Party Crashers

pregnancy. As she pushed herself up from the chair, the phone rang again—classic Leann.
    Jolie picked up the phone and smiled into the receiver. "What did you forget?"
    Silence greeted her.
    "Leann?"
    Someone was there, she could hear the openness of the connected call, a faint rustle in the background. "Leann, is that you?" When there was no answer, her heart skipped a beat. "Gary?"
    The rustling sound grew louder, then a click disconnected the call. Jolie swallowed and listened to the dial tone for a few seconds, then set down the phone and looked toward the darkened bedroom. Unbidden, a horror movie came to mind, the one about the cute coed receiving threatening calls all evening, only to have the police to call her later and tell her they'd traced the calls as coming from inside the house.
    She wasn't a cute coed, and for the life of her she couldn't remember how the movie had ended. For the life of her ? Bad choice of words, she conceded, moving toward the bedroom as quietly as possible. She had her cell phone in her right hand, ready to punch the speed dial button for 911. Remembering something on an airline safety report about shoes being a ready weapon, she scooped up one of her chunky-heel pumps and wielded it in the other hand, thinking that if Gary Hagan was crouching in the bedroom, he would be more likely to die from laughter than from any wound she might inflict.
    Moisture gathered around her hairline as she pounced on the light switch. When she stepped into the doorway, though, the most dangerous-looking thing in her bedroom was the multi-outlet strip in the floor overloaded with a spaghetti knot of appliance cords.
    She scoffed at her foolishness and sat on the mossy-colored duvet to remove her pantyhose, thinking she had to get a grip on herself. Gary Hagan wasn't a murderer. It was more likely that he'd been drinking and somehow had driven into the river, then panicked when he couldn't get his companion out.
    Except why would he have been near the river, so far from his apartment, so far from his neighborhood of Buckhead? And who was the dead woman?
    Her gaze landed on the book that Gary had given her to read—the sales bible, he had called it. The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz. She had gotten a couple of chapters into it, but had quit reading it when he disappeared, because she'd begun to feel patronized...not by the author, but by Gary. He was always pushing her to think about the future, to become her own boss. Don't spend the rest of your life working for someone else, Jolie. Why spend your energy making someone else rich ?
    It was one of the reasons she had quit the Sanders Agency; when Sammy had made a snide remark about Gary absconding with her car, quitting had seemed like both a way to defend Gary and a way to follow his advice.
    Now who felt like a big, broke fool?
    She rubbed her temples and decided there was no warding off the headache that had been coming on all day. Backtracking to the kitchen, she tossed down a couple of aspirin and peered into the freezer for dinner options. One chicken breast and a package of frozen whole-wheat waffles.
    The waffles won. She dropped two in the toaster, then walked to her desk and flipped on her computer. She'd missed the early local news, but suspected she'd be able to find something online about the discovery reeled out of the Chattahoochee River. She glanced at the to-do list next to her computer and frowned.

    Have business cards printed
    Send postcards to customer list
    Pay E & O insurance premium
    Pay fees for MLS

    The errors and omissions insurance was a must to prevent an honest contractual mistake from wrecking her real-estate career, but thankfully, it was affordable. A lifetime membership to the Multiple Listing System to access home listings online would be less expensive in the long run, but five grand stood between her and that option. For now, she'd have to go the monthly subscription route. And advertising on a shoestring budget meant lots of postcards, flyers, emails, and good old-fashioned cold-calling. She was tempted not to do anything until this bizarre situation with Gary was resolved, but when the holidays were over, the brokerage company had to be up and running. Life would go on, and she needed to be able to support herself.
    Assuming she wasn't in jail, of course.
    Jolie was halfway through the waffles when she found the story she was looking for on a local news web site:

    CAR AND BODY PULLED