I had even tried to hire a nurse to come by and help her out at her house, but she wasn't having any of it. She had protested, said it was time for her to move here. I bristled at the idea. A nursing home? No thanks. But she had insisted it wasn't that kind of place, and on the phone she sounded happy.
Until she called me a few weeks ago and said she wanted to see me. That had me worried, even though she said it wasn't an emergency.
So I was back in West Bend, for the first time in seven years.
I'd lied to Iver and the others, telling them I was flying somewhere and taking time off. My team knew nothing about my past or about my family. Of course, Emir probably had a dossier on me, but he had never said anything, so I preferred to think he'd refrained from using his tech skills to figure out everything there was to know about me.
My team were the closest people in the world to me, yet they knew nothing about my past. And the only thing I knew about their pasts were the parts that involved grifting.
Grifters were funny that way. We were masters at leaving our pasts behind, creating new lives everywhere we went, and shedding the old ones. My childhood wasn't as real to me as my present life, and I didn't want to taint my present with ghosts from the past.
Except for Silas.
I'd brought that part of the past right into my present. And it was amazing.
But I needed to leave Silas back in Vegas, where he belonged.
The door to her room was open, but I knocked anyway. "Nana?"
Letty looked up at me from where she sat in her upholstered chair, dressed head-to-toe in a leopard tracksuit studded with rhinestones. Her face immediately brightened. "Tempest!"
"Don't get up, Nana," I said, walking across the room to hug her. "How are you?"
"Oh, you're a sight for sore eyes, honey," she said. "Sit, sit. Stay a while. You are staying a while, aren't you?"
"A few days, Nana," I said. I could afford to take a few days in West Bend, I told myself. I doubted anyone would recognize me anymore, at least from a cursory glance. The last time I’d actually set foot in the town of West Bend, I was a gangly, awkward seventeen-year-old. And even if someone happened to recognize me, it wasn't like there was a warrant out for my arrest.
There was also a part of me that craved the familiarity of West Bend. It was the only place I'd ever been truly happy, and I wanted a dose of that feeling again.
"Let me look at you, girl," Letty said, pausing, her eyes trailing up and down my body, narrowing as she looked at me. "Have you lost weight? Are you eating enough? You look like you have dark circles under your eyes. Are you sleeping? Don't lie to me - you're not getting enough sleep. I can see it in your eyes."
"Okay, Nana," I said. "Enough with the barrage of questions."
"Oh, don't Nana me," she said. "What's the helmet for? Are you riding that death trap again?"
I sighed, feigning exasperation but secretly happy with all the questions. It was a part of our routine that was familiar. "Yes, Nana. I'm sleeping. No, I haven't lost weight. Yes, I'm eating. Yes, I'm still riding the bike - I rode it out here from Vegas, in fact. Now, how are you feeling?"
"Sit down, girl," she said insistently, motioning to the upholstered chair across from her. She waited until I sat down to start in on me again, clucking her tongue against her teeth as she shook her head. "You kids these days. I don't know why you'd want to ride on something like that. You're asking to be flattened by a semi-truck."
I laughed. "Yeah, well, we can't all ride in horse-and-buggies, the way people did when you were a girl."
Letty hooted. "Horse drawn carriages," she said. "Do you think I'm two hundred years old, Tempest?"
"You don't look a day over a hundred and fifty, Nana," I said.
She guffawed, her hand on her stomach, and finally caught her breath. "Oh, Tempest, I missed you and your sense of humor."
I leaned forward in my chair. "Really, Nana," I said. "How are you doing? Be honest with me. Are they treating you well?"
"Are you kidding, girl?" she asked, gesturing toward herself. "Look at me! I'm fucking fantastic. This place is paradise."
I laughed so hard I nearly choked, hearing the words fucking fantastic come out of Letty's mouth. "Nana!"
"Oh, hush," she said. "I'm eighty years old. I can say the word fuck if I want to."
"Well, you seem like you're doing well, Nana," I said. "And you look good. I'm digging the leopard."
Letty grinned. "It's got rhinestones for added bling," she said. "You have to stand out here, you know, keep up with yourself. There is a lot of competition here."
"Who are you competing with?"
"There are more women here than men, you see, so you have to make sure you’re in primo shape," she said. Her gaze lingered on my arms. "Did you get new tattoos? That one, with the bird there, near your shoulder - I like it. I think I need some ink."
I laughed. "Nana, what the hell has gotten into you?"
She leaned forward, dropped her voice low, her tone conspiratorial. "Who hasn't gotten into me, Tempest?"
"Oh my God, are you talking about what I think you're talking about?" I asked. "Are you dating someone?"
She sat back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. "Oh, honey, I'm not dating anybody," she said. "I'm playing the field. A lot. All the time."
My jaw fell open. "Nana, I don't even know what to say."
"Oh yes," she said. "This place is heaven on earth. I mean, the accommodations themselves are so-so, and the food is infrequently edible, but my social life has never been better. I wasn't having this much sex when your grandfather was alive, God rest his soul." She made the sign of the cross, even though I knew she wasn't religious.
"I'm glad you're having fun," I said, unable to stifle my chuckle.
"Fun isn't even the word," she said. "I'm having the time of my life. There are eligible men with prescriptions for the little blue pill all over this place."
"Oh, Lord," I said. "I'm not sure the staff here is equipped to deal with you."
"They aren't," she said, matter-of-factly. "And don't you go tipping them off, either. You let me have a little fun before I die."
"As long as you don't go dying on me," I said. "Not for a long time."
"I've got a few years left in me," she said. "Don't you worry about that."
"Well, if you keep partying like you're twenty-one, you might be kicking the bucket sooner than that, Nana," I said.
"Well then I'll go to the grave whooping it up," she said. "Like a rock star."
I laughed. "I missed you a lot, Letty."
"It's so good to see you, Tempest," she said. "But there is a reason I wanted you to come by."
"Not so you could regale me with tales of your debauchery?" I asked.
"Well, if you want to hear them, I can tell you all about Mr. Johnson in room 122," she said. "He snuck over here the other night and -"
I held up my hand. "Nana," I warned. "Do not tell me this story. I'll have to insist. Did you hear from my parents or something?"
She shook her head, a dark look crossing her face. "Your parents," she said, scowling. "The more appropriate question is whether you, their only daughter, has heard from them."
"I would tell you if I had," I said. "Of course not. I haven't heard from them since I went out on my own."
"How are things going?" she asked, her voice just above a whisper. "I know you won't spill all your secrets, but have you taken down any bad guys lately?"
I'd come clean with my grandmother years ago, told her I was following in my parents' footsteps, but with a twist on the con game. She'd smiled when I explained why I was grifting, said that righting wrongs the way I was doing was a "noble enough" profession. "Just got finished with a case, Nana."
"Someone who deserved everything he got?"
I nodded. "Definitely," I said. "And we got some money for the family he'd harmed, people who were really struggling."
She smiled. "You
know, when your mother took up with your father, I was devastated. I knew he was a con artist the moment I laid eyes on him. He just had that vibe about him. He ruined our relationship. And when she took you away from me when you were a child, I thought that the two of them would ruin you. But here you are, all grown up, standing on your own two feet and doing what's right."
I felt myself flush. "Well, I'm not exactly doing what's right," I said. "I'm breaking the law."
She waved her hand. "Pshaw," she said. "Sometimes people get away with doing terrible things, and the law never punishes them for it. Life needs people like you to set things right. Even if it's not necessarily legal."
"It's definitely not legal," I said.
Letty looked at me for a long time. "Legal or not, I couldn't be more proud of you, dear."
“So you don’t think I’m crazy anymore, huh?” I leaned back in the chair, my arms crossed over my chest.
“Please.” Luke grinned at me. “You’re always going to be crazy, little brother. But I think your theory about mom’s death has some merit, at least.”
"Is that why you're sticking around in West Bend, Luke?" I probed. "Because you're interested in who might have had reason to want our parents dead?"
Luke's face reddened. I couldn't recall a time I'd ever seen Luke blush. I glanced across the room at Elias, who grinned.
"No," Elias said, crossing the room and pulling up a chair at the kitchen table. "There's a girl, isn't there?"
Luke shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Luke has a girlfriend," Elias said, his voice teasing. "Shit, I wish Killian were here. He would give you hell, man."
"Shut up, you assholes," Luke said.
"If he doesn't want to talk about it, leave him alone, Elias," I said, suddenly thinking about my reaction to Trigg when he asked about Tempest.
Elias studied me, his eyes narrowing. "What are you doing, taking up for him?" he asked. "You're usually the one to jump right on something like this."
"Yeah, well," I said. "Maybe he doesn't want to talk about it because it's someone who means something to him."
"Stop fucking talking about me like I'm not in the room, guys," Luke said. "I'm sitting right here."
But Elias ignored him, still staring at me. "Since when did you become Mr. Sensitive?" he asked. "Next thing you know, we're going to be sitting around talking about our feelings. Maybe we'll start crying, too."
"Shut up," I said. "You're the one mooning over River."
"Yeah, because it's River," he said. "Have you seen her?" He couldn't stop grinning, and I knew he was happy. It was good to see it.
"Why don't we talk about what we started with?" I said. "Stop getting off track. Our parents' deaths."
I could feel Elias' eyes still on me, but he relented. "Fine. I still maintain the entire idea they were murdered is ridiculous. Everyone wanted the asshole dead," he said, referring to our abusive drunk of a father. "If he were going to be murdered, it would have happened in a bar fight out in the open, not in the abandoned mine behind our house."
"Or one of us would have killed him," Luke said darkly. But if was true. The fact that one of us hadn't murdered him was itself a miracle. "I just think it doesn't make sense that she overdosed with pills and booze. She didn't even drink."
"Lots of things didn't make sense when it came to her," Elias said. "She was erratic. But what's that saying - the best explanation is the most direct one, right? That's the case here. Stop looking for complicated ways to make sense of things."
"Maybe you're right," I said half-heartedly. Elias was in this hazy honeymoon stage with River, and I was sure that was part of his reluctance to think about any of this.
I couldn't exactly blame him. If I had something like he had with River, maybe I wouldn't be concerning myself with this bullshit either.
An image of Tempest lying on the piano as I buried my head between her legs flashed into my mind, and I shook it off. I wasn't going to have anything like Elias and River had, not with Tempest. Even if I might want to.
"No, he's not right," Luke said. "You both know she got an offer on the property right before she died. There's a connection. Silas, back me up - it was your theory in the first place."
"I already thought about that," Elias said. "But the property thing just doesn't seem related. The land is a shit piece of land outside of town, and she wasn't even considering the offer."
"Well, she wouldn't talk about it," I said. "That doesn't mean she wasn't considering it. Or that it was related."
"I just think we shouldn't be stirring up shit solely to stir it up," Elias said.
"Well, people are murdered because of personal or financial reasons, right?" Luke asked.
"Where did you get that?" Elias said. "Have you been watching crime shows?"
"Shut the hell up," Luke said. "I'm going somewhere with this. Those are the main reasons people are murdered. So if they were killed, it'd be for one of those reasons."
"Or random acts," Elias said.
Luke nodded. "Okay, or random acts."
"Well, we already ruled both of those out," Elias said. "The likelihood of the asshole being murdered for personal reasons disguised as an accident in the mine behind the house is low. And there's no reason for our mother to have been killed - she was fairly inoffensive."
Inoffensive, I thought, recalling how she'd destroyed the letter from Tempest, taken the money I'd saved to be with her. She'd ruined things between us. She was far from inoffensive in my books.
"The financial motivation might be there," Luke said. "If the company wanted her off of the property."
"So, what," Elias said. "Some mining company is just offing town residents that don't sell their land? It's a completely ridiculous idea."
"Well, what if that wasn't it?" I said. "Maybe the asshole found something in the mining area back by the mountain. Or maybe he was looking for something. It would explain why he was back there, when that mine had been abandoned for years."
Luke guffawed, the sound echoing through the kitchen. "Yeah," he said. "Abandoned because of you, Silas."
Elias laughed. "It's funny now," he said. "It wasn't funny at the time."
"No, it wasn't fucking funny," I said. Our father had kicked the shit out of me for what had happened, the way I'd lost him the mining permit that allowed him to sell coal to people in town when we were kids. It was the whole reason he'd wound up being the janitor at the high school, which was punishment enough for me all by itself. But before that, my punishment involved his giving me two broken ribs.
"Well, the explosion was pretty legendary," Elias said.
"Hell yeah, it was," Luke said. "Anyway, I came over here and told the same thing to Elias. But I went and poked around the property and didn't see anything, so I don't know what to think. I couldn't find that offer mom got from the company, either."
"I've gone back and forth on it in my mind," Elias said. "I just think it's a far more likely explanation that the asshole was drunk as a skunk and messing around in the mine and something fell on his fucking head. Blunt force trauma. The coroner's office said it was probably a rock. There were landslides back there."
I grunted a response. I wasn't sure what I thought. Hell, I didn't even know if I cared - it's not like I was that close to either of them. Besides, finding out that my mother had betrayed me the way she had when it came to Tempest had soured me on the whole thing. Maybe it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.
Still, it wouldn't hurt to just run over to the property and take a look myself. "Maybe I'll just head over there and poke around," I said. "See what I can see."
Elias shook his head. "Don't expect me to join you," he said. "We're still doing stuff around the house."
I laughed. "Roger that," I said. "I have a pretty good idea of the stuff you're doing."
"Damn straight," Elias said, grinning broadly.
"Luke?" I asked. "Do you want to go with me?"