Dating is Murder by Harley Jane Kozak Read Free Book Online

Quinn especially, she thinks Annika is just perfect, but teens need tough love, is what I tell my moms and dads.”
    “Sounds like you know what you’re talking about. So did she meet this guy at school?”
    “Now, that’s another thing. The girls need six units of college-level coursework, not aerobics or commercial auditions or whatnot but things pertaining to our culture. Annika wanted physics. I told her no, physics has nothing to do with America, so she went ahead and took it on her own, in
addition
to ESL. She wanted to do everything. I don’t know when that girl ever slept. She was a bad example for Britta and Hitomi, with her extracurriculars. I tell them, Do your job, help out with the dishes and such, but then enjoy yourself. You’re here to experience the American way of life, not run yourself ragged.”
    For some of us, running ourselves ragged was the American way of life. “So what do you think happened?” I asked, hesitant now to mention drugs. An aproned woman headed our way and I grabbed a gadget from a rack. “Say, these are awfully cute. Like a little mallet. For meat, I suppose. What do you call these?”
    “Meat mallets.” Glenda glanced at her fellow salesperson, then rubbed her eyes, leaving little dots of cakey mascara on the delicate skin underneath. “I couldn’t say where she is, with all her goings-on. I better ring you up.”
    I started to tell her I don’t cook, but her boss was approaching, so I let her sell me three cheese graters and the meat mallet. “After all, everyone eats cheese,” she said.
    “But you don’t think Annika met with foul play?” I asked, glancing out into the mall.
    “Well, dear, with what you hear on the news these days, I’m surprised we all haven’t met with foul play.”
    The Au Pairs par Excellence agency answered with a machine, a woman’s voice promising an end to my child-care problems once I made the decision to bring an au pair into my life. She urged me to check out their Web site and leave a message after the beep.
    I left a message every half hour up until six o’clock.
    The next morning, I started in again at nine A.M. Then I went down to San Pedro to find them.

5
    W ednesday was another unseasonably gorgeous day. Joey and I could fully appreciate this along with everyone else on the 405 South because the San Diego Freeway was moving us along at the speed of barges. Which gave me time to wrestle with the idea of Annika being a druggie.
    “I wouldn’t say an unidentified pill and an empty coke vial constitute a druggie,” Joey said. “Not where I come from.”
    “You come from Nebraska.”
    “Exactly. The decadent Corn Belt. Hey, you’re getting a little obsessive, aren’t you, going to San Pedro at this hour? What happened to your day job, your mural deadline?”
    “Their floors are still wet. And I wouldn’t have to go to San Pedro if people would answer their phones. Thanks for the ride, by the way.”
    Joey opened a window. Her Irish setter hair whirled around the front seat, a victim of the Santa Ana winds. “Thanks for qualifying me for the carpool lane.” She was on a mission to sell her husband’s year-old BMW. “Not one person answered Elliot’s newspaper ad,” she said, “so now we deal with the dealers. Today, Long Beach. Tomorrow, City of Industry. Don’t marry a man who needs a new car every year; life’s too short.”
    “Why doesn’t he just trade it in?” I asked.
    “He says it’s worth more than they offered. We went through the same thing last year.”
    “Why doesn’t he just lease?” I asked.
    “Who can say? Why does he do anything? Why invest in a reality TV show?’
    “Okay, why?”
    Joey changed lanes. “I like to think
Biological Clock
is a money-laundering scheme and my husband is stowing large amounts of cash in a Swiss bank, preparing to buy me a small village in Italy for our third anniversary. Elliot says it’s a case of Larry, his old fraternity brother, needing a partner in his