Murphy's Law by Lisa Marie Rice Read Free Book Online Page A

were already setting the tables for lunch.
    A girl finds a dead body and she can’t even get a cup of coffee, she thought in disgust. Maybe if she begged.
    There were interesting plate-rattling sounds coming from the kitchen. She stuck her head into the spotless room where a chef was stirring something wonderfully savory in a pot and a waiter was chopping salad. They looked up.
    “Coffee?” she asked. “ Caffè ? Please?”
    Both men were extremely good-looking. The chef smiled and said, “ Sì, signorina .” He immediately put a moka maker on the gas stove.
    “ Grazie .” She was getting the hang of Italian. Having so many attractive males around was certainly an incentive. Any more thousand-watt smiles from dark, gorgeous faces and she’d be babbling.
    A few minutes later, the waiter walked out with a little tray and an espresso cup. Faith’s stomach growled in appreciation.
    A whiff of a cologne she didn’t recognize but probably cost more than she spent on underwear in a year, a flutter of an incredibly fine linen shirt, and Griffin Ball was sitting beside her, graciously accepting her coffee with a flirtatious smile at the handsome waiter.
    With a movement of his elegant hand he pointed at the cup, held up two fingers. “ Un altro caffè, per favore .”
    Trust him to speak Italian.
    He opened the small packet of sugar on the saucer, carefully poured about a third of it into his cup and stirred. Slim and elegant, he made sure he stayed that way. He leaned his perfectly coiffed head forward. “Is it true, Faith? The staff here is talking but it seems so—so unreal. Kane dead sounds…”
    “Too good to be true?”
    Grif hid his smile behind a genteel cough. He was from the south and had impeccable manners. He also had a wicked sense of humor, making his witty comments in a deep southern drawl. He was sharp, elegant and urbane. He was the ideal of a mathematician, except he had no talent. All of that had gone to Kane, who had been an animal.
    “So.” He leaned forward. “ Is it true, what they’re saying? Is he dead?”
    “Well,” she said, considering. “The last time I saw him he had a knife in his heart and he wasn’t breathing. Looked pretty dead to me.”
    Besides Tim Gresham, Grif was her only friend in the math department. Moreover, he understood her perfectly, always. Their eyes met and they looked away, both a second from grinning.
    In Faith’s case, it would have been a nervous tic of a grin, born of stress and fatigue.
    In Grif’s case, it would probably have been a grin of vindication. Kane had made Grif’s life miserable, too, though Grif wasn’t as powerless as she was. He came from a rich, well-connected southern family, and his partner, Carl, came from a rich, well-connected northern family.
    Carl’ s father had donated enough to Southbury to ensure that Griffin Ball, of the South Carolina Balls, be hired for a vacancy in the math faculty. Grif had little math talent, but was a superb administrator and personnel manager, human skills Roland Kane totally lacked. Kane had made Grif’s life miserable because that was his nature. But deep in the convoluted recesses of Kane’s mind there must have been some recognition of how much he relied on Grif’s people skills, because Grif’s job was secure, notwithstanding his second-rate skills as a mathematician.
    Actually, Faith thought in surprise, Grif was, as of now, de facto department head, something he always wanted. The administration had made no bones about the fact that it preferred dealing with him rather than Kane. Admin would undoubtedly confirm the posting as soon as they got home.
    Unless, of course, it was Grif who’d offed Kane in the first place.
    Could be.
    She watched him sipping his coffee— her coffee. He looked the way he always looked. Cool and elegant and together. From the top of his well-cut hair to the tips of his expensive loafers he looked like a successful academic, a man at the peak of his powers. But was