Late Edition by Fern Michaels Read Free Book Online Page A

come up with something.”
    They spent the rest of the evening soothing Ida and preparing for their trip to Charleston. Toots called Abby, explaining to her that they were making an unscheduled trip back home. She told Abby that she was going to contact Chris about house-sitting the beach house while she and the godmothers were gone. But if for some reason she could not reach him before they left tomorrow, she would call Abby and ask her to contact Chris to see if he would mind house-sitting for a few weeks. Abby said she would be more than happy to take care of it, telling her not to worry, that she and Chris could handle things while she was gone. With nothing more to do than pack their bags, make a few phone calls to, among other things, arrange for a chartered flight back East, and try to drown out the events of the evening with a few stiff drinks and more than one pack of cigarettes, they called it a night.
    Tomorrow was another day.

Chapter 5
    I n spite of all the events of the evening, once the four friends had calmed down and gone to their separate rooms, Mavis couldn’t wait to boot up her computer and check for new orders, but she didn’t want what appeared to the others to be her odd behavior to arouse any more suspicion than it had already. Lately, Sophie had been giving her an eagle-eyed stare every time she saw her wearing dark colors. Unbeknownst to the others, Mavis had been working with a Web design company for the past couple of months, and her new Web site was up and running. A retired schoolteacher turned entrepreneur, or so she liked to think of herself, Mavis hoped she’d found a need that she could fill while making a little bit of extra money in the process. Though she received Social Security and a small pension from her years of teaching English, Mavis hated being so dependent on Toots for almost everything. She owed her life to Toots. Literally. It had been almost a year since Toots had sent her a plane ticket to visit her in Charleston.
    She had been a hundred pounds overweight and lonelier than she had wanted to admit. Mavis could never forget the shopping trip Toots had arranged for her when she arrived. Catherine, a petite woman who used to dress such stars as Doris Day, had a shop specifically intended to provide attractive clothes for plus-size women. Mavis fit the bill. The woman dressed her bulky frame, and once they’d landed in this wonderful land of movies, sunshine, and sand, Mavis had started dieting, because she knew her life depended on it. It had been close to a year, and she was one hundred pounds lighter and a perfect size eight. She had never intended to get into the fashion business. She’d been a high school English teacher her entire life. However, when she started losing weight, her clothes hung on her like a sheet. Handy with a needle and thread, Mavis took in her clothes; then, when she lost even more weight, she started remaking the clothes herself. Toots, ever the bearer of gifts, had bought her the best sewing machine on the market, and here she was, designing, making, and selling her new clothes over the Internet. Surprised at how much she enjoyed designing and creating eye-catching outfits, she beamed with every outfit she finished. They never failed to elicit a compliment from the girls. If, and it was a big if, her line of clothes was successful, she’d already made contact with a factory, and she’d even found a source of high-quality material that would put her mourning clothes right up there with those of some of the big-name designers. Ralph Lauren, Anne Klein, and Gloria Vanderbilt, watch out!
    She’d taken to reading the obituaries with her morning coffee after she decided a romance with George wasn’t what she wanted, especially knowing he needed that vacuum construction device, VCD, to have sex. Herbert, her dearly departed husband, had been her one true love. She wasn’t looking for a romance but tried to keep an