Danger in High Heels (18 page)

I was just putting the finishing touches on a doodle of a slingback with a studded ankle strap when I heard the front door open.

"That you?" I asked, peeking into the living room to find my husband. I stole a glance at his face, trying to gauge his mood. As in, did he know his wife had fled the scene of a crime that afternoon?

"Yep," came Ramirez's answer. "Sorry I'm late. I tried to call, but your phone went to voicemail."

I glanced up at the clock. I hadn't even realized how much time I'd spent doodling. It was after eight. "No problem," I told him. "I was just going to start dinner. Hungry?"

"Starving. I haven't eaten since lunch," he said, following me into the kitchen.

I bit my lip, hoping that finding a dead Russian in a motel room hadn't been the cause. "Rough afternoon?" I asked tentatively.

He nodded, pulling a beer from the fridge and cracking open the top. "Very." He paused, taking a long drag. "How was your afternoon? The kids give you any trouble?"

"Nope!" Mostly because they were with my Mom, but I didn't feel compelled to add that. "You make any headway on Irina's case?" I asked, steering the conversation away from my exploits.

But Ramirez shook his head. "No, I got called out on something else."

"Oh? Anything interesting?"

"Not really. Shooting at a motel in North Hollywood."

I froze. "Oh," I squeaked out. "Who?"

"Some Russian guy."

I turned away, sure my face had guilt written all over it.

"The police have any leads on the shooter?" I managed to ask, opening the freezer and studying the contents to avoid eye contact.

"Several witnesses saw a couple of women leaving the scene."

I closed my eyes, and felt my knees go weak. "They did?" I squeaked out.

"Yeah, but no one was close enough to get a description. Besides, the witnesses weren't real reliable. Couple of junkies and a prostitute."

I did a sigh of relief.

"You okay?"

I spun around. "Sure, yes, great. Why?"

He shrugged, taking another sip of his beer. "You just sounded funny, that's all."

"Nope. I'm fine and dandy. Great. Fabulous."

"Hmph," he grunted.

I cleared my throat. "Chicken or fish?" I asked, coming out of the freezer with two frozen meals as a clear distraction technique.

He paused, his eyes roving my face. And for a split second I thought he knew everything from my babysitter reliance to my body finding.

I did my best poker face, holding the frozen offerings in front of me.

But it must have just been my overactive guilty conscience, because a second later it passed, and he said, "Chicken."

I quickly pulled the entrée from the package and popped it into the microwave, keeping my back to him. My poker face could only last so long.

"You know, you're going to have to make this up to me sometime," he said.

I sucked in a breath and spun around. "What do you mean?"

"All the frozen meals. I know you're on a diet, but why do I have to suffer?" he asked, the hint of a smile in his voice.

I did a mental sigh of relief. "Tell you what," I said. "How about you learn to cook, and you can make it up to yourself?"

"I can cook," he protested.

I raised an eyebrow his way.

"What? I made myself toast this morning. And I made a sandwich for lunch."

I gave him a playful punch in the arm. "Yeah, you're a regular Iron Chef."

He pulled me in for a warm kiss that melted away any worrying I might have had. When he finally pulled away, I was hotter than the microwaved chicken.

"I'm gonna grab a quick shower before dinner," he told me. Then as he walked away, he shot a wink over his shoulder. "Feel free to join me if you want."

I bit my lip, stared at the frozen food. Then made a bee-line for the shower.

*  *  *

The next morning Ramirez woke up and was gone before dawn. The twins woke up colicky an hour later, and I woke up tired and still bathed in guilt over fleeing the murder scene and lying to my husband. I made a pot of coffee, fed both babies, and was just starting to feel human again when my cell buzzed to life on the counter. I grabbed it, checking the readout before I answered.

"Hey Dana," I grunted, my voice still gravelly with sleep. Or lack thereof.

"Seen the
Informer
this morning?" she asked, a hard edge in her voice usually used for yelling at her spin instructor.

Uh-oh.

"No…" I said, grabbing my laptop and tucking the phone under my chin as I pulled up the website.

There, splashed across the front page again, was Dana. This time Allie had somehow caught the two of us slurping down milkshakes at Foster's Freeze like they were going out of style. Above our images were the words "Dana Dashel Drowns in Dairy Delights."

I closed my eyes and thought a really dirty word. "Well, at least your hair looks great," I said.

"Did you read the headline!?"

I nodded. "She does have a thing for alliterations, doesn't she?"

"I'm going to kill her."

I didn't blame her. "I'll hold her down."

Dana sighed on the other end. "I can't live like this anymore. She's killing my career. Do you know what Lover Girl cosmetics did today?"

"What?" I asked, leaving the
Informer
and pulling up a Google screen.

"They asked if I was okay."

"And what did you tell them?"

"Well, that I was of course. But that's not the point. The point is they think I might
not
be okay."

"Well, you were photographed in Crocs."

"Oh, God, my career is over. Everyone in town thinks I've lost it. I'm going to be the laughing stock of Hollywood,"

"No you won't. No one will remember this in a day or two."

"Jennifer Aniston," she shot back. "No matter how happy she is now, she's always the girl Brad Pitt dumped. You know how many years ago that was?"

I shook my head at the phone. "Not really."

"Well, me neither. But it was at least five kids ago, if that gives you an idea of how long Hollywood's memory can be."

"I think you're overreacting just a little. I mean they just wanted to check on you," I told her as I scrolled through news stories, trying to see if there was any mention of our dead Russian.

"First the checking-on-you then the contract-dropping. I can't afford to lose Lover Girl, Maddie."

"Ah! Got it," I said, finding a story about the Bayshore Inn.

"Got what?" Dana asked.

"A story about our dead guy," I told her quickly scanning the article.

"What's it say?"

"That a body was found at the Bayshore. The guy's name was Vladimir Muskova. No mention of Irina or Katrina," I said, scanning the text. "The press must not have made the connection to the other murder yet."

"If there is one," Dana hedged.

"Oh, get this," I said, scrolling down the page. "He had a prior criminal record."

"For what?" Dana asked.

"I don't know. It doesn't say."

"I bet Ramirez could tell you."

I bit my lip. "I bet he could too. He'd also tell me to mind my own business and sleep on the couch tonight," I added.

"Right. Not the best option."

"Let me do a little more digging," I said, coming to the end of the article. "I'll call you back if I find anything."

Dana sighed, and I could hear her nodding on the other end. "Fine. I'll be here. With Allie stalking me, I'm not really in the mood to go out today anyway."

I made a few sympathetic sounds before hanging up. Max was fussing, so I dragged the laptop into the living room and set up camp on the floor between the babies' play mats. I typed with one hand while I dangled a stuffed elephant with sparkly ears just out of their reach.

Twenty minutes later, I was all googled out. I had completely exhausted any public internet records on one Vladimir Muskova.

My eyes strayed to an icon on my desktop. A police database Ramirez used when he did research from home. I did a quick angel-shoulder, devil-shoulder thing weighing the good of finding out the dead guy's connection to the dancing twins versus the bad of sneaking into my husband's files. Not surprisingly the dead Russian won out. I clicked the icon, doing a mental fist pump in the air when it turned out Ramirez's password was auto-saved, letting me right into the program.

I quickly typed my guy's name into the inquiry field, feeling like big red stop signs were going to flash on the screen at any minute, broadcasting proof of my intrusion to the entire L.A.P.D.

Luckily, the name spit out a record immediately. The database listed Vladimir Muskova, A.K.A. Vlad the Bad, as a smuggler. A smuggler of what, it didn't say, but he'd been arrested twice at the Canadian border, both times let go because of witnesses disappearing. I'd watched enough mob movies to know what that meant. I agreed with the nickname. Vlad was very bad.

I sat back, jiggling the elephant in Livvie's direction.

A smuggler visits Irina and fights with her. Then he visits Katrina. Then Katrina fights with her sister, and the sister ends up dead.

Then the smuggler ends up dead.

Were Katrina and Irina helping him smuggle something? Did something go wrong with the deal? If so, what? And who killed them? And how did buying votes on
Dancing with Celebrities
fit into all of this?

I didn't know. But I knew one thing. Of the three Russians, only one was still alive to answer my questions.

Katrina.

Chapter Fifteen

I called Mom, who was more than happy to take the twins again today. I dressed the gruesome twosome in matching outfits – Livvie in a pink, plaid ruffled dress with a ruffled diaper cover and Max in a blue plaid onesie with a pair of the most adorable teeny tiny denim jeans you ever saw – and loaded them into my minivan, dropping them, an enormous diaper bag, and enough milk to keep them fat and happy for the afternoon at Mom's house. Mom cooed and cuddled, and the twins giggled and gurgled back. I felt the slightest twinge that they all seemed perfectly happy to be spending the day without me. But I shoved it down, knowing that where I was going today was no place for kids.

My first stop was a two-story duplex off Wilshire, where I idled at the curb and texted number three on my speed dial.
out front. dbl parkd

Five minutes later, Marco came flying out the front doors. "Dahling, I'm so glad you called me!" he sing-songed as he hopped into the car.

He wore a pair of jeans that looked painted onto his slim frame, rolled at the cuff to expose a pair of ankles that I'm pretty sure were smoother than mine. He had a sparkly red tank on top, a pair of woven sandals on his feet, and a bright fuchsia scarf tied around his neck. "Inconspicuous" was clearly not in Marco's vocabulary.

However, with Dana on the down-low today, I needed new backup. And sparkly was better than nothing.

An hour in traffic later we were in the Glitter Galaxy's parking lot, the nude woman on their sign flashing down at us.

Marco blinked, taking in his surroundings as I cut the engine. "Uh, Maddie. You said we were conducting interrogations today."

"I said an
interviews
," I corrected him. "And we are."

"Then what are we doing here?"

"I need to talk to someone who works here."

Marco gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. "But, Maddie, it's a..." he leaned in, stage whispering. "...strip club."

"What tipped you off?" I asked, watching his face turn different shades of neon beneath the big, yellow nipple.

"There are naked people in there," Marco told me.

"I know."

"Naked
women.
" He shuddered.

It took all I had not to laugh at him. Instead, I put a sympathetic hand on his arm. "Honey, it's going to be okay. Just stick close to me and avert your eyes from the stage."

Marco nodded. He got out of the minivan, glanced up at the yellow nipple, and visibly paled.

"You could wait in the car?" I suggested, taking pity on him.

He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders. "No. I can do this. You've seen one va-jay-jay, you've seen them all, right?" he said, doing a forced smile.

I paused. "
Have
you seen one va-jay-jay, Marco?"

He looked back up at the nude lady in neon. "Just hers," he squeaked out.

I patted him on the shoulder. "Be brave. They're not that bad."

He nodded, steeling himself for the worst as we entered the Glitter Galaxy.

The crowd was thicker than last time, though I noticed some of the same guys sitting in the same spots. I hoped they hadn't been here since yesterday.