18
You can’t blame Cassady for screaming. The terror of a homicide detective pointing his gun at you can only be diminished slightly by the fact that he’s wearing nothing but boxers. And you can’t blame a homicide detective for reacting instinctively when he’s jolted awake by an intruder.
I didn’t think to tell Kyle—the detective formerly known as Edwards—that Cassady had a key to my apartment and an understanding with the doormen which meant she was capable of appearing unannounced. And there was no way for me to tell Cassady that Kyle was going to be there in the morning because I was still marveling over the fact that he was there at all when I fell asleep and didn’t wake up again until Cassady started screaming.
When I heard her scream, I instinctively rolled out of bed, which was not the nicest thing to do to my wretched shoulder, and wrapped myself in a sheet. For a moment, I thought I was having another Vicodin dream, given the sight of semi-nude Kyle drawing down on Cassady who looked about ready to throw up on her exquisite Gianfranco Ferre black brocade jacket and flouncy skirt.
Kyle lowered the gun and that seemed to make Cassady feel a little better. I sank down on the foot of the bed and that made me feel better. Kyle and Cassady both turned to me for an explanation.
“She has a key. He has a gun,” was all I could come up with.
“We figured that much out ourselves,” Cassady replied.
“Bet I can count on you to fill in the rest, too,” I warned.
Kyle didn’t say anything, he just started collecting his clothes from various points on my bedroom floor. Cassady took advantage of his turned back to waggle her eyebrows at me as lasciviously as possible. I tried not to smile, but I couldn’t hold it back completely. She rolled her eyes and leaned against the doorjamb.
“Would you like some privacy, Detective Edwards?”
“I’m fine, thank you, Ms. Lynch.”
“Cassady, this is Kyle. Kyle, Cassady.”
“So we’re all on a first-name basis now. How nice.” Cassady rolled her eyes again and stuck out her hand, but Kyle was in the middle of pulling on his trousers and not in a position to walk across the room. He nodded to her and she settled for nodding back. “Well. This is such a nice and cozy way to start the day, I hate to spoil it. But we do have a funeral to attend.”
I actually found the thought of the funeral easier to handle than the thought of getting up and getting dressed for it. My shoulder was really starting to ache, especially when I glanced at the clock radio on my bedside table. “It’s only seven thirty, Cassady.”
“I had no idea how slowly you’d be moving this morning, and we promised to meet Tricia early in case she needed last-minute help.”
“We did?”
Cassady’s eyes slid back over to Kyle. “I’m sure some things from last night are a little hazier than others.”
Kyle refrained from commenting or looking at Cassady and pulled his shirt on. “I’ll meet you at the church.”
“You’re coming to the funeral?”
“On business.”
“Ooh, are we going to flush out the killer in the middle of the service?” Cassady said, only half-jesting.
“No ‘we,’” Kyle replied in complete seriousness, which was somewhat undercut by his search for his shoes and socks. “Your job, Ms … . Cassady, is to sit on Molly and make sure she doesn’t run up to the pulpit and exhort the killer to give himself up or do anything else that even smells like investigative work. My partner and I will take care of all that.”
“Including the exhortation?”
“Especially the exhortation.”
Cassady started to make another smart comment, but there’s something about the sight of a detective slipping on his shoulder holster that subdues your drive to make jokes. “I’ll take care of her,” Cassady promised instead.
“Thank you.” He clipped his badge on his belt and reloaded his pockets with his wallet and change and all that junk men jingle around. He grabbed his jacket, kissed me quickly but persuasively, and said, “Be careful.”
“You, too,” I murmured back.
Cassady stepped out of the doorway to let him pass and he gave her a half-smile of appreciation. She smiled back and watched him leave the apartment so she could spin on me the moment the door closed behind him.
“Dish. Now.”
“I need help getting ready for the funeral,” I dodged, not quite ready to share yet.
“You didn’t have any trouble getting naked, why do you need help getting dressed?” Cassady scoffed.
“I had help getting naked,” I assured her.
“You cannot tease me and then not dish. It’s not proper etiquette.”
“But watching Kyle get dressed is,” I countered.
She smirked. “I was captivated and couldn’t turn away. He’s very nice.”
“Yes, he is.”
“So dish.”
“No.”
Cassady looked at me hard, her eyes widening in surprise, which is not an expression you see on her face very often. “Oh, no. He’s got potential.”
“I have to take a shower.” I headed for the bathroom, still wrapped in my sheet. Cassady stomped on the edge of the sheet to stop me.
“You can’t get your shoulder wet.”
“Then I’ll take a bath. And then you can help me get dressed.”
“I get to pick what you’re wearing? That’ll be fun.” Accepting the momentary brush-off, Cassady turned to my closet. I went into the bathroom and took one of the most awkward baths of my life. I broke my wrist in PE when I was in seventh grade—a moment in which gravity tried to take control of the sport of pole vaulting and, for the moment, won—and I had to shower with a trash bag taped around my forearm for four weeks. My shoulder was a little more difficult to isolate, but I managed. Listening through the door to Cassady’s scathing color commentary on my wardrobe helped.
I did have to break down and ask for Cassady’s help in washing my hair. I wrapped myself in a towel and stuck my head in the sink. My main concern was squeezing the two of us into my tiny bathroom which really is nothing more than a water closet, emphasis on the closet part. It wasn’t until Cassady’s hands were on the back of my head, pushing my head under the water, that I realized I had bigger problems.
“Tell me!” she laughed.
“Amazing!” I sputtered.
“How much potential?”
“Substantial. Real.”
“This is too delicious for words. Tricia will have a cow.”
Tricia couldn’t have a cow if you paid her. It’s not part of her genetic makeup. Tricia is someone who has kittens. And right there on the church steps, she had kittens as Cassady described with great vigor walking in on Kyle and me.
“Oh. Oh. Oh,” Tricia squeaked.
“What’s more,” Cassady said, “she says he has real potential .”
“I knew it!” Tricia exclaimed triumphantly. “Oh, how wonderful. This is so exciting!” She hugged me, swerving away from the injured shoulder at the last second, a gesture I appreciated since I had chosen to forgo my morning Vicodin in the interest of staying sharp at the funeral and reception. “Not to minimize the shock and horror of your being shot, Molly, but I’m very happy for you.”
“Thanks.”
“I take it there’s been no progress on that front?”
“The wheels of justice turn more slowly than the wheels of romance,” Cassady suggested.
“Don’t we have a funeral to go to?” I asked.
In our darkest moments, don’t we all wonder about the crowd our funerals will draw? In my episodes of bleakness, I lean toward about fourteen people in metal folding chairs with flaking paint in a church basement with bad fluorescent lighting and exposed pipes.
It would never occur to me to imagine the epic scene that was unfolding for Teddy’s service. For starters, St. Aidan’s is a great old stone church, a classic Gothic church, with vaulted ceilings, elegant lighting, and solid wood pews. It pr
obably even has a nice, warm, beautifully appointed basement.
Then there were the people. Tricia had gone up to the choir loft to check on the musicians, but Cassady and I tucked ourselves into a niche in the narthex, close to the open front doors, to watch everyone arrive.
We were just this side of a theater premiere, with town cars and limos disgorging movers and shakers dressed in elegant black outfits, ranging from business suits to cocktail dresses. I don’t think many people in this crowd had dressed with church in mind; everyone was thinking about the reception.
People paused to hug or air-kiss on the church steps, then made their way through the narthex for more relatively quiet greetings, then into the sanctuary. There were presidents of ad agencies, reps from our biggest advertisers, editors and advertising directors from other magazines, newspaper people, fixtures on the charity circuit, and a couple of overwhelmed and unfamiliar folks who were probably members of Helen’s or Teddy’s families. It was a fascinating parade of predominantly powerful people, but I kept watching all of them thinking, which ones did he sleep with and which one killed him?
Which brought me back to Yvonne. It seemed odd to be doing this without Yvonne. It seemed odd to consider doing this again in a week for Yvonne. I bowed my head and dashed off a quick prayer of thanks that no one had to do it for me. This week.
Cassady nudged me. “You all right?” she hissed.
I lifted my head. “I’m praying,” I hissed back.
Cassady blinked slowly. “Tell Him you’ll call back. It’s time to sit down.”
We walked down the side aisle and found seats not far from a little knot of Zeitgeist people. I caught Kendall’s eye and waved discreetly. Kendall tapped Gretchen and Fred, on each side of her, to get them to turn and acknowledge me. Fred looked doped up and Gretchen looked ill. I couldn’t blame either one.
Helen was the essence of dignity when she rose to address the congregation. She didn’t weep, but you could tell she was working hard not to. I glanced around to see if Kyle and Lipscomb had arrived yet. This was sincere, not a performance, and I wanted to be sure they saw it, but I couldn’t spot them in the crowd.
I turned my attention back to the service. I tried to appreciate the music, to absorb all the lovely things that were being said about Teddy, to ignore The Publisher’s hideous tie while he made his remarks, but I couldn’t concentrate. My mind kept going back to Kyle and the night before, but I couldn’t think about that in church. That was asking for lightning to strike me. Or maybe I just didn’t want to analyze it at all when the thrill of it was still so fresh that I could feel it.
I forced my mind in a different direction and it started spinning, turning the puzzle pieces over and over, looking for the one that would make it all fit together. Teddy. Teddy and Yvonne. Teddy and Yvonne and me. And money. And Camille. And Alicia. And Will. Will didn’t seem capable of killing, but I would have said the same about Yvonne two weeks ago. If Yvonne killed Teddy, had Will killed Yvonne because some deal had ruptured? Had all his eggs been in the Teddy basket and when the bottom had fallen out, he’d blamed Yvonne? But then how had he come to take a shot at me? Maybe I hadn’t been as subtle about my investigation as I thought I’d been, but I hadn’t exactly strewn bread crumbs from MePa to my front door. Was Will the key to all this? Had I been wrong about Yvonne? Had I been out of my mind to think I could figure this out at all? No. This was going to make sense.
I still hadn’t figured it out when we reached the Essex House. I let Cassady steer me to the Grand Salon. The room was stunning, just enough solemnity in the flowers and linens to convey the seriousness of the occasion, but not so much that it was depressing. Tricia had done a spectacular job of getting the room dressed beautifully with such little notice, and if I managed to see her in the course of the proceedings, which I doubted, I would have to tell her so.
Cassady pushed me through the crowd, which was growing louder and looser by the moment. Give them all a drink and someone would start the game of “Remember the time that Teddy …” and there would be a lot of forced laughter and melancholy merriment and then we could all go home. Parking me in a fairly central spot in the room, Cassady told me to stay put while she went and got us drinks.
As wonderful a job as Tricia had done, there was still something about the Art Deco setting and its overly rich, autumnal colors that gave the proceedings a staged quality, or more precisely, a nightmarish quality of bent reality and crumbling facades. I should have taken another Vicodin and let things be even more warped, but I could feel the answer nibbling around the edges of my brain and I didn’t want to do anything to startle it away.
That task fell to Peter. I was trying to build my house of cards with Will as my centerpiece when a voice in my ear intoned, “Man is the only animal that contemplates its own death. And then throws a party to celebrate it.”
I turned to face him, surprised. “I didn’t remember seeing you on the guest list.”
“Nice to see you, too,” he replied. He offered me a mimosa and I took it automatically. “I’m here on behalf of the staff of Jazzed.”
“Thanks for pinch-hitting.”
“It’s as much out of a desire to see you as to pay my respects to Teddy. Are you okay?”
I wasn’t sure how much he knew. I would have shrugged, but I figured that would hurt too much. “It’s been a long week.”
“The cops still hassling you?”
“Not since I got shot.” I couldn’t resist. I just had to see the look on his face, that look of sheer shock that a guy who spends all his time trying to be one up on the next guy doesn’t get much practice using.
“What?”
“Someone took a shot at me last night. I figure somebody put a hit on the whole magazine and is picking us off one by one. We should have a staff retreat at a deserted summer camp in the Poconos and make it easier on the poor psycho. Or maybe The Publisher is just trying to cut down on overhead.”
“The police think this is connected to Yvonne’s and Teddy’s deaths?”
“Leaning in that direction.”
“Molly, this is amazing. What happened?” The final nail in the coffin. Excepting Kyle, that is. No more misgivings. A guy who really cared about you would say, “This is terrible,” or “I’m worried about you,” right? This guy flips open the reporter’s mental notebook and starts taking notes.
Cassady saved the moment by returning with more mimosas. “Hello, Peter. Pleasure to mourn with you.” She indicated the entrance with a toss of the head. “Kyle and his friend are here.”
We all turned to look and saw Kyle and Detective Lipscomb moving along the perimeter of the crowd. Peter looked back at me quickly. “Kyle?”
“Detective Edwards from Homicide,” I said, deliberately misunderstanding his tone. “The one who questioned me yesterday.” Was that really only yesterday? Amazing.
Peter was looking at me hard with that pinched brow look guys get when they’re trying to decide how much dignity they can bear to part with in order to get the information they want. Peter wanted to know about Edwards’ transformation to “Kyle” but he didn’t want to make himself vulnerable by asking. I looked around the room to give him a moment to finish the struggle.
Helen was standing across the room with a knot of people including her sister Candy and a male version of Candy who could only be their brother. People drifted up to Helen, hugged her or shook her hand, exchanged the proper statements of sorrow or comfort and moved on. It looked like it was sucking the lifeblood out of Helen ten cc’s at a time. I wondered when I should go over and decided to wait, even though it would have given me a good reason to walk away from Peter.
There was a knot of Zeitgeist people near Helen—Fred, Kendall, and Brady with some of the editorial staff. I was surprised not to see Gretchen with Fred and Kendall since they had seemed to be propping her up as they walked down the aisle after the service. Maybe she’d gone to the bar.
I scanned the room, half-looking for Kyle
again, and I spotted Gretchen. She wasn’t getting drinks, she was talking to a group of women. One I recognized as Hilary Abraham, a fashion account manager at Femme. I didn’t recognize the others. But I recognized what they were all looking at. Gretchen was wearing the shoe jewels from the Nocturne ad and the women were all exclaiming over them.
The freight train that had hit me when I got shot hit me again, but this time it was pure emotion. The pure emotion of watching the bars fall into place as a slot machine rings up a jackpot. Gretchen was wearing the shoe jewels. Gretchen knew about the shoe jewels. So Gretchen knew Will. Maybe Gretchen was even Will’s girlfriend. And as a devoted assistant, she had approached Teddy and asked him to help them out and he’d said no, so she’d killed him. I wasn’t sure how that led to Yvonne getting killed or my getting shot, but I was certainly going to find out.
I started to walk away and Peter, who had been talking about something while I hadn’t been listening, grabbed my arm to stop me. Fortunately, it was my left arm, but I still got him to let go with one withering glance. I handed my champagne glass to Cassady and said, “I’ll be right back.” Then I took Peter’s face in both my hands, kissed him good-bye and said, “It’s been fun. I hope you meet someone wonderful this afternoon,” and walked over to Gretchen.
The group was so involved in Gretchen’s explanation of how the shoe jewels were made and how they could be fitted to almost any pair of high heels that they didn’t see me coming. I walked right up to them and tapped Gretchen on the shoulder. “Excuse me, but I need to ask you a quick question,” I said. Gretchen threw a glance at her captivated audience. “Won’t take a second,” I told them. “Don’t go away, you can have her right back.”
I stepped back three paces and Gretchen came with me, less than willing. “What do you need?” she asked curtly, impatient to get back to what I’m sure she considered a bevy of potential customers.
“I need to know why you shot me.”
Killer Heels Page 25
