4 Decoupage Can Be Deadly (8 page)

“More like terminal if it’s system-wide. Batteries aren’t that expensive. Alternators are a different story. They’ll set you back a few hundred dollars.”

On top of the cost of the tow truck. How I wish I still owned my dependable Camry! Unfortunately, that car became one of the first casualties of my plummet from middleclass comfort. Once I’d learned the extent of the debt Karl stuck me with, I could no longer afford the car payments.

“I can give you a jump,” he offered, “but there’s no guarantee it will hold until you get home.”

With my luck? Especially today? I’d have better odds of winning both MegaMillions and Powerball. In the same week. “I don’t relish the idea of finding myself stranded on Rt. 287, tying up traffic during the height of rush hour.” I held out my hand. “Thanks anyway, Mr.—”

“Martinelli. Martino Martinelli but you can call me Tino. Everyone does.”

“Thank you, Tino.”

“Wish I could’ve been more help.”

“That makes two of us.”

He nodded in the direction of the police activity. “What’s going on down there? Accident?”

“We found a dead body this morning,” said Cloris.

“No shit! In the parking lot? Must’ve happened after I dropped Mr. G off. Someone have a heart attack or something?”

“You haven’t been here all day?” I asked.

“Not since eight. Mr. G. had me running errands for him and his lady friend.”

Cloris and I exchanged a quick glance. “You saw Philomena?” she asked.

“Nah, I just had a long list of stuff to take care of for her.”

“When was the last time you saw her?” I asked.

“Why? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“The body we found was murdered, and the police think it might be Philomena,” I said.

The color drained from Tino Martinelli’s ruddy complexion. “Does Mr. G. know?”

“Of course, he knows,” I said. “The police spent the day questioning all of us, but they haven’t made a positive ID yet. The victim could be someone else.”

“Huh?”

“You should probably go talk to them.”

“The police? Why?”

“To help in the investigation,” said Cloris.

“If it is Philomena,” I added, “you may have been one of the last people to see her alive yesterday.”

Tino drew his brows together and leaned forward in a menacing Cro-Magnon manner. “What are you saying? You think
I
had something to do with it?”

I inched backwards until my rear made contact with my Hyundai. “No, of course not.”

“But you might have seen or heard something that could help the police catch the killer,” said Cloris. “Until they do, no one is safe.”

Tino took a step back and scanned the parking lot. “You mean there could be a serial killer on the loose?”

“No one is even sure who the victim is yet,” I said. “Let alone why she was murdered. Until the police have answers, anything is possible.”

Tino stepped backward and relaxed his body, his brows separating until the Cro-Magnon Tino morphed back into Homo Sapiens Tino. He rubbed his broad jaw. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Sorry I jumped all over you. I’ll go talk to them. Anything to help.”

He climbed back into the Lincoln. “Sorry I couldn’t fix your car,” he said before heading toward the crime scene.

“Me, too,” I mumbled.

“Are you going to call a tow truck, or do you want a ride home?” asked Cloris.

I lowered the Hyundai’s hood. “A ride home if you don’t mind.”

“Always put off today what you can do tomorrow?”

“More like put off till tomorrow what you can’t pay for today.”

“How will you get to work without a car?”

As much as I still bristled over Ira giving Alex that Jeep, the timing worked in my favor. Alex couldn’t drive the car until he took driver’s ed and passed his tests. A perfectly good vehicle sat parked in front of my house. I’d worry about the Hyundai later.

~*~

Cloris pulled into my driveway behind Zack’s silver Porsche Boxster. “At least you’ll have a way of relieving some stress tonight.”

“You’re forgetting about Mama, Lucille, and the boys.”

“I’m sure three of the four will be happy to accommodate you, and the fourth can’t climb the apartment stairs. Go for it.”

I so needed some mind-numbing sex right now, but nothing kills the mood like murder.

Hi, honey, how was your day?

Oh, the usual. Stumbled across another dead body.

Any chance I could postpone the catching up until after the sex? Doubtful. I hopped out of Cloris’s car. “Thanks for the ride. See you tomorrow.”

I found everyone minus Lucille congregated in my kitchen. For all the chaos my duplicitous husband had caused me, the gods must have thought I needed something—or someone—to keep me sane. That someone arrived in the guise of Zachary Barnes, the photo-journalist who had rented the apartment above my garage shortly after Karl’s death.

Why a to-die-for stud who looks like Pierce Brosnan, George Clooney, Patrick Dempsey, and Antonio Bandares all contributed to his gene pool would be interested in a pear-shaped, cellulite-riddled, slightly overweight, more than slightly in debt, middle-aged widow like me is beyond my comprehension, but I’m not complaining. I simply tell myself the universe works in mysterious ways.

At first, propriety kept my hormones in check. Recently widowed moms of teenage sons shouldn’t jump in bed with near-strangers. However, as Zack insinuated himself more and more into my life (Did I mention he loves to cook? In my kitchen?), propriety began sounding downright Victorian—especially since Mama and the boys set about working in cahoots to get Zack and me together.

This past summer, after I decided I’d mourned Karl long enough, propriety went the way of the dodo bird. The result? One massive conflagration of Vesuvian proportions that showed no signs of waning.

“You’re back,” I said, stating the obvious.

Zack stepped away from whatever epicurean delight he was concocting on my stove to wrap me in his arms and plant a toe-curling kiss on my lips. I never knew what I was missing until I’d experienced one of Zack’s kisses. When Alex and Nick started hooting and applauding, I stepped back, breaking the kiss.

“Don’t stop on our account,” said Nick.

I shot him a Mom Look that yielded little effect, given that my cheeks flamed.

“Have a successful trip?” I asked Zack.

“Definitely.”

“Overthrow any dictators? Rescue any hostages? Save the world from imminent destruction?” No matter how often Zack protested to the contrary, I suspected he used the photo-journalism gig as a cover for his real work—that of a spy for one of the alphabet agencies.

His numerous, award-winning photographs notwithstanding, given the places Zack traveled, often at a moment’s notice, I thought my suspicions justified. After all, some men must be capable of multitasking.

He thought I was nuts.

“Do I look like a spy?” he asked.

Ralph squawked from his perch atop the refrigerator. “
You spy! What do you spy?
”
Troilus and Cressida
. Act Three, Scene One.”

“I spy a filthy bird,” said Mama who sat at the kitchen table with Catherine the Great curled up in her lap. “Really, Anastasia, must you allow that winged rat in the kitchen?”

“Mama, Ralph is as clean as or cleaner than your cat.”

Mama stroked Catherine the Great’s fur and planted a kiss on the top of the cat’s head. “I sincerely doubt that. Catherine the Great is meticulous in her grooming habits.”

Alex came to our African Grey’s defense. “Yeah, but Ralph doesn’t lick his privates, Grandma.”

Score one for my eldest son. “He’s got you there, Flora,” said Zack.

Mama had no rebuttal, so she changed the subject. “Come to think of it, you do look like a spy, Zack. At least the kind in movies. You’d make a far better James Bond than that Daniel Craig fellow. Have you ever done any acting, dear?”

“Not since I played a stalk of celery in fifth grade.”

“I’m sure you were a very convincing stalk of celery,” said Mama. “You should consider going into acting.”

“When he gives up spying?” asked Nick.

Zack threw his hands up in the air. “I am not a spy!”

“If you say so,” I said.

Mephisto lumbered into the kitchen and stood by the back door. “Where’s Lucille?” I asked.

“Sulking,” said Mama.

Mephisto was Lucille’s responsibility. Not only was he her dog, she needed the exercise of walking him several times a day, even though one of us had to retrace her footsteps afterwards to pick up the dog’s poop. If Lucille bent down, she might not get back up. “Alex, take Devil Dog out for a walk,” I said. “Nick, set the table.”

Alex returned five minutes later. “Hey, Mom, where’s your car?”

“At the office.”

“How’d you get home?” asked Nick.

“I flew.” When no one accepted that explanation, I said, “My car died.” Along with someone else but I wasn’t about to bring that subject up just yet. “Cloris drove me home.”

“We’ll drive up after dinner,” said Zack. “It’s probably the battery. I’ll give it a charge and follow you home.”

“What if it won’t hold a charge?”

“We come up with Plan B.”

~*~

“It’s definitely not the battery,” said Zack after repeatedly trying the jumper cables.

Why did that not surprise me. “So what’s Plan B?”

“Ira?”

“Why do you know more about my life than I do?”

“Flora said he offered you a car.”

“Ira is trying to buy his way into our lives. Did she also tell you he and Cynthia are kaput?”

“That came as no surprise.”

“No wonder Cynthia made a play for you during the barbecue. She was already trolling for her next meal ticket.”

“This is going to sound cynical,” said Zack, “but maybe you should accept a car from Ira. He’s lonely and insecure. Not to mention having all sorts of unfounded issues of guilt over what the brother he never met did to you and your kids. If giving you a car makes him feel better about himself, why not let him?”

“Because I don’t want to owe him anything.”

“Then offer to pay him.”

“Sure, I’ll pick a few hundred Franklins off the money tree in the backyard.” I smacked my forehead with my palm. “Silly me! Why didn’t I think of that earlier?”

“Pay him what you can when you can.”

“I’d be paying him back into my nineties.”

“You’re either going to have to accept Ira’s generosity or buy a car from a stranger.”

“You don’t think this is fixable?”

“Maybe.”

“I see a
but
coming.”

“The car is old, sweetheart. Once stuff starts going wrong, it doesn’t stop. How much money are you willing to spend on repairs to postpone the inevitable? Ira will give you a safe, reliable car, unlike the crook who sold you this rusted out piece of shit.”

I sighed. “I’ll call Ira.”

After we got back into Zack’s car, he placed his hands of the steering wheel but didn’t start the engine. “Something wrong?” I asked.

“I was just wondering when we were going to discuss the elephant in the parking lot. Or were you hoping I wouldn’t notice the crime scene tape swaying in the breeze?”

“That was the plan.” I had hoped it would be dark enough by the time we arrived back at Trimedia that Zack wouldn’t notice the aftermath of the police investigation, but between daylight savings time and the parking lot flood lights, the yellow and black tape was quite clearly visible.

“What happened?”

“I found a dead body.”

Zack shook his head. “Why does that not surprise me anymore?”

After I recapped the events of the day, he said. “Were you planning on telling me about the murder, or am I only learning about it because I’m here?”

“I was going to tell you.”

“When?”

“I was hoping to wait until after you jumped my bones.”

Before Zack could answer—or act on my suggestion (which would have been more than a little awkward in his Boxster)—my cell phone rang.

“Did you hear the news?” asked Cloris when I answered.

“What news?”

“The medical examiner ID’d the body. It’s Philomena.”

SEVEN

Zack definitely lived up to my expectations later that night, almost making me forget about the dead Hyundai and the dead rap star-turned-entrepreneur. Reality set back in the next morning as I drove to work in Alex’s Jeep. At least reality came accompanied by air-conditioning, something I’d suffered without all summer while driving the Hyundai.

Although the calendar claimed autumn began last week, the scorching temperatures we’d sustained throughout the summer never received the memo. For the first time in nearly five months, I drove to work in comfort, not needing a shower and a change of clothes once I arrived.