A Dress to Die For by Dolores Johnson

Author:Dolores Johnson [Johnson, Dolores]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79531-1
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

I had just put the ribs on the table, two for each of us, when I heard a knock on the door. It was the policeman, who’d come back to tell me he couldn’t find any trace of Betty around the neighborhood.

“We found her,” I said, pointing to the table. “She was hiding on the fire escape.”

“I looked out and didn’t see her,” he argued, coming into the room.

“I scrunched up against the wall and grabbed the cat when I heard someone open the window,” she said as she gnawed on one of the ribs.

“Oh, you thought I was still the burglar?”

“Somethin’ like that.” Betty nodded as she wiped the back of her hand across her barbecue-stained lips and continued to eat. I had a hunch that she may have known it was a cop and not wanted any more to do with him than she had with the crooks.

He took a statement from her, and then I told him about Kate’s murder and the Fortuny dress and how I thought the break-in must have been another attempt to get the dress. As he left, he said to let the police know if I found anything missing later. I realized that this would probably be the end of the investigation. Break-ins happen all the time, and the police can’t devote a lot of time to the ones where nothing is taken.

I went back to the table, where I discovered that Mack had taken the last two ribs. My ribs. I decided not to point this out to him. If a couple of ribs were going to make Mack accept Betty graciously into our dry-cleaning family, I decided to let him have them.

Betty smacked her lips and threw down her second rib, chewed clean. “I think maybe I could use another one of those ice packs. My ankle is throbbing again.”

I went to the refrigerator, grabbed some more ice, and put it in a new Baggie since the earlier one had been destroyed when Mack sat on it. I was muttering to myself as I did it because I had an apartment to clean up and I didn’t feel like playing nursemaid permanently.

“Maybe you can help me get to bed, and then I can elevate the leg,” Betty said. “I’m really tuckered out after spending all that time on the fire escape.”

Guilt, of course, overcame my desire to ask who among this intrepid crew was going to help me clean up the place. While Betty was in the bathroom, I remade the rollaway bed, which had been stripped of its sheets by the burglars. Then I set up the screen to separate the bed from the rest of the room. Luckily the burglars hadn’t slashed it since it was one of my best works of art, with a picture of the Denver skyline painted on it.

Mack had a look of amusement on his face the whole time. It especially irritated me because he was still chewing on one of the ribs. My ribs.

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