Murder on Old Main Street (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page B

lost patience with those clients’ bad attitudes. Emma, however, simply ignored their bullying and set them straight, quietly but firmly, and few could look into her honest brown eyes and doubt her word.
    At nearly six o’clock I turned off my computer and rubbed my eyes, grainy from staring at a lighted screen all afternoon. I walked out through the lobby, which was windowless and thus almost dark, and stuck my head up the stairwell to the loft. As I expected, Emma’s lights were still on, and I could hear her soothing yet another jittery client on the phone. “Goodnight, Sweetie, don’t stay too much later,” I called and let myself out the big barn door, turning my key in the outside lock to keep the bogeyman away from my girl.
    When I arrived at my condominium, I was surprised to see lights gleaming through the kitchen windows and two cars parked end to end on one side of the driveway—Joey’s Honda and Armando’s Passat. Uh oh. It had completely slipped my mind that Joey was coming for dinner tonight, and Armando’s visit was unscheduled. Guiltily, I pressed the automatic door opener on my visor and waited for the garage door to rise. Armando and Joey were uncomfortable in each other’s presence. It was partly age and ethnicity, I knew. After all, how much could a middle-aged Latino raised in South America and a twenty-something Caucasian raised in New England have in common? More than that, it was temperament. Armando was reserved and gentlemanly; Joey was open and flamboyant. They just didn’t get each other. For my sake, they made polite conversation when trapped in the same room, but their mutual confusion was always evident.
    I eased open the car door and tiptoed to the top of the short staircase that led from the garage to the kitchen, where I pressed my ear to the door. I heard nothing but the hiss of something sautéing on the stove and the clink of a pet tag on the edge of Jasmine’s, or more likely Simon’s, kitty chow bowl. My beloved old cat Oliver had died the previous spring. While I was still grieving, my next door neighbor, an elderly woman named Mary Feeney, appeared one evening cuddling a furry mite to her chest. She had found the kitten dodging cars in the supermarket parking lot and brought him to me for temporary shelter. Within two days, I couldn’t give him up. The mite, named Simon, had made it a point never to miss another meal and currently tipped the scales at seventeen pounds.
    I tiptoed back down to the car, chunked its door shut, and then clattered back up the stairs. “I’m home!” I announced cheerfully as I burst through the door. The kitchen was empty but for Jasmine, licking her whiskers after her dinner, but an enticing aroma of cooking wafted from a covered pan on the stovetop. Raucous laughter came from the family room. “What’s so funny?” I asked, coming into the room and dropping my raincoat over Joey’s blond head where he lay on the sofa with Simon sandbagging his broad chest. Armando, in office attire and groomed to perfection, as always, rose to give me a quick kiss, and I patted his backside appreciatively before Joey struggled out from under my coat. Both wore the guilty expressions of Men Caught in the Act … of what, I didn’t know. An off-color joke? Woman-bashing? I wrote it off to a little male bonding and didn’t pursue it.
    An hour later, we finished up the tasty entrée concocted by Armando out of rice and some leftover chicken and fresh tomatoes he’d found in the refrigerator, and I finished telling them the surprising events of the day. Both greeted my news in character.
    “I am sorry you had such a distressing day, Cara ,” said Armando, taking my hand, “but at least this time you are not in any danger.” This last part referred to the murder that had occurred a year previously, which Margo, Strutter and I had helped to solve.
    “Yeah, this getting involved in murder investigations is getting to be a habit with you, Ma. It’s a