Pasta Imperfect - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,94

show us how to transform our makeup from daywear to eveningwear."

"Is that the eveningwear you have on now?" I asked, wincing at the peacock blue shading and thick liner above their eyes.

"Heavens no. This is daywear. Eveningwear is a lot more dramatic."

EH! I studied the clothing on the bed. The metallic gold tank tops. The zebra-striped vests. The black leather pants. The see-through blouses and mesh sweaters. I couldn't help being amazed that with all the exclusive clothing shops in Florence, Jackie had still managed to find a Frederick's of Hollywood. But I had to hand it to her. There wasn't a thing here that wouldn't look dynamite with orange hair. She really did have great color sense.

"We've run into a small problem though," Britha said to me. Or was it Barbro? Now that she'd dropped the rhyming gig, I couldn't tell. "The tags are still attached to everything, and we don't have any scissors. We could try gnawing them off, but our dentist says that's very bad for your teeth."

"As it happens," I said, retrieving my Swiss Army knife from the pocket of my capri pants, "you're in luck. Compliments of Nana. She bought this for me in Switzerland last year. It performs twenty-nine functions." I held it out for their perusal. "Thirty if you count throwing it at someone."

"It has a hole in it," Barbro observed. Or maybe it was Britha. Geesch, where were their name tags? "Is it broken?"

I touched the hole fondly. "There used to be a little clock in that hole, but it got broken, so I pried it out. The rest of the gizmos work all right though."

I plucked the miniature scissors out of the housing and with the twins' help, began snipping tags from all their new purchases. There was quite a pile when we finished, which indicated a fact of which I'd been totally unaware.

Writing sentiments for greeting cards must be a lucrative business. Britha and Barbro Severid had spent a fortune.

"What color eye shadow would complement this?" one of them asked as she danced around the floor with an alligator jacket.

Hunh. I didn't think Lutherans were allowed to dance. No, wait. That was the Baptists. Catholics could dance, they just couldn't have sex until they were married. I didn't know how the Baptists felt about sex before marriage, but I'd guess they'd say it was permissible as long as you didn't assume any upright position that could be misconstrued as a rumba.

I gathered the tags off the bed and was about to trash them in the cylinder by the desk when something at the bottom of the wastebasket caught my eye. A bottle. The same bottle that had fallen through their plastic sack at the top of the Duomo.

Only now the bottle was empty.

I glanced in the twins' direction. Jackie obviously hadn't pierced their ears, so how had they used up an entire bottle of rubbing alcohol in two days' time? Maybe they'd spilled it. Or more logically, maybe they'd decided to take sponge baths instead of hassling with the inadequate shower facilities. I remembered Mom giving me sponge baths with rubbing alcohol and water when I'd been feverish as a child. But it seemed they advised against that these days because of the toxicity, or something like that.

I held onto the tags, eyeing the bottle more closely. The label screamed 91% in large blue numbers. Pretty strong solution. I usually bought the 70 percent solution to use as an astringent, but unlike the twins' bottle, my sixteen-ounce bottle seemed to last forever.

Shrugging, I dumped the tags into the cylinder, my eyes suddenly freezing in their sockets as I watched them fall onto the bottle. Emily, you dolt! The "other" alcohol that had poisoned Philip Blackmore. Had it been rubbing alcohol? Was that what Officer Piccione had been trying to say? Oh, my God! But...but the twins hadn't been anywhere near Philip at the wine bar. How could they have --

I tried to visualize every detail at the wine bar again. I could see Philip in his well-worn pink polo shirt. His deep tan. His silver hair. His hand clutching the stem of his wineglass. His --

In my mind's eye, I telescoped closer, noticing something I hadn't noticed before.

Uff da! It was so clever. So perfect. So devious! I regarded the twins, my heart about to explode in my chest, my mouth dry as sandpaper. Oh, God. They weren't sweet little old ladies. They were cold-blooded murderers! At least, one of