1 Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun (2 page)

In memory of Karen Davenport,
amazing critique partner, friend,
and Anastasia's biggest fan.

My everlasting gratitude to the following people who played a
part in making the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Series a reality:

To Carolyn Grayson for suggesting I write a crafting mystery
and Denise Dumars for finding Anastasia a home.

To Terri Bischoff, Midnight Ink acquisitions editor, for offering Anastasia that home and to all the other members of the Midnight Ink team for the various roles they played in making Anastasia look her best.

To authors Mary Kennedy, Kasey Michaels, Brenda Novak, and
Hank Phillippi Ryan for taking time out of their busy lives to read
Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun and provide such awesome praise.

To my fellow founders of Liberty States Fiction Writers: Gail
Freeman, Melinda Leigh, Caridad Pineiro, Kathye Quick, Michele
Richter, Rayna Vause, and Anne Walradt for their friendship and
support through all those ups and downs. You ladies totally rock!

And finally, to Rob, Chris, Scott, Jen, Megan, Jack, Zoe, and
Chase for filling my life with love.

I HATE WHINERS. ALWAYS have. So I was doing my damnedest not
to become one in spite of the lollapalooza of a quadruple
whammy that had broadsided me last week. Not an easy task,
given that one of those lollapalooza whammies had barged into
my bedroom and was presently hammering her cane against my
bathroom door.

"Damn it, Anastasia! Hot water doesn't grow on trees, you
know!"

Some people can't start the day without a cigarette. Lucille Pollack, Monster-in-Law from the Stygian Swamp, can't start hers
without a sludge load of complaints. As much as I detest cigarettes,
I'd much prefer a nicotine-puffing mother-in-law, as long as she
came with an occasional kind word and a semi-pleasant disposition. Unfortunately, marriage is a package deal. Husbands come
with family. And mine came with a doozie to end all doozies.

My mother-in-law is a card-carrying, circa 1930s communist.
When she met me, it was hate at first sight. I bear the name of a dead Russian princess, thanks to my mother's unsubstantiated Romanov link-a great-grandmother with the maiden name of Romanoff. With Mama, the connection is more like sixty, not six, degrees of separation, and the links are coated with a thick layer of
rust. But that's never stopped Mama from bragging about our
royal ancestry, and it set the tone for my relationship-or lack of
it-with my mother-in-law from Day One.

I suppose I didn't help the situation by naming one of my sons
Nicholas and the other Alexander, even if they were named after
my grandfathers-Alexander Periwinkle and Nicholas Sudberry.

"My kingdom for a bedroom door lock," I muttered. Not that I
had much of a kingdom left. So it would have to be a really cheap
lock.

"About time," said Lucille as I exited the bathroom amidst a
cloud of warm steam. "Some people have no consideration of others." Raising one of her Sequoia-like arms, she waved her cane in
my face. "Those boys of yours have been camped out in the other
bathroom for half an hour doing what, I can't imagine."

Lucille always referred to Nick and Alex as those boys, refusing
to use their given names. Like it might corrupt her political sensibilities or something.

"Three minutes," she continued ranting. "That's all it takes me
to shower and all it should take any of you. I'm the only person in
this house who gives one iota of concern for the earth's depleting
resources.

She landed an elbow to my ribs to push me aside. Manifesto,
her runt-of-the-litter French bulldog-or Mephisto, the Devil
Dog, as the rest of the family had dubbed the Satan-incarnate ca nine-followed close on her heels. As he squeezed past me, he
raised his wrinkled head and growled.

As soon as they'd both muscled their way into the bathroom,
my mother-in-law slammed the door in my face and locked it.
God only knows why she needs her dog in the bathroom with her.
And if he does know, I hope he continues to spare the rest of us
the knowledge.

My Grandma Periwinkle used to say that honeyed words conquered waspish dispositions. However, I doubted all the beehives
in North America could produce enough honey to mollify the
likes of Lucille. After eighteen years as her daughter-in-law, I still
hadn't succeeded in extracting a single pleasantry from her.

Of all the shocks I sustained over the past week, knowing I was
now stuck with Lucille topped the list. Two months ago, she shattered her hip in a hit-and-run accident when an SUV mowed her
down while she jaywalked across Queens Boulevard. Her apartment building burned to the ground while she was in the hospital.

Comrade Lucille put her political beliefs above everyone and
everything, including common sense. Since she didn't trust banks,
her life savings, along with all her possessions, had gone up in
flames. And of course, she didn't have insurance.

Homeless and penniless, Lucille came to live with us. "It won't
be for long," my husband Karl (Lucille had named him after Karl
Marx) had assured me. "Only until she gets back on her feet."

"Literally or figuratively?" I asked.

"Literally." Karl liked his mother best when two rivers and an
hour's drive separated them. "I promise, we'll find somewhere for
her to live, even if we have to pay for it ourselves."

Trusting person that I am-was-I believed him. We had a
moderately sized nest egg set aside, and I would have been more
than happy to tap into it to settle Lucille into a retirement community. Lucille had recovered from her injuries, although the
chances of her now leaving any time soon were as non-existent as
the eggs in that same nest.

Unbeknownst to me-formerly known as Trusting WifeKarl, who handled the family finances, had not only cracked open,
fried, and devoured our nest egg, he'd maxed out our home equity
line of credit, borrowed against his life insurance policy, cashed in
his 401(k), and drained the kids' college accounts.

I discovered this financial quagmire within twenty-four hours
of learning that my husband, who was supposed to be at a sales
meeting in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, had dropped dead on a roulette table at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. The love of my life was a
closet gambling addict. He left me and his sons totally broke, up
the yin-yang in debt, and saddled with his mother.

If he weren't already dead, I'd kill him.

Without a doubt, a jury of my peers would rule it justifiable
homicide.

With Ralph, our African Grey parrot, keeping a voyeuristic eye
on me from his perch atop the armoire, I dried myself off and
began to dress for work.

They say the wife is always the last to know. For the past week
I'd wracked my brain for signs I might have missed, niggling
doubts I may have brushed aside. Even in retrospect, I had no clue
of impending cataclysm. Karl was that good. Or maybe I had
played my role of Trusting Wife too well. Either way, the result was
the same.

Karl and I hadn't had the best of marriages, but we hadn't had
the worst, either. We might not have had the can't-wait-to-jumpyour-bones hots for each other after so many years, but how many
couples did? That sort of love only exists in chick flicks and romance novels. Along with the myth of multiple orgasms. Or so I'd
convinced myself years ago.

Besides, after working all day, plus taking care of the kids, the
shopping, the carpooling, the cooking and the cleaning, who had
the energy to put into even one orgasm most nights? Even for a
dropdead- gorgeous - although -balding- and-slightly- overweightyet-still-a-hunk husband? Faking it was a lot quicker and easier.
And gave me a few extra precious minutes of snooze time.

Still, I thought we'd had a pretty good marriage compared to
most other couples we knew, a marriage built on trust and communication. In reality what we had was more like blind trust on
my part and a whopping lack of communication on his. Most of
all, though, I thought my husband loved me. Apparently he loved
Roxie Roulette more.

Could I have been more clueless if I'd tried?

The theme from Rocky sang out from inside the armoire. Dead
is dead only for the deceased. The widow, I'm learning, becomes a
multi-tasking juggler of a thousand and one details. Our phone
hadn't stopped ringing since the call from the hotel in Las Vegas.

But this wasn't the home phone. I opened the armoire and
reached for the box of Karl's personal items the funeral director
had given me. No one had bothered to turn off his phone. The
display read Private Call. "Hello?"

"Put Karl on."

"Excuse me?"

"Don't play games with me, Sweet Cheeks. Hand the phone to
that slippery weasel. Now."

"I'm afraid that's not possible."

"Make it possible. You tell him Ricardo's run out of patience,
and he's run out of time."

As an auto parts salesman for a national wholesaler, Karl dealt
with his share of lowlife Neanderthals, but Ricardo sounded lower
than most of the run-of-the mill Neanderthals in the auto industry.

I wasn't in the mood for any macho-posturing Soprano wannabe. "If this concerns an order you placed, you'll have to get in
touch with the main office in Secaucus. Karl passed away last
week."

Silence greeted my statement. At first I thought Ricardo had
hung up. When he finally spoke, I wished he had. "No kidding?"

"Your sense of humor might be that warped, but I can assure
you, mine isn't."

"This his missus?" He sounded suspicious.

"Yes"

"Look, I'm sorry about your loss," he said, although his tone
suggested otherwise, "but I got my own problems. That schmuck
was into me for fifty G's. We had a deal, and dead or not, he's gotta
pay up. Capisce?"

Hardly. But I now sensed that Ricardo was no body shop owner.
"Who are you?"

"Let's just say I'm a former business associate of the deceased.
One you just inherited, Sweet Cheeks. Along with his debt."

I glanced at the bathroom door. Thankfully, Lucille's threeminute shower was running overtime. I lowered my voice. "I don't know anything about a debt, and I certainly don't have fifty thousand dollars."

Although both statements were true, after what I had recently
learned about my husband's secret life, he probably did owe Ricardo fifty thousand dollars, the same fifty thousand dollars the
casino manager in Las Vegas said Karl gambled away shortly before cashing in his chips-literally-at that roulette table.

But what really freaked me out as I stood half-naked, in nothing more than my black panties and matching bra, was the thought
that there could be other Ricardos waiting to pounce. Lots of other
Ricardos. Behind my husband's upstanding, church-going, familyoriented facade, he had apparently hidden a shitload of secrets.
What next?

Ricardo wasn't buying into my ignorance. "I happen to know
otherwise, Sweet Cheeks, so don't try to con me. I'll be over in an
hour to collect."

There are five stages of grief. I'd gone through the first stage,
denial, so fast I hardly remembered being there. For most of the
past week, I'd silently seethed over Karl's duplicity. With each new
deceit I'd uncovered, my anger grew exponentially. I knew Stage
Two, anger, would be sticking around for a long time to come,
sucking dry all the love I once had for my husband.