4 Decoupage Can Be Deadly (6 page)

“We need to find a nice girl for Ira,” said Mama after I closed the front door. “What about some of the women you work with, dear? Are any of them single?”

“Forget it, Yenta.”

“Really, Anastasia!”

“Don’t
really
me, Mama. How long have you known about the car for Alex?”

“A few weeks. Ever since Ira started shopping around for one.”

“And it never occurred to you to mention anything about it to me?”

“And spoil the surprise?”

I channeled Tessa and did a fair representation of one of her eye rolls. “How does Lawrence feel about his daughter walking out on Ira?”

“He’s not exactly certain Cynthia walked out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lawrence suspects Ira actually threw Cynthia out, even though Ira claims Cynthia left him.”

“Why?”

“She insisted he send his kids off to boarding school. They were having some huge fights about it.”

“And Lawrence still lives with Ira?”

“He’s on Ira’s side.”

“But he’s her father!”

“It’s called tough love, dear. Cynthia needs to grow up. She’s a spoiled brat. Whether she left Ira or Ira sent her packing, doesn’t really matter.”

“What do you mean? She’ll probably walk away with a huge settlement, given Ira’s apparent bottomless pot of gold.”

“Not according to their pre-nup.”

I raised an eyebrow. “A pre-nup?”

“Ira insisted on one,” said Mama. “He might come across as a milquetoast, but according to Lawrence, he’s a barracuda when it comes to his money.”

“That Jeep parked out front claims otherwise.”

“A generous barracuda but a barracuda nonetheless. He and Cynthia weren’t married long enough for her to benefit financially in a divorce. Ira made sure of that.”

~*~

Morning arrived, finding me no closer to a decision regarding Alex’s car. Instead of sleeping, I’d spent most of the night debating with myself. Did I have the right to deny my son the gift based solely on my uneasiness regarding Ira’s generosity? Would I feel the same if Mama had gifted him with the Jeep? Probably not. Had Karl not left me doggy-paddling in an ocean of red ink, I would have bought Alex a car for his birthday. I’d planned to.
We’d
planned to. Back in those bygone days of our comfortably middleclass American Dream life, now a distant memory.

I had promised my son an answer this morning, and in the end I found no logical reason to justify making him hand back the keys. Before he left for school, I reluctantly allowed Alex to keep his birthday present from Ira.

After one of Trimedia’s less-than-stable employees had tried to kill me a few months ago, Naomi used the opportunity to leverage some much needed benefits for her staff by leading the board into believing I intended to sue Trimedia. Along with receiving a cash settlement that allowed me to pay off a huge chunk of my Karl-induced debt, I and my fellow editors were now entitled to comp time.

Even though our planning meetings for the issue six months out normally fell on the last Monday of the month, Naomi had bumped the meeting back a week due to the consumer show. So I took Monday off and caught up on all the errands, laundry, and cleaning that had piled up over the weekend.

~*~

The next morning, as I drove to work in my rust bucket Hyundai, holding my breath through the constant creaks, rattles, and squeaks, I thought about compromising my principles even further. Car years, I decided, were equivalent to dogs years, which made my Hyundai fifty-six years old. Not ancient but the car already suffered from an acute case of car-thritis. Any day now I expected something major to fail.

I managed throughout the summer without air-conditioning. I could manage without heat. I couldn’t manage without an alternator or a carburetor, even if I had no idea what either did. However, although tempting, I also couldn’t cross the line that would allow me to let Ira purchase a car for me. Such generosity suggested a level of intimacy I refused to encourage with my newly acquired half-brother-in-law.

Yet I wondered if I’d stick to my high principles if it were Zack offering to buy me a car.

I also wondered if it made sense to start playing the lottery. If anyone ever needed an extra million or two or ten, I was that someone. Hell, I’d settle for winning a few hundred thousand. Too bad I couldn’t bring myself to part with even a dollar of my hard earned money while red ink ruled my life.

The first thing I did after arriving at work was hit the break room for a cup of coffee and something chocolate. I found a freshly brewed pot of coffee but not even a leftover crumb of a chocolate anything.

On my way to my cubicle, I popped my head into Cloris’s cubicle. “No goodies this morning?” I could count on few things in this life, but one of them was that Cloris kept the break room supplied with goodies from her test kitchen and samples sent by vendors who wanted her to feature their products in her food articles.

“Going through withdrawal?”

“Hand over whatever chocolate you’re hoarding, or I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

“That bad, huh?” She pulled a plastic container from her tote and popped the lid.

A decadent fudgy aroma wafted toward me. I grabbed a cookie and took a bite. Around a mouthful of pure heaven I said, “You’ve performed a miracle. I’m calling the pope to nominate you for sainthood.”

“Good thing I’m Catholic. What’s up with you?”

“I’ll tell you all about it while we unpack the show models and equipment, assuming the shipment arrived yesterday.”

“It did. I noticed them off-loading the cases when I left work last night.”

I grabbed three more cookies before we headed to the models room to retrieve the hand truck. As we waited for the elevator to take us down to the ground level, I devoured my entire horde.

“Binging on chocolate. Zack out of town?” asked Cloris.

I nodded. “And so much more.”

“Lucille?”

“And Mama and Ira. If I’d known what was waiting to ambush me Sunday night, I never would have gone home.” I gave Cloris the abridged version of events, finishing as we arrived at the entrance to the building’s physical plant. Dozens of cases holding the booths and models for all the magazines that had taken part in the show sat in the middle of the large concrete block room.

The two of us stood in the doorway. “This place always freaks me out,” said Cloris. “I can never shake the feeling someone’s hiding in a dark corner, waiting to pounce.”

“Ditto.” With its huge hissing furnace, clanking overhead pipes, wall of electrical panels, and one flickering low-watt bare bulb hanging from a fixture in the middle of the room, the place reminded me of too many suspense novels I’ve read. “The serial killer always sets up shop in places like this.”

Cloris punched me in the arm. “You had to mention that, didn’t you?”

“Let’s grab our stuff and get out of here before something crawls up our legs. You know how I hate spiders.”

An odor of decay hit us as we approached the five large cases that housed our booth and models. I pinched my nostrils closed. “I think something hitched a ride back from the convention center in one of our cases.” I backed away. “Do you think it’s still alive? I don’t want to open the lid and have a rat jump out at us.”

“I don’t think there’s any chance of that, not with such an overpowering stench.”

“What if more than one rat climbed in and some are still alive?”

“We’d hear them scratching around, wouldn’t we? It’s probably just one small mouse.”

“Smells way too much for one small mouse,” I said.

Cloris shook her head. “You’d be surprised how much one tiny dead mouse can stink. I found one in my basement last winter. I thought the sewer system had backed up, the place reeked so much.”

I walked up to the case we needed to empty. “Let’s get this over with. If we’re lucky, Mickey kicked the bucket in one of the booth cases, not the models case.”

We unfastening the strapping on either side of the case holding the models and flipped the lid’s metal latches. Cloris lifted the lid, and I proceeded to toss my cookies—literally—all over what was definitely not a dead mouse.

FIVE

Cloris grabbed my arm, and we both raced from the room, slamming the steel door behind us. I ran to the outer wall and pushed the button to raise the overhead door of the loading bay. We collapsed against the outer wall and sucked in fresh air.

“Was that—?” asked Cloris, her body still shaking several minutes later.

“I think so.” But neither of us had hung around long enough to get up-close-and-personal with the corpse. Given the way the body was shoved face down in the case, all we saw was the back of a blonde head, no face. “Either Philomena or one of her entourage.”

I whipped out my phone and scrolled through the address book, searching for Detective Winifred Batswin’s direct line.

“Mrs. Pollack,” she said, answering on the second ring, “I hope you haven’t stumbled across any new dead bodies.”

Detective Batswin, along with her partner Detective Robbins (someone in the Morris County police department had a wicked sense of humor pairing up those two,) were the lead investigators last February when I discovered the murdered body of our former fashion editor in my cubicle. They were also involved in the aftermath of the Morning Makeovers fiasco when producer Sheri Rabbstein and her lover pulled a Thelma and Louise.

I’m hoping Batswin never finds out about the murders that occurred while I moonlighted this summer at the Westfield Assisted Living and Rehabilitation Center. Since Westfield is in a different county, my fingers are crossed. Along with my toes, eyes, and all extremities. Batswin is already convinced I’m a twenty-first century Jessica Fletcher: Wherever I go, murder follows.

“I’m afraid so,” I said.

Batswin moaned. “Where are you?”

I gave her a quick rundown of the last few minutes, minus the cookie tossing.

“Stay put, and don’t touch anything. I’m on my way.”

“Don’t worry,” said Cloris when I relayed Batswin’s orders. “I’m sure you’re not the first person to lose it over a dead body, and you won’t be the last.”

“We should alert Naomi,” I said.

“What about Gruenwald?”

“Probably not a good idea. Let the police deal with him.”

“You don’t think he did it, do you?”

“No, but I think the police will want to question him as a person of interest. More often than not, the spouse or significant other of the murder victim winds up being the killer.”

“Look at Sherlock Pollack spouting police-speak!”

I’ve learned quite a bit over the last few months from my reluctant involvement in murder investigations. Emphasis on
reluctant
.

Within minutes Trimedia segued from magazine publishing to crime scene investigation. Work came to an abrupt halt as the Morris County police herded every employee in the building, from the bean counters to the janitor, into various conference rooms on each floor, the better to keep an eye on us, I supposed, while they did their CSI thing.

“How long do we have to stay here?” asked Janice. “I’m beginning to understand what sardines go through.”

The conference rooms we were in normally held no more than a dozen people seated around a long table. Besides the lucky dozen who had secured chairs, I counted nearly fifty people lining the walls and squatting on the floor of our holding pen.

“Anyone know how many people work in the building?” asked Serena.

“Approximately two hundred,” said Naomi.

“And those two detectives are interviewing each one of us?” asked Tessa. We’ll be here for days.”

“Let’s hope they called in reinforcements,” I said.

Batswin and Robbins appropriated the
American Woman
conference room for their interviews. Having called in the grim discovery, I received the honor of first in line for a police brow beating, even though Cloris and I were questioned in the loading bay as soon as Batswin and Robbins arrived.

A uniformed officer escorted me to the conference room where I settled into a seat opposite the two detectives. Batswin, Robbins, and I had danced this dance before, back when they suspected me of killing Marlys Vandenburg. After I helped them catch the real killer, I’d earned a modicum of grudging respect from them. It didn’t hurt that I knew they’d illegally borrowed a stash of counterfeit bills from the police evidence locker during an unsuccessful sting operation, thus giving me my very own Get Out of Jail Free card.

“Mrs. Pollack,” said Batswin. She expelled a deep sigh and shook her head in a gesture that suggested she was disappointed in me, I suppose for contaminating her crime scene. Or maybe for complicating her day with another dead body.

Even sitting down, Batswin exuded a commanding presence. A big-boned woman, nearly six feet tall, she was dressed in her standard outfit: a no-nonsense conservatively cut gray suit with a tailored white shirt. She wore her silver streaked sable hair tied back in a low ponytail, her face devoid of make-up other than a swipe of lip gloss. The only hint of personality came from her earrings, always Native American. Today purple feathered dream catchers swayed from her lobes.