Valentine's Day Is Killing Me Read Free Page A

yell out, “No, no, hurry! He’ll be okay!” and knew. In that moment, Julie Kay About had her first and last psychic flash: her date had a date with the paramedics.
    She shoved past the crowd—there were only two officers there so far for crowd control—and burst into the small restaurant. Even in this moment of stress, she couldn’t repress a shudder at the de rigueur white tablecloths with a single red rosebud in a tall glass vase in the center of each one. Most of the tables were empty; everyone, it seemed, was grouped around her date.
    She knelt beside Scott Wythe, the artist formerly known as blind date, now known as dead date…because he was dead, all right. You didn’t have to be a health-care pro to know that . It was the peculiar gray color, the way his eyes looked like poached eggs. Oh, and the way the shrimp fork was sticking out of the middle of his chest. The blood stain was shaped like a fish on a bicycle. Were murder-scene bloodstains some sort of Rorschach test? Would a married couple see a pair of gold wedding bands? And why was she thinking of that now?
    She tried not to be selfish, but couldn’t quash the thought: worst blind date ever! Poor Scott! Poor her! Why did this have to happen? To either of them?
    “Let us through,” one of the paramedics ordered, and she obediently moved aside. Should she ride to the hospital in the ambulance with her date? Her dead date? Because that was creepy, even if it was also the right thing to do. Drive along behind in her own car? And then do what? She couldn’t even identify him for the doctors. All she could do was give out his e-mail address and tell them he had terrible grammar in life.
    “Julie?”
    And he was so young! Ridiculously, amazingly young. She knew he would have to be, but if the dead guy had seen his twenty-fifth birthday, she’d…well, she didn’t know what she’d do. He still had traces of acne on his perfectly unlined face, poor fellow.
    “Julie Kay?”
    “That’s enough,” someone else said, and she looked up in time to see an utterly gorgeous man being clapped into cuffs. He looked at her and even from across the restaurant…
    (their eyes met across a crowded crime scene…)
    (focus, Julie Kay)
    …she could see how blue his eyes were—the color of an Easter sky. He was hunched over slightly as the cuffs were put on, and was looking up at her with a friendly expression on his face.
    “Yes?” she asked. Wow, they’d caught the killer already! Unless the cuffs were recreational. But no, the fellow in the bad suit had a badge clipped to his belt, and the gal beside him—much better dressed—was reading him his rights.
    “I guess I’m going to be a little late,” Blue Eyes explained.
    “…the right to have an attorney present now and during any future questioning…”
    “What?” she asked. She was a little nervous to be talking to the killer.
    “…one will be appointed to you free of charge if you wish…”
    “You know. For our date,” Blue Eyes added helpfully. She noticed he was dressed in excellent first-date fashion: khakis, a dark blue work shirt, loafers, dark socks. His shoulders looked impossibly broad in the shirt—swimmer’s shoulders. He was ridiculously tall, too…he towered over the detectives. His dark brown hair hung in his eyes, and he jerked his head back so he could look right at her some more.
    “What?” she said again, catching on but not wanting to, figuring it out but not wanting a bit of this mess, not one piece—no, thank you.
    “I bought you some flowers,” he said, jerking his head at a table to her left. “But I can’t get them for you right now.”
    “You didn’t,” she said faintly.
    “Buy flowers?”
    “Kill this guy.”
    “Oh, hell no!”
    Well, that was something. Still, Julie Kay had no idea how to feel about recent events. Was it better that her date was the dead guy, or the murder suspect?
    “I thought I had a psychic flash,” she said faintly. “My very first