Killer Heels

by Sheryl J. Anderson

  The St. Regis is one of those stunning places with high ceilings and glistening floors that make me feel like my face is dirty and my hair isn’t combed, no matter how swanked up I am. “I dunno. Heaven could look like this. The streets are paved with gold, aren’t they?”

  “I’m not going to engage you in theological debate.”

  “Not without a cocktail, anyway.”

  “And it’s only three o’clock, so that’s not an option.”

  “It’s always five o’clock somewhere in the world.”

  “Aren’t we both here because we have work to do?”

  “You’re done. You’ve already scratched this off your location list. But I’ll tell you the real reason we can’t have Teddy’s reception here. This is where he brought his mistresses and where Helen busted him on it.”

  Tricia’s face spun into a spiral of disgust, then righted itself. “So she has some revenge scenario in mind that she wants to enact at the reception?”

  “Thing is, she doesn’t actually seem the type. It might be more of a case of quiet satisfaction that she’s honoring him at the scene of his crimes and only she and the mistresses know.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “So’s cheating on your wife. Wanna have a little fun?”

  “Are those related thoughts?” Tricia looked a little alarmed.

  “Maybe you do need a cocktail.” I stood and she followed, but I didn’t take her to the bar, I took her to the concierge desk. “Yvonne is very anxious to talk to you about the plans for Saturday,” I warned her on the way.

  “I told Helen I’d have something to go over with her at the end of the day, I’ll call Yvonne as soon as Helen signs off. What are we doing?”

  “You’re being sweet, innocent, and insightful and I’m digging around in the mud. Only it won’t seem so dirty because you’ll be so sweet, innocent, and insightful as a diversion.”

  Tricia rolled her eyes. “It won’t be the first time I’ve been a beard. Not even the first time at this hotel.” I made a mental note to revisit that statement, but we’d reached the concierge and it was time to focus.

  “Good afternoon, ladies. How are you today?” The concierge spoke in the mashed and clipped tones of someone who would rather die than admit he’d grown up in Brooklyn. The nametag on his custom suit read “Paul,” but it was a safe bet he’d been called Paulie until he was at least fifteen. But that was far behind him now that he was attending to the needs and wants of people with obscene amounts of money. I thought he pulled it off nicely, but I’m a big fan of sleek Mediterranean types, on an aesthetic level anyway. Tricia, whose tastes run WASP-y by definition, was less impressed.

  “Paul, I need your assistance with a difficult, delicate matter.”

  “Of course.”

  “Our brother was often a guest in your hotel. He just …” I paused for effect and Tricia sniffed, right on cue. I tilted my head slightly so she wasn’t in my field of vision before continuing, “ … passed away.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Paul said evenly.

  “We’re trying to tidy up his affairs, and I use that word deliberately, Paul. We want to spare my sister-in-law any hurt possible.”

  “I understand,” Paul said. This didn’t seem at all unusual to him. I guess there were plenty of people in the city with enough loose change to spend hundreds of dollars for a tryst. My thought was, if you’re going to shell out half a grand for an afternoon of pleasure, go shoe shopping. At least you take something tangible home with you.

  “I’m not sure if he had an account with you or how he was handling the billing, but it’s a bill our sister-in-law doesn’t need to see.”

  “A delicate situation, to be sure.” Paul’s polite smile never wavered, but nothing else moved either. He wasn’t exactly leaping at the opportunity to be of service.

  Tricia opened her purse, slid her hand in, back out, and onto the counter of Paul’s station in one fluid movement. It took me a moment to realize that she had her hand over a bill, but Paul knew what she was doing right away. He put his hand next to hers and they executed the transfer like Houdini and his wife passing a key. Before I knew it, Paul had pocketed the money, Tricia had closed her purse, and we were in business.

  Paul placed his hands on the keyboard of the computer that nestled discreetly in the corner of his station. “Let me see what I can do. His name?”

  “I believe he used the name Marquand when he was here.”

  Paul thought a moment. “I don’t recognize that name.” He typed, waited, then shook his head. “We haven’t had a guest by that name since the first of the year, anyway. A more extensive search would require my speaking with my associates in Accounting.”

  Tricia stepped in delicately, probably tallying how many associates in Accounting would need bribes, too. “Perhaps we got the name wrong,” she said more to me than to Paul.

  “If he came here often and was a gentleman of distinctive demeanor, or had a particularly memorable lady friend …” Paul offered.

  Given the choice, I bet on the fact that Paul would remember Camille over Teddy. “His most recent lady friend is very tall, very lovely, very Scandinavian.”

  “She looks like a model,” Tricia said with as close to a wink and a nudge as Tricia is capable of giving.

  Paul worked to keep a straight face, no doubt dictated by the employee handbook. “Could you mean Mr. and Mrs. Maarten?”

  “Yes,” I said quickly, thinking of Camille’s mangled pronunciation and of the MAARTEN printed on the back of the picture of Teddy and Yvonne. The picture. I’d forgotten about the picture. I started rooting around in my purse. “Absolutely. I must have misunderstood.”

  “Camille—that is, Mrs. Maarten—has a bit of difficulty pronouncing it.” We both looked at him in surprise, but he kept that impassive expression in place. “I find it charming.”

  “You know who she is,” I confirmed.

  “And we are the soul of discretion. Though the staff here at the St. Regis uniformly salutes your late brother on his … success.”

  I found the picture in my purse and laid it on the counter for Paul’s inspection. I wanted to be sure Camille wasn’t in here with multiple partners and confusing things. “This is my brother—”

  “With your sister-in-law. Yes. I’ve met her as well.”

  I felt like I was holding a compass that had suddenly swung south. I tapped the picture. “You’ve met her?” It wasn’t Helen that Camille had encountered, it was Yvonne?

  “The real Mrs. Maarten, as she referred to herself, yes. It was an unfortunate incident and I would rather not divulge—”

  “You were here the day she caught Camille and Teddy together.”

  “Yes. Your sister-in-law is a memorable woman. I also remember because she mentioned to him, quite forcefully, that he had never brought her here and she was very upset about that. Which I took as a compliment to our hotel.”

  Tricia smiled at him. “And I’m sure that’s exactly what she had in mind.”

  “Did you see my brother Monday night?”

  “No, ma’am. And I would have, had he come in. He always checked in with me.”

  Always looking for that something extra, I’ll bet. “Is there an account we need to attend to?” I asked.

  Paul stepped out from behind his station. “If you’ll just give me a moment.”

  We nodded and he hurried over to the front desk. There was bound to be a lot of whispering and snickering, but it didn’t look like it was going to cost us extra. “How much do I owe you?” I muttered to Tricia.

  “Nothing.”

  “Tricia—”

  “I’ll put it on Yvonne’s bill.”

  “There’s a certain poetic justice in that.”

  “So let me get this straight. Teddy brings Camille here, Yvonne finds out and busts him, but as far as we know, Helen stays out of the loop.”

  “And then Teddy invites Yvonne here, probably thinking he can make it up to her, but he winds up
dead.”

  I looked around at the thousands of dollars worth of fresh flowers in the lobby alone, the exquisite furnishings glittering regally under all the chandeliers, the intensely rich people coming and going, all to the accompaniment of Gershwin tunes being played on a grand piano back in the bar. Exceptional, but to die for? Or kill for?

  “Why’d she wait a week to kill him?” Tricia asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he pleaded for a second chance.”

  “Do you think he got it and blew that, too?”

  “Could be. I think I have her ‘Dear John’ letter in my pocket.”

  Tricia growled in vexation. “Why do you keep mentioning the good stuff as an afterthought?”

  “I’m not sure what the note says. I need to reassemble it.”

  “They have very nice tables in the bar here. Let’s go.” Tricia grabbed my wrist and made to march me off to the lobby bar, but Paul returned at that moment.

  “Thank you for waiting, ladies. Your brother’s account is handled by a third party.”

  “That wouldn’t be Zeitgeist magazine by any chance, would it?” I asked.

  “You didn’t hear it from me,” Paul cautioned.

  So Teddy was cheating on the boss and billing it to the company. Talk about living dangerously—and paying for it. We thanked Paul profusely and moved off to the bar. This counted as an acceptable reason to start drinking early.

  We picked a table near the piano, figuring that the music would cover our conversation, hushed though it was. Tricia felt that the landmark status of the hotel demanded a classic drink and ordered a vodka gimlet. I suspected we had a rough evening ahead of us and ordered Glenfiddich neat.

  I’d been twisting so many mental puzzles around in my head that it was actually soothing to have a physical one to spread out across the table. Whoever had torn up the note had done it very precisely so all the pieces were about the same size. Tricia called Cassady and told her to come meet us, listened to a lot of guff about the bar at the St. Regis not being Cassady’s kind of bar, then buckled down to help me move the tiny pieces around until we started to get a sense of what Yvonne had written.

  We were just finishing the reconstruction when Cassady arrived. We could tell she was approaching from the way all the businessmen lifted their heads from their drinks for a moment, like lions around the watering hole catching a new scent in the air. And she wasn’t even dressed up. It’s one of the reasons she doesn’t like this kind of bar—you can’t exactly slip in unnoticed, you have to walk right through the middle of everybody. Not that Cassady doesn’t like being noticed sometimes, but most of the time she can’t be bothered.

  She gave us each a quick kiss on the cheek, sat down, and sniffed our drink glasses. “What’s going on here?”

  “The ambiance demanded it,” Tricia explained.

  Cassady beckoned to our waitress, ordered Grey Goose on the rocks, and held her arms out to the sides. “Am I supposed to roll up my sleeves next?”

  “We actually have it almost put together,” I told her. Tricia brought her up to date as I carefully laid in the last few pieces of the note.

  “I knew you were on the right track with Yvonne,” Cassady said when Tricia was done.

  “But the reasons might be more complicated than I thought,” I warned, scanning the completed note.

  “They can be downright medieval as long as you get the right person. Court-ordered psychiatrists will take care of the rest,” Cassady assured me.

  “So what does it say?” Tricia asked.

  We all hunched over the note, pressed as closely together as possible, lab partners all trying to peer into the microscope at the same time. The note read:

  Dear Teddy,

  This has to stop. I can’t allow it to continue. I have given you ample fair warning but you have persisted and left me no choice. I’m not happy about this decision, but I can’t see any other answer. Forgive me. In my heart, I will always be—

  Yours, Yvonne

  I walked us through it. “So she gives him this note and his answer is to tear it up and put it back in the music box with the cardkey. He wanted her to meet him here and give him one more chance.”

  Cassady shook her head in disagreement. “Seems like an awkward way to fire someone.”

  “Fire?” Tricia and I looked at each other, making sure we both found that a ridiculous interpretation.

  “She’s not going to fire him, she’s going to break up with him,” Tricia explained.

  “She’s going to kill him,” I corrected them both.

  “You think this is a death threat?” Cassady asked. “You’re jumping to that conclusion because you know what happened.”

  “Read the note,” I responded. Problem was, while Cassady read the note again and tried to imagine it coming from the killer’s point of view, I read it again from the point of view of a boss forced to fire a friend and lover for embezzlement and, possibly, other infractions. It worked both ways. Then I read it a third time with Tricia’s more romantic interpretation. That worked, too. Damn.

  “So who’s right?” Tricia asked.

  “Maybe we’re all right,” I suggested. “They aren’t mutually exclusive feelings. Maybe the combination pushed her to homicide.”

  Cassady hummed thoughtfully. Tricia clapped her hands quietly. “Good work, Molly.”

  But was it? Something about this wasn’t right. There was still a piece missing. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Since I didn’t respond, Tricia turned to Cassady. “Didn’t she do a good job, Cassady?”

  Cassady jingled the ice in her drink for applause. “A little free in her handling of evidence, but a good lawyer will be able to work around that. As long as the cops are scrupulous once she hands it over.”

  “Cops?” I echoed automatically, still searching to identify what was nagging me.

  “You’ve already gone above and beyond, you don’t have to arrest and try her by yourself, Molly. We have people who are paid to do that. I hear some of them are even intensely cute.”

  Edwards. Was I ready to talk to Edwards? It all added up in my head, but when I thought about telling him, I felt more nervous than I’d been with Garrett. It was even more important that Edwards buy my story than Garrett. So I had to nail down this extra piece first. As my mother always said, “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.”

  Shoe. The ad. That was it. That was the missing part. If Yvonne suspected Teddy of financial impropriety, why wasn’t she telling Brady that? Why was she giving Gretchen time to try and straighten things out? Did she really not know that he had been skimming or kicking back or whatever was going on with that ad? Was she hoping to protect Teddy out of guilt after his death? Or was Yvonne involved too and hoping that, if third parties “discovered” the problem, she could blame it all on Teddy and walk away unsullied?

  “Have either of you heard of a company called Nocturne ?” Tricia and Cassady shook their heads and I described the product in the ad Brady had shown me.

  “What a terrific idea,” Tricia sighed enviously. “Don’t you hate that, when someone comes up with a cool idea that makes so much sense that you should have thought of it quite some time ago?”

  “Who’s behind it?” Cassady, ever the commerce maven, was already flipping through her mental Rolodex.

  “I don’t know.”

  Cassady took her little Coach leather notepad and Tiffany silver memo pen out of her purse and scribbled down the name. She asked me for the name of the ad company, too, and wrote that down. “Let me make some inquiries.”

  “‘Inquiries’ is so much more ominous than ‘phone calls,’” Tricia observed.

  “Same thing, I just bill ‘inquiries’ at a higher rate,” Cassady explained. She closed her notepad with the little flip of the wrist that she’d learned from Officer Hendryx Monday night and smiled. “This is pro bono, don’t worry.”

  “It’s about money,” I said with increasing certainty. “The love affairs might b
e part of it, added fuel to the fire, but this is about money.”

  Tricia nodded. “That would explain why she didn’t kill him when she caught him here with Camille.”

  Cassady was watching me with cool appraisal. “You need to call Edwards. You need to make him aware of what you know.”

  “For Helen’s sake,” Tricia added.

  “And for her own,” Cassady told her. “If she sits on this too much longer, we’re getting into obstruction and all sorts of other unpleasant areas.” She turned back to me. “You need to call him. Unless you really don’t think you’re right.”

  That last little bit was Cassady issuing a challenge more than giving advice. She said it because she knew it would cut through everything else and make me pick up the phone. Which I did.

  Tricia nudged Cassady. “Look. She has him on speed dial.”

  Cassady nodded in approval. “Every single woman in Manhattan should have her shrink, her colorist, her favorite restaurant, and a police detective on speed dial.”

  My mouth was suddenly dry. I took a sip of my drink and, of course, he answered the phone as I was swallowing. But as I choked, I realized it wasn’t him. “Homicide, Lipscomb.”

  I tried to find my voice and my cool, but both were pretty shaky. “Detective Lipscomb, this is Molly Forrester. I spoke with you—”

  “Yes, Ms. Forrester. What can I do for you?”

  “Is Detective Edwards available?”

  “I’ll see.” Detective Lipscomb put me on hold and I couldn’t help imagining Edwards standing right next to him, the two of them counting off some male-endorsed amount of time before Lipscomb picked the phone back up and told me Edwards couldn’t talk to me because he’d had time to think about how stupid he’d been to kiss me and he didn’t have time for these complications and would I stop—

  “Detective Edwards.”

  Oh. I really had thought he wasn’t going to take the call. “Hi, it’s Molly Forrester.”

  “Hello.” It was neutral, but it wasn’t cold. So far, so good.