Deadly in High Heels

by Gemma Halliday

  I stifled a laugh. There was nothing subtle about Marco, especially when it came to fashion.

  "—struck a nerve with her. I mean, I doubt she'll be rejoining the pageant circuit any time soon, but we did end up doing a little shopping tour together and picked out some uber cute stuff."

  "So she was your 'project?'" I grinned at him, realizing now that Don hadn't been absent due to guilt but a change of heart. Or, change of clothes, as the case may be.

  He nodded. "She's still got that unibrow thing going on, though. We've gotta do something about that today." He shrugged. "Anyway, she decided that there was nothing wrong with a happy medium where femininity is concerned. I'm kind of proud of her, actually. She's like a new woman. Or she will be, when I'm through with her."

  "Good luck with that," I told him.

  "I don't need luck, dahling," he said. "Underneath that corduroy and polyester, there's a diamond waiting to be polished. I've seen the proof."

  He had a point there. I just hoped he had the patience.

  "I like this game," Mom piped up. "Guess what Dorothy and I are doing this afternoon?"

  "They'll never guess," Mrs. Rosenblatt said. "You'll never guess," she told us.

  "Cleansing someone's juju?" I asked, trying not to be snarky about it. Especially since I could taste my food again.

  "Oh, no, dear." Mom did a little dismissive wave. "We're clear in that department now. This is much better. We're taking a private surfing lesson with Dirk from the Lost Aloha Shack!"

  Mrs. Rosenblatt nodded. "He's cleared his whole afternoon to work with us."

  "He's going to teach us how to wax our boards and everything," Mom added.

  This time Ramirez was the one to drop his fork. He looked up in alarm. "Don't they wear wetsuits to surf?"

  Marco did a wolf whistle. "You go, girls!"

  "That's why our lesson is this afternoon," Mom said. "He said he'd need some time this morning to scare up the right sizes for us. Can you imagine how darling we're going to look in wetsuits?"

  I didn't want to imagine. I didn't even want to think about Mrs. Rosenblatt in a skintight wetsuit. But I knew darling wasn't the way I'd describe it. Poor Surfer Dirk didn't know what he was getting himself into.

  "This year, our first lesson," Mom said. "Next year, we hang ten at the Pipeline!"

  "Well, I don't have that kind of energy," Dana said. "This experience has been exhausting. I plan to park it on the beach all afternoon and work on my tan. Without judging a soul." She pushed aside her bowl of brown rice and raisins. "I'm done with the pageant world for good. I'm sticking to kinder, gentler Hollywood, where all the violence is make-believe."

  Mom looked over at me, blotting her lips with her napkin. "What about you, dear? What are your plans for the afternoon?"

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ramirez glance my way with a hopeful expression. "I don't want to sound like a wet blanket," I said, "but I need to catch up on some rest after the past few days. I haven't been sleeping too well."

  "It's the snoring, isn't it?" Mrs. Rosenblatt said.

  "Of course it's the snoring," Mom told her. "You sound like a road grader when you sleep."

  Mrs. Rosenblatt's mouth twisted. "Well, I bought those breathing strips."

  "Yes, you did, and I haven't seen you use them since the first night you bought them," Mom said. "They've been sitting on the bathroom counter. The bathroom counter doesn't snore, Dorothy."

  Mrs. R harrumphed but let it go.

  "After that," I cut in, "I thought I might as well start packing. It's going to take me awhile."

  "I know just what you mean," Marco said. "I don't know how I'm going to fit my grass skirt into my suitcase."

  Ramirez raised an eyebrow at him.

  "Well, I'm not leaving mine here," Marco said, defensive. "You never know when a grass skirt might come in handy."

  "I was just thinking that last night," Ramirez said

  Marco's face lit up. "See? I knew there was hope for you!"

  *

  The knock on my door came almost as soon as I got back to the room.

  I opened it and grinned.

  "Alone at last," Ramirez said. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him and slipping the chain. When he turned around, his eyes were dark and liquid, slowly going over me in a way that made me shiver. In a good way. A really good way.

  "What took you so long?" I asked him. "I've been back here for two minutes already."

  He grinned. "Had to listen to some fashion tips from Marco. He thinks I've turned over a new leaf."

  I looked him over. Faded jeans, pale blue tee, and general air of studliness. I thought the old leaf was just fine. "You don't need fashion tips," I told him. "You just need to be wearing less fashion." I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively.

  He kicked off his shoes and stripped the T-shirt over his head, leaving his hair in a very sexy tousle. The panther tattoo on his bicep flexed and stretched as he moved. His jeans were slung low, riding below the curve of his hipbone.

  I admired the chiseled planes of his chest and abs. I think my mouth was starting to water. "But I have to pack. My plane leaves in…" I trailed off as he took a step closer.

  "Five hours. The drive to the airport only takes thirty minutes, security and checkin an hour. I can help you pack in twenty." He leaned in, nuzzling his lips against my neck.

  "Which leaves?" I was having a hard time keeping up with the math through my sudden hormone haze.

  "Three hours," he said, kissing a trail down my neck. "Without work, kids, moms, pageant contestants, or murderers. Just you, me, and a big, empty bed."

  Now that sounded like paradise.

  *

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gemma Halliday is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the High Heels Mysteries, the Hollywood Headlines Mysteries, the Jamie Bond Mysteries, the Tahoe Tessie Mysteries, as well as several other works. Gemma's books have received numerous awards, including a Golden Heart, two National Reader's Choice awards, and three RITA nominations. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her boyfriend, Jackson Stein, who writes vampire thrillers, and their three children, who are adorably distracting on a daily basis.

  To learn more about Gemma, visit her online at http://www.gemmahalliday.com

  Connect with Gemma on Facebook at:

  http://www.facebook.com/gemmahallidayauthor

  *

  BOOKS BY GEMMA HALLIDAY

  High Heels Mysteries:

  Spying in High Heels

  Killer in High Heels

  Undercover in High Heels

  Christmas in High Heels (short story)

  Alibi in High Heels

  Mayhem in High Heels

  Honeymoon in High Heels (novella)

  Sweetheart in High Heels (short story)

  Fearless in High Heels

  Danger in High Heels

  Homicide in High Heels

  Deadly in High Heels

  Hollywood Headlines Mysteries:

  Hollywood Scandals

  Hollywood Secrets

  Hollywood Confessions

  Twelve’s Drummer Dying

  Jamie Bond Mysteries:

  Unbreakable Bond

  Secret Bond

  Lethal Bond

  Bond Bombshell (short story)

  Tahoe Tessie Mysteries:

  Luck Be A Lady

  Hey Big Spender

  Baby It's Cold Outside (short story)

  Young Adult Books:

  Deadly Cool

  Social Suicide

  Wicked Games (coming soon!)

  Other Works:

  Play Nice

  Viva Las Vegas

  A High Heels Haunting (novella)

  Watching You (short story)

 
; Confessions of a Bombshell Bandit (short story)

  *

  SNEAK PEEK

  of the first Jamie Bond Mystery

  by Gemma Halliday & Jennifer Fischetto:

  UNBREAKABLE BOND

  CHAPTER ONE

  "Pick one."

  Two eight-by-ten glossy photos dropped onto my desk.

  I looked up. "Excuse me?"

  Paul Levine, my weedy looking attorney, sighed, then sank into the imitation leather chair opposite my desk. "You've been running in the red for the last three months. You've got a balloon payment on the business loan coming up, and this month you pulled in fifty percent less revenue than last. Unless you want to drown in your own debt, you need to fire someone." He gestured again to the two photos. "Pick one."

  I glanced down at the two pictures. A leggy brunette and an all-American-girl blonde. I shoved them back across the desk.

  "No way."

  Levine did another deep, theatrical sigh. "I had a feeling you'd say that."

  "Look, business is just a little slow."

  "It's a tortoise, Jamie."

  "It's been the off season."

  "There's an 'on' season for infidelity?" he asked, doing air quotes with his fingers.

  "We'll take out some ads."

  "Which cost money. Something, my dear, that you don't have."

  I narrowed my eyes at him. "I'll think of something."

  Levine leaned forward, the overhead lights shining unattractively off his bald spot. "Let's face it, people just aren't getting divorced these days. With the economy the way it is, women would rather turn a blind eye to their husbands' indiscretions than try to exist on half his income. It's cheaper to stay together and pretend to be happy."

  "No one can pretend for that long."

  "Pick. One," Levine enunciated.

  I looked down at the two photos, which incidentally consisted of 50% percent of the Bond Agency. The problem wasn't that I'd over hired. The problem was I knew jack shit about running a business.

  Men. That's what I knew.

  When I was seven years old Chad Fischer's Mom packed him a Snickers bar in his lunch. And not those fun size suckers. This was a king-sized log of nougat, caramel, and sugar induced highs that would last well past the end of afternoon cartoons. I wanted it. Every kid in second grade wanted it. But I tossed my blonde hair over one shoulder, batted my baby blues at Chad, and promised that he could stand underneath me while my little pink skirt and I did flips on the monkey bars at recess. I got the Snickers. That was my first lesson in how easy men were.

  Fast forward a few years, and my fifteen-year-old self was hanging out at the Northridge mall slurping a Jamba Juice when I'd been spotted by Maurcess DeLine, owner of the world renowned DeLine Models. Suddenly I wasn't just working the boys at my school; I was working every guy that bought a magazine with my body on the cover. And getting paid handsomely to do it. I'd been DeLine's top model for over a decade when Maurcess had started to drop hints that my fresh innocence act wasn't cutting it anymore. I was twenty-six. A dinosaur in runway years.

  That's when I moved back to L.A. and decided to take over the family business.

  Domestic espionage.

  Really, there was very little difference between making love to a camera and making a married man forget his vows. In fact, this was sometimes even easier. Men with adultery already on their minds were simple targets. It was like taking Snickers from a second grader all over again.

  Unfortunately, getting their wives to pay was a whole other matter.

  I glanced at the two photos staring up at me. Truth was, I needed both of these women.

  "Cutting back on personnel only means I can handle fewer cases. I don't see how that's going to help me expand the business," I argued.

  "We're not talking expansion here, Jamie. We're talking staying afloat. We're talking not filing for bankruptcy."

  "I've got a big client tonight. Judge Thomas Waterston. Superior court. If things go well, I guarantee his wife will have her entire bridge club in here by the end of the week."

  "Well, you'd better hope that's true," Levine said, rising. "Because your balloon payment is due on the 1st. You've got two weeks, then…" He tapped the photos. "One of them's got to go."

  *

  "Caleigh?"

  "What?" She swiveled in her desk chair, turning her wide eyes my way.

  "You're on the Peters case. Care to give us an update?" I tapped open the schedule app on my phone and leaned an elbow across the conference table.

  She cleared her throat and shuffled the notes in her lap. Caleigh Presley hailed from the south, claiming she was some distant cousin of Elvis's. Blonde, blue-eyed and bubbly, she'd cornered the market on perky. I'd met Caleigh while doing a Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot in Cancun. She'd smuggled a bag of fat free Cheetos onto the set, and we'd bonded instantly. Three years later Caleigh foolishly agreed to go out on a date with Nigel Owens, the top fashion photographer in London. I say foolishly because everyone but Caleigh knew about his particular fetish for bondage and tickling. When Caleigh refused to be molested by his feather duster, Nigel had refused to work with her, calling her "difficult". News that quickly spread to other photographers, her agent, and every high profile account in the fashion world. They'd dropped her like a skydiver without a parachute. Luckily for her, that had been just about the time I'd taken over the Bond Agency, and I'd hired her on the spot.

  Not, mind you, that I'd hired her out of any sort of pity. Despite her innocent-little-thing looks, Caleigh spoke five different languages and had the computer know-how to hack into the pentagon. Dumb blonde she was not.

  "Right. Peters." Caleigh cleared her throat again. "Well, so far I've followed him to the Venice Boardwalk, Element, and out to dinner twice at Formaggio's."

  "And?"

  She shook her head. "Nothin'. I'm beginning to wonder if his wife isn't paranoid. So far the guy's a straight arrow. Both the dinners were business meetings, and he didn't so much as glance at a bikini on the boardwalk."

  I picked up my coffee cup and swished the dregs around in the bottom, trying to remember if Mrs. Peters had seemed the paranoid type when she'd come in last week. Or, more importantly, the type who would balk at the amount of billable hours we'd spent with nothing to show for it. "What about the club? Element?"

  Again, Caleigh shook her head. "Sorry, boss. He ducked in for a drink with a buddy, danced a little, then ducked back out. No funny business."

  "Fine. If we don't have anything by Monday, we'll call it off. But take Sam with you this weekend," I said, gesturing to the woman sitting next to her, "and tag-team him. Every man has a breaking point."

  Caleigh nodded and made a note on the yellow pad in her lap.

  I turned to Sam. "Where are we with the Nortons?"

  Samantha Cross had come to me from Brooklyn last year. Long legs, perfect mocha latte skin, and thick dark curls, Sam had been a finalist on the first season of the reality show America's New Hot Model and quickly become the darling of the cover girl world. Until five years later when her boyfriend, Julio, had knocked her up. As if taking a nine month hiatus from modeling hadn't been enough to kill her fledgling career, it turned out Sam wasn't one of those lucky ladies whose bodies miraculously snap back after pregnancy. While she was still a knockout among normal people, the two ounces of fat hanging around her lightly stretch-marked belly put a decisive end to her bikini days. So, Sam had packed up the munchkin (Julio was long gone at that point) and headed out to California to make a career change. One I was happy to facilitate. Sam had legs long enough to make husbands forget their vows and, thanks to her military-brat upbringing, knew more about guns than the NRA. And her aim was flawless. Sam could shoot the balls off a fruit fly at fifty yards.

  "Mrs. Norton's lawyer," Sam said, "has requested all of our notes."

  "Which we will gladly copy for him. Mrs. Norton has gone through three husbands with the agency. What Mrs. Norton wants, we give."

 
"Of course." Sam nodded. "I think Mr. Norton's lawyers are close to a settlement." Her brown eyes lit up, and she leaned in close. "They offered a 60/40 split plus the house in Aspen."

  "Good for her." She deserved it. Especially after her husband had offered to pay Sam fifty dollars for a blow job in the back of his Jag. Sam had been so insulted that he'd offered less than a hundred, she'd actually hauled off and punched him. I made a note in my organizer to edit that part out before handing the footage over to Mrs. Norton's lawyers.

  "Okay, so get the Norton files to her lawyer, then work Mr. Peters with Caleigh."

  Sam nodded. "Will do."

  "So… new cases this week?" I asked, turning to the woman on my left.

  Maya Alexander handled all of the admin for the agency, including scheduling appointments with prospective clients. And if her face looked a little familiar, it was because she was March's Playmate of the month. Lucky for me, not many men recognized her with her clothes on.

  "Uh-huh. Two possible new cases. Mrs. Shankmann, who claims her husband, and I quote, 'shtupped the freakin' au pair,' and a Rachel Blake who wants us to test her fiancée before the wedding."

  Caleigh raised her hand and bounced in her seat. "Oh, me, me. I love doing bachelor parties."

  "Done." I noted it down. "I'll take Mr. Shankmann if we get the account. Right. On to tonight. Judge Waterston."

  All three girls leaned forward in their seats.

  "We all know how high profile, i.e. high dollar, this account is."

  Three heads nodded.

  "So, this needs to go off flawlessly. Mrs. Waterston is a big name. She has big friends, who all have big cash on the line should they decide they need our services to bust their prenups."

  "We're hitting him at the party?" Sam asked, checking her notes.

  "Black tie benefit at the Beverley Hilton. So, I want everyone to look sharp, okay?"