Page 10 of Accidental Murder
Troy scrutinized each woman approaching the restaurant.
Do it. Now.
Putting the Jeep in gear, Kayla inched forward. She lurched when a taxi swerved around her and skidded to a stop. A woman in a red slinky dress exited. Troy beamed, revealing geeky retro-style braces.
Something snapped inside Kayla. A flurry of violent memories engulfed her. Dennis slamming her against the wall. His forearm pressed against her throat. Silver braces inches from her face. Dennis issuing a warning she would never forget:You will obey me.
In a flash, she tore from the curb. In the rearview mirror, she saw Troy staring after her. What could he do? It wasn’t like he could track her down. He didn’t have her address. She would kill a couple of hours at her favorite diner, then go home and tell Ashley the date was a bust. Ashley wouldn’t be the wiser.
CHAPTER NINE
Ashley tappedthe kitchen table with a fingertip and glanced at the telephone on the counter. She’d been waiting for a panicked call from Kayla. When she was confident the phone call wouldn’t come and her sister had gone through with the date, she gave in to her whim. Time to break free. To soar. Ever since she’d visited the iridologist, she’d felt a driving need to change her life. She didn’t want to be a supermodel any longer. She wanted to do what she’d always dreamed of doing, become a translator at the United Nations. Kayla, who had often chided Ashley for selling herself short, would whoop with glee.
Feeling like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, Ashley hurried to Kayla’s bedroom, disrobed, and donned the jeans Kayla had discarded. The denim felt rough on her skin, but she didn’t mind. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn anything but silk. She wriggled into Kayla’s Stanford sweatshirt and drank in the yummy smell of Ivory soap. No perfumes for her sister. Au naturel was Kayla’s signature scent. Ashley donned Kayla’s favorite Giants’ baseball cap. Next, she retreated to the bathroom and scrubbed off every last fleck of makeup, removed her nail polish, and clipped her manicured fingernails.
“Freedom,” she crooned.
With a glass of chardonnay in hand, she shuffled into the office. She perched on the edge of the ergonomic chair by the desk and gawked at the computer monitor. The way her sister could solve the most complex computer issues amazed her. When was the last time she’d told Kayla how much she admired her? She would tonight, when she returned home. They would laugh and talk until dawn, like they had as girls before life had become complicated. She tapped on the web browser icon, prepared to read about the steps she needed to take, when a security beep cut through the silence.
“Kayla, no way!” she hollered without budging from the chair. “Do not tell me you got cold feet. No, no, no!”
Java darted into the office, yowled, and disappeared beneath the desk.
“Hush, fur face!” Ashley barked. “Kayla, get in here. Right now!”
But Kayla didn’t enter. A man did.
CHAPTER TEN
A cold breezecut through Kayla as she sauntered into the American Diner. A bell chimed the opening notes ofGod Bless America.
Waiters and waitresses, attired in red-and-white striped outfits and blue-starred hats, saluted. “Welcome, Citizen!” they yelled.
No Christmas carols for the diner. It was all-American, all the time.
Kayla let the door swing shut and, for the first time since she’d given in to her sister’s blind date demands, smiled. She made a beeline for the counter where Eve Clegg was refilling sugar bowls. “Load up a plate of hot ones,” Kayla ordered, “and be quick about it, girlfriend.”
On a rainy night three years ago, Kayla had stumbled into the diner and discovered the homemade biscuits. From that moment on, the restaurant had become her weekly hangout and Eve her closest friend, next to Ashley.
“Pushy, pushy.” Eve’s uniform hung on her slim frame. A dozen flag pins adorned the collar. “Simply because you’re wearing fancy duds does not make you the boss of me.”
Kayla eyed Eve’s hair as she set Ashley’s evening purse on the counter. “What color is that, maroon?”
“Burgundy.” Hair, according to Eve, was a cheap fix. She tweaked hers all the time. She could riff like a comedian about her other body parts, including her angular nose, bony rear, and the diminutive size of her breasts. “The hair goes with the flags, don’t you think? Very patriotic.” She tucked flyaway strands of hair into the snood at the nape of her neck.
“Don’t you think the color is a tad brassy for a serious journalist?”
When not on the clock, Eve wrote pieces for newspapers and online sources. She hoped to win a Pulitzer one day, but many of today’s journalists couldn’t eke out a living from their writing; hence, the job at the diner.
“Editors don’t care about appearance,” Eve said. “They want someone who can write from the soul.”
Kayla perched on a stool and flipped the menu cards of the mini-jukebox in search of a song to inspire her.
Eve set a plate of biscuits and a tumbler of honey in front of Kayla. “Someone is going to hire me full time. Real soon. Stay alert.”
“My eyes are peeled.” Kayla took a bite of a biscuit. Heaven.
Eve cleared dirty plates from the spot beside Kayla and collected a tip consisting solely of nickels. “As controversial as it sounds, I always wanted a coat like the one you’ve got on.”
