Stone Cold Crazy (Lil & Boris #4) (Lil and Boris Mysteries) Read Free Page A

be.
    “Now,” she ordered, “go get my husband back here, and maybe you better find out what that sonvabitch is doing here.”
    I still felt my old life smacking me around like a twig in rapids, but I could control it now. I went to find out what my ex-fiancée was doing in my hometown.

2.
    W hen I first met Steven Kipling, he asked me where I was from. When I told him, he said, “Oh, like the Waltons,” and I burst out laughing.
    Looking back, I probably took that as a better omen than it was.
    Nobody was laughing Tuesday morning, when I met Jack for breakfast out at the Country Rose. It’s the bed and breakfast on the back end of Johns Mountain, owned and operated by Lynn Turner, a relation of Aunt Marge’s. She had recently gotten the idea to open the breakfast part to all comers, since the only restaurant in Crazy is Old Mill, and that’s only open for lunch and supper. She didn’t serve anything too high-end, pretty much a five-bucks-a-head buffet of oatmeal, fruit, juice, tea, coffee, and some wicked good cornbread with honey or molasses. Lynn served it all on gorgeous china with patterns of roses, in a very Victorian room with very Victorian furniture. Or, in nice weather, on her screened-in porch with the view out toward Bear Mountain. Not bad for a fiver.
    I loaded up on the cornbread and fruit. Jack chose coffee, oatmeal, and a lonely banana. We sat at a small round patio table outside, covered in a white tablecloth. The napkins were white, too. Lynn loved her roses, but she wasn’t insane. She kept it tasteful. And tasty.
    “I’m sorry, Lil, when Steve said he knew you, I didn’t think twice,” my cousin apologized, pouring cream into his coffee. “I thought it was just an FBI thing.”
    “No harm done, I was just surprised. Haven’t heard from him since we broke up. That’s…” I calculated around a mouthful of cornbread and honey. “Ten years, give or take a lifetime.”
    Jack nodded thoughtfully. I poured some of the cream into a saucer and set it on a third chair for Boris. Lynn winced but shut her mouth.
    “Look, I can get another adviser,” Jack said reasonably. “You’re family. He’s just hired help.”
    The Littlepage arrogance grated. “No. I’m sure he’s a good adviser. What exactly is he advising you on?”
    “Grenville.”
    Oh Lord, spare me. Not Grenville. That is one hunk of property I would like to never have known existed. It lies out Piedmont Road, sort of opposite our mini-mall, and it was once owned by a Littlepage who thought he could make himself a fancy English estate. What he ended up with was a lot of nothing. Over the decades, the land had been sold off, but it had eventually wound up in one big parcel again. Grenville was last owned by Vera Collier, and ownership since Vera’s death had been contested by those of her heirs not disqualified from inheriting by reason of having been involved in her murder.
    My first question was, therefore, “Grenville? How’d that happen?”
    Jack’s grin was pure malice, in an indifferent, big-business way. “The Colliers didn’t pay the taxes. I saw it on the county website, and it only cost me twenty grand at auction.”
    Considering he’d been willing to pay seven figures, that was some bargain. He also got one up on my Eller relatives. Grenville would’ve given them a route from Crazy to their land at Quarry, where geology had been delaying a development plan for ages.
    I whistled. “Congratulations, but what are you going to do with it? It’s too vertical for much.” Not my most brilliant observation, but I’m probably the only Littlepage or Eller in a century to be raised in Crazy. I couldn’t bet Jack had ever seen the land. He had said often he’d like to settle here more permanently, but talk is cheap, especially to rich people.
    I watched my cousin cut a banana into perfect little yellow discs and spear one with a fork. I’d never seen someone eat a banana with a fork. Even Boris stared. “Tourism.