Julie Delacroix Johnson asked as she sat in a tufted chair in her apartment in Santa Rosa. Dressed in a miniskirt and tight black sweater, she crossed one leg over the other and swung her foot nervously, her slip-on shoe in danger of falling off her toes. She’d allowed Nick and Walt into her home, but she was wary. Her husband, Robert, who looked all of eighteen, regarded the other men with wary dark eyes, pulled out a kitchen chair, swung it around and straddled it. His arms were folded over the back, biceps bulging as he cradled a beer between his hands. Trying to look tough. To Nick’s way of thinking it wasn’t working. The kid was a punk. And he was hiding something. Walt had taken a seat on a velvet couch that looked new, sharing the tan cushions with a black cat that lifted its head disdainfully before scuttling off and hiding under a table that held a vase of silk flowers. Music was blaring from big speakers, the bass so loud that the floor shook. “If I tell you all about Mom, what do I get out of it?”
