Lavender Lies Read Online Free

cleared off several large building sites on the slope of Lookout Mountain without paying any attention to erosion control. He hasn’t sold the lots yet, and every time it rains, another piece of the hillside slides down.”
    “Ah,” the Whiz said wisely. “So it was the Sierra Club that offed him.”
    “Or Greenpeace,” Ruby said in a serious tone. “If you ask me, somebody took out a contract on him.” At my skeptical look, she added, heatedly, “Well, it happens. People hire hit men all the time. And don’t tell me I ought to feel sorry for that jerk. I don’t, not one bit.”
    “Letty Coleman is the one I feel sorry for,” I said. “She’s nothing like her husband.” I turned to Sheila. “McQuaid didn’t know about Coleman’s murder when he went to work this morning, so it must have just happened. I wonder how Hark got it into the paper so fast—and how he got that headline past Arlene and her red pencil.”
    The Whiz looked at the headline. “What’s wrong with it?”
    Ruby laughed. “Three things. ‘Dead,’ ‘bloody,’ and ‘murder.’ Arlene wouldn’t approve.”
    “That’s the old Arlene,” I said. “Now that it’s her turn to worry about the bottom line, it’s a different newspaper.”
    When Arlene Seidensticker took over the weekly Enterprise from her father, Arnold, she turned it into a daily. Arnold’s idea of hard copy was the police blotter at the bottom of page 20, which reported such criminal events as old Mr. Spitzer getting picked up for drunk and disorderly again, or Mrs. Sampson’s goats jumping their fence and terrorizing the neighborhood. If you wanted the nitty-gritty details of the $200,000 embezzlement in the Adams County Hospital accounting office or the assault on the ten-year-old girl who was on her way home from choir practice, you had to catch it on the local grapevine. It wasn’t that we didn’t have crime in Pecan Springs—it was just that Arnold Seidensticker didn’t believe in telling anybody about it. Traditionally, Pecan Springs washed its dirty laundry in secret, and it was clean and sweet-smelling by the time the Enterprise hung it out to dry. The times are changing, though. For better or worse, Arlene’s daily is tougher, grittier, and does a better job of covering the news than her father’s old weekly.
    “Coleman’s wife found the body about seven this morning,” Sheila said. “Hark was driving past the house when the first police car showed up. He got to see the crime scene before they closed it off.”
    Hark Hibler is the latest in Ruby’s long string of boyfriends. I like him very much, although I’m not sure the two of them are a good match. Ruby is wonderfully wild and exotic, like eating mango ice cream naked between satin sheets. Hark is down-home Texas, chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and canned green beans. Separately, they’re fine. Together ... well, it’s a weird combination.
    The Whiz took her feet off the porch rail. “Who dun-nit?” she asked. “Any arrests yet?”
    “I have no idea,” Sheila said. “China will have to ask McQuaid.”
    “Sure,” I said amiably. “I’ll snoop around and get the lowdown for you. Then the next time you run into a Council member, you can casually toss out some of the details of the investigation, thereby appearing to have an inside track and enhancing your chances of—”
    Sheila bopped my shoulder with her fist. She does weight training, and her bop was not gentle.
    “Okay.” I rubbed my shoulder. “You can appear ignorant and uninformed and blow your chance at the job. But Howard Cosell will still love you.”
    “Personally, I like the idea, Sheila.” Ruby began to braid another lavender heart. “Why don’t you volunteer to help with the investigation? The Council will see what you can do, and the turkeys who keep saying women don’t have what it takes will have to eat shit and die.”
    “Absolutely not,” Sheila said firmly. “This is McQuaid’s case, and he