Dear God. Don’t let it be true. Please don’t let Dan stop caring about me…

Bam! Bam! Bam! Someone was banging on my door.

My heart did a somersault in my chest. Was it Dan? Had he come back?

“Let me in, Paige!” Abby shouted. “What’s that horrible howling noise? It sounds like you’re skinning a cat in there!”

“Go away!” I hollered, mewling and puling and gasping for air. “I want to be alone.”

“No go, Garbo! You’d better open the door right now, or I’ll break it down. Either way, I’m coming in!”

Knowing Abby was fully capable of demolishing my door (it wouldn’t surprise me if she kept an axe in her broom closet), I pried myself up off the couch, staggered across the floor, and-wiping my tears on my sweaty forearm-opened it myself.

“

Oy vey!” Abby yelped when she saw me. “You look awful! Are you sick or something?” She breezed into my apartment and gave me a head-to-toe onceover. “Yuck! There’s a glob of snot the size of New Jersey hanging out of your nose!”

Great. A broken heart and a giant booger. Now my life’s complete.

“That’s the least of my problems,” I said, slogging over to the kitchen counter and blowing my nose on a paper napkin. As I was throwing the napkin in the trash under the sink, the coffee pot caught my attention. Steam was shooting out of the spout and the loosened lid was rattling and snapping like a pair of novelty store dentures. How long had the pot been perking? I had no idea.

I turned off the stove and squinted through my swollen eyelids at Abby. “Want some coffee?”

“Sure,” she said, looking fresh, clean and ravishing as usual. Her shiny black hair was loose and streaming down her back like a waterfall. Her white peasant blouse and bright red capris looked as if they’d just been washed and ironed. There wasn’t a drop of perspiration on her perfectly made-up face-or anywhere else on her person, for that matter.

(Just par for the course, you should know. Abby usually looks like a Walt Disney princess, while I often resemble a scarecrow… or a dead monkey).

While I was pouring the coffee, Abby popped into the living room and turned the fan to face the kitchen table. Then she walked over to the table, positioned a chair in the center of the airflow, and sat down.

“So what’s the matter now?” she asked. “Tell me all your troubles, Bubbles.”

I carried our coffee over to the table and sat down across from Abby. “I don’t even know where to begin,” I said, choking back a rising tide of tears. “So much has happened since I last spoke to you.”

“You mean since you left the Vanguard last night?”

“Since five minutes before I left.”

“But that was just eight hours ago.” She spooned some sugar into her cup. “How much could have happened since then?”

“Plenty,” I grumbled, disgusted with myself and revolted by my entire lifestyle. I was reluctant to tell Abby about what had happened with Dan (I didn’t want to start crying again), so I lit up an L &M and began recounting the details of my most recent misfortunes from the beginning.

“Before I left you last night,” I told her, speaking in a voice so dead it was dirgeful, “I went over to talk to the bartenders. I wanted to find out if they knew anything about Rhonda Blake or the man she was with. So I asked them both a few questions and-”

“

Feh!” Abby erupted, spraying coffee out of her mouth and all over the tabletop. “This stuff is foul! It’s as thick as house paint and it tastes like dirt!”

“Oh… I guess I cooked it too long.”

“Uh, yeah! I’d say you did. When did you put it on the stove? Last summer?”

“Ha ha,” I said, not laughing, just pronouncing the words.

“It’s like acid,” she needled. “I wonder if it damaged the spoon.” She picked said utensil up off the table, held it up close to her nose, and-doing a swell imitation of Jerry Lewis at his crazy, cross-eyed best-examined it from every angle.

I knew what Abby was doing. She was trying to make me smile. She was trying to tease me out of my mournful mental state and nudge me back to the land of the living. But it wasn’t working. I didn’t

want to be alive.

I took a drag on my cigarette and exhaled slowly. “Ha ha,” I said again, as mirthlessly as before.

“Oh, come on, Paige!” Abby said, slapping the spoon down on the table and throwing her hands in the air. Her patience was fading fast. “Snap out of it! Whatever it is, it can’t be

that bad.”

“Oh, yeah?” I retorted, summoning enough energy to plant myself firmly on the defensive. “First listen to everything that’s happened to me since I last saw you, and

then you can decide how bad it is.”

A JILLION CIGARETTES AND FOUR CUPS of coffee later (yes, we both drank the filthy stuff anyway), I concluded the tale of my latest pitfalls and perils.

“That’s really

bad!” Abby admitted, referring to the whole disturbing picture, but mostly to my disturbing conflict with Dan. (As you no doubt know by now, Abby believes man trouble is the worst kind of trouble any woman can have.) “Why the hell didn’t you just tell Dan the truth?” she ranted. “Then he wouldn’t have broken up with you! Then he could help us look for the murderer, and protect you from Baldy and Blackie at the same time.”

“But it never would have worked out that way,” I sadly replied. “Don’t you see? Instead of helping us look for the killer, Dan would’ve ordered us to drop our investigation altogether. He would have insisted that we leave the whole case-and poor Willy Sinclair’s entire future-in Detective Flannagan’s homophobic hands. And I could not, in good conscience, allow that to happen. I would never, ever forgive myself if Willy went to jail-or got the death sentence!-for a murder I know he didn’t commit.”

“What makes you so sure he’s innocent?” Abby inquired. “His blood type is guilty as sin.”

“Right. And that may be all Flannagan needs to convict him. But lots of people have type A blood, you know. And they’re probably all more homicidal than Willy. Willy wouldn’t hurt a fly-or even a flea. He’s a nervous little mama’s boy. I’ll bet the closest he ever came to cutting a man was during his girlish youth, when he was cutting out paper dolls. Take my word for it, Ab. Willy’s frilly and he’s silly-but he’s not a murderer.”

“You may be right,” Abby conceded. “I wouldn’t peg him as a killer, either. But we’ve been over all of this before, you dig, and

you’re the one always warning me not to jump to conclusions. You always say there has to be solid proof. And right now the only proof we have is the blood type.”

“Which proves nothing.”

“Maybe, baby. But what if you’re wrong? What if you’re screwing up your relationship with Dan and putting yourself in danger to save Willy when you should be trying to bust him instead? Gray’s murder was obviously a crime of passion. And Willy strikes me as both passionate and

meshuga. You might have to call your next mystery novel ‘The Killer in the Yellow Silk Kimono.’ ”

I smiled (finally). “That’s not a bad title,” I said, “but I doubt I’ll ever be using it. I think ‘A Killer Named Cupcake’ is the better choice.”

“Oh, really?” Abby said, arching one eyebrow to the roof. “Have you been holding out on me, Paige? Have you found out who the mysterious Cupcake is?”

“No, but she’s still a prime suspect. Most murderers turn out to be really close to their victims, and if she was Gray’s steady girlfriend as you say, then she was the closest. Her real name will come out eventually.”

“I’ll bet it’s Rhonda Blake,” Abby said, with a sniff. “That dame even

looks like a cupcake-all soft and buttery and slathered with poisonous vanilla frosting.”

“Yes, but remember how annoyed with Gray she was-how she threatened to turn him in to the director if he didn’t show up for the next show? A real girlfriend wouldn’t feel that way. Instead of reporting him, she’d try to protect him.”