oh you do, okay, so I've been out of the loop. Do what he says, or you'll answer to me, got it?"

"Yes ma'am!" the little twerps said in chorus while they saluted me. It was adorable – I really hate adorable. I looked at Xand to see if he was smirking or anything, maybe he arranged this, but he seemed just as flummoxed as me. Stephanie was kind of slack jawed at the sudden transformation from little hooligans to little darlings.

"Okay girls, pick out your rooms, put away your stuff, freshen up, then come down to the library. Uh wait, how old are you? And which is which?"

"I'm Rikki, and I'm thirteen."

"Fourteen. Davina."

"Almost fifteen. I'm Evelyn."

Oh good grief. What the fuck did I do to deserve this? I was expecting them to be a little older, but then again I didn't specify when I talked to Giles. Come to think of it, he probably has more trouble placing the younger ones. Oh well, the nice thing about slayers is that I could hit them if I needed to, but I suppose not when anyone was around, it wouldn't look too good.

Xander said, "We'll have to get them enrolled in school."

"Oh good, that'll get 'em out of my hair for most of the day."

"That's what you think. Lunches, after school activities, bake sales, teacher conferences, report cards, principal conferences, homework supervision, disciplinary hearings – with mini-slayers that's pretty much a given, science fairs; the list doesn't stop Faithy. You're a soccer mom now."

"&^#&* !"

I hadn't been in the fucking dining room before and I hadn't realized that there was this huge walled garden at the end of the house. One whole wall of the dining room was retractable glass, and the design intent was with the glass wall open the garden and dining room seemed like one big room. This was not an original part of the house, obviously. The effect was very luxurious.

Six of us didn't even fill up a third of the dining room table. Stone was quite charming to my young charges. Apparently women of all ages responded to him, anyway he told them jokes, mostly age-appropriate, told them stories, and appeared to listen attentively when they excitedly blathered on about their favorite music and clothes and all the stuff that passed me by when I was their age. Listening to them made me feel not just old, but fucking ancient. I wondered if I should tell them stories about living on the streets as a runaway – that would sure as shit be fucking instructive.

Jacques served us hamburgers with salad and french fries, only he called them pommes frites. Didn't make any difference what he called 'em, I didn't know fries could taste that fucking good. And the burgers were out of this world.

Jacques impressed me when he didn't blink at the requests for seconds and thirds. My young slayers ate like locusts and Jacques kept the food coming without complaint.

The conversation was flowing as well as the food, in the middle of slight pause, I said, "I should've invited Charity."

Well that was a conversation stopper. Four and a half pairs of eyes stared at me.

After a long, long silent pause, Xander said, "Uh, you do remember she tried to kill you, right?"

"Yeah, but someone's been feeding her a line, she needs – hell, I don't know what she needs – but I want to try to get to know her. She is my sister after all."

No one had anything to say after that except how good the desert was: some sort of custard with a crunchy top, something French, rich, and incredibly delicious.

After dinner I found Stephanie. "Do I have a chauffeur? 'Cuz if I do, I haven't seen him."

"Yes. He's due back from vacation tomorrow."

"And where do you live?"

"Over the garage, with Jacques. He's my husband."

"Ah, I see. I'm amazed you've remained so thin and fit while married to a man who can cook like that."

She laughed and said, "Oh I would be as big a hot-air balloon, but I exercise constantly."

"Who else lives on the estate?"

"There's a gardener and his wife. He takes care of the grounds and gardens and his wife occasionally helps out in the greenhouse, but she's not full time. I take care of supervising the maid service, and any other service we need to run the estate."

"Sort of like a butler."

"Yes, exactly."

"Okay. Is it going to bother you having the girls here? I know they can be a handful, but this is part of my job actually, with the ISWC in London."

"Really? Can you explain that?"

"No, it's kind of hard to explain." She wasn't satisfied with that answer, but I signed the paychecks so she didn't press me.

"I do worry about you having to take on more than you've signed up for. I never thought I needed a secretary, and yet I can already see I'd be lost without you."

"It's my job. And no, it's not onerous, in fact, since you don't have any of your aunt's social engagements, I actually have much less to do than I'm used to."

"Oh, sorry to disappoint."

"Not a disappointment, I feel certain social engagements will start springing up. After all, you are a very lovely young woman of good family..."

I snorted. "Good family, right, that's a good one. My mom was unmarried and died of a drug overdose. She had so many so-called boyfriends that she had no idea of who my father might have been – she couldn't even remember the names of most of the candidates. Her social life was indistinguishable from a prostitute's, so no, no way am I from a 'good' family."

"You can trace your lineage back to the fourth trip of the second Mayflower in the year 1634..."

"I thought we were Irish."

"That came later. You have multiple ancestors you know, we all do in fact."

"Second Mayflower?"

"Yes, in 1622 the first Mayflower was broken up and sold for lumber after the famous voyage to Plymouth. Then they built another ship with the same name, which made five successful voyages to New England, but disappeared on the last."

"So, anyway Ms. Lehane, you are considered to be from a fine old New England family, whether you wish to think of yourself that way or not. Your mother lost her way, but that doesn't mean you need to follow her footsteps."

"I hope not."

Stone finally got back to me with more details on mom's land. "So here's the thing," he said over the phone, "your mother left a will, she wrote it about three months before she died. In it, she left the three acre plot to your Aunt Florence."

"What the fuck! Why'd she do that?"

"So far I haven't found out. On the day she wrote the will, she opened a bank account with fifty thousand dollars in it."

"Huh? Where the fuck did she get that kinda money?"

"We haven't traced it yet. Anyway, she wrote one check on the account, to the Chappaquiddick Drug & Alcohol Rehabilitation Center, for five thousand dollars. I checked, at the time a full drug rehab program cost fifty thousand dollars, at five thousand dollars per week."

"Fuck, that's one expensive program."

"Yeah, it's a legitimate rehab center though, and they have an excellent rep. I think they cater mostly to wealthy politicians and movie stars. So your mother checked in. But at the end of the first week, she checked out. Later that day she withdrew five thousand in cash from the bank. The Rehab center never saw her again. She drained the bank account and was dead three months later."

"So your sayin' after a week of rehab she got high and stayed that way for three months then keeled over."

"Yeah, or something close to that. She may have been going up and down, she may have spent some on food, we don't know yet. Woodman and Weld hired a Massachusetts PI firm to look into it."

"So you're sayin' someone gave mom fifty grand all at once to use on rehab, but bein' a junkie, it didn't work out too well."

"Unless the plan worked all too well."

"If the intention was to actually help her, you'd think they would've paid the rehab center directly."

"I'm bristling with suspicion over the whole thing."

"So Stone, can you tell me what happened to the other three acres?"

"It was seized for back taxes. You see, your mother inherited the land from your grandfather. She ignored it for years and since for most of that time it was worth very little, being mostly swamp primarily useful only for camping, duck hunting and raising mosquitoes, she didn't pay it any attention, in fact she probably completely forgot about it. But eventually the airport expanded and the Big Dig people wanted the land and suddenly it was worth something. The state took half for back taxes and eventually Metro bought the other half for one point six million dollars."

"From Florence."

"Yes."

"Your sayin' Aunt Florence gave my mother fifty thousand dollars in exchange for being named in her will."

"It looks that way, but we haven't traced the money yet."

"Florence killed my mother because she saw a way to make money off a druggie." The thought repeating, sort of a circular thought.

"Don't jump to conclusions, Faith, we don't know that for sure, not yet anyway."

"Did Helen know about it?"

"We know there was major disagreement between the two, and the timing fits."

"Yeah, that's all I need, I'm gonna fuckin' kill her."

"Faith, wait! You can't...!" I hung up on him.

TBC

A/N: If you've read John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent, you will have recognized some of the major plot elements. Also, a few chapters ago, Murallo's Grocery was a direct reference to the novel. I haven't figured out how to logically tie Ethan Hawley, or maybe his children, into this story, but I keep thinking about it.

I should probably apologize for my snarky reference to Chappaquiddick and politicians, I couldn't help myself.