Read Online Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) by Jack Fredrickson - Free Book Online

I’m settling into.”
    â€œGood deeds.”
    â€œGood deeds.”
    For a minute we both stared out the window like strangers new to town.
    â€œEver hear of the heiress who built that penthouse?” She pointed at another hotel, across Michigan Avenue.
    â€œNever.”
    â€œAirlifting the construction material by helicopter required F.A.A. approval.”
    â€œSounds like a reasonable use of an inheritance.”
    â€œSweetie heard about that. Ten years ago, she and Silas bought the roof on this place and did the same, helicopters and all.”
    â€œAirlifting two-by-fours doesn’t impress.”
    â€œIt does them, the social creatures. They take their cues from one another. That means outrageous things, sometimes. That can also mean big donations. One person gives; others follow. A lot of money is raised for charity that way.” She turned away from the window. “This can be my chance to make something positive out of my father’s wealth and connections.” She smiled at me with those weary, beautiful eyes. “How about a movie, a week from tomorrow night?”
    â€œAnd dinner.”
    â€œAt our trattoria,” she added, smiling. It was where I’d proposed, after so very few dates.
    Before she got snagged by charitable works, we’d started going back there, first tentatively, then frequently, after our divorce. The reminding was part of the rebuilding.
    â€œAll right,” I said, rolling my eyes with exaggerated reluctance, “but don’t expect anything afterward.”
    Her laugh was loud then, and genuine. It warmed the room, and my core, where I keep my sense of well-being.
    â€œI must go, schmooze with rich people,” she said. “The buffet is against the far wall.”
    â€œWhat about Sweetie Fairbairn?”
    â€œI told her you’d be by the food.”
    Then she was gone.
    Having subsisted on modestly portioned, microwavable meals for too long, I found the buffet with the urgency of a falcon diving for a mouse. The table was twenty-five feet long and filled with the usual caviar, squiggly little pastries stuffed with squiggly little cheeses, veggies, and meats that were not at all usual to me. At the far end, there was a goodly portion of a steer up on its side, attended to by a fellow with a white hat and a long knife. Most exciting of all, nothing on the table appeared to have been painted red to disguise marine origins.
    The item in the center of the table, though, gave me pause. It was long, orange, and shaped like a paving brick.
    The color was right, the shape perfect. A bizarre thought formed. I gave the table a nudge with my hip, but the thing did not quiver, at least not convincingly.
    â€œWondering?”
    A short blond woman in a black dress and a single strand of small pearls had come up.
    I turned. “Yes.”
    She picked up a bone china plate—no paper for those digs, high atop the Wilbur Wright—and a linen napkin. “Let me help you,” she said. Her voice had a slight lilt, a trace of something Scandinavian.
    She could have been forty, she could have been fifty. She could have been beautiful, or perhaps not. Certainly her makeup had been artfully, and maybe professionally, applied. As she started filling the plate, I noticed faint age spots on her hands, spots that no creams could completely hide.
    She filled the plate quickly. At the caviar, she paused, raising an eyebrow.
    I thought back to the lasagna I’d eaten, not that many nights earlier, and shook my head. “I’ve had too much seafood lately.”
    She nodded and continued adding to the plate. She finished at the end of the table, when the white-hatted man laid a large slice of rare roast beef over the mound on the plate, as though trying to hide an embarrassment of too much food with a blanket.
    â€œYou deliberately avoided that?” I asked, pointing at the brick on the table’s center.
    She smiled and