Don't Cry Now Read Online Free PDF Page A

payments?”
    â€œMany have been killed for far less.”
    â€œJesus, Diana, I didn’t kill her. You have to know that.”
    â€œOf course I know that.” Diana suddenly snapped around in her chair, as if she’d just realized she’d misplaced something important. “Where’s Rod? Does he know what’s happened?”
    â€œNot yet. I couldn’t reach him until about twenty minutes ago. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was. I couldn’t find anyone. You were in meetings; Rod was atlunch. The only person I could get a hold of was Pam Goldenberg.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œHer daughter is in day care with Amanda. We carpool together. I asked her if she’d mind keeping Amanda at her house until I get out of here.”
    â€œGood thinking.”
    â€œAbout time.”
    Diana reached across the table to take her friend’s hand. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Bonnie. It’s not every day you stumble across the dead body of your husband’s ex-wife.” She looked toward the ceiling. “How do you think Rod will take it?”
    Bonnie shrugged, pushed herself out of her chair. “I guess that after the shock wears off, he’ll be okay. It’s Sam and Lauren I’m worried about. How are they going to cope with the fact their mother’s been murdered? What will this do to them?”
    Diana’s voice grew timid. “Does this mean they’ll be moving in with you?”
    Bonnie paused. “What other choices are there?”
    She closed her eyes, the images of Rod’s two teenage children leaping into focus: Sam, sixteen years old and a student at Weston Secondary, very tall and very skinny, with shoulder-length hair newly dyed jet-black, and a tiny gold loop earring wrapped around his left nostril; Lauren, age fourteen, a mediocre student despite attending the best private girls’ school in Newton, model-thin and doe-eyed, with her mother’s head of luxuriant long reddish hair and full sensuous lips.
    â€œThey hate me,” Bonnie muttered.
    â€œThey don’t hate you.”
    â€œYes, they do. And they barely know their half sister.”
    Diana looked toward the inside window. “Here comes Rod.”
    â€œThank God.” Bonnie jumped to her feet, watching as the tall, handsome man who was her husband was directed by a young woman in a wrinkled blue uniform toward thesmall interior office. Bonnie stepped toward the closed office door, hand reaching for the knob, then stopped dead.
    â€œTell me that’s not who I think it is,” Diana said, voicing Bonnie’s thoughts out loud.
    â€œI don’t believe it.”
    â€œWhat’s she doing here?”
    The door opened. Rod stepped inside, the woman behind him momentarily detained by a young man who was thrusting something at her for her to sign, a crowd already gathering around her. An excited buzz filled the air. Isn’t that Marla Brenzelle? a voice asked. Is that really Marla Brenzelle?
    Marla Brenzelle, my ass, Bonnie thought. I knew her in high school when she was plain old Marlene Brenzel, back in the days before plastic surgery gave her a new nose and a new set of boobs, before her teeth were capped and her tummy was tucked, before her thighs were lipo-suctioned and her hair was bleached the color of ripe corn. I knew her when the only people she could get to listen to her were those hapless souls she cornered in the hallway between classes, long before her daddy bought a television station and made her the star of her own television talk show. The only thing about Marlene Brenzel that hadn’t changed in the intervening years was her brain, Bonnie thought. She still didn’t have one.
    â€œOh, Rod, I’m so glad you’re here.”
    â€œI got here as fast as I could. Marla insisted on driving me.” Rod surrounded Bonnie with his arms. “What’s going on?”
    â€œThey haven’t told