Murder is a Girl's Best Friend Read Online Free Page A

general and the public at large. Orchid’s owner (yep!—the one and the same Oliver Rice Harrington) didn’t want the company’s “clean” feminine image sullied by DD ’s “dirty” (not to mention bloody ) concerns.
    When the elevator doors popped open, I lunged into the lobby and hurried down the black rubber runner leading across the marble floor to the row of revolving glass doors on the Third Avenue side of the building. I stepped into one of the doors and pushed my way through to the sidewalk. A wall of cold wet air slammed me in the face, and my eyelashes were immediately caked with snowflakes. The sidewalk had recently been shoveled—you could tell by the knee-high banks of snow at the curb—but the fast-falling flakes had already formed a crunchy new white carpet underfoot.
    Lowering my head against the oncoming snow, I clasped my collar close around my chin and forged down Third to the automat. The restaurant was just one block away from my office, but with my lungs in shock from the freezing cold, and my heart caught up in my throat the way it was, I felt like I was crossing the tundra.

    HORN & HARDART’S WAS CROWDED AS usual. It wasn’t yet noon, but lots of people were already sliding their lunch trays along the waist-high service railings, popping nickels into allotted coin slots, then opening the little chrome and glass doors of the individual food compartments to remove their chosen dishes. The line at the change-maker’s register was long, and quickly growing longer. It seemed that everybody in Manhattan—rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, weak or strong—liked to meet and eat at the automat, even during a snowstorm.
    I spotted an empty table for two and went to claim it. Taking the seat facing the door, I shrugged out of my coat and tucked it over the back of my chair. I removed my red beret, shook off the snow, and put it back on. Then I raked my eyes around the crowded room, looking for the total stranger who had been a friend of my husband’s—the man who could be bringing me a measure of peace and solace, or a load of sorrow and despair. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was ready (okay, resigned ) to meet both the past and the future head-on.
    I didn’t have to wait long. Within minutes, a medium-tall, well-built man wearing a brown felt fedora and a brown suede bomber jacket, carrying a shoebox tied with twine, pushed his way through the door and began shooting his eyes around the restaurant, from one corner of the dining room to the other, obviously looking for someone. And that someone was obviously me, since the minute he spotted my red beret, he snapped to attention. He lowered his bright blue eyes to my brown ones, then strode over to my table—our table—with the energy of a man on a mission.
    “Paige?” he said. “Is that you?” His lean, clean-shaven face was burning with curiosity. And such a fiery intensity I wanted to back away from the heat.
    “Terence?” I said. “Terence Catcher?” I didn’t stand up from the table. I was afraid if I tried to balance my jittery body on my numb, unsteady feet, they’d slip right out from under me, and I’d find myself flat on my back—or, worse, face down—on the speckled beige linoleum.
    “Terry,” he said, sitting down and placing the Thom McAn shoebox on the table. He reached his gloved hand across the table and grabbed hold of mine. “Please call me Terry. ”
    “Okay, Terry” I said, removing my fingers from his leathery grip. I peered into the depths of his big blue eyes, searching for some clue to his character, but all I could see was a keen, penetrating intelligence. And pain. A truckload of pain.
    Terry returned my stare, then gave me a thin, crooked smile. “You’re even more beautiful than Bob said you were.”
    “Thank you,” I said, quickly lowering my gaze to the tabletop. If the blazing temperature of my cheeks was any indication of reality, my face had turned as red as my beret.
    (I’m what you