Dying in Style by Elaine Viets Read Free Book Online Page B

enough time to drop the food at home, change into something decent, and pick up her daughter at school.
    Her cell phone rang. She scoped the number on the screen. It was her boss, Harry.
    “I need you at the office right now,” he said.
    Office? Josie could count the times she’d been in the Suttin office.
    “Harry, I’ve been shopping General Cheeps in my white-trash outfit. I smell like a giant fried chicken. My car is filled with buckets of Curly-Crisp. Let me go home and change first. It will only take ten minutes.”
    “I said now ,” Harry shouted. “Don’t stop for anything, not even the red lights. Get your ass in this office.”
    Josie’s heart froze. Something was wrong.

Chapter 5
    “This cheap tart tried to ruin my fifty-million-dollar deal?” Danessa looked at Josie and laughed.
    Mom was right, Josie thought. I should have worn the raincoat.
    The fiercely elegant Danessa had charged into the ratty office of Suttin Services, scattering a whirlwind of papers. Chairs overturned in her wake. Office equipment slid off the stands. Staffers crouched down at their desks. She was followed by a small, pale creature in owlish glasses and a beige suit a size too big. The personal PR woman.
    Harry, Josie’s boss, had been munching something meaty when Danessa burst through his door. He covered it with a stack of reports, but there were grease specks on his shirt and shiny smears on his mouth and fingers.
    His lips trembled in fear, but no sound came out. Josie would have to defend herself.
    “Who are you calling a cheap tart?” Josie was in full Maplewood fighting mode. It took guts to say those words with WHITE TRASH on her chest.
    Danessa stepped in front of Josie. She was nine feet tall in witch-pointy stilettos. Her eyes were the color of a summer storm. Her simple black dress was the down payment on a house. Her dramatic necklace cost even more. It was a dragonfly in amber. Josie couldn’t stop staring at the trapped bug.
    Josie’s fried-chicken fumes overpowered Danessa’s subtle perfume. Please God, don’t let her notice the WHITE TRASH on my tube top, she thought.
    She glanced down. God had answered her prayer. The WHITE TRASH wasn’t showing because Josie’s tube top had rolled down to her nipples. Josie yanked it back up.
    “For your information, I am dressed properly for my current shopping assignment,” she said. “Just as I was dressed properly when I shopped your stores. I produced a report that was fair, balanced and accurate.”
    Josie thought she sounded dignified yet fearless, which was more than she could say for Harry, that trembling blob. Was this the man who told her, “You let me deal with it. You just write your report”? Now he sat at his desk like one of those lifelike people statues. Harry could at least have chimed in with a “Yeah, that’s right.”
    Danessa turned a glare on Josie that should have shriveled her soul. Fortunately, Josie had been rendered glare-resistant by her mother.
    “Accurate!” Danessa said, in the voice God used when she was displeased. “You call that report accurate? It was a tissue of lies.”
    Josie pulled her eyes away from the long-dead bug around Danessa’s neck. Amazing. She’d never heard anyone say “tissue of lies” when she meant “full of shit.” Josie had to admit Danessa was magnificent in her rage. Her anger was a force of nature.
    “I am Stephanie with Reichman-Brassard Public Relations. We have found numerous discrepancies in your report,” the PR creature said. She pulled out a beige leather folder and handed a thick packet to Josie and Harry, along with six eight-by-ten glossies.
    “My stores are not dirty,” Danessa said. “My displays do not have fingerprints and my counters are not covered with half-eaten candy bars. You made that up.”
    “Our professional photos show no sign of fingerprints or debris,” Stephanie said.
    “Of course not,” Josie said. “You cleaned the Lucite stands before you took the