I’ve never experienced anything like it. I could see in her eyes that I was right and the thrill that it sent through me was akin to great sex, but there was a vindication element to it that made it completely different. It was intoxicating and could be, I sensed, highly addictive.
“I … didn’t …” Gretchen faltered.
“Isn’t that interesting. You didn’t go for the innocent, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Molly,’ because you do know I was shot. You’re going straight to the basic denial, which I think translates to—”
“Excuse us, please,” Kyle said as he grabbed my arm and walked me away from Gretchen without warning.
“No!” I protested.
He pulled me close so he could speak quietly. “What’re you doing kissing Crew Boy?”
“I was dumping him!” I turned back, but Gretchen was already melting into the crowd. “Stop her!” I called, but the room was loud and no one paid attention. I turned back to Kyle. “Gretchen did it. Did at least me. She’s getting away. Let’s go.”
“What?”
I shook my arm out of his grasp and plunged into the crowd. I figured she’d have to try to run, which meant she’d head for the main entrance. I kept my head down, avoiding eye contact and trying not to stomp on feet. I could hear Kyle behind me, calling my name and trying to get me to stop, but I couldn’t. I had to catch Gretchen.
Kyle caught up with me as I raced for the front door of the hotel. Scanning the lobby on the run, I explained, “It’s Gretchen. Teddy’s assistant. She’s the missing piece. She did it. All of it, probably. It wasn’t passion, it was business. I don’t have it all laid out yet, but we have to stop her.”
Kyle looked at me hard, then listened to some inner voice and nodded. “Okay.”
Problem was, no one at the front door had seen anyone matching Gretchen’s description in the last few minutes. Kyle said that meant she could still be in the hotel. “You go back into the reception and stay there. Lipscomb and I will look for her.”
“I need to talk to her,” I insisted.
“You need to stay out of harm’s way,” he said, marching me back toward the Grand Salon.
“I can help,” I promised.
“Molly, please. Let me do my job. You’ve already done enough.” I wasn’t sure whether the last comment was a compliment or a complaint, but decided this was not the time to ask for clarification.
We got back to the Grand Salon and found Cassady and Tricia, who had been looking for me, and Lipscomb, who had been looking for Kyle. Kyle gave Lipscomb a quick rundown and they took off to try and find Gretchen elsewhere in the hotel. His parting words to me were, “Stay here.”
“So are you staying here?” Cassady asked as soon as the detectives were out of sight.
“Of course not,” I replied.
“Molly, you can’t do this,” Tricia pleaded. “You have a nice detective and a nice bullet wound which all makes for a nice article. Quit while you’re ahead.”
“Yeah, right.”
Tricia sighed and looked at Cassady. “I had to try.”
Cassady kissed Tricia on the cheek. “I know. You stay here and take care of the event. I’ll go with her.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Expect me to stay here and work while I worry about both of you.”
“Just try to cover our tracks, I don’t know who else from the magazine might be involved,” I told her, starting to back away toward the front doors.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to Will’s. We’ll call you,” I said with a casual tone that surprised me.
“What about Kyle?”
“He’ll only tell me no. I’ll call him from there.”
Cassady and I ran as best you can run in three-inch heels, which is basically that hideous locked-elbow, sway-backed mincing run made famous by high school cheerleaders, all the way across the lobby and into the first available cab.
“I can see how some might find this fun,” Cassady said when she caught her breath.
All I could wish for was, “Let’s hope it stays that way.”
19
I figured the cab ride to Will’s apartment would be long enough for me to develop some clever plan to trap Gretchen and get her to confess to me, rat out everyone involved, and have it all make sense by the time I got her back to Kyle. I could’ve used a couple more red lights.
Cassady and I told the cab to let us off around the corner, but other than the fact that it was imprinted on my consciousness from the Quinn Martin television series of my childhood, I’m not sure why. The theory was, any element of surprise would be helpful, I suppose.
But I’m not sure who was more surprised when we collided on the sidewalk—Will or us. Will was dressed for travel, with a distressed leather jacket over jeans and a sweater. He was wearing Doc Martens and carrying a duffel bag and a smaller leather satchel. His jeweler’s tools, probably.
He blanched when he recognized us and tried to push past us, but Cassady took a self-defense class last year and enjoyed it a little too much. She grabbed his shoulders, kneed him in the groin, and dropped him like a sack of mulch. The duffel and the satchel went down with him. The satchel clanged, confirming my suspicions of its contents. It took him a moment to catch his breath, but as soon as he could vocalize, he groaned, “None of this was my idea.”
Cassady groaned. “You gotta love a man who goes the distance.”
“Where’s Gretchen?” I asked.
“Upstairs. Packing.”
“What?”
“She came home from the reception and said you’d figured it all out and we had to pack quickly and run. So I threw a bunch of stuff together, but she’s up there folding stuff and taking her time, so I say we gotta go and she says she’s hurrying and I say I’m outta here, but now we’re totally screwed.”
We watched him curl up into the fetal position and give up. “You okay with him?” I asked Cassady.
“Sure. I still have another knee, but he’s all outta nuts,” she assured me.
I tossed her my cell phone. “You should probably call Kyle. And Tricia.”
“I won’t tell Tricia she was second.”
I started for the stairs, then stopped as a crucial question occurred to me. “Will, does she still have the gun?”
“I threw it in the sewer. Not that I had anything to do with it. She just told me what she did and showed me the gun and I freaked and threw it in the sewer.”
Cassady looked like she was considering kicking Will while he was down. She leaned down to make sure he could see the disgust on her face. “Look at what she’s done for you—killed two people, tried to kill a third—and this is how you repay her? You’re the worst excuse for a boyfriend I’ve seen in the history of mankind.”
I left Will in Cassady’s capable hands and ran up the stairs. At the top, I wondered if there were other weapons I should have asked about, but it was pretty much too late now. I prayed for the second time that day and tried the door. It was open.
Gretchen was at the bed and what appeared to be all her worldly possessions were on it. She was folding garments carefully and laying them into suitcases, sorting and matching separates as she went along. When she was in a prison jumpsuit, this was going to seem like even more of a waste of time than it did right now.
“Will, I need the—” She stopped when she turned and saw I wasn’t Will. The silk blouse she was trying to fold slid out of her hands and heaped onto the pile on the bed. “Get out.”
“I’m sorry we got interrupted, Gretchen. You were about to explain to me why you shot me.”
“I didn’t.” Her eyes were moving around the room, maybe looking for weapons. At least that meant she didn’t have one handy. I had to keep her cornered and distracted.
“Yes, you did.”
“Will did it.”
“No, he didn’t, Gretchen. He’s down there on the sidewalk, weeping like a little baby and giving you up so fast. And he’s only talking to Cassady.
Wait till the cops get here.”
“Oh, God, they’re coming?”
“Yes, so tell me what happened and I’ll help you with them.”
“Are you sleeping with that detective?”
“Why?”
“Why else would you think they’d listen to you?”
“I’ll do what I can, Gretchen.”
She shifted her weight back and forth anxiously, her mind speeding through alternatives. If she didn’t have a weapon handy, there weren’t that many. Her fingers idly stroked the clothes on the bed, then she made a sudden run at the door. I lunged for her, pulling something in my injured shoulder that was going to hurt for a very long time, but managing to intercept her and knock her down. This Gracie ju jitsu instructor I dated briefly was all about leverage—emotional as well as physical, which is why it was brief—and I remembered his big thing was always taking your opponent’s feet out from under him. We rolled around on the floor in finest catfight fashion, smacking my bad shoulder on the floor a time or two which made me see stars, but I managed to pin her on her stomach, then put my heel in the small of her back for emphasis.
She struggled to regain her composure. “If you don’t know why I did it, then you’re not as smart as I thought you were and I didn’t need to bother,” she spat.
I rose to the bait, not because she’d gotten to me but because I wanted her to think she was in control of the situation so she didn’t develop the need to shoot at me again. “I figured out part of it. You and Will are a couple.”
“Oh, bravo,” Gretchen responded, “since the fact that I’m in his apartment packing my clothes has so many other explanations.”
“You wanted to go into business together. The shoe jewels. Which are a killer idea, by the way, pardon the expression.” I pulled the shoes off her feet and got off her, hoping that in her winded and barefoot condition she wouldn’t try to run again. “And Teddy said he’d help you.”
“That bastard.” She sat up, brushing herself off as much as possible.
“I always thought you kinda had a crush on him.” I sat down across from her, trying to keep this low key.
Tears sprang into Gretchen’s eyes. I was right, but something had changed. “I told him I’d do anything if he’d help us get our business started. We just needed a little boost. Do you know how many people see an ad that appears in Zeitgeist? Half a million people.”
“But you didn’t have the twenty grand. So what did Teddy want in return?”
Gretchen flushed crimson. In spite of everything I knew, my heart sank for her momentarily. The oldest currency in the world. Complicated by the fact that she’d had a crush on the guy. “You slept with him?”
Her flush deepened. “That’s just for the models and the executives. He just wanted me to … service him.”
“And you did it?” I asked, in confirmation, not in judgment.
She nodded, tears spilling over now. “Every time he asked.”
“And in return, he was going to pay for your ad.”
She nodded. “But the issue was getting ready to close and he hadn’t done it yet and I confronted him. And he laughed at me. He told me what I’d given him wasn’t worth twenty thousand dollars, so he wanted part of the company, too.” She dissolved into gulping sobs.
I could see it playing out a little too clearly for comfort. “That was Monday night?”
She nodded, pushing to her feet. I nervously rose with her, but she went to the small table in the kitchen area, grabbed the box of tissues, and blew her nose loudly.
“Okay. I get Teddy, but why Yvonne?”
She blew her nose again before replying. “It was stupid, especially because you were so sure Yvonne had killed Teddy. I should’ve let you just screw her up. But Will said we had to get the ad in or it was all over, we were out of money, out of time, everything. I tried to kite a check, but it didn’t work, thanks to Wendy, that bitch.” She pulled another tissue out of the box for the sole purpose of shredding it. “So I asked Yvonne to stake us or I’d tell Helen about the affair and maybe tell the police, too.”
“This was during your supposed shopping trip to Chelsea ?”
“I brought her here, so she could meet Will and see our work for herself.”
“But she said no.”
Gretchen’s face twisted horribly. “Are you kidding? Why would she just say no when she could be wretched and hateful instead? She told me that I was insane to think that I could run a business, have an influence. She said I was never going to be anything more than an assistant and not a very good one at that.”
I’d heard Yvonne say as much to Gretchen, so I knew Gretchen wasn’t exaggerating. And I remembered the smell of bleach when Tricia, Cassady, and I came to the apartment. They’d done their best to clean up, then Will had dropped Yvonne’s body and Gretchen, deliberately bruised, over in Chelsea and ditched the car somewhere. It was all adding up, but I still had trouble accepting it.
“But how did killing Yvonne help you? Brady still wouldn’t let the ad go through.”
“I didn’t exactly think it through, okay? I was taking it one step at a time. And that bitch was asking for it anyway.”
“Okay, Gretchen, she was a bitch, but that’s no reason to kill—”
“How could you understand? You’re doing what you want to do. People don’t treat you like office furniture.”
“There are a lot of people at the magazine who like you, Gretchen,” I attempted.
“That’s why I had to beg you to go shopping with me.”
“I had other things on my mind,” I offered, knowing it was lame even if it was true.
“You’re as bad as the rest of them. Did you ever suspect me of Teddy’s murder? No. I had access, I had opportunity, but you never even thought about me.”
“Are you complaining?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.
She went toward the sink to throw away her tissues and it took me a moment to realize what she had in her hand when she turned back around. It wasn’t a huge knife, but it didn’t need to be, given how angry and twisted Gretchen was.
“I could’ve killed you last night,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she was justifying her miss or sincerely explaining it because I wasn’t listening all that carefully, the knife proving to be a major distraction. “I should have.”
“I think it’s really important that you didn’t,” I told her, backing toward the door. “It’ll show the jury that you have the capacity for mercy. And remorse.” Not that that was going to do much for two counts of murder, but we didn’t need to get into that at the moment.
Gretchen wasn’t buying it anyway. “Yeah, right,” she said and ran at me, full force. I tried to scramble back to the door and get out, but I didn’t have time. I threw my hands up instinctively, not thinking about how much it was going to hurt my shoulder and forgetting until the moment that the knife sliced down into them that I was still holding Gretchen’s shoes. The knife buried itself in the left shoe and wouldn’t come free. I used the leverage to yank the knife out of Gretchen’s hand, then swung the other shoe as hard as I could and pump-slapped her in the side of the head. I knocked her off her feet and literally sat on her until the front door banged open and Kyle ran in, gun in hand.
Even though my shoulder felt like it was about to fall off, I held up the shoe with the knife sticking out of it. “Such a shame. They were great shoes.”
20
Dear Molly, I recently went through an experience—well, a series of experiences that were pretty traumatic. But they were pretty exciting, too. The problem is, I’m not sure what to do now that they’re over. And I’m not sure how to separate my feelings about what happened from my feelings about the people I met during them and vice versa. Truthfully, I’m worried that the feelings might go away now that the experience is over. Or maybe I’m more worried that they won’t. What’s the best way to clear my head and figure out what comes next? Signed, Still Spinning
Cassady raised her glass in t
he air. “If I may quote Dorothy Parker, ‘Three be the things I shall never attain, envy, content, and sufficient champagne,’” she proclaimed, charging our glasses with more bubbly.
It was Sunday, just after noon, and Tricia, Cassady, and I were having brunch at Sarabeth’s on the Upper West Side. The restaurant is decorated like an old country inn and that, combined with the eons you spend in line waiting to get in, really makes you feel like you’ve gotten away from the city for a moment. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be far away, I just wanted to be distracted for a while, get a little emotional distance at least.
Tricia had wanted to round up all of our friends and have a big party to celebrate my “capture” of Gretchen, but it was too soon and I wasn’t sure it was something I wanted to celebrate anyway. I felt immense satisfaction, but no joy. The whole thing was far more tragic than I had ever imagined it would be when I first stumbled over Teddy. As exhilarating as it was, it had been exhausting, too. So a champagne brunch with my two best friends seemed the perfect way to mark the day. The day after, to be precise.
“What a week,” Cassady sighed.
“Thank God it’s over,” I admitted. “My therapist is in for a big surprise tomorrow.”
“You’re going to write such an amazing article,” Tricia enthused.
I nodded slowly. I was looking forward to writing the article, but I was also looking forward to having more champagne and not thinking about anything else for the rest of the afternoon.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” a voice said, and we all turned in surprise to find Kyle standing beside us. He was carrying a plain white-handled shopping bag that I found intriguing and incongruous.
I hadn’t seen much of him after he burst into Will and Gretchen’s apartment the day before. He’d had work to do and I’d had to give a statement and it all got very crazy and not very pleasant as the reality of it all settled in, so I went home and took my belated Vicodin, turned the bell off on the phone, and shut the world out as long as possible. Since Cassady and Tricia both have keys, that wasn’t as long as it might have been. But I hadn’t seen Kyle again until now.
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