Almost Dead by Lisa Jackson Read Free Book Online Page B

will.”
    Holt turned and jogged through the falling rain, his shoes slapping on the wet bricks. He skirted a camellia bush, his shoulder swiping a near-dead bloom, a few red petals dropping onto the ground.
    Watching him leave, Paterno couldn’t help wondering if Holt had married Cissy Cahill for love or money. That was the trouble with having millions stashed away in stocks, real estate, or the bank vault—someone was always after a piece of it. You could never be certain if they cared for you because they truly found you fascinating and really loved you, or if they were attracted to you because of the number of zeroes on your bank statement.
    Greed, before, had cost a few people close to the Cahills their lives.
    He made a mental note to check out Holt. Phone records, he told himself, might help. Credit-card receipts and bank balances. If the old lady had been murdered. He glanced through the open doorway, spying the broken body of the little dead woman, appearing, in many ways, like a nestling that had fallen from its nest. In life, Eugenia Cahill had been a force to be reckoned with. Sharp as a tack and definitely the matriarch, she’d run this family with tiny iron fists and an incredible will.
    Had she suffered an unlucky fall?
    Or was it murder?
    With Marla Cahill on the loose, he was betting on the latter.
     
    Cissy spied Jack running toward the car and rolled down her window. “What’s happening? Can we leave?”
    “The police are still investigating. They’re not sure what went on with your grandmother, and they’re being careful, just in case this isn’t an accident.”
    “Not an accident?” she repeated, her worst fears slicing through her.
    “Nothing’s decided,” he said, standing in the rain, the shoulders of his shirt drenched, his hair dripping, his face a mask of concern.
    Cissy gazed at him. Murder? “No way…no one would want to kill Gran,” she protested, though, deep inside, hadn’t she considered that Eugenia hadn’t just fallen? Her mother’s escape. The cops’ surveillance. Homicide detectives in the house. They all added up to the simple fact that someone was likely behind her grandmother’s death. She felt herself shaking inside, unspoken denials forming on her lips.
    “Paterno gave me the green light to take you home.”
    Cissy didn’t want to leave with Jack, but she had to get out of here, away from the creepy old house with its dead body in the foyer and secrets locked away in all the other rooms. Now lights were glowing in the windows of all four stories, as if a giant party was in full swing, when, instead, police, photographers, criminalists, and God only knew who else were crawling through the rooms where she’d spent so much of her life.
    “Come on, I’m drowning out here. Let’s go.”
    A van marked as belonging to the coroner’s office rolled to the end of the drive and parked between the other vehicles scattered haphazardly on the rain-slickened streets. A reporter, wielding her microphone like a weapon, flew out of a news vehicle and hurried up to the driver of the van as soon as he stepped a foot on the pavement.
    Cissy watched in horror as someone she assumed was the assistant ME gave a quick little interview.
    “Practice your ‘no comments,’” Jack advised, and she remembered that he too had once been with a newspaper, chasing down the latest story not only in Los Angeles, when he was first out of college, but in the Bay Area as well. Now he’d already opened the passenger door and was unbuckling his son. “Come on, big guy, let’s go home.”
    Beej, the traitor, flung his hands up and down and grinned like a goof for his father, who it seemed just happened to be his most favorite person in the world.
    Although she wasn’t crazy about spending any more time with Jack, she didn’t have much of a choice. And, believe it or not, Jack’s company was a lot less stressful than the detective’s. She hauled her purse, diaper bag, and disreputable