Dressed To Kill by Lynn Cahoon Read Free Book Online Page B

needing done. Living alone with my dog as company, the house didn’t get extremely dirty. So I didn’t worry about extreme cleaning. The situation worked for both of us.
    Don’t get me wrong, I loved my little house. Especially now that the downstairs had been painted and filled with keepsakes from my life instead of the prior owner’s, Miss Emily. The woman loved her crosswords. I was still finding piles of ripped pages from the local paper with half-completed puzzles upstairs as I tried to clean out the other two bedrooms. I glanced upstairs, weighing the thought of digging into cleaning one of the bedrooms versus reading the few final chapters in the contemporary romance. Love won out.
    It always does.
    As I curled up on the porch swing, I threw a blanket over my legs. After a few chapters, I promptly fell asleep.
    In my dream I was chasing kittens, trying to keep them safe and out of harm’s way. They weren’t cooperating. I’d wrangle one back into the paper box and another would take off, running with scissors. Finally, exhausted, I’d lain by the box, and the kittens had come to sleep by me. I could still feel the purrs vibrating on my legs as I woke from the dream.
    When I looked down at my legs, still covered by my wandering quilt, I found the source of the vibration. A black cat opened her yellow eyes, blinked twice, then laid her head on my leg and fell back to sleep.
    “Who are you?” I reached down to stroke the cat’s soft fur. She purred her response, but I felt a collar and a tag. I adjusted on the swing, bringing her closer so I could read the tag. “Maggie?” I read further down to see the address.
    Pulling her into my arms, I stood and walked around the house, Emma following at my heels. “Some watchdog you are,” I chided as I locked her into the front yard. “Allowing another animal to come and cuddle with me while I slept.”
    Maggie meowed and Emma let out a short bark, like, Where are you taking my new friend?
    Crossing the empty road, I made my way to Esmeralda’s front door via her winding stone path. I had to admit, the woman knew how to set a stage. As the town’s resident fortune-teller, Esmeralda’s home was her office. At least when she wasn’t working her second job as a dispatcher for the police department. Small towns, everyone is related or works with someone you know. I liked my neighbor. She kept to herself. Her business didn’t attract a lot of traff ic on the street, and she had started working on the outside of the house. When I first inherited the house from Miss Emily, Esmeralda’s had been in worse shape than mine—a fact that the city council overlooked due to her relationship with our Honorable Mayor Baylor. I was getting tear-down notices; she was giving fortunes with positive outcomes in her private sessions at City Hall.
    Not that I held a grudge.
    I pushed the doorbell and a cascade of wind chime music tinkled behind the door. No response. I looked down at the kitten, not willing to trust that if I put it down in the yard, it wouldn’t cross the road again, this time with not as favorable results. I pushed the bell again, thinking that maybe Esmeralda was on the phones at her other job. I snuck a peek toward town. I didn’t think Greg would take kindly to me dropping the kitten off at the police station. I could take her inside the house and wait. I returned my gaze to the sleepy kitten in my arms. “What do you think, Maggie?”
    She blinked twice at me. Then I heard the door creak open.
    “Jill. So nice of you to stop by.” Esmeralda was dressed in full costume, a scarf tied over her long black hair, a white peasant blouse with a neckline that showed more cleavage than most of the beach babes who frequented the store on summer days. Layers of skirts rustled with her slightest movement.
    Maggie meowed and shifted in my arms.
    “I had a visitor this afternoon.” I held the cat toward her.
    She shook her head, holding up her sparkling red nails.