by Lois Winston
A frazzled-looking, pudgy young woman with red-rimmed eyes rose from behind the desk. She stared at us for a moment, puzzlement settling across her face. Then with a gasp, she ran into Erica’s arms. “Omigod! Erica, I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Erica laughed. “You’re not the only one. I look in the mirror and see a stranger.”
Gina stepped back. Holding Erica’s hands in hers, she studied her cousin from head-to-toe. “But a drop-dead gorgeous stranger.”
She pulled one of her hands free and tucked a clump of straggly dishwater brown hair behind her ear. “I must look like something the cat wouldn’t bother dragging in, but I’m so glad you’re here. I can’t stop crying.”
With that she collapsed sobbing into Erica’s arms and wailed, “I don’t know what to do. It’s like he’s vanished off the face of the earth. No one’s seen or heard from him since late Monday morning.”
FIFTEEN
“Where was Emil headed when he left?” I asked Gina after her sobbing had subsided to an occasional hiccup.
She lifted her head from Erica’s shoulder. Swiping at her cheek with her shoulder, she sniffed back her tears and directed a wary, watery brown gaze toward me. “Who are you?”
Erica stepped out of Gina’s embrace but kept her arm wrapped around her cousin’s shoulders as she made introductions. “These are the friends from work I told you about. Anastasia and Cloris. They’re here to help.”
Gina’s expression remained cautious as her gaze darted between Cloris and me. “Emil had a meeting downtown.”
“With whom?”
She fiddled with a button on her work smock. “He didn’t tell me.”
“Nothing written in his appointment book?”
“He doesn’t keep one.”
Or keeps it from her. “So you don’t know if he ever made it to his meeting?”
She answered with a shake of her head, accompanied by a mournful sigh.
“Do you know anything about his date with Marlys Vandenburg Monday night?”
Gina’s features hardened. Her body stiffened under her billowy cobalt blue work smock. “It was a business meeting, not a date.”
“But you knew he was supposed to meet her?”
She tugged on both ends of the yellow tape measure slung around her neck and scowled at a pair of scuffed black boots that peeked out beneath a frayed pair of stonewashed denim jeans. “I knew.”
Cloris cleared her throat. “You don’t sound very happy about it.”
“Why would I? Marlys Vandenburg strutted around like she was Queen of the Fashion District, even though she only worked for some third-rate monthly.”
When Cloris arched her eyebrow, Gina quickly added, “No offense.”
“We prefer to think of ourselves as second-rate,” I said, “but go on.”
Gina paced between the cutting table and the bank of sewing machines that lined the far wall of the room. Her fingers fidgeted with the ends of the tape measure. “Emil couldn’t stand Marlys, the way she used and abused people. He used to mock her behind her back. But when she took an interest in his new line, he decided to milk her for as much publicity as he could get. Better to suck up, he figured, than wind up another victim of her poison pen.”
She stopped pacing and spun around to confront me. “Believe me, no way was he looking forward to spending Monday night with her.” She gulped back a sob. “And now he’s missing.”
Why did I get the feeling I was watching a scene from a Grade-B soap opera? Believe her? Gina’s body language announced in ninety-six point extra-bold type that she was either laying on a whopper or holding back a huge chunk of truth. “Have you filed a missing persons report with the police?”
She hesitated, darting a quick glance toward Erica. “Sort of.”
“Sort of?” asked Cloris.
Gina paced over to the windows and slumped into one of the sewing machine chairs. She clenched her fists in her lap and lowered her head. “The police came looking for Emil yesterday. Said they wanted to ask him some questions. I figured it was about Marlys’s murder. I got scared.”
“You didn’t tell them he’s missing?” I asked.
“I said he was out of town, that he hadn’t said where he was going, and I didn’t know when he’d be back. I’m not sure they believed me.”
Since Gina’s acting abilities were on a par with the late Anna Nicole Smith’s, I’m sure they didn’t. “Do you mind if we look through the computer and his files?” I asked.
“I’ve already gone through everything several times, but be my guest. Maybe you’ll discover something I missed.”
But after an hour of looking through dozens of cyber and paper files, prying into every nook and cranny of the workshop, sifting on hands and knees through every drawer and bin, not a clue to Emil Pachette’s whereabouts turned up. “What about his apartment?” I asked.
Once again Gina hesitated, glancing at Erica before she answered. “He’s not there. I checked.”
“You have a key?” asked Cloris.
“Emil keeps a spare set locked in the filing cabinet. When he didn’t show up for work yesterday and didn’t answer his phone or cell, I decided to check for myself. I thought he might be ill.”
“Did you look for any clues as to where he might have gone?” I asked.
Her chin shot up. Her cheeks flushed to near purple. She backed up until her rump banged into the corner of the sewing machine cabinet, spilling a plastic container of straight pins onto the hardwood floor. “I didn’t snoop through his things,” she cried.
In my mind I heard Ralph squawking, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Hamlet. Act Three, Scene Two.”
“We’re not accusing you of snooping,” snapped Cloris.
“We’re here to help,” added Erica. She crossed the room and placed a hand on her cousin’s forearm. “Why don’t we all go over to Emil’s apartment and take a look? Maybe we’ll find a clue.”
Gina mulled the idea over for a moment before agreeing. “Maybe that’s a good idea,” she said as she shrugged out of her work smock and tossed it on the cutting table. She crossed the room to the desk and removed a worn leather shoulder bag from the bottom drawer. After fishing around in her purse for a set of keys, she grabbed a navy pea coat hanging from a clothes tree near the entrance, then flipped off the lights and opened the door.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I asked.
She glanced around the room. “I don’t think so.”
“What about the keys to Emil’s apartment?”
Gina’s cheeks once again flamed as red as a neon bar sign. The girl blushed as much as a heroine in a Barbara Cartland romance novel. Her fist tightened around the ring of keys in her hand. “I have them.”
“On your key ring?” asked Cloris.
Gina threw back her shoulders and jutted out her chin. “I forgot to put them back in the filing cabinet. Is that a crime?”
With Gina focused on Cloris, I shot Cloris a back-off-I-need-her-cooperation-to-clear-me look.
“Of course not,” I said in my best reassuring tone. “I’ll bet you’ve been totally distracted with worry. I know I would be.”
She offered me a shy smile that I suspected was meant to throw off my suspicions. I smiled back, letting her think I bought into her act. Gina definitely knew more than she was divulging.
~*~
Fifteen minutes later, the four of us stood inside Emil Pachette’s cramped third-floor walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen. A quick perusal of the studio apartment revealed someone had left in a hurry. Half-emptied dresser drawers were pulled open, clothes strewn across the bed and on the floor. An open box of Frosted Flakes lay on the table. Dirty dishes filled the sink.
I turned to Gina. “Did the apartment look like this yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“No toothbrush,” said Cloris, peaking out from the closet-sized bathroom.
I walked over to the desk and rifled through the mail. “Bills. Utilities. C
able. Phone.” I lifted the pages of the phone bill and scanned the list of long-distance calls. “Where is Emil from originally?” I asked Gina.
“Paris.”
I studied the bill further. “You sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure. Most of his family still live there.”
“Have you ever met any of them?”
“No. Emil’s parents are afraid to fly. Especially after September 11th. They don’t even want him flying home to visit them.”
“So he speaks with them regularly?”
Gina sat down on the edge of a slightly tattered nubby cocoa and tan herringbone loveseat. She picked up a saffron-and-celery-colored toss pillow laying to her left and wove the fringe through her fingers as she spoke. “Quite often. He calls his parents at least once a week.”
“From the office?”
“No.” She continued to fidget the fringe, pouting at the pillow as she spoke. “Emil never makes personal calls from the office phone.”
“Then how do you know he speaks with his parents?” asked Cloris.
Gina tossed the pillow aside and glared at Cloris. “Because he tells me.”
~*~
“So what do you think?” asked Cloris after we left Emil’s apartment. We had forced ourselves into an already over-packed subway car headed back to Penn Station. There are few experiences in life equal to full body contact with total strangers on a New York subway, but if we didn’t catch the last rush hour train to Morris County, we’d have an hour’s wait for the next one.
“I think Emil has Gina and everyone else bamboozled,” I said as the train came to a halt and we fell out onto the platform.
Now that my arms were no longer pinned to my sides, I glanced at my watch. We had less than five minutes to race through the underground maze connecting the subway system to New Jersey Transit.
“What do you mean?” asked Erica, trying to keep up with the jogging pace Cloris and I set. I slowed a tad. Poor Erica probably wished she could wave a magic wand and transform those strappy burgundy suede Jimmy Choos into her broken-in Doc Martens.
“If that man’s from France, I’m from Venus.”
“Want to explain?” asked Cloris.
Ahead of us, I saw the Now Boarding sign flashing above the steps to our platform. I waited to answer until we had raced down the steps and onto the train.
“According to his phone bill,” I said, collapsing into the first available three-person bench seat, “Emil Pachette didn’t call Paris once last month.”
Erica’s eyes widened as she gulped in a few deep breaths. “But Gina said he calls his parents at least once a week. Why would he lie to her about that?”
“He didn’t.”
“But you just said—”
“I said he didn’t call Paris, but he did phone Horse Thief Falls, Minnesota nine times. I think Emil Pachette is a big phony.”
“So?” said Cloris. She unbuttoned her coat and fanned herself with the beret she had pulled off her head. “Lots of people create new personas for themselves in order to advance their careers. It might be unethical, but it’s not necessarily illegal. Or a motive for murder.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” I said, unbuttoning my own coat. New Jersey Transit had two temperature settings on their trains—Hell and Siberia. Thanks to my participation in the subway marathon, Hell had graduated to hotter-than-Hell.
“What are you getting at?” she asked.
“Think about it. We’re all assuming Marlys had adopted Emil as her next pet project.”
“She practically announced it at the staff meeting Monday morning,” said Erica.
“We all know Marlys never did anything that didn’t benefit Marlys first and foremost. What would she get out of promoting a questionable fashion talent like Emil Pachette?”
Having seen his work, I had little doubt the mediocre designer would eventually wind up as an assistant buyer for moderately priced women’s wear at Macy’s. “What if that was a ruse to cover up her true intentions?”
“Of course!” cried Cloris.
“What?” asked Erica, glancing first toward Cloris, then shifting her attention to me.
Jessica Fletcher move over. It may have taken me a bit longer than an hour, but I had figured out whodunit. “Somehow, Marlys discovered Emil’s true identity. Marlys being Marlys, she decided to blackmail him, but she got more than she bargained for.”
It all made perfect sense. “Knowing he had little choice,” I explained, “Emil agreed to the blackmail. He then probably came up with some pretext to get Marlys back to the office Monday night. Once there, he pulled out a bottle of Merlot. When Marlys wasn’t looking, he doctored her glass. And the rest, as they say, is Murder She Wrote—or in this case, Murder He Glued.
~*~
On the way home from the office, my cell phone rang. I glanced at the display. This time I recognized the number. Zachary Barnes. What could he want? My brain zeroed in on the obvious. He’d had second thoughts about leaving Manhattan and was pulling out of the rental agreement.
Wasn’t there some law that allowed for reneging from a signed contract within two or three days? Shit and double-shit. I’d already spent his deposit check on some of my own bills. Now what?
I answered the phone, expecting to hear the worst. “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s Zack Barnes. I’m back from New Mexico and was wondering if I could drop by sometime tonight to do a bit of measuring.”
I couldn’t help myself; I let loose with a huge laugh of relief.
“Something funny?”
“Just one very over-active imagination,” I said. “I was worried you were calling to pull out.”
“Never. That apartment is perfect for me. So do you mind?”
“I had a late day at the office. I’m on my way home now. Come whenever it’s convenient for you.”
“Great. And by the way, Anastasia...”
“Yes.”
“You’ll find I’m a man of my word. I don’t go around screwing people.”
Sure, I once thought the same of Karl. What was that old saying? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me? From now on my skepticism ran deep.
~*~
I arrived home after nine, tired and hungry but relieved that I no longer had to worry about Batswin and Robbins pinning a murder rap on me—or Zachary Barnes pulling out of the rental. My newly elevated comfort level lasted only until I pulled into the driveway and my headlights spotlighted the broken basement window.
SIXTEEN
My heart raced as I grabbed my cell phone and called the house. One ring. Two rings. I had no idea if the intruder was still inside. Three rings.
“Hello?”
“Nick, is everything okay?”
He laughed. “Kind of depends on your definition of okay, doesn’t it, Mom?”
Was this a hint of a problem? “What do you mean?”
“Well, the Grandmas are accusing each other of plotting the world’s destruction, as usual. Mephisto and Catherine the Great are circling each other like two cocks about to spar, as usual. And Ralph is squawking play-by-play, as usual. So I guess nothing’s really okay, but it’s pretty much normal for here, right?”
“Right.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“In the driveway.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll explain in a minute.” After placing a call to the Westfield police, I shut off the engine and headed for the back door.
As much as I had hoped the broken window was the result of a stray baseball, the evidence proved otherwise. Someone had definitely broken into my house. Again. Large, muddy footprints led from the top of the washing machine, which sat directly under the cellar window, across the laundry room, through the basement, and up the stairs.
Of course neither the boys nor their grandmothers had noticed—let alone cleaned up—the dirt that was tracked across the kitchen floor and ground into the dining room and living room carpets.
“Anyth
ing missing?” asked Fogarty when he and Harley arrived five minutes later.
“Not that I can see,” I said.
Unlike the previous break-in, the house hadn’t been trashed. Otherwise, I would have immediately suspected Ricardo. However, like last time, the intruder had left undisturbed both the few pieces of good jewelry I owned, as well as the electronics and computer equipment.
This made two break-ins in twenty-four hours with nothing taken. And that sent a sub-zero wind chill coursing up my spine and through my veins. Was the burglar looking for something very specific, or were we dealing with some creep playing a perverted game? Did all of this have something to do with Karl’s secret life? Were there more unsavory things I had yet to learn about my husband? More unsavory associates of his waiting to pounce on me and my family?
“And no one saw or heard anything?” asked Harley, his stub of a pencil poised over his spiral-bound pocket notepad.
“Heard you of nothing strange about the streets? Antony and Cleopatra. Act Four, Scene Three.”
Harley jumped at the sound of Ralph squawking his two cents worth of Shakespeare, then forced a chuckle to mask his embarrassment. “Forgot about him,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“That’s one damn smart bird,” said Fogarty. “Ever think of putting him in show business?”
“He only speaks when the mood strikes him,” I said, watching Ralph swoop from one lampshade across the room to another, where he had a better bead on Catherine the Great. The haughty feline paused from grooming her privates to bestow a disdainful glare on Ralph.
“Too bad he can’t tell us what he saw.” Harley turned his attention to the boys. “How about you guys? See or hear anything?”
Nick and Alex shook their heads. “We didn’t get home until after five,” said Alex. “I was at the library.”
“I had basketball practice,” said Nick.
Fogarty turned to Mama and Lucille. “What about you ladies?”
