Murder is a Girl's Best Friend (39 page)

“Believe me. I know him,” I added, overcome with deep admiration for Dan and an even deeper dread of losing him. “He’s a man with a stout, dependable heart. He despises liars and pretenders and people who act without conscience. He may throw
me
over for good after this,” I said, “but he’ll never abandon Judy.”

Terry gave me a knowing smile. “He sounds a lot like Bob. I’ll be very happy to meet him.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said, “because he ain’t gonna be so happy to meet you.”

 

 

AFTER DOWNING A BAGEL WITH CREAM cheese and another cup of coffee, I announced that I was going home. I wanted to take a shower, get dressed, straighten up my apartment, update my story notes, plug in the lights on my little tree, wrap my presents, and have some quiet time alone before Dan arrived. I needed to organize my thoughts and recharge my batteries, prepare myself for the confessional ordeal ahead.

Abby and Terry weren’t too thrilled with the idea. They thought I should use Abby’s shower and wait for Dan in Abby’s apartment. They finally gave in, though, after I begged and pleaded till my face turned blue, and after they accompanied me next door to check out my entire apartment and strap another thick layer of masking tape over the cardboard patch on my back door.

“I don’t like this at all, Paige,” Terry said. “It would be so easy for somebody to bust through this flimsy Duz box. Why didn’t you have the glass replaced?”

“I couldn’t! All the glaziers were closed for the holidays. And what difference would it make anyway? It’s just as easy to bust through glass as it is cardboard. Whoever broke in the first time had no trouble at all!”

“Paige is right,” Abby said, taking my side for once. “And, today being Christmas, this is probably the safest time for her to be here on her own. I say we go next door and let her have some time to herself—and some time alone with Dan—as long as she promises to hook back up with us as soon as she can, and to spend the night at my place again.”

“I promise! I promise!” I said, so eager for them to leave I would have sworn to swallow a live bullfrog. “I’ll call you back over here as soon as I’ve broken the news to Dan and absorbed his initial rage. Trust me,” I said to Terry, “you don’t want to meet him until his righteous anger is spent—or at least partially subdued.” (I didn’t mention that this felicitous transformation was unlikely to occur during any of our lifetimes.)

“Oh, all right!” Terry grumbled, stomping to the door and heading out into the hall. “But if you see or hear anything fishy, you better come get us right away.”

“She will, she will!” Abby urged, moving in close behind him, pushing him along. “Catch ya later, Paige,” she said, turning to give me a quick wink before disappearing inside her apartment.

Not wanting to waste a second of my precious solitude, I slammed and locked my door, dashed upstairs, and tore off all my clothes. Then I luxuriated in the shower for a good ten minutes—letting the hot steamy water splash down on my head and pour over my body—until my brain turned soft, and my muscles relaxed, and the wounds on my shins looked rosy and clean. After drying myself off, I sprayed on so much perfume and slapped on so much bath powder the air in the bathroom became unbreathable.

Coughing, sneezing, and gasping for oxygen, I staggered into the bedroom and put on my silkiest, sexiest un derthings—black bra, panties, garter belt, slip, and a brand new pair of sheer, seamed stockings. I thought smelling sweet and feeling slinky might help me diffuse Dan’s anger somehow. Or maybe the perfume and silk would cloud his senses—turn his fury into a different kind of passion. (Ha! What a laughable notion that turned out to be! More about that later.)

Not wanting to put on my high heels yet, but also not wanting to get any runs in my stockings, I slipped my feet into my warm, furry horse slippers. (They were both supposed to look like Roy Rogers’s horse Trigger, but they actually looked like two fat, yellowish, narrow-faced groundhogs with oversized eyes and odd, pointy ears.) Then I trotted back into the bathroom to put on my makeup.

After
that
interminable primping process, I set my wet hair—in the enormous mesh rollers that were supposed to turn my natural curls into long, soft, billowing waves of velvet (another laughable notion!)—and pulled on the huge, puffy vinyl cap of my hairdryer. Plugging the long air hose into the dryer cap, and then plugging the wire for the whole contraption into the wall socket near my bed, I turned the dryer on full blast. And then I sat there like a dope, on the edge of my bed for a full fifteen minutes, while the hood over my curlers swelled with a deafening surge of air so hot my ears turned crispy.

It was at that point, I’m sure—while I was sitting senseless on my bed, clad in my sexiest underwear, with both feet encased in misshapen palomino horseshoes and my head and ears enclosed in a roaring hot air balloon—that the murderer entered my apartment.

Chapter 31

WHEN I COULDN’T TAKE THE NOISE AND the heat anymore, I turned off the dryer and unhooked the air hose from the hood. Leaving the hot vinyl cap on my head so my still-damp hair would continue to dry, I scooted into the bathroom to retouch the spots where my makeup had melted.

That’s when I heard it—a noise from downstairs that sounded like a book dropping to the floor.

What was that? Was somebody there? Had Abby come over to borrow my copy of
Pride and Prejudice
again? Had Dan arrived early, let himself in with a police department passkey, and decided to make a secret study of my current taste in detective fiction? I tiptoed into the hall and stood at the top of the stairs, holding my breath so tight I felt faint, and listening with all my might for other suspicious sounds.

The silence was so thick it was sliceable. All I could hear was the soft, low hum of my refrigerator. No pages were rustling; no floorboards were creaking; no knuckles were cracking; no sighs were escaping through unsealed lips.
’Twas the last day of Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a louse.
Finally coming to the conclusion that I had imagined the original noise, I started breathing again. Then I began making my way downstairs to take a quick look around.

Halfway there, I came to a dead stop. The kitchen door had suddenly come into view, and I was paralyzed by what I saw. The flattened Duz detergent box wasn’t covering the shattered door pane anymore. It was dented and twisted and dangling down from the edge of the perfectly square hole by several tangled strips of masking tape. The linoleum by the door looked wet and splotchy, as though somebody had walked through a giant snowdrift before entering and tracked plenty of slush inside.

Frozen in fear, I stood stiff as a stick in the middle of the staircase, madly searching my brain for a swift, safe plan of action. Should I run back upstairs, climb the little wrought-iron ladder bolted to the wall by my bathroom, and try to escape out onto the roof of the building? No! I’d never be able to get the heavy, snow-laden overhead trap door open in time. The intruder would catch up with me before I could even pop my noggin through the hatch! Should I dash down the rest of the stairs, throw open the kitchen door, flee out onto the icy landing and over to Abby’s back door—or down into the courtyard—screaming my head off for help? God, no! That seemed a surefire way to get my screaming head shot off.

The only scheme that made any sense to me at all was to go all the way downstairs and talk to the intruder (okay, by this time I was pretty sure it was the
murderer
). Since he or she was still desperate to get hold of the diamonds—and still had no idea where I’d hidden them—I figured I wouldn’t get killed immediately. If I played my cards right, and said all the right things, I might be able to confuse the killer and delay my death indefinitely. Maybe I could stall everything for an hour or so, until Dan was due to arrive. Or maybe I could work my way over to the cabinet under the kitchen sink, and get my hands on my trusty bleach bottle . . .

Having no idea how I might accomplish any of these goals, but determined to make a hearty attempt, I sucked up all my courage (which, at that point, would have barely filled an eyedropper) and walked down the rest of the stairs. As soon as my horse slippers hit the kitchen floor, I reared back on my heels and spun around a full ninety degrees to face the monster who had killed Judy Catcher.

 

 

“WELL, DON’T YOU LOOK CUTE,” ELSIE LONDERGAN said, voice oozing with sarcasm. She was standing tall, very tall, in the middle of the room—right where the kitchen linoleum ended and the wood floor of the living room began—with one hand stuffed into the pocket of her coat and the other stuck straight out in front of her.
That
hand (as you may have already guessed) was holding a gun. A very small gun, to be sure, but it looked big as a bazooka to me.

“What the hell have you got on your head?” Elsie asked, aiming the pistol at my plastic-capped cranium. “A fucking turban?” Her chiseled John Wayne features were twisted in a grisly scowl.

“It’s the hood of my hair dryer,” I said, trying to breathe evenly and keep my knees from knocking. Both efforts were unsuccessful.

“And your feet?” she said, targeting my toes. “What the hell have you got on your feet?”

“My horse slippers,” I stammered. “I got them in the children’s department at Klein’s. They’re supposed to look like Trigger.” I regretted the use of
that
word, hoping Elsie wouldn’t be tempted to pull it.

“And what’s with the sexy underwear?” she said with a nasty smirk. “Got a hot date?”

“My boyfriend’s coming over.” I considered telling her that my boyfriend was a homicide detective, and that he’d be there any minute, but I was afraid that would spook her, make her anxious to kill me and get the hell out of there—with or without the diamonds. I decided to save that information for later use, when things got really hairy, as I was sure they would.

“When’s he coming?”

“In about an hour.”

“Good. Then you’ll have plenty of time to show me where the diamonds are.”

“Yes, I will,” I declared, encouraging her wholehearted belief in that scenario. Then, hoping to divert her attention to other subjects, I added, “And you’ll have plenty of time to tell me how a mature and motherly widow like yourself could find it in her heart to kill an innocent young girl like Judy Catcher.”

Bingo. I hit the emotional jackpot on my very first spin.

“I’m no widow!” Elsie shrieked, her contorted face turning three shades of purple. “I’d give anything if my lying, cheating rat of a husband was dead, but he isn’t! He’s living the high life somewhere in Hawaii with his 22-year-old whore of a girlfriend. They ran off together six years ago when he was fifty-two and she was only sixteen!” Elsie’s fierce blue eyes were darting all over the place, but her gun was pointed straight at me. “If that filthy, thieving snake was here right now, I’d plug him so full of holes he’d do nothing for the rest of his short, painful little life but bleed.”

Ugh. A rather disgusting—not to mention distressing—image. “Thieving?” I said quickly, trying to keep her talking instead of shooting. (I just love to reminisce, don’t you?) “Why did you call him a
thieving
snake? Did he steal anything from you?”

“He stole every goddamn cent of our life savings. All my jewelry, too.”

“How horrible!” I sputtered, doing my best to sound sympathetic. “I don’t blame you for wanting to kill him! . . . But,” I added, working to keep up my end of the conversation, “I still don’t understand why you wanted to kill Judy.”

Elsie lowered the gun to waist-level, propping her elbow on her hip and squeezing her upper arm tight against her ribs. “Because she was a goddamn homewrecker, that’s why!” Her shrill voice was vibrating like a wire stretched to the limit. “She was young—so young—and stupid as a stump. I couldn’t stand the way she was always bouncing around, acting so blameless and bubbly, asking my advice about every goddamn thing under the sun, and raving over her two-timing, slobbery old boyfriend like he was Clark Gable or Kirk Doug-las. Made me sick to my stomach!”

I was surprised by her show of repugnance. “I thought you loved Judy like a daughter.”

“April fool!” Elsie cried, mouth grinning, eyes twinkling. She looked so crazy I was chilled to the bone.

“This is December,” I said, hoping my nonchalant response would disarm her, take some of the fire out of her fury.

Big boo boo.

“Shut up!” she screamed, jerking her arm up and aiming the gun at my face.

I raised both my hands and didn’t say a word. The time had come to take Elsie Londergan seriously. Very, very seriously.

“You’re a real smart aleck, you know that?” she said, eyes blazing. “I wanted to kill you that first day you showed up at my place and started sticking your nosy beak in my business! But I had to wait because of the diamonds. I figured Judy’s brother had found the jewelry when he was staying in her apartment and packing up all her stuff. And then—since he’d asked
you
to help him find his sister’s killer—I figured you were hiding the fucking diamonds for him, or at least knew where
he
had hidden them.”