Dead is the New Black Read Free

answer the police truthfully and candidly when they ask you a question, and I’ll do the same, okay? Outside that, I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “I’m sorry I was late today.” Laura tried to deflect the unpleasantness.
    “Why? Did you kill her between seven thirty and eight?”
    “No!”
    “Then keep out of it. Whatever happens here today, we have to stay focused. There’s a show in two weeks, and it goes off the rails if we let it.” He was right, if not a little freakishly callous. His company was his life. She had never heard him speak of a love interest of any gender. He had friends, or people he knew in the business. The two were one in the same. His parents lived in Canada, and he never spoke of any other family. No pets even.
    He travelled frequently and without notice. After arriving at work, Carmella or Laura would get a call in the morning from his personal assistant, Tinto Benito, a man they had never met, informing them that Jeremy would be traveling for two weeks or ten days or whatever, and Gracie was in charge. No calls. No emails. No nothing. Sometimes, Gracie would tell them Jeremy wasn’t coming in, and they were going to have to manage without their boss for a time. But when he came back, there was hell to pay. That was the side of him she saw now—terse and bitchy.
    “Don’t worry,” she said. Before she could stop herself, she added, “I won’t let the business go off the rails.” It was a promise she had no idea how to keep.
    “I’m counting on you,” he replied, making it much, much worse.
    “I saw a fake Donatella,” she said. He raised an eyebrow. “Some lady on the train. I followed her. That’s why I was later than usual.”
    “You followed her?”
    “She said her mother got it in China. So someone’s knocking you off in Asia.”
    He grinned. She focused on the beautiful little crease in his bottom lip that disappeared when he smiled.
    “You stopped her and asked her where she got it?”
    “Yeah. I figured you could tell Gracie, because I don’t want to. She’s liable to go bananas on me for not ripping it off her.” And then Laura realized she was speaking about Gracie as if she were still alive, which she wasn’t. She guessed Jeremy was now in charge of hunting down and suing counterfeiters, which Gracie did—no, had done —with relish.
    Laura didn’t realize how tense she was until she jumped at the sound of the front doorbell. “I’ll get it.” She ran for reception.
    Two uniformed cops stood outside the glass doors with two guys in cheap civilian jackets who Laura assumed were detectives. They needed a code to get in and looked ready to do whatever police officers did when they needed to open a locked door. She used her key to let them in and introduced herself.
    “I’m Detective Cangemi,” the first detective said with a Brooklyn accent so thick he sounded like he had a pack of gum in his jaw. “This is Detective Samuelson, who else we got in the office?” The two uniforms blew past without even a ‘How-do-you-do.’
    “Me and Jeremy St. James, I have no idea who else is here.”
    “It’s Sunday. Why’s anyone here?”
    “The show’s next Friday.” She didn’t mean to sound like a snotrag, but she probably did, anyway.
    “Lent’s got four Fridays, but I ain’t going to Mass every Monday.”
    “You do if you have to rebuild the church every Ash Wednesday.”
    Detective Cangemi smirked. “Get inside,” he said, as if it were his office and she were the one visiting. She figured they learned they owned the city at the academy.
    Jeremy walked Samuelson to the back, talking with graceful gestures, accentuating the fact that he was tall, slim, straight-shouldered, and lithe. When he walked like that, she had thoughts she quickly had to shut out before people saw them on her face.
    When their voices faded, Cangemi sat her down on the leather couch in reception and had her recount her morning and her routine. In at 7:30 five days a