Read Online Alpine for You by Maddy Hunter - Free Book Online Page B

believe he’s gone. He was one of our best customers. We issued him a Preferred Customer card only last year. The platinum version.”
    She looked genuinely sad as she continued. “I hope they don’t discover that drugs played any part in his death. It’s every druggist’s nightmare, you know. Thinking that the prescriptions they fill might be used to cause someone’s death. Poor Andy. He was always so nice to me when he’d come in to pick up a prescription. He even gave me a free ticket to that Christmas play the two of you were in. I gave him a little bouquet of flowers backstage after the play was over. He was so appreciative. He said no one had ever given him flowers before.”
    The crowd started to break up and move down another alleyway in groups of two and three abreast. Jane and I followed at the back.
    “That was thoughtful of you to give him flowers,” I said. The only thing I’d received during the production was a ticket for parking too long in a loading zone.
    “Just my way of saying thank you. He surprised me though. Uff da. He was so stiff and unemotional onstage. Not a very good actor, was he?”
    Maybe not onstage, but in real life, Andy was a great actor. How else could he trick all these women into thinking he was a nice guy? “He had a knack for playing certain parts.”
    “I overheard someone say you’re the one who discovered his body.”
    “Actually, Shirley Angowski discovered his body. I discovered Shirley.”
    “Shirley Angowski?”
    “The blonde lady who ate dinner with us last night. Remember? The geography expert from Rhode Island.”
    Jane nodded recognition. “Andy was going to send me her E-mail address so I could include her name on our mailing list. I guess she’ll have to give it to me herself now. We’ll be running a two-for-one special on hair care products when I get back. She looks like she uses a lot of hair care products.”
    She had my interest now. “Two-for-one? Even on specialty items like strawberry volumizer and kiwi mousse?” The volumizer smelled so real, I counted it as a fruit exchange on my list of daily nutritional requirements.
    “Andy never should have come on this trip,” Jane said, as we crossed a promenade leading to the waterfront. “He put himself under too much stress wanting to be the perfect escort. All that planning, and reading, and packing. The pressure must have killed him.”
    He’d probably read a couple of guidebooks and thrown his underwear into a suitcase. She was right. Way too much stress for a guy to handle.
    “Do you suppose his wife will fly over here to accompany the body on the trip home?”
    I shook my head. “Louise is phobic about flying. Maybe one of his five ex-wives will get the urge to volunteer.”
    “Poor Louise is going to be grief-stricken when she hears the news,” Jane brooded. “I should find a sympathy card and send it to her. You wouldn’t happen to know where the nearest Hallmark card shop is, would you?”
    “Nope, but I can tell you where you can find a nice watch.”
    We stopped along the promenade at the base of a really long covered bridge that spanned the water at a lazy forty-five-degree angle. It was constructed of weathered brown wood, and in flower boxes across its expanse was a profusion of red geraniums that brightened the pewter grayness of sky and water. From the front of the crowd I heard Sonya’s voice. “This is called Chapel Bridge. It was constructed in the year 1300. As we cross over it, please note…”
    The wind caught her words and scattered them in the opposite direction from where I was standing. It was chillier standing by the water, the wind more gusty. Cold glazed my cheeks. Cold numbed my mouth and fingertips. I turned my back to the wind.
    “Whoa!” My arm nearly wrenched out of its socket as an updraft swooshed under my umbrella and snapped it inside out. The wind ripped my hood off my head. Rain spat in my face. In my eyes. Down my neck. A sudden strong gust tore