Pink Balloons and Other Deadly Things (Mystery Series - Book One) Read Online Free Page A

up a steady clientele.
    “You don’t understand, Meg. They think I did it.”
    “Oh, please. You couldn't kill those carpenter ants that were eating your house.”
    “Tell that to the police. That detective said I should call a lawyer.” I still owed money to Arthur Carboni, my divorce lawyer. The thought of having to hire another lawyer, a criminal lawyer, for God’s sake, nearly put me over the edge. “Where am I going to get money for a lawyer?”
    “He’s just trying to scare you.”
    “Well, he succeeded. I’m scared out of my gourd.”
    Solicitously she placed a cup of chamomile tea in front of me. “Drink. It'll soothe your nerves.”
    The first time Meg had served me chamomile tea she had just moved to town and was preparing for the grand opening of her shop. It was only a few weeks after Rich's precipitous departure.
    As I'd stood by our bed, stunned, watching him pack, Rich had announced he was going to move in with Erica for a while. “For a while,” as though he planned to give me another chance if she didn’t live up to expectations. He still loved me, he’d added kindly, but it was a “different” kind of love than he felt for Erica. He might even come back, but right now he needed time off. Time off? From what? Me? Marriage? Car pools?
    Just like that. Eighteen years. A marriage. Over. Not even a formal ritual, like walking around me seven times or tossing me back over the threshold.
    Weeks later I was still beating myself up, trying to figure out where I’d failed him. Whatever the reason, it no longer mattered. He was gone. Out of my life, and I couldn’t accept the awful reality of it. I knew I was making myself sick. I was down to ninety-nine pounds, my hair was falling out and I'd begun having heart palpitations. I was living proof of the message I used to give my clients at the biofeedback center—-your body believes everything you tell it. I was telling my body that my life wasn't worth living.
    That was my frame of mind when I happened to drive by Meg’s window display. I was passing through Piermont on my way to Nyack to check out office space when I began to feel dizzy and pulled over by Meg’s Place. There was a hole in my stomach the size of Alaska, and I decided to force myself to eat. I wandered into the shop.
    Meg was up on a ladder hanging a sepia blowup of an elegant sloop that looked like something out of another more romantic century. Her long red-gold hair was caught up in a ponytail, and the extra large “Save our Rainforests” T-shirt worn over baggy blue jeans couldn’t hide the fact that her figure was spectacular. When she pivoted on the ladder to say “Sorry, I'm not open yet,” I wasn't prepared for the face that peered down at me.
    Meg has the square chin of a photogenic model and skin so luminous it glows, but her most striking feature is her eyes. They’re large and almond shaped, almost Asian, but of a deep aqua-blue. I don’t believe I'd ever seen anyone off screen so stunning. I’ve been told I’m not bad looking myself—-at least, I wasn’t before I’d elected to go with the concentration camp look--but next to Meg I felt like the ugly duckling's twin sister. Not exactly what I needed on that particular day.
    I mumbled an apology, started backing out, and tripped over a wire. My head met the corner of a cabinet. The searing pain opened the floodgates. The next thing I knew, Meg was leaning over me, handing me a mug and murmuring, “Here, drink this. It’ll soothe your nerves.”
    We've been fast friends ever since.
    “You're always in your office until five on Saturdays,” Meg said. “I can testify to that.”
    I picked up the delicate porcelain mug and burned my throat downing the boiling liquid, on the off chance she might be right about the tranquilizing effects of herbal teas. “Not yesterday. My patient canceled. I was finished by three.”
    “Where’d you go after that?” She handed me one of her butter-drenched blueberry