Dead is the New Black by Christine DeMaio-Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

no intention of clearing up his muddy job description.
    “What do they have him on?” She tried to peek over at his phone, but he put it down.
    “You trying to sound like you know what you’re talking about?”
    “On what evidence are they holding my boss? That better?”
    He smiled and shook his head a little. “Not much. I think they just need to look like they’re doing something.”
    “Detective Cangemi came to my house last night.”
    Tinto shut his phone. “What did he want?”
    “First, you tell me what they have Jeremy on.” She felt like she just crossed into an abyss. Of course, a lawyer would have a way around her stupid game.
    Instead, he answered, “They got fibers from the murder weapon on his hands, they got him on tape coming into the office the night before, and they got him fighting with the victim all day Saturday. They think the paper shredding was all about him trying to cut her out of the business.” He made a face as if that were the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. “And he has no alibi, which is the damnedest. So what did that little Flatbush prick want?” He had obviously met Cangemi a few times before.
    Laura was about to answer when a buzzer went off, jolting everyone in the room into a heightened state of awareness.
    It was eight o’clock.
    It began at their first meeting, arranged by Carmella after she mentored Laura at Parsons. Though Carmella had little of note to say about Laura’s designing, she saw her muslins and was duly impressed by her ability to translate three-dimensional ideas into flat shapes. The next week, she brought her a double grande no-foam latte with three hazelnut pumps in a venti cup, an exact twin to her own, and wooed her with tales of life as the daughter of a disowned Italian Countess in Milan. That Saturday, Laura had gone to Carmella’s pseudo loft for an it-took-all-day Bolognese served with the company of three of the most accomplished people whose names Laura would never remember. The spell began with Carmella’s story of the son of a Monaco gambler chasing her up the Duomo in Florence, culminating in a kiss at the top, and ending with her strolling topless on the beach in Sciacca with a construction worker who left her heartbroken. After that, she cut her hair into a pixie and wouldn’t let it grow out until she found love again. It was a heart-tugging tear-jerker over the zabaione.
    Laura had no idea she was being seduced, even after she was told Jeremy needed a temp patternmaker, a job Laura could do but did not, under any circumstances, want, because he had such a temper, no one as young as she could do it without crying every day. Before she knew what was happening, Laura had accepted the appointment with the famous Jeremy St. James, a stroke of good fortune that sent her friends giggling and cheering. Her sister only reminded her that she was in danger of making patterns the rest of her life, instead of designing.
    Which kept her up all night, worrying.
    The appointment had taken all day, even with Jeremy dispensing with the interview portion of the hiring process and standing her in front of the pattern table with a swatch of fabric and a sketch. He watched her score the lines, fold the pleats into the paper, and cut the corners of the pattern. He was absolutely still, which made her nervous enough, but it turned her on, because being nervous in front of a good-looking man was a feeling she associated with being in love. When the pattern was done, he refolded a dart, adding another sixteenth of an inch to the depth. He told her to cut and sew it, because no patternmaker was worth a good goddamn if they couldn’t cut and sew.
    He corrected the angle of the scissors with a gentle push, then demanded she sew it. She made the shirt, with Jeremy kneeling next to her, forcing her to breathe hard through her nose to catch his scent, a salty brine of the beach in early summer that she could smell in her clothes even after she got home. He