I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason Read Online Free PDF

through the house and out the back door, into the garage that, in a moment of madness, I’d had a couple of Lael’s handyman buddies convert into my office. The guys didn’t exactly get the glitter garden theme—Lucite desk, floors painted apple green and walls hot pink, old Pucci pillows on my whopper of an easy chair—but they pulled it off in seven weeks, built-in bookshelves and all. Still, I wouldn’twant to be back there during an earthquake. Which meant that working at my computer always felt vaguely life-threatening. Maybe that was a good thing, I don’t know.
    The shoes were there. So was Mimi the cat, draped across the keyboard like an odalisque. I shooed her off, surely to suffer for it later, and checked my e-mail. There was a message from my editor, Sally, inquiring about my progress. Sly, but not that sly. The woman was obviously starting to shake in her boots. What was she, clairvoyant? For all Sally knew, everything was going fine, just fine. A month ago, she’d read the first twelve chapters and hadn’t had any complaints. In fact, she’d raved about the section on Temecula.
    Gardner had bought a ranch and settled in Temecula after selling his Hollywood residence in 1936. It was a hunting, fishing, and animals-everywhere kind of place, an outdoorsman’s paradise. There was even a pet coyote named Bravo that ESG’s buddy Raymond Chandler had been especially fond of. But my editor was allergic to furry things. I think the part that riveted her was Gardner’s story about how whenever fellow writers down on their luck showed up in Temecula to borrow money the animals were delighted, but editors, well, when they showed up, the dogs knew to bite them.
    I suppose a lot can change in a month. I put Sally’s e-mail in my drafts folder, which is where I put everything I don’t want to deal with. I keep hoping those messages will simply disappear. Or succumb to bit rot, which sounds so slow and painful.
    In my neighborhood, you don’t need a Walkman when you go running. A clean outfit is good. A business card, better. In the course of pursuing the ever-elusive goal of physical fitness, I have made the acquaintance of decorators, podiatrists, portrait photographers, and other potentiallyserviceable types conveniently located within a five-mile radius of my house. But today I kept my head down. And besides, it was barely six A.M. West Hollywood is not a town of early risers. Everyone is either retired, an aspiring actor/singer/model working the dinner shift, or self-employed. No one emerges until around ten, when the streets become clogged with people heading gamely to the gym, or on their cell phones, cleaning up after their dogs.
    I started perspiring after half a mile. Not a good sign. Twenty minutes more and I was sweating like a pig. I turned down a tree-lined street. Rapture. It was shady, almost dark. There was no one around, so I did the unthinkable. I stopped to catch my breath. A lone car cruised down the other side of the street, witness to my shame. The guy inside gave me the eye. I didn’t think much of it until he swung a U-turn at the corner and started driving slowly alongside me. Unnerved, I started running again. He stayed with me. I turned at the next corner. He turned, too. Great. Where was everyone? Man, these people were lazy. Home was only two blocks away, but I didn’t want him to see where I lived. Alone. And I had left the door unlocked, as usual.
    I kept running. Past my house, past my neighbor’s house, onto King’s Road. He kept following. This was crazy. I was seriously out of breath now. I had a stitch in my side. He was just trying to scare me, I knew that. But it was working. I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea. I was afraid to glance his way. Maybe he’d take it as encouragement. There were no alleys to duck into, and all the underground garages along King’s had electronic gates that were