A Dose of Murder Read Online Free PDF

soon.
    Miles’s friend. Now it made sense.
    I’d been so overwhelmed by the job, Adele and Goldie that I hadn’t put two and two together. Miles might have mentioned Goldie a time or two, but . . . I had no idea he looked like this.
    Feeling as if I really had stepped through the looking glass, I smiled at Goldie. “Pauline Sokol. Nice to meet you.”
    Adele slapped herself in the head. “Where are my manners? Sorry. Oh, Pauline is the new investigator Fabio might have mentioned to you—” She turned toward me. “Goldie calls all of you moles.”
    Goldie laughed. “Come on, suga, we need to talk.” He pulled me into his office, and Adele clattered down the hallway.
    With Southern manners any mama would be proud of, Goldie showed me into his office and offered me a drink. As I looked at the moss-covered tree growing in the corner, the zebra-striped couch next to the glass coffee table resting on elephant legs and Goldie’s desk made of chrome and more glass, I mumbled, “Scotch, neat.”
    â€œA girl after my own heart.” He turned to open a mahogany cabinet near the window then pulled out the hidden bar.
    â€œI mean . . . coffee.” Scotch? Where’d that come from? This was getting worse. I couldn’t help but stare. Even his voice didn’t give him away. I’d seen Ru Paul on television a few times, and Goldie could give him a run for his money, although Ru was gorgeous too.
    He looked back. “I’ll take the Scotch. You get the Joe.”
    As I sat and sipped the coffee latte he’d whipped up, I decided I liked Goldie. Although the most flamboyant friend of Miles, I automatically considered Goldie a friend of mine, too. He told me how he’d been in the Army, worked intelligence as Adele had said and went back home to New Orleans, where he wanted to open his own private investigating firm but never did.
    After nonstop work and burning out (been there, done that), he met Miles at a Mardi Gras parade. Amid the ruckus and the gaudy plastic doubloons thrown from the floats, Miles convinced him to move north and work for his uncle, Mr. Scarpello.
    Goldie said he never looked back.
    â€œNow, Fabio gives you the file and you’re pretty much on your own. You get yourself some good equipment, suga. Not that cheap stuff that breaks down before you know it and you’re paying twice as much cuz you have to buy more. A good video camera is a must.”
    â€œThank goodness I have one already.”
    He polished off his Scotch, wiped a long finger across his bottom lip. “Let me guess. One of those older models that is about two feet long with a dick of a microphone sticking out on the end long enough to poke someone in the eye?”
    â€œWhy . . . yes.” That wasn’t a good thing? Not the dick in the eye thing, but the long microphone?
    â€œSuga . . .” He walked to the wall unit and turned on the television. While I watched Emeril pour some batter into a Bundt cake pan, Goldie snapped off the tiger’s left eye from his chest.
    â€œWhat are you . . .”
    He opened the eye, which still stared at me, and took a cord from the back of the television and connected it. With the aplomb of a Boston Pops conductor, he waved his hand toward the TV.
    A few seconds of snow, followed by a blue screen, and then . . .
    â€œOh shit!”
    I
materialized on the screen, standing in the hallway and obviously trying to hide behind Adele. Whoever said television added ten pounds was correct. I decided I would run an extra lap that night. “How’d you do that?”
    He shook his finger at me. “See how you’d be too obvious with your dick camera?”
    â€œCompletely.” I did, but those ten extra pounds wouldn’t leave my thoughts.
    â€œWe’ve got a lot of work to do, suga. The right equipment is a must in this business. Come on.”
    After hours of