Her vision settled it—if she was going to have any time to investigate and prevent her mother’s future murder, they needed a damn nanny.
“Let me start by saying you have excellent references, Jamal,” Val said to the man sitting across from her in the living room interviewing for the nanny job, “but they don’t say anything about your self-defense capabilities.”
Jamal’s warm, broad smile fell a hair. “My…what?”
“Self-defense. Hand-to-hand combat, weapon skills, firearms training. Those things.”
“Um, I don’t have any of that.” He ran his hands along the pleats of his pressed slacks without looking down, then let out an awkward chuckle. “It’s never been necessary, at least not for any of my previous clients. But I am certified in Montessori education techniques, can cook a wide range of healthy meals to accommodate any gluten-intolerant, diabetic, or allergic needs, am fluent in French, German, and Japanese—”
“But do you think you could learn to shoot a gun?”
“I—hmm…” Jamal’s lips tightened and he looked off to the side of Val as if seriously considering her question. At least he was open to the possibility and didn’t freak and run like the other people she’d interviewed so far. If they were going to get a nanny, then the least that third wheel could do was provide a little protection if the conspiracy that’d consumed their lives a few years ago resurfaced again. Based on her visions, she knew it was only a matter of time.
“I could learn,” Jamal said, “though I’d really prefer not to. Guns and children don’t mix.”
Val scoffed. Damn, he was like all the others. He’d seemed so reasonable a moment ago. “Yeah, well, sometimes you don’t have a choice when shit goes down—Gah!”
Val jerked backward when Lydia came out of nowhere. With an ice cream cone in one hand, she sprinted between her mother and Jamal while wearing a child-size life vest over a bathing suit covered in pink dolphins.
“When shit goes down!” Lydia yelled over her shoulder.
Val shot up. “Don’t talk like that! And you cannot take that ice cream into the pool!”
Lydia came to a hard stop, ran back, and threw her arms around Val. “Sorry, Mommy,” she said in her cutest voice, and Val almost forgot about the cone still in her hand until she dropped it on the coffee table and ran off again.
Val let out a long, exasperated sigh as the ice cream melted into a white puddle of goop, probably permanently staining whatever expensive wood constituted the table. “Goddammit.”
“Goddammit!” Simon’s voice came from behind her. She turned to see her son clad in his own blue dolphin shorts and life vest, riding piggyback on Max while Toby followed close behind. Her husband wore only boxers. Great. Well, it was better than his usual outfit for their indoor pool—his birthday suit.
“Don’t say the things Mommy says,” Val said. “Come on, we’ve talked about this.”
Simon answered by giggling and taking a big lick of his own cone. Val winced as ice cream dripped onto the carpet. Another mess to clean up.
Jamal rose and extended a hand toward the duo. “Hello, Mr. Carressa, I’m Jamal. Pleasure to meet you.”
Max thrust his hip out so he could meet Jamal in an awkward handshake while keeping a hold on Simon. She saw the nanny candidate glance at the brilliant aquamarine fractal tattoos on Max’s inner forearms, one of the Julia set—which represented her, something about “chaotic perturbations” or whatever—and the other of the twin dragon—which obviously represented their children. He’d gotten them years before he’d even met her; an important glimpse of his future, now his reality. “Hey there,” Max said. “She hasn’t scared you away yet?”
“No sir,” Jamal said with a polite, lying smile. “This has been one of the more, uh, interesting interviews I’ve had, but I figured as much—not to say I expected you to be bad people or anything, I didn’t mean it like that—”
“But you expected us to be weirdos, right?” Val said. Just what she needed—another goddamn person judging them while having no idea who they were or what they’d been through.
“No, no, of course not,” Jamal stammered at the same time Max said, “Val…”
“Local celebrities stalked by trouble? People who, for some inexplicable reason, leave a trail of shit behind them wherever they go? You know what? Everything you’ve heard is true. We’re chaos magnets. Nannies who can’t handle that need not apply—”
“Val,” Max said, his lips pressed into a tight frown. “Language.” He looked at Jamal and grinned, slipping on the mask she recognized as the one he used to put people at ease when intimidated by either his good looks, wealth, status, or abrasive wife. Someone had to tell it like it was. “She hasn’t had her coffee today. Ran out this morning. Nothing personal. It was great to meet you, Jamal.” He turned toward Val, mouthed Be nice, then tromped off with Simon to join Lydia.
“Be nice, Mommy!” Simon hollered on their way out.
Even her own children were against her. She gritted her teeth and forced a smile at Jamal. He stood dumbfounded, his mouth hanging open a crack.
“Well, thanks for coming by, Jamal. Any questions for me?”
“Um…oh, uh—” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, then flailed it at her until she realized he wanted her to turn around. Val did so, and felt a delicate dabbing at her back.
She craned her head to see behind her. “What are you—” When the dabbing stopped, she faced him and saw smears of ice cream on the hanky. Lydia must’ve left them there during their hug. “Thanks,” she said.
He used the rest of his handkerchief to scoop up the white goop and cone from the coffee table. After wiping his fingers off on his slacks, he held his hand out to her and gave her a warm smile. “It was a pleasure to meet you and your family, Mrs. Carressa.”
It was still Shepherd, actually, but…Was he taking that ice cream cone home with him? And did he just address her with respect, and not fear and contempt? She felt her rigid frown loosen until she returned his warm smile. “It was nice meeting you, too. When can you start?”
* * *
Max smeared peanut butter on a piece of bread, pulled it in half, and gave one piece to each twin where they sat at the kitchen table. “Got one you like yet?” he asked Val as he made himself his own slice of peanut butter bread.
She tapped a pen against her notebook, filled with old pages of hand-drawn clues she had seen in her visions when she’d been a private investigator. These days it held grocery lists, to-do items, cookie recipes, and now the names of every potential nanny she’d interviewed and the pros and cons of each. “I liked the last guy. There’s one more to interview today; she’ll be here in twenty minutes. Maybe she’ll be a Krav Maga expert or something.”
“Fingers crossed,” Max mumbled through a mouth full of peanut butter. “I’m hoping for a hot blonde myself.”
Val shot him a cross between a smile and a sneer. “Me, too.”
Max nearly choking on his food as he chuckled, then glanced at the kids. They nibbled their snack, blissfully ignorant of their parents’ lewd joke. Simon and Lydia weren’t quite all-knowing—yet.
She let the pen drop next to her scribbled note: None will carry gun. “This is pointless. These people don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. We should just hire a bodyguard and teach him how to do arts and crafts with the kids.”
“It’ll be fine, Val.” Max shoved the last bit of his bread into his mouth.
“It will not be fine. What if I pick a bad nanny? What if letting my”—it felt odd to say the two words together, almost painful—“my mother visit is a mistake? What if I can’t stop what’s going to happen to her? What if Northwalk shows up again and we’re not here?”
Max walked around the marble kitchen island separating them, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pulled her close. “It will be fine. They’re not coming back. Even if worse comes to worst, we can handle it. I’ve got you and you’ve got me, remember?”
He touched his forehead to hers. She leaned in for a kiss and tasted the peanut butter on his lips, relaxing in his embrace and losing herself for a moment in him.
Lydia interrupted their private moment. “The wife is here,” she said to no one in particular.
Val pulled her lips away from Max’s to look at her daughter. “Who?”
The intercom to the door buzzed. It must’ve been the last nanny. Val wasn’t exactly a paragon of manners, but showing up to an appointment twenty minutes early seemed unusually anal retentive. Nannies with sticks up their asses need not apply, either. And why would Lydia call her “the wife”? She’d need to have another talk with the kids about not announcing future events right before they happened; it got the wrong kind of attention, and also freaked people out.
“I’ll get it,” Val said. “Almost done for today, thank God.”
Max asked, “Want me to sit with you on this one?”
She cocked an eyebrow at his naked torso, a towel wrapped around his waist. “Yeah, no. The last thing we need is Mary Poppins telling the tabloids you exposed yourself to her. Get the kids dressed, will you? And keep them out of the living room, for Christ’s sake.”
“Will do, boss.” He kissed her, then herded the kids out of the kitchen. They stampeded up the stairs like squealing baby elephants, leaving the first floor to Val and the final nanny.
In the front hallway, Val hit the intercom button that connected to the gate enclosing their condo complex and buzzed in Donna from the Seattle Premiere Nanny Agency. When Val answered the door, however, it wasn’t Donna who stood in the threshold.