Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 05 - A Deadly Change of Luck by Gina Cresse

hungry.   Lou’s place looked like a regular zoo while she was growing up.  Lou thought she’d become a veterinarian, but when she got to be a teenager, she quit bringing home animals and started bringing home people instead.  Homeless she’d find wandering the streets.  Drunks she found passed out in the gutters.  Troubled runaways who couldn’t go home.   Lou finally had to put his foot down.  He could handle the pets, but that’s where he drew the line.”
    “Was she angry?” I asked.
    “Angry?  That girl would like to have boiled her father in oil when he made her turn those people out.  She thought Maggie would be on her side, but when Maggie backed up Lou, Nellie felt deserted.  She did her time there at home until she graduated from high school, then she joined the Peace Corps and took off for all those third-world countries.”
    “She never came home?” I asked.
    “Oh, she comes home every few years for a short visit, mostly for appearances, but we haven’t seen her for six years.  When she heard that Lou and Maggie sent Frankie back to the hospital, she disowned the entire family.”
    Betty gently slid a tray of cookies into the oven.  “I’d like to see her try to handle that brother of hers.  She had no idea what he was like,” she said, closing the oven door and setting the timer.
    I started thinking about poor Lou Winnomore.  It seemed his life was riddled with difficulties.  “What about his other son?  The one who passed away?”
    “Joey.  There’s another sad story.  I’m just glad Lou wasn’t around for that.  It would have torn him apart,” Chuck said.
    “What happened?”
    “Joey committed suicide, must have been about two weeks after Lou died.  That’s when we found out about the mess he’d gotten himself into.  Shot himself in the head with his service revolver.  Bridgett would have killed him herself if he hadn’t done the job first.”
    “Bridgett?  That’s his wife?”
    Chuck nodded.  “He’d had an affair and the other woman turned up pregnant.  Boy, everything hit the fan when that news came out.”
    “Does Bridgett live around here?” I asked.
    “Oh, yeah.   Over near the university.   She’s trying to get a degree in something, I don’t remember what, so she can get a better job, now that she’s a single parent.
    “You don’t know what she’s studying?”
    “No.  She’s pretty much divorced herself from Joey’s family.  It’s like she thinks we supported what he did.”
    I wondered what Bridgett might be capable of.  The old saying about a woman scorned crossed my mind.  She could have killed her cheating husband, then killed her father-in-law and stolen the lottery ticket to avoid splitting her son’s inheritance with the other boy.  “Her name’s Bridgett Winnomore?”
    “As far as I know, she hasn’t changed her name.  If it weren’t for the boy, she’d probably go back to her maiden name.”
    I took the last bite of my cookie and wiped my fingers on the napkin.  “What about the other woman?  Is she still in the picture?”
    Betty laughed.  “Oh, she’s in the picture, all right .  Never saw a greedier woman in my entire life.  I bet she spends more time in her lawyer’s office finding ways to get her hooks in to other people’s money than she does at home with that baby.  You know the ordeal we went through to sell the house because of her.”
    “Do you think I could have her address?  And Bridgett’s, too?” I asked.
    “Sure.  That detective already has their addresses.  You might run into him if you go to see them,” Chuck said as he reached for a pen and paper and an address book near his phone.”
    I certainly hope d I wouldn’t run into Sam.  He’d kill me if he thought I was interfering with his investigation.  I thanked Chuck for the information, and Betty for the cookies.  She wrapped up a half-dozen for me to take. 
    I stared at the paper with the women’s addresses and wondered