Beach Bags and Burglaries (A Haley Randolph Mystery) Read Online Free PDF

through the palms, shrubs, flowers, and fountains, and finally Marcie ducked behind a huge fern plant and stopped.
    “It’s that girl,” she blurted out in a hushed voice. “Yasmin.”
    I gasped. “Yasmin? The one who’s dating Tate-Tate-Tate?”
    “Yes.”
    “I hate her.”
    Marcie peeked through the greenery. “I just saw her.”
    “Here?” I demanded.
    “Yes.”
    “Now?”
    “Yes.”
    “I hate her.”
    “I think she’s getting married here,” Marcie said.
    “Crap.”
    Between Marcie and me, we knew a lot of people. We’d see friends and acquaintances at bars, clubs, out shopping, and at the purse parties Marcie and I gave, which is how we’d met Yasmin. She’d somehow rotated into our circle of friends.
    Marcie got along with Yasmin okay—Marcie can get along with most anyone—but I absolutely couldn’t stand her. All she ever talked about was her boyfriend, Tate. No matter what kind of conversation we were having, she always turned it around to focus on him. She was so obsessed with the guy we’d started referring to him as Tate-Tate-Tate—behind her back, of course.
    I pulled back a fern branch and peeked out. “She didn’t see you, did she?”
    “No,” Marcie said. “I took off as soon as I spotted her.”
    “No way am I dealing with her on this vacation,” I said. “I don’t want to see her, or talk to her, or even be in the same room with her.”
    “I know,” Marcie said.
    “I hate her.”
    “She had on one of those T-shirts that had the word ‘bride’ spelled out in rhinestones,” Marcie said.
    “Hang on a minute,” I said, now irritated in a whole new way. “Yasmin is getting married? And she didn’t invite us?”
    “That’s what it looks like,” Marcie said.
    “We’re supposed to be her friends,” I said, totally outraged now.
    “I know,” Marcie agreed.
    “And she didn’t even invite us to her wedding?” I demanded.
    “Nope.”
    Yeah, okay, I couldn’t stand her—which I’m sure she didn’t realize because she was always so focused on Tate-Tate-Tate—but I was majorly miffed because she hadn’t invited me to her wedding, which made no sense but there it was.
    “We’ll avoid her. It’ll be easy, really,” Marcie said. “She’ll be so caught up in her wedding, she probably wouldn’t notice us even if we walked right past her.”
    Marcie was almost always right. I hoped she was this time, too. Not only was this supposed to be my no-men vacation, but I’d recently broken up with my fabulous boyfriend Ty, so the last thing—the very last thing—I wanted to be around was a couple who were blissfully happy, totally in love, and actually getting married.
    “Bella and Sandy are at the beach,” Marcie said. “Let’s go, too. It’ll be fun.”
    My mood instantly improved. Surely I would spot a Sea Vixen if I was at the beach.
    We made our way through the courtyard, took a couple of wrong turns, and finally found the rear hotel entrance.
    Thanks to my extraordinary peripheral vision—enhanced significantly by months of avoiding eye contact with Holt’s customers desperate for help—I saw that lots of men were still in the room where Detectives Vance and Pearce had interviewed me.
    Luke Warner popped into my mind again.
    I pushed him out.
    Upstairs in our room, Marcie and I changed into bikinis—mine was blue, Marcie’s black—gathered our things, and went downstairs. A tram pulled up just as we walked outside, so we climbed onboard. I immediately turned my attention out the window, hoping to spot a Sea Vixen.
    “You’ll find one,” Marcie said, reading my mind as only a BFF could.
    “Darn right I will,” I said.
    The tram glided silently and effortlessly along the paved road, and stopped a few minutes later beneath tall, swaying palms. The sandy beach stretched to the edge of the blue, rolling surf. A thatched roofed bar had attracted a crowd. Servers in white shorts and burgundy shirts brought drinks to the guests relaxing on lounge