Killer Heels (13 page)

“Honey. That’s why they call it Deep Throat,” Cassady assured her.

“My brother insists Pat Nixon was Deep Throat.” Tricia said it with the pained smile of someone admitting to a great family scandal. And given that her brother had recently registered Democrat, I guess it qualified.

“Okay, I have to leave before I start imagining the Nixons having sex in the Rose Garden. Thanks for lunch, I’ll call you.” I blew them both kisses and headed out, hoping that I was on my way to piecing together a story as opposed to making a fool of myself.

Fortunately, Stephanie and I talked pretty frequently and emailed even more often, so it wasn’t a complete shock to her for me to call and ask if I could stop by. I hedged about giving her a reason on the phone and I think that intrigued her.

Femme
is two buildings down from
Zeitgeist
and as the cab passed our building, I had this little palpitation of guilt, as though Yvonne could see me hunched in the back of the cab, looking up at her window to see if she was looking down at me. A fragment of song from childhood bounced through my head: “I looked back to see if you looked back at me at the same time that you looked back to see if I looked back at you …” Now that I suspected Yvonne, did Yvonne suspect that I did? It actually gave me goosebumps to consider it.

I met Stephanie Glenn five years ago when we were both writing for a mercifully short-lived magazine called
Sonic
. Brent Carruthers, this absolute freak who had been born into a maple syrup fortune, decided he was going to justify his existence by redefining New York culture. He had some theory about investing in cool businesses and then ensuring their success by pumping them in the magazine.

He threw a lot of money around and got people very excited, so excited that they didn’t notice that he really had no idea what he was doing. The magazine was more an experiment in how many fonts could be crammed onto a single page before it imploded under the weight of its own pretension. Then Brent had to go into rehab and we found out how much of the maple syrup money had already been soaked up, and we all went and got other jobs having put out a whole four issues in nine months. But I met some cool people, so it wasn’t a complete waste.

Stephanie landed at
Femme
shortly thereafter and had done a great job of ascending there. She was a contributing editor now, had a wonderful reputation, and had been on
Today
three times. As her assistant, an overly perky young man named Rico with two piercings in his left eyebrow, showed me to her office, I found myself honestly without envy about how well she was doing. I find that’s a pretty genuine reading on how much I like a person.

Stephanie hopped up from her desk to greet me as Rico showed me in. Her office was lovely—not the corner but close to it, spacious, airy, Queen Anne desk, fresh flowers on the credenza, classic view of Lexington Ave. Good for her. She came right at me, arms open wide. Stephanie’s short and bouncy and rarely still, but it’s infectious, not grating. She’d gotten a perm since I’d last seen her and her dark blonde hair was a surprising mop of curls.

“I love your hair,” I said as we hugged and she led me over to her couch.

She poked at it, wrinkling her nose. “I lost a bet.”

“At least you didn’t have to shave it.”

She rolled her eyes. “We were about two shots short of that. So, this is such a nice surprise. Did Rico offer you something to drink?”

“I’m fine. And I don’t want to stay too long, I know you’re busy.”

She shrugged. “Nothing breathing down my neck. What’s up?”

I hesitated. I should have given my opening statement more thought on the way over, determined in advance how much information I could offer Stephanie. I was just going to have to feel my way along. “Did you hear about Teddy Reynolds?”

Stephanie sucked her top lip behind her bottom teeth and nodded. “I got an email from Francesca and I figured it was some ugly rumor, but then I talked to Mike Russell over at the
Post
and he checked it out for me. It happened right there in your offices?” I nodded and she shuddered. “Who found him?”

“I did.”

“Ohmigod.” Stephanie grabbed my hand and shuddered again. “Are you okay?”

I nodded again. “I’m just trying to make sense of it all.”

“Of course.”

I took a deep breath. “Yvonne’s taking it pretty hard.” I paused, trying to read Stephanie’s reaction.

Her top lip disappeared again and she nodded. “I can imagine.”

I proceeded cautiously. “I’m trying to figure out … the best way to deal with her and I thought you worked with both of them over here and maybe you’d have some insight …”

Stephanie nodded vigorously. “Did you know they were sleeping together?”

I couldn’t help it. My eyebrows leapt up of their own accord and I squeaked out, “Really?”

“That’s the whole reason he followed her when she moved to you. I mean, he’s—he was—good at his job and all, but they wanted to be close to each other.”

There’s such an amazing difference between thinking something and hearing someone else say it out loud. When it’s just a thought rattling around in your head, you can dismiss it. It has no weight, no form, you can convince yourself that you made the whole thing up like Jacob Marley born out of the chunk of undigested potato. But then someone else says it and it takes on a painful, undeniable solidity and you’re staring your mortality right in the face.

“You look shocked,” Stephanie said, patting my hand. “Sure you don’t want Rico to get you something?”

“No, no, I’m fine. You know, I suspected, but I just wasn’t sure …”

“They were very discreet, I’ll give them that. And Yvonne gets the credit for that because everyone knows Teddy’s such a dog.”

I nodded, picturing the condoms in the drawer unrolling themselves and floating around like little ghosts. Don’t the French call the orgasm
la petite mort
, the little death? Not that this was really the time for pondering that cultural puzzle. “Right.”

“I had my suspicions when they were here, but I only know for sure because Yvonne and I were at this wretched charity thing to keep the rainforest from killing the baby whales or something and we both sneaked off to the bar during the after-dinner speech and got polluted. It was actually great fun. You know, trashing old bosses and complaining about writers—not you, of course—and all that good stuff. But then she takes this sudden weepy turn about love and the meaning of life and she winds up telling me way too much about Teddy and their sex life and how he keeps cheating on her but she always lets him come back. It was pretty amazing. Total buzz kill, though.”

“Speaking of cheating, do you think Teddy’s wife knew?”

Stephanie thought a moment, then chose her words carefully. “Yvonne seemed to think she knew in theory, but not in specifics, you know?” Stephanie tilted her head thoughtfully and her lip tucked back in behind her teeth. “But maybe that changed.”

Another vote for Edwards’ theory. I wasn’t sure there was any point in defending Helen to Stephanie. “How long ago did you and Yvonne get soused?”

“Maybe three weeks.” Wow. Current events, not history. So if Helen had just found out … Or if Teddy had decided to end it … Or both …

“How long had it been going on?”

Stephanie shook her head. “It started when they were working here, that’s all I know. Oh. And that at first, they only did it when they were out of town. Fashion shoots, that kind of thing.”

“St. Maarten?” I ventured.

Stephanie thought a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, we did a big travel-fashion combo issue and the main shoot was down there. Would’ve been about the right time. But after a while, they started justifying why they could do it in town.”

In town, in the office, I was trying so hard not to visualize any of this. “No wonder she’s taking it so hard.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she took to her bed with a load of pills and a crate of tissues.”

Sounded pretty appealing to me, too. In fact, I needed to stand up before curling up on Stephanie’s sofa and weeping for a while proved irresistible. Why did I feel like crying? Stephanie had given me the information I needed, but I felt like she’d taken something away from me. What had I lost? Hope? Deniability? I needed to go.

I squeezed Stephanie’s hand. “This helps. A lot.”

“You want me to call her? Obviously, I won’t tell her we talked, but some extra sympathy at this point can’t hurt, right?”

“You mean Yvonne, not Helen, right?”

Stephanie blanched. “God, I didn’t even think about Helen. Isn’t that awful. I should call her, too.”

“I’m sure they’d both appreciate it.” I stood and Stephanie stood with me. “Thanks.”

“Sure. I mean, I can’t imagine how you must feel, having found him and all. I think it’s great that you’re thinking of Yvonne at a time like this.”

I forced a smile. If Stephanie only knew in what context I was thinking of Yvonne. “Like I said, I’m just trying to make sense of it.”

Stephanie walked me to her office door. “You know, when you do make sense of it, it would make a great article.”

My smile grew a little less forced. “Really?”

“Really. I wish we could publish it, but I’m not sure whether it would go under ‘Beauty Tips’ or ‘New Spring Looks.’ But you should think about it.”

“Thanks,” I said, actually grateful to her for easing my guilt for coming to her under a not-completely-honest pretense. “I will.”

“But don’t tell anybody you heard it from me,” Stephanie added as I walked out. “I don’t want to come off as a gossip-monger. At least until after the funeral.” She gave me a crooked smile to make it clear she was uncomfortable with the joke she was making. At least she felt like she could make one right now.

I walked back to the office, Stuart Weitzmans and all. I needed the air—which was full of that ripe apple crispness that we get sometimes in October if the wind is just right and the rain hasn’t started—and I needed the time. And I needed to decide what to do next.

What I didn’t need was an absurdly large bouquet of flowers on the middle of my desk when I walked back into my office. Since I work at home a lot, precious office space is otherwise allocated and I lay claim to a desk near Yvonne’s office. I don’t keep much on it and I quite often find other people’s junk all over it when I do come in, so I had a moment of hope when I thought the bouquet might belong to someone else. That’s how messed up my head was: I looked at a hugely expensive floral arrangement and hoped it wasn’t for me. But seriously. Flowers at this point could only mean trouble.

Gretchen hurried over to meet me at my desk. “I’m so glad you came back. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get these to you if you didn’t and I couldn’t imagine carrying them on the subway.”

“Cab. It’s the only way,” Kendall announced as she walked up. Kendall seems like a nice person, pretty smart, but she takes a strange pride in never smiling. Perhaps it’s out of respect for the two inches of lipstick that she trowels on every morning, always in some deep earth tone that looks like something Starbucks scrapes out of their pots at closing. But since dark gray is the bright end of her wardrobe’s color range, the lipstick works. Maybe it isn’t a fashion thing. Maybe she just hates us all. But she was probably right about the cab.

“Yeah, the cab,” I said, mainly because they were both looking at me expectantly so I felt I should say something.

But they didn’t care about the cab. “Who are they from?” Gretchen asked.

Getting flowers at the office can be a very cool thing. It’s an excuse to announce to everyone that it’s your birthday or you have a new boyfriend or you’re having great sex with an old boyfriend—all sorts of happy things. But there was no way this bouquet was good news. After all, whom could they be from? Even if Edwards could afford such a mongo display, he didn’t seem the type to go this far to get an apology accepted. And as painful as it was to admit, I had to: There was only one other guy who could be sending me flowers right now.

“Peter,” I told them after I opened the card and confirmed my suspicion.

“Is he your boyfriend?” Kendall asked. Without a smile, the question was as grim as I felt.

“We’ve been seeing each other.” I smiled when I answered, thinking it might scare her back to her desk. She just nodded like I was passing on the great teachings of our beloved ancestors.

Gretchen buried her nose in the flowers and breathed deeply. “Must be going well,” she said with heavy-handed wistfulness, in case there was any chance we’d forgotten things weren’t so hot for her right now. She even sighed as she withdrew her face. She actually had pollen on one cheek from the day lilies.

I brushed her cheek off rather than responding. “Pollen,” I explained.

Kendall leaned in to inspect Gretchen’s cheek. “Your blush is all messed up now,” she reported with a sidelong glance at me. The news seemed to distress Gretchen greatly, because she excused herself and hurried off to the ladies room. Mercifully, Kendall followed her.

I sat down and read the card again. R U OK? PETER. The only thing more distressing than Peter trying to be sincere was Peter trying to be cute. And Peter trying to be cute to cover up his lack of sincerity just took the cake.

I called him. What choice did I have? I had to acknowledge the flowers at the very least. And I couldn’t exactly leave him dangling while I figured out the murder and Edwards and everything else. I did have an emotional investment here, though the market seemed to have softened significantly in the time Peter had been out of town.

Not that the call was all about doing the right thing by Peter the boyfriend. This was also Peter the operator, and I had to figure out what exactly he was up to. Big flowers at the office were not his style. He wanted something.

“Dinner tonight. I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’re free.” I’d reached him on his cell, on his way to interview some baseball player whose name I was clearly supposed to both recognize and revere. Strike two.

“I might be able to make myself free.” I had nothing on my calendar except solving Teddy’s murder, but he didn’t need to know that.