Read Online The Design Is Murder (Murders By Design) by Jean Harrington - Free Book Online

said. “He’s capable of it. What kind of husband locks his wife out of the house in the middle of the night? When she’s stark naked?”
    “No, you don’t mean to tell me...no, he didn’t.” I forgot all about eating. This stuff was better than food.
    “Yes, I didn’t have a thing on. Not even jewelry.”
    Not wanting to miss a word, I bent in closer. “What happened?”
    “Stew and I were arguing. As usual. He didn’t like something I said, so he grabbed my arm and threw me out onto the front lawn, and me without a stitch on. And the mosquitoes! Omigod.”
    With a flourish, the waiter placed our salads in front of us. “Enjoy, ladies.”
    Kay dug in immediately, but more curious than hungry, I asked, “What on earth did you do?”
    “I found a beach towel thrown over a patio chair and wrapped myself in it. Then I sat on the back terrace all night shivering and fighting the bugs. While Stew was sleeping it off the next morning, Teresa let me in.”
    “Yes, she mentioned that she’d worked for you.”
    Kay stopped chewing long enough to laugh. “Not really for me. Always for Stew...at times I wondered what went on between them. Especially after she refused to testify against him during the divorce.”
    “I see,” I replied, really beginning to.
    “Do you understand why I needed to talk to you? I don’t trust Stew’s motives in buying the house at 595, and I don’t trust Teresa, either. In fact, I’m surprised he didn’t marry her instead of that Connie Rae person.” Kay looked up from her salad. “You met Connie Rae, didn’t you?”
    I shook my head. “No, she was already dead when I saw her.”
    “Too bad,” Kay said, too casually to be believed. “I remember her from the club. She was a bartender there, though barely of drinking age herself. That must have been the lure—youth. Teresa’s forty if she’s a day.” Kay shrugged. “Oh well, now that I have your promise not to gossip, I don’t have anything to worry about, do I?”
    I picked up my fork and took a bite of chicken, hoping it wouldn’t choke me. Whether Kay knew it or not, her warning not to carry tales from her house to Stew’s was frigging insulting. To spread gossip about clients was not only totally unprofessional, but on a practical level, a sure way to kill a business.
    Instead of wondering if I would betray her daily comings and goings, she might be better off wondering about how James Stahlman’s first two wives had died. If I were about to become wife number three, I’d sure wonder. And worry.

Chapter Thirteen
    Outside the Magnolia Café, Kay and I hugged goodbye, best-friend style. Why not? We weren’t friends, but we were both women who had experienced life and its, well...surprises.
    I strolled leisurely back to the shop, breathing in salty Gulf air that showed a definite tendency to succumb to summer humidity. But no complaints. The breeze was still balmy, the sky blue, and the flowers perfuming Fifth Avenue spilled exuberantly from their planters.
    With high season over, traffic had thinned, and miracle of miracles, empty parking slots lined both sides of the street. Our town slowed down for the summer, and that was good as long as it didn’t slow to a crawl. After all, people like me had businesses to run.
    I turned off the avenue onto Fern Alley, and as I passed the window of Off Shoots, the ladies boutique next to my shop, I waved at Irma, one of the leggy young twins who ran it. Farther along the alley, a white panel truck sat parked outside Deva Dunne Interiors. Big, bold red letters on the truck’s side announced Tony’s Tiles & More. This same truck had been parked in the Hawkins’s driveway the day Connie Rae died. And if I wasn’t mistaken, that was Tony sitting behind the wheel with the motor running. Strange. Why would he be lingering in the alley?
    I was about to step into the shop when the truck’s passenger side door opened and a man jumped out. He had a manila envelope in his hand and