Murder Most Mellow (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Read Free Page B

teeth.
    “About a client whose case you didn’t want?” she asked, turning toward him.
    “Right,” he snapped.
    “Well, did you take the case?” she demanded.
    “No, but somebody will,” he shot back. “And then I look picky because I didn’t.”
    “Well, aren’t you picky?” she asked cheerfully.
    “Yes, but—”
    “If you are picky, look picky, and sound picky, then you must be creating your own reality most effectively.” Her mouth stretched into a wide Howdy Doody grin.
    “Sarah!” Peter yelped, his voice rising from misunderstood to outraged in one word.
    Sarah jumped forward and hugged him violently. Then she kissed Tony and me on our respective cheeks, nodded at Linda, shouted “The universe doth provide,” and was on her way down the porch stairs before you could say “transpolitical ecological awareness.”
    Sarah’s robot whirred and clacked dutifully down the stairs behind her on its hydraulic lifters, then joined her in her new BMW.
    We watched the back of the car as it shot out of the driveway, popping gravel. The license plate read iloveme and a bumper sticker affirmed “Too Hip, Gotta Go.”
    Peter snarled, “I could strangle that woman,” once more for the road, and our Sunday discussion group broke up for the day.
    I couldn’t sleep that night. I wish I could claim it was because of my precognition of death. But it wasn’t. I was worrying about a lot of things that Sunday night, but mostly I was worrying about Wayne.
    I popped out of bed, dislodging C.C. from her comfortable position on my chest. She scolded me as I began to pace the length of the bedroom. My lover Wayne, I said to myself sadly as I reached one wall. I turned. Some lover. I stomped angrily toward the other wall. We hadn’t made love in three months!
    I stopped pacing to pick up C.C. She was a small black cat with white spots, one shaped like a goatee on her chin and another like a beret balanced rakishly over her right ear. I buried my face in her fur and hugged her. She squirmed impatiently out of my arms. Damn. My cat didn’t even love me anymore.
    I sighed and wandered into the living room, struggling with my wide-awake mind. Wayne and I had been blissful lovers for almost a year when my divorce from my husband Craig had been declared final.
    And then the fertilizer had hit the proverbial fan. Wayne wanted to marry me. A simple enough desire. Except that I didn’t want to be married.
    I sat in one of the canvas chairs that hung from the beams of the ceiling, remembering Wayne sitting in the chair when we had met two years ago. He had been so shy, so… so unassertive.
    I let out a deep, martyr’s sigh. Our relationship had been everything I wanted. At least until the prospect of marriage had reared its ugly head. I pushed off with my feet and let my chair swing slowly back and forth.
    Wayne was a man of such contradictions. A gentle man with a black belt in karate. A man with a scarred and battered face on top of a gorgeous body. A man with a law degree who had spent most of his adult years as a bodyguard and companion to a wealthy manic-depressive. An articulate writer whose speech was brusque, often to the point of unintelligibility. And a kind and loving man who was as stubborn as I was.
    For many months Wayne had gone along with my hesitation about marriage. But finally he got fed up. Then, three months ago, he became militant. Either we were married or we were “just friends,” he insisted. He wouldn’t make love to me until I agreed to marry him. Coy maidenhood from a six-foot-two, muscular bodyguard?
    I got up from the swinging chair and walked over to the Texan, one of the pinball machines in the living room. If we got married, would we share expenses? That’s how I would want it. I had been down the road of financial dependency before and it had turned into a dead end. But how do you share expenses with a man who owns a mansion, a Jaguar and a restaurant empire?
    I switched on the pinball