Read Online Love You to Death by Melissa Senate - Free Book Online

tonight, sorry. I’ve met someone else. You know I can’t handle confrontation.

    Riley Witherspoon. Dated for two months. Really liked him. Dumped me in February after issue declaring him Best CPA in Portland hit the stands.

    And then there was Ted Puck in July. You know what happened there.

    And Henry this month. (Ditto.)

     

    What happened to Ted was all over the evening news. I couldn’t not watch it. There weren’t many more details, except that there were no witnesses. He’d been shot to death around eight o’clock last night, but he hadn’t been found until early this morning by the workers.

    No witnesses. He’d been completely trapped, with no one around to help. What had Ted been doing down at the end of the pier on a cold January night anyway? There was nothing down that far but boats, and Ted didn’t own a boat. Perhaps he’d been meeting someone who did own a boat? Had been out for a jog? Ted was a runner. Was he meeting someone? Why down there? Why not in a restaurant? Or a bar? If he’d been having an affair, he couldn’t very well rendezvous on the street. In the cold.

    He hadn’t been robbed, so there was no way it was a random shooting. He’d gone down there for a reason, and had been shot to death. Maybe he’d gotten involved in something shady, like gambling. Or drugs. But Ted was a banker on the up-and-up, as far as I knew. Or maybe he was a cheater in love and in business? He was very likely booby-trapped, set up.

    I doubted the good detective would be spending so much time on me if Ted’s BlackBerry had contained any notations about meeting someone down at the pier last night. Nothing on his calendar and nothing on his voice mail, home machine or e-mail—I was sure. Nor anything suspicious about Ted’s coworkers or business associates or his habits, whatever they were. Ben and his partner seemed very thorough. Unless, as I suspected, Ben was tracking me and Fargo was investigating all other areas of Ted’s life.

    They were focusing on me because I, as the spurned girlfriend, made the most sense. So maybe they should be focusing on Ted’s other spurned girlfriends. I had no idea who they were, but I had no doubt they existed in the hundreds. Both unfortunately and fortunately, Ted didn’t kiss and tell.

    “Women always ask, but they don’t really want to know,” he’d said during our early dates when I asked him, ever so coyly, about exes.

    I needed to know. Perhaps that was information I could get from Ben. Yeah, right. Mr. I Can’t Discuss The Case. There had to be ways to track down former girlfriends.

    But first I needed to see where Ted was found. Maybe it would jog my memory of something he’d said, a reference he’d made. Or maybe it would just make me very, very sad.

    I called Jolie to ask if she’d meet me at the pier.

    “You have no idea how you’re going to react,” she said. “Don’t go alone. I’m working late, but I can go with you tomorrow if you really want to see it with your own eyes.”

    Rebecca basically said the same thing.

    But I needed to go now. As I tried Olivia and Opal, I had no doubt both would make up crazy excuses. No one answered at Olivia’s house, which meant she was screening, since she had caller ID and was definitely home at six o’clock at night. Opal answered her cell phone, but was at a rehearsal dinner for her rehearsal dinner. (Very likely a first.)

    Shelley to the rescue; she immediately said she’d cancel her plans with Baxter. “We’re just going to hang out at my apartment and watch TV— again, ” she complained. “He never wants to go out! Anyway, I’ll meet you down there, Abby. But I don’t know if it’s a good idea. What if there’s blood?”

    But there couldn’t be blood because of all the rain. It would just be the same old beautiful pier with the same old beautiful boats docked for the winter. Except it couldn’t possibly be beautiful anymore.

    Turned out I was wrong; the pier was still