Read Death By Chick Lit for Free Online Page A

of the night!”
    “Why didn’t you answer your home phone, Lulu?”
    “Because it’s the middle of the night!”
    “But then why did you answer your cell phone?”
    “I heard both ring, so I figured it was something important,” Lola offered. She was an old hand at not giving her mother more information than she needed—for example, the fact that she was currently speeding uptown to tamper with evidence at a young man’s apartment, in which she had once slept.
    “Are you sure you’re okay, Lulu? Do you want me to get on the shuttle?”
    “Yes, Mom. I mean, no. I mean, yes, I’m okay, no, no shuttle, thank you,” Lola said. “How did you hear about Mimi so fast, anyway?”
    “Well, I couldn’t sleep—and now I see why!—so I got on the on line.”
    Her befuddled terminology notwithstanding, Mrs. Somerville had actually gotten pretty handy with the Internet. As far as Lola was concerned, her mother and the World Wide Web were a match made in hell. Lola remembered the good old days—when the newspaper clippings about preliminary studies showing a link between cell phones and brain tumors, or which types of fish have the most mercury contamination, would arrive, nice and slow, by U.S. mail.
    “Let me see what else is on the Google,” said Mrs. Somerville. Clickety-click, Lola heard.
    Lola was an only child. She got a lot of attention. Which she loved, except when she didn’t. The only phase when she’d ever really wanted a sibling—specifically, an older brother who’d tousle her hair and explain what the “bases” were—had occurred when she was too young to realize that what she actually wanted was a boyfriend. Lola did know, however, that more siblings had been wanted: when she was little, her parents—a medical professional and a professor of neurolinguistics, and therefore not the type to use terms such as “wee-wee” or “daddy plants a seed”—had given her way too much information about whose plumbing had gone wrong where, and why it looked like it was just going to be the three of them.
    At that moment, it had occurred to young Lola, if subconsciously, that she was going to have to work extra hard to make Mom and Dad not sad that she, just she, was all they had.
    Her mother, Audrey, was a registered nurse and social worker, so, to be fair, fussing was her job. Interestingly and refreshingly, though, Mrs. Somerville had generally steered clear of interfering in Lola’s love life; somehow she’d seemed less worried about Lola’s getting married than she was about Lola’s getting melanoma. Perhaps this raise-an-independent-daughter spirit stemmed back to Mrs. Somerville’s days as a collaborating writer on Our Bodies, Our Selves . Lola’s childhood had been very Free to Be You and Me, only with more hand washing.
    “Hey, Mom, can I go now?” Lola asked. “I’m really trying to get eight hours tonight, as recommended in that article you sent me about sleep and toxoplasmosis.”
    “Lulu!” Mrs. Somerville sounded freshly upset.
    “What, Mom?”
    “ You found the body?”
    “Mom, what are you reading?” Is there anything Doug can rig up to keep my mother off the Web? That would give parental control a whole new meaning.
    “ Royalty ,” said Audrey. Royalty ?! thought Lola. That my mother knows about it is either a testament to its market penetration or to her omniscience or both. “It’s right here, under ‘Breaking.’ Oh, this— this is just too much. Lola, you have got to be more careful!”
    “I’ll try not to stumble on any more bodies, Mom, I promise.”
    “Not with corpses, with reporters. This Page Proof person spelled your name wrong.”
    Oh, for God’s sake. At least Wally’s pseudonym wouldn’t trigger any memories from the Aunt Fern fix-up.
    “Just promise me you’re okay, Lulu?”
    “I promise, Mommy.”
    “Try not to go out.”
    “At all?”
    “Well, I suppose daytime is still okay.”
    “I’ll do my best,” said Lola.
    “If you promise to