Read Online Murder is a Girl's Best Friend by Amanda Matetsky - Free Book Online Page A

deep drag, I shoved the empty soup bowl to one side. Then I pulled the Thom McAn shoebox into the center of the table, under the beam of yellowish light from the kitchen table lamp, and nervously lifted the lid. The oatmeal box was still there, thank God (or Christ, or Zeus, or Buddha, or Vishnu, or Allah, or Whoever might have been in charge at that particular moment) —and so were the diamonds. I took them out of their tissue paper package and spread them out on the table. There were two bracelets, a pair of earrings, a pin, and a necklace—just as Terry had said.
    They were pretty, I guess, in a blinking, twinkly sort of way, but I had never understood why everybody always made such a big fuss about diamonds—or why these useless bits of glassy stone were worth so darn much money. You couldn’t eat them, or drink them, or talk to them, or make love with them. They couldn’t make you laugh, or keep your feet warm, or teach you a foreign language. All they could do was just sit there and sparkle. And if you turned out the light, they couldn’t even do that!
    You could wear them, of course, but—unlike every other living woman in the entire Western Hemisphere—I had never had the slightest desire to adorn myself with expensive gems. I had a feeling they would be uncomfortable (in many more ways than one), and I knew for a fact they wouldn’t go with the rest of my wardrobe. I can honestly say that if I had been the one who owned this jewelry—this mass of crystalline carbon sitting here on the table in front of me—I probably never would have worn it at all. I probably would have balled it up in a wad of tissue paper and stashed it away in an oatmeal box.
    Madly scooping the diamonds up in both hands, I tucked them back into their tissue nest and squashed the paper package back inside the Quaker carton. Great hiding place, Judy! I said to myself, and to my new spiritual protégé. You were probably murdered because of these diamonds, but at least you kept your killer from finding them and profiting from your death. And by hiding the diamonds so well, you may have provided a traceable clue to your killer’s identity. Clever girl.
    Stubbing my cigarette in the ashtray, I put the top back on the cereal box and whisked the closed container across the room to the cabinet above my kitchen sink. Sliding my small stock of Campbell’s soups to one side, I made room for the container in the back of the cabinet, next to an unopened jar of peanut butter. As I was putting the carton on the shelf, my stomach growled again, and for a moment I actually considered making myself a bowl of oatmeal. (Can you believe that? I’m such a dope sometimes.) Luckily, I came to my sleuth-based senses before I ate the evidence.
    Stomach still gurgling, I scooted back to the kitchen table to look through the other stuff in the shoebox. Everything Terry had said would be there was there: Terry’s home phone number and address, Judy’s address, Mrs. Londergan’s apartment number and phone number, the names and address of Judy’s former roommates.
    The two photographs were there as well, and I snatched them both up for a closer look. The first was a grinning close-up—a wallet-sized headshot of a slightly pudgy blonde, with short bangs and a long ponytail, and a pair of dimples deep as canyons. She was wearing a dark sweater over a white-collared dickey.
    I recognized the uniform—it was a high school yearbook photo. Judy Catcher’s, I presumed. She looked so young, and so sweet, and so vulnerable that I wanted to pat her dimpled cheeks and tell her everything was going to be all right—even though it clearly wasn’t.
    The other picture was a candid snapshot, a slightly blurry black-and-white image of two people cavorting on the sidewalk in front of a Walgreen’s drugstore. One of the people was Judy. She was older and thinner now, wearing a plaid sheath skirt, a black sweater, black nylons, black flats, and her short blonde hair was