Chocolate Dipped Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

but she wasn’t making any sense. Savannah had been on her way back to the hotel, hadn’t she? I pushed hair out of my eyes so I could see Karen better. “Are you sure?”
    “Do I look like I’m not?”
    “But how? Where? When? ”
    “The same way she always does. Tonight. At O’Schuck’s.”
    O’Schuck’s is an upscale nightclub around the corner and down two blocks, so Savannah would have had no trouble getting there, but I was having a hard time putting everything together in my head. “Are you sure? Maybe it’s just a vicious rumor.”
    “I wish!” Karen spotted half a loaf of chocolate tea bread on my kitchen counter and snagged it. She sat on the couch, curled her feet up under her, and tore off a piece. “Evie and I walked in and found them, all cozied up together and laughing—” She broke off with a shudder and crammed another bite into her mouth. “I can’t stay with him,” she mumbled around the bread. “I absolutely refuse to sleep in the same bed with him.”
    The fumes of whatever she’d been drinking hovered in the air between us, and her eyes had a vague, unfocused look. I wondered if she’d done the bulk of her drinking before she met up with Sergio and Savannah, or after. “Are you sure that’s what Sergio was doing?”
    Karen glared at me. A crumb dropped from the side of her mouth onto the couch. “I know what I saw.”
    “I’m sure you do,” I said quickly. “It’s just that—well, I know how much Sergio loves you, and I have a hard time believing he’d throw it all away like this. Maybe you should tell me what you saw—exactly.”
    Karen pulled her knees up to her chest and dropped her forehead onto the shelf they made. “Just what I told you,” she muttered into the denim of her jeans. “Sergio and that . . . that . . .” Her head shot up. “That woman were sitting together this close. He was looking at her with that look—you know the one I mean.”
    I reached across the cushions and tore off a piece of bread for myself. The only difference between Karen and me is that Karen won’t be wearing the bread around her hips next week.
    “God only knows what I would have found if I’d been ten minutes later,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
    Her pain was raw and palpable, and it wasn’t alone. All the hurt and outrage I’d felt over Roger’s affair was there, shoring it up.
    I reached across the cushion again, this time to link my fingers with hers. “You don’t think Sergio would have . . . you know?”
    Karen’s hazel eyes darkened. “Had sex with her? Absolutely. You know how men get when they’re around Savannah. It’s like they can’t even think.”
    “Yeah, but—” I cut myself off before I could defend her. Maybe she’d fooled me, too. Maybe everything she’d said tonight on the street had been an act, designed to win sympathy. If so, it had worked like a charm. Feeling foolish, I nodded toward the suitcase. “So you left him? For good?”
    “I don’t know yet. I’m so angry I can hardly see straight. I can’t even bear to look at him right now.”
    “What about the kids?”
    “They’re home. He can take care of them for a while. Let’s see how much time he has for getting friendly with an old girlfriend while he’s washing dirty underwear and running kids to karate class.”
    I wondered just how much laundry and carpooling Sergio would actually do, but I didn’t dare raise the question aloud. He was in enough trouble as it was. “So where are you going?”
    The corners of Karen’s mouth turned down. “Going?”
    “You’ve left home, and you’re carrying around a suitcase. You must have something planned.”
    “Well, of course I do. I’m staying here with you.”
    “Here?” I uncurled quickly. “ Here? But—”
    “You don’t want me?”
    I knew I must look horrified, and I didn’t want to add to her pain, so I shook my head and dug up a smile. “I didn’t say that. It’s just that this place is so