Death on Heels Read Online Free PDF

barbecued shrimp, sweet potato biscuits, and corn bread. Stella was grooving in grits heaven. Brooke was delicately diving into the bread basket. But Lacey only picked at her food.
    She had toyed with the idea of not telling her friends she was leaving town and dropping them an e-mail after the fact, but she couldn’t deal with the hurt feelings. After all, the three of them had been through a lot together.
    Stella, who had been in physical therapy since her leg cast came off, was now proudly hobbling around. Devastated that she couldn’t wear high heels yet, at least not
two
of them, Stella was determined to wear her highest heels for her wedding to the semi-dapper Nigel, a scamp of an Englishman who had stolen her heart—and, Lacey hoped, nothing else. Lacey still didn’t trust Nigel completely, but he was growing on her. Nigel called himself a “professional stolen jewel retriever,” but he was in fact a semi-reformed jewel thief turned some kind of shadowy insurance investigator. Lacey thought he had a littletoo much interest in shiny baubles.
Most likely why he’s attracted to Stella. She’s nothing if not a shiny bauble of a person. With a heart of gold.
    “This is my hour of need,” Stella whined. Brooke and Lacey rolled their eyes in unison.
    “We can’t all have our hour of need together at the same time,” Lacey said.
    “I didn’t mean it like that. Exactly.” Stella fiddled with a chestnut brown curl. She was the manager and head stylist at Stylettos Salon in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood, and she was fighting the urge to do something radical with her hair before her wedding. But for the sake of her friends, and the wedding pictures that future generations of her progeny would see, she was restraining the impulse. Lacey could see self-control was taking its toll. “I just meant that I’m swamped at the salon or I’d come with you.”
    “No thanks, ladies. The Pink Posse can sit this one out.”
    “Sure, you say that now, but when you’re up to your ass in alligators, or alligator pumps, you’ll be sorry,” Stella said.
    “No alligators of any kind in Sagebrush,” Lacey assured her. “Just rattlesnakes and other assorted wild critters. Coyotes. Pronghorns. Jackalopes. You know.”
    “What’s a jackalope?” Stella asked.
    Brooke handed Lacey her own copy of the Cole Tucker story, with annotations. “And when you need a lawyer, who are you going to call, way out West?”
    “Really, guys, you’re very sweet to worry about me, but I’ll be fine. Vic will be there.” Lacey tried to shift the subject. “Frankly, I’m surprised you two don’t have dates tonight.”
    “Ha! Who says I don’t? I’m seeing Nigel later,” Stella said. “We have to discuss ushers, and he still hasn’t picked a best man. I suggested Vic.”
    “My Vic? Vic Donovan? Really? You’re kidding, right?” Vic and Nigel had a history, from prep school on down to the present, and it wasn’t friendly, though their diplomatic relations were now thawing a bit.
    “Funny, that’s what Nigel said. But he’s got to have a best man. And he hardly knows anyone here. Any other guys, I mean.”
    “How about Kepelov?” Lacey was being facetious. Gregor Kepelov was supposedly an ex-KGB spy, and Nigel’s sometime partner in the soldier-of-fortune business. And sometime mortal enemy.
    “Yeah,” Stella said dubiously. “He’s, like, semi-under-consideration too. Sort of.”
    “And you, Brooke. Working late tonight?”
    “Unfortunately. It’s going to be a long weekend too. But I might see Damon in the morning for coffee.”
    Stella batted her eyelashes. “The romance of the century. Skyping at two a.m. to keep you warm.”
    “That’s right, Stella, the twenty-first century.” Brooke was very fond of Damon, her boyish cyberspace muckraker. “Truth, justice, and the American way. And Skyping.”
    Stella dismissed Brooke’s romance with a shrug. “And why haven’t we heard about this killer