Hot Money by Sherryl Woods Read Free Book Online Page A

you on?”
    “Yours, but everyone knows you and Tessa couldn’t stand each other. Roger’s testimony won’t be the last they hear along those lines. You said you blew up at her at the last committee meeting. I assume there were others present.”
    “A whole roomful,” Liza admitted. “Okay, so there is a block of time I can’t account for. I suppose that means I had opportunity and a possible motive, but you have to admit that makes a pretty weak case. When was the last time someone killed someone just because they were terminally dim-witted?”
    Molly moaned. “Liza, you have to stop saying stuff like that.”
    “Why? It’s the truth. Do you know how much money that woman wasted on invitations because she just had to have one that was die-cut and embossed so it would make a statement? Four thousand dollars, that’s how much. She didn’t even use recycled paper, for heaven’s sake. When I heard that, I hit the roof.” She took to pacing again, her temper heating up all over again. “And I’ll tell you what statement it made. It said she was more concerned with her own ridiculous image than she was about the environment. She should have been shot.”
    “Liza!”
    Molly’s protest apparently penetrated. Liza sighed heavily. “Jesus! I know I shouldn’t say stuff like that, but it makes me so furious …”
    “How furious?” Michael inquired lightly as he joined them.
    Molly and Liza both swallowed hard, then tried to explain at once.
    “Hold it! Stop!” he said when he could finally get a word in. “You don’t have to convince me that the remark was entirely innocent, but you’d better be careful where else you say things like that. The detective in charge of this case is a by-the-book kind of guy. There will be a lot of pressure, given the status of those attending tonight. He is going to be very anxious to see that it’s solved in a hurry.”
    “I tried to tell her,” Molly said.
    “I know. I’ll shut up,” Liza promised. “I just had to get that off my chest.”
    “In the future vent your anger in the privacy of your own home,” Michael suggested mildly.
    Hoping to distract him from a full-blown lecture, Molly inquired, “What’s happening in there? Have the police narrowed the list of suspects down yet?”
    “That’s not something they’re sharing with me.”
    “What about the cause of death?”
    “I’m not on the need-to-know list for that either.”
    Molly glared at him. “What good is being at a murder with a policeman if he won’t tell you anything?”
    “Maybe next time you’d prefer to be escorted by your ex-husband. I understand he loves this sort of thing.”
    The dig struck home. Hal DeWitt loved being around money and power. It gave him the perfect opportunity to suck up. Molly was sure the only reason he was absent tonight was because Liza’s name had been on the invitation and he’d guessed Molly would be in attendance.
    “If you’re going to ruin a reasonably pleasant conversation by bringing up my ex, I think I’ll take another walk around the grounds until the police want me.”
    To her chagrin no one tried to stop her when she strolled off in the direction of the catering tent. It was too bad, too, because she was just in time to see society caterer Neville Foster launch into a shouting match with one of the hapless servers who’d been in charge of shaving off wafer-thin slices of rare roast beef earlier in the evening.
    “What do you mean it is missing?” he screamed, hands on narrow hips. “How could you be so careless, so inept?”
    “It was there earlier,” the man insisted stubbornly, refusing to be intimidated by Neville’s outrage. “I recall lighting the candles myself.”
    “So you are saying that one of the guests just happened to walk off with an antique silver candlestick tucked in her purse?” the caterer inquired so sarcastically that Molly winced. “What would anyone at this affair need with such a candlestick? No doubt they own