Staging Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

roots needed attention and her impoverished toy boy. Well, I could do something about the first problem, if not the second. The moment I was in the car, I’d phone my hairdresser.
    I waited till the waitress had gone to get the machine for my card. ‘Darling, there’s nothing I’d like better. But I’ve got something on this afternoon I just can’t afford to miss.’
    ‘Oh, come on, Vee – can’t it wait?’
    ‘Not if I want to pay my mortgage.’ I tapped my PIN into the machine without adding a tip. I’d once waitressed for an employer who used the tronc to pay our pitiful wages instead of using it as a well-deserved bonus. This wicked practicewas still legal, apparently. So if I left a tip it was always cash, tucked in the time-honoured way under a plate.
    Getting to my feet, I shrugged on my jacket.
    I could see Meredith eyeing up the guest beers. Was he going to stay and make a maudlin afternoon of it? What if maudlin, in his case, led to murderous? I’d better mention the Brosnics after all. But he shook his head, and, picking up a space-age skid lid, accompanied me to the car park. Poor Meredith: his wheels weren’t the huge BMW bike his helmet implied, but a little fart-and -bang machine, 50cc at most. The poor thing put Greg’s vivid car into perspective. We shared a wordless grimace.
    I reached up to hug him. ‘We both need a bit of luck, Merry, don’t we? Now don’t do anything stupid, will you?’

    As it happens that afternoon’s work, to which I would turn my attention as soon as I’d booked a hair appointment, involved not loos but the Brosnics. To my huge relief I hadn’t been summoned to show them round any more properties, but there was still the matter of the courtesy call. If it had worked for the Wimpoles it might work for them, and though my flesh crawled at the thought of having further contact with them, there was the inescapable fact thatsuccess would bring in a lot of money.
    Stratford never lost its charm, no matter how often I got stuck in traffic behind a monster coach, or waited hours to be served because someone couldn’t understand the currency. I parked as usual behind Greg’s office, and then, just for the pleasure of it, I walked back to the river. It was still chilly for the time of year, and as usual half the tourists – I heard more American accents than English ones – were as unprepared as poor Mrs Brosnic, apparently believing that if you were in a tourist spot the sun must shine. My route back took me past one of my favourite clothes shops, Basler. I felt like a child with its nose pressed against the doors of a toyshop. Except I suppose Toys’R’Us might not have the charm of the shops I swear I’m remembering, not just imagining.
    But good suits demand good salaries, so I accelerated hard, as if I were Juliet, keen to meet her Romeo. A bit of power-walking never hurt anyone, though because of other, happily dawdling, pedestrians it was hard to do it in any sustained way.
    However, I felt sufficiently full of vim and vigour by the time I swung into the office. In fact, had Greg been around, I would have had sufficient to box his managerial ears for him. We were supposed to be meticulous in updating our computer records, yet here was the Brosnics’ filewith nothing on it except his phone number and the name of the football club he was supposed to be buying. Try how I might – and my territorial loyalties to the Black Country were pretty strong – I could not imagine the purchase of West Bromwich Albion giving any oligarch, from Russia or anywhere else, the cachet that buying Chelsea or Arsenal might. Oh, he’d mentioned the hired Bentley, but hadn’t quite managed to say where it was rented from or jot down the number. What sort of day had Greg been having? Had the hair transplants involved removing some of his brain?
    At least I had a phone number. I brought up the files of the houses they’d seen, and did a quick scan of any others that might catch