The Deadliest Option by Annette Meyers Read Free Book Online

Wetzon’s Perrier, and was out the door before Wetzon could close her astonished mouth.
    “Shit!” Wetzon said to the empty room, to the Andy Warhol drawing of the roll of dollar bills that they had bought when they first went into business together, to Smith’s desk with its clutter of papers and personal items. She took two plastic plates and two plastic cups from the utility cabinet in their bathroom and joined Smith in the warm benevolence of their garden.
    “Now, isn’t this nice?” Smith said, as if it were all her idea. She’d pulled one of the iron chairs out into full sunlight and was using her reflector. Already her lovely olive tones were shading to a luminous bronze.
    Wetzon looked at her enviously. The sun was an anathema to her own pale skin, and she used sun block creams all year round, wearing a hat as soon as the first glimmer of spring sunshine appeared. Her friend Carlos said she had a hat fetish, which she did, having at least twenty-five or thirty hats in boxes, on hooks, and piled high on the old wooden hat block in her apartment.
    Smith opened the Diet Coke and the Perrier with a snap and poured with a champagne flourish. She smiled at Wetzon. “Pull your chair out and get some sun, for godsakes. You look all washed out, sugar.”
    Wetzon left her chair where it was, in partial shade, and sat down, feeling all at once angry and disgruntled. Somehow Smith had reversed moods with her.
    “Smith, I think we should talk about this mess you’ve gotten us into.”
    “What mess? Wetzon, please. After all this time, you still don’t understand this business the way I do. By investigating the murder—”
    “We have no credentials to do a murder investigation, Smith.” She shifted in her chair, beginning to sweat. It had gotten hot, just on the edge of downright uncomfortable.
    “Look at it this way. Whatever we find out, we can turn over to your precious police. But more important, we can insinuate ourselves into Luwisher Brothers. We’ll discover where all the bodies are buried and dig up so much dirt ...” She licked her lips suggestively. “It will lock us into the company for life.”
    “Smith! Goddammit, that’s blackmail.”
    “Wetzon, stop being so naive. This is business.” She took another big bite out of her sandwich. “Mmmm. Delish,” she mumbled, leaving considerable doubt in Wetzon’s mind whether she was talking about the situation or the sandwich. “Come on, you negative old drip, this’ll be fun—not to say lucrative.”
    “But we’ll be interfering in a murder investigation.”
    “How? Just tell me how. By asking a few questions, fishing around a little? How?”
    “Oh, I don’t know.” Wetzon gripped her sandwich and chicken salad oozed out of a torn space in the pita pocket.
    “So, we’re doing it. Okay?”
    “You’re too much for me. I don’t want to argue.” She found herself nibbling around the edges of her sandwich as if she were eating a melting Popsicle. “But I want you to promise me that if we get in the way, if the police tell us to back off, we will.” Silvestri would be furious with her—and this wasn’t even her fault. She had tried to stay out of it.
    Smith beamed. “Well, that’s easy to promise. Sweetie, I would never want us to—”
    “Oh, shut up, Smith.” Wetzon ate the rest of her sandwich feeling that in spite of herself, she’d been manipulated by Smith yet one more time. On the other hand, she was forced to admit, to herself only, that she found the situation they were in intriguing.
    Smith put down the reflector and looked hurt. “You don’t have to be so ungracious. I know you. If this had been your idea, you would be flaunting it. Besides, it sure didn’t look like murder to me. It was obviously a stroke.”
    “Now I take it you’re an expert in forensic medicine?”
    “Humpf. You know I have good instincts. Besides, the cards say—”
    “The cards say we should investigate a murder?”
    “Well, no, not