Pasta Imperfect - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,21

except shoes and underwear. Britha and Barbro clung to each other by the bed, looking severely shell-shocked. "If we need to vacate the building, would now be a good time to do it?" Britha asked.

I stared slack-jawed at my suitcase. I stared at Britha and Barbro. They looked so terrified, I ignored my own woes for the moment and hurried over to give them a reassuring hug. "It's not a real fire," I soothed. "It's just a drill. I can tell by the ring."

They sagged against each other with relief. "We're sorry about what just happened, Emily," Britha explained. "We didn't think to close the door, but we should have. When those romance gals saw us picking through your things, they thought it was a free-for-all. We didn't know how to stop them!" She paused, her expression changing suddenly from anguish to delight. "We did make our selections though. I've seen young people wearing clothes like this in the library, but I never thought we'd have a chance to wear them ourselves. Isn't that right, Barbro?"

Barbro nodded as Britha whipped out two pairs of cigarette pants and two bodysuits from behind her back. "This is so exciting. Look, Emily." She stretched my nude-colored bodysuit to and fro like a piece of softened taffy, then regarded me with the devil sparkling in her seventy - three - year - old eyes. "Spandex."

It was close to midnight when I finally hit the shower. To keep the toilet paper and towels dry, I piled them outside the bathroom door before I turned on the water. Surprisingly, the pressure was really good. Spray hit all four walls like a category three hurricane and started filling the sink. It made me think I could do handwash laundry while I showered...if I had any clothes left. Why had I let the twins keep my only remaining articles of clothing? I was such a pushover. But what else could I have done? When Britha held that bodysuit up to herself, she looked like a twenty-one-year-old about to order her first legal Bud Light. How could I have grabbed it away from her?

I observed the pool of water gathering at my feet. Hmm. Drain was a little slow.

I tried to rationalize the lunacy of my decision by reminding myself that the twins' father had been a Lutheran minister who'd probably frowned upon beer, bingo, patent leather, and any kind of stretch microfiber. Introducing them to spandex could change their whole lives! I mean, look what it had done for the NFL.

I turned off the shower and slogged through two inches of water for my towel, hoping the backup didn't leak through to the ground floor. I stared at the clogged drain and wondered how to say "Drano" in Italian.

I heard an odd thump in the hallway as I was drying myself, but I wasn't about to check it out wrapped in a towel the size of a linen napkin. I cocked my head to listen more closely, but when I didn't hear any follow-up commotion, I chalked it up to typical hotel sounds, finished toweling dry, and climbed into bed.

I fell asleep the minute my head hit the pillow -- awakened what seemed like hours later by a chorus of voices shouting in Italian just outside my door. I cracked an eye to squint at the ceiling, then reached over to hit the illumination bar on my travel alarm: 1:06. Okay, I knew Italians were night owls, but this was a public building, and some of us wanted to sleep!

I crawled out of bed, shrugged into my Laura Ashley dress, and staggered across the room, thinking fierce thoughts. I threw open the door. "Would you people please --"

The corridor was empty.

I looked left. I looked right. I stepped farther into the hallway and peered down the staircase. The voices I'd heard echoed up from the lobby. But they weren't the voices of rowdy Italian night owls. They were the voices of a half dozen uniformed police gathered around a woman whose lifeless body lay at the bottom of the stairs.

My eyes froze open in horror.

And she was wearing my new stretch denim corset dress with the bra straps!

Chapter 4

Cassandra Trzebiatowski," Duncan reported in a gravelly voice. "Room 211." He stood outside my room, rumpled and barefoot -- the same way he'd looked when I'd banged on his door an hour earlier.

"The police speculate she tripped over the runner at the top of the stairs and fell down the