Read Online Death Takes a Honeymoon by DEBORAH DONNELLY - Free Book Online Page A

glow.
    At one point I was kidding around with a bunch of men, feeling like one of the guys, and soon after I was in the rest room with a cluster of women, all of them comforting me on the loss of my dear cousin. Pretty soon I was crying myself.
    Another blur, time passing, and then we were back out in the crowd, B.J. laughing again and waving her beer bottle in the air. “Hey, there’s Danny. Yo, Dan the Man! Here’s your old pal Carnegie.”
    “Who? Oh, hello.”
    Danny Kane hadn’t changed much, except for accelerating baldness. His dark eyes and narrow nose and mouth were small and bunched closely together, so that the space between them and his retreating hairline had a vacant, unoccupied look. Tonight the high curve of his forehead shone with sweat, and his eyes were stupefied.
    Well, this was only Monday. Not forty-eight hours ago Danny had seen his comrade lying dead, in the kind of accident that could just as easily have happened to him. Big Ernie never rests, and we all drown our demons as best we can.
    “I’m sorry about your cousin,” he said mournfully.
    “We weren’t... I mean, thanks. It must have been hard for you guys.”
    He tried to reply and faltered, but B.J. interrupted him anyway. Her mood was flying higher and higher. “Carnegie’s going to stay for Tracy’s wedding. It’s going to be absolutely fabulous!”
    “Absolutely,” Danny echoed, nodding. His head dropped lower with each nod, and we stood there, an awkward little island of silence in the beating, deafening surf of hilarity. The night’s false euphoria was ebbing away. I could picture the guest bed in the loft of B.J.’s cabin, and I wanted to climb into the picture and sleep for a long, long time.
    “B.J., why don’t we get out of—h-hey, watch it!” Someone knocked me hard behind the knees, and I jostled into Danny. B.J.’s crowing laughter rose again, accompanied by... barking?
    I turned around and saw that the intruder was none other than the troublemaker, Gorka. He stood there giving me a big drooling grin, and trying to give me something else, too. A red baseball cap, damp and mangled, hung from his crocodile jaws.
    Gorka poked his treasure against my knees again, then laid it at my feet and barked merrily when I retrieved it. If the drinkers around us noticed all this, they didn’t seem to care.
    “Friend of yours?” said B.J., and hiccuped. Danny had wandered away.
    “No, but he belongs to—Gorka, be quiet. No bark!
Sit.
”
    My new admirer sat, drumming his scarred tail against the floor, thoroughly pleased with himself. I rose on tiptoe to search for his owner and sure enough, Domaso Duarte was plowing toward us from the Pio’s doorway. But the owner of the baseball cap got to me first.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” demanded the Tyke. Her honey-brown hair was loose around her face, strands sticking to her broad, damp cheekbones.
    I realized that I was sweating myself. Between the hot night outside the building and the body heat inside, the air-conditioning didn’t stand a chance.
    “Don’t yell at
me,
” I bawled. “Yell at the damn dog. Here, take your hat.”
    “I don’t want it now; it’s all slimy. You should keep that mutt outside.” She turned to B.J. “And you should quit asking stupid questions about the accident. Everyone feels bad enough already. You got that?”
    The Tyke’s voice gained an ugly note of menace with this last phrase. Gorka swung his muzzle toward her and lifted his lip, showing a fang or three. Not a snarl, really, just a pointed expression of disapproval. The Tyke backed up a pace, and I gave him a silent
Good dog.
    Gorka must have read my mind. He unfolded his back legs and stood, his massive head higher than the Tyke’s waist. She swore, backing up farther, then turned and stamped away, her flip-flops flopping.
Good boy.
    “Hey, Carrie, this guy giving you trouble?” The voice came clearly through a sudden lull in the din, as a broad, black-furred hand