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answered.
    â€œOh, baby.” Ignoring Wes, she threw her arms around her son, who accepted the embrace in silence, his body language screaming his discomfort at the display of affection. “I’ve got your things right here.” Now she accepted the duffel from Wes and placed it on Stefan’s chest. It was at that point she noticed September and her mouth began quivering.
    Drawing herself up straight and looking down her nose in that haughty way that was pure Verna, she demanded, “What are you doing here?”

Chapter Two
    â€œI was called to the case,” September told her ex-stepmother tightly. She’d recently learned that Verna and Braden’s affair had begun while her mother was still alive, and that Kathryn Rafferty had intercepted a note from Verna that had subsequently led to the auto accident that caused her death. Was Verna responsible? No. Not really. But had circumstances been different September might still have her mother. And the truth was she’d never liked Verna all that much anyway.
    â€œLeave me alone. All of you,” Stefan said, ignoring the tension between the two women. “I want to get dressed.”
    September and Wes acquiesced by stepping outside the curtain, but Verna got barked at by her son when she apparently thought she would stay. By the time she flung the curtain aside, her cheeks were flushed with repressed anger—which she immediately took out on September.
    â€œWho did this to him?” she demanded. “What kind of a sick person would leave my son out nearly naked in this weather?”
    â€œThis weather” was midforties, and though it wasn’t exactly red hot, Stefan wouldn’t have died from the elements like Christopher Ballonni had. “We don’t know yet,” September told her.
    â€œI thought you were a detective, or something. Going after real crime.”
    â€œThis is a real crime, ma’am,” Wes pointed out.
    Verna shot him a scorching look, then eyed him from head to toe. There was something inherently sexy about Wes that must have registered, because Verna turned back to September a little more distracted than before but still rattling down her own path. “Don’t try to tell me you came here to help Stefan. I know how all of you think. You’ve never accepted Stefan like you should.”
    This was the song Verna had sung from the moment she’d married Braden. And though there was some truth to it, it was more that Stefan was just someone none of them wanted to know. It wasn’t because he wasn’t a Rafferty. It was because he was odd and remote and sullen.
    Briefly, September thought about bringing up the Christopher Ballonni case; the story had been all over the news when it occurred and Stefan’s placard suggested the crimes were by the same doer, as the MO was the same. But, as Wes had pointed out, Stefan was “family” in the loosest sense of the word, and as soon as her lieutenant learned of her connection to him, September might be yanked off the case.
    Until that happened, she wanted to garner as much information as possible.
    And, really, she didn’t feel like offering any information to Verna anyway.
    Stefan stepped from behind the curtain, dressed in dark slacks and a white dress shirt. “God, Mom,” he muttered. “Couldn’t you have found me a T-shirt?”
    Verna turned her attention on him, her rigidity melting a little. “I brought your work clothes.”
    â€œYou think I’m going to work after this?” he demanded.
    â€œI didn’t think.... You look so nice dressed up.”
    September assessed Stefan’s white pallor and the flat line of his mouth and decided Verna must see something that clearly wasn’t there.
    â€œJesus, Mom,” he muttered, attempting to brush by September.
    Verna said, “We’ll just go home, then.”
    â€œAre the two of you living together?” September