Free Shoots to Kill by Kate Collins

paperback.
    If she had teeth. What could Libby have been thinking to hire such a coarse, unprofessional clerk? I suspected I knew the answer but hoped I was wrong. “I didn’t catch your name,” I said, as Mom scratched out a hasty note.
    “Tilly Gladwell,” the woman muttered, drawing herself up as though she were royalty, “not that it’s any business o’yers.” She looked up with a scowl when Mom laid the jacket on the counter in front of her. “Not ’ere! Over there.” She pointed to an empty table next to the curtained doorway, then, with a sharp huff of displeasure, turned back to her book.
    “She must be a temp,” Mom said, trying to put a good spin on it, as we walked back toward Bloomers.
    Or a very bad copy of Grace—until Libby could get the real thing.
    That evening, when I went to Down the Hatch to meet Marco for dinner, Gert, the waitress, who had been there as long as the fake carp, informed me that Marco was meeting with a potential client in his office. Suspecting it was Libby, I slid into our booth, ordered a Miller Lite, and watched the evening news on the television mounted on the wall, waiting for his meeting to end.
    Fifteen minutes later, Libby breezed past the table with only a brief hello, confirming my suspicions about the client. I smiled to myself. Marco had obviously refused to take her case.
    At that moment, he slid onto the bench opposite me. “How’s it going, Sunshine?”
    “Super. So, I guess you told Libby to hit the bricks.”
    Marco signaled to Gert to come take our order. “No, I took her case.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    “You didn’t!” Stunned, I put my hands against the sides of my face. “This just keeps getting worse.”
    “It appears Libby has a legitimate problem, Sunshine. I’m going to look into it for her.”
    “She’s playing you, Marco, just like she’s playing my mom.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Libby convinced Mom to put her art on display at Blume’s Art Shop.”
    “Maybe Libby likes your mother’s art.”
    “No one likes my mother’s art. Why do you think we store it in our basement?”
    “You should be glad your mother has an outlet for her stuff. Now you’re off the hook.”
    “The point I’m trying to make is that everyone falls for Libby’s act, including you!”
    “Have a little faith in me, Abby. Libby is genuinely frightened.”
    “Of what? The boogeyman?”
    Leaning toward me, Marco said quietly, “I’ll tell you this in confidence only because I was going to ask you to work on this case with me anyway. Libby is being stalked. She’s getting hate mail, e-mails, and threatening phone calls, to the point where she’s afraid to go out alone. She believes the stalker may be someone from college with whom she had problems before.”
    “Do you know how easy it would be for her to claim someone is stalking her? Libby could mail herself threatening letters.”
    “She could, but why would she? Why do you want to believe the worst about Libby?”
    “Because I know her. She looks harmless on the outside, but inside she’s all screwed up.”
    “No, you knew her, Abby, when she was eleven years old. Give her a break.”
    I sat back and crossed my arms. “I’ll give her a break when she gets a life of her own and stops copying mine.”
    Marco sat back, too, clearly irked. “Let’s just drop the subject. Nothing I say is going to snap you out of this funk. I think you should take a pass on working on her case, too. There’s no way you can be objective.”
    “Those were the next words out of my mouth,” I replied testily.
    “You want to order?” he grumbled, nodding toward our waitress standing patiently at the end of the booth.
    “I need comfort food, Gert,” I told her.
    “One grilled cheese and tomato sandwich with sweet pickles on the side,” she said, marking it on her pad.
    After Marco had given her his order, I said to him, “You know what I’d like you to do? Walk down to Libby’s shop tomorrow. See for