Full Frontal Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

back. I’d just found out that Rita would sleep with anything in pants. After she’d drop Bobby off at the preschool, she’d go cruising , for god’s sake!”
    â€œOh. A liar and a nymphomaniac.”
    He flared. “She’s still in therapy for it! She didn’t mention that little fact to you? No? What a surprise.”
    Perlmutter pulled out his notebook. “Name of the therapist?”
    Hugh gave him a name and address without having to look it up. “I’ve been writing checks to that quack for over two years. He hasn’t done her a bit of good. But Rita won’t change therapists. She says he understands her.”
    Walter Galloway snorted. “He’s shtupping her himself.”
    â€œDad.” Mild reprimand from Hugh.
    â€œWhy not? Everybody else is. She’s a tramp. Worthless. My son married a tramp.” The old man sneered. Hugh’s face darkened.
    Well, well — a sore point? Marian took the opening. “Did you oppose your son’s marriage, Mr. Galloway?”
    â€œOf course I did!” he snapped. “No man wants his son marrying a tart.”
    â€œThen you knew she was a tart before they were married?”
    A pause. “I sensed it. Women like that send out signals.”
    And the signal he was sending out was that he wasn’t going to budge on the matter. Back to Hugh. “There’s one more thing. Your wife claims you hired someone to pose as a house-cleaner and spy on her.”
    â€œWhat?!” roared Walter Galloway.
    His son looked equally startled. “Oh, that’s a new one! Very good, Rita … very good indeed. What’s she claiming, that she found the cleaner reading her mail?”
    â€œThe cleaner was going through her checkbook and credit card statements. And it was your brother-in-law who found her doing it, not your wife.”
    â€œFairchild?” He mulled that over. “That casts a different light on things.”
    â€œHow?” his father asked. “That brother of hers is no better than she is. They both spend their lives making pretty pictures. Reflections of life.” He sniffed. “Reflections , not the real thing. They see things the way they want to see them.”
    Hugh made a dismissive gesture, as if he’d heard all that before. “Fairchild isn’t the pathological liar that Rita is, but of course he’d lie to help her. But if he wasn’t lying, I suppose the cleaner could just have been nosy about the people whose house she was cleaning. Still, couldn’t she have been planted there by the kidnapper?”
    Perlmutter spoke up. “That’s not likely. Too complicated. And someone who wanted to grab Bobby for ransom wouldn’t need to look at your wife’s checkbook to see if the Galloways could pay the ransom.”
    Hugh wasn’t ready to concede the point. “But it’s an anomaly. It ought to be checked out.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” Marian assured him. “It will be. But Alex Fairchild said you bought the cleaning service. That would make it easy to slip a ringer into the house.”
    Hugh leaped angrily from his chair. “I bought three cleaning services! We’re merging them into one. Good lord, Lieutenant, it was an ordinary business transaction!”
    His father huffed. “Small potatoes.”
    â€œWith a potential for growth that you simply will not see! Those three piddling little businesses are just the starting point.” Back to Marian. “But that’s neither here nor there. Now I am accused of hiring a spy in addition to everything else? I’m calling my lawyers. I’m sure that’s grounds for a libel action. Rita’s gone over the edge. I’ve been trying to handle this problem in a civil manner, but the woman is beyond reason. I will not allow my son to grow up under her influence. She’s already poisoning him against me.”
    Marian wondered if that