No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 by Sara M. Barton Read Free Book Online

living with him, he wanted
me to visit his apartment in Manhattan. I told him I was never a
city girl. I had lived in Philadelphia while I was a student at
Pantheon College. Even though I had enjoyed my school days, I
wasn’t a fan of the hustle and bustle of high rises and cramped
buildings, crowded subway trains, or constant street traffic. I had
no intention of giving up my job at Dynamic Productions. What I
hadn’t told George was that I had invested a lot of my time and
money in the company over the years, and I wanted to be around to
see it pay off for me. It had been my lifeline after Kevin died,
and it looked like it would be again after the divorce.
    “We should live together,”
he announced over dinner at Le Rochet du Nuit.
    “It’s rather soon,” I had
replied.
    “When it’s right, you know
it. We make beautiful music together.”
    “I hardly know you,” I
pointed out to him over a plum galette for two.
    “How else will we ever find
out everything there is to know about each other unless we’re
always together?”
    George had showered me with
attention, constantly wanting to know the details of my life --
where I was born, what my parents were like, the family history,
the genealogy, even things like when Bosco and I bought the house
and how much we had paid. Looking back, I could see the reality. He
was trolling for the information that would unlock the gates of my
castle. I had been flattered by his intense interest in me,
mistaking it for love. How disappointing to learn the gazes we
exchanged were driven by his greed, his desire to steal what
mattered most to me. I felt even more the fool. Was I so hungry for
love and attention that I threw all caution to the wind? At least I
had the good sense to remember all the business lessons learned at
Bosco’s side. “Never mix business with pleasure,” had been a
constant phrase in his repertoire. “Business is business. It’s
about money.” At the time, I had viewed that as a cynical,
cold-hearted perspective on life, but it may yet turn out to be my
saving grace. At least I still had my investment in Dynamic
Productions.
    In all the time I had spent
with George, I had never been in his home or his car. When he moved
in with me, he announced that he had rented his Manhattan apartment
fully furnished, in order to avoid having to store his belongings.
He came with three suitcases of clothing, a laptop, and his cell
phone. As if he were only planning to stay a short while. As if he
were on a business trip.
    With my purchases in hand, I
now strolled back to work, preoccupied with the remembrance of that
auspicious start of my budding romance with George. I was missing
something, some clue that I should have caught, some little piece
of information that could now explain how I had lost my life to a
heel like George, but I just couldn’t seem to grab it when it came
close to the surface.
    The minute I was through the
front door, Gloria greeted me with phone messages that needed
immediate attention. I kept busy handling day-to-day tasks. By one
thirty, I was ready for some lunch. We sent out for food, so we
could have a group meeting, to discuss several upcoming
projects.
    Ralph was out most of the
afternoon on a video shot for a well-known medical center with Dom
and a couple of college interns working for us for the summer. The
three students were getting credit for learning the ins and outs of
video production. At quarter to five, I took the daily notes and
put them on Ralph’s desk. His normally tidy desk was loaded with
paperwork. Afraid that the material would get mixed up with his
mail, the monthly billing reports and the storyboards for a few
planned commercials, I stacked my pile on the chair in front of his
desk, and as I did, my eye caught sight of something that startled
me. It was the envelope sitting on top of the day’s mail in his
“in” box, addressed to Ralph in a familiar hand. Why was George
sending Ralph mail?
    With a furtive glance