Murder is a Girl's Best Friend

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Authors: Amanda Matetsky
out,” he grumbled, “and with all this snow, it could take me two hours to get downtown to you.”
    That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “Come on-a my house, my house-a come on,” I crooned, trying to sing like Rosemary Clooney, but surely sounding more like Andy Devine. “I’m-a gonna give-a you figs and dates and grapes and cakes . . . ”
    Dan chuckled, and the way his laughter curled around in his throat made my skin tingle. “Very tempting,” he said, “but I’ve got to write these reports up now, while the facts are still clear in my mind. And I thought you said you were tired . . . on your way up to bed.”
    “The sound of your voice rejuvenated me,” I told him. “And I feel sorry for your cold castanets.”
    The minute those words were out of my mouth, my face turned hot as a bonfire. I hardly ever made suggestive comments like that (except to Mike and Mario, when I was trying to deflect their suggestive comments to me ). And I never spoke that way to Dan. Really! I don’t know what came over me. Either I’d lost my head in the whirlwind of the day’s startling and emotional events, or I’d picked up a racy (okay, raunchy ) new manner of self-expression just from hanging out with Abby.
    If Dan was shocked by my risqué remark, he didn’t let on. If anything, he seemed pleased. Another deep chuckle came rumbling through the receiver, ending in a long, luscious (dare I say lusty?) sigh. “I’ll come tomorrow night,” he said. “Snow or no snow. Around nine o’clock. Will that be okay?”
    “Sure thing, Sergeant,” I said, trying to sound cool though my face was still flaming. “Be there or be square.”

    AS ON-EDGE AND ANXIOUS AS I WAS, I FELL asleep the minute my bones hit the mattress. It wasn’t a deep and restful sleep—I kept thrashing around in the tangled covers, dreaming about guns, and diamonds, and dimples, and dachshunds, and soldiers with snow for hair—but at least I squirmed through the night in a somewhat unconscious state, and when my alarm clock woke me up in the morning I felt somewhat refreshed.
    I showered, dressed (black wool skirt, pale yellow sweater set), slapped on some makeup, and hurried downstairs to the coat closet. The Thom McAn shoebox was there, right where I’d put it on the shelf, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that the upsetting events of the previous day had been real, not an invention of my freaky imagination. I took the shoebox down, yanked off the lid, and dumped Terry’s notes and the two photos out on the table. Then I scraped the scattered items into a neat little pile, stuffed the pile into the side pocket of my large black leather clutch bag (next to the newspaper clips about the murder), and zipped it closed.
    After putting on all my outerwear—my camel’s hair coat, black beret, black gloves, green plaid muffler, and warm, dry, fur-lined, ankle-high snowboots—I stepped over to the cabinet above the kitchen sink and pulled it open. The white-haired man in the Quaker hat was still there, smiling out at me from the shadows, standing tall behind the Campbell’s soup cans like a faithful yeoman of the guard. I gave him a sly wink and a grateful curtsy, closed the cabinet door, and left for work.
    No traffic was moving on Bleecker. The cars lining the curb were all buried under a foot of snow, and there was an accumulation of at least ten inches in the street. The sidewalks weren’t much better. A few bundled-up pedestrians were making their way to the subway (and onward, I assumed, to work), but they were walking very slowly and carefully, in single file, along narrow footpaths that had been worn, like trenches, through the hardening snowbanks.
    It was colder than a butcher’s freezer, but at least it wasn’t snowing anymore. Wrapping my muffler over the lower half of my face so my breath would keep my nose warm, and hugging my clutch bag in close to my chest like a baby, I joined the slow-moving procession toward Sixth Avenue and

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