Items related to The Real Deal
With her bestselling mix of thrilling twists and characters to cheer for, Fern Michaels delves inside Washington, DC's halls of power—and into the heart of an independent woman driven by passion and bound by duty.
Raised by her loving but eccentric aunt, former FBI agent Quinn Star has always relied on herself—how else could she have survived the Bureau's old boys network, or navigated the heartbreak of a thwarted affair with her boss? Now Quinn risks her life every day in the Secret Service, protecting the First Lady of the United States. Only she can't safeguard her from the ruthless advisors intent on hiding the President's debilitating illness for their political gain. Suspecting a conspiracy that places the fate of the President, his wife—and the nation—on the line, Quinn whisks the First Lady out of the capital to her South Carolina home. But nowhere is truly safe from whoever is pulling the strings in a lethal game designed to keep Quinn from uncovering the truth. And no one can tell Quinn if she should risk her heart when a lover emerges from the shadows of the past...
Raised by her loving but eccentric aunt, former FBI agent Quinn Star has always relied on herself—how else could she have survived the Bureau's old boys network, or navigated the heartbreak of a thwarted affair with her boss? Now Quinn risks her life every day in the Secret Service, protecting the First Lady of the United States. Only she can't safeguard her from the ruthless advisors intent on hiding the President's debilitating illness for their political gain. Suspecting a conspiracy that places the fate of the President, his wife—and the nation—on the line, Quinn whisks the First Lady out of the capital to her South Carolina home. But nowhere is truly safe from whoever is pulling the strings in a lethal game designed to keep Quinn from uncovering the truth. And no one can tell Quinn if she should risk her heart when a lover emerges from the shadows of the past...
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About the Author:
New York Times bestselling author Fern Michaels has a passion for romance that stems from her other joys in life—her family, animals, and historic homes. She is usually found in South Carolina, where she is either tapping out stories on her computer or completing some kind of historical restoration.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
The Real Deal
1
Washington, DC
November 2007
The sun was barely over the horizon when Quinn Star exited her narrow four-story house in Georgetown. She locked the door, jiggling the knob to be certain it was locked before she pocketed the key in her baggy sweatpants. She ran in place, her mind whirling with what was on her agenda for the day. She took a moment to savor the cold, crisp November air, taking deep breaths and watching the little puffs of steam when she exhaled.
She loved this time of the day in the nation’s capital. The day was new and fresh, not yet tarnished with smog, corruption, and deal making in the most famous city in the world. Not that she was a part of the corruption and horse trading, but she did read the papers. There was corruption everywhere, even in the heartland, and the real deal making, as everyone in Washington knew, went on in the cloakrooms on the Hill and behind closed doors. Sometimes on the golf course or tennis court. She thanked God the way she did every morning at this time that she was no longer a part of the federal government.
On those rare times when she couldn’t fall asleep, she thought about Ezra Lapufsky and their time together, her face burning with her thoughts. Their relationship certainly hadn’t been perfect, neither had her job. In fact, both had been riddled with problems. Both she and Puff should have known better than to get involved with a coworker, but they’d gone ahead and forged a relationship anyway. For almost three long years. Puff had been everything she’d wanted in a man. He was kind, gentle, had a wicked sense of humor, and he’d said he loved her. The only problem was, he loved his job more. An eerie feeling settled between her shoulder blades as she looked over her shoulder, not once, but twice. She didn’t see anyone lurking about, but the feeling stayed with her as she started off at a slow trot. Her feet didn’t pick up speed until she hit O Street, where she ran at full throttle till she came to the crossroads of Wisconsin and M. She waved to other runners, people whose faces were familiar but whose names she didn’t know. There was Super Stud and his chocolate Lab. He waved. She waved back. Directly behind him was a woman she called Gypsy Rose Lee, in skimpy shorts and something that looked like a bustier. “I hope your tits freeze,” Quinn muttered to herself.
She turned to look behind her again because of the hard, clomping footfalls she heard. The donut man, puffing along at an uneven gait, so bundled up he could barely move. Quinn concentrated on the pavement in front of her. Time to turn around and head home. She was a block ahead of herself today. On M, she was just in time to see a figure dart behind a tall, bare sycamore tree. A chill raced up her spine as the donut man chugged past her.
Is someone watching me? Who? Why? Some lunatic with a penchant for a woman who looks like a bag lady at a quarter to six in the morning? If it’s a stalker, why isn’t he stalking the hot-looking chick in the bustier?
Quinn lengthened her strides and flew down the street. She careened around the corner ten minutes later and galloped up the steps to her tall, skinny Federal house. Safe inside, she turned the dead bolt. Her breathing was ragged as she leaned back against the door, her body trembling. She didn’t know why.
Federal Circuit Court Judge Alexander Duval, Quinn’s significant other and newly nominated by the president to be the next director of the FBI, came through the dining room, fully dressed, a cup of coffee in his outstretched hand. Quinn smiled at the handsome man as she accepted the cup of strong, dark coffee. Quinn eyed Alex over the rim of her coffee cup. He always looked so put together, with his custom suits that fit him to perfection. His dark hair was always in place, and she knew he shaved several times a day. He had a year-round tan thanks to a tanning bed in his own personal gym at home. His eyes were slate gray, and at times she thought them hard as glass. She tried not to compare those gray eyes to Puff’s melting brown ones.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen on your run?” he asked, his face and voice reflecting concern.
“Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have that someone is following me, watching me. It’s not just when I run in the morning, Alex. I felt it yesterday when I went out to lunch, and the day before that when I got in my car to drive home. Don’t look at me like that. I’m always careful, and I keep my wits about me. Hmmm, good coffee. Breakfast would have been nice,” she said lightly.
Alex twinkled. “My thoughts exactly, but unfortunately, I can’t wait for you to make it. I’ll be late tonight, and I might not even make it at all. I’ll give you a call. Be sure to turn on the alarm when you leave and don’t forget to lock the door.”
“You sound like Birdie. Don’t worry about tonight. I think I’m having dinner with her unless someone died last night and she has to attend a wake. Call me.”
Alex kissed her good-bye, not one of those peck-on-the-cheek kisses either. This kiss almost made her toes curl and her blood sing. Almost. He favored her with a wide grin and a hard pinch to her bottom. “That’s so you don’t forget me today,” he said as he headed for the door. “I’m tired of being engaged. When are you going to marry me?” he called over his shoulder.
“One of these days,” Quinn retorted as she sashayed her way to the bathroom.
Alex’s parting shot before he walked out the door was, “Your biological clock is ticking.”
It’s true, Quinn thought as she gulped the coffee in her cup. She was fast approaching forty. Who was she kidding? In two months she would be forty. Birdie was on her back all the time about settling down and raising a family. A bride needed her parents in the church when she walked down the aisle. What kind of wedding would it be without her mother and father in attendance? Hell, she didn’t even know where the happy wanderers were these days. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Alex. She did, but sometimes she compared what she felt for him to what she’d felt for Ezra Lapufsky, and it always came up short. Lately, though, she’d started to wonder if it was the sex she loved or the man himself. She just wasn’t ready to make that final commitment. For all she knew she might never be ready.
Stark naked, Quinn padded over to the shower and turned it on. While she waited for the water to warm up, she looked out the window and immediately stepped back when she thought she recognized Ezra Lapufsky. Her heart pounded against her breastbone.
Quinn opened the shower door and stepped inside just as the doorbell rang. She debated a moment before she lathered up. She never had visitors this early in the morning. Alex had a key and would have let himself in. Birdie also had a key. Puff? Not in a million years. She grimaced as she shampooed her honey blond hair.
Puff?
Why now, eight long years after she’d broken up with him, was she thinking about Ezra Lapufsky? Because she felt like someone was stalking her, following her, spying on her. It was what Puff did for a living. It had to be her imagination. Or was it because Puff had been her first real love, and she’d never really gotten over him? Was that why she was dragging her feet about marrying Alex? Or...did it have something to do with Alex’s nomination?
“I hate you, Ezra Lapufsky,” she seethed as she let the steaming water cascade over her head.
Forty-five minutes later, dressed in a charcoal gray Armani suit, she walked into the kitchen to make toast for herself. The minute the slice of dark bread popped out of the toaster she spread it with the butter and jam that Alex had left on the counter. She gobbled it, finishing her coffee at the same time. It only took a minute to turn off the coffee machine, return the butter and jam to the refrigerator, and head out the back door. She was almost to her car when she heard the kitchen phone ringing. Shrugging, she ignored it. It was probably Birdie either confirming or canceling dinner that night. She’d call her aunt later.
She headed for Georgetown University, where she taught law classes three days a week. When she wasn’t teaching, she practiced law from her own offices on M Street. When she had spare time during the day, she sat in Alex’s courtroom and watched him. All in all, she had a rewarding, satisfying life.
More or less.
· · ·
It was totally dark when Quinn parked her car at the side of her aunt’s yellow house on Connecticut Avenue. She loved Birdie’s old house, loved the old pine floors, with the knotholes so big you could stick your finger through them, and the sweeping spiral staircase. As a child she had slid down the banister thousands of times to land on the well-cushioned floor. Birdie still kept a pile of harem pillows clustered around the newel post at the foot of the stairs.
The sensor lights came alive as she walked from her car up the path that led to the three-story house she’d grown up in. It was always at Birdie’s that she found the most comfort and the most love. In that big, old, yellow house, was her past and sometimes even her present. One day in the future, hopefully, a very distant day, she would take up residence there again when Birdie went to what she called the big BO in the sky. Birdie always referred to heaven as the Big Obituary.
At the age of sixty-seven, Birdie was full of what she called piss and vinegar. She still wrote obituaries for three different newspapers, still visited the homeless three times a week, taking them food and clothing, and she still faithfully walked Winnie, her fourth-generation basset hound, morning, noon, and night. She also did her own gardening, cooked on occasion, and kept scrapbooks of all the deceased whose lives she had doctored up and improved upon in her obituaries. When she wasn’t tending to her normal activities, she managed to visit all nine funeral homes within a five-mile radius to pay her final respects. On a daily basis. If business at the funeral parlors was slow, which was sometimes the case, especially in late summer, according to Birdie, she worked on updating her scrapbooks. Birdie was quirky but lovable. Sometimes she was downright surly, like when she was really ticked off about something, at which point she could swear like a trooper and never bat an eye, and she didn’t care who heard her.
Grinning from ear to ear, Quinn let herself into the house and whistled for Winnie, who trotted over. She immediately lay down and rolled over for Quinn to scratch her belly.
“Lordy, Winnie, you’re getting fat. You need more exercise,” Quinn said, rubbing the dog’s belly.
“She is not getting fat. She hardly eats anything. She’s just a little broad, but it’s from neutering. I called you earlier, but there was no answer. Are you okay, baby?”
Quinn looked up at her aunt. She was as round as an orange, only five feet tall. She was dressed in her normal attire, a flowered dress that was a field of brilliant purple and white violets, and her Birkenstocks. Granny glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She peered through them, for a closer look at her niece. Her gray topknot jiggled when she huffed and puffed her way over to the staircase, where she sat down.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Alex asked me to marry him again this morning. I don’t know why I can’t say yes. I love him. I’m almost sure I do. We have a spectacular sex life. He’s a wonderful man. He’s kind, considerate, and generous. I don’t much care for his parents, but I wouldn’t be marrying them. He almost makes my blood sing sometimes. He doesn’t care about my screwball parents either. I can’t imagine my life without him in it. My God, the man was just nominated to be FBI director. What’s my problem, Birdie?” Quinn challenged her aunt.
Birdie propped her elbows on her plump knees. “Your problem is you’re crazy. You should have married that man years ago if you love him so much. I don’t understand how he puts up with you. What I really think is you still have a soft spot in your heart for that FBI agent, Ezra. What exactly does spectacular mean?” she asked slyly.
Quinn stood up. Winnie howled and proceeded to do her one and only trick—she rolled over onto her back, then rolled back onto her stomach. For that feat, which was almost impossible considering her girth, she was entitled to an Oreo cookie. When one didn’t materialize in Quinn’s hand, she howled her outrage. Quinn ran to the kitchen for the cookie and tossed it to the basset, who stretched and caught it in midair, her long ears flapping in her own breeze.
“Good girl, Winnie.” Birdie chuckled.
“You said she was on a diet and didn’t eat much. Oreo cookies aren’t for dogs; they’re for people,” Quinn said, her voice accusing.
“She doesn’t eat the cookie; she just licks the middle like I do. You’re trying to evade my question. What does spectacular mean?”
“None of your business, Birdie. Okay, okay, don’t get a puss on. It means Alex likes sex. I like sex. Together we have good sex. Really good sex. Are you happy now that you know your niece has great sex?”
“There’s more to life than sex,” Birdie sniffed as she struggled to her feet. She puffed out her cheeks as she plopped a bright blue bowler hat on her head. “Where are we going for dinner?”
“I thought we could go to Chow Li’s. He has the best egg rolls and spareribs in the city. If you want to go somewhere else, it’s fine with me.”
“It doesn’t matter where we go as long as I get back here by seven-thirty,” Birdie said. “I have two viewings this evening. I just have to get my coat so hold your horses.”
Quinn looked over at Winnie, who was sitting on her haunches. The two halves of the Oreo cookie lay on the floor. There wasn’t a speck of the white cream left on either half. “I’d like to know what she really gives you for dinner,” Quinn said.
“I heard that! She gets dry dog food, and she hates it. She’s starving herself to death.”
Quinn turned away so Birdie couldn’t see the smile on her face. Birdie cooked specially for Winnie: chicken livers, ground sirloin, roast beef, and other human foods. She said it was okay because she made sure Winnie ate her vegetables, too. Maybe she was right, since Winnie’s predecessors had all been on the same diet and lived to ripe old ages.
“So, who died today?” Quinn asked.
“Six people. Do you believe that? I said good-bye to Mabel Harrington this afternoon. I was disappointed in the job they did on her. I told Malcolm, too. She didn’t look like herself at all. I had him deepen the shade of lip gloss and add a little more rouge. They didn’t do those spit curls she favored by her ears right either. I made them fix the curls, too. You can’t go wrong with Estée Lauder products. Mabel’s daughters thanked me when Malcolm closed off the room and finished the job. She didn’t look waxy at all. I felt satisfied when I left. God only knows what they’re going to do to John Raleigh tonight. He was so grisly, with that long hair and even longer beard, if you know what I mean. Poor thing. He wanted to be laid out, but his son wanted cremation. It’s cheaper.”
“So you paid for his wake, right? I’m keeping score, Birdie. You must think you’re independently wealthy.”
“I am independently wealthy. I bought AOL when it was twenty-five cents and Intel when it was five dollars, and don’t forget Mr. Softy when it first came on the market. You really don’t want me to mention those dot com companies I got in and out of in the nick of time, do you?” Birdie smirked.
Quinn sighed. She could never win with Birdie. Every funeral home, every nursing home...
1
Washington, DC
November 2007
The sun was barely over the horizon when Quinn Star exited her narrow four-story house in Georgetown. She locked the door, jiggling the knob to be certain it was locked before she pocketed the key in her baggy sweatpants. She ran in place, her mind whirling with what was on her agenda for the day. She took a moment to savor the cold, crisp November air, taking deep breaths and watching the little puffs of steam when she exhaled.
She loved this time of the day in the nation’s capital. The day was new and fresh, not yet tarnished with smog, corruption, and deal making in the most famous city in the world. Not that she was a part of the corruption and horse trading, but she did read the papers. There was corruption everywhere, even in the heartland, and the real deal making, as everyone in Washington knew, went on in the cloakrooms on the Hill and behind closed doors. Sometimes on the golf course or tennis court. She thanked God the way she did every morning at this time that she was no longer a part of the federal government.
On those rare times when she couldn’t fall asleep, she thought about Ezra Lapufsky and their time together, her face burning with her thoughts. Their relationship certainly hadn’t been perfect, neither had her job. In fact, both had been riddled with problems. Both she and Puff should have known better than to get involved with a coworker, but they’d gone ahead and forged a relationship anyway. For almost three long years. Puff had been everything she’d wanted in a man. He was kind, gentle, had a wicked sense of humor, and he’d said he loved her. The only problem was, he loved his job more. An eerie feeling settled between her shoulder blades as she looked over her shoulder, not once, but twice. She didn’t see anyone lurking about, but the feeling stayed with her as she started off at a slow trot. Her feet didn’t pick up speed until she hit O Street, where she ran at full throttle till she came to the crossroads of Wisconsin and M. She waved to other runners, people whose faces were familiar but whose names she didn’t know. There was Super Stud and his chocolate Lab. He waved. She waved back. Directly behind him was a woman she called Gypsy Rose Lee, in skimpy shorts and something that looked like a bustier. “I hope your tits freeze,” Quinn muttered to herself.
She turned to look behind her again because of the hard, clomping footfalls she heard. The donut man, puffing along at an uneven gait, so bundled up he could barely move. Quinn concentrated on the pavement in front of her. Time to turn around and head home. She was a block ahead of herself today. On M, she was just in time to see a figure dart behind a tall, bare sycamore tree. A chill raced up her spine as the donut man chugged past her.
Is someone watching me? Who? Why? Some lunatic with a penchant for a woman who looks like a bag lady at a quarter to six in the morning? If it’s a stalker, why isn’t he stalking the hot-looking chick in the bustier?
Quinn lengthened her strides and flew down the street. She careened around the corner ten minutes later and galloped up the steps to her tall, skinny Federal house. Safe inside, she turned the dead bolt. Her breathing was ragged as she leaned back against the door, her body trembling. She didn’t know why.
Federal Circuit Court Judge Alexander Duval, Quinn’s significant other and newly nominated by the president to be the next director of the FBI, came through the dining room, fully dressed, a cup of coffee in his outstretched hand. Quinn smiled at the handsome man as she accepted the cup of strong, dark coffee. Quinn eyed Alex over the rim of her coffee cup. He always looked so put together, with his custom suits that fit him to perfection. His dark hair was always in place, and she knew he shaved several times a day. He had a year-round tan thanks to a tanning bed in his own personal gym at home. His eyes were slate gray, and at times she thought them hard as glass. She tried not to compare those gray eyes to Puff’s melting brown ones.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen on your run?” he asked, his face and voice reflecting concern.
“Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have that someone is following me, watching me. It’s not just when I run in the morning, Alex. I felt it yesterday when I went out to lunch, and the day before that when I got in my car to drive home. Don’t look at me like that. I’m always careful, and I keep my wits about me. Hmmm, good coffee. Breakfast would have been nice,” she said lightly.
Alex twinkled. “My thoughts exactly, but unfortunately, I can’t wait for you to make it. I’ll be late tonight, and I might not even make it at all. I’ll give you a call. Be sure to turn on the alarm when you leave and don’t forget to lock the door.”
“You sound like Birdie. Don’t worry about tonight. I think I’m having dinner with her unless someone died last night and she has to attend a wake. Call me.”
Alex kissed her good-bye, not one of those peck-on-the-cheek kisses either. This kiss almost made her toes curl and her blood sing. Almost. He favored her with a wide grin and a hard pinch to her bottom. “That’s so you don’t forget me today,” he said as he headed for the door. “I’m tired of being engaged. When are you going to marry me?” he called over his shoulder.
“One of these days,” Quinn retorted as she sashayed her way to the bathroom.
Alex’s parting shot before he walked out the door was, “Your biological clock is ticking.”
It’s true, Quinn thought as she gulped the coffee in her cup. She was fast approaching forty. Who was she kidding? In two months she would be forty. Birdie was on her back all the time about settling down and raising a family. A bride needed her parents in the church when she walked down the aisle. What kind of wedding would it be without her mother and father in attendance? Hell, she didn’t even know where the happy wanderers were these days. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Alex. She did, but sometimes she compared what she felt for him to what she’d felt for Ezra Lapufsky, and it always came up short. Lately, though, she’d started to wonder if it was the sex she loved or the man himself. She just wasn’t ready to make that final commitment. For all she knew she might never be ready.
Stark naked, Quinn padded over to the shower and turned it on. While she waited for the water to warm up, she looked out the window and immediately stepped back when she thought she recognized Ezra Lapufsky. Her heart pounded against her breastbone.
Quinn opened the shower door and stepped inside just as the doorbell rang. She debated a moment before she lathered up. She never had visitors this early in the morning. Alex had a key and would have let himself in. Birdie also had a key. Puff? Not in a million years. She grimaced as she shampooed her honey blond hair.
Puff?
Why now, eight long years after she’d broken up with him, was she thinking about Ezra Lapufsky? Because she felt like someone was stalking her, following her, spying on her. It was what Puff did for a living. It had to be her imagination. Or was it because Puff had been her first real love, and she’d never really gotten over him? Was that why she was dragging her feet about marrying Alex? Or...did it have something to do with Alex’s nomination?
“I hate you, Ezra Lapufsky,” she seethed as she let the steaming water cascade over her head.
Forty-five minutes later, dressed in a charcoal gray Armani suit, she walked into the kitchen to make toast for herself. The minute the slice of dark bread popped out of the toaster she spread it with the butter and jam that Alex had left on the counter. She gobbled it, finishing her coffee at the same time. It only took a minute to turn off the coffee machine, return the butter and jam to the refrigerator, and head out the back door. She was almost to her car when she heard the kitchen phone ringing. Shrugging, she ignored it. It was probably Birdie either confirming or canceling dinner that night. She’d call her aunt later.
She headed for Georgetown University, where she taught law classes three days a week. When she wasn’t teaching, she practiced law from her own offices on M Street. When she had spare time during the day, she sat in Alex’s courtroom and watched him. All in all, she had a rewarding, satisfying life.
More or less.
· · ·
It was totally dark when Quinn parked her car at the side of her aunt’s yellow house on Connecticut Avenue. She loved Birdie’s old house, loved the old pine floors, with the knotholes so big you could stick your finger through them, and the sweeping spiral staircase. As a child she had slid down the banister thousands of times to land on the well-cushioned floor. Birdie still kept a pile of harem pillows clustered around the newel post at the foot of the stairs.
The sensor lights came alive as she walked from her car up the path that led to the three-story house she’d grown up in. It was always at Birdie’s that she found the most comfort and the most love. In that big, old, yellow house, was her past and sometimes even her present. One day in the future, hopefully, a very distant day, she would take up residence there again when Birdie went to what she called the big BO in the sky. Birdie always referred to heaven as the Big Obituary.
At the age of sixty-seven, Birdie was full of what she called piss and vinegar. She still wrote obituaries for three different newspapers, still visited the homeless three times a week, taking them food and clothing, and she still faithfully walked Winnie, her fourth-generation basset hound, morning, noon, and night. She also did her own gardening, cooked on occasion, and kept scrapbooks of all the deceased whose lives she had doctored up and improved upon in her obituaries. When she wasn’t tending to her normal activities, she managed to visit all nine funeral homes within a five-mile radius to pay her final respects. On a daily basis. If business at the funeral parlors was slow, which was sometimes the case, especially in late summer, according to Birdie, she worked on updating her scrapbooks. Birdie was quirky but lovable. Sometimes she was downright surly, like when she was really ticked off about something, at which point she could swear like a trooper and never bat an eye, and she didn’t care who heard her.
Grinning from ear to ear, Quinn let herself into the house and whistled for Winnie, who trotted over. She immediately lay down and rolled over for Quinn to scratch her belly.
“Lordy, Winnie, you’re getting fat. You need more exercise,” Quinn said, rubbing the dog’s belly.
“She is not getting fat. She hardly eats anything. She’s just a little broad, but it’s from neutering. I called you earlier, but there was no answer. Are you okay, baby?”
Quinn looked up at her aunt. She was as round as an orange, only five feet tall. She was dressed in her normal attire, a flowered dress that was a field of brilliant purple and white violets, and her Birkenstocks. Granny glasses perched on the tip of her nose. She peered through them, for a closer look at her niece. Her gray topknot jiggled when she huffed and puffed her way over to the staircase, where she sat down.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Alex asked me to marry him again this morning. I don’t know why I can’t say yes. I love him. I’m almost sure I do. We have a spectacular sex life. He’s a wonderful man. He’s kind, considerate, and generous. I don’t much care for his parents, but I wouldn’t be marrying them. He almost makes my blood sing sometimes. He doesn’t care about my screwball parents either. I can’t imagine my life without him in it. My God, the man was just nominated to be FBI director. What’s my problem, Birdie?” Quinn challenged her aunt.
Birdie propped her elbows on her plump knees. “Your problem is you’re crazy. You should have married that man years ago if you love him so much. I don’t understand how he puts up with you. What I really think is you still have a soft spot in your heart for that FBI agent, Ezra. What exactly does spectacular mean?” she asked slyly.
Quinn stood up. Winnie howled and proceeded to do her one and only trick—she rolled over onto her back, then rolled back onto her stomach. For that feat, which was almost impossible considering her girth, she was entitled to an Oreo cookie. When one didn’t materialize in Quinn’s hand, she howled her outrage. Quinn ran to the kitchen for the cookie and tossed it to the basset, who stretched and caught it in midair, her long ears flapping in her own breeze.
“Good girl, Winnie.” Birdie chuckled.
“You said she was on a diet and didn’t eat much. Oreo cookies aren’t for dogs; they’re for people,” Quinn said, her voice accusing.
“She doesn’t eat the cookie; she just licks the middle like I do. You’re trying to evade my question. What does spectacular mean?”
“None of your business, Birdie. Okay, okay, don’t get a puss on. It means Alex likes sex. I like sex. Together we have good sex. Really good sex. Are you happy now that you know your niece has great sex?”
“There’s more to life than sex,” Birdie sniffed as she struggled to her feet. She puffed out her cheeks as she plopped a bright blue bowler hat on her head. “Where are we going for dinner?”
“I thought we could go to Chow Li’s. He has the best egg rolls and spareribs in the city. If you want to go somewhere else, it’s fine with me.”
“It doesn’t matter where we go as long as I get back here by seven-thirty,” Birdie said. “I have two viewings this evening. I just have to get my coat so hold your horses.”
Quinn looked over at Winnie, who was sitting on her haunches. The two halves of the Oreo cookie lay on the floor. There wasn’t a speck of the white cream left on either half. “I’d like to know what she really gives you for dinner,” Quinn said.
“I heard that! She gets dry dog food, and she hates it. She’s starving herself to death.”
Quinn turned away so Birdie couldn’t see the smile on her face. Birdie cooked specially for Winnie: chicken livers, ground sirloin, roast beef, and other human foods. She said it was okay because she made sure Winnie ate her vegetables, too. Maybe she was right, since Winnie’s predecessors had all been on the same diet and lived to ripe old ages.
“So, who died today?” Quinn asked.
“Six people. Do you believe that? I said good-bye to Mabel Harrington this afternoon. I was disappointed in the job they did on her. I told Malcolm, too. She didn’t look like herself at all. I had him deepen the shade of lip gloss and add a little more rouge. They didn’t do those spit curls she favored by her ears right either. I made them fix the curls, too. You can’t go wrong with Estée Lauder products. Mabel’s daughters thanked me when Malcolm closed off the room and finished the job. She didn’t look waxy at all. I felt satisfied when I left. God only knows what they’re going to do to John Raleigh tonight. He was so grisly, with that long hair and even longer beard, if you know what I mean. Poor thing. He wanted to be laid out, but his son wanted cremation. It’s cheaper.”
“So you paid for his wake, right? I’m keeping score, Birdie. You must think you’re independently wealthy.”
“I am independently wealthy. I bought AOL when it was twenty-five cents and Intel when it was five dollars, and don’t forget Mr. Softy when it first came on the market. You really don’t want me to mention those dot com companies I got in and out of in the nick of time, do you?” Birdie smirked.
Quinn sighed. She could never win with Birdie. Every funeral home, every nursing home...
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- PublisherGallery Books
- Publication date2015
- ISBN 10 1501123734
- ISBN 13 9781501123733
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages448
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