Page 2 of Guy (House of Frazier #4)

“You see more than one or two?” He told Selma that he thought that he’d only seen the one at his house, but there had been one at Lica’s home, too.

“They usually run in packs. I don’t know why, but I only help them one at a time.

Is your ghost nice to you? I don’t know what I’d do without Harley being around me all the time.

Ghosts don’t know that she can send them away, but when they get mean with me, she does it.

It’s kind of funny how silly they can be. ”

“What do you do to get them out of your life?” She told him that if she helps them, they just go away on their own. Otherwise, she sends them on their way if they get nasty with her. “None of them has gotten nasty with me. Yet.”

“They might not ever.” She asked him what his ghost wanted from him. After telling her, she nodded. “If you do the list, I don’t know what that might do for her, but I’m betting that when you talk to her stepdaughter, she’ll be all right to leave. You just have to play that one by ear.”

“I will.” He thought of something else. “Can your ghosts make lists? I don’t know how she was to remember the list she gave me, but I swear now that I think on it, she had a list of her own.”

“If they get angry enough, they can touch you, but I’ve never had one have a list before.

But then I’m just a kid and they know that.

” She smiled at him, and Guy felt it all the way to his heart.

“I love you, Uncle Guy. You should come around more often. I know that you don’t like people, but we’re just kids and you love us. ”

“I do love you two. Very much.” He looked longingly at the door. “I should be going. I have things that need my attention.”

“Stay for dinner. I know that mom and dad will love that.” He didn’t want to stay for dinner, but she’d been helpful to him, and he didn’t want to snap at her or her sister.

They were great kids. He told her that if it was all right with their parents, he’d stay.

Of course, they thought it was a great idea.

He felt like he couldn’t win around people.

After dinner, which wasn’t as bad as it could have been, he made his way to the house.

Belinda was either in another part of the house or she’d gone out to nib some more into people’s business.

The book he started on a week ago was sort of calling to him to write some more, but once he got his computer open, he decided to see if he could find Belinda’s stepdaughter.

It was easier than he thought it should have been.

He had all the information about her. Not just her name, but her birthdate and where she’d been living at her last address.

According to the things he’d found for her, she’d been living in the same house since her stepmom had been killed.

Pulling up the name of the insurance company, wondering why they’d not done very much in the way of contacting her for the policy, he made a call to them.

They were still in business, but he’d not realized how late it was, so he didn’t leave a message for them to call him back. Next, he tried to call Amber Gross.

~*~

Amber was washing her dishes when her phone rang.

Whoever it was, it was more than likely a spam call.

She’d been getting them since she’d put the phone back in working order.

It had taken her nearly a month of getting the people who called her to realize they weren’t calling a doctor’s office but her home.

Sometimes she still got emergency calls to her home in the middle of the night, looking for Doctor Shipley. She answered it on the second ring.

“My name is Guy Fraizer.” She thought that he sounded like she should know him. When she asked him what he wanted, he seemed startled by the question. “I know your mom. Your stepmom, Belinda Gross. She died about ten years ago.”

“Is this a joke?” He said that he didn’t have a sense of humor, so no, it wasn’t a joke.

“She’s been dead all this time, and you’re just now getting around to telling me that you knew her.

Why?” He started on something about her murder not being solved, and she cut him off.

“You don’t think that I know that? I’ve been working on the case since it’s gone cold. What are you calling for now?”

“There is insurance money for you that her kids are going to get if you don’t go to the insurance office within the next thirty days and claim it.” She asked him again who he was. “I told you. I’m Guy Frazier. Just a friend of your moms.”

She wrote down all the information that he had for her mom and decided that he was lying. There was no way that Belinda would have singled her out over her kids. No matter what kind of pieces of shits they were. She asked him how he knew about the insurance money.

“She told me to tell you the truth, but you won’t believe me.

But she did tell me some things that only she would know about you.

The money is right there. You just need to take a copy of your birth certificate and two forms of ID, like I told you.

” She asked him what he knew. “That when you were ten years old, you wrote in your diary that you wanted to be a big cat like she was, and the other thing is…” He paused for so long that she thought that she’d lost him.

“She said that you lost your virginity to a boy by the name of Wintercrest.”

The only other persons who knew that were, of course, Jimmy and Belinda. She’d never even written it in her diary. And Jimmy had died not six months after having the worst sex in her life with, and then Belinda five years later. She asked him again where he got the information.

“Look, you’re going to go and get the money, right?

” She told him she was going to the insurance company first thing in the morning.

“Then why do you want to know how I know? I just know, all right? Just get your money and do something great with it. Or don’t.

I don’t care what you do. I’m hanging up now before I say anything else that you might regret. ”

The phone went dead not a second later, and she put it back in the receiver.

Sitting in her kitchen, thinking about what he’d said, she wondered what had prompted him to call her tonight about the insurance money.

It had to be something more. Writing down his name and number that had come up on her caller ID, she was going to call him and bother him if it turned out to be a lie. Or thank him if it was true.

She tried to think what this man would gain if she went to the office in the morning and was able to claim the insurance policies.

Amber started to ask herself why the kids didn’t tell her, and answered her own question.

Because they didn’t like her. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that Belinda might have singled her out over her own flesh and blood.

They were jerks of the highest order. They’d never treated her right.

Not even her dad for as long as he was in the picture.

Her dad had married Belinda when she’d been three.

Belinda then had Margaret and Shawn right after the wedding, about a month later.

She’d already figured out that they got married because of the kids, but it didn’t matter to her.

Belinda was as nice a mother as she’d ever had.

But the kids were not nice from the moment she’d brought them home from the hospital.

The twins had hated her since they were old enough to learn what the feeling was.

Her dad and Belinda had tried to protect her as much as they could.

Sometimes, Shawn, even at a young age, would torment her to the point of tears about anything he deemed not perfect.

And Amber was far from perfect in his eyes.

With her red hair and purple eyes, she was a standout most of the time.

Shawn and Margaret were blonds with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen, mostly like her dads but lighter in color.

Getting a shower now that the sun was coming up, she fixed her hair into a nice fat braid at the back of her head, and pulling on her sunglasses, she made her way to the insurance office with her needed identification.

She was going to see if the other man was right in saying that she had insurance.

“Oh, Ms. Gross, we’ve been trying to find you.

Your brother and sister said that you were dead, but they didn’t have any proof of that.

And Mrs. Gross had made it plain that you were to get the money over them.

So nice to see you.” She said she lived less than a couple of miles from the place.

“Did you not see the ads in the newspaper? We put them in there once a week since your mother passed on.”

“It doesn’t matter now, does it? I’m here, and I’m willing to do what it takes to get the money.

I sure could use it.” He had her sign off on the identification she’d brought in when he’d made copies of it.

Telling her it was for the other two when they came in, inquiring about the money, they could show them that she’d been the one who got it. “Was there a will?”

“There is one. We’ll get to reading it as soon as the other two can be gathered up to show up on time.

They’re not at all prompt.” She didn’t point out that they had never been as children either.

She doubted that it had gotten much better over the years.

“Now, the policy has nothing to do with the will, though she did want to make sure you got to hear the will, too. What day would be good for you to do this?”

“Today?” Mr. Brush said that he’d try to get in touch with the kids and see what they could do. “I guess it was in the paper about the will reading, too. You know my brother and sister knew where I lived. They’d stop by a few times a month to harass me about money.”