Killer Heels

by Sheryl J. Anderson

  The door was barely closed behind her when Helen asked me, “So what do you really think happened to my Teddy?”

  The question threw me and so did the cool, clipped way she asked it. There was something in her tone that I couldn’t quite place, but it made me uncomfortable. Still, I’d never been with someone who was going through what Helen was going through, so I figured I needed to let it go and answer the question. But how honestly did I want to answer it? “I’m not sure,” I told us both.

  “Whoever did it should burn in hell.” She said it with that same tone and the unsettled feeling spread through my stomach. I semi-nodded and she gave me this tight little smile. The unsettled feeling turned to an ice cube and I thought—she knows something.

  I actually wished, for the briefest moment, that Yvonne were still there. I had this odd sense of dislocation and I needed to orient myself to a third party to get steady again. I started to change the subject, for my own comfort, and then realized that if I was serious about solving this crime, I couldn’t flinch at the first queasy moment. But I couldn’t suddenly go all Phillip Marlowe on her either. Maybe I could ease into it and start with the classic table-turning that keeps a discussion with a boyfriend so entertaining. “What do you think happened, Helen?”

  Her jaw locked and her expression cooled appreciably. I forced myself to meet her gaze and to not apologize, which I readily do in most awkward social situations, occasionally even when I know it’s not my fault but I want the moment to pass. If she was offended, she was going to have to explain why. “I think my life is over,” she finally answered, just a few degrees warmer.

  Dear Molly, how do I keep going when the most important thing in my life has vanished? I get this question, in various permutations, way more often than I should when you figure most of my readers are in their twenties and should be able to take a few more kicks in the teeth from life before needing dentures.

  “No, it’s not,” I said gently. “It’s going to be hard, but you can do this.”

  “The question is, do I want to?” Her tone didn’t get any warmer, but she started to tear up. I couldn’t quite tell if they were tears of sorrow or anger, even when she continued, “I can’t tell you what it feels like to be in this place and so full of regret.”

  “Regret about what?”

  She looked at me really hard for a really long moment as she weighed some pros and cons. I’m pretty sure she was going to tell me, but the phone rang and made us both jump. I started to answer it for her, but she grabbed it, as eager to end our conversation as she was to start another one. It was Teddy’s brother Charlie in Minneapolis. Helen began to bravely recite the facts as she knew them and I backed off.

  I slipped into the kitchen, seeking a glass of water. What I really wanted to do was see what kind of ice cream Helen kept in the freezer or, better yet, what kind of wine Teddy kept in the fridge, but my good breeding prevented me from being a total pig. You wait for the wake to stuff your face. I did open the fridge in the hopes of finding cold bottled water and found myself staring at carryout containers from Costa del Sol. So she really had ordered in. That much of her alibi stood up.

  The word “alibi” trailed a little flush of guilt in its wake. On a visceral level, I knew Helen had nothing to do with this, yet, here I was, sneaking a peek inside the bag. Had she ordered for one or for two? The crinkling of the plastic bag sounded like a tarp flapping in the wind as I listened with one ear to make sure Helen was still on the phone. Inside, there were two foil carryout dishes. I pried up the cardboard cover of the top one: it held a few beef medallions in Madeira and some stray slices of vegetables. Leftovers. I eased the dish up to inspect the one underneath, holding my breath as Helen seemed to stay silent too long, then breathing again as she sobbed anew into the phone.

  The second dish was full. Paella, beautifully presented given that it was for takeout. Now, a woman who can’t finish one entreée isn’t going to order two. And you don’t order something with shellfish in it a day ahead unless you like flirting with intestinal distress. Helen had ordered it for Teddy in the hopes that he’d be home early enough to eat it. She’d thought he was coming home. Whatever the regret was, she hadn’t given up completely. She knew something, but she hadn’t killed him.

  Yvonne returned while Helen was finishing up with Charlie and then Candy arrived. I knew I was not going to get Helen back to confessional mode with her sister around. Candy has four kids under the age of nine, one of those expansive women who always smells of cookie dough and carries safety pins in her purse and mothers everybody. That’s probably what Helen needed most right now, so it was a perfect time for Yvonne and me to get ourselves home.

  Helen made me promise to meet her at the police station at ten to help her through the identification and all that stuff. Candy didn’t leap in and tell me that it wasn’t necessary, that she would take over from here, so I confirmed I’d meet the two of them at the station. Yvonne waited a moment to see if Helen would ask her to be there, too, but Helen hugged us both and thanked us for helping her through the worst night of her life. It actually choked me up, but it seemed to tick Yvonne off. She left her shopping bag with goodies on the coffee table and practically marched me to the elevator.

  “So. What did she say? While I was gone?” Yvonne asked as we waited for a cab. The sun was uncomfortably bright and I was craving a toothbrush and a cup of coffee, so I was inclined to be snippy. Then I realized she wasn’t being ghoulish, she was being worried. Good Lord. Did she know something, too? Here I was, vowing that I was going to solve this crime and I was apparently the only one I had talked to all night with no clue as to what might have happened.

  I felt no compunction about being blunt with Yvonne. “Why, Yvonne? What do you know?”

  “Oh. My. God. Like I could know a thing.” She refused to look at me, keeping her eyes a little too wide and a little too intent on the stream of traffic.

  “Save the coys for the boys, Yvonne. This is serious.” She waggled her fingers at a taxi and it pulled over. She headed for it and I grabbed her arm, which she didn’t appreciate. “You and Teddy go back a long way, right? Don’t you want to make sure this gets solved, for his sake?”

  Yvonne gave me a look of such malevolence that her mascara should have vaporized from the heat. “What does it matter? He’s gone. Nothing can change that.”

  “It’ll matter to Helen.”

  “I owe that bitch?”

  I was so startled that her arm was out of my grasp and her butt was in the taxi before I took another breath. I started to scramble into the taxi beside her, but she stopped me. “Nine o’clock. You’ll help me tell the staff.” She slammed the door and the taxi slipped away.

  Which is why I was less than playful with Cassady and Tricia and why I selected a charcoal wool crepe pencil skirt and white blouse for my breakfast … thing with Detective Edwards.

  “Okay, it’s not a date, but it’s not a job interview either,” Tricia protested as I changed. She held out the Zanottis from the night before.

  I slipped them on, considered them, then took them off and handed them back. “Thanks for the loan.” I sighed as my Achilles tendons unknotted and my heels sank to the ground. There was a good chance that would be the extent of my workout for the day, so I wanted to relish it.

  Cassady gave me one of her piercing lawyer looks. “It’s not too late to cancel.”

  “On the breakfast?”

  “On solving the murder. We all say things in the heat of the moment that we quickly come to regret and there’s no shame in finding a graceful exit as long as you find it early.”

  Tricia scrunched her mouth into a little knot of disbelief. “And that’s worked so well for you on how many occasions ?”

  “Advice is meant to be given, not followed,” Cassady retorted.

  “That adds meaning to my life,” I said as I repacked my Achilles tendons into my Stuart Weitzman Babydolls. When in doubt, go with black pumps. Really sweet, really hig
h black pumps.

  Cassady had the grace to wince. “Sorry. I meant casual advice, not professional advice.”

  “No need to apologize for me. I’m well aware I make no meaningful contribution to society. That’s why I’m going to solve this crime and turn things around.” I grabbed my jacket and my purse. “You two are welcome to stay here and talk behind my back. Just make sure you lock up on your way out.”

  Tricia rocked up on her toes, unhappy. “Can’t we all share a cab? We’ll drop you at the deli.”

  “I love you both, but I need some quiet time. To pull together my thoughts.”

  I was still trying to do just that as I stared blankly at the menu at Carnegie Deli and secretly hoped that Detective Edwards was about to stand me up. What was I going to tell him? Helen was innocent because there was food in her fridge? Because she seemed nice? Wanting to be helpful and being able to be helpful seemed to be drifting farther and farther apart at the moment. But before I could sort it all out, he was sliding into the seat across from me, looking better than I was prepared for. “Good morning. I was afraid you’d stand me up.”

  I tried a whimsical look, but it felt more like a twitch. “Why would I?”

  “Better offer?”

  “Didn’t get one. But I haven’t checked my messages in the last hour or so.”

  “Please don’t.” He smiled lazily and pushed the menu out of the way without looking at it. I put mine on top of his. He clearly knew what he wanted. I didn’t have a clue, but I was developing a taste for figuring things out on the fly.

  “How was Helen Reynolds when you left her?”

  Oh, fine. Right to business. I actually felt a flicker of disappointment, but then again, I had been the one to insist that this was not a date. Served me right. “About the same. Her sister came in from Queens and that helped. You don’t still suspect her?”

  “I thought we were having breakfast so you could tell me what you know.” He upped the wattage on his smile, but now there was a touch of warning to it, too.

  “Helen didn’t do it.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  I figured he’d scoff at the paella, so I went for a more psychological approach. “She wants vengeance on whoever did do it. And she wasn’t faking.”

  “You know her that well?”

  “No, I know real emotion when I see it.”

  His smile loosened a little and I waited for the smart response, but the waitress intruded. He ordered an everything bagel, toasted, and coffee. I thought about doing the same, then thought about the number of times poppyseeds wind up between your front teeth, even when you’re being careful, and ordered a bowl of fruit and coffee. It seemed a shame to order so simply when the smells of steak and eggs and maple syrup and melting butter meandered through the whole place, but I wanted to make sure he understood that I understood that this was a working breakfast. And yes, I am also one of those girls who thinks twice about eating hearty in front of a guy in the early stages.

  “Refresh my memory. How long had you known Teddy?” He was playing with his pen against his closed notebook, turning the pen end on end. He kept his eyes on mine, but I kept glancing down at the pen, less distracted than avoiding the Big Blues for a moment.

  “Three years. I’d heard of him before that, but I came to the magazine three years ago.”

  “Heard of him?”

  “An old friend of mine, Stephanie Glenn, worked with him at Femme. That’s where he was before Zeitgeist. In fact, Yvonne worked there, too. They go way back, she’s the one that brought him over to Zeitgeist. He had a great reputation, business-wise. It’s his social skills that got mixed reviews.”

  “What’d your friend think of him?”

  “She thought he was a hoot. But she didn’t work for him, which is where you find most of the people who weren’t big fans.”

  “Did she sleep with him?”

  I almost laughed, imagining Stephanie with Teddy. “No way.” Edwards arched an eyebrow. “She’s gay.”

  “I see. Do you know who did sleep with him?”

  “Why are you back on that?” It was fine for me to be obsessing about the possibility of Teddy’s rancid romantic past, but I was doing it as a journalist and a student of human behavior. Edwards was doing it as a cop and that road could only lead back to, “You do still suspect Helen.”

  “At this stage, I suspect everyone. Statistically, the wife goes to the head of the class.”

  “You’re wasting my time.”

  “So point me in another direction.”

  “I think it was someone he knew pretty well. Someone who knew he worked weird hours. Someone who was furious with him.” Like his wife who had just discovered he was sleeping around on her, but not her. The thought clanked around noisily in my head, but I refused to say it and prepared myself for Edwards saying it.

  Instead, he asked, “Why furious?”

  This was a test, right? He knew the answer and wanted to see how keenly observant I was capable of being. Fine. I resisted the impulse to begin with “Well, duh,” and said, “Because she left the knife in his throat.”

  Edwards stopped tapping his pen and looked at me oddly. Had I failed the test? Didn’t it make perfect sense that you’d leave the knife behind only to make a statement? Sort of like signing a painting. “If you stabbed someone in a moment of anger or passion, don’t you think you’d realize what you’d done and pull the knife back out, to clean or hide the knife if nothing else? To leave the knife in there—that’s rage. The ultimate ‘screw you, Teddy.’”

  The pen started tapping again, but slowly and deliberately. “She?”

  “What?” I’d hoped for an “exactly, my dear Forrester” or something a little more indicative of how well we were doing.

  “You said ‘she left the knife.’ Why?”

  “Because Teddy was a bully, but a coward. He wouldn’t have gotten close enough to an angry man for a man to stab him like that.”

  Edwards didn’t react at all for a moment, then nodded. “Our analysis of the blood spatter indicates that Reynolds was in the doorway of his office, probably leaning against the frame, and was stabbed with an overhand thrust from a lower angle.”

  I raised my hand, trying to figure that one out. “So she’s shorter than he was.”

  Edwards watched my hand. Keenly aware that my nails were a mess, I dropped my hand back into my lap. Edwards’ eyes slid up to mine. “How tall are you?”

  I almost told him, but for once, my brain worked faster than my mouth. “Excuse me?”

  “How tall are you?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” He didn’t shake his head, didn’t smile, didn’t look away. I felt like Carrie as the pig’s blood hit the top of her head. Of course Detective Edwards didn’t want to take me to the prom because I was cute. He thought I was guilty.

  I tried to laugh derisively, but it came out as the mutant child of a sob and a hiccup. I could feel my cheeks reddening and realized I had transformed into some kind of scarlet frog, blurping and blushing madly. What would the detective make of that? Would he take it as a sign of guilt or would he be sharp enough to recognize that I really wanted to throttle him, but was restraining myself because I knew it would be completely counterproductive at this point.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “‘I’m five-seven’?” he suggested.

  “I’m five-eight in my bare feet, but I’ll look taller as I stand to leave.” I grabbed my purse and took a moment to arrange my feet beside my chair so I wouldn’t trip as I got up for my grand exit.

  Before I could stand, Edwards put his hand over mine, pressing it down into the table with a slight but undeniable pressure. “Please don’t make a scene.”

  “I can’t. I don’t have any silverware.”

  He leaned in, his voice low and urgent. I leaned in to listen, hating it, but needing to hear what he had to say. “It’s been my experience that when a civilian gets all gung-ho about helping to solve
a crime, they have some investment in the crime.”

  “He was my friend,” I hissed.

  “There’s more to it.” He leaned in closer. If this had happened two minutes earlier, I would have thought he was going to kiss me. Now, I felt like he was trying to smell Teddy’s blood on me. “Tell me.”

  Dear Molly, I’m sitting in the middle of Carnegie Deli, holding hands with this super-hot homicide detective and I have a choice. I can tell him I want to help on this case because it could further my career, in which case he’ll think I’m a heartless bitch, or I can tell him I want to help because I think he’s super-hot, in which case he’ll think I’m throwing myself at him. Which has the greater potential for soul-shriveling embarrassment? Signed, Getting Madder by the Minute

  “I want to write about this investigation from an inside perspective and use the article to further my journalism career.” Let’s face it. Appearing desperate to advance in your business life is showing good hustle. Appearing desperate to advance in your personal life is just—being desperate. And that we cannot be.

  Edwards sank slowly back into his seat, his hand trailing off mine. He stared at me and I managed to stare back with what I hoped was the proper blend of hurt and disdain. I couldn’t tell if he believed me or if he was playing me, but for the moment, I didn’t care. I just wanted to get out of this with one shred of dignity, even if it was trailing behind me like toilet paper caught on the bottom of my shoe.

  “Am I free to go?”

  He nodded slowly, still staring at me. He wasn’t sure if he believed me or not. His problem.

  I stood and my legs were steadier than I had expected them to be. “I am glad you’ve abandoned the botched burglary theory.”

  He nodded, still turning something else over in his mind. Was he feeling bad about accusing me? Wouldn’t that be nice. “We found his wallet in a dumpster outside the parking garage. Someone used his cardkey to get out through the garage, then tossed the wallet with the money and credit cards still inside.”