Read Stranded for Free Online Page B

at one time, on the right. A door to the left was closed. I looked at it curiously. There’s something magnetic about a closed door, at least for someone as curious as I am. I could almost feel, as my good friend Magnolia back in Missouri would say, vibes coming off the room. Was that where Hiram had been murdered?
    Kelli ignored the closed door and led us into the living room, brushing aside a spider web draped catty-corner across the archway.
    “Living in the same house wasn’t working out because . . . ?” Okay, it was a nosy question. But little old ladies can often get away with nosiness, and I’m willing to take advantage of any perks available to LOLs.
    “The rumors are rampant, of course. One is that Uncle Hiram didn’t want me living in the house with him because he was afraid I’d poison him. Another is that I didn’t want to live here because it would cramp my lifestyle. I’m from the Los Angeles area. Which to the local imagination could mean anything from nude dancing on tabletops to throwing cocaine parties with my friends from the Hollywood Mob. It’s all so outrageous that it would be funny, except . . .” She shook her head and blinked, and I guessed the town’s suspicions hurt her more than she wanted to let on.
    “And the real reason you didn’t want to live in the same house was . . . ?”
    “A big reason was that Uncle Hiram didn’t like cats, and I have my Sandra Day. I didn’t care for his heavy smoking, and we also had some . . . philosophical differences.” An intriguing comment, I thought, but she moved on without elaborating. “I also prefer something a little more cozy than this.”
    She waved toward the distant ceiling, the molding and elaborate crystal chandelier liberally draped with more spider webs. The enormous fireplace had been covered over at some time and was now just a blank brick wall beneath an elaborately carved mantel. The mantel would still be a nice place to hang a child’s stocking at Christmas, and I felt an unexpected wave of nostalgia about a fireplace mantel hung with stockings back in my son Colin’s childhood. Sometimes it’s hard to believe how old Colin would be now if he hadn’t disappeared in a ferry accident while on a military peacekeeping assignment in Korea so long ago.
    A round tower room opened off this larger room, a charming, airy space, lace-curtained but quite devoid of furniture. Actually, both living and dining rooms were rather skimpily furnished, though a few impressive and no doubt valuable antiques remained. A lovely grand piano and a grandfather clock dominated the living room, and a heavy, claw-footed oak table and matching hutch stood in the adjoining dining room. A number of oversized portraits and photographs of various stiff-backed, bearded gentlemen hung on the walls, a couple of the men accompanied by wasp-waisted women in enormous, elegant hats.
    Abilene, hands stuffed in the back pockets of her jeans, studied one of the photos. Although I suspected she was less interested in the people than the woman’s hat, probably looking to see if the feathers were from some endangered species. Abilene notices things like that.
    “Are any of these pictures of Hiram?” I asked.
    “No. That was his father.” She pointed to one elaborately framed oval photo of a wiry man with an unexpectedly rakish look in spite of an unsmiling countenance. The cane in his hand looked more like a stylish accessory than a necessity. “But I’m not certain who the others are. Various grandparents and uncles and cousins, according to Hiram. But he could be mischievous. I wouldn’t put it past him to just pick up some old photo in an antique store and blithely claim it was a distinguished or rascally old McLeod.”
    An odd but probably harmless peculiarity of character.
    Jarring next to the classic lines of the piano was a modern sofa with a purple and green pattern that looked as if it had been overrun by some virulent species of jungle fungus.