Read Arson Takes a Dare: The Third Marisa Adair Mystery Adventure (Marisa Adair Mysteries Book 3) for Free Online Page A

really very busy unpacking. Berea, please take your—entourage—back to your own suite.”
    “I wouldn’t ask if you if I didn’t think you’d do a great job, Althea. It’s not as if we’re close friends.” As Berea leaned into Althea’s personal space, silence fell in the suite. “With your triangular face, you remind me of a small, finicky cat. The fine wrinkles in your face are like whiskers, or thin stripes. You walk among the rest of us as if you’re afraid you’ll get the pink pads on your paws dirty, with your little feline nose up in the air.”
    Clay angled his body between the two women. “Berea, please—”
    She bopped him on the shoulder with her silver pointer. “And you, Clay Napier. You’re so handsome, with your cleft chin and strong jaw line. You sport a few artistic lines from your angled cheekbones to your willful nose. You look like what you are… a retired secret agent.”
    Althea gasped. “Berea, you’ve gone too far. I must insist you apologize to Mr. Napier this instant.”
    Clay took Berea’s arm. “My dear Mrs. Kenton, please allow me to escort you back to your suite.”
    “Do you two ever listen to yourselves when you’re talking?” Mrs. Kenton’s voice rose. “Althea, you always sound as if you have a stick up your ass. ‘I must insist you apologize.’ And Clay, you’re as bad as your lover. ‘Please allow me to escort you.’ Separately, you each come off as pretentious. Together, there’s a synergy effect. The pompous whole is greater than the sum of the arrogant parts.”
    “Mrs. Kenton, I must insist you leave.” Clay tried to tug Berea to the door. 
    “‘I must insist.’ Classic.” Like an emaciated mule, she metaphorically dug her heels in and laid her ears back. “Clay, there are whispers that you killed one of your former colleagues at the nursing home. His death was conveniently blamed on a nurse at the nursing home, an angel of death who killed patients to put them out of their misery.”
    Clay hauled Berea toward the door.
    The old woman’s face hardened as she tried to slap Althea with her pointer and missed. She retracted the pointer and slipped it in her pocket. “Althea, according to Parvis Stidham’s online investigative reports, you based many of your books on Marisa Adair’s life. You wrote about her terrible childhood with an alcoholic father and school bullies. You also took her private struggles with alcoholism and made them public in your books.”
    “Time to go, Berea.” Clay propelled the recalcitrant Berea to the open door, leaving furrows from her shoes in the thick carpet in her wake.
    Berea grasped the doorframe like a cat who didn’t want to go outside. “You gambled your relationship with Marisa to further your own career, and you lost. Why would you turn down the opportunity to legitimately use someone’s life?” She slapped at Clay’s insistent hands. “Do you get some sort of perverse satisfaction from stealing a person’s life for your books?”
    “That’s enough.” Clay pried Berea’s fingers from the wooden doorframe and shoved her into the hall. “It’s time for everyone to leave.” Under his authoritative shooing, people flowed into the hall.
    As the happy sounds of the excited crowd faded, only Clay, Althea, Flora May, and Starla remained in the suite.
    Flora May shook her head, sending her high beehive of hair into a drunken tilt. “Last spring at the nursing home, Mrs. Kenton was confused. The only thing that kept her upright in her wheelchair was the seatbelts. She haunted the nursing home halls like a smelly ghost—”
    “Ghosts don’t leave trails of urine in their wake, Flora May.” Starla wrinkled her tiny nose like a rabbit. “Remember that bedraggled doll Mrs. Kenton kept clutched to her bosom like a baby?”
    Althea opened her mouth. Clay squeezed her arm. She closed it.
    “The nutty old bat called the doll ‘Mayla’.”
    “Flora May, you can’t refer to Mrs. Kenton as either nutty