Full Frontal Murder by Barbara Paul Page A

bodyguards.
    Marian held her badge up to the eyehole and waited. The door was opened by an unsmiling man in a conservative business suit. “I’m Lieutenant Larch, Midtown South. I need to see Mrs. Galloway.”
    He stepped back to let her enter, and then led her down a white staircase to an open area on a lower level where a television was playing with the sound low. Rita Galloway sat looking at the set with a glassy-eyed stare that suggested she wasn’t seeing what was on the screen. She jumped when Marian spoke her name.
    â€œOh, Lieutenant!” She clicked off the TV. “Any news?”
    â€œA little.” She sat down on what looked like a pile of deep-blue pillows but turned out to be a chair. Alex Fairchild’s apartment was so ultra-modern it looked like the set of a futuristic movie. Airy and open, no clutter. The bodyguard took another chair near the foot of the stairway; he hadn’t spoken once. “Where’s Bobby?”
    â€œIn the next room, with his guard. What’s the news?”
    â€œIt looks as if you were right about the cleaning woman being a plant.” Marian went on to explain about Consuela Palmero. “It’s not her real name. But she’s a lead.”
    â€œTo Hugh?”
    â€œOr to someone who’s after Bobby for the ransom. I know—you’re convinced it’s your husband. But until we find something that links him directly to these things that have been happening, we can’t arrest him.”
    â€œThis is insane! Hugh tried to kill us last night and—”
    â€œMrs. Galloway, stop and think. Does your husband want Bobby dead?”
    â€œNo! He wants me dead!”
    â€œSo how could he expect the same homemade bomb to get you but not Bobby? It doesn’t make sense. Fire is always dangerous, but neither of you was hurt, were you? That bomb was meant to badger you, not kill you.”
    Rita Galloway was silent a moment and then said, “That stained-glass dragon is irreplaceable, you know. It was one of a kind. The artisan who fashioned it died last year.”
    A door opened and Bobby rushed in, followed by another unsmiling man in a business suit. “Mama! I wrote my name!” He held up a sheet of paper on which “Bobby” had been drawn in green crayon.
    â€œWhy, honey, that’s wonderful!” Rita fussed over him a few minutes and then shot a questioning look at Bobby’s bodyguard.
    The man spread his hands. “He wanted to know.”
    Rita gave him a big smile, the first Marian had ever seen on her face. Marian leaned forward toward the boy. “Hi, Bobby. Remember me?”
    He turned shy. “Mary Ann,” he said in a tiny voice.
    â€œHey, you remember!” She leaned back in her chair: less threatening. “Good for you.”
    â€œI drew a cow,” he volunteered.
    â€œYou did? Cows are hard to draw.”
    He nodded soberly. “I never see a cow.”
    â€œThat should make it even harder.”
    â€œI see monkeys, and goats, and, and, and snakes—”
    â€œBobby,” his mother interrupted gently. “Ah, Mary Ann and I need to talk right now. Okay?”
    â€œOkay.” Bobby dropped to his hands and knees and started chugging away like a choo-choo.
    Rita watched a moment to make sure he was absorbed in his play and then turned back to Marian. “Are you having Hugh followed?” she asked in a low voice.
    Marian had been afraid she’d ask that. “There’s no point. He spends most of his day at the office, doesn’t he? There are a dozen ways out of the Galloway Building. We can’t watch them all. And if he is guilty, he’s hiring someone to do his dirty work for him. He didn’t … ah …” She remembered just in time that Bobby was in the room. “He didn’t do the job outside the church himself. And it’s unlikely he ran the risk of being seen in your neighborhood last