Drop Dead Gorgeous Read Online Free PDF

doorway, frowning. “I’m not acting weird.”
    “You looked white when I was talking about dinner.”
    “Oh … well, I guess I couldn’t stop thinking about Eleanor.”
    “I know, but it’s not like either of us was really still friends with her. You hadn’t seen her in fifteen years, and I’d seen her maybe three or four times.”
    “Still… ”
    “Lori, we just can’t take everything to heart. You always hurt for everybody else all the time, but you should have learned by now, you just can’t do that. Life’s a bitch.”
    “And then you die yourself?” Lori queried, using the cliché dryly.
    “Right. Bad things happen. Lots of kids we went to school with are dead. Petey Fitzhugh finally passed away from his hemophilia . Larry Gonzalez died at twenty- seven from cancer. That’s the way it goes.”
    “Ellie was murdered,” Lori reminded her.
    They stared at one another. Lori thought that maybe they were both about to say, “So was Mandy ! ”
    But neither of them said the words. They hung there on the air between them, like a miasma. But then, way back when, the kids would never have thought that Mandy had been murdered that day; it was the cops who believed that she had been, the D.A.’s office who had come up with the charges.
    “Mom!” Brendan called.
    It was a mournful sound. The kid was starving. Jan was right. She couldn’t bleed for every evil thing that happened in the universe.
    “He must be really hungry—we didn’t go shopping yet. I’ve got milk, coffee, orange juice, and sodas, and that’s it. Let’s get going.”
    “Right, let’s get going,” Jan agreed.
    “Except—” Lori murmured.
    “Except?”
    “Except, are we safe?” she murmured softly.
    Jan sighed. “Ho ney, where we’re going is wall- to-wall tourists. Great. You don’t want to move down here and get paranoid right away! I even let Tina hang around the Grove with her friends on weekends, as long as they stick to the main drag. Lots of cops on the streets all the time. Ellie was snatched from a South Beach club where she was probably trying to pick up guys.”
    “I guess I’m just spooked,” Lori said. But as they exited the house, she thought that a good alarm system was going to be her first investment.
    Spooked. That was it. She’d lived in greater Miami, London, and New York. All big cities. Places you learned to be street-smart, places where murder did happen far too frequently. There wasn’t anything astonishing about a murder in Miami.
    Except that …
    The victim had been an old friend of hers.
    Old friend, yes, old friend, someone she hadn’t seen in fifteen years. She had to let it go …
    She didn’t think that she could, but then, getting out was good. Driving down familiar streets that weren’t quite so familiar anymore took Lori’s mind from what had happened to Ellie.
    Things had changed. Coconut Grove had gotten busy—really busy, even on a Monday night.
    The area had always been trendy; it remained so with artsy shops mixed in with larger, popular chain stores. She couldn’t get over all the new construction in the area, the multitude of cars—and people. Tour buses were parked on Main Street in front of a Planet Hollywood. She might have been back in New York, there were so many languages being spoken.
    The Italian restaurant Jan had chosen was small and apparently very good because it was full. Music played from another place across the street, car horns honked as people tried to get through the congested streets, and as they waited for their table, they had to speak up to be heard by one another. Once they were seated, Jan introduced Lori to everyone who worked in the restaurant who happened to pass them by. This turned out to be good, because Ja n’s beeper went off almost imme diately and she disappeared to make a phone call, then returned and apologized, but prepared to leave them.
    “Tina, I’ll take you home,” Jan said.
    “Mom can take her,” Brendan protested.
    “If