Death hits the fan Read Free Page B

there was no answer from the back. Yvette looked past Shayla's empty seat at Ted Brown.
    "Shouldn't we stop her or something?" she demanded.
    Ted just shrugged his shoulders, keeping his eyes straight ahead, his morose face pale and immobile.

    "But what if she's, like . .." Yvette waved her small hands in the air. Leprechaun hands, I thought irrelevantly. No bigger than a child's. "Holy shi-shick, what if she's destroying evidence or something?"
    Ted made no response. Yvette looked down at the man still trying to resuscitate Shayla. Evidence? What did she mean by "evidence"?
    A gust of wind shook the glass doors at the front of the store. Then rain splattered their surface as if in answer.
    "Lou?" Yvette whispered urgently, looking down now in Shayla's direction, but the man who must have been Lou just kept pressing on Shayla's chest. Hard.
    Ivan put his hand on Mr. Quadrini's shoulder. And I disengaged my cold hand from Wayne's warmer one and got up slowly, very slowly, too dizzy to do otherwise, before bending over the folding chairs to question Ivan.
    "Ivan?" I hissed.
    The owner of Fictional Pleasures jumped in place, startled by my sudden whisper, then looked back at me.
    "Is she . .." Somehow, I couldn't say "dead."
    "I don't know, I don't know," Ivan groaned miserably. Why had I thought he'd know, anyway? Why couldn't my mind seem to function? "Maybe Lou can revive her—"
    "Take off the bracelet!" Mr. Quadrini yelled again.
    Ivan began to turn back to the pinstriped man.
    "Who's Lou?" I asked quickly before Ivan could complete the turn.
    "Lou Cassell, Yvette's husband," Ivan told me, putting his hand at the side of his mouth as if to shield his words from the others. "Lou comes to all her signings. A very supportive spouse. Very caring."
    I looked past Ivan at the man trying to save Shayla's life. He couldn't have been over thirty. He had to be at least fifteen years younger than Yvette. And he was gorgeous, with a body like Adonis and skin the rich brown of shiitake mush-

    rooms. This was Yvette Cassell's husband? A man with large golden-brown, tiger-shaped eyes and high cheekbones above a mustached, sensual mouth—
    He rose slowly as I was cataloging his physical attributes. But his sensual mouth wasn't smiling. He closed his golden-brown eyes for a moment, then shook his head.
    "No!" Mr. Quadrini objected. But his voice was quavering now.
    And then that gorgeous younger man turned to Yvette.
    "She's gone," he said, his tone clear and high, astonished. He shook his head again, harder, took a breath, and reached out for Yvette's hand. Yvette grabbed his large dark hand with her small light one, eyebrows raised over the rims of her tinted glasses. Lou stood still for a moment, head bowed. Then he looked up again.
    "Someone needs to call the paramedics," he said.
    Til call," Wayne offered quietly. He stood up and patted my back gently, as if for permission.
    I nodded and he made his way down the row of chairs and turned toward the phone.
    "And the police," Lou added, his tone deepening. His gorgeous features looked angry now. Fierce.
    'The police?" Ivan said, looking as dazed as the rest of us. "The police?"
    Wayne picked up the phone by the cash register. I could hear the low rumble of his voice against the rhythmically pounding rain and Dean's quiet weeping. Mr. Quadrini let out a sob as the heater kicked in with a roar of hot air.
    I wanted to do something suddenly. Shayla had called out my name. And she was dead. But what could I do?
    "I don't know, I don't understand," Dean mumbled through his tears. He cradled the jade stone in his hand. "What will I tell Scott?"
    "Oh, jeez, Scott," Zoe muttered, pulling back abruptly from Dean. "Scott."

    I wondered who Scott was. And who was Dean to Shayla? And Zoe ...
    "Who's the man with the gray beard?" I whispered to Ivan.
    "Dean Frazier, a friend of Shayla's, I think. And the woman was her friend too, Zoe something," Ivan told me, his voice a whisper.
    His thug's face