Read Online Edited to Death by Linda Lee Peterson - Free Book Online

Little Italian ladies dressed in black with hairnets
     and faint mustaches on their upper lips.” He sighed.
    “Don’t mind him,” I said to Calvin. “Funerals make him nostalgic.” I turned to Michael.
     “Besides, you love sushi.”
    “I know. I’m going off to drown my sorrows in some raw tuna.” He wandered off again.
    “I like that guy,” said Calvin.
    “Me, too,” I said. I grinned. “He’s not bad in the sack, even if he’s not my fashion
     advisor.”
    “So judgmental, Maggie.”
    “Got it in one,” I said.
    “You women. You’ve really taken all the fun out of objectification of the opposite
     sex.”
    “Objectification?”
    “Yeah. I used to have a shrink girlfriend and she took me to some of those conferences
     where the Berkeley lady therapists in Birkenstocks sit around and relive their girlhoods
     from a feminist perspective.”
    “You went?”
    “Sure. One thing about those feminist conferences, they’re great places to meet women.
     And they have to be nice to me, because I’m a…” He gestured quote marks in the air,
     “… man of color.” He tilted his beer bottle and swigged, waggling his eyebrows in
     a bad imitation of W.C. Fields.
    “You’re reprehensible, Calvin.”
    “But lovable. You know, I like real women, too. Watch this. I’m going to hook up with
     the Empress of Ice over there.” He gestured with his beer bottle. The object of his
     attention was Small Town ’s film critic, Andrea Storch. “Starchy Storch,” the magazine staff called her. Boston-born,
     Wellesley-educated, she rarely appeared out of regulation uniform: tailored wool skirt
     and cashmere twinset. Usually gray. Pearls, of course, and a signet ring. I was willing
     to bet good money the ring had belonged to one of her very Episcopalian parents.
    “Do your best, Calvin,” I said. “I hope you two will be very happy.”
    As Calvin strolled over to assault the redoubtable Ms. Storch, I decided to search
     out the next of kin. Actually, I wasn’t sure to whom I should tender my condolences.
     There was Claire, of course, but she was really the ex, even though I didn’t think
     they’d ever actually filed for divorce. Or Stuart? But then, I’d never really understood
     that relationship either.
    I’d been charming to Stuart, truly I had, including him in dinner invitations we extended
     to Quentin—all that Miss Manners stuff—but it had cost me.
    I bumped into Stuart in the kitchen. He was at the counter, piling more tiny linen
     cocktail napkins on a tray. He had forsaken his usual Errol Flynn-style blousy silk
     shirt for a gray and white striped broadcloth shirt and tailored wool slacks. I touched
     his shoulder.
    He turned. “Maggie.” He pecked me on the cheek. “Thanks for sitting with me at the
     service.”
    “How are you holding up, Stuart?”
    He shrugged. “Well, the widow and I are circling, trying to decide whose party this
     really is.”
    “You look wonderful. Very uptown; Quentin would approve.”
    He smiled. “He would, wouldn’t he? He should, it’s his shirt. This is as close as
     I come to Savile Row, I’m afraid.”
    “God, Stuart, I feel so awful for you. For me, too.”
    He adjusted his stack of napkins a millimeter this way and that. Without looking up,
     he said, “Tell me about finding him.”
    I suppressed a shudder. “There’s not much to tell. We had a lunch date. Nobody answered
     the door. Madame went to get me some writing paper so I could leave a nasty note,
     and then I pushed the door open and walked up the stairs. He was,” I swallowed hard,
     “just lying there, sort of crumpled, over the desk.”
    “I feel so guilty about all this.”
    My heart sank. “Why?”
    “I should have been here when whoever it was came in.”
    “Why weren’t you?”
    “Quentin and I had a blowup. He’d gotten an invitation to a gallery opening up on
     Sutter Street. And I knew he wasn’t going to take me.”
    “Why?”
    “Oh, he hardly ever took me