High Heels Are Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

Cheryl Report vanished. Josie put down her chili spoon and went to her mother’s chair. “GBH, Mom,” she said. That was the family code for Great Big Hug. Jane tensed at first, then hugged her daughter. As Josie folded her mother in her arms, she saw Jane’s thinning gray hair.
    I turned most of those hairs gray, Josie thought, and kissed her mother’s head. You don’t truly understand your mother until you are one.
    Josie sat down again and gave Jane an edited version of her visit to Soft Shoe. “You would have loved the store, Mom,” she said. “The decor, the music, everything. The salesman even had a pink carnation in his buttonhole. It was so nineteen fifties.”
    “Those were civilized times,” Jane said. “A man who wears a suit and a boutonniere is different from the salespersons you normally encounter.”
    “That’s for sure,” Josie said fervently.
    Jane looked at her daughter sharply. Josie was glad when Amelia interrupted them.
    “Did you go to the Soft Shoe at Plaza Venetia? Theyhave a Dry Ice store there,” Amelia said. “Can we go?” She had cracker crumbs everywhere, even in her hair.
    “You want to go shopping again?” Josie said.
    Now that she’d turned nine, Amelia was interested in shopping. That made Josie uneasy. Josie worked as a mystery shopper, a job she hoped her daughter would never have. Jane was a shopaholic, addicted to the Home Shopping Network. A few months ago, Josie had found her mother’s closets stuffed with unopened boxes of jewelry, cosmetics and exercise equipment. Jane was seeing a counselor now, and there were fewer visits from the UPS man, but Josie worried that her daughter had inherited a twisted shopping gene.
    “Can we, Mom, can we?” Amelia begged.
    “What do you need from the mall?” Josie said.
    “I don’t
need
anything. All the girls at school go to Dry Ice. Please, Mom.”
    “I’ll think about it,” Josie said.
    Amelia was shrewd enough to shut up.
    Once the Perfect Cheryl Report ended, Josie waited for the kicker. She wanted to see if Mrs. Mueller had ratted her out to Jane. But her mother never mentioned her romantic interlude with Josh on the front porch. That was a relief.
    The next morning, Josie set off for work wearing her yard-sale Escada suit and her rescued red heels. The whole outfit cost less than thirty dollars, but Josie thought it was a success. She could pass as a trophy wife with a chest full of implants and a purse full of plastic at the upscale malls.
    Mrs. Mueller’s curtains twitched as Josie hurried to her car. That nosy old woman was hiding behind the white lace. Josie hoped she was making notes on her outfit. The needle-toed shoes would kill her feet, but at least Mrs. Mueller would consider her properly dressed. When Josie wore a tube top and short shorts for one down-market shopping assignment, Mrs. M complained that Josie made the neighborhood look bad.
    Amelia herded her mother to the car like an anxious sheepdog. “Hurry, Mom. We’re going to be late,” she said.
    They almost escaped. But Stan the Man Next Door, their neighbor on the other side, ran toward their car.
    “It’s your boyfriend.” Amelia sniggered, with the casual cruelty of the young. Stan never missed an opportunity to talk to Josie.
    “I don’t have time for this,” Josie muttered as she fired up the engine. But it was too late. Stan was blocking her exit. She had to either talk to Stan or run him down. The second choice was tempting, but it would make her even later.
    Stan was wearing a limp short-sleeved shirt that was gray with age. One side sagged from the weight of a pocket protector. His powder blue necktie was snagged polyester. Stan dressed like a pensioner of eighty instead of a thirty-five-year-old man.
    “Josie,” he said. “Your porch light is out. That’s not safe. Do you want me to get a new bulb and change it for you?”
    Josie blushed. She’d unscrewed the porch light the night of her date with Josh, so they’d have