Diane Mott Davidson - Goldy 05 - Killer Pancake by Killer Pancake

Author:Killer Pancake
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2010-02-10T03:00:00+00:00

"Sounds... intriguing. You went on a field trip to Braithwaite's lab? What did he do in the lab?" My head was spinning.

Dusty dotted my lips with a Q-Tip loaded with what resembled cooked pumpkin. She spread it all around, then ordered me to blot. Only when she'd put the cap back on Nectarine Climax did she answer, "Oh, you know, he has that big greenhouse.

Haven't you seen it? I never wrote up my report on the trip because I... left the school. But anyway. Last I heard, Charles was working on roses or something."

10

I looked in the mirror. Nefertiti blinked back. My eyes, dark-lined and shadowed the color of burnt toast, had a hard time concealing astonishment. Roses or something. Experimenting. The way you experiment to produce a blue rose, like the one I'd found on the garage floor near where Claire was hit? I furrowed my newly powdered brow, squinted at the smorgasbord of brightly packaged products lined up on the shiny counter, and asked Dusty to sell me some hand cream for my friend in the hospital.

While I dug through my wallet looking for the emergency hundred-dollar bill, she picked out a jar for eighty bucks. Twenty dollars wasn't going to get me too far in an emergency.

"Please, Dusty," I begged, "don't you have something less expensive?"

She shrugged, as if I were about to make the biggest mistake of my life. "The smallest jar is sixty."

"I'll take it." While she rummaged below the counter for the sixty-dollar size, I asked nonchalantly, "What about a guy named Shaman Krill? Did Claire go out with anybody by that name, before or after her fling with Charles B.?"

Dusty plunked a shiny box down on the counter. "Shaman Krill? Never heard of him. What does he look like?"

I handed her the hundred-dollar bill. "He's an animal rights' activist with a dark ponytail, gold earring, short stature, and big attitude. Sound familiar?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Are you kidding? He sounds disgusting. I never saw anybody like that. And Claire would never have gone out with some weirdo." She pressed buttons on the cash-register terminal to ring up my purchase, lifted the jar and the receipt - for the cameras, I guessed - and gave me the bag.

"Thanks, Dusty."

She tilted her head and gave me a sweet smile. "Come back soon. It's fun to have somebody to talk to."

Time to leave the store, time to find Julian, time to go see Marla. Time to see if I could get my friend-who'd-just-had-a- heart-attack to smile at my freshly minted face. And yet something was holding me back. I couldn't go just yet, and besides, Julian was still doing the chamber brunch. The paper bag crackled in my hand as I surveyed the store, the store that twinkled with bright lights and glittering decor and mirrors I hated to look in. Mirrors. I looked up to the second story. Not an hour ago I had seen Babs

Braithwaite leaning half-dressed over the escalator and claiming somebody was back there.

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