Elaine Viets & Victoria Laurie, Nancy Martin, Denise Swanson - Drop-Dead Blonde (v5.0) (pdf) by Unknown (best classic books .TXT) 📗

89 90 Excerpt from Cross You Heart And Hope to Die slipped on a pair of Chanel boots, and headed out for an evening that promised to be legendary. It was go, or lose my job.

And oh, baby, I needed the job.

I applied lipstick and three coats of mascara while my sister drove int Philadelphia. Michael had other business to tend, so I'd called Libby to go with me. On the way, she told me about her new business venture.

``Donald Trump says a successful entrepreneur has to be passionate about what she does,'' she informed me as she fearlessly drove her minivan through the snow.

``What does that mean?''

``So I found my passion. My greatest wish is to electrify the romantic relationships of everyone I know.''

``Electrify? Sounds like you're selling vibrators.''

``At Potions and Passions, we call them intimacy aids.''

I nearly scratched my cornea with the mascara wand. ``You're kidding, right?''

``Adult products are a booming business! I'm an official Potions and Passions consultant now. I get my first ship- ment of sex toys this week. Except we're supposed to say erotic enhancements.'' With a charmingly demented smile, she asked, ``Don't you want to know what the buzz is about?''

While she laughed, full of delight and adventure, I said, ``Libby, why couldn't you pay off your Christmas debt by going to work as a telemarketer or something? You could sell lawn mowers to bedouins!''

``I'm not passionate about lawn mowers. I am passionate about sex.''

For Libby, the path to self-fulfillment was a long, winding highway with many roadside attractions. Still a few years shy of forty, she visited the graves of two husbands and at least one ``very dear friend.'' Before her children were born, Libby had been a rising painter, not to mention a founding member of the local erotic yoga society. But now- adays she was always flinging herself into diversionary pit stops that sometimes made me long to strangle her.

``Anyway,'' she said, ``I need to make a living. I hate being penniless, don't you?'' Poverty was new to both my sisters and me. Groomed for debutante balls and advantageous marriages, we had been Excerpt from Cross You Heart And Hope to Die 91 badly burned when our parents lit a match to the Blackbird family fortune. They spent our trust funds faster than drunken lottery winners could buy a fleet of Cadillacs, then ran off to South America to practice the nuances of the tango.

Mama and Daddy left me to cope with Blackbird Farm-- a difficult challenge in itself with its crumbling roof and ancient plumbing. But the $2 million debt of back taxes really threw me for a loop. Maybe it's an old-fashioned notion, but I couldn't let the family legacy be bulldozed to make room for a Wal-Mart, so I sold everything I could to start a tax repayment plan, and then I ventured gamely into the world of employment for the first time in my life.

Okay, so I hadn't been reduced to eating out of Dumps- ters, but my lifestyle went from frocks and rocks to maca- roni and cheese in a hurry. I had to get a job. My blue- blooded ancestors were probably rolling over in the Black- bird mausoleum, but now when Kitty Keough, the society columnist for the Philadelphia Intelligencer, called, I came running.

``Why can't Kitty go to this big-deal fashion show her- self?'' Libby asked. ``It's just her kind of thing, right? Fa- mous people sucking up and free goody bags, too? Why send her assistant instead?''

``I don't know. She didn't say. It's probably part of her plot to get me fired. But I have to go, don't I?'' I tucked and the mascara back in Libby's handbag and checked my watch. ``And it starts in ten minutes.''

``We'll get there,'' Libby promised, and she floored the accelerator of her minivan. KILLER BLONDE

A DEAD-END JOB MYSTERY

ELAINE VIETS Chapter 1

``Some women are born blond,'' Margery Flax said. ``Some achieve it. Being blond doesn't have anything to do with your natural hair color. It's an attitude. A true blonde knows she can get away with murder.''

``Can she really?'' Helen Hawthorne said. ``Did you ever know a successful blond killer?''

``I knew one,'' Margery said. ``It was more than thirty years ago. It was a blonde-on-blonde crime. The blond killer was never caught. Her blond victim was never found.''

Helen, a brunette, was sitting out by the pool at the Co- ronado Tropic Apartments with her gray-haired landlady, Margery Flax. It was one of those soft south Florida twi- lights where women who've had a little wine tell each other secrets.

Helen would never have guessed that Margery knew an uncaught killer. But there was a lot she didn't know about her landlady. There were a few things Margery didn't know about her, either: Helen was on the run from the law in St. Louis. So far, the court hadn't found her.

South Florida was a good place to hide. Helen wondered how many lawless types like herself were sitting out by their pools tonight, sipping wine.

She couldn't answer that question, so Helen concentrated on what she did know about Margery. Her landlady was seventy-six, she loved purple, and she smoked Marlboros.

Now Margery seemed ready to reveal something from her past. She poured them both more white wine from the box on the patio table and set fire to another cigarette. Her lighter flared yellow, then her cigarette tip glowed orange

95 96 Elaine Viets in the deepening dark. It was oddly comforting, perhaps because it was unchanging. Margery's smoking ritual would have had the same flare and glow in the last century.

``Keep in mind this happened some thirty-five years ago,'' Margery said. ``America was a different country. Nixon was president. We were still in Vietnam. There were riots and protest marches. But the summer of love was