The Amanda Pepper Mysteries: Bundle #3 by Gillian Roberts

Author:Gillian Roberts [Roberts, Gillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

TALK ABOUT A BLOW UPSIDE the head. I sat in the coffeehouse a long while after Skippy made his reluctant retreat. I considered again the weight of secrets and wondered how else my mother’s had shaped her. And me.

My entire life needed to be revisited, reviewed, and reinterpreted. I wondered if my father knew. And if he didn’t, what that meant about the quality of their bonds.

I wondered until I was wondering in tiny, dizzying circles, and I made my way down the street, noticing the thinning crowds, the increasing cold, and my friend, Sasha Berg, who should have been out with Dr. Perfect instead of balanced on one exceedingly high heel in front of my entryway. Her other heel was up behind her, pressed against the brick wall. She looked like an ad for a B movie.

She also looked like the antidote to Skippy.

Sasha is easy to spot. It’s partly her six-foot height—before the heels—partly her voluptuous proportions, and partly her idiosyncratic wardrobe. Tonight, except for her spiky hair, she looked ready for The Hop in a Fifties powder-pink taffeta with a tight charcoal-gray velvet midriff and a pouf of a tulle crumb-catcher above the pointy bustline. And encasing it all, a ratty fur stole. Sasha had never heard of political correctness, or at least had not hearkened to its clarion calls.

But the closer I came, the less she looked like an antidote to anything. Her morose expression clashed with her purple shoes.

“Great outfit,” I said. She halfheartedly waved one high-gloved arm. I had a clue as to what troubled her, given the absence of Dr. Wonderful Perfection. And I worried where I’d find energy for Sasha’s problems this particular night. She was a high-maintenance friend, perpetually in romantic jams, and I was fresh out of spirit myself.

“Come on in,” I said. Silently, she complied. Very bad sign.

Once inside, I poured her a glass of wine before she asked for it, and one for myself as well. I deserved it. I needed it.

She sipped and sighed. “It’s been an interesting night,” she said.

I waited, then prodded. “Where is Dr. Wonderful?”

“Perfect Pete does not exist and never did.”

“Okay, so Imperfect Pete. Where is he?”

She shook her head. “I mean he really, truly, did not exist. Neither does the Landauer Trust he supposedly worked for. Neither did his medical degree. So I’ve been standing in front of your house—and where were you, by the way? While the cop’s away the teacher plays? But I’ve been here, freezing and trying to figure out who he was, because he wasn’t any of the above. So far, I’ve come up with a smile to die for, great buns, and an incredibly smooth con.”

“Can’t be,” I said. “Why would he con you?”

“There’s the humiliating part. He’s a stupid con man. An inept, second-rate one who doesn’t do his homework if he goes after a woman who doesn’t have two dimes to rub together. I think he liked my place and generalized from it.”

For some obscure legal or tax purpose, Sasha’s father had given her a condo during one of his frequent divorces.

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