Free Dating Dead Men by Harley Jane Kozak Page A

lucky to pass for middle-aged.
    Near the shop's freight entrance I encountered a car. Joey's.
    At least, it looked like her car, an old silver Saab. I moved in for a closer look. The map light was on, illuminating a copy of
Vanity Fair
and an empty frozen yogurt container on the front seat. Yes, Joey's car.
    That light shouldn't stay on, or she'd run down her battery. I tried the door.
    The car alarm blared. Behind me, the freight door opened. Someone grabbed me. I screamed.
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    B EING HUGGED BY my friend Joey was like being hugged by an ironing board, Joey being five foot ten, all angles. I let myself be fussed over as I shivered in the alley, relieved yet enraged, probably headed for a breakdown, now that the crisis was over.
    â€œYou're freezing,” Joey said. She was pale and lovely, with wild hair the color of an Irish setter. “You're shaking like you have palsy. What are you doing?”
    â€œWhat am I doing? What are you doing? Why didn't you park out front like a normal person?”
    Joey herded me into the back room, illuminated by candles. “I brought over the chaise longue,” she said, “so I had to use the freight entrance.”
    The back room was Joey's home away from home, in part because it housed so much of her furniture. She spent the night often when her husband was out of town, occasionally when he was in town, or whenever she felt the need to, as she put it, run away and join the circus.
    â€œHow come you didn't pick up the phone a minute ago?” I asked.
    Joey led me to the red velvet sofa that had once been hers, now folded out into a bed and made up with sheets and pillows. “I unplugged it back here,” she said, covering me with a quilt. “Someone's been calling every half hour.”
    â€œWhat? Who?” I shot up, shedding the quilt.
    â€œI don't know who, they hang up when I answer. God, you're jumpy. Look, I've got the space heater going and tea, so why don't you just sit down and warm up?”
    I sat, watching her cowboy boots clomp across the room to my drafting table, where steam rose from an electric teakettle. She wore paisley pajamas with her boots, a look I found oddly comforting. She made tea, the steam distorting her profile, fogging up her John Lennon glasses. Joey had a nearly flawless face, made interesting by a scar in the shape of a crescent moon running from cheekbone to jaw line, dead white against her ivory skin. Sometimes she covered it with makeup. Mostly, she didn't bother.
    â€œDo you think my brother is capable of killing someone?” I couldn't believe the words had come out of my mouth. I hadn't meant to talk about this. Forty seconds in front of the heater must've thawed it out of me.
    Joey unplugged the teakettle, and came over to hand me a mug of tea. She stretched out on the brocade chaise longue, looking vampish, her long red hair flowing over the side of the chaise, nearly to the floor.
    â€œAnyone is capable of killing,” she said, “if they're scared enough or mad enough. Even Quakers. But I don't think P.B.'s more likely to kill than, say, you are, which is a lot less likely than your average person. Did you have a particular method in mind?”
    â€œShooting.”
    â€œReally? Would P.B. have access to a gun, in the hospital?”
    I wrapped the blanket tighter around myself. “Maybe. It turns out security at Rio Pescado isn't state-of-the-art. And Dr. Charlie says P.B.'s foot is healing well, so he may have some mobility—oh, heck.” I fell back onto a pillow and gazed up at Uncle Theo's circus trapeze suspended from the ceiling. Maybe I could just lie here until this was all over.
    â€œWollie, having introduced the topic of murder, you can't now fade out mid-sentence. You know, you look like a refugee from Eastern Europe.”
    I roused myself to glance at the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. The hood of my sweatshirt was bunched up