Polished Off by Lila Dare

Author:Lila Dare [Dare, Lila]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2011-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

I PULLED UP AT MY APARTMENT HOPING FOR PEACE and quiet, but got my landlady. Genevieve Jones was in her mid-eighties but had more get-up-and-go than your average teenager. On a normal day, she might start off with tai chi in the park, serve lunch to housebound people with Meals on Wheels, and play four hours of bridge before dining with a crony or one of her many nieces or nephews. With a frill of white hair that made her look like a crowned crane, she was thin and long-legged, which only enhanced the resemblance.

I lived in the one-bedroom carriage house that was her son’s. He’d never married and had died of cancer the day before he turned sixty. She rented the place to me when I came back from Atlanta. Living with Mom wasn’t an option and I liked the cozy apartment and Mrs. Jones. I checked up on her and did some gardening in return for a break on the rent. Lately, though, I’d been thinking a place of my very own—a house—would be nice.

“Yoo-hoo! Grace.” Mrs. Jones waved from her veranda, which protected her from the rain. “Did I hear you’ve entered a beauty pageant? You’re a lovely girl, but aren’t you a teensy bit long in the tooth?”

Closing my car door a bit harder than necessary, I started toward her, not caring that I was getting wet. It felt good. I noted that the forsythia bushes were encroaching on the sidewalk again. I’d trim them back this weekend.

“I’m not a contestant, Mrs. Jones,” I said. “I’m doing the girls’ hair. And Stella’s doing their nails.” I climbed the steps to the veranda and ran my fingers through raintangled hair.

Mrs. Jones shook her head, setting her pouf of hair dancing. “Such a shame about her husband. It just goes to show that you never know, doesn’t it?”

“What does?” I asked, wary of what the local gossips might have relayed to her. They took one part fact and mixed in three parts imagination or wishful thinking or spite and came up with a tale that didn’t bear much resemblance to actual happenings.

“Why, about him fathering that woman’s baby and then killing her when she told him about the pregnancy. Wine cooler? The sun’s well over the yard arm, as my father used to say.”

“What!”

“Peach or strawberry?” she asked, dipping her hand into the cooler beside her rocking chair. She held up a dripping green bottle.

“Uh, peach, thanks,” I said, sinking reluctantly into the rocker. I hadn’t meant to stay—hopefully Vonda was on her way over—but I had to learn what Mrs. Jones had heard, even if it was no closer to the truth than Chicago to London. Rain drummed on the veranda’s roof and I had to lean in to hear Mrs. Jones.

“Well, you know that my niece Karen works at the coroner’s office over to Kingsland. And she heard that nice Dr. Butler mention that the autopsy showed a fetus, not but two and a half or three months along.

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