If Looks Could Kill by Eileen Dreyer Read Free Book Online Page B

pull off the scratchy wig and ditch the glasses.
    Luella pointed with the coffeepot that always seemed to be in her hand. "Your purse. Nobody else has one like it."
    Hefting the offending article onto the counter, Chris had to agree. The rest of her life might be orderly and organized. Her purse took care of all overflow. Crammed with everything from airline tickets to screwdrivers, it was the size of a Voltzwagen and twice as heavy. Useful for survival in airports and defense on dark streets.
    "Well, congratulations," she admitted, pulling off the scarf and stuffing it in with the revision notes she had to take to a phone and the other outfit she was going to change into at the store, "you have better eyesight than half the town."
    Luella just snorted. "Half the town don't pay attention. The rest pay too much."
    "One of my victims this morning was the new chief," Chris announced slyly, knowing perfectly well that her statement would lead the group onto the subject she wanted.
    It did.
    "Well, I'm not sure," Luella said as she imparted another dose of caffeine with the information Chris had casually requested, "but what I hear is that he was in a gunfight with a drug ring up in Chicago. Almost died. Can't hardly be surprised, considerin' the size of that scar."
    "Weren't no drug dealer," Paulie Twill protested from the next stool over. "Gang fight. Chief stopped it single-handed after his partner was killed."
    "Well, Eldon told me," Pete Chitwell said, resetting his feed cap on thinning red hair and nodding his head decisively, "and he should know, bein' as how he's the sheriff, that it was a Mafia guy. Had a hit out on the chief for him testifyin' at a trial. That's why it ain't safe for him to be in Chicago no more."
    Luella snorted. "If the Mafia can find him in Chicago, what's to say they can't find him in Pyrite?"
    Pete swung his fork in Chris's direction. "Nobody's found C. J. Turner yet, have they?"
    "Yeah, but she's usin' a different name. He isn't."
    Which left Chris with the realization that she should have known better than to go to the town grapevine for accurate information. A serial killer was after her, and the new police chief was running from the Godfather. If life were really that interesting, she wouldn't have to write books.
    "I heard it was just another senseless bowling ball accident," came a new voice from the doorway.
    Chris turned to find Sue Clarkson sauntering in for her pre-work breakfast. The only reason anybody knew Sue's last name was that she was married to the town's general practitioner, a tall, slow-moving, good-looking ex-jock who liked his fishing and loved his wife. Even though the two of them had only relocated to Pyrite from St. Louis five or six years ago, they'd so ingrained themselves into the fabric of the town that people almost considered them natives. Especially Sue, whose success at her job was measured by the fact that instead of being known as Dr. Clarkson's wife, she was simply referred to as "Sue-Who-Runs-City-Hall."
    Chris was glad to see her. Sue was her sanity in the small town, a dry dose of common sense that helped keep the rest of her life in proportion. Sue and Tom were also the basis for some of Chris's most profitable writing, but they never had a clue, and she hoped to keep it that way.
    "Well now, you should know, Sue," Luella spoke up, already setting out coffee and juice for the tiny blonde woman, who hopped up on the stool and set down the brace of romance books she always brought to enjoy with her breakfast. "Just how did the chief come by that scar?"
    "Shaving accident," Sue informed them all and attacked her coffee. Sue was also the repository for most of the town's better—and better-kept—secrets.
    Chris couldn't help a smile, already feeling saner. The sun was up, the world of Pyrite went comfortably on, and Sue was here to sow normality like pumpkin seeds. In the daylight, Chris was always vaguely ashamed of her phobias. In the daylight, she couldn't