1 Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun (11 page)

I hadn't thought of that. "I'm showing good faith."

Robbins slammed his hand on the table, rattling the coffee tray.
And me. "What you're showing is two tons of stupidity, Mrs. Pollack."

My voice strangled in my throat as it rose several octaves. "Damn
it! He threatened to hurt my kids."

Batswin steepled her hands in front of her on the table and
spoke in a modulated, unemotional tone that set off alarm sirens
inside me. "Most likely, you're dealing with organized crime. Loan
sharks around here are usually connected to the mob. They don't
want to hear excuses."

"Show up with only partial payment," added Robbins, his voice
as grim as his words, "and you'll be wearing cement mukluks before the day is out."

Suddenly my shoes felt much heavier than the pair of Nine
West black pumps I had slipped into that morning. I fought back
an uncontrollable urge to check my feet. I knew Batswin and Robbins were serious, not just trying to scare the shit out of me. This is
New Jersey where cement shoes come in all styles and sizes.

"We can help you," he added.

"How?" And what would they want in return?

"We'll put a tap on your phone. When this Ricardo creep calls
to set up a drop, we'll nab him."

"I don't live in this county. It's out of your jurisdiction, isn't it?"

"You let us worry about the details," said Batswin.

It sounded so easy, so simple. And that's what scared me. "But
what if something goes wrong? What if he gives you the slip? What
if you arrest him and some slick lawyer gets him off? What happens to my kids, then?"

"You've been watching too much television," said Robbins.
"We're not as incompetent as Hollywood portrays us"

"And I'm not that gullible, Detective. I also read the newspapers.

Robbins leaned in close, his palms and forearms flat against the
table, Mighty Mouse dangling from his neck as if the mouse were
about to swoop down and save the day. Robbins' stormy gray eyes
narrowed, his voice grew menacing. "We don't need your permission, Mrs. Pollack. Extortion is a crime. We can get a court order
to tap your phone."

"This is a nightmare," I moaned.

"Then end it," said Batswin.

They gave me no choice. "All right."

"We'll supply you with the fifty thousand dollars," said Robbins.

Marked bills, no doubt. Meanwhile, between now and the time
they caught Ricardo, they'd hear every word spoken over my phone
line.

Which was probably the reason they were so eager to help me
get rid of Ricardo. They expected to glean information about
Marlys's murder from listening in on all my private conversations.

Dumb cops. All they'd hear is carpooling arrangements, teenage pseudo phone sex, Fantasy Baseball player trades, and The
Daughters of the October Revolution plotting to take over the
world.

But if Batswin and Robbins could rid me of Ricardo, at least I'd
have one less two-thousand-pound gorilla sitting on my chest. I'd
also have the money from the apartment rental to pay the overdue
utility bills.

Now if I could only cajole the Dynamic Duo into taking Lucille ...

As I left the conference room, I paused, my hand on the doorknob, and turned to face them. "Do you know yet how Marlys
died?"

Batswin shook her head. "We're still waiting for the lab results."

I opened the door to find Erica hovering on the other side.

ERICA HUGGED HER MIDSECTION, her face a pastiche of worry and
fear. Grabbing my arm, she hurried me down the hall to the empty
break room. "What did they say?" she asked after closing the door
behind us. Her nervous whisper quaked around snuffles and tears
as she poured coffee for both of us. "Did they ask about me?"

"No, why?"

She placed the coffee on the table, then dug in her pocket for a
used tissue. Choking back a panicked sob, she collapsed into one
of the plastic chairs, her voice muffled by her fists and the crumpled tissue she pressed against her face. "I think they think I had
something to do with it. They questioned me for nearly an hour."

"They're questioning all of us, Erica. That's how they do their
job."

Tears spilled onto her cheeks and bounced into her lap, raining
dark blue spots on her stone-washed denim jumper. "But everyone
knows how Marlys treated me, how I hated her," she wailed.

"I think they're quickly learning that lots of people hated
Marlys. Do you have an alibi for last night?"

"I was with Dicky. Except for when he left for a few hours to
meet with a client. But I didn't tell the detectives about that. I was
too scared."

"Dicky?"

A deep scarlet suffused Erica's pale cheeks; a shy smile tickled
the corners of both her mouth and eyes. "My boyfriend," she
mumbled.

"Erica!" I plunked into one of the other plastic chairs that surrounded the rickety, coffee-stained Formica table.

Erica had a boyfriend? We all assumed she went home every
night to an empty apartment and microwavable meals-for-one.
She had never mentioned a boyfriend. Hell, Erica had never mentioned having a date.

It was nice to know that someone's life was picking up, unlike
mine, which had recently received a royal flushing down the toilet.
"How long has this been going on?"

"A few months."

"Why have you been keeping him a secret?"

"I didn't want Marlys to find out. You know how she is ... was.
She'd say he's a real loser if he's going out with me. He's not,
though. Dicky's a very successful businessman. He's a financial advisor and owns his own company with lots of employees."

Her slight smile blossomed into a sheepish grin. She spoke into
her lap. "And he really likes me."

"I'm happy for you, Erica."

She blew her nose in what was left of the tissue. "I guess I don't
have to hide my relationship with Dicky anymore. Now that
Marlys is gone."

"Relationship? This sounds serious."

"I guess you could say that." She averted her eyes; her cheeks
deepened to the shade of a cooked lobster. "We're living together."

"Really?"

"Does that shock you?"

"Why should it shock me?"

"Well, you being older and all..."

Ouch! She made me sound like I had one foot in Little Old
Lady Land. "I'm only forty-two. Besides, your generation didn't invent cohabitation."

"My father would disown me if he found out. Heck, he nearly
disowned me when I moved out of the house and got my own
apartment. He said nice girls live at home until they get married."

No wonder Erica made the proverbial dormouse look like the
proverbial king of the jungle. The poor kid had grown up under
the thumb of some domineering nineteenth-century Neanderthal.
Then she had the misfortune to go to work for his twenty-first
century Amazon counterpart. Talk about jumping from the wok
into the inferno.

"Dicky's the first good thing that's ever happened to me," she
said as if reading my thoughts.

Of that I had no doubt. I raised my coffee cup in a toast. "Here's
to the first of many."

Her eyebrows knit together. "I don't want many boyfriends. I
just want Dicky."

"Of many good things in your life."

She blushed. "Oh" Then she raised her coffee cup to meet mine.

Before we could click Styrofoam to Styrofoam, a knock sounded
at the door. Batswin entered between my and Erica's simultaneous
"Come" and "in," catching us with our cups in mid-toast.

"Celebrating something?"

Erica cringed at the sound of Batswin's voice. Her hand shook
so hard, she nearly dropped her cup.

"In a manner of speaking," I said, "but it's personal. Nothing to
do with your investigation."

Batswin walked over to the coffeepot and helped herself to a
cup. "I'll be the judge of that," she said, her back turned to us.

I glanced at Erica. Her features froze into a tense mask, but I
figured it was better to be truthful than to let Batswin assume we
had something to hide from her. "Erica has a new boyfriend."

At the sound of new, the terror and tension melted from Erica's
face, and she offered me a slight smile. Poor kid. She didn't want
Batswin to think she was a loser, that she had never had a boyfriend before Dicky.

Batswin lowered herself into one of the remaining chairs, directly opposite me, her large form appearing less than comfortable
squeezed into the cheap molded plastic seat. "Congratulations"
She raised her cup toward Erica before taking a long sip.

"Thank you," mumbled Erica.

"Is there something we can help you with, Detective, or did
you only come in for a hit of caffeine?" I asked.

Batswin lowered her cup to the table and held it between both
her hands. She leveled her midnight eyes at me. I fought back the
shiver that threatened to claim my body. Wheels were turning behind those sharp black orbs, and I wasn't sure they were necessar ily the wheels of justice. At least not justice for me, no matter what
she said about believing I didn't kill Marlys.

"I just spoke with the coroner," she said.

Erica sank deeper into her chair, as if trying to become invisible.
I leaned forward, clutching my coffee cup. "You know who killed
Marlys?"

"Not who. What"

"And?"

Batswin's stare grew darker, more pointed. "Marlys Vandenburg was killed with your glue gun, Mrs. Pollack, and the only
prints on it are yours."

I COULDN'T WRAP MY mind around the preposterous idea of my
trusty hot glue gun as a murder weapon. After all, a glue gun
wasn't the weapon of choice for most murderers. Didn't killers
tend to favor guns with bullets? You could get a pretty nasty burn
from a hot glue gun if you weren't careful, but that was about all.

Unless... "Was she hit over the head with it?" I didn't remember seeing any lumps or bruises on Marlys, but I was too freaked at
the time to take inventory.

"She was suffocated with the glue," said Batswin.

Suffocated? With a glue gun? I studied Batswin to see if she was
trying to trick me in some way. Her features remained expressionless, a blank expanse between the two dream catchers swaying
from her ear lobes.