Fashion Faux Paw Read Online Free Page B

EpiPen. After pulling it out, she hiked the bag over her shoulder and shot back to the stage.

Chapter 2

    “I can’t believe this is happening to us again,” Rudy groused while sitting at Ellie’s feet. “We must have a sign hangin’ over our heads. Somethin’ like ‘They’re here. It’s time to kill somebody.’”
    Sitting on one of the chairs between the water cooler and the food table, Ellie scanned the canine corner. The forensic team was still collecting and labeling everything that had been on the table and under it when the show started. The models had been released from questioning, as well as the designers, and the detectives on the case were finishing up with anyone who’d worked behind the scenes, including the makeup artists and hairstylists.
    She’d been told to sit and wait. The man in charge would get to her soon enough.
    “I think that’s a bit of a stretch. We don’t have that kind of power, nor do we want it.” Ellie ended the comment with a sigh. She was beat, but she had sat through enough of these murder cleanup sessions to know the cops would take their time to do it right, no matter whom they inconvenienced.
    Rudy jumped on the chair to her right. “Then we must have some bad karma workin’ our lives.”
    “You’re starting to sound like Viv’s sister and her astrology predictions,” she said, remembering the detailed chart she’d received from Arlene Millman after she’d exposed the person who killed her sleazeball fiancé. She’d been thinking about the chart since Lilah had been pronounced dead on the stage, and had made a decision. “I believe these murders we keep stepping into are accidental. There hasn’t been a thing we could do to stop them, yet we end up finding the killer. It’s our destiny.”
    Rudy gruffed a laugh. “Isn’t destiny the same as karma?”
    Ellie shrugged. “I guess, so that’s probably the way I’ll have to look at it. I don’t think we have another choice.”
    “How about you try tellin’ that one to Detective Demento, and see what he has to say.”
    “Let’s keep the idea between the two of us, shall we?”
    She was happy that Sam and his partner, Vince, hadn’t been called to this case. Sam was going to blow a gasket when he found out she was involved in another murder, even if she really wasn’t. “It’s going to be difficult enough when he finds out this happened while I was here. And when he learns that I was the last person to come in contact with the body before . . . Well, I don’t even want to think about it.”
    Ellie would never forget touching Lilah’s clammy skin and sticking the EpiPen needle in her thigh. Unfortunately, by the time the EMTs in the emergency van stationed outside the event had pushed their way through the crowd and done their best to revive the designer, she was gone.
    After they’d officially declared Lilah dead, they asked Ellie questions. That’s when she found out the EpiPen she’d pulled from Lilah’s bag was a blank. And when she’d told the EMTs Lilah had made a huge deal out of her allergy, they had called the medical examiner and the police. According to them, it was rare for anyone with an allergy as serious as Lilah’s to be caught with an empty EpiPen and no backup.
    It was then she learned that the pens usually came in a box of two, and people with a severe allergy took pains to carry a full load. In fact, these days the pens were used for so many types of allergies that even the ME, a guy named Steve Bauman, was surprised no one in the audience had responded to the emcee’s plaintive request.
    The thought that she’d been unable to help Lilah made Ellie’s stomach churn. Though she couldn’t be blamed for killing the designer, she felt responsible for using an empty pen. If she’d known it was already discharged, she might have been able to do more to locate another one.
    While she continued to stew over the tragic event, one of the women from the forensic team, a blonde