Deadly Deceptions Read Online Free PDF

changed between us.
    I had no clue why.
    We’d both been playing parts, of course. And somewhere along the way we’d forgotten our lines.
    â€œWho were you before you were Greer?” I persisted very quietly.
    For a moment I actually thought she was going to tell me. Then she shook her head. “I know it sounds corny—like something from the late show—but that person doesn’t exist anymore.”
    â€œAnything more from the blackmailer?” Talk about something from the late show. How often does a question like that come up in normal conversation?
    Not that I’d know a normal conversation if I fell over it.
    Greer bit her lower lip.
    The timer on the microwave dinged.
    I got up, pulled out the rubber lasagna and set it down in front of the woman I still thought of as my sister, for all the strange distance that stretched between us. I gave her some silverware and refilled her wineglass.
    Tentatively she picked up a fork and jabbed it at the lasagna. I knew she was avoiding my eyes, and I was prepared to wait her out. I’ve got staying power—I once camped in front of a furniture store for three days to get the free couch they were offering as a prize at their grand opening. I was on the news twice, and Lillian, alarmed by the publicity, came and dragged me away fifteen minutes before I would have become the proud owner of an orange velour sectional, complete with built-in plastic cup holders.
    Just one of the many reasons I have to be grateful to her.
    â€œGreer?” I prompted.
    â€œYes,” she said.
    â€œYes, what?”
    â€œYes, I’ve heard from the blackmailers—plural.”
    â€œWhen? What did he—they—say? Was it a letter, a phone call, an e-mail? Black-and-white eight-by-tens of you in some compromising position?”
    Greer skewered me with a look. “This lasagna,” she said, “is worse than the wine.” But she kept eating. And she kept drinking, too, though I’d already lost interest in the vino. It did taste like vinegar.
    â€œHow am I supposed to help you if you won’t tell me what’s going on?”
    â€œI didn’t hire you because I’m being blackmailed. I hired you to find out if Alex is cheating on me.”
    â€œHe is,” I said, silently saying goodbye to the five-thousand-dollar retainer she’d given me, not to mention the other five I would have gotten when I turned in a definitive report. Actually, I was in pretty good financial shape for the first time in my life, because my demon ex-mother-in-law, Margery DeLuca, had forked over the proceeds of a life insurance policy Nick had taken out, in a fit of fiscal responsibility, with me as beneficiary. Still, Greer’s payment represented my first earnings as a private investigator and for me that was meaningful.
    Greer stiffened, peering at me over the lasagna and the cheap wine. “Do you have proof?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œThen the case isn’t solved, is it? Maybe now that people aren’t trying to kill you, you can get back to work.” This was a reference to recent misadventures—so recent, in fact, that I still had little gummy bits of duct-tape residue on my wrists and ankles. I’d soaked and scoured, but they just kept appearing, as though they’d been hiding under my skin.
    â€œGreer,” I said.
    â€œWhat?” She sounded testy. Could have been the leather noodles and the rotgut, but I didn’t think so. Greer had been defensive, to say the least, since she’d stolen Alex Pennington from his first missus, closed down her hard-won interior design business and become the classic trophy wife.
    â€œTalk to me. Who’s blackmailing you, and why? More important, have you changed your mind about telling the police?”
    The last time we’d discussed the issue, Greer and Jolie and I, she’d refused to involve Scottsdale’s finest. Apparently whatever she’d