Killer Crab Cakes by Livia J. Washburn Read Free Book Online

or was it five?
    “You’ll enjoy it, dear,” Eve had told him as she patted his grizzled cheek. “I’m sure at least one place will have paintings of John Wayne and Elvis on black velvet.”
    “I can’t wait,” Sam had said with mock enthusiasm.
    That left Phyllis to answer the door again. She hoped that this time it wouldn’t be someone as annoying as that reporter had been.
    There wasn’t one person waiting on the porch; there were three: two men and one woman. All of them were in their forties, and Phyllis was surprised to see that the two men were twins, short, stocky men with sharp faces and sleek dark hair. She wasn’t sure why them being twins surprised her. She’d had numerous pairs of twins in her classes, and they had to grow up into adults.
    The woman had dark hair, too, and she looked enough like the two men for Phyllis to realize that they were all siblings. Not triplets, though. The woman appeared to be several years older.
    “We’re looking for Phyllis Newsom,” she said.
    “I’m Mrs. Newsom,” Phyllis told them. “Can I help you?”
    “My name is Frances Heaton,” the woman said. “I’m Edward McKenna’s daughter.”
    “Oh, Ms. Heaton, I’m so sorry about what happened—”
    “These are my brothers, Oscar and Oliver McKenna.” Frances Heaton’s voice was brusque and businesslike as she broke in on Phyllis’s attempt to convey her sympathy.
    Phyllis nodded politely anyway as she said, “I’m pleased to meet all of you. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”
    As she spoke she was thinking that Oscar and Oliver had probably been teased unmercifully about their names and about being twins when they were growing up. Both of them had that long-suffering look.
    “Please come in,” Phyllis went on as she stepped back, holding the door. She motioned for the visitors to enter the foyer. When they had done so, she closed the front door and led them into the parlor. “Have a seat. Can I get you anything? Something to drink?”
    Frances Heaton shook her head as the three of them sat on the sofa, her in the middle and her brothers flanking her. “We’re here to collect our father’s things.”
    “Of course. I really am sorry. I suppose the police notified you?”
    “That’s right. We drove down from San Antonio right away.”
    They must have left immediately after the phone call bearing the bad news, Phyllis thought. There had been time for them to make the drive from San Antonio, but just barely.
    She felt like she ought to say something else. “I didn’t know your father for very long, but he seemed like a very nice man—”
    “He was an idiot,” one of the brothers said.
    “He would have to be to trust you to run the company,” the other brother said.
    “Stop it,” Frances said. “He never should have put either one of you in charge, and you know it.”
    Phyllis sat there during the sharp exchange, trying not to look flabbergasted. Obviously, the McKenna siblings didn’t get along well, and they didn’t bother hiding it even in the presence of strangers, when most people would at least try to put up a facade of cordiality. The resentment and dislike between them had to run pretty deep, and from the sound of it they hadn’t cared all that much for their father, either.
    Frances turned her attention back to Phyllis. “Have you already gathered my father’s belongings?”
    Before Phyllis could answer, the brother on Frances’s left said, “He was our father, too, you know.”
    “You always say my father , like he wasn’t even related to us,” the other brother said.
    Frances made a noise that was halfway between a laugh and an angry grunt. “Sometimes I wonder,” she said.
    “That’s a terrible thing to say!”
    “Can’t you at least be civil, at a time like this?”
    The three of them sat there glaring at one another, with Frances’s head swiveling back and forth like she was watching a tennis match . . . a tennis match she found very