Pinned for Murder by Elizabeth Lynn Casey Page B

me.”
    Leona looked from Beatrice to the photograph and back again, her perfectly waxed eyebrows rising ever so slightly. “Would you mind if I move Kenny long enough to check my eyes?”
    “Your eyes are beautiful, Leona. Truly luminous.” Tori glanced at Margaret Louise and grinned. “But I have to tell you . . . Doug is married. Has kids, too. A boy and a girl if I remember correctly.”
    Leona pushed the visor back into place, her shoulders slumping momentarily.
    “What about him ?” Margaret Louise asked as her finger extended across her sister’s shoulder. “Is he married?”
    “He? Who? Where?” Leona’s head lifted like a periscope, her gaze moving side to side.
    “Over there.” Margaret Louise leaned forward once again, her finger providing a better route for Leona to follow. “The hunk with the bulging muscles and military style crew cut.”
    “Military style crew cut?” Leona repeated. “Where? Wh—Ohhh, there he is.”
    Tori laughed. “That’s Curtis. He’s working for Martha—” The sentence stalled on her tongue, her mind still struggling with the notion that Rose’s ornery neighbor was dead.
    “It’s a shame to see someone so strong and in shape out of work. Perhaps I can find something for him to do around the shop.”
    “Your shop is fine,” Margaret Louise offered. “What on earth could you possibly find for him to do?”
    Leona pulled the visor down once again, her hand removing Beatrice’s autographed picture in one motion. Peering at her reflection, she whipped a tube of lipstick from her purse and applied it to her lips. “Perhaps around my house, then.”
    “What needs fixin’ there?”
    “I could use a shed.”
    “For what? You have no children. You have no grandchildren. You live in a three-bedroom house all by your—”
    “Oh shut up, Twin.” Leona dropped the lipstick back into her purse and extracted a tissue instead. Quickly, she pursed her lips together once, twice, three times before dabbing the excess color onto the tissue. “It’s not his fault he’s suddenly without a job. Isn’t it my civic duty, as a human being, to provide work to someone who needs it?”
    “Your civic duty?” Margaret Louise repeated with a teasing lilt. “Since when have you ever been worried about civic duty?”
    Leona pushed the visor back into place and tugged on the door handle. “Since now.”
    Tori reached across the seat and grabbed hold of Leona’s shoulder. “Wait. He’s not in a uniform.”
    Beatrice’s giggle was drowned out by Margaret Louise’s snort of laughter.
    Leona pulled the handle toward her body, her stocking-clad legs swiveling toward the street. “Snug jeans . . . a T-shirt that hugs his biceps . . . and a tool belt armed with any number of enticing objects . . . I’d say he’s most certainly a man in uniform.”
    “And the fact he, too, is about half your age?”
    “That just means he’s still teachable.” Leona stepped onto the sidewalk, her narrow black skirt showcasing a pair of legs women half her age would envy.
    Shaking her head, Margaret Louise followed suit, her plump body a stark contrast to her twin’s. Tori and Beatrice joined them on the sidewalk.
    “Tori, hi!” Doug strode across Rose’s front lawn, sun-lit highlights shimmering through his dirty blond hair. “What brings you by at this time of day?”
    “My friends and I just wanted to check in on Rose real quick.” She gestured to each of the women standing alongside her. “Doug, I’d like you to meet some of Rose’s friends—this is Beatrice, Margaret Louise, and L—”
    “Leona . . . Leona Elkin,” the sixtysomething woman supplied as she extended her hand in pristine fashion while batting her eyelashes at Mach speed.
    Grabbing hold of her fingers, Doug lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it gently. “Leona, what a beautiful name.”
    The woman sighed, the enamored sound a mere backdrop to Margaret Louise’s guffaw.
    Leona glared at her sister.
    Margaret