Murder by the Slice by Livia J. Washburn Read Free Book Online Page A

you don’t have to apologize. Joel is so obnoxious he practically shouts it from the rooftops. Can you believe he wanted to skip some of his child support payments just because he spent too much money remodeling his office? He promised he would catch up later, but that doesn’t do Becca any good now, does it?”
    “Becca is your daughter?” Phyllis asked, hoping that would get Shannon off the subject of her hostility toward her ex-husband.
    “That’s right. She’s in the fourth grade at Loving.” Shannon glanced in Phyllis’s cart. “I see you have bananas. Are you going to use them in the snack you plan to make for the contest?”
    Phyllis gave a guilty little start. She had hesitated when she passed the bananas, but after a moment she had finally given in to temptation and put them in her cart. She already had peanut butter, oatmeal, and applesauce at home. The recipe idea still lingered in the back of her mind, intriguing her with its possibilities. But she wasn’t going to enter it in the contest. She had told Carolyn that she wouldn’t.
    She said, “Actually, I don’t think I’ll be competing—”
    “What? But you have to! It was your recipe that won everyone over to Mrs. Wilbarger’s idea. It really has to be in the contest.” Shannon got a determined look on her face. “I insist.”
    Phyllis didn’t know what to say. She didn’t like being browbeaten, and she had given her word to Carolyn, but Shannon was forceful and clearly accustomed to having people go along with what she wanted.
    And the recipe would make a fine healthy snack, too. Good, and good for you, as Carolyn had said.
    Before Phyllis could decide what to do, she was distracted by a young man who had come up behind Shannon. He wore a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off to reveal several colorful tattoos, and he not only had rings through both earlobes, but his nose was pierced, too, with a silver stud on the left nostril. His head was shaved. Just the sight of him made Phyllis nervous.
    And then a surge of outright fear went through her as the young man’s hand reached out, straight toward the purse hanging from Shannon’s shoulder.

Chapter 6

    Phyllis opened her mouth to call out a warning to Shannon that the man was about to grab her purse, but before she could say anything, the young man said, “Hey, Mom, can I have a couple bucks? I want to go back to Mickey D’s and get something to eat.”
    Shannon turned her head to look at him, and the sharpness and impatience she had demonstrated during the meeting that morning were back again as she said, “You can have something to eat when we get home. Where did you wander off to, anyway?”
    The young man shrugged. “Went to look at the CDs.”
    “You didn’t take any of them, did you? I don’t want the alarm going off again when we leave the store.”
    “No,” he said sullenly. “I didn’t do anything. I just looked at them.”
    “Good.” Shannon glanced at Phyllis. Clearly, she didn’t want to introduce the young man to her, but she felt compelled to do so. “Mrs. Newsom, this is my son, Kirk.”
    Phyllis nodded. “Hello.”
    The young man returned a curt nod and said, ” ‘Sup.”
    Phyllis had watched enough TV to think about saying, Word, dawg, just to see what his reaction would be, but she thought better of it.
    Anyway, Kirk had already turned his attention back to his mother. “I just want to get some fries—”
    Shannon didn’t let him finish. “I already said no.”
    “Fine, whatever.” Kirk stuck his hands in the pockets of his tattered jeans and wandered on down the aisle.
    “I’m sorry about that,” Shannon said to Phyllis. “Obviously, I didn’t discipline Kirk enough when he was a child.”
    Phyllis remembered what Lindsey Gonzales had said that morning about Shannon having an older son from her first marriage. She hadn’t thought about the son being that old.
    “You don’t look old enough to have a grown child.”
    “I had Kirk when I was