Read Online Killer Summer by Ridley Pearson - Free Book Online Page A

skintight designer jeans, high heels, and red silk, western-style shirt unsnapped to the third button.
    They arrived to the party like Sun Valley royalty. Thankfully, they were swallowed up immediately by the social crush.
    “Hey, Sheriff, isn’t that—?”
    “Yeah,” Walt said, cutting Brandon off, forcing himself to look away.
    “She sure cleans up good.”
    “I’ll be at Mobile Command. Stay on comm.”
    He headed for the far entrance of the tent.
    The tent itself was now crowded with guests, a confusing mix of pretensions and loud talk that went with wine connoisseurs. Overhearing such descriptions as “a buttery nose” and “a chalky vanilla finish,” he wanted to laugh. To him, wine came in a box, and eventually went down the toilet.
    The more tasting that went on, the louder the voices became, a shouting match with built-in laugh track.
    Nearly out of the tent now, Walt overheard a young woman arguing with a volunteer hostess that she should be allowed in the party. The volunteer politely explained it was by invitation only.
    “I won’t be but five minutes,” the young woman complained bitterly. “I promise, I won’t drink any wine. I could care less! I just need a minute with one of the presenters.”
    “Who?”
    “Arthur Remy. It’s extremely important. ”
    Mention of Remy’s name caught Walt’s attention. The volunteer hostess said something Walt couldn’t hear. The young woman seeking entrance, clearly disgusted, charged past her into the tent.
     
     
     
    W hen Fiona spotted Walt, she gripped Roger’s arm more tightly and steered him toward the whites.
    “Do you ever play that game where you make up what other people do, who they are, what they’re thinking?” she blurted out before realizing how childish it sounded. “Forget I just said that,” she added, embarrassed.
    “Heavens no! It’s a wonderful game. The only problem is, I know everyone here.”
    “Everyone?”
    “Damn near.”
    They each accepted a small glass of white wine.
    “What about him,” she asked, “the anxious-looking guy?”
    “You guess first,” he said. “I’ll tell you how close you are.”
    “You know him?”
    “ Of him, absolutely.”
    “Someone intense. A surgeon maybe. Or a broker who lost everything in the crash last year. He’s a wannabe, worried sick, by the look of him, at not being the center of a conversation.”
    “That’s Teddy Sumner,” Hillabrand revealed. “His wife was the film producer Annette Dunning. You know, The Last Look , A Farewell to Harm —”
    “I loved that movie!” she gasped.
    “She died of breast cancer . . . two years ago, now. Teddy took over the reins, soon confirming the old adage that there can’t be two geniuses in the same bed.”
    “There’s no such adage.”
    “There ought to be. He’s squandered most of the fortune she’d made them—not helped any by the crash, of course—living well beyond his means. Has a teenage daughter, I think, which can’t be easy. A nice enough guy who should have been content to live off her earnings rather than trying to prove himself, which rarely works. You want to feel sorry for him, but he was his own undoing.”
    “Your turn,” she said, looking around the tent. She pointed out the Engletons, whose guest cottage she was renting. He was tall, with a wisp of white interrupting his dark hair. She was exotic-looking, wearing a shawl from India or Pakistan.
    “I know Michael and Leslie very well. You know that.”
    “But if you didn’t . . . ?”
    “But I do . . . That’s not how the game is played, is it?”
    “Okay, fine. How about the man with the pinup, the blow-up doll . . . Do you know them?”
    “Aren’t we generous?”
    “I don’t feel sorry for someone who looks like a teakettle. You don’t wear a copper top like that unless you’re starved for attention.”
    “I’d peg him as ex-military. German, maybe something more exotic like Czech or one of the - zaki s . Extremely confident. Runs his