Rita Lakin_Gladdy Gold_01 Read Online Free Page B

in."
    "How can he do that?" Evvie asks. "You have to be pretty
stupid to let in someone you don't know."
    "Well, it happens all the time. My murder mysteries come
up with tons of different ways. A guy carrying flowers poses as a
delivery man. You'd open the door, wouldn't you? Or a telegram. Or
someone in a cop's uniform? Or someone says your kids were in an
accident and he's the good Samaritan they sent to get you. . . ."
    Ida and Evvie are silent for a moment. "I see what you
mean," Ida says. "Who'd ever question any of those?"
    I suddenly feel my blood run cold. "Is it possible," I
say, thinking about Selma yet again, "maybe it wasn't a heart attack or
an accident--?"
    "Hey, dolls! Up here!"
    Ida jumps, startled. We look up, to the second floor.
    And guess who? It's our favorite pain-in-the-ass, Hy
Binder, heading for the laundry room with a basket load of wash.
    "We almost got away," Evvie moans.
    "Didja hear this one?" he calls out to us. "What's the
difference between a wife and a girlfriend?" Not bothering to wait for
a response, he tells us. "Forty-five pounds."
    "Get lost, Hy," Ida yells.
    "What's it called when a woman is paralyzed from the
waist down?" Pause, then a guffaw. "Marriage!"
    There's no stopping him.
    Evvie shrieks at him. "Why don't you go soak your head in
the dryer?"
    "Don't you mean washer?" Ida asks.
    "Washer. Dryer. Who cares. Just get rid of him!"
    Evvie starts to get into the car. "I'd rather melt than
listen to his dreck!"
    "Wait, but didja hear what happened real early this
morning? No joke."
    Lola comes out of their apartment with another basket of
laundry. She continues it for Hy. "Guess who crazy Kronk got this time?"
    "Who, now?" Evvie asks, changing her mind about the car
in the face of a choice piece of gossip.
    Greta and Armand Kronk lived here for many years. She was
Spanish, he German. They hinted vaguely at being in "showbiz" and they
would have nothing to do with any of us, although one year they did
offer classes in flamenco. But they were so unpleasant, and their
prices so expensive, very few people took their classes. Eventually
Armand died and just about no one has seen Greta since. Food and liquor
are delivered to her door. Especially liquor. A few years ago she
started getting creepy, prowling the Dumpsters at night. First, she
would smear garbage all over people's cars and front doors. Then she
began scrawling juvenile kinds of poems on our front doors in
greasepaint. Very short. To the point. And scary in their accuracy. No
one can figure out how she knows so much about all of us. No one ever
admits how close she comes to nailing us.
    "The Muellers over us?" Hy comments. "I could hear them
early this morning when John went out to pick up the newspaper. He woke
us up with his yelling and Mary trying to quiet him. I looked out and
he was pounding on Kronk's door, screaming, daring she should come out.
So he can kill her!"
    By now the two prima donnas have managed to come
downstairs. And they want to know what's going on. Evvie shushes them.
    "Wow!" says Ida. "What did she write this time?"
    "Well, you wouldn't believe--" Lola begins.
    Hy interrupts. "He got some soap and wiped it off the
door real fast."
    Sophie, the queen of pastels, tugs on Evvie, insists on
knowing what she and Bella missed by being a teeny-weeny bit late.
Evvie, annoyed, fills her in quickly.
    "But before he finished wiping," Lola continues, "Mrs.
Feder already read what Greta wrote."
    "Wait just a minute," I say. "How did Esther Feder see
from across the way on the first floor at the other end of the building
to the Mueller's top floor at this end? What did she do, wheel her
chair down the sidewalk?"
    "She has binoculars," Hy announces, grinning. Hy is
really getting a charge out of all this. "Well, old Feder told her
darling Harriet. Harriet told Lola. Natch, Lola told me."
    "I can't believe nobody blabbed about it by the pool this
morning," Ida says, amazed.
    "Not in front of the Canadians," says