Read Online One Hot Murder by Lorraine Bartlett - Free Book Online

counted out the day’s receipts for the third time. She liked to do it at least three times in case she made an error, but each time she’d totaled the day’s cash, checks, and credit card receipts, they’d matched. She added Saturday’s receipts to the blue bank bag and totaled up the numbers for the morning’s bank deposit.
    No doubt about it, she could cover the checks to the vendors and there’d still be a couple grand left over to pay some of the bills. One more week to the month and then she’d see how far ahead she was when it came to paying on the last of the loans still outstanding. That had to come first before she even thought about taking out another loan for the HVAC. And anyway, there were only another eight or ten weeks of hot weather until she’d have to start thinking about heating bills. Why waste the money on air-conditioning now?
    Because she was
hot
! And she was sick and tired of being
hot
!
    After locking the receipts in the back of the file cabinet,Katie shut down the computer for the night. But before she left to go to Angelo’s Pizzeria to visit Andy, she decided to wash her hands. There was nothing as filthy as cash money, and she’d handled quite a bit of it. She rose from her chair and headed for the washroom behind her office.
    Soon after she’d become a vendor at Artisans Alley, Edie Silver had decorated the small washroom. She’d put up pretty wallpaper, hung a few floral pictures in gold frames, and installed a rectangular basket for the folded paper towels. After a day’s use by customers and vendors, the little basket was now empty—and the wastebasket was full. Katie shook her wet hands until most of the droplets had fallen, and opened the vanity’s cabinet door to reach for a new package, but instead of the towels she found a small, shabby, imitation alligator-skin suitcase.
    She withdrew it and set it on the vanity. Flipping the old-fashioned latches, she opened the case and found it filled with personal items. Soap, clean washcloths, a purple toothbrush, a whitening toothpaste, and a pink disposable razor.
    “Now who would have left this under the sink?” she asked herself. Had one of the vendors had somewhere to go after closing one night, dolled up, and then left the case to collect some other time? She’d put a note in with the checks on Tuesday and hope the owner would collect it. In the meantime, she closed the case and put it back under the sink. She filled the basket with towels and emptied the wastebasket. She’d give the room a more thorough once-over in the morning before opening.
    She turned out the last of the lights and locked up, pocketing her keys. It was still light—and hot—out. The tarmac held the heat of the day even when it had been in shadows for hours. The lights were on at Angelo’s and she could see several customers lined up to pay for their pizzas. After leaving the deadly after-hours quiet of Artisans Alley, she looked forward to the boisterous noise Andy and his workers made.
    Angelo’s Pizzeria wasn’t quite as hot as Katie’s office at Artisans Alley, but it came close, despite the air-conditioning unit chugging along outside. Andy kept his pizza ovens at a temperature of seven hundred degrees. They were well insulated, but sometimes the place still felt like a sweatshop.
    “Good evening,” she called, and received a chorus of greetings from Andy, his number one helper, Keith, and two of the boys waiting for pizzas to deliver.
    “What’ll you have tonight?” Andy asked.
    “Nothing for me. I’m too hot to eat.”
    “We’re just too hot,” said Tony, one the delivery boys. “I can’t wait to get back in the car and crank up the AC.”
    “Me, too,” agreed Blake, the other driver.
    Andy finished putting a pizza into an insulated bag and handed a stack to Tony. “Here’s yours.” He grabbed the other stack and handed it to Blake. “And here’s yours. Go forth and deliver.”
    The boys yelled a good-bye to Katie, and