Killian: A West Bend Saints Romance Read online

  I could feel Elias' eyes still on me, but he relented. "Fine. I still maintain the entire idea they were murdered is ridiculous. Everyone wanted the asshole dead," he said, referring to our abusive drunk of a father. "If he were going to be murdered, it would have happened in a bar fight out in the open, not in the abandoned mine behind our house."

  "Or one of us would have killed him," Luke said darkly. But if was true. The fact that one of us hadn't murdered him was itself a miracle. "I just think it doesn't make sense that she overdosed with pills and booze. She didn't even drink."

  "Lots of things didn't make sense when it came to her," Elias said. "She was erratic. But what's that saying - the best explanation is the most direct one, right? That's the case here. Stop looking for complicated ways to make sense of things."

  "Maybe you're right," I said half-heartedly. Elias was in this hazy honeymoon stage with River, and I was sure that was part of his reluctance to think about any of this.

  I couldn't exactly blame him. If I had something like he had with River, maybe I wouldn't be concerning myself with this bullshit either.

  An image of Tempest lying on the piano as I buried my head between her legs flashed into my mind, and I shook it off. I wasn't going to have anything like Elias and River had, not with Tempest. Even if I might want to.

  "No, he's not right," Luke said. "You both know she got an offer on the property right before she died. There's a connection. Silas, back me up - it was your theory in the first place."

  "I already thought about that," Elias said. "But the property thing just doesn't seem related. The land is a shit piece of land outside of town, and she wasn't even considering the offer."

  "Well, she wouldn't talk about it," I said. "That doesn't mean she wasn't considering it. Or that it was related."

  "I just think we shouldn't be stirring up shit solely to stir it up," Elias said.

  "Well, people are murdered because of personal or financial reasons, right?" Luke asked.

  "Where did you get that?" Elias said. "Have you been watching crime shows?"

  "Shut the hell up," Luke said. "I'm going somewhere with this. Those are the main reasons people are murdered. So if they were killed, it'd be for one of those reasons."

  "Or random acts," Elias said.

  Luke nodded. "Okay, or random acts."

  "Well, we already ruled both of those out," Elias said. "The likelihood of the asshole being murdered for personal reasons disguised as an accident in the mine behind the house is low. And there's no reason for our mother to have been killed - she was fairly inoffensive."

  Inoffensive, I thought, recalling how she'd destroyed the letter from Tempest, taken the money I'd saved to be with her. She'd ruined things between us. She was far from inoffensive in my books.

  "The financial motivation might be there," Luke said. "If the company wanted her off of the property."

  "So, what," Elias said. "Some mining company is just offing town residents that don't sell their land? It's a completely ridiculous idea."

  "Well, what if that wasn't it?" I said. "Maybe the asshole found something in the mining area back by the mountain. Or maybe he was looking for something. It would explain why he was back there, when that mine had been abandoned for years."

  Luke guffawed, the sound echoing through the kitchen. "Yeah," he said. "Abandoned because of you, Silas."

  Elias laughed. "It's funny now," he said. "It wasn't funny at the time."

  "No, it wasn't fucking funny," I said. Our father had kicked the shit out of me for what had happened, the way I'd lost him the mining permit that allowed him to sell coal to people in town when we were kids. It was the whole reason he'd wound up being the janitor at the high school, which was punishment enough for me all by itself. But before that, my punishment involved his giving me two broken ribs.

  "Well, the explosion was pretty legendary," Elias said.

  "Hell yeah, it was," Luke said. "Anyway, I came over here and told the same thing to Elias. But I went and poked around the property and didn't see anything, so I don't know what to think. I couldn't find that offer mom got from the company, either."

  "I've gone back and forth on it in my mind," Elias said. "I just think it's a far more likely explanation that the asshole was drunk as a skunk and messing around in the mine and something fell on his fucking head. Blunt force trauma. The coroner's office said it was probably a rock. There were landslides back there."

  I grunted a response. I wasn't sure what I thought. Hell, I didn't even know if I cared - it's not like I was that close to either of them. Besides, finding out that my mother had betrayed me the way she had when it came to Tempest had soured me on the whole thing. Maybe it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.

  Still, it wouldn't hurt to just run over to the property and take a look myself. "Maybe I'll just head over there and poke around," I said. "See what I can see."

  Elias shook his head. "Don't expect me to join you," he said. "We're still doing stuff around the house."

  I laughed. "Roger that," I said. "I have a pretty good idea of the stuff you're doing."

  "Damn straight," Elias said, grinning broadly.

  "Luke?" I asked. "Do you want to go with me?"

  "When?"

  I shrugged. "Tomorrow, I guess. It's getting late today; it'll be getting dark soon and I don't want to be looking around back there by the mountain in the dark."

  Luke looked down at the table. "Oh," he said. "Yeah. No, I mean. I can't. Not tomorrow."

  Elias raised one eyebrow. "Oh, yeah?" he asked. "Do you have big plans?"

  "Shut up," Luke said. "I have plans. Plans I don't need to include you two shitheads in."

  Elias hooted before turning toward me. "Luke's social calendar is booked. Sorry, dude, you're going to have to do it yourself."

  23

  Tempest

  "So, what did you need to talk to me about, Nana?" I asked. "Please tell me you didn't just want to gossip about your sex life."

  "I won't regale you with tales of my social life," she said. "Right now, anyway. I wanted to talk to you about the house."

  "What about it?" I asked. "I think we should hang on to it, Nana." I wasn't ready for her to sell her house, even if she wanted to get rid of it. In my twenty-four years, it was the only place I'd ever felt at home. That stretch of time in West Bend was the longest period of time I'd spent with her - hell, it was one of the longer periods of time I'd spent anywhere - and I had fond memories of it.

  I didn't want to let those memories go.

  Kind of like the ones I had of Elias.

  "I want you to look at the paperwork, dear," she said. "You have an eye for detail, and you understand a grift. I want to make sure I'm not getting conned."

  "What did you do, Nana?" I asked, my voice high. "Did you put it on the market? Did someone make you an offer?"

  She waved her hand. "No, no, nothing like that," she said. "But this company did, this mining company that might be moving in to West Bend. They've been making offers here and there to people - most of them have property in West Bend."

  "What's the offer?" I asked. "Is it fair?"

  "Well, now, I don't know," she said. "That's why I want you to look at it."

  "I don't think you should sell it, Nana," I said. "Unless you need the money, in which case I'll make sure you have it."

  "Honey, I'm not saying I want to sell it," she said. "I just think there's something hinky about this company."

  "What do you mean?" I asked. "Did they do something?"

  "That's what I'm wondering," she said. "I was going to do some research on the internet, try to find out about the company, but you know me and computers."

  I laughed. Describing my grandmother as technology-averse would be putting it mildly. "Yes, Nana, I know."

  "So I thought you could do some research on the internet, find out some more about them, figure out what they're up to."

  "You understand that I'm a con artist and not a private detective,