Love is Murder by Sandra Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

help!
    Dear God, why hadn’t she thought of that before now? Standing under the canopy over the building’s entrance so that she was temporarily out of the rain, she searched her pockets for her phone. Where was it? She usually kept it in her purse, but she hadn’t brought a purse with her. Had she left the phone back at her apartment?
    Olivia gazed through the heavy downpour and tried to figure out exactly where she was. If she was only a few blocks from her apartment, why was everything around her so unfamiliar? She couldn’t possibly have run far enough to have left her own neighborhood. The darkness combined with the rain made everything look different. That had to be what was wrong. In the daylight, with the sun shining, she would know exactly where she was. Her apartment was only blocks from downtown Florence, Alabama, and a stone’s throw from the UNA campus. Although it was the middle of the night, surely someone was out and about, someone would drive by soon, someone would hear her cries. But Florence was a typical small Southern city where on a weeknight most good folks were in bed this time of night, not out prowling the streets, not even the college students.
    Realizing how vulnerable she was there in front of the brightly lit building, Olivia ventured out into the rain. Her brisk walk turned into a slow run as she made her way up the sidewalk and turned onto a gloomy side street. Her gaze hampered by the relentless downpour, she didn’t see the sidewalk café until she stumbled over a metal chair. Barely managing to stay on her feet, she grabbed the back of the chair to steady herself. A twinkling neon light in the café window cast multicolored flashes of illumination across the sidewalk and the half-dozen black metal chairs and three small glass-and-metal tables.
    She had to stop. She couldn’t go any farther. Olivia chose a chair in the corner and dragged it to the most obscure area of the outdoor café that she could find. Halfway hidden behind a huge potted plant and partially sheltered by the building’s overhang, she slumped down into the chair. Bracing her elbows on her knees, she leaned over and supported her pounding head between her open palms. She massaged her throbbing temples with her fingertips.
    How had she gotten herself into such a horrible predicament? Olivia Lynn Warren had lived an uneventful, vanilla, white-bread life. A good girl from a good family, an honor student, graduated magna cum laude, paid her taxes, went to church, obeyed traffic laws, had never even gotten a speeding ticket.
    Cramps twisted her belly as nausea threatened. She needed a bathroom. She needed to rid her body of the poison. Unable to stop the flow of tears, her emotions raw, Olivia leaned her head back against the brick wall behind her and took several deep breaths. The nausea subsided, at least temporarily, and the gripping pain in her belly eased up enough so that she could bear it.
    Olivia tried to remember that night—weeks or months ago—when she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and witnessed a murder. From that moment on, her life had been an upside-down whirlwind of disaster, Jed Merrill the only good thing that had come out of so much bad. But now, Jed had turned against her. He had poisoned her.
    Why couldn’t she remember? Had the poison affected her brain?
    But she hadn’t forgotten everything. She remembered some things, mostly bits and pieces. And the things she did remember seemed to be all mixed up together, making it difficult for her to form a correct timeline.
    Olivia remembered Amber Carr. Amber had hired their decorating firm to redo her living room, dining room and perform an extensive kitchen remodel. Olivia had been fresh out of college, a first year resident with the firm, and eager to prove herself. From the moment Mrs. Carr had walked into Downtown Interiors and spotted Olivia, the two had hit it off like a house afire. Amber had been only a few years older than Olivia