Free 1 Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun by Lois Winston Page A

slip? What
if you arrest him and some slick lawyer gets him off? What happens to my kids, then?"
    "You've been watching too much television," said Robbins.
"We're not as incompetent as Hollywood portrays us"
    "And I'm not that gullible, Detective. I also read the newspapers.
    Robbins leaned in close, his palms and forearms flat against the
table, Mighty Mouse dangling from his neck as if the mouse were
about to swoop down and save the day. Robbins' stormy gray eyes
narrowed, his voice grew menacing. "We don't need your permission, Mrs. Pollack. Extortion is a crime. We can get a court order
to tap your phone."
    "This is a nightmare," I moaned.

    "Then end it," said Batswin.
    They gave me no choice. "All right."
    "We'll supply you with the fifty thousand dollars," said Robbins.
    Marked bills, no doubt. Meanwhile, between now and the time
they caught Ricardo, they'd hear every word spoken over my phone
line.
    Which was probably the reason they were so eager to help me
get rid of Ricardo. They expected to glean information about
Marlys's murder from listening in on all my private conversations.
    Dumb cops. All they'd hear is carpooling arrangements, teenage pseudo phone sex, Fantasy Baseball player trades, and The
Daughters of the October Revolution plotting to take over the
world.
    But if Batswin and Robbins could rid me of Ricardo, at least I'd
have one less two-thousand-pound gorilla sitting on my chest. I'd
also have the money from the apartment rental to pay the overdue
utility bills.
    Now if I could only cajole the Dynamic Duo into taking Lucille ...
    As I left the conference room, I paused, my hand on the doorknob, and turned to face them. "Do you know yet how Marlys
died?"
    Batswin shook her head. "We're still waiting for the lab results."
    I opened the door to find Erica hovering on the other side.

     

ERICA HUGGED HER MIDSECTION, her face a pastiche of worry and
fear. Grabbing my arm, she hurried me down the hall to the empty
break room. "What did they say?" she asked after closing the door
behind us. Her nervous whisper quaked around snuffles and tears
as she poured coffee for both of us. "Did they ask about me?"
    "No, why?"
    She placed the coffee on the table, then dug in her pocket for a
used tissue. Choking back a panicked sob, she collapsed into one
of the plastic chairs, her voice muffled by her fists and the crumpled tissue she pressed against her face. "I think they think I had
something to do with it. They questioned me for nearly an hour."
    "They're questioning all of us, Erica. That's how they do their
job."
    Tears spilled onto her cheeks and bounced into her lap, raining
dark blue spots on her stone-washed denim jumper. "But everyone
knows how Marlys treated me, how I hated her," she wailed.

    "I think they're quickly learning that lots of people hated
Marlys. Do you have an alibi for last night?"
    "I was with Dicky. Except for when he left for a few hours to
meet with a client. But I didn't tell the detectives about that. I was
too scared."
    "Dicky?"
    A deep scarlet suffused Erica's pale cheeks; a shy smile tickled
the corners of both her mouth and eyes. "My boyfriend," she
mumbled.
    "Erica!" I plunked into one of the other plastic chairs that surrounded the rickety, coffee-stained Formica table.
    Erica had a boyfriend? We all assumed she went home every
night to an empty apartment and microwavable meals-for-one.
She had never mentioned a boyfriend. Hell, Erica had never mentioned having a date.
    It was nice to know that someone's life was picking up, unlike
mine, which had recently received a royal flushing down the toilet.
"How long has this been going on?"
    "A few months."
    "Why have you been keeping him a secret?"
    "I didn't want Marlys to find out. You know how she is ... was.
She'd say he's a real loser if he's going out with me. He's not,
though. Dicky's a very successful businessman. He's a financial advisor and owns his own company with lots of