1 Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun (9 page)

"Do you know that woman snores like an elephant? And so does
that damn dog of hers. Except when he's growling at Catherine the
Great. I'm afraid he'll attack my poor precious if I doze off."

The aforementioned corpulent pussy jumped on the bed, settling her royal rump in my face. In less than three minutes both
Mama and Catherine the Great were snoring loud enough to rattle
the windows, and I was wide awake.

I yanked my pillow out from under Catherine the Great,
grabbed one of the quilts off the bed, my portable alarm clock from
the nightstand, and headed for the den. With luck, Ralph would be
asleep and not wake from the nocturnal intrusion into his domain.
I could do without Shakespeare at three in the morning.

As I made my way down the darkened hall, I spit cat hairs from
between my lips. Mama was missing the entrepreneurial venture
of a lifetime. Catherine the Great shed enough fur to provide
Dolly Parton with an unending supply of wigs, which would in turn provide Mama with a steady income-something she sorely
needed, given her penchant for marrying men who lived way
beyond their means and left her with little besides short-lived
memories.

For the next several hours I tossed and turned on my makeshift
bed. The den couch had seen better days a decade ago. A replacement had been at the head of my home improvements list for ages,
but something more pressing always bumped it back to Number
Two. Or Three. Or Thirty. Like a leaky roof. Or a dead washing
machine.

Or a gambling husband.

Besides a lumpy couch keeping me awake, thoughts of extortion and murder raced through my veins and my brain like a triple-shot espresso. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw a dead Marlys,
heard a threatening Ricardo. Saw the crime-fighting duo of
Batswin and Robbins jabbing their accusatory fingers in my face.
And I still had no idea what I was going to do when Ricardo demanded his money a few short hours from now.

A discordant orchestra made up of Mama and Lucille and Mephisto and Catherine the Great played in the background. Above
the din of their grumbling and griping and growling and hissing,
Ralph squawked, "Help, ho! Murder! Murder! Othello. Act Five,
Scene One." Eyes open or closed, the nightmare pounded in my
head.

I tossed and turned and tossed some more. Finally, out of sheer
exhaustion, my brain called it a night-or a morning, considering
the late hour-and drifted me back to the sands of Maui.

A moment later the alarm clock screamed the arrival of six A.M.

"MOM! WE'RE GONNA MISS the bus," yelled Alex a short time later.
"Grandmother Lucille's set up base camp in the bathroom."

"For a change," added Nick.

"And Grandma Flora's taken your bathroom hostage," continued Alex.

"Tell me about it," I muttered. The moment I'd stepped out of
my bathroom in search of clean underwear, Mama had commandeered the commode, locking herself in and taking my hairdryer
and make-up prisoner.

I pounded on the door. "Mama, are you coming out any time
soon?"

"I don't think so, dear. Having a bit of a problem this morning."

Lord, please don't let me have inherited Mama's internal plumbing, I prayed as I headed for the other bathroom. One working
mother, two elderly women with an assortment of semi-dysfunctional bodily functions, and two hormone-driven studmuffin teenagers definitely required more than two bathrooms and a
forty-gallon hot water heater.

I pounded on the door of the hall bathroom. "Lucille, the boys
need to get in there." She didn't answer. I tried the knob. Locked.

I pounded harder. Mephisto's bark echoed off the tile. "Lucille!"

"Leave me alone. I'm busy!" A sound better left to the confines
of the bathroom punctuated her statement. The Devil Dog yelped.

"She cares more about that dog than she does us," said Nick.

"We don't choose our relatives," I said, as much as I wished
otherwise.

"I'll bet Dad was secretly adopted," said Alex.

"Or maybe stolen at birth," offered Nick. "He was nothing like
her. Ever."

In truth Karl had been the complete opposite of his mother in
both appearance and personality, not to mention political persuasion. Then again, had Karl been more like his mother, I never
would have married him, and I wouldn't currently be treading
water in the middle of piranha-infested Lake Titicaca. Pun intended.

Karl had inherited all his genes from his father. Or so I assumed. According to my husband, his father had walked out on
them shortly after knocking up his mother. No one had seen or
heard from Isidore Pollack since.

Another sound best left undescribed erupted from behind the
door.

"What's she doing in there?" asked Alex.

"I'm not sure I want to know."

"We need another bathroom," said Nick.

I offered him a wry, caffeine and sleep deprived grin. "I'll add it
to my list."

"Sorry, Mom," he mumbled. I hadn't yet told my sons the full
extent of our financial problems, but I did have to tell them something of the situation. Our lifestyle had to change and change fast.
They'd taken the news as best as can be expected from typical
teenage boys, which is to say not well at all.

I dreaded having to tell them all that I'd left out. Like their now
nonexistent college accounts. Only a year and a half away from
college, Alex had his heart set on Harvard. Until last week, I believed we'd have no trouble swinging the steep Ivy League fees.
Today we couldn't even afford the local community college. Coward that I am, I kept putting off the college discussion. But now
that Lucille knew the extent of our pauperdom, I knew I had to tell
my kids soon.

Nick fixed his gaze on a dust bunny that had taken up residence between the carpet runner and the baseboard. Or maybe it
was one of Catherine the Great's hairballs. Something else I didn't
want to know at six-thirty in the morning. Cleaning came last on
my to-do list right now. Not that it had ever ranked all that high,
but there are just so many hours in the day, and a girl's got to juggle and prioritize.

And delegate.

As soon as they decamped from the bathrooms, I'd assign
Mama and Lucille cleaning and laundry detail. I didn't dare ask
them to take over the cooking. Either they'd burn the house down
or we'd all wind up with a case of food poisoning. Possibly both.

I placed my hand on Nick's shoulder. "We'll get through this."

"How?"

I haven't a clue, but we will. Meanwhile, go use the bathroom
in the apartment above the garage."

"I thought we were going to rent that out."

"We are. As of Saturday. And don't worry about the bus. I'll
drive you both to school."

The phone rang as the boys headed toward the back door. "I'll
get it," Alex yelled.

A moment later he called out, "Hey, Mom, it's for you. Some
guy. Says it's important."

I grabbed the phone, placed my hand over the mouthpiece and
pointed to the back door. "Hurry up," I told the boys. I waited until
they closed the door behind them before speaking into the phone.

"Hello?" As much as I hoped it was that guy from Publisher's
Clearing House telling me I'd won a million dollars, I knew immediately it was my not-so-friendly neighborhood loan shark.

"Got my money?"

"I told you, I don't have your money."

Ricardo made a noise that sounded halfway between a tsk and
a kiss. "And I happen to know otherwise. Check your safe deposit
box recently?"

"Look, for all I know Karl never even met you. What proof do I
have that he owed you any money?"

"My word."

I snorted. "Since when is the word of an extortionist worth
anything?"

"Extortionist?" His tone grew more menacing. "Look, lady, I
staked that no-good weasel husband of yours to fifty G's. I know
for a fact he got the dough to pay me back. Now I want it, and I
intend to get it. Capisce?"

"And I'm telling you I don't have it. Karl left me with nothing
but debt."

"Then you'd better find some way to get it. And remember,
Sweet Cheeks, you tell the cops, and you live to regret it. Get my
drift?"

I clenched the receiver so tightly that my knuckles turned white
and my fingers throbbed. "Stop threatening me!"

"No threats, Sweet Cheeks. Facts. By the way, those are two
handsome looking kids you got there. Spittin' image of their old
man. Sure would be a shame if they lost those good looks."

"No!" I clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle my strangled
cry. My words came out in a choked whisper. "Leave my sons
alone. Please! You'll get your money. I just need some time."

"You got a week."

"That's not enough!"

"One week." The phone went dead.

Marlys's murder aside, I couldn't wait to get to work. Another day
of backstabbing office politics would seem like a week at The
Golden Door Spa compared to dealing with widowhood, pauperdom, and getting shaken down by a loan shark-not to mention
dealing with Lucille and Mama.

Some sadist had yanked me out of my dull but normal life and
plunked me down in the middle of a Janet Evanovich novel. What
would Stephanie Plum do? I pondered this question on my drive
to work. Stephanie never had to worry, though. No matter how big
the mess she found herself in, good old Janet would write her a happy ending. No such luck for me. My problems were real. They
weren't about to disappear with the stroke of a pen or click of a
keyboard.

By the time I arrived at work, an hour late and with damp hair,
speculative gossip circled the halls of Trimedia. Half the staff
crowded around the entrance to my cubicle. They scattered like
cockroaches as I approached. All except Cloris and Daphne.

"Did you hear?" asked Daphne. Her wild mane of Nicole Kidman red curls bounced on her shoulders as she bounced on the
balls of her Payless mock alligator pumps. "Someone killed Marlys
last night. Here. In your office."

That last bit of information seemed a tad redundant, considering, as I'd suspected, yellow crime tape barred the entrance to my
cubicle. "I know," I told her. "I found the body."

"Shut up!" she shrieked.

"You didn't!" cried Cloris.

I gave them a quick recap of my late-night adventure after returning to the office.

"Ewww!" Daphne hugged her arms around her chest and shivered, whether from her belly button-showcasing ivory lace croptop or from revulsion was anyone's guess. "That's too weird."

"Someone sure has a sick sense of humor," said Cloris. "Who
do you think did it?"

"Marlys had more enemies than friends. I'd imagine there's a
long list of people who hated her"

"But enough to kill her?" asked Daphne, her wide-eyed gaze
fixed on my nearly empty office. The police had confiscated my
computer, my desk chair, all my supplies, and-worst of all-the three dozen satin birdseed roses scheduled for this morning's
photo shoot.

A thin coating of black fingerprint powder dusted the empty
counters and shelves. Was I expected to clean up the mess or could I
cajole the janitor into tackling the chore? "Do you think crime scene
cleanup is included in the janitor's job description?" I asked.