Double Black Diamond (Mercy Watts Mysteries) Read Free Page B

going hand in hand. He didn’t know anything. With all his resources, all his abilities to snoop in anyone’s life, he knew nothing. He saw the Bleds with their fat accounts, mansions, and art collections and thought he could see the truth. That all they were was money. The truth is always more complicated. Pain is universal. You can’t buy your way out of that, although people seemed to think huge houses changed it. They were wrong. I’d spent the last month at Millicent’s bedside. She’d gotten pneumonia and had suffered just the same as anyone else.  
    “Miss Watts? Did you hear me?” asked Spidermonkey.  
    “They’re real people,” I said.
    “Did I imply that they weren’t?”  
    “Yes,” I said with a flash of unexpected anger.  
    He sipped his coffee and watched me quietly. “I thought I would see it, if I looked close.”  
    “What?”  
    “The difference between you and Marilyn Monroe, but I can’t. I swear I can’t.”  
    “What’s that got to do with anything?”  
    “You and your parents have enthralled the Bleds. Great beauty can do that. But you…you really love them.”  
    “Of course I do. They’re my family.”  
    “I have to admit when I started this line of inquiry for you I thought it would be fairly simple. The more I dig, the more intrigued I am.”  
    “About the house?”
    “No, actually. It’s clear your father did the Bleds a service, legal or otherwise, and the payment was your life on Hawthorne Avenue. What intrigues me is why? Why did it happen in the first place? I can find no reason for your father to ever have met the Bleds, much less have been asked to do something that was clearly very important to them. Your parents weren’t in their circle. They practically lived on different planets, but the Bleds went to your father. They trusted him with something huge and he proved worthy.”
    “They chose wisely,” I said.  
    “They did, but I want to know why it happened. It’s driving me crazy.”  
    “I can’t help you. None of them ever mentioned how they met. Millicent and Myrtle have always treated us like family.”  
    “You’re not, in case you’re wondering. I checked back several generations.”
    “Did you find Josiah Bled’s death certificate while you were at it?”
    “No. Josiah Bled went off the grid about the time the house was signed over. I can find no trace of him. If there’s a death certificate, it wasn’t filed in the States. Do you want me to keep looking? Overseas, I mean.”
    “Yes. Start in France.”
    Spidermonkey raised an eyebrow. “Why France?”  
    “He spent a lot of time there. Loved it. That’s what The Girls say.”  
    “Fine by me. What about your parents and the house?”  
    “Find out where Dad went. There was a pilot. Ask him or her.”  
    “Him. Donnell Frazer. Dead ten years ago. The rest of the crew was unnamed.”
    “The family doesn’t like strangers. Whoever was on that plane was regular staff. Take a look at employee records.”  
    Spidermonkey laughed. “They don’t like strangers. Your father wasn’t a stranger then.”  
    “I guess not.”  
    “How far do you do want me to go with this?”  
    “As far as it takes. I have a feeling that Brooks’s lawsuit wasn’t the end of it.” I finished the heavenly cinnamon roll and started to get up.
    “You’re right on that. Are you in the will?”  
    “Will?”
    “Myrtle and Millicent’s will?”  
    “Probably.” I sat back down.
    “They haven’t said anything about the art, in particular?”  
    “No.”  
    “There are noises in the art world about control over the Bled Collection after The Girls pass away. The art museum has been trying to get a hold of that collection for years.”
    “I know, but that will never happen. They have family. Blood family, I mean. I assume Lawton will inherit.”  
    “Not you?” asked Spidermonkey.  
    “No way. Lawton is Myrtle’s son.”
    “There are rumors that you or your