To Die For by Kathy Braidhill Read Free Book Online Page A

stop Dana from putting her own hands around June’s neck and strangling her face-to-face, sealing off her windpipe as June lost consciousness.
    Dana pulled over a heavy wood chair, the match to the ottoman. One end of the curly cord was around June’s neck. Dana threaded the other end of the phone cord around an arm of the chair, linking June’s tethered neck directly to the chair, then tilted the chair back as leverage to keep constant pressure on the cord. Quickly scanning the area, Dana found a heavy glass wine decanter in the kitchen. She walked a few strides to the kitchen to retrieve it and came back to where June struggled vainly under the chair. She had awakened and was moaning softly and barely moving. Dana flipped June onto her back and stood behind her, close to her head.
    How can you be pulling that kind of shit when you’re supposed to be a friend of the family? I’m real fragile right now.
    In less than a minute, June was no longer moving.
    Dana left the way she came in, pausing to rifle credit cards from June’s purse on top of the dryer. She tossed aside the JCPenney and the Broadway cards and chose the Mervyn’s and Visa charge cards. She stuck both cards in her own purse and returned to the little boy still strapped in the Cadillac’s front seat.
    â€œHey, Jason! Let’s go shopping!”
    *   *   *
    Forty-five minutes later, Dana sipped iced tea and puffed on a cigarette at Baily’s Wine Country Café in an upscale shopping center in Temecula, frowning her annoyance at the small boy running around the al fresco dining area. She ordered without looking at the menu and snapped at the waiter. She charged the scampi, crab cakes and cheesecake to June’s credit card. It was too much to eat, so the waiter packed up the rest to go.
    The next stop was for an eyebrow and moustache wax and a perm for herself, and a fashionable step-cut haircut for the boy. Signing the $164.76 charge “June Roberts,” she cheerfully bragged to her stylist that she was going on a “shopping spree.” At West Dallas, an upscale leather goods store, she spent $511 on a black, fringed leather jacket and red, yellow and black cowboy boots. She wore the red boots out of the store. Thirteen minutes later, she was Temecula’s Jewelry Mart, signing June Roberts’ name on a credit card charge for $161 diamond-and-sapphire drop earrings. Swinging through Mervyn’s, a popular chain department store, she moved quickly, gathering up a dozen pairs of Jockey women’s underwear, and three pairs of children’s shoes for the young boy, $167.96; five pairs of boys’ jeans and Levi’s, eight shirts and a handful of boys’ socks and undies, $240.80; and a set of new sheets, $40.93—all charged to June.
    On the way home, Dana stopped by Sav-On to pick up Tootsie Rolls and Skittles, orange-flavored Gatorade, rawhide dog treats, dog biscuits and dog shampoo, two cartons of Marlboro Lights and two 1.75 bottles of Smirnoff vodka. Wedged into the cart was a purple boogie board, a short, Styrofoam board used for body surfing. Headed for the check-out counter, she paused by the toy aisle and tossed a $5.99 toy police helicopter into her shopping basket. Dana signed June’s name on the $74.62 charge slip.
    As Dana and Jason shopped, June’s canasta partners waited for a while, then played without her, wondering why she hadn’t called. Edna had tried in vain to reach June to give her the name and phone number of her insurance agent.
    After a busy afternoon of shopping, Dana got on the freeway and took the exit leading to an unincorporated area of Lake Elsinore. She steered the big Cadillac past a run-down liquor store, with bars on the window and graffiti on the concrete block walls, and an auto parts store, with cracks in the parking lot big enough for knee-high weeds to grow. In this neighborhood, there were no manicured lawns, no curbs,