The Hot Ladies Murder Club. Ann Major

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      Four

      The first thing Hannah had done when she got home was to race to her bedroom, rip off her ugly jumper and toss it onto her bedroom floor on top of everything else she’d worn that week. Okay, so she was a lousy housekeeper—

      Stripping off her panty hose, she pulled on a worn pair of hip-hugger, button-fly jeans and a T-shirt that didn’t reach her navel.

      When Georgia ran into her bedroom with her nail polish and begged her to paint their toenails orange, Hannah was in no mood for company. She wanted to tell Georgia she was too young for orange nail polish. But since Georgia had no friends her age here to play with, she smiled and gently said, “Sure, darling, let’s go for it.”

      Georgia squealed and squatted on the floor in front of Hannah’s bare feet. “I’ll paint yours first and then you paint mine!”

      “Don’t forget to stay inside the lines.”

      Georgia laughed and did her best, but her best left a lot to be desired. Soon orange nail polish was on Hannah’s heel and dribbling between her toes onto the oak floor.

      “Sorry, Mommy.”

      “Oh, well, a little nail polish will wash off.” When Georgia skipped off to her room after she was done, Hannah found a rag to clean the floor and hollered after her, “Put the polish back where it belongs, love.”

      Georgia’s door slammed. Without bothering to wait until her orange toenails dried, Hannah slipped into a pair of tall platform sandals and returned to the kitchen to enjoy a glass of wine by herself while Georgia played on her computer.

      Big Burger wrappings littered the kitchen counter. Georgia had only had to plead thirty seconds before winning the Big Burger battle hands down. Hannah was too tired tonight to feel too guilty about indulging her.

      The phone rang, and she picked it up before she checked the caller ID. If she’d checked, she would have put Katherine Rosner off until she was back in her office. The woman came on a little too strong, which was natural since Katherine’s doctor husband was divorcing her. The woman was feeling desperate at the thought of having to move to a smaller place and go back into nursing. Hannah sympathized, but she was tired tonight.

      “It’s me. Do you have a minute?” Katherine’s soft, sexy voice was highly charged.

      Tiny redheaded woman. Huge aura. Something about Katherine bothered Hannah. She moved with the grace of a leopard, fast and swift and silent, so you didn’t always know she was coming. Then there she was, her ferocious eyes flashing as she made some demand or launched into a rant about her grievances—the main one being her husband.

      Hannah had spent eight hours showing Katherine houses the day before.

      “Hi, Katherine, I was wondering what you’d decided.”

      “I still can’t make up my mind. The house in Country Club needs too much work. Besides, it’s owned by a lousy personal injury attorney. I’m not going to feed one of those sharks by buying a house from him.”

      Translation: the house in Country Club was way more than Katherine could afford without her doctor husband’s salary.

      Hannah sighed. “You never mentioned you had it in for attorneys.”

      “Just the personal injury guys.”

      Hannah thought about Joe Campbell. Katherine did have a point.

      “Then we’ll keep looking,” Hannah said.

      “You are so sweet.”

      “Yesterday was fun.” That wasn’t totally true.

      “I was feeling so depressed after you left, so I went out for a drive. I saw a sign on Ocean. Darling house. There was a blue heron on the pier.”

      Katherine probably wouldn’t qualify for a loan on a house on Ocean Drive. “Do you really need a pier? I mean do you fish or anything? And a seawall costs a lot to maintain.”

      “I grew up in the country. Four brothers. I fish, hunt…So, can we see it together tomorrow? Nine? Your office?”

      Hannah jotted down the address and agreed to meet her though she knew it was a waste of time.

      Katherine was a sleek, elegant doctor’s wife on the wrong side of forty, who worked hard not to look it. She had a good body. When she wore skirts, she showed a lot of leg.

      From what Katherine had told her, Hannah had gathered she’d been the other woman in the doctor’s nasty divorce ten years earlier and didn’t want to be blindsided by a younger, hotter version of herself.

      “So, is he leaving you for another woman?” Hannah had asked when they’d been touring the garden of the house in Country Club.

      “No, he said he just doesn’t look forward to coming home to me at night anymore.”

      “Oh, Katherine…”

      “It’s so unfair. He’s no prince. He’s overweight, older. He has nose hairs. He’s always clipping them when he follows me around yapping at me. And he’s no big deal in bed.”

      “Then maybe he’s doing you a favor.”

      “He’s leaving me!” Katherine had shrieked. “I’ll be all alone…again. He makes money. I was a lousy nurse before…”

      After the phone call Hannah tried to unwind again, but Katherine’s restless energy had infected her. Hannah felt as uprooted as Katherine. She didn’t belong in Texas, but she couldn’t go home. The window over the sink was cracked an inch, so the roar of the surf and the smell of muggy, salt air and pungent, rotting sea things permeated the tiny kitchen—alien scents. She was used to grass and trees, to big-city life, to a cooler, softer climate. To glamour. To horror.

      Hannah clenched her fingers. Who was she to judge Katherine? There was a big hole in her own life. Huge. Only her problems weren’t as simple as Katherine’s. Hannah couldn’t fix them by a divorce. If only Dom would give her a divorce.

      They say if a frog hops into a kettle of water and you light a fire under it, the frog won’t jump out as the water warms up. He’ll die.

      That had happened to Hannah twice before with men.

      Sometimes she felt like she was that frog, dying, little by little. For nine months she’d been in exile, living, if you could call it living, while she waited for a miracle. Away from her friends, Georgia had become increasingly bored and unhappy, and СКАЧАТЬ