If Hooks Could Kill Read Free Page A

Charlie was alive, someone had tried to hire him to do PR for their house. Yes, a house. It had become quite a star because it was Todd Jenkins house in the family saga
The Jenkins
. It had also been used as the home of the matriarch in
Our Family and Friends
. Though a family lived there when it wasn’t being used for a show, it had been built with the idea of renting it out to productions, so the interior was designed with an open plan, which made camera setups easy. Charlie had shown me the house and I had laughed when I saw the kitchen. It was designed for cameras not for cooking. I mean, you practically needed a golf cart to bring the dishes from the dining room to the sink.
    After getting an assurance that Dinah wasn’t thinking of listing her house with the location service and being noncommittal about signing any sort of petition, Nanci let us go, but I noticed she followed us as we walked up to Kelly’s house. Kelly’s place had been given an overhaul since it was originally built. Someone had taken the basic stucco house and added a second story. To me, it looked like a cream-colored box with a red-tiled roof.
    Kelly answered the door with a cordless phone to her ear. I guess she was used to people just showing up at her door because even though we hadn’t called ahead she didn’t seem surprised to see us. Whenever I saw her, I thought of the phrase
cute as a button
, though the saying didn’t really make much sense. How was a button cute? But Kelly definitely was. She smiled at us and the two dimples in her cheeks appeared and then quickly disappeared when she saw Nanci lurking in the background. Kelly put her hand over the phone as Nanci fussed about the truck in the driveway and insisted that it was ruining her view. Kelly listened with a tired sigh; clearly she’d heard this before. “It
is
my driveway,” Kelly reminded Nanci in a pointed tone.
    Nanci made a huffing sound, turned abruptly and left. The cuteness came back into Kelly’s face, and while she apologized for the interruption to whoever she was talking to on the phone, she gestured for us to come in. Her chestnut brown ponytail swung from side to side as she led the way. The beige capri pants and loose ivory linen top were casual, but something in the fit and the texture of the fabric said expensive. Still listening to the phone call, she pointed to some small brightly colored blocks in a box and mouthed
watch out
.
    Not only did Adele watch out, she picked up the box and examined the side. She pushed it on me with a knowing nod. The front had the words LUGO Blocks printed in big letters and showed some scary looking pictures of things you could build. Whoever had written the copy clearly wasn’t too good with English. Did anyone really say, “One thousand and one funs,” or “Let’s block”?
    As Kelly hung up, she saw me reading the box and made a disparaging sound. “Sorry about the blocks. My kids were here last week and Dan brought the blocks home from the store for them. He doesn’t understand that kids care about brands. LUGO?” she said with a snort. The phone rang in her hand and she went to answer it. “Go on into my workroom. I’ll be in there in a minute.” She put the phone to her ear as the three of us went in the direction she’d pointed. Adele pressed ahead mumbling something about wanting to see if there were any crochet supplies.
    Dinah pointed at the “No Kids Allowed” sign on the door and gave me a quizzical look. Dinah was all about teaching kids and young adults how to behave, not excluding them. We passed through the door into a large room at the back of the house. A sliding glass door looked out on the backyard, and there were the men we’d seen before, walking around the yard measuring things.
    “Hmm, let’s just see what she’s got,” Adele said as her hat brim flopped in front of her face. She lifted it away from her eyes and quickly began to look around the room.
    I was less concerned about