“You poor thing. This just isn’t our day, is it? You’ll never guess what happened to me this morning. We found out that the actor who plays Ernie the Earwig fell out of his son’s bunk bed while having sex with the babysitter. Anyhow, he broke one of his vertebrae and he’s going to be in traction for the next month and now we’ve got to write him out of the next ten scripts. I’ll be here till midnight for sure. And today’s the day Steve and I were supposed to meet with Armando and choose a band for the wedding. Oh, well. They’ll just have to choose one without me.” She finally paused to take a breath. “But I can’t believe I’m rambling on about my petty problems when you’re in such a fix.”

Frankly, neither could I.

“Jaine, honey. If you need an attorney, don’t you worry. I’ll pay for it. And if you want to stay at my apartment, you come right over. I’ll hold your hand and make you hot cocoa with marshmallows, just the way you like it.”

See? Just when you think Kandi is the most self-centered woman in the universe, she turns around and offers you her heart and her marshmallows. That’s why we’ve been best friends all these years.

“Thanks, Kandi,” I said with false bravado. “But I’ll be okay.”

The minute I hung up, the phone rang again.

What if, this time, it was my parents? What if the wire services picked up the story and they’d heard about the murder?

Gingerly I picked up the receiver.

But it wasn’t my parents. It was worse. Much worse. It was Andrew Ferguson.

“I just saw the paper,” he said solemnly.

My heart sank; I knew what was coming next.

“Sam and I talked it over, and I’m afraid that as long as your name is connected with a murder, we can’t hire you.”

“I understand,” I managed to say.

“I’m really sorry, Jaine.”

That made two of us.

I hung up and slumped down onto the sofa. From her perch on top of my computer keyboard Prozac saw how miserable I was and came rushing to my side. (Okay, so she didn’t technically come rushing to my side. Technically, she went right on licking her privates, but I could tell she was worried about me.)

“Oh, Prozac,” I moaned, “this is awful.”

Not only had I lost the job, but Andrew Ferguson had seen my driver’s license photo. That, on top of the Pantyhose-on-the-Desk Affair and the Stuffing-My-Face-with-Burrito Episode—it was all too horrible to contemplate.