Killer Heels (32 page)

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.”

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.