Peril in High Heels (High Heels Mysteries Book 11)

by Gemma Halliday

  "So anyone could have done it?" I asked.

  He nodded. "Especially if there was some anger behind it."

  "What else?" I asked, nibbling a fry.

  "As you already know, Dana's prints were the only ones found on the murder weapon."

  "Which means the killer must have worn gloves," I added.

  Ramirez nodded. "That's a possibility."

  "If the killer went to the prop trailer to get the sword, he could have easily picked up a pair of gloves at the wardrobe trailer next to it, too," Dana reasoned.

  "He or she," I added, thinking of the wife.

  "Again—all possible," Ramirez conceded. "Bartlett said the prop master couldn't remember if he locked everything up that night. Security had gotten a little lax out here."

  Understandable. Not many moose looking to steal props.

  "Is that all they have?" I asked.

  "More or less. No sign of forced entry on the trailer, so either Frost had left it unlocked or he let the killer in."

  "Meaning he knew him or her," I said.

  "But that means anyone from the production could have done it," Dana said.

  "Even his wife," I added.

  Ramirez shot me a look. "Or anyone else. The ME's report said the attack came from behind. There was no sign of a struggle."

  "So he let the killer in then turned his back, and…" I trailed off, suppressing a shudder as I imagined the scene.

  "But there was something else," Ramirez added, sipping from his beer glass. "Something left at the scene."

  "What?" I asked, leaning in.

  "Local forensic team is still working to identify it. It was a piece of metal. Small, silver, and curved." Ramirez pulled his phone out of his back pocket, opening up the camera app.

  "You mean like a piece of jewelry?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "I don't know. It didn't look particularly decorative."

  "And it was in Frost's trailer?" Dana asked.

  Ramirez nodded. "Actually, it was stuck in the cuff of Frost's pant leg. Looked like it was either transferred from something he came into contact with that day or from the perpetrator." Ramirez turned his phone screen so we could see it, showing us a picture of the piece in question. The photo had been taken through a plastic evidence bag, but we could clearly see a small, silver bit of metal that was curved to look like the letter C.

  I felt my pulse pick up. I'd seen metal like that before. That day, even. Hundreds of tiny curved links, woven together.

  On J.R. Ravensberg's chain mail muumuu.

  "I've seen this," I blurted out. I glanced up at Dana. "On J.R. Ravensberg. He owns a chain mail dress."

  "Dress?" Ramirez repeated.

  "Or tunic. Or whatever they call it. But the pieces of it look just like this."

  Ramirez paused while Brock came by with a fresh round of drinks. "When did you see this?"

  I felt the weight of Dana's worried gaze.

  "Uh…I saw him in town," I said. Which was the truth. Never mind that I'd seen him after that when he'd had a shotgun pointed at Dana and me. Details were unimportant. "Couldn't the police match J.R.'s tunic against what they found at the murder scene?"

  Ramirez nodded. "In theory. If we had the tunic."

  "Well, he's wearing it right now!" I paused. "Probably."

  But my husband shook his head. "It's not that easy. I can't just confiscate people's property because it looks like something else."

  "You can't?"

  "No. Neither can Bartlett. He'd need probable cause to get a warrant. Otherwise he'd have an illegal search and seizure."

  "It's probably the same thing that was found in the murdered man's cuff. That sounds like cause," Dana cut in.

  "You have a guess. Not evidence," he said.

  "The tunic is the evidence—" I started to protest.

  But I was cut off by Ramirez's ringing cell.

  He checked the readout. "I need to take this. Excuse me."

  When he'd stepped away from the table, Dana immediately grabbed my arm. "Maddie, we have to go back to J.R. Ravensberg's cabin and get a sample of that chain mail."

  I glanced at Ramirez, chatting into his phone beneath a giant moose head. "I don't think that's a good idea. Remember Ravensberg's shotgun? There's no telling what he'd do if we come back."

  "There's no telling what Bartlett will do if we don't!" she pleaded. "You saw him today. He was just itching to arrest me."

  I bit my lip, eyes going to my husband again. "Ramirez won't let that happen."

  "Ramirez has no jurisdiction here. He's at Bartlett's mercy as much as I am." She pulled her best puppy dog eyes on me.

  I shook my head. "No. No way. I'm not falling for that pathetic look again."

  "Please! You heard Ramirez," she argued. "There's all sorts of red tape they'd have to go through to get a warrant. And J.R. isn't even on Bartlett's radar! Unless the police think it will convict me, they're not going through all that trouble."

  I wasn't sure that was 100% accurate. But I knew it wasn't 100% off the mark either. And the more time that went by, the less chances of tying the chain mail to J.R. at all. I pursed my lips, glancing toward my husband again.

  "Ramirez would kill me."

  "He doesn't have to know. At least not until we have a sample of the chain mail."

  "And then what?" I whispered.

  "Then…we say we found it. Outside his place. Or in his trash! Isn't that, like, public property or something?"

  It was something. "I don't know…"

  Dana clasped her hands together in a pleading motion and leaned them on the table. "Please, Maddie. I'd do it for you."

  I sighed. I knew she would. Which is why, against all my better judgment, I heard myself saying, "Okay. Fine. We'll go back to the cabin."

  She perked up immediately, doing a little happy dance in her chair.

  "But." I held up a finger to tamp down her excitement. "We can't say a word to Ramirez about this."

  "Agreed." She beamed at me. "Thanks so much, Mads."

  "Thanks for what?" Ramirez asked as he sat down.

  "I agreed to run lines with Dana tomorrow," I said quickly, mentally crossing my fingers behind my back.

  "Oh." He popped a fry into his mouth. "Okay."

  I let out a sigh, feeling dread grow at the excitement suddenly in my best friend's eyes.

  And the suspicion in my husband's.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It took the evening news and half of Jimmy Fallon before Ramirez finally drifted off to sleep. I stayed in bed for another ten minutes, listening to his breathing deepen, wishing I could snuggle into the warm curve of his body for the night. Finally, I slid the remote from under his fingers, shut off the TV, and slipped out of bed. After swapping out my pajamas for jeans and a hoodie, I quietly let myself out of the room, hoping that jet lag would keep Ramirez sleeping deeply.

  Dana was dressed and waiting for me in the corridor outside. Together, we hurried through the dark lobby to the parking lot, which was full, the cars gleaming under the moonlight.

  "I feel like a teenager sneaking out of the house," she said when we were on the road, headed back to Crossbow Trail.

  "This won't be nearly as much fun," I warned her. "Seriously, we have to be careful. Ravensberg is off his rocker."

  "He won't even know we were there," she said. "We'll get the evidence and get out while he's snoring peacefully."

  I only wished I shared her confidence. Instead, I couldn't shake the feeling we were making a huge mistake.

  The drive went faster than I would have liked, since I wasn't too eager to reach our destination. I wouldn't have minded a moose convention in the middle of the road, but for once, there wasn't anything moose in sight. The woods seemed darker and more desolate than before as we pulled up to the dirt roadblock at the end of Crossbow Trail and parked.

  "Watch your step," I whispered as we got out. "You can't run for your life with a sprained ankle."

  "We won't have
to run for our lives," Dana said. "This is going to go smoothly. You'll see."

  Her mood had improved enormously, now that she was being proactive on her own behalf, but I still didn't share her enthusiasm about our mission. I could see fifty ways things could go wrong, starting and ending with Ravensberg's shotgun. What if he was a night owl who worked until the morning hours? Worse, what if he was an insomniac who'd decided to take a stroll with his shotgun for company?

  Only as we approached, the cabin was completely dark. Off in the distance, a bird squawked once and fell silent. The moon fled behind a cloud, as if reluctant to witness our bad judgment.

  "Think the door is locked?" Dana whispered as we slowly made our way up the rickety porch.

  "I can't imagine why," I whispered back. "Unless he's worried about being robbed by elk."

  She shook her head. "Not likely. You and I both know it's not elk season."

  "Ha. Ha. Very funny."

  She grinned as she pulled a tissue from her pocket and used it to turn the knob. As I'd expected—and feared—the door swung open easily. On squeaky hinges that sounded like a scream in the dead quiet. We froze in the doorway, listening, waiting, hoping, praying. When there was no reaction, I let out a shaky breath.

  "Well, now we know he's not an insomniac," I whispered. Unless he was out of bed and waiting around the corner to pounce.

  No, I couldn't go there. He didn't seem like the cunning type. He seemed like the type that would chase us bare naked back to Moose Haven if he'd heard us.

  Dana tiptoed inside. With no streetlight, nightlight, or moonlight, she disappeared into the darkness in seconds. I took a deep breath and followed her, guiding my path with outstretched hands. Ordinarily I'd have been worried about inadvertently walking into fine china or delicate crystal or pricey art, but I knew from our prior peek in his windows that Ravensberg's interior decorator was a taxidermist. It was more likely I'd cut my hand on a deer antler than on a shard of Lalique.

  "Where would you keep chain mail?" Her whispered question was just a few feet in front of me. Disturbing that she could be so close and I couldn't see her.

  "Is that a trick question?" I asked.

  "I hope it's not in the bedroom," she said. "I really don't want to go into the bedroom."

  I really didn't want that, either. "If he sleeps in it, I'm outta here." I paused. "Maybe it's in the bathroom."

  "Wouldn't it rust if you washed it?"

  "Okay, the kitchen, then."

  "You think he cooks in it?"

  "Dana," I said, "just find the chain mail, okay? I'll stand lookout." Figure of speech, since I couldn't even see my own nose. But the operative word being stand. I really wasn't comfortable with both of us tiptoeing around the cabin like thieves. It doubled the chances of one of us knocking into something and waking Ravensberg. Or knocking into Ravensberg himself.

  "Wait, I feel something," she whispered urgently.

  "Grab it and let's get out of here," I said.

  A moment later, she said, "Never mind. It's only a wristwatch. Feels like a Rolex."

  I blinked into the darkness. "How can it feel like a Rolex?"

  "Trust me," she said.

  Whatever. "Just keep going."

  A minute later, she said, "Wait, I feel something."

  "Does it feel like a Movado?"

  I imagined her nose wrinkling at me. "Never mind. It's just a fork. Eww, I think it's dirty!"

  "Dana," I whispered savagely, "we're looking for chain mail, remember?"

  "Don't blame me," she whispered back. "I don't have any owl DNA. It's kind of hard to see in the dark. I swear, this guy is—oops."

  Oops? Oops couldn't be good. Oops was never good.

  "I found it," she whispered a second later.

  "Get a sample, quick," I said. "I don't want to be here for breakfast."

  I heard her extracting the pair of wire clippers from her pocket that she'd picked up at the Moose Mart while I'd been waiting on Ramirez to fall asleep. "We just need a small piece," she said, more to herself than me. I heard a couple of snips followed by some hurried footsteps, and then Dana plowed right into me.

  Caught by surprise, I stumbled backward, grabbing for something to keep us upright, and failing. We went down hard in a tangle of arms and legs.

  "What the…?"

  We froze, Dana's knee in my ear and her elbow in my stomach. "Did your voice just change?" she whispered.

  "That wasn't me," I whispered back.

  "He's awake?"

  "Either that or the moose head's talking."

  "We have to get out of here!" She dug her elbows in for traction.

  I bit my lip to keep from letting out a groan. "Stop," I whispered. I grabbed her arm. "If we open the front door now, he'll know we're here. Maybe he'll think he just dreamed the noise."

  "Maybe he'll come out here to be sure," she shot back.

  I groped along the floor until my fingers brushed up against the sofa leg. "Behind the sofa," I whispered.

  We wedged ourselves between the sofa and the wall just as the sound of a door opening cut through the quiet.

  "Who's out here?" Ravensberg growled. "Show yourself!"

  Not in a hundred lifetimes. We didn't move a limb. We barely breathed. The floorboards creaked as he made his way first closer to us, then farther away, covering the cabin methodically. If he decided to start moving the furniture, we didn't stand a chance.

  When his footsteps had receded into the back of the cabin—kitchen, bathroom, it hardly mattered—I whispered in Dana's ear. "We have to make a run for it."

  "What if he hears the door?"

  "Make sure he doesn't."

  "But the hinges!"

  The hinges. I'd forgotten about the squeaking hinges. I glanced up, spying a window just to our right.

  "The window, then," I whispered.

  "Are you sure? That sounds awfully dangerous."

  "More dangerous than this?"

  I didn't wait for an answer. I backed out of our hiding spot and crawled to the window. Dana was so close behind, we were nearly piggyback. When my nose hit the wall, I stood up and reached for the window, hoping that it wasn't warped or stuck. Holding my breath, I hoisted it open. Nearly faint with relief that it slid quietly and smoothly, I shoved my legs through and landed with a thud on the ground. Then I spun around and grabbed Dana's hands, pulling her over the sill until we landed in a tangle in the pine needles below.

  "Who is out there? I hear you!" Ravensberg's voice bellowed.

  "Go!" I whispered, pushing her ahead of me.

  She went, stumbling once before getting her feet under her and racing toward the edge of the clearing. I was a step behind her, blood pumping in my ears as I heard the unmistakable squeak of the front door hinges and the slam of a wood door hitting against the cabin wall.

  Followed by the crack of a shotgun ripping through the air.

  Instinctively I ducked, stumbling on a branch. My heart lodged so firmly in my throat I could almost taste it.

  "You better run!" Ravensberg shouted.

  Another gunshot tore through the night air, sounding incongruously like amplified pop rocks but without the sense of fun. We ducked and ran, not breaking stride until we reached the car.

  We both practically launched ourselves inside, Dana barely getting her door closed before she had the engine on and tires spinning, fishtailing down Crossbow Trail. It wasn't until we hit pavement again than I dared to breathe.

  "We are not telling Ramirez about this," I said. "Ever."

  "Goes without saying." She gripped the wheel hard.

  Our breathing had just about returned to normal by the time we parked again in the Big Moose's lot and crept down the hall to our rooms. When we'd reached Dana's door, she turned and held out her hand. "You'd better hold on to this." She dropped the few little Cs of chain mail she'd snipped off into my palm. "I don't want the police to find them in my room if they come with a search warrant."

  I didn't bothe
r to argue. I took the tiny bits of metal and shoved them into my pocket. "Get some sleep." I gave her a hug and slipped back into my own room. Quickly, I wriggled out of the street clothes and into my jammies and climbed back into bed beside my sleeping husband.

  He stirred but didn't wake.

  I thanked goodness for small favors, and I closed my eyes, willing the adrenaline to ebb and let sleep take over.

  * * *

  "Hey, babe."

  I cracked one eye open to the vicious onslaught of daylight and immediately closed it again. "What time is it?" I murmured.

  "Six forty-five."

  "Wake me up in another hour." Gathering the covers up to my chin, I rolled onto my side.

  Ramirez bent to kiss my cheek. "I'll leave a wake-up call for you at the front desk. I'm heading out."

  "Out where?" I mumbled.

  "I'm going to meet Bartlett."

  That woke me up. I sat up, smoothing my hair back. "So early? What's going on?"

  "There were reports of shots fired in the woods last night out near Crossbow Trail, wherever that is."

  Oh boy. "Oh?" I asked, hearing my voice go up a notch.

  Luckily, Ramirez either didn't notice or chalked it up to my usual morning pleasantness. "Yeah, he said it might just be a bunch of teenagers shooting at cans, but he agreed to let me tag along in case it's related to the Frost case."

  My eyes flicked to the jeans puddled on the chair, the chain mail sample safe in the pocket. "Yep. Probably teenagers." I could feel guilt written all over my face.

  He cocked his head, assessing. "You feel okay?"

  "Yep. I'm fine." I smiled up at him, hoping it looked more convincing than it felt. "Be careful out there, okay?"

  "I will." He gave me a kiss. "Going back to sleep?"

  I nodded. "For a little while. Then I'll head over to the set."

  "To go over Dana's lines with her?"

  That caught me mid-yawn. "Huh?"

  He brushed some stray hairs off my face. "Aren't you supposed to help Dana with her lines today?"

  "Oh. Yeah. Yep. That's what I'll be doing today!" I could practically hear the telltale chain mail thumping from across the room.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, I groaned out loud. I hated lying to Ramirez.