Murder is a Girl's Best Friend

by Amanda Matetsky

  And then I heard the gun go off.

  Steeling myself against a wallop of fresh pain, I was surprised when I didn’t feel any. (Any new pain, that is. The wounds in my left shoulder and left leg still hurt like hell!) My eyes flew open and immediately focused on my right leg. It was smooth and unbloody. It was whole. There wasn’t even a run in my stocking! My right arm was also intact. And these happy realizations gave rize to a sudden resurgence of energy—which allowed me to push my torso up to a near upright position, which meant I could finally see what was going on.

  And that was when I almost died for real.

  Terry Catcher—my dear late husband’s dear old friend, and m y dearest new friend—was crouched low in the middle of my kitchen, staggering in a sea of splintered glass, with his snowy white hair gleaming, and the snowy white sleeve of his crisp cotton shirt turning red as red could be. He had been shot! And I could tell from the way Elsie was standing, and raising both arms to eye-level, and taking aim through the sight of her ugly little gun, that he was about to be shot again.

  “Look out!” I screamed, as loud as I could, hoping my cry would alert him to duck for cover. But I could have saved my breath. Because before those words were even halfway out of my mouth, Terry had sprung through the air like a Flying Wallenda, tackled Elsie below the waist, and brought her down—with a thunderous slam—in a heavy, lumpen sprawl on the linoleum. There was a fierce, vociferous struggle (you wouldn’t believe the filthy curses that came tumbling out of Elsie’s mouth!)—and then the gun went off again.

  Shocked by the blast, Terry and Elsie were frozen still for a moment. But as soon as they realized neither one of them had been shot, they continued their ferocious wrestling match—flailing, thrashing, and rolling around on the floor—until Terry scrambled on top, sat astride Elsie’s heaving trunk, pinned her arms down with both knees, and socked her hard (really hard!) in the face with his fist. Twice.

  Elsie grunted and groaned and loosened her grip on the gun. Terry snatched the gun from her hand, grasped it in his own, and pointed the hideous, hateful, heinous, horrid thing at her. (Sorry about the excessive alliteration, folks, but I couldn’t help myself. A girl’s gotta have some fun somehow! And besides, the string of h-words listed above seemed the thriftiest way to express my true feelings about firearms.)

  “Paige! Paige! Are you okay?” Terry cried out, keeping his gaze and the gun fixed on Elsie. He was still sitting on top of her, fastening her flat on her back to the floor.

  “I’ve been better,” I said. “But what about you? Your arm’s gushing!”

  “It’s nothing but a flesh wound. Where’s Abby?” he yelped, whipping his head from side to side, frantically searching his limited field of vision. “Is she all right? Has she been hit?”

  “Oh, my God!” I shrieked. “Is Abby here, too?” I hadn’t heard her. I couldn’t see her. Was she behind me? Why didn’t she say something?

  “I told her to stay out,” Terry cried, “but she wouldn’t listen. She came through the door right after I did!”

  I went into a total panic. Had the last bullet fired struck Abby? Using my good arm and leg for leverage, I madly scooched my disabled self around, until the area behind me was viewable, and the cold wind blowing through the wide-open door was blowing smack into my face.

  And then I almost died again.

  Abby was lying in a heap—a very still heap—on the floor to one side of the door, right at the bottom of the stairs. I couldn’t see her face; it was turned away from me, toward the wall. There was no evidence of blood on her clothes or the floor, so I couldn’t tell whether or not she’d been shot. Or whether or not she was dead.

  “She’s back here, Terry,” I wailed. “On the floor at the foot of the stairs. I don’t see any blood or anything, but she’s definitely not moving. I can’t get over there. You’ve got to help her!”

  Terry bounded to his feet, screaming at Elsie, “Get up! Get up off the floor and sit in this chair where I can see you. Quick—or I’ll shoot your head off!”

  Without a word, Elsie stood up, straightened her skirt, and sat down. I couldn’t believe she was being so quiet. Why wasn’t she shouting? Why wasn’t she cursing? One look at her gaping, lopsided face and I had my answer. Her chiseled John Wayne jaw was broken.

  Keeping the gun pointed at Elsie, Terry backed away toward the open kitchen door, each footstep crunching on broken glass. When he reached the spot where Abby was lying, and saw that she was totally unconscious, he let out a heartrending moan and sank to his knees by her side. “Baby! Oh, baby!” he cried, setting the gun down on the floor and scooping Abby up in his arms, pulling her in close to his chest, stroking her face and her hair. He’d forgotten all about Elsie. All that mattered to him right now was Abby. “Wake up, baby,” he begged, choking and sobbing between words. “Please, please wake up . . .”

  Do I have to tell you how crazy scared I was at this moment? Must I say that the thought of losing Abby—my most beloved friend in all the world—filled me with unfathomable, unbearable dread? Need I mention that the sight of the gun sitting unattended on the floor (i.e., not pointed at Elsie) was driving me insane with fear?

  I knew I had to get to the gun before Elsie did—or Terry,

  Abby, and I would all be dead. But I also knew I’d never make it. I couldn’t walk, or even crawl. Using my good arm and leg like rudders, I’d have to slide my wounded body across the splintered-glass-strewn floor, protected only by thin layers of silk (i.e., my stockings and my slip). I didn’t stand a chance in hell. Elsie was going to grab the gun. Sure as shootin’.

  Shows you what a fool I am. Elsie never even tried to reclaim the damn thing. She just vaulted off her chair, lunged over to the front door, threw it wide open, and—holding her hand tight around her broken jaw like a girdle—disappeared down the stairs to the street.

  THE NEXT FEW MINUTES WERE THE longest of my life (if you don’t count the minutes—okay, months!—following my receipt of a certain U.S. Army telegram). I believed Abby was dead or dying. I figured Elsie was on her way to Idlewild to catch the next flight to Timbuktu. I thought Judy’s murder would go forever un-avenged (Roscoe’s, too, but I didn’t care so much about that), and I had a sinking (okay, sunken) feeling that I’d never walk again. I didn’t think Terry would ever recover, either.

  So you can imagine my breathless, joyful, heart-soaring delight when Abby started squirming . . . and groaning . . . and then suddenly opened her eyes! And you must know how happy I was when she pushed herself up to a sitting position, shook her hair down her back, looked over at Terry, and said, “Hey, what the hell happened?”

  “Oh, Abby!” Terry sobbed, so overcome with relief I thought he’d start bawling again. “Are you okay? Have you been hurt?”

  “My head’s killing me.” She touched the egg-sized lump on her forehead. “Oh, now I remember!” she said, giving Terry a poke in the ribs. “When we busted into Paige’s apartment, you turned around and shoved me down to the floor. I think my head hit the wall when I fell. What did you do that for?”

  “Elsie had a gun and she was aiming it at us. I had to push you out of the way.”

  “Elsie?!” she shrieked. “I knew it! I told you that old bat was involved! Where is she? Locked in the closet? And where is Paige? Is she okay?” Abby shot her eyes around the apartment, looking for Elsie and me. “Oh, my God!” she cried, when she saw me lying on the bloody floor. “Paige has been shot!” She pushed herself to her hands and knees and crawled toward me—fast!—across the glass-littered linoleum.

  Terry jumped up and lunged into the living room to the phone. “I’ll call for an ambulance!”

  When Abby reached my side and saw the shape I was in, she broke down in tears. “Oh, Paige! This is so horrible!” she howled, slobbering all over herself. “And it’s all my fault! I never should have let you stay here alone!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, allowing my head to fall back on the floor. “I’m going to be fine. I’m n
ot losing any more blood, and I’m still conscious. The doctors will fix me up in no time.” I didn’t believe a word I was saying. The pain was profound, and I was growing weaker by the second. Staring up at Abby’s frantic face, I realized my vision was getting blurry.

  So when Abby’s face vanished and two tall, shadowy figures suddenly appeared above me, I couldn’t see who it was right away. It took me several seconds of squinting and straining and forcing my eyes to focus before I realized that one of the apparitions was Dan, and that the other one—get this!—was Elsie. Her broken jaw was hanging open and her wrists were in handcuffs.

  “What the devil?” I sputtered, feeling a stab of new energy. I pushed myself up to my good elbow again. “What’s going on? How did you . . . ?”

  “Don’t talk now, Paige,” Dan sternly interrupted. “You’ve got to save your strength. The ambulance will be here soon.”

  “But I don’t understand what’s happening!” I whimpered.

  “You and me both, babe,” Dan grumbled. His blurry face was plastered with a blurry scowl. He dropped into a squat, brushed his fingers down my cheek, and stared into my eyes with fierce concern. “But now’s not the time to discuss it. You’re too weak. We’ll talk later, after the docs get you patched up.”

  As I lowered my heavy head back down to the floor, a gust of wind blew over my freezing cold body. “Could somebody please close the back door?” I whimpered, teeth chattering, consciousness waning fast.

  Then Elsie started singing the National Anthem, and Abby and Terry started dancing “Ring around the Rosy,” and Dan wrapped me up in Bob’s old Army blanket, and Judy Catcher’s face appeared on the ceiling, gazing down at me with the warmest imaginable smile. And then the ceiling started spinning, and Judy’s face began to swirl, and I was five years old again, wearing my horse slippers and my plastic turban, riding the merry-go-round so fast and so furiously I thought I’d be dizzy forever.

  Epilogue

  HAVE YOU EVER WOKEN UP FROM A CRAZY dream believing that all the wild and scary things you dreamt about had actually taken place? Well, that’s what happened to me when I came to that night in the hospital. Except it happened in reverse. I woke up believing that all the wild and scary things that had actually taken place were nothing but a crazy dream.

  It took a few minutes for my sense of reality to return—for me to realize that the bed I was lying in was not my own; that my body was all bandaged up for a reason. And when I turned my head to the side and saw Dan sitting in a chair right next to the bed, staring at me intently (and oh-so-seriously) with his searing black eyes, I had all the proof I needed that the ghastly scenes swirling around like smoke in my head had really occurred.

  “I don’t know whether to kiss you or kick you,” Dan said, making his conflicting emotions conspicuously clear. “But since you look like a Martian with that silly thing on your head, I’ve got to kiss you. A girl in a space suit drives me crazy.” With that, he raised himself out of his chair, leaned over the bed railing, cupped my face in his big warm hands, and planted the world’s steamiest kiss on my startled but delighted mouth. (And I had thought black silk underwear would turn Dan on! Apparently hair dryer hoods and hospital gowns were more to his liking.)

  As soon as he pried his luscious lips away and my heartbeat returned to normal, I sputtered, “Why did they leave me like this? They could have removed the cap and take the curlers out!”

  “The docs and nurses had a few more important things to take care of,” Dan said. “In the Emergency Room, believe it or not, gunshot wounds take precedence over hairdos.”

  I didn’t want to be reminded of the gun, or the shots, or the wounds. “What time is it?” I asked, quickly changing the uncomfortable topic.

  He looked at his watch. “Four-thirty in the morning.”

  “Oh, shoot!” (As soon as those words were out of my mouth, I wished I’d thought of a better—i.e., less ballistic—way to express my disappointment.)

  “What’s the matter, babe?” Dan gave me one of his cocky, sexy, melt-your-bones-to-molasses smiles. “Past your bedtime?”

  “No, it’s past Christmas!” I exclaimed. “And I never got to give you your present, or even wish you a happy holiday!”

  Dan chuckled for a second, then turned serious. “Just knowing you’re alive makes all my days happy.”

  Joy to the world! I sang to myself. A girl could get used to this. I should get almost killed more often.

  But these jubilant feelings didn’t last long. Because before I knew it, Dan’s whole demeanor had changed. One minute he was lovey-dovey and all smiles, and the next he was busting a gasket, ranting and raving like Joe McCarthy himself, telling me off for risking my precious life just so I could play detective in yet another unsolved murder case.

  Terry and Abby had told him the whole story, he said, and he didn’t care how many times Bob had saved Terry’s life in Korea, or how hard Terry had begged me to help him find his little sister’s killer, or how much I wanted to write a story about the murder, I should never, ever, ever have gotten involved the way I did. It was an outrageous, unheard-of, unconscionable thing for me to do, and I should have my head examined for even thinking that I could solve another homicide.

  (At this particular point in time—while I was lying there immobile on my back and bandaged up like a mummy—I was inclined to agree with him. But I didn’t tell him that, of course.)

  Dan was really, really angry that I hadn’t told him about the case and asked himto look into Judy’s murder. Why the hell did I keep it a secret from him? Did I actually believe that I was so much smarter than he was? Did I really think I could conduct a better murder investigation than the whole darn NYPD? And how dare I put myself in so goddamn much danger?! Did I ever stop to think how horrible it would be for him if I were killed and he had to head up a search for m y murderer?

  I had to admit (to myself and to Dan) that that particular thought hadn’t once crossed my mind. And then I had to apologize—profusely—for my lack of consideration. And my lack of trust. And my reckless self-endangerment. And my “idiotically inflated head.” (Dan’s words, not mine.)

  But nothing I said would soothe the savage beast—not even my emotional protestations about the laziness and inef fectualness of Detective Hugo Sweeny, or my sworn testimony that I thought he (Dan) would never interfere in another precinct’s homicide investigation.

  He most certainly would have interfered, Dan claimed (more vociferously than I care to remember). Especially since he already knew what a shiftless sonofabitch Sweeny was, and how incompetent he’d been in the past, and how he’d begun closing cases prematurely because his retirement was coming up soon and he wanted to leave the job with a clean slate. And even if he didn’t know all that stuff about Sweeny, Dan insisted, he would have seen to it that the Catcher case was reopened. With so much glaring evidence in hand, that’s what any good cop would do.

  Okay, okay! So I was a stupid fool. And everything Dan said to me in the hospital that night (I mean morning) was totally legitimate. I really should have told him about Judy’s murder. And about the diamonds. And I should have revealed everything at the very beginning—the same day Terry met me at the automat and asked me to help him find the creep who had killed his sister.

  But you understand why I didn’t, don’t you? You know how overwhelmed I was by Terry’s pain and sorrow, and by his desperate plea for help, and by the fact that he had been so close to my late husband in his final days. And you also know how crazy Dan would have gone if I had even tried to discuss the details of the Judy Catcher murder case with him, right? No matter what Dan says, all hell would have broken loose! And he would have banished me from the investigation. He would have forced me to give up my search . . . and give up my story . . . and, well, give up my natural (though most would say unnatural) career goals.

  So what was a girl supposed to do? Be true to her late husband . . . or to her new boyfriend . . . or to herself? Finding that question impossibl
e to answer, I chose to dodge the truth altogether. I heaved a heavy sigh, closed my weary eyes, and fell into a sleep so deep it was deadly.

  I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL FOR A WEEK, AND Dan came to visit every day. He was still mad at me, but he was also still pretty crazy about me (I could tell by the way his strong, craggy face turned all mushy when he thought I wasn’t looking). And, as much as he didn’t want to rehash—or give credence to—my involvement in the Judy Catcher case, he couldn’t curb his professional curiosity, or stop himself from picking up the investigation where I’d left off.

  It wasn’t enough that he’d apprehended the murderer himself; that he’d been sharp and alert enough to chase Elsie down when he saw her burst out of my building and start running away like a thief; that he’d had the sense (and the instinct) to ignore all the rules and handcuff her right there and then, in the middle of Bleecker Street on Christmas Day, and march her—jawbone wagging like a broken gate—back up the stairs to my apartment. And it wasn’t enough that Elsie had, just a few days later, in light of all the irrefutable evidence against her, and in the presence of her lawyer and several prison officials, written up and signed a full confession (the prison docs had wired her busted jaw together, but she still couldn’t talk).

  Nope! That wasn’t enough for our man Dan! There were still a few loose ends in the case, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d tied them all together. And I was the only one who could help him do that. (This fact tickled me pink, but seemed to give Dan a humongous headache.)