Not A Girl Detective by Susan Kandel Read Free Book Online

Then a photograph of a
    headless mannequin draped in fur.
    There was one more slide. I leaned my head back and
    peered at the tiny piece of film. The image was hard to see. It was black-and-white and very grainy. A painting.
    I looked at it more closely. A painting of a naked
    woman. A naked woman with pale skin, light eyes,
    wavy hair, and a knowing look.
    And a killer smile.
    It was the painting of Grace Horton I had just seen in Edgar Edwards’s blue bedroom.
    So where was Edgar Edwards?
    And where was Nancy Olsen?
    And what was Nancy Olsen doing with Edgar Ed-
    wards’s dirty picture of Nancy Drew?
    5
    Things can go from bad to worse faster than you
    might think.
    It started when I pulled into my driveway and almost
    flattened Buster.
    Luckily I saw him in time. I slammed on the brakes,
    tore out of the Caddy, and threw myself upon my en-
    tirely unfazed poodle, who endured my ministrations,
    then squirmed away to perform the life-affirming act of peeing on the grass. I was so discombobulated that I
    neglected to ask myself why Buster wasn’t inside the
    house where I’d left him. He wasn’t the vagabond sort.
    It was then that I noticed my front door was wide
    open.
    Now you might think a person would proceed with
    caution. Especially a person whose father was a cop,
    whose two brothers are cops, a person who is dating a cop. But you know what they say. Doctors make the
    worst patients. Trust me, it relates. In any case, Lois, my neighbor from three doors down, carrying a can of
    cat food, stopped me before I could barrel inside.
    44
    S U S A N
    K A N D E L
    “Poor Buster. I saw the whole thing. And good after-
    noon to you, birthday girl!”
    Lois and her twin sister, Marlene, known profession-
    ally as Jasmine and Hibiscus, had been showgirls way
    back around the dawn of time. They amused them-
    selves these days by tottering up and down the block in their scuffed pumps, tending to the neighborhood
    strays.
    “Buster is fine, but what do you mean, ‘birthday
    girl’? It’s not my birthday.”
    “Oh, Cece.” She tittered. “Getting old is a blessing.”
    “Lois,” I said, “my birthday is in October. What’s going on around here?”
    “Your friends came by at one.”
    “Lael and Bridget?”
    “No, no, your gentleman friends,” she said excitedly.
    “They were trying the back gate. They said they wanted to leave the lady of the house a surprise for her birthday. My hands were full”—she wagged a can of
    Friskies at me—“so I showed them the key you hide in
    the flowerpot.”
    “You what ?”
    “Then Marlene called on my cell phone and I had to
    go. They promised they’d lock up.”
    I didn’t wait for the rest. I scrambled up the steps and straight into the living room. Then I heard Lois hyper-ventilating behind me.
    “Oh, dear. They looked like such nice fellows.”
    Bad was Buster. This was worse.
    The green velvet couch was overturned. The chairs
    were pushed up against the wall. Tapes and CDs littered the floor. My flokati rug was bunched up in a heap, like N O T
    A
    G I R L
    D E T E C T I V E
    45
    a dead polar bear. The dining room was a disaster, too.
    The armoire had been ransacked and my faded Indian
    tablecloths from Pioneer Boulevard in Artesia (you
    take the 10 to the 5 to the 91, and in forty-five minutes you’d swear you were in New Delhi) had been tossed
    unceremoniously to the ground. At least they’d spared my wedding china—not the pattern I would’ve chosen,
    but my ex-mother-in-law was not to be swayed.
    The kitchen looked pretty much like I’d left it, which was a total mess, except that the dishwasher door was open. I noted some eggy crust clinging to the frying pan I’d wedged onto the top rack. Damn. That thing still
    wasn’t working. Ilya the repairman had been over three times in the last three weeks.
    “This is awful!” Lois wailed.
    Then I remembered my computer. I was terrible
    about backing things up. Things like my nearly com-
    pleted book on Carolyn