Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (best desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📗

insisted, on the holidays, we had to go west: Texas, Arizona, North and South Dakota, Wyoming…and in the end we went to Colorado. The girls were twelve and thirteen. And we went to Boulder and every fecking day…!” She hooted with laughter. “Every fecking day he’d drag us up into the mountains, till we found this town, Seven Hills. Well, you’d love it! Wasn’t it straight out of the movies! With a saloon and everything! So we cancelled the B&B in Boulder and spent the rest of the holiday in Seven Hills, in the saloon. Booked a couple of rooms there.”

“And that’s where she met Mo?”

“And Isaac and Greg.”

I raised my eyebrows as I reached for another biscuit. “Greg?”

“Isaac and Mo are brothers. Lovely lads, lovely parents, Ingrid and Alfredo. He was Mexican, but a lovely fellow all the same. And Greg was their friend. His father had a ranch nearby. They was forever together, playing and getting into all sorts of trouble. Happy-go-lucky as you like. Lovely lads. Well, didn’t we end up going back every year after that?”

“What happened to your husband, Mel?”

“An accident at work took him from us, 2005. They tried to say that he was careless, but my Tony was never careless. He was meticulous in everything.” She sipped her tea. “He left us cared for, all the same, and the company settled out of court. I mean to say, would they settle out of court if it was his fault? I don’t think so, do you? Bastards.”

“So you continued going to Seven Hills.”

“Well, we had to, didn’t we? For his memory, and also because the girls loved it there. It’s a different world. The freedom! And it’s clean, and the people are—no offense—well, they’re kind and honest and decent. Not like, you know, a lot of people in the city. And didn’t they love their little friends?”

Dehan said, “Kath would have been fifteen?”

Mel nodded. “And I think that was when she fell in love with Mo. It was Isaac at first, when they were kids, and we always said that Isaac and Kath would end up together, and Mo and Pat. And poor Greg, well, he had nobody. But that summer it all changed, and to be honest, I think Isaac was a bit upset. It was OK in the end, because he married Anne-Marie, who’s a lovely girl. Just lovely!” She sighed. “But Mo had grown in just a year into a very handsome young man, and he was funny, you know? Had a great sense of humor. All the girls were crazy about him. And she being so upset about her father, he made her laugh.” She turned to Dehan. “That counts for a lot, doesn’t it, love? When a man can make you laugh.”

Dehan’s cup was empty. She put it on the table and took another biscuit. “So what happened to Pat?”

Mel’s face seemed to contract in on itself. For a moment it looked as though she might start crying, but there was a strength there that held her in check. She waited a moment, then took a deep breath.

“They were both hit real hard by Tony’s death. Kath was lucky in that she found love and consolation with Mo. God love him, he was a rock for her. But Pat wasn’t so fortunate, and she…” She stopped and stared out of the French windows, at the unseasonal sunshine. “She got in with the wrong crowd. Greg was a good lad, but he had some bad friends. Pat started drinking, and then it was the pot, smoking pot, and then it was the hard stuff.”

I asked, “Where is she now?”

“She’s been dry for a couple of years now, staying off the pot and that. She’s out with friends.”

“She lives at home with you?”

She burst out laughing. It was a startling sound, almost like the screech of a parrot. “Sure! Don’t they all feckin’ live at home with me! Jaysus! What I wouldn’t give for them to all feck off and get their own feckin’ places! But they’re all still at home with mummy!”

She fell back on the sofa laughing. It was infectious and I glanced at Dehan. She was laughing, too.

When she’d settled a bit, I asked, “Who is ‘all’?”

“Ah, love’m. I know life is hard these days, and I don’t begrudge them. Mo and, uh,” she hesitated, “and Sinead, they’re living at home. He’s working at the car dealer and she’s started the nursery. Pat’s at home, you know, she can’t look after herself. She just slips back and starts drinking and smoking again, and mixing with the wrong crowd…”

I smiled, thinking of Dehan’s prediction about the matriarch. “What about Isaac and…”

“Oh, well, that didn’t work out. Him and Anne-Marie broke up.”

“When was that?”

“Just a couple of months after Kath… you know, was…”

I nodded. “I see.” I pointed at one of the photographs. Dehan was already nodding, like she had wanted to ask the same question. “I notice a picture there. I gather that’s Mo, because there are several of him with Kath. But there he is not with Kath. Who is that girl?”

She looked a bit embarrassed. “Well, that’s Anne-Marie.” She took a deep breath. “Kath’s death was a terrible upheaval for all of us. A second tragedy, and it seemed not so long ago that Tony had died.” She shrugged and shook her head. The gesture seemed to say that it was just one of those things. “Mo was devastated. Anne-Marie was just there for him. A tower of strength. He’d lost his job, Isaac was working… one thing led to another…”

I nodded again. “It always does. So Anne-Marie is living here, too?”

“Yes. She and Mo were married last year.”

Dehan smiled at her. “So you are helping them to rebuild their lives.”

“I’m doing what I can, love. In