Love Can Be Murder

Great.
    "I thought your cousin was getting married this weekend."
    "She was. I mean, she was supposed to." She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. "It's a long story. I'll call you in a few days and explain everything."
    Angora squinted at Roxann.
    "Meanwhile, tell Detective Capistrano that I've gone back to Biloxi."
    "Are you in danger?" her father asked.
    "I'll be fine. Really."
    He sighed heavily. "This is how you use your education? Play cat and mouse with unsavory characters?"
    She swallowed hard, trying not to feel like a little girl who'd misbehaved. "I'll call you, Dad." With much remorse, she pushed the disconnect button and turned a cheerful smile in Angora's direction. "Feeling rested?"
    "Yes." Angora stretched. "What was that all about?"
    "I called my father to let him know we'd stayed at his house last night."
    "Who is Detective Capistrano?"
    "Nobody. Hey, is that a mall?"
    Angora was nothing if not easily distracted. "Yes! Take this exit—we're going to spend some money."
    "I don't have much cash," Roxann warned. Actually, she had fourteen dollars and twenty-two cents in her purse, which wasn't even leather.
    Angora pshawed. "Who needs cash when I have Trenton's gold card?"
    "I didn't hear you say that."

Chapter Eleven

    ANGORA STOOD BEHIND R oxann and stared at her cousin's reflection. Envy threatened to surface, but pride over the wardrobe makeover she'd supervised won out. "You look marvelous."
    Roxann's brown eyes cut to her in the mirror. "I look ridiculous."
    Angora sighed — nothing was more exasperating than a beautiful woman who failed to recognize her physical potential. How many times had she heard Dee say that the family cheekbones had been wasted on Roxann? And one of her most mortifying memories was having the plastic surgeon draw on her God-given piggish nose with a black marker based on a picture of Roxann that Dee had produced.
    "It's my mother's nose," Dee had insisted, "and it should have been yours."
    After her jaw had been broken and reset, and her teeth straightened, she and Roxann could have passed for sisters, except for the hips and the hair. Her own true color was a mousy brown, but Dee had been so determined that everyone think she was a natural blonde, Angora's hair had been lightened since kindergarten.
    "You just need time to adjust to your new look," Angora assured Roxann. "You're going to knock his socks off."
    "Who?"
    "Whoever."
    Roxann scoffed, but Angora noticed the subtle change in her demeanor as she turned sideways and perused her whip-slim figure in brown leather pants, pink blouse, and high-heeled ankle boots. She was thinking about someone.
    Roxann tugged at the waistband. "These pants are tighter on me than on the animal that wore the hide."
    Angora grinned and turned to the clerk hovering in the background. "We'll take this outfit, and all the rest."
    "Angora, I can't let you buy all these things for me."
    "Why not? After all, you rescued me." She waved Trenton's gold American Express card. "No limit."
    She handed over the card with a flourish. Bankruptcy was too good for Trenton after what he'd done to her. Although now with Darma Walker's money, along with her dead husband's, it would take more than a shopping spree at a sub-par department store to make an impression on him. Or to relieve her own anguish.
    The rage that had hovered just beneath the surface since yesterday made her skin prickly and hot. She hated Trenton all the more for giving her what was probably a permanent nerve rash. Unable to restrain herself, she clawed at the itchy skin on her neck with the frenzy of a lapdog. Trenton didn't deserve to live happily ever after, not after destroying her life, the miserable, lying beast. And to think she'd saved herself for him, had been willing to dedicate her life to him, all because Dee had promised that he was the one for her.
    "We can get some ointment for your hives."
    She stopped mid-scratch at Roxann's voice, feeling like a ten-year-old. "I'll be fine," she said, straightening, but panicked for a few seconds, trying to remember where she was—sometimes her mind took her to another place.
    "Angora?"
    Racks of clothing, bad carpet, three-way mirrors—oh, yes, the department store. She manufactured a smile for Roxann, then disguised her raw neck with a quick flip of the collar of her new silk blouse. "Next stop—hair and makeup."
    Roxann blanched. "Huh?"
    Instantly cheered, Angora hooked her arm around her cousin's shoulder. "When we're