Read Online For Better or Hearse by Laura Durham - Free Book Online

champagne flute. “Wewere all questioned, of course. But they questioned me a second time. I don’t have a convincing alibi.”
    â€œWeren’t you here in the hotel?” Kate asked. She sat up as a pair of waiters brought four oversized salads in wide-lipped bowls to the table. One of them almost dropped a bowl in Kate’s lap when he got a glimpse of her blouse.
    â€œThat’s right,” I remembered. “I didn’t see you much when we set up for the wedding.”
    Georgia pinched her eyes together, and her forehead creased into deep furrows. She picked up a white ramekin of dressing and drizzled a thin stream onto her salad. “I was in my office with the door closed. I needed to catch up with paperwork.”
    The table fell silent as we began eating. Georgia hated paperwork and loved being in the middle of an event. I didn’t buy it.
    â€œYou never do paperwork.” Kate shifted to the side and winked at Georgia as a waiter attentively refilled her nearly full water glass. “Are you sure you didn’t kill him accidentally?”
    I rolled my eyes. “How do you accidentally impale someone on an ice sculpture, Kate?”
    â€œI’m telling you, I was in my office doing paperwork,” Georgia insisted, a flush creeping up her neck. “I didn’t have a choice.”
    Darcy cleared her throat. “Our general manager gave Georgia a deadline for all of her financial reports. She had to turn them in by the end of the weekend or she’d get a bad review. I would have helped her but I don’t know how to do all the reports yet.”
    â€œMr. Elliott has it in for me.” Georgia’s eyes flashed with anger. “He’s wanted to fire me ever since I took this job. He’ll use any excuse to write me up.”
    â€œWrite you up?” Kate stopped eating and held her fork in midair.
    â€œThey can’t fire you without cause,” Darcy explained. “They have to keep track of your mistakes, then when they get enough they can fire you.”
    â€œYikes.” Kate cringed.
    I looked at Georgia over the top of my iced tea. “Why does Mr. Elliott want to fire you?”
    â€œI refused to go out with him when I first started here.”
    â€œI thought dating someone in the hotel is forbidden,” Kate said. Leave it to Kate to know the ins and outs of dating protocol in any D.C. locale.
    â€œWho cares about that?” Georgia burst out. “Have you seen him? He has more hair in his ears than on his head. At least before he got the plugs.”
    I cringed. Not a pretty picture. “So you were a little behind in your work and he put the screws to you?”
    Kate leaned over toward me. “She said she wasn’t dating him.”
    I decided not to even attempt to explain and turned back to Georgia. “How far behind were you?”
    â€œI hadn’t even started. I told Darcy to make sure no one bothered me, and she promised to check on the wedding. I explained all this to the police, but they didn’t seem too convinced. Darcy was the only person who can vouch for me, and even she didn’t see me for a couple of hours.”
    â€œI wish I could give you an alibi.” Darcy nibbled the edge of her lip. “If I’d come back up to check on you, the police wouldn’t have any reason to consider you a suspect.”
    â€œDon’t be silly.” Georgia smiled weakly. “If only I’d dated our general manager, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”
    â€œJust because you don’t have an alibi doesn’t mean you’re an automatic murder suspect.” I waved a forkful of greens. “The police have to have motive and evidence. If you weren’t anywhere near the murder, there’s no way they could link you to the crime.”
    â€œAnd if you were in your office then you were nowhere near the murder scene,” Kate said. “Annabelle, on the other hand,