Free The Best of Sisters in Crime by Marilyn Wallace

back to the house.
    Jeri was holding
Laurie, her mother standing over her, Mary Cooper sitting close on the couch. “Oh,
look what a baby-waby. What a darling girly-wirl. Do you feel the least bit
hot? Laurie-baurie, you’re not running a fever, are you?”
    The kid had just
gotten the thumbs-up from a hospital, and she was wrapped in half a dozen
blankets. I doubted she was running a fever.
    Ellen leaned
over to feel the baby’s face. “Ohhh, I think she might be. Give her to Grandma.
Grandma knows how to fix babies, doesn’t she, Laurie girl? Come to Grandma and
Grandma will sponge you with alcohol, Grandma will.”
    She looked like
a hawk coming in for a landing, ready to snare its prey and fly up again, but
Mary was quicker still. Almost before you saw it happening, she had the baby
away from Ellen and in her own lap. “What you need is some nice juice, don’t
you, Laurie-bear? And then Meemaw’s going to rock you and rock you . . . oh, my goodness,
you’re burning up.” Her voice was on the edge of panic. “Listen, Jeri, this
baby’s wheezing! We’ve got to get her breathing damp air. . . ”
    She wasn’t
wheezing, she was gulping, probably in amazement. I felt my own jaw-drop and.
looking away, unwittingly caught the eye of Mary’s husband, who hadn’t wanted
me to see the anguish there. Quickly he dropped a curtain of blandness. Beside
me, I heard Michael whisper, “My God!”
    I knew we were
seeing something extreme. They were all excited to have Laurie home, and they
were competing with each other, letting out what looked like their scariest
sides if you knew what we did. But a Stephanie didn’t come along every day.
Laurie was in no further danger, I was sure of it. Still, I understood why Gary
had had the sudden change of heart about her guardianship.
    I turned to
Michael. “Are you going to try to get her?”
    He plucked at
his sweater sleeve, staring at his wrist as if it had a treasure map on it. “I
haven’t decided.”
    An image from my
fitful morning dreams came back to me: a giant in a forest, taller than all the
trees and built like a mountain; a female giant with belly and breasts like
boulders, dressed in white robes and carrying, draped across her outstretched
arms, a dead man, head dangling on its flaccid neck.
    In a few days
Michael called. When he got home to Seattle, a letter had been waiting for
him—a note, rather, from Gary, postmarked the day of his death. It didn’t
apologize, it didn’t explain—it didn’t even say, “Dear Michael.” It was simply
a quote from Hamlet typed on a piece
of paper, not handwritten, Michael thought, because it could be construed as a
confession and there was the insurance to think about.
    This was the
quote:
    Diseases desperate grown
    By desperate appliance are relieved,
    Or not at all.
    I didn’t ask
Michael again whether he intended to take Laurie. At the moment, I was too
furious with one passive male to trust myself to speak civilly with another.
Instead, I simmered inwardly, thinking how like Gary it was to confess to
murder with a quote from Shakespeare. Thinking that, as he typed it, he
probably imagined grandly that nothing in his life would become him like the
leaving of it. The schmuck.
     
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contents
     

Hog Heaven by Gillian Roberts
     
    Gillian
Roberts introduced Amanda Pepper in Caught
Dead in Philadelphia, which won an Anthony.
Eight more hooks followed, including the latest, The Bluest Blood, featuring the clever, perceptive, and charming Mandy and C.K.
Mackenzie, her attractive and astute policeman/paramour. Gillian Roberts is a
pseudonym for Judith Greber, whose novels, including Mendocino and As
Good As It Gets, reflect her concern for how
ordinary people deal with intimacy, the challenges of life, and contradictions.
    In “Hog
Heaven,” an aging Romeo can hardly believe his luck when a beautiful woman
approaches him. Gillian says, “I heard about the event that resulted in “Hog
Heaven”