Dial Me for Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

clues. He was well-groomed as always—cheeks and chin clean shaven, mustache perfectly trimmed, brown hair neatly styled and combed—but the dark circles under his eyes were almost as blue as bruises.
    “What are you staring at?” Pomeroy asked, shooting me a menacing glare.
    “Oh, uh, er—”
    “Don’t just stand there,” he barked. “Bring me the new crime clips. Now.”
    To avoid any further discord, I stepped over to my desk, picked up the labeled and dated manila folder containing the articles I’d cut from the morning newspapers (including those about the Virginia Pratt murder), and handed the file over to Pomeroy.
    “That will be all, Mrs. Turner,” he snorted. “You may take your lunch hour now.”
    “Excuse me?” I stammered, struck nearly speechless for the second time that day. In all the three years and nine months I’d worked at Daring Detective, Pomeroy had never once deliberately given me leave to go out for lunch. In fact, if he happened to be in the office at noon—the official beginning of my lunch hour—he generally found a way to delay my departure, thereby shaving a few minutes off my allotted time.
    “What did you say, Mr. Pomeroy?” I asked again, thinking my ears must be playing tricks on me.
    “I said take your lunch hour now!” he growled, glancing up at the clock and chewing on the tip of his pipe stem.
    “Yes, sir,” I said, secretly rejoicing over my prompt dismissal, but still shocked to the core to receive it. I snatched my purse off my desk, plucked my camel’s hair jacket and red wool beret off the coat tree, and hurriedly let myself out into the hall, before he could change his mind.
    What the hell is going on? I wondered, making a wobbly, high-heeled dash for the elevator. What on earth is Pomeroy up to? Why does he look so worn-out and worried? And why was he so eager to get rid of me?
    I couldn’t answer any of those questions, of course, and by the time the elevator arrived, I’d stopped trying. Pomeroy’s shady schemes and mysterious problems had faded—like a weak radio signal—from my mind. All I cared about now was Virginia Pratt and Sabrina Stanhope; they had taken complete control of my thoughts.
    And before my lunch hour was over, they’d be controlling my actions, too.

Chapter 3
    AT NOON, THE SIDEWALKS OF MANHATTAN ARE like rows of cages in a zoo—full of hungry animals darting this way and that, scrambling toward their appointed feeding stations, hoping to get a good place at their favorite trough. I exited my building at 43rd and Third and merged with the herd, hurrying past the Automat (one of my favorite troughs), crossing under the recently closed Third Avenue el, and forging my way to the IRT subway station at 42nd and Lex.
    Once seated and lurching southward on the downtown local, I slipped my feet halfway out of my shoes (my new red suede pumps were killing me!) and removed my white cotton gloves (I didn’t want to get them dirty). Then I began studying the advertisements on the placards overhead, hoping the goofy pictures and silly slogans would take my mind off murder and have a soothing effect on my rattled nerves.
    No such luck. The ad for Blatz beer—featuring Liberace in white tie and tails, wearing a piano keyboard smile, lifting his frosty glass up to the heavens and proclaiming Blatz to be the finest beer in his hometown of Milwaukee—just made me violently thirsty. And the even more absurd ad showing a baby boy in a party hat, with a very happy look on his face, saying (in a cartoon balloon) to his smiling, smoking mother, “Gee, Mommy, you sure enjoy your Marlboro!” just made me desperate for a cigarette (naturally, I was all out). And the ad for the new Decorator Refrigerator by International Harvester, picturing a red plaid refrigerator designed to match a set of red plaid kitchen curtains, just made me groan out loud. (I’ve never had the slightest desire to own a plaid refrigerator, and I can promise you I never