1 Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun (18 page)

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 ninetysix 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-needher-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. Halfemptied 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. Cable. 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-celerycolored 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... "