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Then, in the late eighteen hundreds, Mr and Mrs Braden had been killed in the house, as well A historical parallel of the Menendez case? From the books, h tiruntled son had killed his parents for the money And, of course, similar cases had been suspected elsewhere The Braden case was similar, too, to the Lizzie Borden murders Both Lizzie and the Braden boy had been acquitted, but nobody doubted that each of them had murdered their families

Just like today’s case

Saet the hell away from his computer He was not involved

But he was

He’d found the kid in the road

And, he’d grown up in Sale a school kid, and the rhyton, he loved his wife…

A good attorney, of course--even a hack--would go for an insanity plea The kid had grown up in what everyone in the area termed a haunted house--a really haunted house--which, in a city like Sale

Any attorney could defend the boy It was too easy

He forced himself to leave the computer screen and walk around the house

His parents had been dead for nearly two years; he’d returned for the funeral, and he hadn’t been back since The house, however, was in excellent shape His father, until his death, had seen to it that no electrical wires frayed, that the heating system was state-of-the-art and that every board that even seeed was replaced His father’s friend and contractor, Ji the two years His dad had come from old Puritan stock, and he’d considered it an honor to care for the horandparents before them did It wasn’t one of the oldest houses in the area, but it ranked right in there with hteenth century all the way into the twenty-first

He s a sip of the coffee he still held, untouched "Darn you, Dad You knew that I won’t be able to sell the daer lived--was a pain in the ass, no ured he’d co damned day He dropped his head He didn’t want to be involved with a legal situation here

But he couldn’t blink without seeing in his mind’s eye the blank brown eyes of the naked boy covered in blood and shaking on the road

"Jenna!" Uncle Ja

She hugged hieneral Despite their long history of warfare, the Irish were an exceptionally warical tales, and they seldo their minds

"Uncle Ja her at arraying auburn hair He was her er brother, and had always had achildren He was so devout that he’d nearly gone into the priesthood, but had decided at the lastHe’d attended medical school and becoirl, aye, that you do! Pretty thing, you alere Beautiful eyes, green like Eire, and hair like fire--you got o with it, eh?" Her own accent had become little more than a hint of a different place, but she had co teen Jarown man

"Mum’s temper isn’t that bad, Uncle Jarinned "Come over here, I’ve a booth for us," he told her He slipped an ar her toward a corner booth "Lovely, lovely, isn’t it? I’ve always loved this city You have the Wiccans with their wonderful shops--and their Wiccan gossip and squabbles, of course! You’ve got the ietting along--and not But fall here is thelife and creating cornucopias and carving out pumpkins"

"Yes, I love it here, too, Uncle Jamie"