Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too by Nancy Martin Read Free Book Online Page B

safely through the first trimester. Or maybe I wasn’t ready to admit that I was inconveniently pregnant. I wasn’t prepared to discuss my current condition with anyone yet. Not even with my best friends.
    So I said, “Don’t let me keep you from your job. You probably have a zillion calls to make.”
    Delilah eased me onto a stool at the tall table where she’d been drinking. “If the guest of honor’s dead, I might as well take it easy. Man, I can’t believe it. I was just with him a couple of hours ago.”
    The room was warm, and I slid my coat off my shoulders. “What did you go to see him about?”
    â€œOh, you know, party stuff.” She helped arrange my coat on another stool, then finally met my eye. “To be honest, we had a big fight. I don’t usually scream at clients, but Zell is—was—well, I’d better keep the specifics to myself.”
    â€œNot for long. The police are going to come looking for you, Delilah. They’ll be talking to everyone who spoke with Zell today.”
    She was nodding fast and reached for her drink. “Sure, sure. I understand. I didn’t see anything, though. I mean, except Zell acting like an asshole, same as always. We were supposed to finalize details about tonight, but instead we had a squabble and I left.”
    She picked up her martini glass and drained the last inch of liquor in one swallow. I finally noticed that she wore only one earring, and her makeup was not as pristine as usual. Two of her beautifully manicured nails were ragged, too.
    â€œWhat did you fight about?” I asked.
    â€œMoney, of course. We had a deal, but today he decided he wanted a discount.” She laughed shortly, unamused. “I probably won’t get paid at all now. Not good timing for me. Maybe his partner will pony up, but I doubt it.”
    â€œZell had a partner? You mean, in Cupcakes?”
    Delilah looked at her empty glass as if she wished she hadn’t finished the martini. “ChaCha Reynolds. You ever meet her? She’s running around here acting like one of the Cupcakes herself. To tell the truth, I don’t know which of those two I hate working for most. Maybe ChaCha. She’s always calling me sassy.” Delilah pulled a bitter smile. “Ever notice you white women never get called sassy? Just the sistahs.”
    â€œSo she isn’t exactly overburdened with social graces.”
    â€œHey, there’s a name for women who put little girls in tight clothes and make them shake their booties for a bunch of drunk frat boys, and it ain’t Mother Teresa.” Delilah glanced around for a waitress. “She isn’t going to be exactly grief stricken now that her partner’s dead, either.”
    â€œOh? Why’s that?”
    Delilah cast me a sideways look. “You playing detective already?”
    â€œI can’t help being curious.”
    â€œThey had a big fight here yesterday. You can ask her yourself. Here comes ChaCha now.”
    Charging out of the kitchen came a tiny lady with the perfectly toned body of a preteen gymnast and the pinched face of a sixty-something woman who’d spent her life hustling for a buck. The gold jewelry around her wrinkled neck, wrists and fingers said she’d been successful.
    Under her breath, Delilah said, “Story goes, ChaCha used to be a chorus girl in one of those Branson country-western shows.”
    ChaCha hurried over to us with a clipboard in hand. Her hair was a brassy red wig styled into a bouffant that added three inches to her diminutive size. Her Cupcakes T-shirt hinted at childlike breasts, and below the shirt she wore nothing but a pair of black dancer’s tights and low-heeled tap shoes with a strap across the ankle. Her legs looked lean and strong. The bare skin of her arms, throat and face was a little loose, but tanned to a deep shade of mahogany, except for the white rings around her eyes, no doubt