Too Pretty to Die Read Online Free Page A

covered by the society editor of the Park Cities Press , no less?
    I caught the crasher’s profile as she charged toward the living room, and a familiar name rose to my lips. I was sure I was wrong, until I heard the slurred voice as she howled, “You quack, you ruined my face!”
    Nope. I was right on the nose.
    Miranda DuBois, I knew without a doubt, co-anchor of the Channel 5 evening news, famous for her dimpled smile and ample cleavage; but, long before that, a classmate at Hockaday, one of the pageant girls I’d avoided like the plague. Not that she wasn’t nice enough, but it had always felt more like saccharine than sugar to me.
    “ Look at me . . . I’m a monster! My life is ruined !”
    By the sound of her raving, I guessed that the long-term effects of bleaching her hair had damaged her self-control.
    The woman was acting totally bonkers.
    “Oh, my, now this is what I call a story,” Janet murmured as she stepped around me to get a reporter’s eye view of the goings-on.
    Despite my best intentions, I followed in Janet’s wake, reaching the threshold of the living room in time to glimpse Miranda shaking her tiny black purse around the room and sputtering about exposing the truth and making them—whoever they were—pay for what they’d done.
    Once I got close enough, though, I saw that it was no clutch bag Miranda was jabbing in the air.
    In case my eyes weren’t to be trusted, my ears picked up the gasps of “She’s got a gun!” as the less-than-sober Ms. Miranda DuBois took aim at Delaney . . . then at the mustached blond dude who’d come with Dr. Sonja . . . and finally pointed the tiny pistol right at Dr. Sonja’s heart.
    The women started shrieking and dodging for cover in a blur of autumn-colored cashmere and wool.
    “Get down!” Janet cried, and grabbed my shoulder, pushing me toward the floor with her just before a shot rang out.

Chapter 2
    I f I’d been smart, I would’ve hightailed it out of Delaney’s place ASAPP (As Soon As Pistol Popped). No one would’ve thought less of me. Heck, no one would’ve noticed had I gone, since I’d hardly been the life of the Pretty Party.
    Only I didn’t do the wise thing. I did what I usually did: opened my mouth when I shouldn’t, raised my hand when I should’ve kept it firmly entrenched at my side, and generally played Dudley Do-right.
    Ugh.
    Which explained how I ended up driving a drunk and unhappy Miranda DuBois to her duplex après the fiasco at Dr. Sonja’s Botox bash.
    My buddy Janet Graham deserted me—and aborted our dinner plans for Bob’s Steak and Chop House—instead calling a cab and hightailing it to her Park Cities Press office. She had a juicy story to type up and was determined to get it into tomorrow’s edition. If she waited until morning, it would have to go in the second biweekly edition, not out for three days, and by then it would be old news.
    There was little Janet hated more than being old news.
    So I got left behind and stuck with Miranda.
    Call me a sap, but after witnessing the goings-on, I felt suddenly protective of Hockaday’s prettiest graduate. I felt sorry for her, even.
    Strange, because she’d doubtless felt sorry for me back in prep school, since I wasn’t anyone’s idea of “most beautiful” or “most popular.” She’d been the golden girl, the kind of woman every guy wanted to be with and every woman wanted to be; while I’d been gawky and more of a loner. I was the artsy kid, the one with glue in her fingernails and paint in her hair.
    I was still artsy.
    Only, Miranda DuBois was hardly the golden girl anymore.
    The woman was obviously in the midst of a meltdown, and could well have killed a woman had her aim been square. Assuming her driving would be equally erratic, I didn’t want to be a party to the former Miss Dallas propelling her Jaguar off the road and into a tree.
    So I retrieved her keys from the ignition—she’d left her car running right out front—and I handed them