Tressed to Kill Read Online Free PDF Page B

salon?” I asked, scooping up a blob of icing on my finger and licking it.
Mom shot me an incredulous look. “No time. It was one thing to do some baking when it was just a friend or two dropping by now and then for a trim and a little gossip. But now—”
“Now it’s a lot of friends dropping in for cuts and color and more gossip than you’d find in People magazine,” I finished for her.
“Now it’s a bona fide business,” she said with an emphatic nod. “No matter what Constance DuBois might think.”
The dead woman’s name hung in the air. “Maybe,” I said tentatively, “this cloud might have a silver lining. I mean, she probably didn’t have time to get in touch with the licensing board before—”
The back door, the one that led to the small yard and alley behind the house, burst open. “Violetta, did you hear what happened?”
Althea Jenkins stood on the threshold, brilliant poppy shirt tucked into matching broomstick skirt, vibrating with an air of uncharacteristic excitement. “Constance DuBois—”
“We found her,” I said before she could finish.
“You what?” She put a hand to her heart and looked from me to Mom.
We both nodded. “It was horrible,” Mom said. “The blood . . .” She poured Althea a cup of tea as her friend sank into a chair.
“We found her on our way home from the town hall meeting,” I said. A thought crossed my mind. “I didn’t see you there, Althea. I thought you were planning to go.”
“I wasn’t feeling well,” Althea said shortly. “Indigestion.” She blew on her tea, letting the fragrant steam drift into her face. “Tell me what happened.”
Mom and I took turns filling her in on the events from the meeting.
“I’m so very sorry, Vi,” she said when Mom’s voice trailed off describing how she tried to help Constance. “I can see that finding her was a real shock for you. But good riddance to bad rubbish.”
“Althea!” My mom’s voice was shocked. “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
“I never hesitated to say what I thought about Constance Wells DuBois when she was alive; I don’t know why I should stop now that she’s dead,” Althea said, a stubborn look on her face. Sunlight skimmed the prominent angles of her jaw and cheekbones, pooling her deep-set eyes in shadow.
“What did she ever do to you?” I asked, surprised by the venom in her voice.
A knock sounded at the door before she could answer. With the familiarity of long friendship, she rose to answer it.
“You ain’t welcome here, Hank Parker,” Althea said when she saw the figure standing in the doorway.
“Official business,” he said with a half smile, pushing open the screen door. “Morning, Grace,” he said, the smile growing broader as he took in the long red University of Georgia tee shirt I’d slept in and the tousled hair tumbling about my shoulders. I tried to tuck my bare legs under the chair.
The smile left me cold. Arctic. I could remember the time when it turned my insides to mush, but that was before I caught him with Melissa Littleton and realized she was one in a string. I wasn’t sure what I’d ever seen in Hank, beyond the smile and the hot bod, now sporting a small potbelly under the khaki of his uniform shirt. He’d been a lineman on the football team but a lazy student, and it had taken him several years of flipping burgers and selling vacuums after high school to find his niche as a cop. With my twenty-twenty hindsight, I saw his passion for the law had more to do with cop groupies and guns than with protecting the public. At the time, I thought it was noble. Was I an idiot, or what? Once he signed on with the Atlanta PD, we got married, and it was all downhill from there. Down a steep, icy hill on a toboggan with greased runners.
“What do you want?” I asked with as much dignity as possible, given my state of semi-dress.
“I could tell you what I really want if we were alone,” he said. He tucked his thumbs into his belt and slouched against the door jamb.
I flushed with fury and embarrassment.
“I won’t have