Pink Balloons and Other Deadly Things (Mystery Series - Book One) by Nancy Tesler

temper. “I’m sure they’d appreciate any help you could give.”
    “Well, of course, but---”
    I got creative. “If you helped break the case, I bet you’d get your picture in the paper. Who knows, they might even do a TV thing,” I added.
    “What do you mean?”
    “One of those reality shows. TV people pay big money for stories like these. ‘Crime solved by local housewife.’ You know how they eat that sort of thing up.”
    There was silence on the other end of the line. I let it linger.
    “You know,” she said after a very long pause. “I think I do remember something.”
    My heart stopped beating, then resumed an uneven ta-dum, ta-dum, thump, thump, ta-dum. “Yeah?”
    “There was a car cruising the street.”
    “What do you mean, cruising?”
    “You know, it went up and down the street a few times.”
    “You sure?” Maybe I’d painted too alluring a picture, and this was all a figment of Sue’s greedy imagination. “How come you didn’t tell the police about it?”
    “I just thought of it. At the time it barely registered. I thought it was some guy looking for the Lambert kid. You know which one I mean, Paige---”
    “She's away at college.”
    “So it couldn’t’ve been for her!” Sue was caught up in it now. Her voice cracked with excitement. “I think I’m onto something. Maybe it was---”
    “What’d the car look like?”
    Long pause. “I think it was dark green. Or maybe black. It looked new.”
    “What make?”
    “Hell, I don't know. One of those Japanese things—-like a Nissan. Or a Toyota.”
    “For heaven’s sake, Sue, can’t you tell a Toyota from a Nissan?”
    “No, I can't! I buy American!”
    I tried to repair the damage. “I didn't mean---”
    “Maybe I'll just call that cop myself.”
    “Did you see who was driving?” I asked before she could hang up on me. “A man or a woman?”
    I could hear the wheels whirring in her head. Why should she share the glory, much less the TV money, with me?
    “I don’t know. A guy, I think,” she muttered finally. “I’m really not sure.”
    “Did it slow up in front of my—-of Rich's house?”
    “Didn't notice. That's all I can tell you, Carrie. Fang’s crying at the door. I gotta take him for a walk.”
    Imagine naming that cream puff Fang. Damn, I was mad at myself. She'd shut down like a computer screen in a blackout. “Okay, Sue,” I said, with false heartiness. “You've been great. Knew I could count on you. Give me a call if anything else occurs to you, okay?”
    “Yeah, sure,” she responded unenthusiastically, and hung up.
    I wondered what to do with the information. Maybe I should tell Brodsky, let him follow up on it. I was reaching for the phone when my eye fell on a familiar logo: Arthur Carboni, Attorney at Law.
    A bill? I knew I still owed Arthur money, but I was paying him in installments, and I always paid him on the fifteenth. Why would he be sending me a bill now? Slitting open the envelope, I withdrew a neatly typed invoice for eighteen hundred and fifty dollars. Eighteen hundred! Where did that come from? I’d put down seventy-five hundred at the initial hiring, and he’d gone through that like Matt through a heavenly hash sundae. I studied the bill. Itemized, one hundred fifty for two phone calls, two hundred for my installment payment, and fifteen hundred for the services of an investigative firm called Mirimar, which Carboni had hired to look into Rich’s finances. I scanned the page. For fifteen hundred dollars, these charlatans had spent several days observing 101 Deerview Place and discovered that Rich was living with Erica there, noted that his office building actually did exist and that the sun was shining on the days the investigator visited it, searched the refuse bin outside the building and found it contained nothing incriminating, and after a visit to the hall of records, learned that Rich had a mortgage of four hundred ninety thousand dollars left on the house. They'd also