Criminal Intent (MIRA) by Laurie Breton Read Free Book Online Page B

assisted-living facilities where elderly people could maintain their independence but still receive 24-hour assistance. He’d even brought over a brochure or two and read all the scintillating details to her. Gram, of course, had thought the idea absurd. “Why do I need a stranger on call,” she’d said, “when I already have you?”
    That was the problem. She already had him. Perhaps because of her blindness—or maybe it was just orneriness—Gram had no concept of time, no clue that other people had lives they needed to attend to. No matter what time of day or night an emergency arose, she had only to hit speed dial 1 and he’d be there within minutes. The problem was that her definition of emergency and his seldom matched. So far he’d been called out to change the lightbulb in her refrigerator, to chase a raccoon off her front porch, to sniff the milk and make sure it hadn’t soured. And now, to find her missing cat.
    When Gram had reached her mideighties and her health had begun to fail, he’d been unanimously elected her caregiver. He got the job by default. Who else was going to do it, if not him? Sure as hell not his sister, Dee, who had six kids and a useless husband and a pinched look about her mouth that suggested she had been sorely disappointed by life. The last time Davy’d had the audacity to suggest that she might consider helping out with Gram once in a while, his sister had gone ballistic. She’d sputtered about how busy her life was, chasing after a half-dozen kids and trying to keep the floors scrubbed and the laundry done, not to mention working to support the family. How dare he, who hung out with riffraff and had nothing but spare time, criticize her for failing to take on yet another responsibility in the form of the octogenarian who’d raised them?
    Nope, Deewouldn’t be picking up the slack any time soon. Nor would Brian, his kid brother, who’d seen the writing on the wall and blown this town before the ink was dry on his high school diploma. Not that Davy blamed him for leaving, all things considered. They never talked about Brian; he and Dee and Gram, never even mentioned his name. It was as though his brother had died, and the pain was so great that the only way the family could survive was to perpetrate this elaborate ruse that he’d never existed in the first place. No, Brian wasn’t about to come home and take care of his ailing grandmother. The last time Davy’d heard from his brother was six or seven years ago, when Brian had called from New Mexico. He was living in Taos, where he’d made scores of friends. Life was good. He’d met someone. It was looking serious; they’d just bought a small house together. Alec was a chef by trade, and they’d decided that with his culinary talents and Brian’s head for business, they should open a restaurant. But startup costs were killer, and they were short on capital. Maybe big bro would be interested in investing in their little venture?
    Davy had sent his brother a check for five thousand dollars. Guilt money. Guilt because he hadn’t been good enough at protecting his doe-eyed, sensitive little brother from school-yard taunts, from Dee’s sanctimonious determination to pretend she’d never even had a baby brother, from Gram’s well-meaning but misplaced attempts to fix the part of Brian that she deemed defective. He hadn’t been able to protect Brian from being unloved, so he’d tried to make up for it with money.
    He’d never heard from Brian again. The check had been cashed almost immediately, but Brian hadn’t acknowledged his generosity with so much as a phone call. Davy hadn’t been surprised. Disappointed, maybe, but not surprised. They were one fucked-up bunch, the Hunter clan. He and Brian and Dee wereposter children for dysfunctional. Then again, did anybody really come from a functional family? Had anybody ever seen one? Did anybody even know what one was supposed to look like?
    When he pulled into Gram’s