Death by Marriage Read Online Free Page B

screamed and fell sobbing into her husband’s arms. Another frantic tinkle of glass as Crystal and Miss Letty erupted through the bead curtain, their eyes darting in a frantic arc around the shop. Bemused, I stood like an idiot—later, I’d attribute my failure to act to sleep deprivation—and watched the action like a couch potato absorbed in a game show.
    Royal Willie was off and running, his goal much more enticing than the dog track’s mechanical rabbit. Evidently, Artemis had sneaked through the front door with the latest customers, a not unusual occurrence as the oversize orange cat enjoyed passing his days sleeping in the comfort of DreamWear’s air-conditioning. Artemis, terror of the local dog population as well as cats, squirrels, rats, and mice, had met few serious challenges in his time. Royal Willie, prince of the dog track, was definitely one of them.
    Artemis outpaced Royal Willie until he hit the low wall bordering the front window display. He bounced straight up, headed for the side wall rack and raced toward the back. Sensing that Royal Willie was about to catch the rabbit for the first time in his illustrious career, Artemis made a leap for the orange-fur body of the lion and clawed his way to the upper shelf. Where he crouched, rump in the air, wedged between the lion head and the tall white ears of the Easter Bunny, his tail bushed to twice its normal size, his teeth bared in triumph. With a long drawn-out Grrr-yee-oww-yee-oww-grr he offered a joyous challenge to Royal Willie who could only stand quivering below, offering frustrated yips.
    “Oh, Willie, how could you?” sobbed Miss Letty as one of my customers, younger and faster on his feet than most, solemnly handed her the greyhound’s leash.
    “It’s all right, Miss Letty,” I assured her. “No harm done. This was bound to happen sooner or later. I should put them both off limits, but I just don’t have the heart.”
    “But your beautiful costumes . . .”
    “They’re fine. Artemis’s orange fur blends right in with the lion.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Royal Willie’s captor turn away to hide his twitching lips.
    “Animals!” Evelyn huffed. “Come, Jeffrey. I’ll never find anything suitable in this madhouse.” The couple who had inadvertently let Artemis in, perhaps feeling guilty, followed them out.
    Our dear Miss Letty began to cry. “I’ll pay you for the lost sales, Gwyn. I’m so terribly sorry, my dear, I can’t imagine what got into Willie.”
    It took a while to convince her that no harm had been done. That, no, I would not take her money, absolutely not. Royal Willie was welcome any time. Well, perhaps next time his leash should be tied to something.
    Crystal, still murmuring words of sympathy and reassurance, escorted Miss Letty to the door. I turned to our sole remaining customer. Royal Willie’s captor—Boone Talbot, Chief of Police.

 
    Chapter 3
     
    I’d met Boone Talbot for the first time last night. Until now, the paths of DreamWear and the Golden Beach police might as well have been on two separate planets.
    Of course Talbot had been Chief of Police only three months. Many long-time residents of Golden Beach had wanted a nati ve son to replace our retiring c hief, and they mocked the youngish Deputy Chief from Grand Island, Nebraska, as having “corn husks behind his ears.” They also complained that the town council had somehow managed to hire a man from a state as far from a large body of water as it’s possible to get for Chief of Police in a town bordered on the west by the Gulf of Mexico and the Intracoastal Waterway and on the east by the Arcadia, a river officially designated by the state as “wild and scenic.”
    Of course, making fun of our new Chief was a handy tool for obscuring the fact that he’d been hired after an embarrassing accounting scandal rocked the reign of our blissfully entrenched Chief Brannigan. That’s right. Jeb Brannigan’s father. Small world.
    Chief