Shoes To Die For

by Laura Levine

  And in a gratifying moment of poetic justice, I watched as Nina tripped on her stilettos and went sprawling onto the floor, just as Frenchie had done right before Nina stabbed her in the jugular.

  I grabbed the gun, and now it was Nina’s turn to lie on the floor, staring up into the barrel of a lethal weapon.

  “I’m sure the police will be very interested in our little chat,” I said.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Tell the cops. It’s your word against mine. You have no proof that I killed Frenchie.”

  “Oh, yes, she does.”

  We turned and saw Maxine standing in the doorway.

  “Hi, Jaine,” she said, with a shy smile. “I stayed late to work on the books.”

  Thank God for workaholics.

  “I heard everything,” she said.

  “Great,” I said. “Now please call the cops.”

  “I already did.”

  As if on cue, we heard the faint wail of a police siren.

  I looked down at Nina, whose eyes were blazing with fury.

  “Fat people may die young,” I said, “but people on death row die even younger.”

  Then I picked up one of her pasties, which had fallen off during our scuffle.

  “Better put this back on,” I said, tossing it to her. “You don’t want to catch cold.”

  Epilogue

  You’ll be happy to know that Becky came to her senses and broke up with Tyler. She quit her job at Passions and moved down to Hermosa Beach, where she’s now designing swimsuits for a local surf shop. They’re in wild Day-Glo colors with daisies sewn in strategic places. She calls them Beckinis.

  Needless to say, she’s sworn off roommates forever.

  What with all the publicity from Frenchie’s murder, Passions has practically become a tourist attraction. Grace is still defying the laws of gravity and looking amazingly young. Maxine is still doing the books and going home at night to Sparkles—and her new kitty, Sparkles, Jr. And Amanda Tucker is still running around with enough botox in her face to paralyze the population of Peru.

  (Not long ago, I bumped into Grace and Amanda at Amanda’s alma mater—the Chanel counter at Bloomingdale’s—and they finally confessed that they were indeed at Passions the night of the murder. Like Maxine, they went there to get the account books. And like Maxine, they panicked and ran at the sight of Frenchie with a Jimmy Choo in her neck.)

  Wonderful news about Kate Garrett, the UCLA writing instructor. She sold another novel. About a middle-aged woman who has an affair with her scheming, amoral writing student. Something tells me this one won’t wind up gathering dust in her garage.

  And speaking of scheming, amoral writing students, last I heard, Tyler was writing spec scripts and dating an agent at ICM.

  Believe it or not, Kandi’s still dating Anton, the performance artist. I guess you can never underestimate the allure of a guy with hot fudge sauce in his ears.

  As for me, I’m back in the land of T-shirts and elastic-waist pants. And wouldn’t have it any other way. Although I really must drop a few pounds. Which is why I’ve started a strict new diet. Absolutely no carbs, low fat, and high protein. Aren’t you proud of me?

  The guys at Tip Top Dry Cleaners fired their ad agency and came groveling back to me, begging me to take their account again. Okay, so I did the groveling, but at least they’re back, and I’m busy writing block-buster slogans like Free Pick-Up and Delivery, and We Specialize in Leather and Suede.

  And you’ll never guess who I heard from the other day. Darrell, the speed-dating yachtsman. He worked his way through his list of seventeen women and was ready to give me a chance. I fibbed a bit and told him I was dating someone else and moving to another state and had recently discovered I had latent lesbian tendencies. He seemed turned on by the lesbian stuff, so I managed to get off the phone by telling him I felt a seizure coming on.

  Oh, and I’ve got good news and bad news about my Prada suit. The good news is: The cleaners got out the wine stains. The bad news: They lost the buttons.

  Which is why I’ve got to get back to work and earn some money right now. And I will. Right after I feed Prozac and finish my donut.

  Okay, so I lied about the diet.

  Sometimes-sleuth Jaine Austen struggles to make ends—and zippers—meet while living on a freelance writer’s salary in Los Angeles. When she’s not hunting down the latest flavor of her favorite ice cream, she’s tracking down criminals on her own Walk of Infamy…

  On the frontlines of the battle of the bulge, otherwise known as trying on bathing suits in the communal dressing room at Loehmann’s, Jaine makes a new friend—a wanna-be actress named Pam—and gets a new job: sprucing up Pam’s bare-bones résumé. Their feeling of connection is mutual, so Pam invites Jaine to join The PMS Club—a women’s support group that meets once a week over guacamole and margaritas to commiserate about love and life.

  But joining the club proves to be more of a curse than a blessing for Jaine. Though she is warned that Rochelle, the hostess, makes a guacamole to die for, Jaine never takes the warning literally. Until another PMS member—Marybeth, a relentlessly perky interior decorator—drops dead over a mouthful of the green stuff after confessing she is having an affair with Rochelle’s husband. Turns out that someone knew about Marybeth’s nut allergy and added a fatal dose of peanut oil to the dip.

  While Rochelle and her husband are the obvious suspects, everyone at that night’s meeting is under suspicion, including Jaine, putting a new job opportunity at a conservative downtown bank in jeopardy. So, instead of dishing dirt with The PMS Club, Jaine has to dig up dirt on the surviving members—an alcoholic widow, a sassy sixty-something, a too-fabulous honorary male PMS-er, and Pam. As Jaine delves deeper, she tunes into some truly sinister vibes, and it soon becomes clear: someone in this club thinks getting away with murder should be a privilege of membership…

  Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek at The PMS Murder coming next month!

  Chapter 1

  What’s more painful than a mammogram? More excruciating than a bikini wax? More humiliating than spinach stuck to your front tooth?

  Shopping for a bathing suit, of course.

  There’s nothing worse. Not even a root canal. (Unless it’s a root canal in a bathing suit with spinach stuck to your front tooth.)

  That’s what I was doing the day I first became involved in what eventually became known as the PMS Murder: trying on a bathing suit. For some ridiculous reason I’d decided to take up water aerobics. Actually, for two ridiculous reasons: my thighs. Before my horrified eyes, they were rapidly turning into Ramada Inns for cellulite.

  So I figured I’d join a gym, and after a few weeks of sloshing around in the pool, I’d have the toned and silky thighs of my dreams. But before I could get toned and silky, there was just one tiny obstacle in my way: I needed to buy the aforementioned bathing suit.

  I knew it would be bad. The last time I’d gone bathing suit shopping, I came home and spent the night crying on the shoulders of my good buddy José Cuervo. But I never dreamed it would be this bad.

  For starters, I made the mistake of going to a discount clothing store called the Bargain Barn. My checkbook was going through a particularly anemic phase at the time, and I’d heard about what great prices this place had.

  What I hadn’t heard, however, was that there were no private dressing rooms at the Bargain Barn. That’s right. Everyone, I saw to my dismay, had to change in one ghastly mirror-lined communal dressing room, under the pitiless glare of fluorescent lights, where every cellulite bump looked like a crater in the Grand Canyon.

  It’s bad enough having to look at your body flaws in a private dressing room, but to have them exposed in a roomful of other women—I still shudder at the memory.

  Making matters worse was the fact that I was surrounded by skinny young things easing their wash-board tummies into size twos and fours. I once read that sixty percent of American women are a size twelve or larger. Those six
ty percent obviously didn’t shop at the Bargain Barn. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, this was L.A., the liposuction capital of the world, where it’s practically against the law to wear a size twelve or larger.

  I grabbed a handful of bathing suits, ignoring the bikinis and mini-thongs in favor of the more matronly models with built-in bras and enough industrial-strength spandex to rein in a herd of cattle.

  I jammed my body into one hideous swimsuit after another, wondering what had ever possessed me to come up with this insane water aerobics idea. I tried on striped suits and florals; tankinis and skirtinis; blousons and sarongs. No matter what the style, the end result was always the same: I looked like crap.

  One suit promised it would take inches of ugly flab from my waist. And indeed it did. Trouble was, it shoved that ugly flab right down to my hips, which had all the flab they needed, thank you very much.

  I’d just tried on the last of the bathing suits, a striped tankini that made me look like a pregnant convict, when suddenly I heard someone moaning in dismay.

  I looked over and saw a plump thirtysomething woman struggling into a pair of spandex bike shorts and matching halter top. At last. Someone with actual hips and thighs and tummy. One of the sixty percenters!

  She surveyed herself in the mirror and sighed, her cheeks flushed from the exertion of tugging on all that spandex.

  “My God,” she sighed. “I look like the Pillsbury Doughboy with cleavage.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “I look like the doughboy with cleavage, retaining water.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she countered. “I look like the doughboy with cleavage, retaining water on a bad hair day.”

  She ran her fingers through her blunt-cut hair and grimaced.

  “Would you believe this is a size large?” she said, tugging at the shorts. “Who is this large on? Barbie?”

  “Well, I’ve had it.” I wriggled out of the tankini and started to get dressed. “I’m outta here.”

  I’d long since given up my insane water aerobics idea. No. I’d take up something far less humiliating. Like walking. And the first place I intended to walk to was Ben & Jerry’s for a restorative dose of Chunky Monkey.

  “I’m going to drown my sorrows in ice cream.”

  “Great idea,” said my fellow sufferer. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Be my guest.”

  And so, ten minutes later, we were sitting across from each other at Ben & Jerry’s slurping Chunky Monkey ice cream cones.

  “I’m Pam, by the way,” my companion said, licking some ice cream from where it had dribbled onto her wrist. “Pam Kenton.”

  It was nice being with someone who ate with gusto. My best friend Kandi has the appetite of a gnat and usually shoots me disapproving looks when I order anything more fattening than a celery stick. I know it’s only because she cares about me and wants me to be one of the skinny forty percenters, but still, it can get pretty annoying.

  “Actually,” Pam said, “my last name isn’t really Kenton. It’s Koskovolis. Kenton is my stage name. I’m an actress. Of course, you know what that means in this town.”

  “Waitress?”

  “You got it,” she nodded. “And you?”

  “I’m a writer.”

  “Really?” Her eyes widened, impressed. People are always impressed when I tell them I’m a writer. “What do you write?”

  “Oh, industrial brochures. Résumés. Stuff like that.”

  Here’s where they usually stop being impressed. Most folks find résumés and industrial brochures a bit of a yawn.

  But Pam sat up, interested.

  “You write résumés? I sure could use some help with mine. I’m getting tired of waitressing. I want a job where I get to sit down for a while.”

  “I’d be happy to help you with your résumé,” I offered.

  A worry line marred her brow. “I couldn’t afford to pay you much.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about the money. I won’t charge you.”

  Inwardly, I kicked myself. What was wrong with me? Why was I always giving away my services? If I started charging people, maybe I wouldn’t have to shop at joints like the Bargain Barn. Oh, well. Pam seemed awfully nice, and it wasn’t as if I had a lot of assignments that she’d be interfering with. In fact, my work schedule was scarily light.

  “That’s so sweet of you,” Pam said. “How about I fix you dinner as payment?”

  “Sounds great. When do you want to get together?”

  “As soon as you can.”

  “How about tomorrow night?”

  “Oh, I can’t tomorrow,” she said. “That’s PMS night.”

  “PMS night?”

  “A group of friends get together once a week to bitch and moan over guacamole and margaritas. We call ourselves the PMS Club.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Hey, wait. I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t you come with me? We’re short on members right now and I think you’d be a great addition to the club. We could have dinner first at my place while we work on my résumé and then head over to the club afterward. What do you say?”

  “Are you sure the others won’t mind?”

  “No. They’re going to love you; I’m sure of it. And it’s really worthwhile. You get to share your innermost thoughts with like-minded women in a warm, supportive environment.

  “Plus,” she added, with a grin, “you get great guacamole and free margaritas.”

  “Sure,” I said, never one to pass up a free margarita. “Why not?”

  I was soon to find out exactly why not, but that’s a whole other story. Stick around, and I’ll tell it to you.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

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  New York, NY 10022

  Copyright © 2005 by Laura Levine

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  ISBN: 978-0-7582-6513-5