Death is a Bargain (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Kate had kept an eye out to make sure Ballou wouldn’t decide a certain smell needed to be marked in his own special way, with a jaunty lifted leg.
    The poodle-preferring girl held the pin up to her shoulder. “It’ll go great on black satin.”
    The glass imitation-ruby brooch was so fifties and so matronly that Kate couldn’t imagine Marlene ever wearing it, though they’d all worn fat flowerlike lapel pins back then. More puzzling was why this trendy teenager, with her bare midriff and white shorts that clung to her fanny, would be interested in this quaint piece of costume jewelry.
    They were still unpacking. Mary Frances had tackled the box marked jewelry and arranged all the earrings, pins, and bracelets in the plastic display trays Kate had bought at the dollar store. Nothing had been priced. And Kate couldn’t remember where she’d stuck the tags.
    “How much?” The girl fingered the brooch. “I can’t live without it.”
    Marlene slowly turned from Kate to Mary Frances.
    Kate held her breath.
    “Two hundred and fifty.” Marlene sounded firm.
    “Great.” The girl grinned. “Do you have earrings to match?”
    Except for the three of them, giggling guiltily in the wake of their first customer, the corridor was quiet. The vendors here worked a late shift in order to catch both the matinee and the evening crowd.
    When Kate had arrived in the corridor at eight thirty this morning, lugging a big carton, Jocko, who’d been sweeping the floor, dropped his broom and gave her a hand. Thinking Sean must work his relatives round the clock, Kate had nevertheless been grateful for the clown’s offer to help. And he’d ordered two of the circus roustabouts to leave their chores and “help the ladies set up shop.”
    Now at nine, with only half the cartons unpacked, they’d made a big sale.
    “I think this calls for a celebration,” she said. “I’ll go get some coffee for you two and a cup of tea for me and three of those sinful jelly doughnuts from the bakery in the food tent.”
    “Make mine strawberry,” Marlene said, caressing the AMEX receipt. With the matching earrings, their first sale had totaled three hundred and thirty dollars. Kate’s thirty percent came to ninety-nine dollars. She might learn to like this job.
    On her way to the food tent, Kate made a detour. Yesterday, she’d passed a booth selling signs and posters, created on the spot in big, bold, black calligraphy. She ordered a large poster, saying “Past Perfect.” Marlene once said she liked that name.
    “I’ll be back in an hour to pick it up, okay?”
    She stood in line at the bakery counter, trying to decide if she wanted strawberry or raspberry jelly. Mary Frances had opted for a chocolate doughnut.
    A snort-like laugh caught her attention. Right in front of her, Sean Cunningham, as scruffy out of clown costume as in, had his arm around Donna Viera’s waist and his head bent close to the animal trainer’s ear. But not so close that Kate couldn’t hear him whisper, “You don’t tell that Humane Society dame a goddamn thing, you understand me, Donnie?”

Eight

      
    Where the devil was Kate? Ten more minutes of Mary Frances dancing around in cheery collaboration—“Where would you like this, Marlene?…Doesn’t that Pucci scarf just shout, ‘Buy me’?”—and Marlene would have to kill her. Truth be told, she didn’t much like Mary Frances, Broward County’s tango champion. And she had to put up with the ex-nun—prettier and bossier than Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man —as vice president on the Ocean Vista’s board of directors. Enough already. And what in the world could be taking Kate so bloody long?
    “You want I should put this last carton down next to the booth, Miz Friedman?” Jocko juggled the heavy package, a pleasant smile on his round, careworn face. “I don’t want to stop your progress. Hard to believe how much you got unpacked in such a short time. The redhead’s some organizer, ain’t