Dial Om for Murder by Diana Killian Read Free Book Online

much was making her nuts.
    She turned the radio in the kitchen on softly and listened to the news while she readied the ingredients for summer squash pancakes. Predictably, Nicole’s murder was the lead story on the local station, although there didn’t seem to be a lot to report so far. Naturally this did not stop the media from rehashing the little information there was.
    Even so, there were only so many ways to say that the thirty-five-year-old actress had been slain in her home by an unknown assailant while preparations for her birthday party were underway.
    With grim humor, remembering Andy’s comments the night before, A.J. heard that at the time of the attack, Nicole’s boyfriend, director J.W. Young, had been flying back from Mexico where he had been filming a documentary on the 2006 protests in Oaxaca by the local teachers union. So much for Andy’s theory.
    According to the radio, the New Jersey native and star of the hit TV series Family Business appeared to have been struck repeatedly with a koala ice sculpture. Ironically, Nicole had been very active in koala preservation, and so on and so on.
    There was discussion of Nicole’s role in Family Business as street-smart matriarch Bambi Marciano, and some vague allusions were made to real-life mob missus Barbie Siragusa. It sounded to A.J. like Barbie might not have been completely off base in her suspicion that the Bambi Marciano character was based on her. Well, wasn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery? Surely it wasn’t sufficient motive for murder?
    Not that anyone was suggesting that Barbie was a suspect. In fact, there seemed to be a distinct lack of suspects—although there was some passing reference to a possible falling out between Nicole and her fan club.
    There were a couple of interviews with Hollywood big-wigs who tried to find nice ways of saying that Nicole was a mostly adequate actress. Huge talent or not, her violent death ensured her place in the Hollywood pantheon.
    After the commercials there was a very brief snippet of an interview with Jake, and hearing his voice over the radio gave A.J. a pleasant little jolt while she laid strips of turkey bacon in the cast iron frying pan that had well served generations of Eriksson women.
    But Jake had little in the way of news to report either. In fact, “ The investigation is ongoing” seemed to size it up.
    Poor Nicole. A.J. felt a little guilty because she had not liked her more.
    She was thinking about this as she poured granola in two dishes and orange juice into goblets. Her negative opinion of Nicole didn’t change her fate, but it seemed to add insult to injury. It wasn’t a logical reaction.
    A.J. glanced down the hallway. The guest room door was still firmly closed. That was unusual. Andy was by nature an early riser—as was A.J., although these days her mornings were spent doing her sun salutations or taking a quick walk in the meadow or woods with Monster rather than watching Today and gulping coffee as she did her hair. She still spared a few minutes for reading over breakfast, but the breakfast only sporadically included Pop Tarts or Captain Crunch, and her current reading was Yoga Journal or Yoga + Joyful Living rather than the Wall Street Journal.
    Switching off the radio, she fetched her yoga mat and went out on the flagstone patio to perform her sun salutation.
    Sun Salutes, a series of flowing poses or asanas, were designed to wake up and energize the body through the integration of body, mind, and breath. Traditionally the sun salutation would be performed at dawn facing the rising sun, but part of the beauty of yoga was how adaptable it was to real life. And while A.J. certainly didn’t object to the spiritual aspects of yoga, she was finding that, for her, the immediate payoff was the physical benefits of an early-morning stretch combined with the calming focus provided by having to concentrate on each move.
    Between trying to eat more healthily and incorporating