Free Blackbird 02 - Dead Girls Don't Wear Diamonds by Nancy Martin

further insight into Laura's character.
    When I got home that night, I filed the zoo story with my editor via e-mail. Stan Rosenstatz, the features editor and therefore my boss, always fired back a quick thanks when I filed on-line. I think he felt guilty for encouraging me to stay out of the office and away from Kitty.
    Afterwards, I found myself worried about Flan. I didn't want to intrude on the family and decided it was too late to telephone his mother, Annabelle Cooper, for information.
    Unable to sleep, I spent another hour working on the details of a Big Sister/Little Sister outing I had volunteered to organize when my friend Lexie Paine had been forced to step aside due to business commitments. But my heart wasn't in the project that night. I kept thinking about the Coopers.
    On Sunday morning, I tried phoning Annabelle. No answer, but that was no surprise. She was a loyal churchgoer. I told myself I'd try again later.
    Sunday's newspapers were plastered with stories about Oliver Cooper's nomination and Laura Cooper's death. I read in the car on the way to a brunch while Reed Shakespeare drove.
    Before Rory Pendergast's death just a few months earlier, when he had hired me to work for the Intelligencer, he had also arranged for a car and driver to take me to the social engagements that I covered. Since I didn't drive—due to my unfortunate tendency to faint at inopportune moments—Rory's kindness was a godsend. The company he contracted was owned by Michael Abruzzo, not surprisingly, considering the two of them had quite a conspiracy going, but the driver turned out to be Reed, a young student who was working his way through college. It had taken months to get Reed to speak more than monosyllables to me.
    So I was triumphant when he held the car door open for me and actually said, "Are you really going to wear that?"
    Reed didn't grasp the concept of vintage couture dressing. That morning I had dug out of my grandmother's collection a really wonderful St. Laurent Mondrian-inspired dress and short matching coat. Blocks of red, blue and yellow on a white background were crisp and surprisingly contemporary. I was stretching the season a little, maybe, but the weather was still warm and sunny. By his expression, however, Reed indicated he'd rather be seen with a shedding llama.
    "What's wrong with it?"
    "Nuthin," he said at once. Then, clearly losing the struggle to keep his thoughts to himself, he burst out, "Just—can't you wear something normal once in a while?"
    "What's normal?"
    "You know. Plain. Not all this weird stuff."
    Reed never put on anything but neat-as-a-pin blue trousers and a white dress shirt with a tie, unusual for a young man whose contemporaries wore baggy shorts and Fubu basketball shirts, so I wasn't sure what he considered weird. I said, "I'm going to a party, Reed. Don't you get dressed up to go to parties with your friends?"
    "I don't go to parties." He closed the door and walked stiffly around the car to get behind the wheel.
    He didn't mention whether or not he had any friends, I noticed. If he continued to be so tight with personal information, I might be forced to break down his defenses with my ultimate weapon.
    "Have you met my sisters yet, Reed?" I asked from the backseat.
    "No," he said without glancing into the rearview mirror.

"Does it bother you to be seen with me when I look this way?"
    "You can wear whatever you like, I guess. Forget I mentioned it, okay?"
    "Actually, I'm thinking about somebody else."
    He did look at me in the rearview mirror then. "Who?"
    "Someone very concerned about appearances."
    "Does she dress like you?"
    "She was trying, yes."
    "Why?"
    "That's what I'm trying to figure out."
    "Maybe she's just weird. Which way you want to go this morning? Interstate or back roads?"
    "You decide," I said.
    It took a mere twenty-five minutes to reach our destination that morning—a brunch at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
    My job might look frivolous to many people, but I