Booked for Murder Read Free

“We’re all devastated by Penny’s death. She was in the office only hours before she died. It’s a tragic loss.”
    Ms. Varnavides, 42, grew up in Chicago and studied at
Northwestern and Stanford. After graduating, she worked in the computer industry. Her debut Darkliners novel , The Magicking of Danny Armstrong, was first published in England because she couldn’t find a US publisher. But its runaway success was repeated all over the world and she became a full-time novelist ten years ago. She was unmarried and lived in San Francisco.
    The apartment where the tragedy took place is the home of a British academic who exchanged it with Ms. Varnavides’ duplex in Noe Valley for the summer.
    The piece of bread never made it to her mouth. Lindsay sat down suddenly on a kitchen chair and reread the article, tears pricking her eyes. Mutton slumped against her leg, butting his head against her sympathetically. Lindsay’s hand went to the dog’s head in an automatic movement, rubbing her fingers over the silky ears. Her other hand traced the outline of the newsprint. Penny was dead.
    The tears spilled over and trickled down Lindsay’s cheeks. Less than five weeks before, Penny had been sitting on their deck knocking back Sierra Nevada amber ale and bemoaning the end of her relationship with Meredith Miller, the woman she’d been seeing for the previous five years. It had been a shocking conversation. If anyone had asked Lindsay who were the couple most likely to make it work, she’d have answered without hesitation, “Meredith and Penny.” They’d always seemed entirely compatible, a marriage of equals. Even Penny’s need to remain in the closet because of her huge market among teenagers in middle America hadn’t been a bone of contention; it was matched by Meredith’s own requirements. A computer scientist with a defense contractor, she had top-secret clearance, a grading she’d lose immediately her sexuality became known to her professionally paranoid bosses.
    The two women had shared a tall Victorian house that had been divided into a duplex; Meredith lived in the two lower floors, Penny above. But the terraced garden at the back was common, allowing them to move freely from one section of the house to the other without being overlooked. So they’d effectively lived together, while maintaining the fiction of being nothing more than friends. In San Francisco, Lindsay had realized a long time ago, it wasn’t always easy
to tell who were lovers and who merely friends. It was so easy to be out that everyone assumed anyone who wasn’t had to be straight and sadly lacking a partner.
    Although it had been clear from the tone of the conversation that it had been Penny who had given Meredith her marching orders, she had spoken with deep regret about the ending of the relationship. “She left me with no choice,” she’d said sadly, head leaning against Sophie’s shoulder as Lindsay tended the barbecue. “Right from the start, we always had borderlines, you know? We had common concepts of what was acceptable in a relationship and what wasn’t. Fidelity was an absolute. She must have known she was leaving me no option, doing what she did.” She took another pull on her beer and stared into the sunset.
    â€œMaybe she was testing you,” Lindsay had tried.
    â€œI don’t think so,” Penny said. “I think she was in self-destruct mode. And you can’t stop somebody who’s that determined.”
    â€œNo, but you don’t have to give them a shove in the wrong direction,” Lindsay muttered, knowing she wouldn’t be heard over the hissing of the marinade she’d just used to baste the salmon.
    By the end of the evening, Penny had had enough bottles of the dark golden ale for Sophie to insist she stayed the night and Lindsay had had enough of Penny’s grief to slip away on the excuse of