Free The PMS Outlaws: An Elizabeth MacPherson Novel by Sharyn McCrumb Page B

the area elite. All pretense of national coverage had vanished from the pages of the local twice-weekly: it had given pride of place on page one to the country club golf tournament, as if wars, tornados, and presidential elections were things that happened to other people.
    Carla was working alone at first. Two women on the prowl would raise too many eyebrows in a staid private dining room.No one had questioned their entrance, though. They walked in, well dressed and confident, as if they had arranged to meet someone. “Don’t trouble yourself about us,” Purdue told the waiter as she commandeered a table. “He’s late. We’ll keep an eye out for him.” Purdue could manage more well-bred hauteur than the average duchess. It had served her well in courts of law, but it was an even more useful talent when possessed by a fugitive.
    Carla was wearing the little black dress they had bought at a department store sale in a mall two states back. Her only jewelry was a single strand of pearls, which happened to be real because Purdue, who had inherited them from her grandmother, had been wearing them on the day of their original getaway. Well-cut black dress. Blonde hair. Pearls. Now if only she could get the patter right.
    Carla had moved away from the nervous-looking young man. Bad prospect. Conveying this message to Purdue with the briefest of glances, she sauntered with deliberate casualness toward an older man in golfing clothes, who was sitting alone at a table. His face was not visible, but he kept spearing forkfuls of chicken salad from behind an open
Wall Street Journal
, and from the look of his blue-veined hands he was well past sixty. Still young enough to dream, Purdue thought approvingly.
    She held her breath as she watched her partner’s initial approach. Sloe-gin smile, soft voice, one well-manicured hand gesturing toward the newspaper. Good … good … After a few more moments of smiling conversation, Carla slipped into the chair beside the golfer. Now she assumed a pose of rapt enchantment, saying very little, but looking as if the old duffer’s remarks were pearls of wisdom. Things should go off without a hitchnow. Carla had been accepted in her role, and the old fellow would remember her as a sparkling conversationalist, as people usually do when you allow them to do all the talking.
    Purdue turned her attention back to her drink. She didn’t want the mark to catch her staring at him. She wondered how long it would take Carla to get down to business. Purdue sipped her vodka martini, wondering idly why she derived such pleasure from the fleecing of their victims. There were other ways the pair could have supported themselves, even illegally. They could have sold phony gold-mine stock to greedy investors, or wheedled lonely senior citizens out of their life savings with bogus investment scams by telephone. Purdue had not even considered such ventures. There was no satisfaction for her in bilking gullible fools whose only crime was ignorance. She wanted the shallow men, the self-styled Romeos, the ones who thought they were the predators. Purdue recognized her own satisfaction in the humiliation of these men as a species of rage. Where had it come from, though? Was this for Daddy, who thought that the honor roll was nice but not good enough to compensate for the fact that the teenage Purdue was not a pretty, giggly blonde? Was it for every boy who made fun of her in high school, and for every loathsome blind date she had endured in college? Well, no matter. She would show them all.
    She looked up in time to see Carla smiling and nodding in her direction. She leaned over and whispered something in the businessman’s ear, and he grinned and reddened slightly. Then the two of them got up, and, hand in hand, they approached Purdue.
    “I’d like to introduce you to someone very special,” saidCarla. “This is Sam Jenkins. Mr. Jenkins is a banker.” She giggled as she added, “I don’t know when I’ve