In the elevator, I let the dread of having to go through Teddy’s office give way to the excitement that I might find something that would help solve his murder. Helen wanted vengeance and I was beginning to get a little taste of that myself. Or maybe I was telling myself that to feel a little less vulture-ish about my Pulitzer Prize in the making.
The bullpen was painfully subdued as I made my way to Teddy’s office. People were actually working, there was no superfluous chatter, and even the people on the phone spoke more quietly and politely than usual. The only loud voices in the whole place belonged to Yvonne and Gretchen, who were squaring off at Teddy’s door. Gretchen was actually blocking the door, arms folded, jaw clenched, overplucked eyebrows drawn down into her approximation of a menacing look. Yvonne was trying to get past her, but Gretchen was immovable in attitude and size.
Yvonne turned as I walked up, brown paper crunching hideously underfoot. I only had time to smile helpfully before she launched into me. “What’s going on between you and Helen?”
As I tried to flag down the express train Yvonne was driving, Gretchen explained, “Yvonne wants to go through Teddy’s office, but Helen called and said you’re the only one allowed in. The cops already did their sweep, took his PDA, that sort of thing, but you’re supposed to handle everything else.” Gretchen leaned against the doorjamb to emphasize her control of the space and I winced at the mental image Edwards had conjured up of Teddy leaning there as the murderer attacked.
Yvonne persisted. “There are files in there, work that has to be reassigned. I don’t mean to be unfeeling. But we. Still. Have. A magazine to get out here. I am not above firing people to make my point.” She stomped her foot and her heel punctured the brown paper. I actually expected blood to come bubbling up, Sam Raimi-style, but you couldn’t even see a stain through the tear. Thank God.
Yvonne tried to mush the paper back in place with the toe of her shoe, then drew herself up in dramatic indignation. It was pretty futile. I’d never really noticed how short Yvonne was since she was always in the highest heels that structural engineering could manage. All Edwards had said was that the killer was shorter than Teddy, which meant less than five-ten. Even in her highest heels, Yvonne was still only in the five-six to five-seven range.
Yvonne?
I’ve thought some pretty nasty things about Yvonne in the time I’ve worked for her, especially when I was doing a feature article and she changed things in it that didn’t make it any better, just different. Some editors are like that. They have to have it their way, not because your way is wrong but because it’s, you guessed it, your way. But of the many colorful and clearly deserved things I have thought of her, I’ve never thought she might be capable of murder.
Time to think it now. Which meant it was also time to get her away from Teddy’s office, because I was willing to bet she had personal rather than business reasons for wanting to get in there.
“Yvonne, we’ve had an awful night. And not a great morning. Let’s not take it out on each other.” I tried to guide her away from Teddy’s office, but she plopped her bony rear end on Gretchen’s desk, folded her arms across her chest, and made it quite clear she would not be moved.
“Why you?”
Who the hell knew. But I couldn’t admit that or she’d be in there packing boxes with me, which struck me as a pretty bad idea about now. “I believe Helen was concerned it would be too painful for you. Or her. Or Gretchen.” While I was lying, I might as well spare Gretchen’s feelings, too.
“She said that?”
“Not in those exact words.” Or words anywhere close to that, but there was no need to hurt Yvonne if she wasn’t the killer. I made a mental note to pat myself on the back later for treating Yvonne as innocent until I could search Teddy’s office and prove her guilty.
Yvonne struggled with some notion for a moment, perhaps that of Helen being concerned about her, then accepted it. She stood back up, her hand sweeping vaguely behind her to check for upended pencil cups, and walked back to her office without another word. As someone not particularly fond of silence, I was impressed.
Almost as impressed as I was by Gretchen’s strength as she squeezed me in something closer to a chiropractic technique than a hug.
“’Sokay, Gretch,” I wheezed. Gretchen and I are about the same height, so my nose was mushed against her cheek. It made it hard to breathe on two counts—the whole mushing thing and the fact that Gretchen smelled like some strange, old lady perfume I couldn’t quite identify. She usually favored the more exotic, dusky perfumes, but she mainly wore whatever free samples Teddy gave her, so maybe this was something new.
“Thank you for doing this,” she moaned, then moved quickly to her desk to sob some more. I paused in the doorway, not sure whether she intended that I follow and comfort her, but Kendall Graham and Jason Jefferson, two of our bright-eyed editorial assistants, were beside her with tissues, water, and murmurs before I could decide. Kendall shot me a look like I’d made Gretchen cry. Since I’ve never been comfortable being the bad guy, I slunk into Teddy’s office.
I wasn’t sure where to start. There were framed issue covers on the wall, but those belonged to the magazine, not to Teddy. There were personal photographs on the credenza—the wedding picture, Teddy and Helen on Grand Cayman a couple of years ago, toasting the photographer as they laughed at some poolside bar. A beautiful walnut box held Teddy’s collection of Montblanc pens. There were stacks of files everywhere, but those were Gretchen’s problem. There didn’t seem to be that many personal effects. That part might be easier than I’d thought. But what else was the office going to tell me?
I eased myself into the orthopedically correct desk chair and ran my hands over the polished wood of the desk. It was a big, lumbering old thing, the kind Spencer Tracy had whenever he played a lawyer. It had a certain grandness that I’m sure had pleased Teddy. It also looked quite capable of holding its share of secrets.
If I die and someone else has to clean out my desk, I will be mortified for eternity. Imagining someone piecing together my life based on the tampons, Advil, tea bags, Sudafed, toothpaste, and extra pantyhose in just my top drawer made me cringe. It also made me hesitate with my hand on Teddy’s lap drawer. What if there was something in here I didn’t want to know, couldn’t handle? All my suspicions were abstract so far, but what if I was about to confirm them? I kept my head down so I wouldn’t look up and look right at Yvonne’s office, and slid open the drawer.
Men are ahead of the game right away because they are, on the toiletry level, lower-maintenance creatures and don’t require intimate accessories on hand at all times.
Except for condoms. Not something you’d expect to find in a desk drawer, but there they were. Front and center, too, not even hidden back in the back behind a stack of Post-it Notes, which is where I squirrel away the tampons in my desk. Smack dab in the middle. Trojan Twisted Pleasures. I bet.
I slid the drawer shut so fast that I nearly pinched off both my thumbs. I was lightheaded and flustered, as though I had walked in on Teddy standing in the middle of the room naked. I tried to keep my brain from going to the next step, which was Teddy in the middle of the room naked and putting on a condom, but it was tough. I stood up, literally shaking my head to keep the image from lodging and becoming too clear. I forced myself to picture something else, anything else, like counting sheep. So I stood there for a few minutes, thinking of the claymation sheep in the Serta ads. But that morphed into Teddy naked with the sheep and that wasn’t helpful at all.
Why would a married man keep condoms in his desk drawer? It wasn’t like Helen came by the office a lot or they met for lunch a lot, even though she worked close by. These were not for Helen. But who? And where? I suddenly felt very voyeuristic just standing in the middle of the room and looking at the couch, the desk, the rug, trying hard to keep my mind a blank and failing miserably. Sometimes, an active imagination is a curse.
So, if Teddy was a bad dog, did that mean Edwar
ds was right to be considering Helen as his prime suspect? No way. She was furious that this had happened. Probably blamed the mistress. And the mistress certainly made sense—someone who knew he kept late hours because she was one of the reasons he kept them, someone who knew her way around the building, someone who would feel the passion necessary to bury the knife in his throat and leave it there. So who was she?
I started going through his office like a junkie looking for a stash. It was easy enough to dismiss a lot of his desk—it had actual work in it. The top left-hand drawer had office hardware—staples, scissors, letter opener, buck slips. The top right-hand drawer was dominated by snacks—PowerBars, little boxes of raisins, a bag of trail mix. I started to close the drawer, then decided to dig deeper, pushing aside all the healthy snacks to uncover two Milky Ways and a package of strawberry Twizzlers. Somehow, that made me feel better.
Then there was the lap drawer. I slid it open again and pushed the condoms to one side, making a shiny green snake of foil squares coil itself in the front corner. Otherwise, the drawer also held the usual suspects of pens and pencils, a few subway tokens, Post-it Notes in varying sizes in yellow, blue, and pink, and a tin of Altoids.
I slid my hands all the way into the back and recoiled as I touched something soft and rubbery. I jerked my fingers away, only to hit more. A whole little colony. So many disgusting things ran through my mind at once that I surprised even myself. I took a deep breath and pulled the items forward into the light.
Soy sauce. Little take-out packets of soy sauce. And duck sauce. And ketchup, mustard, and even one sweet pickle relish. But no smoking gun. Other than the one I kept imagining in the condoms.
I was going to have to throw the condoms away—they surely weren’t going home to Helen and I didn’t want Gretchen to have to deal with them either—but everything else looked personal enough to pack. We seemed to be in one-carton territory here and I wondered if I’d find enough to comfort Helen. Or was she hoping I’d find something damning as much as I was?
I figured I’d start with the pictures on the credenza, then fill in with the random junk from the desk. I spun around in the chair, grabbed the picture of Helen and Teddy, and dropped it. I almost had a chance to grab it in midair, but my fingers just brushed it and turned its deadfall into a descending cartwheel. I winced as the glass shattered on impact.
The crash apparently wasn’t as loud as it sounded to my guilty ears because Gretchen didn’t come racing in. I stooped and picked up the shards of glass as quickly as possible. At least I hadn’t damaged the picture. I’d offer to replace the glass for Helen. That would be a nice gesture.
I picked up the frame to shake the still clinging pieces of glass into the wastebasket. It was a simple silver frame, three by five, with little finials on the corners. My guess was, Helen had bought it for him. It seemed more her style. I shook the frame, the glass fell free, and the picture started to slide out. I pinched the picture against the frame with my thumb, but it had slipped enough to reveal another picture. I remembered my grandmother keeping our school pictures stacked in a frame like that so she could marvel at how much we’d grown from one year to the next. Was Teddy being sentimental or had he just been too lazy to remove the sample picture that had come with the frame?
I slid the top picture out to check the second. It was another cute couple picture and Teddy looked better in this one. Why did he prefer the other one? Oh. Because the woman in the picture wasn’t Helen. It was Yvonne.
I had that creepy voyeur feeling again, but I couldn’t put the picture down. They were at some black tie event, Teddy in a classic black tux and Yvonne in an amazing Bagdley Mischka which, with the cooperation of strategic underwiring somewhere, flaunted all the cleavage she had. Judging by the cut of the dress and the color of Yvonne’s hair, the picture had been taken last summer.
Now, Yvonne and Teddy had known each other for a long time. They were good friends. They went to a lot of swanky parties, both on behalf of the magazine and to support their own causes. So there was no surprise to see them together at such a function.
The surprise was how they were together. Teddy sat on a barstool. Yvonne stood between his legs, hip, breast, and shoulder nestled against his body, one hand holding a drink, the other comfortably, casually as high on his thigh as it could be without being directly on his crotch. Teddy’s arm was around her, hand possessively on her hip. Yvonne was glancing at the camera, but Teddy’s gaze was fixed on her face. More precisely, her mouth. He was leaning in, about to kiss her. They were relaxed, happy—this was not a mug-for-the-camera staged photo. This was a picture of a couple. Two people who were, at the least, sleeping with each other.
Honestly, my first thought was that I was impressed. How had they managed to be involved, right under our noses, and not have anyone suspect a thing? The consensus among the writing staff was that the bulk of Yvonne’s most annoying character traits were a direct product of the lack of regular sex in her life. The staff was approaching a willingness to sacrifice small animals to pagan deities to get the woman laid so the world would be a happier place. But if my hunch about the picture was right, there was a different cause of Yvonne’s lack of love for humanity.
Then, too, just because they had been a thing didn’t mean they were still a thing. Maybe their affair had ended badly and that had made Yvonne that much more of a joy to be around. I pulled the picture out of the frame to see if the date or anything was printed on the photograph. With the picture out of the way, a small key on a thin red ribbon fell out. It was tiny, less than padlock size. My sweep of the room hadn’t revealed any locked drawers or any locked boxes inside locked drawers. What was the key to and why did Teddy keep it in the picture frame?
I turned my attention back to the picture. There was no date on the back, just an inscription: You will be mine forever. Y. Figures that Yvonne was as demanding a lover as she was a boss. Not “Will you be mine?” or “Hope you’ll be mine,” but “You will be mine.” I wondered how Teddy felt about the issuance of that command.
Particularly because underneath the picture, MAARTEN was written in Teddy’s big blocky handwriting. St. Maarten? I flipped the picture back over and looked at it hard, scrutinizing the details of the bar behind Teddy. Not that I spend a lot of time at bars staring at the back wall, but I’d be willing to put money on their being at the Ritz Carlton right here in Manhattan, not in St. Maarten. So what did “Maarten” mean?
I was sitting there with the picture in one hand and the key in the other when the door opened. With a move that was so smooth I couldn’t believe I’d done it, I stood up and slid my hands into my pockets, concealing their contents, just as Gretchen stepped into the room. She looked at me, standing there with my hands in my pockets like I had all the time in the world, and smiled shakily.
“You want any help?”
I thought about asking her to help me sweep up the broken glass, just so she could feel useful, but decided it was far smarter to get her out of the room as soon as possible. “No, there isn’t really that much,” I assured her, now feeling that I could not take my hands back out of my pockets lest she discern the outline of either frame or key and want to know what I was stealing from the office of her dearly departed boss.
“Teddy wasn’t much for clutter. He only kept the important stuff,” Gretchen sniffed.
The picture in my hand seemed to give off heat as I nodded. “That’ll make it so much easier on Helen.”
Gretchen made an explosive sound that I mistook for a guffaw until I saw the tears streaming down her face. “Poor Helen!” was all she managed.
I nodded in what I hoped passed for sympathy, but I didn’t want to encourage Gretchen’s grief too much for fear that our boss, the murder suspect, would return to the scene of the crime to see what all the wailing was about.
So I assured Gretchen that I could handle packing, shooed her out with as much grace as I could muster, closed the door, and did what any sensible girl with a murder c
lue in her pocket would do. I called my best friends to see if they were free for lunch.
6
“Murder is just an extreme form of social interaction.” I knew it was a bold statement, but since I was sitting on the floor of Cassady’s office, barefoot, with lemon chicken dangling from my chopsticks, I felt I could get away with it.
Tricia reached over and felt my forehead, then shrugged to Cassady and returned to her beef and broccoli. “It doesn’t seem to be a fever-induced delirium.”
“What I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to be psycho to kill someone.”
“But it helps. Especially on the defense end of the process.” Cassady was at her desk, multitasking mightily. Cassady’s office looks more like a college professor’s burrow than fancy lawyer digs. She has overflowing built-in bookcases on two walls, with windows I don’t think she ever looks out, despite the view of Lincoln Center, on the third, and seascapes painted by her little sister framing the door. The Mission furniture is elegant but practical and there are books, files, and periodicals balancing on every available surface. I love it.
Cassady had agreed to meet for lunch, as long as “meet” consisted of all of us having Chinese in her office because she had a filing deadline. I had suggested that we wait until dinner in that case, but she’d snarked about the body count rising by then and a healthy lunch being a crucial step in the investigative process. Fortunately, all Tricia said was she had no plans she couldn’t change and she’d be happy to meet.
Also fortunately, Tricia was her usual diplomatic self when I told her about Yvonne semi-volunteering her for Teddy’s reception and my not exactly throwing myself in front of that train. “How interesting. A funeral reception,” was her first reaction.
“I think Yvonne envisions it more as an industry party with a guest of honor who happens to be dead,” I offered.
“Not exactly my stock in trade.”
Killer Heels Page 9
