Read Online Death by Marriage by Blair Bancroft - Free Book Online Page A

fifty years of accumulated Wallace discards in the attic across the hall. We kept the historical items, such as old photos and weddings dresses, sold the unwanted antiques to Peter Koonce, and made room for rolling racks of costumes under construction, costumes awaiting repair, or costumes that should be trashed but I just didn’t have the heart to do it.
    To top it all off, Mom gifted me with a dormer window overlooking the backyard. It was wide enough to accommodate my sewing machine table, giving me a terrific view twenty-four/seven. Well, maybe not tonight. The stars were always at their most brilliant in the winter, but I’d have to turn out the lights to see them. And I had too much work to do to take time out for star-gazing. But first . . .
    I called the pool hall on my cellphone. No Scott, Stan told me. Hadn’t seen him for a coupla days. I tried Bud’s Snook Shack, out on the Arcadia River at the eastern edge of town. Scott Wallace? Bud had heard about last night, but hadn’t seen Scott for three or four days.
    That was it. Any more calls and Scott would go postal about my checking up on him. I was being silly, turning feminine freakoid over nothing. This was far from the first night Scott had failed to appear for supper. It was just that . . . well . . . it’s not like he pulled mutilated bodies out of the Intracoastal canal every night of the week.
    I settled down to a job for my Designer Hat Number Three. I called this branch of the business “Semi-Randi.” For DreamWear I mostly went for the authentic look. Outfits that looked as if they really might have been worn by Medieval Knights, Fair Maidens, Robin Hood and his Merrie Men, or by seventeenth century pirates and their female companions. I designed for SCA members, for heaven’s sake, and you couldn’t get a more demanding clientele than the members of the Society for Creative Anachronism. I mean, those guys are authenticity Nazis.
    But my Semi-Randi designs were for a catalog business that specialized in outfits for those who wanted sexy, slinky, provocative, slit-down-to- there or slit up to where the sun don’t shine—while keeping the essentials covered. Which was what made these designs Semi-Randi instead of full-out Erotic Designs by Randi Wolff. At the moment I was working on a female pirate outfit that was going to end up looking a bit like the French Maid Mrs. Santa. Lots of red, but with black trim instead of white, and black front lacing that allowed the bouffant red “silk” mini-dress to pouf out in all the right places.
    I sketched in a few more layers of see-thru red fabric on the short skirt, added a black scarf set at a rakish angle on the drawing’s head. I pursed my lips, then added a row of gold coins to each end of the scarf. Oh, yeah. The buyer for the catalog company was going to love it.
    I glanced at the wall clock above the design table. Eleven-forty. A natural night-owl, why was I so tired? And it all rushed back. Martin Kellerman. Scott. Maybe three hours sleep last night. Time to call it a night.
    My bedroom is a corner room on the second floor, with views of the backyard and the driveway. Scott’s Vette still wasn’t there. We had a two-car garage, but only Mom got to put her car inside. The other garage space was taken up by the ride-on mower and full panoply of garden equipment. Whenever Mom got fed up with a particularly difficult customer, she whacked the stuffing out of the weeds and other invasive species in the backyard. Since Golden Beach real estate customers were not known for their unfailing amiability, the backyard looked like we were bucking for space in Better Homes & Gardens . So far Mom hadn’t hacked up my old swing, but I always feared that day was coming.
    I make good money designing nightwear for my Randi and Semi-Randi lines, but for myself, I tend to grab my nightgowns off the rack at Target. It was Florida in January, however, and I was sleeping alone. Again. I slipped a full-length,