Read Online To Die For by Kathy Braidhill - Free Book Online Page B

customer June Roberts’ correct address.
    â€œI just moved there and I don’t remember the address,” she said with an irritated tone to her voice.
    â€œLook, just void it out and use my Visa,” she said, fishing the card out of her purse. “I told you, I’m really in a hurry. I’ve got to go.”
    Though Kellie felt there was something suspicious about this pushy customer, her manager put the sale through using the Visa card. The woman stormed off. But she wasn’t through at Mervyn’s. Before she left, she bought seven pairs of boys’ Levi’s for a total of $154.01. The clerk in the boys’ department let the sale go through.
    *   *   *
    Clerk Maria de Soto had barely opened her register at Sav-On in Lake Elsinore when a blonde woman started unloading a shopping cart full of items onto the cashier’s treadmill. As Maria rung up each item, the woman talked in a loud, nervous voice with her companion, a tallish man with a slicked-back black hair and a beer belly. Kitchen trash bags. Fabric softener. A toilet duck. Carpet spray. Menstrual pads. Two 1.75 bottles of Smirnoff vodka. Four bottles of Ban de Soleil suntan lotion. Two cartons of Marlboro Lights. Maria chatted with the customer, wondering how she’d gotten a tan so early in the year, as she rang up each item.
    Now that’s unusual, Maria thought to herself. No one ever buys two cartons of Marlboro Lights. Or six rolls of Brawny paper towels.
    The woman charged the $138.60 total on her Visa charge and the two customers walked out with the bags. It was 10:04 a.m.
    Dana was in a hurry. She had an appointment for a massage at the upscale Murrieta Hot Springs resort at 11 a.m., a twenty-minute drive. Dana turned into the driveway, landscaped with indigenous cactus and succulent plants. Oversized palm trees with frothy fronds caressed the blue skies. She stopped briefly at the guard shack and continued on to the main building. She parked, checked in, bought a pool pass and was shown to one of the changing rooms where she disrobed, sheathed herself in a wrap-around towel and waited for her masseuse. Fifty minutes later, she emerged, put on one of her swimsuits and paddled around the pool for a few minutes. She got dressed, browsed in the gift shop and put a $32.33 purchase, the $50 massage and a $10 tip on June’s credit card.
    By noon, Dana was lunching at the Ferrari Bistro, a racecar-themed Italian restaurant in Temecula in a new shopping center next to a string of car dealerships. She ordered so much food—calamari, tortellini with basil tomato sauce and iced tea—that she took the leftover portions with her.
    *   *   *
    At 1 p.m., Greco was at his desk, trying to stay calm. He was fending off grogginess with coffee and typing in notes from his notebook so he could write his report on June’s homicide. As his fingers tapped the keyboard, he became immersed in the crime scene again.
    His phone rang. It was a reporter for the local newspaper. Could he talk about the recent murder at Canyon Lake? How is the investigation progressing? Do they have a suspect?
    Greco gave the reporter a quote, simply saying that the department was investigating the homicide of an elderly female, without giving any details, like the cause of death, which Greco knew the reporter could eventually get from the coroner’s department. Greco hung up the phone feeling a renewed wave of panic. He was relieved that the reporter hadn’t asked whether the murders were related. But he knew he would be investigating them in a political hotbox.
    By tomorrow, his worst fears would be realized. The case would be in the newspapers. The residents would be up in arms. There would be pressure from the family. Everyone was expecting him to solve the case. Greco knew he had squat. He had absolutely nothing in the way of a suspect.
    *   *   *
    The Lake Elsinore Outlet Mall lures