Head Over Heels Read Free

thinking her eyes must be deceiving her.
    Surely it was merely being blinded by the sudden light after the dark hallway that made everything seem so brassy. But when she narrowed her eyes to take a good hard look, nothing dimmed. “Oh, my God.”
    The room was all done up in red flocked wallpaper and gold fabrics, and every item that wasn’t nailed down appeared to have been gilded to within an inch of its life. She’d never seen such an accumulation of ticky-tackies in one place in her life.
    â€œDamn, Crystal,” she whispered. “Why not just raise Lizzy in a whorehouse? It would probably be more subdued.” She stared in amazement at the table lamp she’d switched on: It was painted with overblown roses, trimmed in gold leaf, and dripping with crystal teardrops that clinked and chimed where the brush of her hand had set them in motion. Picking up a crimson velvet pillow that had Reno, The Biggest Little City in the World embroidered in metallic gold thread, she fingered its fat tassels while trying to find just one furnishing that was a neutral color or unembellished by curlicues, gold, or fringe. But every item her gaze lit upon seemed more garish than the one before, and she was appalled right down to the bottom of her artistic, restoration specialist’s soul. When the heckhad Crysal accumulated all this? The house hadn’t been crammed with this stuff the last time she’d visited.
    Veronica suddenly found herself completely and uncontrollably furious.
    â€œIf this isn’t just typical, Crystal! You never did have a lick of taste. And you sure as hell never had common sense. You just had to keep working all your stupid angles, didn’t you? God, I can’t believe you’re such a bimbo!” Ambushed by her use of the present tense, she shook her head furiously. “Were, I mean. I can’t believe you w-were such a dumb, reckless…”
    Grief sucker-punched her out of the blue, and clutching the pillow to her stomach, she collapsed onto the tufted brocade couch beneath a huge black velvet painting of a bullfighter. Folding at the waist, she sobbed into her knees, tears flowing in an unstoppable stream that soaked spreading circles on her khakis.
    Oh, God, oh, God. She couldn’t believe her sister was dead. And not just dead, which was hard enough to accept, but murdered . That was something that happened in movies, in books—not to people one knew.
    It was no secret that Crystal hadn’t been the nicest woman in town, and they’d fought like a couple of cats more often than not. But she’d been her sister, and precious memories etched Veronica’s mind of moments when Crystal had been sweet, or big-sister protective, or so downright funny it could make you nearly wet your pants laughing. She hadn’t deserved to die like that, to have her life choked out of her beneath the unrelenting hands of an enraged man.
    A noise out on the back porch brought Veronica’shead up. Sniffling, she sat up and wiped the tears from her cheeks with her palms, swiped the edge of her index fingers beneath her eyes. She had a view straight through the kitchen archway to the back door, but there was nothing to see. She shrugged. It was probably one of Mrs. Martelucchi’s cats.
    Then a man’s shadow crossed the door’s shade-drawn window, and Veronica’s heart kicked hard against the wall of her chest, before starting to pound. The back door knob jiggled and she shot to her feet, the cushion in her lap tumbling to the floor. She looked around for something to use as a weapon and snatched up a gaudy, gold-toned replica of an Erte statuette. Heart lodged so firmly in her throat she could barely breathe, she wrapped both hands around the statuette’s base and instinctively assumed the batter’s stance she’d learned playing sandlot ball behind Murphy’s Feed and Seed. The kitchen door creaked open.
    Muscular shoulders and