Read Online Dangerously Dark by Colette London - Free Book Online Page B

didn’t give up?” I asked. “What if one of them killed Declan? To scare all the Cartorama vendors into abandoning their leases?”
    A momentary silence fell between us. Faintly, I heard the pinging of video games. People talking at the pool tables. Music from somewhere. It all seemed very far away from me.
    Then Tomasz and Janel burst out laughing. Guffawing, really.
    I was offended. “It’s a reasonable theory! Undermine the cart pod. Dissolve it from within. Take over through fear.”
    Danny had told me once that the best motive for murder was greed. At the time, I’d disagreed. But now I thought I might be onto something. It all made sense. Especially if, in a limited market, Cartorama’s land was worth as much as I thought it was.
    Tomasz and Janel didn’t agree, to say the least.
    â€œThat’s it. You’re cut off.” Tomasz took my porter. Then he called me a cab, Janel grabbed my things, and they bundled me away to my Airbnb accommodations without even taking seriously the idea that someone could have deliberately murdered Declan.
    â€œYou are crazy, ” Janel said, firing up my indignation.
    â€œBut cute crazy,” Tomasz added, firing up my . . . Never mind.
    Maybe it was all the chocolate porter talking. Maybe it was the stressful day. Maybe it was the fact that I’d only just recently caught my first murderer. San Francisco was fresh on my mind, and so was everything that had happened there. I couldn’t let go of the idea that Declan may have been killed on purpose.
    Janel and Tomasz’s denials only lent credence to my fears.
    That’s why, later, snug in my Airbnb accommodations—a cute foursquare in the rapidly gentrifying Northeast neighborhood—I picked up my cell phone. I dialed. Woozily, I waited.
    A familiar, sexy voice came over the line.
    â€œHey, Travis!” I shouted, feeling elated to hear him. Also, admittedly tipsy. I don’t usually drink much, especially on a nearly empty stomach. But after stumbling over another dead body today, sampling Tomasz’s excellent craft brew had seemed like a superb idea. “I’ve got a problem,” I told my financial advisor. “A big one. But first . . . what are you wearing right now?”

Four
    When I woke up the next day, I honestly didn’t know where I was. Not that that was strictly unusual for me. I travel so often and so widely that I might at any time (for instance) wake up in a capsule hotel in Singapore, a “tree house” hotel in Harads, or a penthouse in Manhattan. I have friends all over the world. Waking up to an unfamiliar ceiling is de rigueur for me.
    This time, though, the experience was more unsettling than normal. Mostly because, as I blinked up at my room’s white-painted crown molding and mullioned widows (I apparently hadn’t even closed the curtains last night before collapsing into bed), I couldn’t remember, for an instant, how I’d gotten there.
    Alarmed, I sat bolt upright in bed. The motion made the room spin. My head ached, too. With a groan, I sank backward.
    I felt awful. If this was what came of drinking chocolate porter at noon, I needed to put the kibosh on that activity, stat. It didn’t seem likely that a mere three or four drinks could have created a hangover this severe, but I could barely tolerate opening my eyes to examine my surroundings again.
    Warily and painfully, I did so, anyway. I glimpsed my jeans and sneakers, cast off to the gleaming hardwood floor. I saw my stand-in purse (a lame-duck substitute for my beloved—and lost—crossbody bag) on an upholstered armchair nearby. I saw my jacket draped haphazardly on the bed’s footboard, half on and half off the mattress. I saw the twisted coverlet on the bed.
    Clearly, I’d spent a restless night here. But before that . . .
    In a flash, it all came flooding back to me. The cab ride. The drinks at Muddle + Spade. The police,