3 Revenge of the Crafty Corpse Read Online Free PDF Page A

for dinner at some point and catch up.”
    “Absolutely!” As soon as that leprechaun with the pot of gold arrives on my doorstep. The way I calculated my current finances, I might just be able to swing dinner at the Golden Arches around the time I reached Lyndella’s age.
    _____
    A perk to arriving nearly three hours late for work is not having to put up with bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic on Routes 24, 78, and 287, especially in an eight-year-old rattletrap of a car with temperamental air conditioning. However, by the time I arrived at work, even zipping along at this hour of the morning, I was thoroughly baked. To a crisp.
    Not yet noon and less than two weeks into summer, and the mercury had already climbed into triple digits for the third day in a row and the seventh time so far this year. If this wasn’t a sign of global warming, I didn’t know what was.
    American Woman used to be headquartered in Lower Manhattan, a short train commute for me. After Trimedia forced a hostile takeover of Reynolds-Alsopp Publishing, we moved to the middle of a corn field in Morris County, New Jersey. Other companies were supposed to follow. Then the bottom fell out of the real estate market. We remain the single building in the planned business park. Our only neighbor besides the corn fields is the train station built specifically to handle the influx of commuters that never materialized.
    I entered the building and made my way up to the third floor. No one seemed to have noticed my absence. I found the usually bustling halls eerily quiet. That sent a shiver coursing from my toes up to my scalp, reminding me of the last time I found myself alone in the building. Alone with a dead body hot glued to my desk chair.
    I stopped and strained to hear some sounds of activity. Today was the last day of work before the Fourth of July three-day weekend, and it appeared many of my coworkers had taken a vacation day.
    I was concentrating so hard on trying to hear something, that I didn’t hear Cloris come up behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin when she placed her hand on my shoulder. “Jeez! You scared the shit out of me!”
    “Sorry. You looked like you were in a trance. What’s going on?”
    “It’s so quiet here. I was having a Marlys flashback.” Marlys, AKA our former fashion editor Marlys Vandenburg, AKA the aforementioned dead body.
    “That would creep anyone out. Lucky for you, I’ve got just the cure.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and led me into the break room.
    Cloris is the food editor at American Woman , but more importantly, she’s played Watson to my Sherlock twice now, helping me solve three murders among the ranks of Trimedia employees. I could always count on Cloris to have my back. And something chocolate.
    She didn’t disappoint. As soon as we entered the break room, I spied today’s bounty sitting on the counter next to the coffee maker: brownies. “What kind?” I asked, helping myself to one. Cloris never featured plain old brownies in our magazine. Our food editor was the Michelangelo of baked goods, crafting decadent masterpieces, her raw materials of choice: flour, sugar, and eggs.
    “Caramel Marshmallow.” She poured us coffee while I savored my first bite. “What do you think?”
    I let the flavors send my taste buds into gastronomic heaven before answering. “I think you’re going to be responsible for me having to buy a new wardrobe. How many gazillion calories are in one of these suckers?”
    “Let’s just say this is definitely not for one of our diet spreads.” She picked up the plate and held it under my nose. “Have another. You look like you need it.”
    I didn’t argue with her, rationalizing to myself that I’d make up for all the calories by eating celery and carrot sticks all weekend. Right .
    However, before I polished off the first brownie, my cell phone rang. “Sunnyside,” I said, frowning at the display.
    “You think Lucille has whipped the proletariat