Read Online Death by Diamonds by Annette Blair - Free Book Online Page B

myself. Get a grip. In the photograph, the blotches on Dominique’s face ranged from burgundy to purple, the skin around her eyes the worse, her nose, cheeks, and lips triple their normal size. That ghost hadn’t been kidding. She had lost her earthly beauty in a very big way. Sadness took over my weakness and the sight of her made me mad. I was gonna find the sonofabitch who did this to my friend.
    Kyle cleared his throat more than once and swallowed hard before he could get his jaw to work. “She looks like she was stung by bees.”
    “Can you give me a positive ID?” the woman asked. “Is this Dominique DeLong?”
    “Yes,” Kyle said with a catch in his voice. “That’s her.”
    “And you are?” the examiner queried, as she filled out a form.
    “Kyle DeLong, her son. May I ask what killed her?”
    “I’m sorry. It’s not up to me to say. I do the preliminary lab report. My boss does the official medical examiner’s report. The FBI and the police put that together with officers’ and detectives’ reports, witness statements, and evidence, and then maybe they tell you what happened.”
    I tore my gaze from my poor beautiful friend’s marred face. “But you do think it was murder?”
    “It doesn’t matter what I think, Ms. DeLong.”
    I didn’t correct her assumption that I was family. What did it matter?
    She turned to Kyle. “I can tell you that with your ID of the deceased, we’ve finished and we’ll be releasing Ms. DeLong to the funeral home within the hour.”
    “Good,” Kyle said. “I made arrangements this morning.” He took out his cell phone and called the funeral parlor. Closing it, he said, “The wake and interment service are tomorrow.”
    “Why so soon?” I asked.
    “I want it dignified. It’ll be more respectful and less like a circus, if we keep the spectators down to a minimum. The longer we take, the more fans show up.”
    “Right. Of course.”
    Nick continued to hold me as we went to meet Eve in the waiting room. “Who would want to harm Dominique?” I asked.
    Kyle made a mocking sound. “I’m afraid the list is as long as my arm.” Then he opened that arm, and Eve walked into it.
    Fifteen
    They came as if there might never be anything like it again: They were in mod clothes, Victorian suits, and granny gowns, old west outfits, pirate costumes . . .
    —CHARLES PERRY
    The doorbell to Dom’s Fifth Avenue mansion overlooking Central Park began to ring at seven, and frankly I feared that it would never stop.
    The characters who came to offer Kyle their condolences outlandishly attempted to outdress each other, and would once have been called the “radical chic.”
    At another time in fashion history, the faux-grieving rubberneckers vying for a glimpse at the twisted steel of Dom’s metaphorical but deadly “car accident” were known as Bohemians.
    As far as I was concerned, they were slimy, scaled predators leapfrogging each other to reach the lower rungs of the ladder to success.
    However typed, there were some legitimate artists and designers, interspersed with leeches and, for the most part, no-talent hangers-on. Some had genius, some had style, but most had their claws bared in one form or another in an industry that chewed up wannabes and spit them on dirty sidewalks to be tread upon by the uncaring hordes. Speaking of which, I’d managed to secure my brother-in-law’s family home, Cortland House in Mystick Falls as the venue for the Dominique DeLong Memorial Vintage Fashion Show for charity. Hordes would attend that, too, just to get a look at Dominique’s things, not to mention getting inside the gaudy Vancortland palace, which, to be fair, my sister’s husband hated, though that’s where he was brought up.
    Kyle pulled all the right strings so that Dom’s vintage collection fashion show would be advertised in the news tomorrow, along with all the gory details of her death. It seemed irreverent, but Dom herself had said she wanted it done while she