Lie Down with the Devil Read Online Free Page A

born and bred—I might have inferred from his last name, were far less apparent than his physical charms.
    I said, “I’d think she had a lot of company, Miss Franklin.”
    “Call me Jessie. Please.”
    Jessie Franklin had a killer dimple that dotted the right side of her face. She must have been an adorable child. Not quite as adorable as my adopted little sister, Paolina, but close.
    “So congratulations,” I said, checking the date on the invitation. “At least you haven’t married him yet.”
    She stared at her shoes. “I don’t know what to do. Time’s running out.”
    I glanced at the card again. The wedding was less than two weeks away.
    “You have no idea how much fuss there’s been.”
    Modern weddings being what they are, I probably didn’t. Me, I got married for the first and only time when I was nineteen in a simpler world. Me and the groom, a couple of witnesses, and my dying father to walk me down the aisle.
    “I don’t know what to do.” Jessie Franklin’s words came out in gulps, in fits and starts broken by sniffs and nose-blowing. “Everything’s all arranged. My mother—my mother will absolutely die if this doesn’tgo exactly the way she wants it to go. I mean, my dress, it’s gorgeous; it’s finally perfect. My mother made them change the hem three times. Three times! Everything has to be so perfect. I mean, she had a ft, arranging everything.”
    I held up the accusatory note. “Do you have any idea who sent this?”
    “No. Of course not. Absolutely not.”
    “How did you get it?”
    She stared at me blankly.
    “In the mail? Shoved under a door?”
    “I found it. In my purse.”
    “When?”
    “What’s today? Thursday? Oh my God, it’s Thursday night. Two days ago, and I still don’t know what to do.”
    I’ve shadowed bank presidents and suspected thieves. I’ve worked for defense lawyers and district attorneys. This was the first time I’d been approached by a bride-to-be.
    I sat back in my chair and toyed with a pencil. I have warm fuzzy feelings about brides. How can you not? Girls are raised to it, the big day, the ultimate dress, the dream-come-true event. Paolina talks about it:
happily ever after.
    I was a bride once. More to the point, I had been well on the way to becoming a bride again until Sam had learned he couldn’t reenter the country without being charged with murder. Although she was younger and a stranger, I felt an immediate bond with Jessica Franklin, a forged link. Here she was: another woman engaged to a man she wasn’t sure she could trust.
    I bit my lip. “You haven’t said anything to your mother?”
    “Like what? Like first of all, I’m living with my fiancé, which she doesn’t know at all, thinks I’m a virgin who’s never been kissed. Like— I wouldn’t know where to start. My mom and dad, they’re old-fashioned big-time and they think I’m living with a girlfriend and working hard every minute and no fooling around. If anybody found out, I’d die. I mean, I’d never hear the end of it, what a no-good dummy I am and what a mess I’ve made of my life. And if I don’t go through with the wedding, what then? No decent man will want me now, that’s what they’ll say, and all that crap, like it was the 1950s and people still went on dates and held hands in the moonlight. My mom, especially, she’d hit the roof.”
    “Would she cancel the wedding?”
    “If I asked her to, I suppose, but I’d never hear the end of it.”
    “Do you want her to cancel the wedding?”
    I watched Jessica Franklin closely. I’d heard of brides having last-minute regrets, wanting to call the whole thing off, but not having the nerve. Some catch the last-minute flu; a few make a run for it. I wondered if the note had been folded and placed in her handbag by none other than the bride herself. It was such a personal way of delivering bad news. If she hadn’t placed the accusation of infidelity in her own bag, I wondered whether she’d considered