Shoots to Kill Read Online Free PDF Page A

through the purple curtain at the back of the shop into our workroom, detouring up the left side of the big table in the center to grab the messages from the spindle on my desk. I continued past a long counter and a wall of shelving filled with plant containers, buckets of silk flowers, and various other supplies, through a doorway in back that led to the galley kitchen, where Lottie was stirring scrambled eggs. A stack of toast and a jar of orange marmalade sat nearby.
    “Here you go, sweetie,” Lottie said, dishing out a heap of fluffy eggs onto a plate.
    Lottie Dombowski was a friendly, hearty, forty-five-year-old mother of four who hailed from Kentucky. She had owned Bloomers until her husband’s health got so bad and the medical bills got so high that she had to sell. It nearly broke her heart to lose the charming but not very profitable shop, but with having to care for her beloved Herman, not to mention raising her quadruplet teenage sons, she’d had no choice.
    That was where I entered the picture. Having been ejected from (a) law school and (b) my then fiancé Pryce Osborne’s life, I was desperate to do something that justified my existence. Still holding the remnants of my farmer grandpa’s trust money, and having worked as Lottie’s delivery girl, where I discovered my talent for floral artistry, I plunked down the last of Gramps’s money, got a ginormous mortgage, and never looked back.
    I pulled up a stool, read the first message about the moldy baby’s breath, then scrunched it up and tossed it into the trash can in the corner. Grace was already on it. I glanced at the second slip of paper just as Grace came in with a tray holding three cups of coffee.
    “ ’Elizabeth Blume is in town. Please call,’ ” Lottie read over my shoulder. “Now, there’s a name from the past.” She put the skillet back on the range and sat down beside me.
    “Who’s Elizabeth Blume?” Grace asked, delivering our cups. Mine was made just the way I liked it, with a healthy shot of half-and-half.
    “Just a kid I used to babysit when I was in high school. Lottie, did Grace tell you about the mold issue with the gypso—”
    “ Just a kid you babysat?” Lottie snorted, as though I’d somehow belittled Libby. “Gracie, do you remember Delphi, the famous cover model?”
    “It doesn’t ring a bell,” Grace said, sitting down on another stool.
    “You have to remember Delphi. Her trademark look was her pale blond hair cut in a pixie do, big brown doe eyes, red, bow-shaped lips, enormous”—she held her hands way out in front of her breasts—“and long legs. She was the swimsuit model who first appeared in a magazine with a belly button ring. They called her the Belly Button Babe. She and her family were always in the tabloids. Well, anyway, Elizabeth is her daughter.”
    Grace took a sip of coffee. She wouldn’t read a tabloid if her life depended on it.
    “Delphi’s real name is Delphinia Haskell,” Lottie continued, determined to prod Grace’s memory. “Delphi’s first husband had a big bank account and a weak heart. She had a son with him, Oliver, and inherited a fortune. Hubby number two was a foot shorter than her, owned a minor-league baseball team, and was Elizabeth’s daddy. Delphi kept his moniker as her professional name.
    “Then there was number three, who gave her a huge divorce settlement. She used that to open a talent agency here in town for all those little angels whose mommies want to turn them into TV stars.” Lottie stuck out her tongue, leaving no doubt as to her opinion on the subject.
    “So, getting back to the gypsophila,” I said.
    My words floated off into space unnoticed, because Lottie’s comment had induced Grace to weigh in with her perspective, which she usually imparted in the form of a quotation.
    “As Stanislaus cleverly observed,” Grace began, “ ‘What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as