Free Evelyn David - Sullivan Investigations 02 - Murder Takes the Cake by Evelyn David Page B

dead. The sister had called him, said someone at the hospital had given her his card. Thinking of that initial call, reminded him he still had to find someone on the staff to work during the visitation hours for Martha Martinelli. The turnout for the recently departed radio host had been heavy the night before. The family was waiting for a distant relative to arrive, so the funeral wasn’t for a couple of days. At the sister’s request the normal one day of visitation had been extended to three–which created all kinds of scheduling problems. He was going to have to do some shuffling to keep other funerals on time.
    Of course, just as he was leaving work, he ‘d gotten a call from Kathleen. He’d had to stop at Safeway for a lengthy list of must-have items his formerly saintly wife had demanded. What the hell were cornichons anyway? Something about decorating the cheese platter, but he’d tuned her out as soon as he heard what sounded suspiciously like French. Why didn’t she just say pickles?
    There hadn ‘t been a home-cooked meal in the house in ten days, and probably only a handful since Bridget had announced her engagement six weeks earlier. It was true Kathleen had been cooking nonstop, but none of it was for him to eat. It was all prepared for the ‘in-laws.’
    Who the hell had come up with that phrase? In-laws. Outlaws was more like it. Hadn ‘t Josh Lasky, a fancy-schmancy lawyer, as his grandmother of blessed memory would call him, hadn’t he stealthily wormed his way into his little girl’s life and stolen her heart…and, apparently, Kathleen’s sanity.
    Jeff ‘s stomach grumbled loudly. He sighed and stared mournfully at the links of Italian salami and chunks of cheese artfully arranged on a cheese platter. The Lasky clan was running late and all food in the house was off-limits.
    “ Hell with it,” he growled. Then looked around to be sure his wife was nowhere in the vicinity. Food was off-limits and so were any words Kathleen now deemed too coarse for the virgin Lasky ears. He cautiously slipped a few crackers from the plate, reshuffling them to hide any extra space on the platter, and offered up a prayer the food police in his house wouldn’t notice.
    Munching on the purloined goodies, he wondered if he might slice a little Genoa salami to tide him over. He shook his head. He might be an undertaker, but he didn’t have that much of a death wish. If Kathleen smelled salami on his breath, the wrath of Hell would be unleashed.
    He now knew for sure there was life on other planets. What else could explain the stranger sharing his bed? Surely aliens had abducted his Kathleen, the sane, gorgeous woman he ‘d married almost 31 years earlier. Instead he was living with a cruel doppelganger who had announced the previous evening that she had thrown out his stash of frozen Mallomar cookies because he needed to lose at least ten pounds before walking his baby daughter down the aisle. If that wasn’t bad enough, she had proceeded to inform him that as part of his new diet, she wasn’t buying any more beer until “that spare tire around your middle is just an unpleasant memory.” With that she’d returned to reading yet another of her wedding magazines.
    “ Unpleasant memory?” Since when had his body become an ‘unpleasant memory?’ He might have put on a few extra pounds over the decades, but she used to think of them as ‘love handles.’
    He looked in the refrigerator and frowned at the bottles of French wine dominating the top shelf, formerly home to a couple of six-packs of Sam Adams.
    This is what it had come down to: You work hard to take care of your family and in the end, there are no cookies or beer for the guy who is footing the bill for the extravaganza. He was beginning to think Bridget was right. If she eloped, maybe his life and his wife would return.
    He was saved from descending further into a swamp of self-pity by the ringing of the doorbell.
    “Jeff, answer the door. I’m