Killer Chameleon Read Online Free

was becoming fed up with the delays and had said more than once, “Much more of this and we’re eloping, babe.” I’d call him first thing. Well, second, after I’d gotten rid of the boots. My feet were killing me.
    I found a parking space on the side street and on my way to my building kept an eye out for the Reverend Mrs. Hansberry, a recent fixture on our corners. A pail dangling from her arm, she was collecting for presents for needy children in her neighborhood. Pure unadulterated guilt at having more than enough to keep body and soul together had kept me dropping loose change in the pail whenever I saw her. Relieved that she was nowhere in sight, I jogged to the door of my apartment building and lost no time crossing the lobby.
    Our Christmas tree was up, being decorated by the residents’ special events committee and their extended families, from the looks of it. I was in no mood to help. I smiled, waved, and thanked heaven I wouldn’t have to wait on the elevator. It opened immediately.
    I stepped off on the fifth floor to be greeted by the sight of a denim-clad rear end: Cholly, our apartment maintenance man, on his hands and knees in front of the door of the apartment I’d vacated some weeks ago, his backside twitching from side to side as he scrubbed a square foot of carpeting. He and his wife, Neva, our building manager, and now the proud residents of 502, had had no qualms about taking ownership after I’d jumped ship. In the first place, Neva, of Amazonian proportions, was great with child, and their former first-floor apartment had only one bedroom. The room I’d used as a den would be perfect for the new baby. In the second place, it would take more than the memory of the corpse I’d found in my kitchen to spook Neva.
    â€œHell, I didn’t know him,” she said. “Had no business being in here anyways. The nerve, using our—I mean, your—kitchen to light up marijuana like he was in his own personal smoking lounge or something. Glad it did him in.” She was still in a snit over the fact that he had managed to sneak into the building without her seeing him.
    Her first-floor unit had been ideal for keeping an eye on the front door and lobby, and for the most part she’d been a gatekeeper extraordinaire. It was the only thing she regretted about moving; she couldn’t monitor the comings and goings from up here. Word was she was pestering the management company for a closed-circuit camera outside the front entrance and a monitor to be installed in their new apartment. It would never happen, but I had to give her credit for trying.
    Cholly, peering back over his shoulder at me, sat on his haunches and scowled. “Hey, Miz Warren. Sometimes I think I oughta go into the carpet cleaning business.”
    Someone’s dog, no doubt with encouragement, had left a deposit at his door a couple of weeks before. Neva, unable to see her feet and anything else under her protruding midsection, had come out of the apartment and stepped four-square in the pile, leaving it well and truly ground into the nap of the carpet. The odor had been an intermittent problem ever since. And as there were at least nine tenants among the dog-walking set, Cholly had more than a few suspects to choose from.
    â€œAny luck finding the miscreant?” I asked him.
    A full set of wrinkles furrowed his brow, denoting confusion. “Miscreant? Never heard of that breed. Besides, most of the dogs in this building are mutts, ’cept for Miz Grady’s Shih Tzu. Good name for that little bugger. Couldn’t have been him, though. Miz Grady gave him to her daughter way before Halloween. But this here ain’t—”
    Neva chose that moment to open the door, probably to find out who her husband was talking to. Cholly was no prize but he was her prize, and she watched him like a hawk. Truly an odd couple, Neva hovered around the six-foot mark and flirted with