Read Delaney's Shadow for Free Online Page B

fabulous. Then you’re a Wainright, too. Another generation still living in the same house. It says here this was triple brick construction. They built them to last back then, didn’t they?”
    “Please, help yourself to some coffee while you’re waiting. We keep a fresh pot on the sideboard in the dining room. It’s through that door behind you.”
    Instead of taking the hint, the man clutched his brochure and moved farther into the kitchen. “Will you look at these ceilings. They must be fourteen-footers. Or is it fifteen?”
    “Fifteen, I believe.”
    “Marvelous.” Tipping back his head, he turned in a circle to admire the ceiling. When he stopped, he was only a few steps away and was looking directly at her. “Oh, I know who you must be. You’re Delaney Wainright Graye, aren’t you?”
    She was too surprised to deny it. “Yes. How would you . . .”
    “Here,” he said, placing the brochure in her hand. “This is for you.”
    “Excuse me?”
    He smiled and continued across the kitchen to the back door, his gait no longer hesitant or apologetic in the least. “You’ve been served, Mrs. Graye.” He gave her a jaunty wave and stepped outside.
    Delaney regarded what she held. Wedged between the glossy pages of the brochure there was a stiffly folded piece of heavy, legal-sized paper.
    “Delaney?” Helen swept into the kitchen. “I thought I heard voices. Did someone come back here?”
    “Yes. He left.”
    “That’s strange.” She went to the window that overlooked the yard. “My guests know they shouldn’t come into the old section, but sometimes they make themselves too much at home.”
    “It wasn’t a guest, Grandma.” She opened the paper. “It was a process server.”
    “A process . . . Here in my house? The nerve!”
    Delaney wondered if the man had been watching the place from the garden shed, waiting for the best time to slip inside. It was a disconcerting thought. She was thankful he had missed seeing her in the yard. She’d had enough people materializing out of thin air for one morning.
    “I’ll bet it was that man who came here yesterday,” Helen continued. “He seemed wrong somehow so I lied and said we didn’t have a vacancy. What did he look like? Pale? Big and jowly?”
    “No, he was short and very ordinary.”
    “He must have been looking for the Schicks. I’d heard they were having trouble with their former business partner.”
    “He was here for me.”
    “You?” Helen turned. Her gaze went to the paper Delaney held. “Why ever in the world would someone sue you?”
    She steadied her hands so that she could read the print on the summons. Having it served this way had taken her by surprise, but she realized she felt no shock at what it said. In fact, she should have expected it. Now that the police had closed their investigation, there would be no criminal charges laid. A civil suit was the next logical step for a woman who was bent on revenge. “It seems as if I was right,” she said. “Elizabeth’s not letting this rest.”
    “Oh, no. She’s not contesting the will again, is she?”
    She’s not allowing me bury my husband. She’s forcing me to keep ripping open the wound that won’t heal . . .
    Delaney swallowed hard as she refolded the paper and placed it next to the rubber gloves on the counter. They seemed to belong together. Both were ugly reminders of the new reality of her life.
    Messes that she’d made and needed to clean up herself.
    “Delaney? Honey, what is it?”
    “My stepdaughter is suing me for the wrongful death of her father.”
     
    ALL OF THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERS. FROM HER FATHER’S collection of first editions and the burled walnut bookcase that enclosed it, to the trio of Picasso sketches that hung over the leather couch, it rightfully should have gone to her. Even the desk she was lying on ought to have been hers.
    “Elizabeth?”
    Elizabeth Graye summoned a reassuring smile. It wouldn’t do to let Alan Rashotte know her mind