Death by Killer Mop Doll (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery)

by Lois Winston

  Marlowe pulled out a knife and began working on the tape that bound my hands. “How did you know to come here?” I asked as he cut away the layers.

  “You can thank your friend Cloris. She put two and two together and got suspicious when they didn’t add up. Good thing you gave her this address.”

  “Yeah, I thought at first this was Sheri’s house. It isn’t.”

  “We know.”

  “What else do you know?”

  He paused from his slicing and turned to face me. “Time for that later. Let’s get you out of here first and checked out by the docs.”

  I nodded. “She drugged me with something.”

  “They usually do.”

  “They? How many cases have you had like this?”

  “Too many.”

  All I could think was, thank God for experienced detectives. And thank God for Cloris. Marlowe finished ripping the tape from my legs (I wouldn’t need a wax job any time soon) and helped me stand. My legs refused to comply.

  “Let’s sit you back down before you fall flat on your face. I’ll call for a bus.”

  “Bus?”

  “What we call an ambulance.”

  Mama probably would have known that from all her Law & Order viewing. Maybe I needed to watch television, especially police dramas, given that Mama also pegged Sheri as Lou’s killer from Day One.

  “I heard Sheri admit to killing Lou,” I told Marlowe. “And I think the two of them had something to do with Vince.” I didn’t mention that I knew Vince was still alive. No need wading in those shark-infested waters with Marlowe.

  “We’ll get them to talk.”

  Had he told me this at any point in the past, I wouldn’t have believed him, but the man had just rescued me from certain death. If he said he could capture every member of Al Qaeda, blindfolded and with one hand tied behind his back, I’d believe him.

  _____

  Two EMTs arrived, checked my vitals, then lifted me onto a gurney and carried me upstairs. As they wheeled me through the house to the front door, I saw no sign of either Sheri or Maxine, but I did spy my purse with its contents spilled across the living room coffee table.

  “That’s mine,” I said, pointing.

  A uniformed officer standing nearby called to Marlowe, “Okay if the vic takes her purse?”

  Marlowe lumbered in, made a quick check of my wallet, keys, phone, and lip gloss, then scooped the contents back inside my purse and handed it to one of the EMTs. They pushed me outside, into a waiting ambulance, and whisked me away, sirens blaring. I never saw Sheri or Maxine.

  Once at the hospital, a team of medical personnel poured over me, poking and prodding, taking blood for tests. “I wasn’t raped,” I said when a nurse asked permission to do a rape kit.

  “We don’t know what the perps may have done to you while you were unconscious.”

  That creeped me out enough to give permission for any test they wanted to perform. With my legs splayed and my eyes closed, I took a deep breath and let her poke my privates.

  “Was I?”

  “No indication.” She offered her hand and helped me sit up. “The police will need your clothes for evidence. I’ll bring you some scrubs to wear.”

  I itched where the duct tape had contacted my skin. The area had turned red.

  “Do you have a latex allergy?” asked the nurse.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Sometimes people develop latex allergies after repeated exposure. The duct tape may have triggered one in you. I’ll bring you an antihistamine and some salve.”

  Great. Scratch the idea of using duct tape as a cheap alternative to waxing. My arms and legs started to grow redder before my eyes. I looked like I’d been roasted on a spit. I scratched at my cheek.

  “Try not to scratch,” said the nurse as she left the exam room.

  Easy for her to say.

  Once she returned with the scrubs, some pills, and ointment, she helped me slather up and dress. Afterwards, she poked her head out the door and said, “She’s ready.”

  A moment later, Marlowe entered, Phillips right behind him. “Up for some questions?” asked Marlowe, taking a notebook out of his pocket and flipping it open to a pristine page.

  “Absolutely.” Now that I knew I had the rest of my life ahead of me, I wanted to make sure Sheri and Maxine spent the rest of their lives producing nothing more than license plates at a federal facility.

  I sat on my hands to keep from scratching until the antihistamine kicked in. “Ask me anything.”

  “Let’s start with what you’ve been up to,” said Marlowe, pencil poised to write.

  I didn’t like the way he’d phrased that, or the way he eyed me, but I took him and Phillips step-by-step through the last few days, leaving nothing out, other than the fact that I knew Vince wasn’t dead. I’d promised Zack I’d keep that to myself. Besides, Phillips and Marlowe already knew Vince was alive and cooling his heels over on Rikers Island.

  As I told them about Sheri’s hidden cameras, something occurred to me. “When I first met Sheri, she told me one of the show’s techies had written a program to bypass Trimedia’s spy ware.”

  “Spy ware?” asked Phillips.

  “A computer program they use to monitor employees’ Internet usage. We’re not allowed to use the web for anything that’s not work related. Doing so gets you fired.”

  He nodded. “And?”

  “I half-jokingly asked her if the guy could do the same for us at the magazine. She said he’d recently won the lottery, quit his job, and was island-hopping around the Caribbean.

  “But I don’t think that’s the case. Maxine said it was a good thing Sheri set up the spy cameras. Then she said, ‘God bless your tech skills.’ I don’t think there was ever a tech guy who quit. I think it was Sheri all along.”

  Phillips and Marlowe exchanged knowing looks, like I wasn’t telling them anything they hadn’t already figured out for themselves.

  “Hmm,” said Phillips.

  “Got any other insights?” asked Marlowe.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Sheri was behind everything. I’ll bet she planted that e-mail from Monica on Vince’s computer so you’d seize it as evidence and discover the kiddie porn. She set Vince up to get rid of him without having to pay out on his contract. Maybe Vince really isn’t a pervert.” Although I found that hard to believe.

  The more I thought about it, the more everything jelled. “And the security tapes. Sheri volunteered to check them after the vandalism. But she didn’t check them; she erased them. She said killing Lou was an accident. He probably found out about the tapes and confronted her, and she panicked.”

  Marlowe scrawled a few more notes on his pad, then said, “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Pollack. We’ll have a uniformed officer drive you back to New Jersey.”

  He and Phillips turned to leave the room.

  “Wait!”

  They both turned back. “Something more you remember?” asked Marlowe.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me if I’m right?”

  They shook their heads in unison, like some programmed robocops. “Sorry,” said Phillips.

  “Ongoing investigation,” added Marlowe, spouting the company line. “We’re not at liberty to discuss it.”

  With that, they left the room and left me with my mouth hanging open.

  Twenty-three

  I was surprised to find Cloris waiting at my house. “Are you all right?” she asked, eyeing my reddened arms and cheeks.

  “Thanks to you. What made you call Marlowe?”

  “You can thank Janice. She wasn’t in the office this morning. I figured maybe she had a doctor’s appointment or something and didn’t give it another thought. But when she arrived around noon, she stopped off at my cubicle and started telling me a Sheri story. She’d been at the studio, taping a segment all morning. I knew right then that something was wrong because how could Sheri be at the studio and on a location shoot at the same time?”
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br />   “You literally saved my life, you know.”

  “What do you mean—literally.”

  “Just what I said. They were planning to kill me.”

  “They?”

  “Sheri and Maxine, her lover.” I looked around the living room. “Where’s Mama?”

  “Out getting her hair done. I figured someone should be here to tell your mother and the kids that you were missing, and better me than the cops.”

  “So she doesn’t know anything?”

  “Not yet. I gave her some song and dance about needing to borrow the boys when they got home from school. I wanted to stall as long as possible. When Marlowe called to let me know you were safe, I decided to hang around to see for myself.” She gingerly touched my cheek with her index finger. “Painful?”

  “More itchy than anything. The hospital gave me some ointment and pills. They’re helping.”

  “If you change into long sleeves and a pair of slacks and put on some make-up, you might be able to get away with not telling your mom and kids anything.”

  I liked that idea. Mama and the boys didn’t need to know someone had tried to kill me. Again.

  _____

  Zack wasn’t as easy to fool. Or more likely, an inside source had alerted him to the day’s events. An inside source who works for the Manhattan D.A. He sped into the driveway as Cloris and I waited for Mephisto to fertilize the curb.

  “Shouldn’t you be off photographing indigenous meerkat colonies or something?” I asked as he jumped out of the car.

  “That was last week. I’m between assignments.”

  I didn’t buy that for a New York minute, but instead of pressing the topic, I proceeded with introductions. “Cloris, Zack. Zack, Cloris.” To Cloris I said, “Zack is my tenant.” To Zack I said, “Cloris is—.”

  Zack shook Cloris’s hand. “Watson to your Sherlock. I’ve heard.”

  I sighed. “Is there anything about me my mother and sons haven’t told you by now?”

  “Doubtful.” He grabbed the leash and pooper scooper from me. “Why are you out here walking the dog after nearly getting yourself killed?”

  “Hmm … let me think. Because I don’t want dog poop on my carpets?”

  He turned to Cloris. “Can’t you make her lie down?”

  “Can you make her do something she doesn’t want to do?”

  Now it was Zack’s turn to sigh. “Glad it’s not just me.”

  “Three’s a crowd,” said Cloris. “I’m out of here.”

  “You don’t have to go,” I said.

  “Yes, she does,” said Zack.

  I opened my mouth to tell him to stop being so damned bossy, but stopped dead—no pun intended—before uttering the first syllable. The man had what romance writers refer to as a smoldering look in his eyes, something I’d previously dismissed as pure fiction, and that smolder was directed straight at me. Up to this moment, no one had ever smoldered at me before. Not my husband. Not any of the guys I’d dated prior to meeting Karl.

  So much for telling Zack off. If only I didn’t itch so much … I carefully rolled back one loose-fitting sleeve to show him my left arm. “The right one makes for a matched set. Same for my legs.”

  “What the hell did they do, drop you in a patch of poison ivy?”

  “Duct tape. The nurse at the hospital said I might have a latex allergy.” I rolled my sleeve down.

  Zack reached out to cup my face in his hand. I cringed and pulled away. “Face, too. Hidden under the make-up.”

  He let loose with a couple of choice expletives better left deleted. “Where else?”

  “That’s about it. My clothing protected the rest of my skin.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Itches mostly. I’m on oral and topical antihistamines and trying not to think about it too much, so let’s change the subject, okay?”

  Cloris uttered one of those hey-guys-remember-me? throat clearing sounds. “As I was about to say, I need to get home, anyway.” She directed an index finger toward me. “You should take tomorrow off.”

  “Can’t. No more sick days left this year.”

  “Excuse me?” She raised both eyebrows. “A Trimedia employee tried to kill you a few hours ago. Not only are you entitled to some time off, you should think about filing for workman’s comp.”

  “Forget that,” said Zack. “She should sue the pants off Trimedia.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “For hiring a certifiable nut job and setting her loose on all of you.”

  “Nice idea,” I said, “but I can’t afford to lose my job, and what are the chances of Trimedia continuing to employ someone who is suing them?”

  “Actually,” said Cloris, “If they fire you for suing them, I think you can also sue them for that.”

  “Tempting but not worth the risk, and what would I do while these lawsuits were slogging their way through the courts? I’m already living from paycheck to paycheck and barely making ends meet.” Not to mention making next to no dent in my Mount Everest of inherited debt.

  Cloris offered me a rather devious smile. “Find a rich boyfriend?”

  “It’s a good thing you just saved my life,” I told her. “Otherwise, you’d be in serious trouble right now.”

  Cloris left for home, and Zack and I headed up to his apartment. Over glasses of wine, he helped me concoct a story for Mama and the boys. As much as I hated lying to them, I didn’t want them worrying that my name had been drawn out of a hat by every killer and psychopath in the tri-state region. In the last several months I’d had two attempts made on my life. Those were damn high odds, even for CIA operatives, let alone suburban moms. Best they didn’t learn of the second one.

  “I’ve got it! You developed a sudden allergy to Mephisto,” suggested Zack after downing a glass of chardonnay and mulling ideas around in his head for a few minutes.

  “I wish.”

  “Then how about this: you got tangled in his leash and tripped face first into a patch of stinging nettles.”

  “More plausible, but where’s the patch? The boys will want to know to steer clear of it.”

  Zack poured us both more wine. “If you had dumber kids, they wouldn’t think to ask.”

  “True. Smart kids are such a parental burden.”

  The conversation went downhill from there, helped along by several additional glasses of what turned out to be an excellent chardonnay. However, by the third glass, it really didn’t matter. The wine and Zack were taking my mind off my itchy face and limbs, not to mention my near-death experience.

  I finally settled on something mundane but semi-believable if no one looked close enough to notice the almost surgical-like precision delineating my affected skin from my unaffected skin. I suffered an allergic reaction to some organic body cream samples our beauty editor Nicole Emmerling had received and passed around at the office.

  _____

  By the next morning, the rash had faded considerably, and the itching bordered on bearable. Ignoring Cloris’s suggestion to take a few days off, I headed into the office. Had I stayed at home, I’d have nothing to do other than catch up on housework. At the office, I could catch up on the work that came with a deadline and resulted in a paycheck.

  On my way to my cubicle, I grabbed a cup of coffee from the break room. Halfway down the hall, Naomi’s assistant Kim caught up with me. “Naomi wants to see you in her office.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now.”

  That sounded ominous. “What’s going on?”

  Ignoring my question, Kim continued walking toward the break room. I headed down the corridor, past my cubicle, to Naomi’s office.

  I poked my head around the slightly ajar door and found Naomi engrossed in some papers on her desk. I rapped once. “You wanted to see me?” I asked when she lifted her head.

  “Yes. Come in, Anastasia. Close the door behind you and have a seat.”

  “You heard what happened yesterday?”

  She nodded
. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m beginning to think I’m some killer magnet. First Marlys. Then Lou.”

  “And Vince.”

  I shrugged without saying anything, not sure whether I still needed to keep that bit of information to myself. “I’m not Nancy Drew. I didn’t ask to get thrown into the middle of their murders.”

  “Yet you were.”

  “Hopefully, that’s all behind me now. And behind the rest of us. I’d like nothing better than to get back to normal.” Or the new normal, given the other recent, unwelcome changes to my life. Thanks to Dead Louse of a Spouse, normal had flown the hacienda for good.

  “As would I.” Naomi dropped her eyes to the papers in front of her.

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  “No, I’m afraid not.” She picked up the papers and tapped them into a neat pile. “I spent the better part of last evening in an emergency meeting with the board of directors and the legal department.”

  “Regarding the cancellation of the show?”

  “Among other things. The show won’t go on. It’s part of the settlement I negotiated on your behalf.”

  “On my behalf ? I don’t understand.”

  “Cloris called me after she saw you yesterday. She mentioned a lawsuit—”

  “Naomi, that was all Cloris’s idea. I can assure you I have no plans to sue Trimedia.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I—”

  “Anastasia, how the hell can I negotiate a settlement for a suit you don’t plan to file?”

  “But—”

  Naomi held up her hand. “I’m going to do the talking, and you’re going to do the listening. Understood?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Now, in exchange for you not suing Trimedia, Trimedia has agreed to all your demands.” She pushed her glasses farther up her nose and checked the papers she held between her hands. “There’s the usually legal mumbo-jumbo concerning the parties of the first part and the parties of the second part and so forth. I’ll skip all that if you don’t mind.”

  “By all means.” I didn’t understand legal mumbo-jumbo, anyway.

  “Good. First, Trimedia will cancel Morning Makeovers as of today. Secondly, all editors will be fairly compensated for the additional time they spent preparing for and taking part in the taping of the now defunct show. Compensation to be the standard time-and-a-half of each editor’s hourly salary.”