Read Online Spruced Up by Holly Jacobs - Free Book Online

I’d accidently cleaned Mr. Banning’s murder scene, I was the only viable suspect. 
      Yeah, that’s right.  I cleaned it.  I washed and polished the murder weapon.  I even steamed the footprints off the carpet.
      My Uncle Bill went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.  Eventually the authorities realized he was innocent.  They let him out of prison, but he came out with a tattoo.  Mac’s do not get tattoos.  Or go to prison for that matter.
      I was determined not to go to jail and leave my boys, or miss Tiny’s wedding…or get a tattoo.  I just didn’t think a tattoo would age well.  I was thirty-eight, and though I avoided the sun as if I were a vampire rather than simply a fair-skinned woman, I knew that wrinkles would be forthcoming.  And who wants to see a wrinkled tattoo unicorn, even if it was a declaration of my innocence? 
      No one, that’s who.
      Thankfully, I found the murderer.  Of course, he tried to kill me to keep me quiet, but I grew up with brothers and three sons.  I kicked him and made it count.  I rescued myself before Cal came in to rescue me.
      Detective Cal Parker, my new boyfriend.  It felt so odd to use the word boyfriend when I was the mother of three teens and almost forty (sigh) but I hadn’t come up with any better designation for him. 
      I must have sighed as I thought about my cute, hunky new boyfriend because Tiny laughed.  “You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?”
      “Him, who?” I asked, trying to sound as if I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
      “Him—Detective Sexy.”
      “I was thinking about your wedding.”
      Tiny laughed some more and humphed me in a way that I knew meant she wasn’t buying it.
      The phone rang.  I sucked in my stomach as I walked across the room in my pumpkin colored dress.  I picked up the phone. “Mac’Cleaners.  We do it all and we’re glad you called.  How may I help you today?”
      “Quincy, it’s me,” a woman’s voice said.
      I didn’t need any more than that to know it was Theresa Maxwell.  She was officially the worst employee Mac’Cleaners had ever had.  To be honest, that whole cleaning-Mr.-Banning’s-murder scene was her fault because she was supposed to be the one cleaning the dead-body house that day, but she’d called in sick.  When an employee calls in sick, Tiny and I—as the business owners—step in and fill in for them.  So Theresa is why I’d almost ended up in jail for a murder I didn’t commit.
      Theresa really was the worst employee ever, not just in an almost-sent-me-to-jail sort of way.
      I’d like to fire her.  I’d threatened to do just that, but I kept hoping she’d get better.  Seriously, she couldn’t get any worse.  Although this call didn’t bode well for the getting better and seemed to be pointing to worse.  There was panic in her voice.
      “What’s up, Theresa?” I asked suspiciously.
      “It’s not what’s up, it’s what’s down.  I was dusting a painting at the Gifford’s house and it fell.  There’s a tear in it now.”
      I’d seen the Gifford’s house when I cleaned for Theresa a month ago.  The last call of the day had been the dead body house, but the Gifford’s house was part of her morning calls, which became my morning call when Theresa called in sick.  I did not know much about art, but I knew enough to know their art was expensive.  The Giffords lived in Hollywood Hills, an expensive part of town.  I lived in Van George, where the cost of the houses sent my Pennsylvanian family into heart palpitations, but here in southern California was actually a mid-middle class sort of price.
      “Oh…” I searched for a curse word I could use without being too crass or offending anyone. With three teenaged boys in the house, I really tried to watch myself.
      “Boogers,” I opted for.  It was a pretty perfect curse word.  Gross enough to get some umph out of, but not really