Jaine Austen 1 - This Pen for Hire Read Online Free

berry-scented steam. Then I turned on the radio to a classical music station and sank down into the tub. I lay there, listening to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and sipping my bargain chardonnay, imported all the way from Fresno. I could feel the tension oozing out of my body. It was all quite divine, until my neighbor Lance Venable, he of the x-ray hearing, started banging on the wall.
    “Keep it down, will you?”
    With a sigh, I turned off the radio and plopped back into the tub. I tried humming the Moonlight Sonata, but somehow it didn’t sound quite as snazzy as the London Philharmonic. After a while, Prozac wandered in and leaped up onto the toilet tank. She gazed down at me through slitted eyes, as if to say, “What fools these mortals be to get their bodies wet.” Either that or, “Got any tuna?” Like I say, with cats, it’s hard to tell.
    I soaked for about forty-five minutes, until my fingertips were raisins and my hair had frizzed to the consistency of Brillo. Finally, when I’d licked the last drop of chardonnay from the glass, I hauled myself out of the tub.
    I wrapped myself in a coffee-stained chenille bathrobe that I’d owned since Ally McBeal was in junior high, and got into bed. I flicked on the TV with my remote and zapped around, checking out Today’s Special Value on QVC, Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory, and an infomercial for an instrument of torture appropriately named the Ab Dominator.
    Finally, I flipped to the news—just in time to see a skinny guy with a bobbing Adam’s apple being taken into police custody. Wait a minute. I knew that skinny guy. It was Howard Murdoch. I sat up straight in bed. What the heck was Howard doing in police custody?
    The TV reporter obligingly filled me in. My mild-mannered client, a guy so timid he was probably afraid of Count Chocula, was being arrested for the grisly murder of Westside aerobics instructor Stacy Lawrence.

Chapter Four
    “I swear, I didn’t do it.”
    I sat across from Howard in the visitors’ room of the county jail, a stark, fluorescent-lit cavern that smelled like old oatmeal. It was the morning after Howard’s arrest, and I’d driven over to see him. Needless to say, I felt responsible for his incarceration. If I hadn’t written that stupid letter, Howard would never have had a date with Stacy in the first place.
    Of course, it was possible he’d actually killed her. But I didn’t believe it. Not for a minute. The TV reporter said Stacy had been bludgeoned to death. I just couldn’t picture Howard in the act of bludgeoning. I mean, he’s the kind of guy who needs help with a twist-top cap.
    Howard sat behind a fingerprint-smudged glass partition, his skinny body lost in the voluminous folds of his orange jailhouse jumpsuit. He gnawed at his lower lip, his eyes wide with bewilderment and disbelief.
    “What on earth happened?” I said into the prison telephone.
    “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I showed up at her apartment, and she was dead.”
    “How did you get in?”
    “The door was open; I just walked in.”
    “And then?”
    He shut his eyes, replaying the scene in his mind.
    “The apartment was dark. I called out to Stacy, but she didn’t answer. I thought maybe she was in the shower, but I didn’t hear any water running. I called out to her again. Still no answer. For a minute, I wondered if this was her way of standing me up, but that didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t she just come to the door and tell me to get lost? By then I was starting to get worried, so I went down the hall to her bedroom.”
    He shuddered at the memory of what happened next.
    “I saw her lying there, in the dark. I was so close to her, I could smell her perfume. I remember thinking how nice it smelled. I called her name, but she still didn’t answer. Finally, I got up my courage and turned on the light. And that’s when I saw all the blood.”
    Tears welled in his eyes. “Oh, God, it was awful.”
    “Did you call