To Die For Read online

  “If you get tired during the day and want a nap, use this room,” she said, showing me into a bedroom with polished hardwood floors, mauve paint on the walls, and a four-poster bed with a mattress that looked like a cloud. “It has it’s own bathroom.”

  About that time she noticed the way I was cradling my arm, which was still throbbing from the jarring it took. “I bet your arm will feel better if it’s supported in a sling. I have the perfect thing for it.”

  She went to her bedroom—done in shades of white—and returned with a beautiful soft blue shawl. She folded it and fashioned a very comfortable sling for me, which did indeed take some of the stress off the stitches.

  I was certain I was hindering her, getting in the way of her normal routine, but she seemed happy to have my company and chattered away. We watched television some, read some. I called Mom and talked to her, and told her what Dad had done. That would fix him. After lunch I did get tired, and went upstairs for a nap.

  “Wyatt called to check on you,” Mrs. Bloodsworth said when I woke an hour later and came back downstairs. “He was worried when I told him you were lying down. He said you had a fever last night.”

  “That’s normal after you get a wound, and it was just high enough to make me uncomfortable.”

  “I hate that, don’t you? It’s such a miserable feeling. But you aren’t feverish now?”

  “No, I was just tired.”

  While I’d been half-dozing, I’d been thinking about Nicole, and how Wyatt had brushed off my ideas about her murderer. Where did he get off, thinking he knew more about her than I did, just because he was a cop and could investigate people? He was wrong, and I knew it.

  I called my assistant manager, Lynn Hill, and got her at home. When she heard my voice she gasped. “Omigod, I heard you were shot! Is that true?”

  “Sort of. It kind of grazed my arm. I’m okay; I didn’t even have to stay overnight at the hospital. But I have to stay mostly out of sight until they catch the guy who murdered Nicole, and I’m ready for this to be over. If Great Bods reopens tomorrow morning, can you handle things?”

  “Sure, no problem. I can do everything except meet payroll.”

  “I’ll handle that, and get the checks to you. Listen—you talked to Nicole some.”

  “When I had to,” she said drily.

  I understood that completely. “Did she say anything about a special boyfriend?”

  “She was always making mysterious hints. My guess is she was running around with married men, because you know how she was. She always wanted what some other woman had. She wouldn’t have been interested in some single guy, other than as a temporary boost to her ego. You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but she was a piece of work.”

  “Married men. That makes perfect sense,” I said, and it did. Lynn had nailed Nicole’s personality.

  I said good-bye, and called Wyatt’s cell phone. He answered immediately, not even saying hello. “Is something wrong?”

  “Do you mean other than being shot and someone trying to kill me? Not really.” How could I have resisted that line? “Anyway, I checked out something and the word is Nicole was seeing a married man.”

  He paused. “I thought I told you to stay out of police business.” There was an edge of anger to his voice.

  “Kind of hard to, in this situation. Are you going to be so stubborn you aren’t going to check this out?”

  “You didn’t leave the house, did you?” He didn’t answer my question, instead asking one of his own.

  “No, of course not. I’m still tucked away nice and safe.”

  “Good. Stay there. And, yes, I will have this checked out.”

  “It isn’t exactly something the guy will admit to, running around on his wife. Want me to try finding out—”

  “No! No. I want you to do nothing, understand? Let us handle the investigations. You’ve already been shot once, wasn’t that enough?” He hung up.

  He hadn’t exactly been gracious about my pointer. Okay, so he was worried something else would happen to me, and I wasn’t crazy about the idea of putting myself in danger, either. But I could call people, couldn’t I? I was using my cell phone, so there was no way I could give away my location. The ordinary person didn’t have cell-phone tracing capabilities.

  And if you can’t win one battle, go find a battle you can win.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  Belatedly it occurred to me that the detectives had already questioned all my employees, so Lynn should have already told them her married-man theory. In that case, had Wyatt been trying to spare my feelings by saying he’d have it checked out? Oh, that was galling.

  I called Lynn back. “What you said about Nicole seeing married men, did you tell that to the police?”

  “Well, no,” she admitted. “For one thing, I don’t know anything; I’m just saying she’s the type. Actually, what the detective asked was if I knew who she had been seeing, romantically speaking, and I said no, because I don’t. He didn’t chat and say, hey, was she likely to do this or this, you know? But I was thinking about it later, and that’s when it hit me that she was always flirting with the married guys at Great Bods, you know, and while she came on to every man breathing, there was still something about the way she went after the married ones. You saw her in action; you know what I’m talking about.”

  I knew exactly. Nicole had been forever touching, whether it was to ostensibly straighten a collar or a pat on the arm or an arm around the waist as she walked beside a guy—touching. Men aren’t stupid; they knew exactly what she was offering. The smart ones had maybe been flattered, but they hadn’t been hooked. The ones who weren’t so smart, or who were sleazeballs, had responded, so you just knew there was contact going on away from Great Bods. Once she bagged a guy, though, Nicole had always been ready to move on.

  “Did you notice any one guy in particular who paid a lot of attention to her?” I asked Lynn because at Great Bods I was tied up doing office work a lot, so she saw more than I did. “It would also be great if you knew what color car he drives.”

  “Let me think. No one recently, because it’s been mostly our regulars and they were wise to her. A couple of months ago I did spot Nicole coming out of the men’s bathroom, looking so smug I just wanted to bitch-slap her, and a few minutes later one of the guys came out, so I figure they were getting it on in the john.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I shrieked. “I’d have tossed her ass out right then!”

  “You could do that? For doing it in the john?”

  “She was in the men’s john. I’m surprised they didn’t get caught.”

  “I doubt she would have cared. They were probably in a stall. Maybe she was giving him a blow job, but that wasn’t her style, either. At a guess, I’d say she did all the taking and none of the giving.”

  “Do you remember the man’s name?”

  “Not offhand. He didn’t come often, and I don’t think he’s been in at all since then. He wasn’t one of the regulars; he paid for a month and worked out a couple of times, then didn’t renew. I’d recognize his name if I saw it, though. Do you keep a separate file on the ones who didn’t renew?”

  “Not a paper one. He’d be in the computer, though. Do you have any plans for the rest of the day? I’m going to put a call in to the cops”—my cop, specifically—“and they might want you to meet them at Great Bods to go through the computer files.”

  “No, I’ll be around. If I do happen to be out, you can catch me on the cell phone.”

  “Okay. I’ll get back to you.”

  “That sounded interesting,” Mrs. Bloodsworth said, her green eyes bright with interest. She didn’t bother to pretend that she hadn’t been eavesdropping. After all, I was sitting in the same room with her.

  “I hope so. Now, if Wyatt just won’t hang up on me again—”

  “He hung up on you?” Now the green eyes fired. “I taught him better manners than that. Let me drop a little word in h