Death is Semisweet Read Online Free PDF Page A

been satisfied with his collar line in the mirror this morning and decided to stop by Sal’s for a trim on the way to the office. It was just eight-thirty. Sal looked at Heaven through the mirrors that lined the barber shop and shifted his unlit cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “I didn’t get to the second page yet,” he said and jerked his head toward the businessman. Obviously, Sal had been interrupted by this customer before he was finished with the paper. Heavenknew Sal started at the sports section and worked forward.
    “The Plaza was having a big Santa contest and the grand prize winner gets a cruise to Alaska next summer.” She peeked around the edge of the paper at her audience. “Santa, Alaska, near the North Pole, get it? The judges had just started looking them over when the shooting and stuff happened, so they’re going to have the contest again next Sunday. Just one of the fun little sidebars that newspapers find to soften the news of tragedy.” Heaven went on to another section.
    Sal shook his head. “A blimp crashes into Seville Tower, the pilot’s taken out by a sharpshooter, and some slob who doesn’t have the sense not to go out of the house in one of those stupid red suits wants to make sure he can still get his damn prize.”
    Heaven looked up and smiled. “You can even make the feature fluff piece sound dark. That’s one of the things I love about you, Sal.”
    “And of course, I shoulda known when I saw it on the news last night that you were right there in the middle of it. Did Bonnie get the call?” Sal asked.
    “Bonnie got the call. They got the body out of there pretty fast, since where he landed wasn’t exactly the crime scene and since the whole thing was balling up holiday traffic something fierce,” Heaven explained without looking up from the paper. “Bonnie examined the body and told the guy from the coroner’s office she’d leave it to him, if anything strange popped up to let her know. He definitely was shot, probably that’s what killed him, but you never know. She also sent for the firearms specialist from the evidence team to examine the body and make a few guesses. Bonnie didn’t go up on the cherry picker to examine the blimp, said she’dcheck it out at the warehouse today, said the evidence guys knew better than her what to look for. Of course she didn’t really mean that. Bonnie still thinks she’s the best at evidence retrieval but I happen to know she’s a little afraid of heights.”
    Sal whisked the neck of his customer with a soft little brush to remove the loose hairs. “I feel sorry for the poor suckers that had to do the door-to-door. Hundreds of shoppers and each one had a different version, I bet.”
    Heaven chuckled as she folded the paper carefully. Sal didn’t like a messy paper in the shop. “It was a real cluster f—I mean, you got that right.” Heaven tried not to curse in front of Sal’s customers. “Just in the few minutes I stood there with Bonnie, I heard people say that the shots came from all four directions of the compass, I heard that someone had seen a Santa Claus with a compound bow and arrow, someone else was sure the blimp had exploded like a bomb. Bonnie said when you have too many eyewitnesses, you end up with squat.” She got up and gave a short salute at the door. “I’m going to work,” she announced and left.
    As she walked across 39th Street to Café Heaven she felt guilty she hadn’t told Sal all the inside news about Foster’s chocolate company that she’d obtained from Stephanie Simpson. But somehow she hadn’t felt comfortable talking about it in front of Sal’s customer. Heaven certainly wouldn’t want to start the rumor that her friend Stephanie had bad blood with Foster’s Chocolates and had maybe hired a hit man for a blimp. The most innocent remark could turn into vicious gossip in Kansas City. She’d tell Sal later.
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    H arold Foster, Jr. sat with his head in his