by Terri Reid
Mary grinned. “Well, wow! Good news all around.”
“We also wanted to thank you,” Josh said. “All of us. You not only solved our dad’s murder, you brought us back together as a family.”
“It was my pleasure,” Mary said.
“And I have one more surprise,” Abe said.
“What?” Josh and Jessie asked.
“This is going to be great,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a photo. “See this cute little heifer?”
Mary looked at the photo of the black and white cow. “Yes?”
“She’s the first cow I purchased for our new dairy and I’ve named her Mary O’Reilly,” he said, beaming with pride.
“Oh,” Mary replied, trying to muster up a little enthusiasm. “That’s…um…lovely. That’s really lovely.”
She slid the photo back to him across the desk.
“Oh, no, that’s your copy,” he said. “I want you to be able to look at her anytime you’d like and, of course, you can come out to the farm and check out her progress yourself.”
“Well, I would love to do that,” she replied, picturing herself wading through manure in a dairy farm. “Really.”
“And the best news is that she is already pregnant,” he said. “So you both will be delivering at about the same time.”
“How adorable,” she said. “Me and a cow, maternity twins.”
Josh stood up. “Well, we have to get going. We’ve got meetings scheduled with the bank,” he said, extending his hand to Mary. “Thanks again.”
Mary shook his hand. “You are so welcome,” she said. “Please give my best to your mother.”
After a flurry of goodbyes, they left Mary alone in her office looking down on the picture of her namesake. Finally, with a deep sigh, she walked across the room, open the fridge, pulled out a rice cake and bit into it. “Moo!” she said with a sigh.
Chapter Forty-seven
After work, Mary picked up enough pizza to feed the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir and wondered if it was going to be enough for the Brennan boys, not to mention the rest of them. When she walked into the house she was greeted with a contingency of starving children and a nearly exasperated husband.
“They’re like locusts,” he said, as he helped her put out the paper plates and napkins. “I kept throwing food at them and it was scary to see how quickly it disappeared.”
He looked at the empty bowl that had been brimming with potato chips only a few minutes ago. “By the way, we need to go grocery shopping tomorrow,” he said, shaking his head.
Laughing, she opened the cabinet and pulled out another bag of chips. “They are growing boys,” she said. “That’s just how they eat.”
“Scary,” he said.
After the food had been devoured, they all sat in the living room to watch a movie. The debate about which movie to watch lasted nearly fifteen minutes, until Mary suggested that they watch something none of them had ever seen before.
“What?” Andy said. “We’ve pretty much seen everything.”
“How about Dracula?” Mary asked.
“We’ve seen it,” David Brennan said.
“The 1931 version of Dracula?” Mary asked.
“Was that one with the real Dracula?” Andy asked.
Grinning, Mary nodded. “Well, it is the one with the original Dracula,” she agreed. “And it was filmed using only black and white.”
“That’s cool,” David agreed.
“I don’t know,” Bradley said. “That was before ratings. They might see something their parents wouldn’t want them to see.”
“We can see it.”
“They won’t mind.”
“Please!”
Mary bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “Okay, we’ll let you see it,” she agreed. “But you have to agree not to tell your parents.”
Bradley inserted the movie into the DVD player and then scooped up some of the paper plates. Mary followed with another armful.
“You are brilliant,” she said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks,” he said. “You’re not bad yourself.”
Arming themselves with several large bowls of popcorn that they distributed around the room, they cuddled together in the loveseat and enjoyed the movie themselves. A quick seventy-five minutes later, they were onto the second part of their double-feature with the 1931 version of Frankenstein. And when Katie and Clifford arrived at ten-thirty, they were all still arguing whether Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff was scarier.
An hour later, the house was quiet and Mary was snuggling into her pillow, fighting sleep until Bradley joined her in bed. She let her eyes drift closed as she listened to him move around in the bathroom. She awoke a few moments later, listening to the water running in the sink and tried once again to stay awake.
“Honey,” she yawned. “You have to hurry, I’m sinking fast.”
She started to drift off again and then she felt the weight of someone sitting on the bed next to her. “Finally,” she muttered, turning to him.
The scream flew from her mouth before she could stop it and Bradley dashed into the room, a toothbrush still in his mouth. “What?” he demanded.
Not able to form words yet, she slowly reached out her hand in his direction. He ran to her side, grasped her hand and saw what she was looking at.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, no more than two feet away from Mary, were the fleshless decomposing remains of a corpse. The head slowly cocked to one side and hollow eye sockets met her eyes. “Sorry to bother you so late,” he said, in a very genteel tone. “But I rather think I might be dead and I was wondering if you could help me.”
The End
About the author: Terri Reid lives near Freeport, the home of the Mary O’Reilly Mystery Series, and loves a good ghost story. She lives in a hundred year-old farmhouse complete with its own ghost. She loves hearing from her readers at [email protected]
Other Books by Terri Reid:
Mary O’Reilly Paranormal Mystery Series:
Loose Ends (Book One)
Good Tidings (Book Two)
Never Forgotten (Book Three)
Final Call (Book Four)
Darkness Exposed (Book Five)
Natural Reaction (Book Six)
Secret Hollows (Book Seven)
Broken Promises (Book Eight)
Twisted Paths (Book Nine)
Veiled Passages (Book Ten)
Bumpy Roads (Book Eleven)
PRCD Case Files:
The Ghosts Of New Orleans -A Paranormal Research and Containment Division Case File
Eochaidh:
Legend of the Horseman (Book One)