Dead is the New Black by Marianne Stillings Page A

look at
me.”
    I raised my gaze, met his, felt my cheeks
heat. If I were quick, I could make a run for the door, flinging
hefty volumes at him as I went to slow him down.
    Now, if I had written this little scenario
for a couple of Debby Destiny’s clients, my readers would know that Dr. Van Graf was not a killer,
because he was the hero and I was the heroine, and we were meant to
fall in love and live HEA. The murderer would most likely be some
superfluous character like Igor or Wolf, and the presence of those
spots of blood on my hero’s sweater would have a logical
explanation having nothing to do with murder most foul.
    Besides, if he’d just committed murder,
wouldn’t there be a lot more blood on his sweater than a few
droplets? Well, wouldn’t there?
    “I didn’t do this, Steph,” my erstwhile hero
said. “But I’ll need your help to find out who did.”
    My help?
    “My help?” With slow deliberation, I slid my
right hand behind my butt and grabbed the biggest tome my fingers
touched, praying it was Stephen King’s The
Stand , which clocked in at a hefty 1153 pages. If Van Graf
made a move toward me, I would at least have a fighting chance,
slamming his face with a pound or two of hardcover fiction,
stunning him long enough to escape.
    He tilted his head slightly. “It won’t
work.”
    I swallowed, tightened my grip on the book.
“What won’t work, Doctor?”
    “Call me Jon, Stephanie.”
    “What won’t work, Jon
Stephanie ?”
    He chuckled. “Hitting me with that book
you’ve got hold of. Even if you managed to get it off the shelf
without dropping it, I’m pretty quick and—”
    Yanking the book free, I swung my arm,
smacking the volume into his shoulder. Thwaak. It was like hitting a concrete wall with a
sponge.
    “Oh, wow. Ouch.” There was laughter in his
blue eyes and an infuriatingly sarcastic tone in his voice. “Put
that damn book down before somebody gets hurt.”
    “Like you , you
mean?” I challenged. “Move aside or I’ll hit you again, Jon .”
    I don’t know how it happened, but one moment
the book was in my hand and the next it was in his. Turning the
volume, he read the title aloud. “ The Collected
Works of Stephenie Meyer . Hey, thanks. I’ve been looking all
over for this.”
    His brow furrowed as he looked at the book,
then back at me.
    “Your name’s Stephanie. Is this one of
yours?”
    “Mm-hm,” I mumbled. “Sure is.”
    He reached for me and curled his long fingers
around my wrist. I started to pull away when he said, “I’m not
going to hurt you. Look at me. Trust me.”
    Call me an idiot…
    You’re an idiot!
    Thank you. But I wanted to trust him. Hoped I
could. Needed to.
    “Let’s sit down,” he urged. “This is a crime
scene. We don’t want to disturb it more than we already have.”
    As he tugged me along the aisle and out into
the main part of the study, I said, “Are you going to call the
police?”
    “Eventually.”
    The fire crackled and popped in greeting as
we took our seats. “Why wait?” I asked. “If you didn’t kill
Percy—”
    “I told you,” he interrupted. “I did not kill
anyone. Hell, I didn’t even know Usher. Only met him briefly
yesterday. What possible motive would I have? Besides…” He paused
and seemed to search for words. “I have an alibi.”
    I straightened in my chair and eyed him. “An
alibi? What kind of alibi ?”
    “I was with someone.” He cleared his throat
and said softly, “A lady.”
    Narrowing my gaze on him, I said, “Well,
since you were with someone, why did you send Lucy to get me? Why
was the cook waiting for me here instead of you? And why does she
yell everything?”
    He shifted in his chair and with a small
shake of his head, said, “I can’t elaborate on your first two
questions, but I can tell you that Miss Troll is nearly deaf. She
resists getting a hearing aid because she thinks it will make her
look old, and since English is her second language, she yells
because she’s