Interior Motives by Ginny Aiken Read Free Book Online Page A

her back on a steady basis. He only has another fifty thousand dollars to go.”
    I staggered back. Fifty grand! That looked like a whole lot of motive going on. What if . . . ? “Is he current with his payments?”
    Cissy averted her gaze. “Oh, Dr. Díaz is a very honorable man, Haley. He has only his patients’ best interests at heart. Darlene thought the world of him. She had total faith in his work. And him. Him too.”
    Those sirens in my head were making me deaf. “I didn’t ask you that, Cissy. Did Dr. Díaz fall behind on his payments?”
    She tucked her black leather purse tighter under her arm; she smoothed her short, pewter-colored hair over her right ear; she shifted her weight from her right foot to the left. “Um . . .”
    “So Darlene’s good doctor isn’t really all that good.”
    The new heiress wouldn’t face me but instead started toward the beautiful silver Mercedes, so new that it glowed in the rare Pacific Northwest sunlight—Darlene’s new silver baby. Luxury all the way.
    Hmm . . .
    “Cissy,” I said in my sternest voice. “Are you certain Darlene died of cancer?”
    Her eyes widened, and she hurried to the car. “I—”
    I never heard what she started to say, but I sure wished I had. She pulled into the street with the screech of tires and the roar of a monster German engine.
    Billy Shakespeare said it best way back when: something smelled rotten in the state of Denmark . . . Washington.
    Whatever.

4
    So did I call Lila, or did I check things out first?
    The question rumbled in my head the whole night. I tossed and turned with pillows and blankets. But all these thoughts made sleep impossible.
    What should I do? It didn’t help that Cissy had charmed Dad or that his opinion of the AWOL brothers rivaled mine. I, of course, hadn’t repeated my conversation with Cissy.
    On the one hand, it seemed everyone but the ailing widower had a reason to want Darlene dead. The brothers were prime candidates for Slime Bucket of the New Millennium, neither one solvent from the look or sound of it. The Mexican doc had fifty grand hanging in the balance. And the poor relation—so to speak—had become an heiress through Darlene’s death.
    Yeah, yeah, yeah. Been there, done that.
    Everyone thought the same when Marge Norwalk, my mentor and friend, died and left me my first savings account 58 with a balance, her auction house, her snazzy home in a gated community that I promptly sold since it was so fancy it made my teeth itchy, and her fat investment portfolio. But I hadn’t known a thing about the inheritance until the day after Marge’s death. From what Cissy had said that afternoon, my suspicion-o-meter said she knew about Darlene’s will from the start.
    She just had to wait until Jacob joined his wife. Then she wouldn’t have to share the wealth. From where I stood, Jacob Weikert wouldn’t be among us much longer.
    Would anyone believe me?
    Did I believe me?
    Could Cissy have killed Darlene? She was pretty broken up when she realized she’d never wake her friend again. Could the retired nurse be that good an actress?
    I still remembered the icy chill of her fingers when she’d shaken my hand that sad afternoon. Could someone turn down their internal thermometer at will?
    Then again, what about the two snarky sons? Either one could have done in their mother. I’m sure that even though they didn’t strike me as the shiniest bobeches on the candelabra, they had enough gray matter to realize her illness offered a perfect cover for the crime. Larry had said something about bankruptcy and jail as they’d walked past me on their way in.
    Plus the doctor. What kind of guy built a career around the sale of voodoo medicine to desperate, terminally ill senior citizens? And then borrowed buckets of dough from one of them? What part had he played in this tragedy? Was it a tragedy? I mean, beyond the death of a really neat lady.
    Or was this a case of my imagination run wild on its own?
    Every so