Free Full Frontal Murder by Barbara Paul

volunteered the opinion that they wouldn’t have told him even if they had known. But the owner of Maids-in-a-Row was downstairs right then working with the graphics tech to reconstruct Palmero’s face.
    Someone was going to a lot of trouble to cover his/her/their trail. There were three incidents that marked Rita Galloway and Bobby as targets: the spying cleaning lady, the attempted kidnapping, and the small-scale firebombing of the house. But the first didn’t fit with the other two.
    Kidnappers didn’t disguise themselves as housecleaners, for whatever reason. Kidnapping was not a subtle crime; those who attempted it were blunt and crude and frequently quite stupid. And kidnapping was not a criminal ‘career,’ the way burglary or counterfeiting was—except in Italy, and even there kidnapping-as-profession had pretty much been brought under control. But most kidnappers hoped to score enough from one kidnapping to keep them in clover the rest of their days. It was an outrageous crime, the trading of a human life for money—if indeed the trade was made. Too many kidnap victims never emerged from their ordeals alive.
    Kidnappers would certainly spy out the land before attempting to snatch Bobby Galloway, but what could be gained by placing a spy inside the household? The fact that Consuela Palmero (whatever her real name was) had been checking Rita’s finances rather than the layout of the house made Marian think that that incident was not linked to the other two. Hugh Galloway could have engineered the placement of the Palmero woman in his wife’s household and still be innocent of the crimes of attempted kidnapping and fire-bombing.
    Marian found herself wondering how much Walter Galloway really knew about his son’s affairs. She’d pegged the elder Galloway as a stubborn old man who’d never budge from his position that Hugh had made a bad mistake in marrying the evil Rita but that Hugh himself was a good boy. And Alex Fairchild was every bit as biased in favor of his sister. Those two would be no help.
    Thinking of Alex Fairchild reminded her of the private showing of his photographs scheduled for Thursday night—which was tomorrow, she suddenly realized. And still she couldn’t remember the name of the gallery. Fairchild had given her a printed invitation; what had she done with it? Probably left it at Holland’s. Or thrown it out.
    Hoping she’d recognize the name if she saw it, Marian pulled the NYNEX Yellow Pages directory off the shelf. To her dismay she found page after page after page of galleries, all listed in tiny type. No way she was going through all that looking for Fifty-seventh Street addresses.
    She reached for the phone and called the computer department. A woman answered by saying something that sounded like Mahjelblmph . Marian identified herself and said, “I want to locate a gallery on Fifty-seventh Street. I think I’d know the name if I heard it.”
    â€œWhat kind of gallery? Art gallery?”
    â€œIt’s a gallery showing an exhibition of photographs.”
    â€œYeah, that’s an art gallery. I guess.”
    â€œDo we have a database of galleries?”
    â€œ We don’t … but hang a sec.” Marian could heard the soft click of a computer keyboard. “Yeah, here we are. Whooee—lotsa galleries on Fifty-seventh.”
    â€œCould you just read off the names, please?” Marian stopped her when she got to Albian , the sixth name on the list of Fifty-seventh Street galleries. “That’s it, Albian Gallery. What’s the exact address?” She made a note of the number. “Thank you very much! But if we don’t have a database of galleries, where’d you get the information?”
    â€œOn the Internet. NYNEX maintains a Web site.”
    Oh. Marian thanked her again and broke the connection. Next she called Holland and told him they were going to go look at photographs