The Big Chili by Julia Buckley Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t believe for a second that she died of natural causes.”
    â€œI don’t think the police believe that, either, Hank. I think they’re on it, and they’ll determine what happened very soon.”
    He nodded again, and then asked, manlike, where the circuit box was. I directed him to the finished basement, and he disappeared. Curious, I wandered upstairs to find Tammy looking at herself in a three-way mirror. She was quite pretty; I could see why a man like Dixon would take the plunge with a younger woman if that younger woman was Tammy.
    She spied me and said, “Oh God, this place is perfect. It’s got such clean lines, such elegance. I want to throw parties in this house!”
    I thought of her boyfriend’s tired face. Then I noted an engagement ring on her left hand. “Oh, congratulations,” I said, pointing. “I didn’t realize you two were engaged.”
    She nodded. “For about a month now.” She looked behind me to see if anyone was in hearing distance, then lowered her voice. “Alice was quite a bitch about it when she heard we got engaged. She said Hank was being an old fool and that I was a money-hungry climber.”
    Tammy’s face still reflected the hurt she had felt at hearing those words. “Which, if you think about it, is an insult to Hank—as if I couldn’t find anything appealing about him but his money. Hank is a real catch. He’s got a beautiful soul.” She looked back at the mirror for a minute and removed a smudge of lipstick from the corner of her mouth. “Besides, Hank isn’t rich. He’s just well-to-do. And I didn’t know that when I started going out with him. I didn’t even know that he was in banking.”
    â€œI’m sure she was just shocked. Speaking out of jealousy or something.”
    Tammy sniffed. “She had her chance with him and made his life a living hell. I could tell you stories. . . .”
    I sort of wanted to hear them, but I heard the bell jingling downstairs, signaling another arrival. “Oh, shoot,” I said. “I’ve got more company.”
    She shrugged. “Well, another time I’ll tell you all about the precious Alice and what she was really like. To be honest, I dreaded the effect she was going to have on our marriage. She was always calling Hank, day and night, to ask advice, or get him to fix something at her house, or chat with him about some moldy old memory.”
    â€œSounds a little excessive.”
    â€œThank you!” she said, her green eyes wide. “The woman called practically every day. I told Hank she was trying to get him back, and he laughed and said that was ridiculous. Which it was, because Hank is in love with me.”
    And yet relationships could be very, very complicated. I knew from experience. . . .
    Tammy read my mind. “Oh, I know they had a history.But Alice was a witch.” She lowered her voice again and leaned toward me. “I’ll tell you, I know it’s a sin to be glad that someone dropped dead, but—”
    â€œMiss? Do you work here?” said a young man with a burst of blond hair and tanning-salon skin in telltale orange.
    â€œYes—oh—I’ll catch up with you later, Tammy.”
    She waved and headed toward the walk-in closet.
    I led the new visitor downstairs to my brochure pile and answered his questions; his companion, whose skin was an even deeper shade of orange, asked me if there was a deck for tanning and if there were tanning salons in the area—clearly the two questions that concern every prospective buyer. I led them out to the deck and left them to pace around, imagining future sunning sessions.
    By two o’clock my high heels were starting to pinch my toes, and I could feel some of the hair oozing out of the sweep I’d invented that morning, aiming for elegance. I slipped into one of the four bathrooms (two with bath) to