Page 4 of Guy (House of Frazier #4)

Belinda didn’t like that the kids were still hanging out at Amber’s place. They were in their new car, she wondered how they could afford that—and watching the house while they got food delivered to them. They were a pair, the two of them.

She thought about how Amber said that they’d killed her. She didn’t know how, but she thought that they had. They had killed their father, too, she’d said. Thinking about the night that she’d been killed, she no more knew what had killed her than what she had explained to Guy.

Coming out of the car when it had been nasty cold, Belinda had thought that she’d fallen.

Hit her head on the cold ground and died.

But the police report said that it was more than likely a baseball bat that had hit her, and the blunt force trauma had busted her head wide open, and she had bled out.

Guy had gotten all kinds of paperwork from the police, but none of it pointed to a murder. He was also writing about her death.

Guy had been writing books since he was twelve years old.

He had all kinds of pieces of paper in a box where he had kept all his ideas for his first book.

His family didn’t know that he wrote, and he didn’t want them to know, but she thought it was neat how he’d just sit down at the computer and write and write for days without stopping.

Then he’d get up, eat something, and go back at it.

She wouldn’t tell him this, of course, but she thought it was wonderful how he did it.

Just typing whatever he wanted to the paper and going on to the story.

There was also the way he was filling out the house that they shared.

It wasn’t small, the house. It had five bedrooms, six and a half bathrooms, as well as a media room—the one he used for his office, as well as a living room, den, dining room, and the nicest kitchen that she’d ever been in.

There were other rooms, too, ones that she had no name for, but he would get a few boxes in, put together whatever was in them, and then put it in a room.

She liked, too, that he broke down his boxes so they weren’t a mess around the house.

Guy also kept a neat house. Never anything out of place or in the way.

“This report here says that you were robbed, too. The store you were in said that you paid cash for your groceries and had a good deal left over. But your wallet was empty, as were your pockets.” He looked at her when she came into the room.

It still startled her when someone would look directly at her these days.

“Do you remember going into the store at all? You said you were getting out of the car to go in, but according to this, you’d already been in there. ”

“I think I was going back in. I seem to remember not having any ice cream and wanting to go back in and get it. It used to be my one treat I’d give myself.

” She asked him the name of the grocery store.

He told her. “I remember that now. It’s been so very long that I’d forgotten that.

Mr. Smithies Grocery had just about anything you’d want for being a small place. ”

She could tell that he didn’t care. Guy would be stubborn about things and rude the rest of the time. She thought that he was lonely rather than just rude, but that was just her. He wasn’t just nasty to her but to anyone who came by. But for the little girls that she’d seen. Selma and Harley.

Selma could see ghosts because she’d been shot in the head by her father.

It wasn’t an accident like she thought, but he’d shot her on purpose.

Killing her because her momma loved her was a sorry excuse.

Harley had been shot, too, but not as life-threateningly as Selma had been.

She’d been able to see ghosts since then.

Belinda worried about her at first, dealing with the dead, but Harley was her protector, and that made them a good team in working together.

They were beautiful, too, just like their father.

All the Frazier men were beautiful. She supposed they’d be called handsome, but she thought that the way they looked was just too beautiful to ignore.

Their dark curly hair and their strong muscles made them eye candy too, she’d thought that she heard them called.

Whatever they were, she’d loved to have been around when they were turning into men instead of children when she’d been old enough to date them.

Guy, unlike his brothers, wasn’t as outgoing.

He would sit in his house all day at the computer and write.

They loved to get out and do things. It wasn’t as if he never left the house; he did on occasion, but for the most part, he’d write all day or tinker around the house on one of his many household projects.

“You never answered me about your husband. Did you want me to see what I can find out about his death? Do you want me to get a death certificate too?” She said that she’d never thought of him being murdered, but now that it was out there, she wanted to see.

“What are the details surrounding his death? Do you know?”

“He was shot during a robbery. Wrong place, wrong time the police had said.” He asked her if she believed them.

“I’m not sure now. I mean, can a twelve-year-old kill someone and not get caught?

That’s how old the twins would have been when he was killed.

The robber was killed on site. He didn’t get very far because someone with a gun killed him, too. ”

“I’ll see what I can find.” She thanked him. “I have to go out tomorrow in the morning. I’m going to go and see Amber and help her get some security cameras around her house. She’s not been back there since she got it from you, and I can tell that she really wants to go there.”

“Would you mind if I went with you? If I have something to say to her, you can tell her.” He told her no. “Well, I’ll just pester you until you do, then. I know how much you hate my singing now, and I’ll do that.”

“Why don’t you find another house? This one is mine.” She told him again that she was there first. “I actually paid for it, and all you did was squat in it.”

“I was here first. You find yourself another place. I told you I’d help you.

There are any number of houses in the little town that you could live in.

” She didn’t want him to leave, not really.

He’d been making the place cozy and warm with his being there.

“Besides, where are you going to find yourself another roommate that doesn’t cause you trouble like I don’t? ”

“You cause trouble just by being around. I have better things to do other than to cater to your needs, you know.” She thanked him again. “I’m going outside. The mail has run.”

Something else she knew about him that none of his family did was that he wrote first of all.

Secondly, he did it under a false name. Guy wrote murder mysteries and was really good at it.

While she’d not read one herself, she’d read the reviews on the back of the book and was quite impressed.

And no matter how much she pestered him, he still wouldn’t read it to her so that she could have an idea of the man she was living with. Even if she was dead.

When he left, trudging in the snow banks on his way to town, she wondered what had happened to him that made him so bitter.

She’d figured out that it wasn’t his brothers.

They were all as nice as he was rude. But something had made him like the man that he was, and like her murder, she wanted to get to the bottom of it.

She knew about his parents. You couldn’t be dead or alive in this little town without hearing how they treated their kids.

She’d also heard that the mother of these fine men had killed their daddy and tried to blame it on them.

The police officer, whose name she couldn’t remember, had stood up for the boys and had basically adopted them into his own home with his wife to raise them after the mother was put in prison.

Maybe they had something to do with him being the way that he was.

Or maybe some woman hurt him. He didn’t like humans, which she didn’t blame him for.

Humans were an odd sort of people. But someone had hurt him, and she wanted to know why so that she could perhaps fix him for someone.

She looked in on her treasures, things that she’d been able to pick up from others that she’d liked.

Some of it was trash, a set of keys that she’d taken from a house so that the man couldn’t drive with his kids in the car while he was drunk.

A letter that had come in the mail for a person who would have been hurt had they read it.

She’d seen the person writing the nasty letter and had to wait at the house for it to come.

There were also treasures, too. Some lovely silverware—which reminded her of the people that were related to Guy and their underground help system to get people out of abusive relationships.

Another ghost had wanted to use his treasures too to help with the railroad, but most of his was stolen, and they were afraid that it would come back on them.

Just as she was going to go and look for other things to put away from humans to use, she saw a woman walking down the street with her twins behind her.

It was Amber; she just knew it was. And if she didn’t get any help, she was going to get hurt by the kids.

Damn it all to hell and back. She needed to get some help.

It was then that someone knocked on the door to their home.

Looking at the couple standing there, she wondered how she could get them to help her daughter.

Finding Guy was easy. He only went to two places around, if you didn’t count his brother’s home; it was the bank and the post office. Finding him, she told him to call his brother and tell them to find Amber. She was in trouble again. Instead of doing what she wanted, he asked her where she was.