Killer Heels

by Sheryl J. Anderson

  I dug deep for a little confidence to dissolve the rock in my stomach and launched into what I hoped would pass for a blinding display of salesmanship and, even better, coherence.

  “It’s more than ‘putting on a face’ or playing a role. Yes, we all do that. To a certain extent, it’s how we’re taught to interact with people. Company manners and all that. I’m talking about something more basic, more innate, and less conscious. We all have facets. Like a jewel. Turn us slightly, put us in a new light, and a different facet emerges. It’s still the same stone, but the new angle gives you a new appreciation for it, heightens its value. A lot of us go through life with most people only seeing one or two facets.”

  Garrett wasn’t saying anything, not that I was giving him a chance, but he leaned forward in his chair. That was all the encouragement I needed. “Teddy was a vastly different person to everyone who knew him. A jewel of varied facets, some revealed to only a few. By assembling the facets into one jewel, by examining why he hid certain sides from certain people, we understand why we do it in our own lives. And what we gain or lose in the process.”

  Garrett opened his mouth, but I was caught up in my own chain reaction and powerless to stop. “And we frame it all in the fact that Teddy was a victim of violence. Did one facet facilitate that? And what about the facets of the killer? Which ones had Teddy seen, which ones have the rest of us seen? By learning who Teddy was to the person who killed him, what they saw of each other—”

  “—we produce an article worth reading,” Garrett finished for me.

  I was afraid to move, to progress into the next moment. Had I grabbed him? He rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “That’s a pretty tall order.”

  I nodded. “That’s what makes it compelling.”

  “Do you have the cooperation of the police department ?”

  I hoped I didn’t blush as I thought of Edwards. “Occasionally.”

  That brought his smile back. “They can be tough.”

  “It won’t be a problem,” I assured us both.

  “Who’s the killer?”

  “You’ll find out when you read the article.”

  “Then I guess I better buy it.” He kept talking, but I had a hard time hearing him over the rush of blood in my ears. Had he really said he wanted my article? I hadn’t had to jump through flaming hoops or promise him my firstborn or even agree to date him. He wanted my article. Had Cassady slept with him and left that out of the story?

  “Give yourself a little more credit than that. And give me a hell of a lot more,” Cassady said when I called her from the sidewalk. The fact that I was about to write a real article for a real magazine was still sinking in. My hand trembled and I almost dropped my cell phone. “Congrats, Molly.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “A couple of hours, a couple of bottles of champagne, and you’ll believe it. I’ll help. Dinner?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Don’t go into shock or anything.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You can do this, Molly. You’ll be great. All you have to do is solve a murder.”

  “Before or after I take care of world peace?”

  It came out a little shrill and Cassady heard it. “Molly?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Yvonne did it.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Past tense. What happened?”

  “A couple of people pointed me back towards Helen.”

  There was a longer pause on the other end of the phone than I would have liked. “And that’s still Edwards’ theory, too.”

  “Last I knew.”

  There was another pause and I braced myself for what I was sure was coming next. “Then maybe you should leave it to Edwards.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it would be a lousy ending for my article. And because I’m right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Now it was my turn to pause. “I’ll be sure by dinner.” I always work best with a deadline.

  11

  “My. God. Where have you been?” Yvonne asked, not at all in the tone of someone who was happy or relieved to see me, but in the tone of someone who would have been just as pleased to see jackals drag in my corpse as to see me standing in the conference room doorway.

  “I’m sorry, were you looking for me?” I didn’t want to answer her question because truth was, I had been on my hands and knees in her office breaking back into her music box. Well, not so much breaking into it, since I did have the key, but entering it without permission, which was still unlawful on some level. But I’d gotten what I needed. By the skin of my teeth.

  As I came back to the office from my meeting with Garrett Wilson, my concern over Camille’s statements about Helen was giving way to the adrenaline that comes from getting a deal. Most of the writing I do outside the column is for our magazine, so it’s a whole different thing to go out into the real world and pitch freelance ideas. And most of the outside freelance I do is light stuff, airy pieces for friends like Stephanie at other magazines. But this was a whole new ballgame and I was going to pop blood vessels keeping the news to myself. But whom at Zeitgeist could I possibly tell? “Hey, gang, I got a great gig writing about how our boss killed Teddy! Drinks on me!” I don’t think so.

  So I put aside the concern about Helen, contained the adrenaline, and took off an earring. I stowed the earring in the pocket of my skirt, which already held the music box key, and went to see Fred.

  Fred saw me coming, his eyes wide in warning behind rimless glasses. “You don’t want to see her,” he hissed once I was at his desk.

  “No, I don’t, but why wouldn’t I?”

  “Not that this hasn’t been a rough week for us all, but the woman is out of control. Hormones, emotions, medications—something is out of balance somewhere and I may not live until Friday at this rate.”

  “It’s already Wednesday, Fred. Humpday. Hang in there. So is she in her office?” I asked, praying that the answer would be—

  “No. She’s in the conference room with Brady unless he’s choked himself with his belt like a smart fellow.”

  “This still about the irregularities?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s moved on to defaming his mother by now.”

  “Poor guy. Well, I don’t really need her, I need her office.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I showed him the now empty lobe of my right ear. “I lost an earring and I think it might have been while Tricia and I were waiting for her this morning.”

  Fred twinkled. “Why? You two playing rough?”

  I laughed, caught by surprise, and that pleased him greatly. “My secret’s safe with you, isn’t it, Fred?”

  “Of course not.” He tossed his head at Yvonne’s office door. “Help yourself.”

  The door was closed so I felt it wasn’t too conspicuous to close it again behind me. I went immediately to the music box, kneeling on the floor in front of it to support the missing earring scenario in case Yvonne came back in while I was … investigating.

  I fished the cardkey out of the hidden compartment and paused a moment before I flipped it over. Did I want it to be from the St. Regis? Did I want Yvonne to be guilty or did I just want to be right? Before I could decide, I saw that there was something else in the little compartment. When I had opened the music box earlier, I had thought the compartment was lined with lighter material than the rest of the box. Now I saw that it actually was a layer of small, torn pieces of paper.

  I flipped the cardkey over. The St. Regis. I let my breath out in a long, silent whistle and tried to decide how I felt. I couldn’t. This seemed to indicate that I was headed in the right direction, but the road could fork. Helen could have tumbled to Camille because she knew about the St. Regis. Or Helen could have stumbled on to Camille because she knew about Yvonne and tracked her to the St. Regis. One way or the other, I was definitely taking a trip over there this afternoon.<
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  Putting the cardkey aside, I fished the pieces of paper out of the bottom of the compartment. It was a sheet of lovely ecru vellum that had been torn up into tiny squares. I fumbled with the pieces, trying to reassemble the jigsaw puzzle in the palm of my hand. It was Yvonne’s handwriting as best I could tell, but I wasn’t getting a sense of what she had written until I saw “Dear Teddy—” on a piece. I had warring reactions: The investigator who had just sold a piece to Garrett Wilson thought, “Sweet.” The heart of the colleague who knew them both actually sank a bit. A shredded love letter and a hotel cardkey. They made me unexpectedly sad.

  I put the music box back together and replaced it on the shelf, smart enough to know that I couldn’t sit there on the floor of Yvonne’s office and play “Mend the Clue.” I was trying to get to my feet, not a picture of grace given the narrow diameter of my skirt, when the office door opened. I changed my attempt at rising into a lunge between the end table and the sofa, my hand hidden under the sofa as I tried to ball up the fragments of the note into the smallest mass possible.

  “Any luck?” Fred asked, doing a halfway decent impersonation of an interested party.

  “Not yet,” I replied, doing what I hoped was a more convincing impersonation of a woman desperate enough to retrieve a chunk of malachite and sterling silver that she would mash her body between and under pieces of furniture.

  Fred eased the door closed behind him. “Mind if I ask you a—oh, sweet mother Mary.”

  I froze. I knew he couldn’t see my hand from where he was standing, but I was nervous enough to imagine Fred whipping off his glasses and revealing his true identity as Superman, complete with x-ray vision. I decided the least incriminating thing I could say was, “What?”

  “Was this open when you came in?” Fred strode over to the music box and picked it up. I could have kissed him for it, because it gave me a chance to stand up, step behind him as though I wanted to look at the music box over his shoulder, and stuff the wad of notepaper into my pocket out of his line of vision, x-ray or not.

  “I guess I didn’t notice.”

  Fred clicked the lid down firmly, making sure it latched, and replaced the music box. “The last thing we need around here is Yvonne seeing ghosts.”

  “Ghosts?”

  Fred did a melodramatic take over his shoulder to make sure no one was lurking in the doorway, then leaned into me with a conspiratorial grimace. I’m tall enough that this entailed Fred essentially resting his nose between my breasts, but this was Fred and it seemed important, so I let it go. “It’s a game she and Teddy used to play.”

  “A game?” I echoed in encouragement.

  “He used to leave her messages in the music box, leave the lid open to let her know to look.”

  Atta boy! Now I really wanted to kiss him, but I couldn’t risk distracting him. “No way.” He nodded solemnly, but I pressed. “How do you know?”

  “She called me once from some meeting across town, absolutely frantic. She said she’d run out that morning and forgotten to check and it was a catastrophe and Teddy mustn’t know and all sorts of similar hysteria. Then she swore me to secrecy and made me check.”

  “Was it open?”

  He nodded, a little less solemnly. “And there was a matchbook from Nobu there. She said she knew exactly what that meant and that I could take an extra fifteen minutes for lunch because life was good.”

  “So you think she met him there for dinner?”

  “At least.” Fred tilted his head to the side like a little dog waiting for instructions. He was waiting for a reaction, so I figured I’d better give him one.

  I widened my eyes. “You mean Yvonne and Teddy … ?”

  Fred put his finger to his lips, winked, and shushed me. As I continued pretending to be shocked, I ran the equations. If a matchbook from a restaurant meant “meet me for dinner,” then a cardkey from a hotel meant “meet me for sex,” and a hotel cardkey with a shredded love note meant … what? “We need to talk”? “I’m leaving you”? “You’re not leaving me”? I needed to get out of there and piece things together on both the small and grand scale.

  Fred, caught up in his drama, continued. “After that, I started watching the music box. I figured the days it was open, she’d be happy and my vile existence of servitude would be a little less bleak.”

  “Did it track?”

  “Right up until Monday. The box was open and she didn’t seem that happy about it.” Fred frowned as though considering this fact for the first time, but then shrugged, apparently not interested in considering it all that deeply. “And then it was open this morning when you and Tricia were in here and after you left, she got all feverish about it being a message from beyond or some such hysteria.” Great. Not only am I trying to finger Yvonne for murder, no matter what Camille said about Helen, but I have her seeing ghosts in the meantime. I’m Employee of the Month material.

  Fred gestured dismissively at the music box. “It’s just a cheap little thing, the latch is probably breaking down.” Now if we could just get Yvonne to embrace that theory. And if I could just make a clean getaway. “Any luck?” Fred continued.

  I pulled on my earlobe and headed for the door. “No, I must have dropped it somewhere else. Thanks for letting me look, though.”

  “I exist to serve,” Fred drawled and I hurried away, wanting to be well clear of Yvonne’s office before she returned, especially if she was in a foul mood.

  What I needed to do now was find a private spot where I could reassemble the note—not exactly an operation that could take place in the bullpen. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Our offices weren’t designed with privacy in mind. Except for the conference room and Yvonne was in there, which made it forbidden territory. The only real shot I had at uninterrupted, unobserved activity was the ladies restroom. Unfortunately, to get there, I had to walk past the conference room.

  I walked briskly, head down, most thoughtful face on, praying the door would be closed. But as I drew closer, I could hear Yvonne quite clearly, as well as Brady and Gretchen, who were trying desperately to get a word in edgewise. The door was open.

  Yvonne stood at the far end of the conference table with Brady and Gretchen flanking her. Files, artwork, and billing statements were splayed across the table. Yvonne was the picture of wrath, a Herrera harpy. Brady looked like he would volunteer for the Bataan Death March if it meant he could leave the room. Gretchen wept, quietly but deeply.

  I kept walking. I passed the door. I shifted my eyes back to the floor. And still it came, loud and shrill and jarring, like I had tripped an alarm at the Guggenheim: “Molly! My. God. Where have you been?”

  “I’m sorry, were you looking for me?”

  “This doesn’t concern Molly—” Brady began.

  “And it’s not the only thing that concerns me!” Yvonne roared at him. “Surprise! Other worries!” Her eyes still on Brady, she pointed her sharply manicured talon at me with such force and precision, I froze as though it were a poison-tipped spear. Or, more likely, a fully armed ICBM. “Do not move!” I stayed in the doorway.

  Brady sank down in a chair, defeated. Gretchen tried to stand her ground. “It’s been paid for. Teddy wouldn’t have told me to log it in if it hadn’t been paid for. It’s Accounting’s mistake.”

  Yvonne turned the full heat of her wrath on Gretchen. “Other worries. Hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Gretchen demurred.

  “Anything I can do?” I said, more to distract Yvonne than to actually get involved.

  Yvonne held up the talon again, this time commanding me to wait while her eyes bored into Gretchen. “Even if this were all I cared about. What are you?”

  Gretchen didn’t seem to understand the question. Her eyes flicked to me in the briefest show of panic, then went right back to Yvonne. Yvonne leaned in closer. Spittle-spewing range. “An assistant.” Yvonne said it as though it were a curse in some ancient tongue and Gretchen flinched like she understood it in her bones.
/>   In sixth grade, I punched Justin Dietrich in the nose because he called Amanda Mapleton “fat.” She was, but it was stupid and petty of Justin to make an issue of it. Those instincts don’t go away, even when someone like Yvonne is loaded for bear. Now I had to get involved. I walked up to the table and tried to make sense of what they were looking at. “What’s this, Brady?”

  Brady didn’t protest this time. He must’ve figured he’d live longer if someone else caught flak for a while. “We’ve got a bad ad and we’re up against the deadline. Can’t find the agency’s check, keep trading calls with them.” He slid a file marked NACHTMUSIK AGENCY across the table to me, but I was happy to take his word for it. “Sophie’s still out on medical and her assistant isn’t any help. She couldn’t track a payment if it were all in pennies stuffed in her pantyhose.” My protective instincts have limits. I knew Wendy, the assistant in question, and Brady was actually being gracious.

  “So you’re going to pull it?”

  “No!” Gretchen all but stamped her foot. “I remember when Teddy met with their agency, I remember him showing me the check. It’s a good ad. If Teddy were here …”

  Gretchen dissolved into tears again, melting into a chair. Yvonne sneered at me like it was my fault. “More questions ?”

  Why not. “Is it a good ad?”

  Gretchen nodded rapidly through her tears and pushed a piece of paper across the table to me. It was just the match print, but it was still dramatic. It showed a woman’s leg from just below the knee, the foot in a gorgeously simple black high heel. Around the heel was wrapped a lovely piece of jewelry, for lack of a better term. It was a climbing vine made of gold wire, studded with delicate golden flowers with jeweled centers. Other vines in other designs and color combinations lay next to the woman’s foot. Apparently, you slipped these up the heel of your shoe. The ad read, “Walk in ever-changing beauty. Shoe Jewels by Nocturne,” and listed a web address. “Nice ad, cool idea,” I had to admit.