Killer Heels

by Sheryl J. Anderson

  There’s an acrid quality to the air of a police station; probably all those years of flopsweat and anguish get into the wallboard and don’t come clean. It was a relief to be out in the noise and dirt and stink. I give Gershwin a lot of credit for listening to the city and coming up with Rhapsody in Blue. Maybe New York was quieter in those days, but it’s still a pretty magical transformation. I tried to hum it to calm myself as Cassady and I hurried down the steps, but then a cab stopped in front of us, its rider got out, and I choked.

  Peter came rushing over as though I needed mouth-to-mouth. Yeah, that was going to happen. I only coughed for a moment, long enough to embarrass myself, not endanger myself. “Molly. I came as soon as I heard.”

  I wanted to ask “Why?” but what came out was “Heard?”

  “A friend was down here, saw you come in with detectives, thought I’d want to know.”

  I wanted to ask why again, but on second thought, I didn’t want to get into that discussion. I was exhausting myself trying to look at most of the people I knew on at least two different levels—that facets concept that had seemed so intriguing and entertaining when I was pitching it to Garrett Wilson—and at the moment, I had neither the strength nor the patience to add Peter to that list.

  “Anything I can do?”

  “It was just an interview, Peter. They’re not carting her away,” Cassady interceded.

  “You here as a friend or a lawyer?”

  “You here as a friend or a writer?” she zinged back. God, I love my friends. I could’ve hugged her, but that really would have confused Peter.

  Peter played the hurt card, ignoring Cassady. “I came because I was worried about you, Molly. The last time I saw you, a police detective needed to talk to you. And now—”

  “Same detective, different body,” I explained. “You heard about Yvonne?”

  “I’m very sorry,” he nodded. I was sure it was the talk of every other magazine staff in the city. What the hell are they into over there?, stuff like that. And more than a few people shaking their heads mournfully, then making sure their resumes were up to date and ready to mail. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How about I take you home?”

  “How about you take no for an answer?” Cassady snapped. Wouldn’t that be a sight—Cassady taking Peter apart on the precinct steps. She’d win, no question.

  “No one has to take me home or do anything for me,” I mediated. “I’m going back to work. I have things to do, promises to keep, all that nonsense.” I avoided looking at Cassady because she knew I was talking about keeping my meeting with Will and she still didn’t approve. I looked at Peter instead and tried to make it a look of sincerity.

  “How about dinner?”

  “I don’t know, Peter.” Meaning I didn’t know when I’d have the energy to give him an appropriate kiss-off, but it wasn’t going to be tonight.

  “I really am worried about you.” He chose not to look at Cassady either, probably as leery of her reaction as I was.

  “Thanks. I’ll call you.”

  His pride kept him from pushing any further. He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender and backed away. “Okay. Talk to you later.” He hurried up the precinct steps. So had he come to check on me and was going in to check on my story or was the whole thing a song-and-dance? I felt dizzy.

  “I’ve just about had it with men today,” I told Cassady as we hailed a cab.

  “Learn to live with them. I tried to give them up once and the withdrawal symptoms are pretty ugly. Cats, vibrators, sensible shoes …” She mock-shuddered and a cab stopped. Small wonder. A twitch from Cassady can stop traffic.

  She dropped me at my office and pledged to be back for me at two o’clock since there was no way I was going to Will’s alone, especially now. With Yvonne gone.

  I couldn’t believe Yvonne was dead. I was glad that I didn’t have to see her body, since the image of Teddy’s body was going to be with me for the rest of my life, but it did make her death a little more abstract. All along, it had been weird enough to contemplate that something had gone down that was worth one person being killed. Now there were two. This was unreal. Surreal. Screwed up.

  My feet got me back up to the office without my brain having to participate in the process, thankfully. I half-expected to find a sign in the elevator that the eleventh floor had been quarantined due to contagious murder and the elevator would no longer stop there.

  But it did stop and my feet took me to my desk where yet another delight awaited me. Conversation stopped as I entered the bullpen. Cassady stops traffic, but I stop talk. Only because when last seen, I’d been carted away by homicide detectives, but it was nice to have an impact. For about ten seconds. Then it creeped me out. Kendall and Gretchen were watching me like they had to hold each other back from rushing to me and inundating me with compassion. Wouldn’t that be fun.

  “Thank you all for your concern,” I said to the bullpen at large. “It’s nice to be back.”

  I plopped down at my desk. I should immerse myself in my job, right? Isn’t that what the Puritan work ethic demanded? Work hard and everything else will be all right. How many stress-related heart attacks does that explain?

  I’d immersed myself all the way up to the first knuckle on my big toe by powering up my computer when Gretchen and Kendall descended. “Do you need anything ?” Kendall asked, sounding more like a hospice nurse than an assistant.

  “A husband, children, big house in Connecticut, and a job on the Times,” I suggested. “I can take care of the rest.”

  Apparently, it came out more snarky than I’d intended because Kendall burst into tears. I would’ve felt bad if Gretchen had cried, but I was also pretty used to that by now. But Kendall in tears was alarming. I had never seen her express emotion of any kind and to see her blubbering because I’d mouthed off was just the extra helping of guilt that I needed right now.

  “Kendall, I’m sorry. This is no time to joke, is it,” I said, getting up and easing her into my chair. Kendall put her head down on the desk and I awkwardly patted her heaving shoulders. Gretchen stood next to me, staring into space just past Kendall.

  “How you holding up?” I asked, hoping I wouldn’t send her over the edge, too.

  Gretchen shrugged but it took an effort to raise her shoulders that high. “Pretty unbelievable.”

  “Yeah. You really should go home.”

  “I can’t. I’m afraid to be alone.” My heart broke for her. I was haunted enough by the image of Teddy’s dead body, but I found him dead. She’d seen Yvonne die. I couldn’t imagine.

  All the department heads had met with The Publisher to figure out what to do and emerged with the edict that we should go ahead with Teddy’s service on Saturday and a separate one would be planned for Yvonne after The Publisher had a chance to talk to her family. I hadn’t even thought about her service. No one asked me to get involved with Yvonne’s and I was happy to lie low and escape notice.

  Once Kendall got her crying under control, I apologized again and persuaded her to take Gretchen downstairs and have a cappuccino on me. I also whispered to Kendall that she needed to convince Gretchen to go home. I sat back down at my desk and tried to focus on the latest letters to arrive, but it was hard to concentrate. I doodled diagrams on a legal pad with lots of arrows pointing back and forth between Teddy and Yvonne and money launderers or cocaine kings or evil geniuses bent on world domination. It wound up looking like bad art, but not like a solution. With any luck, that would come from meeting Will.

  16

  “I don’t like the fact that we’re going to a neighborhood where so much blood has been spilled,” Tricia said in the cab. She was working her thumbs back and forth on the handle of her Miu Miu crocodile handbag like she was praying a rosary.

  “First of all, it’s bovine blood. Secondly, find me a blood-free neighborhood on this island,” Cassady challenged.

  “It’s just so … fresh in MePa,” Tricia re
plied, gazing out the window. She had called me twice the night before to ask me not to go see Will. Since I was soaking in the tub, I let the machine pick up. By the time I got out, there was a third message from her, saying that she understood why we still had to go and she hoped her understanding wasn’t her undoing.

  I have to agree with her to a certain extent. The fact that the slaughterhouse district is the new cool place in town is a little unnerving, on an aesthetic and symbolic level if nothing else. I’ve had friends explain it in terms of the dynamic forces of a limited real estate market, but it’s still odd.

  The cab let us off in front of a scruffy neighborhood bar and grill with an exhausted awning that read VINNIE’S GRILL. Next to the grill’s entrance, a deeply battered door—with no buzzer installed yet, much to Cassady’s relief—led us to a narrow staircase that took us up to Will’s place.

  There was a doorbell barely discernible under three or four generations of paint. I leaned into it, unsure it had worked until I heard footsteps approaching and deadbolts turning.

  Will peeked out around the safety chain. “Cassie?”

  I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder at Cassady and said, “Yes.”

  Will opened the door to admit us. Walls had been knocked down to create more of a loft space but the light was awful. Nobody painted in here. Not even their walls, which looked like cheap wallpaper had been stripped off and discarded, but further redecorating had been delayed. Cleaning had been going on, though. The whole place smelled of bleach.

  Despite the bad light, the far corner of the room had been draped and lit as a basic backdrop for photography. I wondered if Will had taken the picture for the ad himself. The camera equipment looked pretty expensive. No wonder he had no decorating budget.

  There was another work area in the other corner of the room, a couple of tables covered with large soft cloths with tools and cardboard boxes resting on them. I wanted to go take a peek, but knew I had to choose my moment.

  “These are my associates,” I said, groping for cover names, “Marcia and Cindy.”

  “So shouldn’t you be Jan?” Will asked with a sly smile. I was so busy scoping out the room, I hadn’t taken a good look at him until now. He looked to be in his late 20s, tall, muscular, his wavy hair more auburn and less red than Alicia’s, with compelling brown eyes. But with all the practice I’d had ignoring Edwards’ eyes, I was ready for Will’s.

  “Oh, she is, believe me,” Cassady answered.

  “We get that a lot,” Tricia pitched in.

  Will shifted nervously from foot to foot. “So how can I help you? You didn’t say much on the phone and I haven’t been able to get a hold of Alicia to ask her.”

  Good girl, Alicia, thank you. “We’re designing a new line of scarves and we need a really splashy ad to help us launch the company.”

  “You’re just starting out?”

  I nodded, figuring if I could mold our “story” along the lines of what Gretchen had told me about the shoe jewelry people, I might appeal to the same instincts that had gotten him to work with them while he was doing whatever he was doing with Teddy and Yvonne and parties yet to be uncovered.

  He nodded back. “I know how tough that can be. I’m in a similar situation myself.”

  “Maybe you have some tips on lining up capital that you’d like to share,” Cassady suggested.

  Will turned to her suddenly. He didn’t seem to like that idea at all, but he quickly covered his reaction with a laugh. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “Such a pain when you have to be the creative one and raise the money, too,” I said, and he turned back to me with a nod. The three of us were slowly dispersing across the room and it seemed to bother Will that he couldn’t watch all of us at once. He was a man with something hidden. Or, perhaps, something he wished was better hidden than it was.

  “So we were looking for something simple but dramatic. Maybe a great picture of one of our scarves …” I gestured grandly, my hands moving through the air like a scarf floating to the ground. I should have picked something more dynamic than a scarf.

  Will nodded, wheels turning, getting into the idea. “Where are you placing the ad?”

  “We’re aiming for like Marie Claire, Zeitgeist, we’d so love to get into Vogue,” I said, pretending not to notice the way he perked up when I said Zeitgeist. Tricia and Cassady drifted through the room behind him. He kept glancing at Cassady, surprise, surprise. Using only an eyebrow, I pointed Tricia toward the worktables. I’m not sure what I was hoping she’d find, but the simple fact that the tables were covered up was intriguing. Tricia understood what my eyebrow was trying to say and drifted that way.

  Will glanced back to me. “That’s serious cash.”

  “Yeah, we’re going to have to choose one, go with a single insertion.”

  “Even then.”

  “We’re hoping someone will give us a break.”

  He nodded briskly. “You know anyone at any of those magazines?”

  “Don’t I wish. Do you?” I put an eager spin on it, trying to build a bridge between our supposedly common plights. It’s the easiest way to get people to confide in you, that recognition of a kindred spirit.

  He paused a little too long before saying, “Kind of a friend of a friend deal maybe, but nothing we’ve been able to make work yet.” He was hiding something, I just had to figure out what.

  “Really? Where?”

  Connections are currency in New York. Just look at Tricia and Jasmine. Most people look for an opportunity to brag about whom they know at cool places like magazines, galleries, publishing houses. The fact that Will was again hesitant to speak made me gleeful. Now, if only what he was hiding was something I needed to know and I could find a way to pry it out of him …

  “Zeitgeist,” he admitted.

  Oh. My. God. “Really? Who?” I asked with a fake smile. Please, God, let him be our missing piece of the puzzle.

  He backtracked instantly. “Like I said, a friend of a friend, I mean, I know some of the people on the ad staff, but I’m not in tight enough to help you—”

  “Oh, no, no, I’m not asking you to.” Brady? One of the account managers? Or had he known Teddy and he was being smart enough not to refer to him in the past tense?

  “These are beautiful,” Tricia enthused from the far corner. Will whipped around to see Tricia holding up a heel jewel like the one I’d seen in Will’s ad. She’d pulled back the cloths to reveal a jeweler’s workbench with a number of heel jewels in various stages of completion. “What are they?”

  Will hurried over and gently but emphatically removed the piece from her hand. “It’s shoe jewelry. You slide this up the heel and change the whole look and feel of your shoes. The way you might change earrings after work, you slide these on and office pumps become nightclub shoes.”

  “Is this one of your clients?” Cassady asked.

  Again, Will debated his answer first. “I actually have an interest in the company.”

  “It’s such a fun idea. Are they in stores? Where can I get some?” Tricia enthused.

  “We’re trying to get them in some boutiques, but we wanted to start web-based because of capital but the website’s still under construction and we haven’t placed the ad. Yet.” A dark thought crossed his face and he pulled the covers back over the work. “We’ve hit some funding snags.”

  Which is why the ad that he’d essentially made for himself wasn’t paid for. But how did that tie in to Teddy and Yvonne? If one of them was his connection at the magazine, what else had gone wrong that they wound up dead?

  “Have you shown these to your magazine connections, the friend of a friend at Zeitgeist?”

  That was that. I pushed too far. Will went to a dark place and it didn’t look like he was going to come back any time soon. “I think you should leave.”

  “But we haven’t talked about our ad—”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “But we’ve got a deadline an
d you said you did, too.”

  Will gave us all a quick and scathing once-over. “I’ve got problems of my own and I really can’t afford to spend time with midtown dilettantes pretending to be entrepreneurs. You need to leave now.”

  Cassady was offended just on principle. “Will, you’re making a huge mistake.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time. Wouldn’t even be the first time this week. Good-bye, ladies.” He marched to his door, flung it open, and gestured for us to exit.

  “We could pay for the ad up front if it would help your situation—” I offered, not completely sure where we’d get the money, but trying to keep us in the room with Will.

  He wavered for a micro-moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know that anything can help my situation. Good-bye.”

  I would have loved to have pulled an Agatha Christie “let me explain it all to you” on him, but I didn’t have it all strung together yet. We had no choice but to leave.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I had a thought. “Thirsty, anyone?”

  We ducked into Vinnie’s, a dingy but pleasant neighborhood joint complete with red and white vinyl tablecloths and insufficient lighting. We bought iced teas and sat at a table at one of the front windows, so oily and pitted with age that it slightly warped our view of the street. But sure enough, moments after we sat down, Will came pounding out onto the sidewalk and raced around the corner. We left our drinks on the table and hurried to follow him.

  The key to tailing someone is, I’m sure, maintaining a low profile yourself. We weren’t dressed for it, we were certainly in the wrong shoes for it, and there were three of us. Not ideal conditions. But we did round the corner onto West 14th in time to see Will disappear into a cab.

  “Follow that cab!” Tricia yelled, not that we were anywhere near a cab of our own.

  Cassady sighed. “Must you?”

  “It seemed appropriate. And I’ve never been in a circumstance where it seemed appropriate before.”

  “What a shame.” Cassady swung her disapproving look to me. “You don’t mean to follow him, do you?”

  “We’ve already lost him. But we should get back.”