Sprayed Stiff Read Online Free Page A

doors, then through a dining room with an ornate mahogany table for at least two dozen (I lost count at twenty-five) to the stairway in the foyer. “We have to hurry, before they all descend. The vultures.”
    “They who? The Carricaleses?” I was confused. From her warm tone in talking about their evening with their grandchildren, I could’ve sworn she was fond of them.
    “Oh, I guess I should worry about them, too,” she mused, running a hand through her cropped hair.
    Too? I stopped her on the fourth stair. “Where are your parents, Lexa?”
    “Father is at some lawyer get-sloshed dinner-and-what-all. Moth—Wilma…is…”
    I waited—rather patiently, I thought—as she tugged on my arm. Finally, I had to prompt her. “Wilma is…where?”
    Lexa’s eyes snapped back to reality. “In the study.”
    “To get her hair done? Why?”
    Lexa looked at me like I was nuts for asking the question. “Reyn, go in there and you won’t have to ask why.”
    That wonderfully useless sixth sense I have about danger warned me to no avail. My gray ostrich Tony Lamas lost their purchase on the oriental rug running up the stairs as Lexa, showing amazing strength for such a rail-thin little thing, pulled me forward with her.
    Okay, maybe it was none of my business. Maybe Wilma was entertaining the other two members of a ménage à trois while hubby was away. Maybe she was hosting vampire bridge. Guinevere tiptoed up the stairs past us, ran down the hall, and vanished through a door that was cracked open. It emitted just enough light into the upstairs hall so we could see where we were going.
    Just barely.
    I wondered why Lexa liked knocking around in the dark. Maybe she couldn’t bear to see all the ostentation surrounding her. Feeling a pang of empathy for her, I reached for the light switch at the top of the stairs. Lexa grabbed my hand away. “Please. I don’t want anyone to know we’re up here.”
    “I thought you said no one else was here.”
    “Who knows? After what’s happened tonight—” She paused, darted a look left and right, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “What I mean is, someone else was here. With Wilma. Before I got home.”
    Okay. Maybe it was an affair, after all. Maybe Lexa thought she’d surprised her mother’s sancho, and he was hiding in a closet. Wild sex had mussed Mum’s hair and I had to fix it before Percy the Perfect arrived home. She was of the Donna Reed generation after all, like my mother, who couldn’t do more than surface-comb her own hair between visits to the salon. Wild sex was one thing (my mother certainly had a corner on that one, but that’s another story), wielding a curling iron was another. I had to see this. I took off down the hall toward the study with Lexa scrambling to catch up with me.
    I pushed the door open and wondered immediately why Wilma would let the fuzzball of a cat up in the middle of her Yves Saint Laurent gown. It just seemed so out of character. Guinevere was hunkered down in Wilma’s royal blue lap, getting her fur all over the taffeta, licking her mistress’s heavily bejeweled fingers. My mouth opened to scream before my brain registered that the cat wasn’t licking Wilma’s fingers, she was chewing Wilma’s fingers, and the cat hair wasn’t the worst thing to happen to Wilma’s gown that night.

Three
    “W ILMA, R EYN’S HERE. Your hair is just moments from being its perfect self again,” Lexa cajoled.
    I jumped and sent a Ming vase, along with the ceramic pedestal it sat on, crashing against the wall. Lexa, who’d eased up next to me, didn’t flinch. Uh-oh. Bad sign.
    Instead, she smiled beatifically at Wilma, whose luxurious silver hair was brushed straight out from her head and sprayed absolutely stiff. To complete the look, she was wearing full clown-face makeup. The cat was still chewing. Ick.
    Lexa hadn’t seemed to notice Guinevere. It might be a while, since she apparently hadn’t noticed her mother was dead either. I