Free The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told by Martin H. Greenberg Page B

already open and a squad car was parked there. The officers waved me past, but it wasn’t any blue-brotherhood thing. I’d never known then when I was on the force. I’d just gotten their asses out of trouble at the strip club.
    Took me two minutes to reach the front door. Would have been longer, but I cut straight across the lawn. Wilkerson, the chief-of-staff—which is how you now pronounce the word “butler”—opened the door before I’d hit the top step. “It will do no good to say the lady of the house does not wish to see you, correct?”
    He didn’t even wait for me to reply before he stepped aside. He looked me up and down once. He channeled my mother’s mortification, then led the way up the grand staircase to my mother’s dressing room. He hesitated for a moment and memorized the location of every item in the room, then reluctantly departed, confident the looting would begin once the door clicked shut.
    The room was my mother. Elegant, well-appointed, tasteful, and traditional. I’m sure it was all “revival” something; but I couldn’t tell what. Even though she’d made an attempt to “civilize” me in my teens, very little had stuck. I did know that if it looked old, it was very old, including some Byzantine icons in the corner with a candle glowing in front of them. In a world where even people were disposable, antiques held a certain charm.
    Not so my mother.
    She swept into the room wearing a dark-blue dressing gown—clearly Anderson’s—and dabbed at her eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief. Her eyes were puffy and rimmed with red. For a moment I believed she might have been crying for him, but grief I could have felt radiating out from her.
    My mother doesn’t radiate emotions. She sucks them in. Like a black hole. I think that’s why her daughter is a nun in Nepal, I’m a waste of flesh, and my half-brother is the Prince of Darkness.
    â€œThere’s nothing in his will for you, Patrick.”
    â€œGood to see you, too, mother. I hope he spent it all on himself.”
    Her blue eyes tightened. “It’s in a trust, all of it, save for a few charitable donations.”
    I chuckled. “That explains the tears. Hurts to still be on an allowance.”
    â€œYours is done, Patrick. I know he used to give you money.” She fingered the diamond-encrusted crucifix at her throat. “He was too soft-hearted.”
    â€œHe gave me money once , and it wasn’t Christian charity.” I opened my hands. “I came from the crime scene . . . ”
    Her eyes widened. “You beast! If you breathe a word!” Tears flowed fast. “How much do you want?”
    â€œI don’t want anything.” I shook my head. “Five people have died in the last two months, your husband included. All of them nasty. Sean Hogan, Amanda Preakness, Percival Kendall Ford, and Dorothy Kent.”
    â€œDottie? They said it was a botox allergy.”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter what they said, mother.”
    She blinked and quickly made the sign of the cross. “Are you confessing to me, Patrick? Have you done this? Have you come for me?”
    â€œStop!” I balled my fists and began to mutter. Like most folks, she bought into the Vatican version of the talented . She figured I was going sacrifice her to my Satanic Master, or at least turn her into a toad.
    Tempting, so tempting.
    She paled and then sat hard on a daybed. “I’ll do anything you ask, Patrick. You don’t want to hurt me, your mother.”
    I snorted. If she had enough presence of mind to invoke the maternal bond, she wasn’t really shocked, just scheming. “How was Anderson hooked up with the others?”
    â€œHogan did the trust work, damn him. Everyone else we knew socially. The Club, of course, the Opera Society. Various nonprofit boards.” She paused, her eyes sharpening. “Yes, this is