Murder is a Girl's Best Friend by Amanda Matetsky

and catastrophic. Something that might—in some seemingly indirect, but still horribly injurious way—involve him. Like the last time.
    “Don’t worry, Lenny,” I quickly replied, trying to soothe him with my soft, steady tone. “I’m not in any danger at all. This is just a simple, straightforward murder case that the police are too lazy to solve. I’m looking into it for a friend of mine, actually a good friend of Bob’s.”
    “Oh, I get it!” Lenny said, in a voice so acidic it could have stripped the enamel off the side of a bus. “You’re just skipping through a field of daisies, singing ‘Little Things Mean a Lot,’ and looking for another cold-blooded killer to play hide and seek with.” His normally thin, pale face was puffed up like a pink balloon. “And there’s nothing for me to worry about because you’re doing this for a good friend, right? Oh, no! Excuse me! I’ve got that all wrong, you’re doing it for a good friend of Bob’s! Your wonderful, perfect—need I remind you, dead? —husband Bob.”
    Lenny had gone too far, and he knew it. Way too far. His puffy face registered a sudden look of horror and disbelief, then melted into a soggy mass of shame. “I’m sorry, Paige,” he muttered, staring down at his feet with the intensity of a man who’d just discovered he was standing barefoot in a briar patch. “Please forgive me. That was an awful thing to say. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
    “I know you didn’t mean it, Lenny,” I said, quickly brushing my fingers down the side of his cheek and shoulder, then resting them on the damp sleeve of his thin black overcoat. “And I don’t blame you for being worried. But, please believe me, there’s no reason for you to . . . ”
    The office entrance bell jingled, and in walked Mike and Mario.
    “Hey, what’s going on here?” Mario cried, when he saw me standing up close to Lenny with my hand on his arm. “This is an office, not a dance hall! So ditch the tango, Zimmerman, and get to work!” Ever since Lenny had saved my life, Mario had been extremely jealous of his assistant’s newborn hero status (and of his newborn friendship with me).
    “Maybe he’s not dancing,” Mike chimed in, snickering. “Maybe he’s just turning a Paige!”
    They laughed like insane hyenas for a couple of seconds, then began hanging their hats and coats and mufflers on the tree. Embarrassed by their gibes (and still mortified by his own hurtful remarks to me), Lenny pulled away from me and slunk over to his desk, plopping down in his chair with his coat still on. Then, as if prompted by a slapstick comedy director with a sadistic sense of timing, Harvey Crockett stuck his big bulldog head out of his office and hollered, “More coffee!”
    My workday was off to a splendid start.

Chapter 7

    POMEROY SAUNTERED INTO THE OFFICE around noon, and I scooted out ten minutes later. It was foolhardy of me to even think of traveling all the way across town and back on my short lunch hour, but I was so eager to meet Mrs. Londergan and talk to her about Judy that I simply couldn’t wait until the end of the day.
    Retracing part of my morning commute, I took the shuttle back to Times Square, then the IRT down to 28th Street. Two blocks south on Seventh, a half a block west on 26th, and I found myself standing on the snowy sidewalk in front of the gray stone tenement building where Judy Catcher had lived. And died. A shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
    Sucking in a blast of frosty air, I made my way up the shoveled but slippery stoop to the building’s front door and stepped inside. The tiled entryway was equipped with sixteen metal mailboxes and sixteen buzzers. Each mailbox had a name on it, so I didn’t have to rummage through the papers in my purse—the notes Terry had given me—to figure out which bell to ring.
    Mrs. Londergan lived in 2C. I pushed the buzzer—hard. No answer. I waited a few seconds and pushed it