1 Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun Read Free

renting out the apartment. You'll have to
stay where you are."
    "Absolutely not. It's too small."
    "For what? You lost everything you owned when your apartment burned to the ground."
    She offered no rebuttal. Her entire argument had been an exercise in pushing my buttons. Argument for the sake of argument.
Standard Lucille discourse.
    "By the way," I said to her departing back, "that amount includes cut-rate kibble for Mephisto. If the rest of us have to live on
mac and cheese to get by, he's going to have to make do without
his gourmet canned cuisine."
    She stopped, pounded her cane on the carpet, and glowered at
me over her shoulder. "His name is Manifesto, and he has a delicate constitution."
    So delicate that he'd scarfed down an entire doorstop-heavy
fruitcake several weeks ago when no one was looking. At least Mephisto's thievery had spared the rest of us from dealing with the
annual Christmas gift from Hell.
    "We all have to make sacrifices," I told her.
    "Don't you lecture me about making sacrifices, missy. I lived
through the Great Depression. A depression brought about by
greedy capitalists, I might add. I know all about making sacrifices.
Unlike some people."
    Then she launched into one of her very own communist manifestos, which set an orchestra of percussion instruments pounding
between my temples.

    Over the years I've tried my damnedest to foster a congenial
relationship between me and my mother-in-law. Lucille had pulverized all my attempts under her size-ten orthopedic heels. At
least I knew I wasn't the sole beneficiary of her wrath. The Daughters of the October Revolution, all of whom have similar curmudgeon-like personalities, are the only people I ever recall warming
up to my mother-in-law-probably because they're all as curmudgeonly as she is.
    "I'm late for work," I said, interrupting her dissertation of all
that's wrong with the world. This time I closed the door in her
face.

    I tried not to think about Ricardo's phone call as I made my way to
work. Maybe it was a crank call. One of Karl's lowlife Neanderthal
clients with a warped sense of humor. And maybe pigs really can
fly, Anastasia.
    Sitting astride a winged Miss Piggy would have been a preferable mode of transportation at the moment. Making the daily rush
hour trek to and from work had been somewhat tolerable while I
still owned my Camry. My new state of pauperdom had forced me
to sell the comfortable silver car with its multitude of amenities
back to the dealer. In its place I'd purchased a used, strippeddown, bottom-of-the-line, eight-year-old mud-brown Hyundai.
    The balance of the money from the car sale had paid for shipping Karl's body back from Nevada and the cremation expenses.
Cremation is cheaper than burial, and after what my husband had
done to me and his kids, we didn't need the expense of a cemetery plot. If anyone wanted to visit Karl in the future, they could talk to
the urn on the bookcase shelf.

    I'm not a large woman, barely five-two. And as I've mentioned
previously, I don't like to whine. Although, I suppose that's hard to
tell lately. Anyway, years ago I learned to accept the God-dealt
genes that landed me Mama's stubby legs, Grandma Sudberry's
below-the-navel spread, and Grandma Periwinkle's training brasized boobs, making me a height-challenged, cellulite-dimpled,
flat-chested brunette Bartlett pear.
    And although I refuse to take responsibility for the additional
ten pounds I haven't been able to shed since the birth of my last
child-thanks in part to both my Carbo Junkie Gene and my
Chocoholic Gene-I still managed to squeeze into a size eight. On
good days. Still, in the sub-sub compact Hyundai, I felt like The
Incredible Hulk shoehorned behind the steering wheel.
    After an hour of creeping along Routes 24, 78, and 287 at a
pace slower than the average snail, I pulled into the parking lot of
Trimedia's new headquarters, situated in the middle of a former
cornfield in Morris County.