High Heels and Holidays (15 page)

“Wait!” Goodfellow came around the desk and put his hand on Saint Just's arm, then just as quickly removed it when Saint Just continued to look at him evenly. Coolly, even dispassionately. “I'm so sorry for your friend's trouble, and I'm guilty of giving completely the wrong impression, aren't I? It's just that . . . well, we've had so many incidents. Robberies. And we need every penny—well, every nickel, dime, and quarter, as we are Santas for Silver, aren't we,
ha-ha
. I'm . . . I'm
devastated
that your friend Sterling was injured in the cause. Is there anything I can do? He has our most heartfelt prayers, of course, but if there's anything else we can do, he has but to ask.”

Saint Just allowed himself a smile, a softening of his features. “Why, thank you, sir. Your kind concern is more than enough, Mr. Goodfellow, I assure you, and I'll be certain to convey your best to my good friend for his rapid recovery. Tell me—as I do so worry about Sterling—have there been many robberies?”

“Well, one other, and we think the volunteer was lying, as we smelled liquor on his breath when he came to report the loss,” Goodfellow said sheepishly. “But Sterling makes two, doesn't he? It's just the idea of it, you know? We simply can't afford losses, not with so many mouths to feed.”

“So you feed the poor?”

“Oh, oh yes, of course. Food, clothing. Anything we can do to help. Your friend Sterling is doing good works, sir, I assure you. Here, let me get you a pamphlet.”

Goodfellow gave Saint Just two pamphlets, as a matter of fact, and within a few minutes he was back on the street, a new costume in the paper bag, leaving behind him the impression, he most sincerely hoped, that he thought Santas for Silver was a jolly good charity, one that had his full support, as well as the twenty-dollar bill he slipped into Goodfellow's hand, apologizing that it wasn't silver.

Which actually might have been true, were it not for the avaricious gleam in Joshua Goodfellow's unguarded eyes as he'd watched the coins swirl about on the tray of the machine, then drop into the bags. Or the way the man had, once he thought Saint Just was gone, slipped the twenty-dollar bill into his own pocket as he winked at his personal assistant.

As far as clues went, that twenty-dollar bill traveled straight to Saint Just's already suspicious mind, stopping briefly at his anger, but then coolly moving on.

Reaching in his pocket for his cell phone, Saint Just then took out his billfold to retrieve a business card with a cell phone number scribbled on the back in thick black ink. Stepping under the awning of an electronics store, he punched in the numbers, hit
send
, and a few moments later said, “Mr. Campiano? Alexander Blakely here. A question if you please. You did mean it when you said I could apply to you for a favor? Thank you, sir, I knew I recognized a gentleman of honor when we first so happily met. I would much rather not bother you, make my own inquiries, but I'm afraid I'm rather involved with another pressing matter at the moment, and feel certain you will find my needs a simple matter.”

He listened for a few moments, then switched the phone to his other ear and smiled. “Yes, yes indeed. We most certainly are enjoying the fruit. . . .”

Chapter Fourteen

“G
lasses, napkins, paper plates. Ice. Condiments. This isn't so hard,” Maggie told herself as she inspected the informal buffet she'd assembled on the counter in the kitchen. She'd had parties before. Granted, they'd all been catered, soup to nuts. And this wasn't exactly a party, was it?

Definitely not to Steve, at any rate. She could feel him behind her, staring holes into her back.

“Look, Steve,” she said, turning around, holding a Ritz cracker in front of her like a shield, “Alex thought he was doing the right thing.”

“Yeah, I've heard that story a few times before, Maggie. He was withholding evidence.”

“But he didn't
know
it was evidence when he withheld it. He only thought he was protecting me.”

“And you're all right with that?”

Maggie hesitated, feeling defensive about Alex, and maybe about herself. “Yeah. Yeah, I'm at least sort of all right with that. He really can't help himself, Steve, it's just the way he's . . . the way he was made. Now come on, stop looking like the high executioner or something, the others will be here any minute.”

Steve took the cracker from her, popped it into his own mouth, then followed her into the living room just as the intercom buzzed twice, Socks's signal that someone she knew was on the way up. “You know, Maggie, we probably should find some time to talk sometime soon,” he said, looking—gosh, he looked sort of
guilty
, didn't he?

“Sure. About what?”
Not Alex, Steve
, she thought.
Please, tell me this talk is not going to be about Alex
.

“Uh . . . nothing much, it can wait. Somebody's already on the way up. I, um, I'm officially off duty, so I think I'll go grab a beer. You want anything?”

“No thanks,” Maggie said, frowning as she watched him head for the kitchen once more. Were his ears red? Boy, he was nervous. What was he so nervous about? She was the one who should be nervous. She was the one who had—well, he didn't have to know
that
, now did he?

At the sharp knock on the door, Maggie trotted over to open it and admit Bernie, who had two fully stuffed briefcases hanging from leather straps over her shoulders.

“This had better work, Mags. I haven't lugged this much work out of the office since I was an assistant editor,” she said, dropping the briefcases one after the other to the floor just inside the door. “Here,” she said, pulling a jar of cherries out of her purse and handing it to Maggie. “Just ginger ale, four ice cubes, a cherry and some cherry juice in a highball glass, okay?”

“A Shirley Temple? I used to get those when we went out for dinner—when I was a
kid
. You want me to make you a Shirley Temple?
Shirley
you don't.”

“Funny. No, sweetie, I want a Johnnie Walker on the rocks, but I'll settle for Shirley. Just so it looks good. It's nobody's business that I don't drink anymore.”

“It's not Bruce McCrae's business, you mean. Everybody else knows—and we're damn proud of you, Bernie.”

“Oh, please. Next you'll be patting me on the head and saying good dog, good dog—like I didn't piddle on the rug, or something.” She reached down and picked up the briefcases. “Where do you want these?”

“I don't know.” Maggie pointed to the coffee table between the couches. “Over there? Wow, those are all fan letters?”

Bernie hoisted the briefcases, then plopped them down heavily on the coffee table. “Nope. Just the bad ones. We forward the nice ones to the authors, toss the slams, and keep the hate mail.”

“Hate mail? We get actual hate mail? Not just unhappy mail—but honest-to-God
hate
mail?”

“Hate mail, wacko mail, die-you-bitch mail, you name it. Most of it isn't all that bad—amateur critics,
I'm-better-than-anything-this-gal-writes-I'll–bet-she-slept-her-way-to-the-top
idiots, way too many anal retentives who love to point out typos, and just plain unhappy people who need to get a life, I guess. We just don't let you authors see it, knowing how fragile your egos are.”

“Well, hey, thanks, I guess, although I think whoever screens this stuff missed a couple of slams over the years and they made it to me. And I quote, ‘You, Ms. Dooley, in your effete way, have only managed to contrive silly, flimsy, inconsequential murder mysteries that are little more than cheap paper stages on which to strut your creation's manifest superiority,' unquote.
Manifest superiority
—you gotta love that, if not the cheap paper stage. The guy must have used a thesaurus, and manifest means
to make real
, so hey, I was doing my job, right, since Saint Just
is
the focus of my books—so what the hell was he complaining about? And he went on, and on, and on like that.”

“Not that you're the sort of writer who takes letters like this seriously,” Bernie said, shaking her head.

“Yeah, right. I threw it away, if that counts.”

“Barely. Not when I know you probably obsessed over the damn thing for a week first. Don't ever listen to people like that, Maggie, listen to me. I'm the professional, remember? And, for God's sake, never write back to them. You didn't write back to this guy, did you?”

“No, of course not,” Maggie said as if the question was barely worthy of an answer, not mentioning that she'd actually wasted a full day writing three separate letters—one nice, one not so nice, one that should have been printed on asbestos paper—and only then threw all four letters into the garbage. Then again, there were still the nice ones that sometimes showed up and made her day. Like the e-mail she'd received via her Web site from Kay Ghram, a Kansas librarian, just about a week ago. God bless the woman, she'd written, “All your characters are so fleshed out and real, it's a wonder they aren't in your living room.”
Oh, Kay, sweetie, if you only knew . . . .

“I only write back to the nice ones, I promise,” Maggie told Bernie, snapping out of her reverie. “But what if someone is actually dangerous? You can't just file those letters or ignore them.”

“We send the worst ones to our lawyers, and they decide whether or not we need to contact the police. Oh, relax, Maggie, we haven't sent more than four or five to the cops since I've been at Toland Books. And three of them were from the same guy—he threatened all sorts of mayhem—and he was mad at Toland Books for turning down his opus, not one particular author. We have to take that kind of stuff seriously, you know.”

“What happened to the guy?”

Bernie smiled, pushing back her riot of red curls. “That's the funny thing. He went to some nice place with padded walls for about five years, and then wrote about the experience. I understand it was on the short list for an Oprah book last year.”

“You're making that up.”

“Am I? Oh, hello, Steve.”

“Bernie,” Steve said, looking at the briefcases. “What's all this?”

“Not love letters,” Maggie grumbled, and then opened the first briefcase. “Oh, jeez, this is going to take all night. How are they separated? They are separated, aren't they? By author would be great.”

“And much too easy,” Bernie said, gracefully collapsing on one of the couches. “They're divided by year, unfortunately. We keep seven years' worth, on the advice of counsel. I've got a folder in there for each year. After that, you're on your own.”

The buzzer went again, and Maggie decided to just open the door, then returned to the coffee table. “This was Alex's idea, Steve, because of something Bernie said the other day, some mention she made of fan mail. These are all letters to authors at Toland Books—the nasty letters. We're figuring someone could have sent one to Francis.” She eyed the open briefcases. “If we can find it in that mess.”

“Great idea, I guess, but I don't think the budget is going to stretch to putting a whole team on the single murder theory, chasing down all these letters. We're already stretching it with more cops up at CUNY, and the damn UN meets for a special session next week, and then the president is going to show up at the end of the week for some fund-raiser, and we all know what that does to the budget,” Steve said, sitting down on the facing couch and placing the can of beer on the tabletop.

“That's okay. We volunteered, remember? All of us.” Maggie opened the drawer of the table and pulled out a stack of coasters. She knew she'd forgotten something.

“Sorry, Maggie, I always forget,” he said, grabbing one and sliding it under the sweating beer can.

Alex doesn't
, Maggie thought.
For a guy used to servants, he's very neat
.
And what in hell am I doing—comparing men, measuring them by the way they treat my coffee table? That's just pitiful.

“Knock-knock,” J.P. said cheerfully from the doorway, Bruce McCrae standing close behind her. What, they were joined at the hip now? And J.P. was wearing actual clothes—a pale yellow angora sweater and well-cut dark brown tweed slacks, not one of her endless psychedelic running suits. Then again, Bruce was still in the same clothes he'd had on earlier. Did that mean anything? Oh, yeah, that meant something. J.P.'s triumphant grin meant even more. She didn't need to be a romance-cum-mystery writer to know there had been some definite boink-boinking going on.

Maggie blinked, trying to get rid of the mental image of J.P. and Bruce . . . okay, it was gone now, thank goodness. “Um . . . Steve? This is Bruce McCrae, the guy I was telling you about. The mystery writer, remember? Bruce, Lieutenant Steve Wendell.”

The two men shook hands. “Wendell, huh? I think I've seen your name in the papers lately,” McCrae said. “Weren't you the cop who—”

“Probably. You want a beer?”

“You know how modest Steve is,” Maggie told J.P. nervously when the two men had disappeared into the kitchen. Then she turned around to glare at J.P. “And you, lady? You're
nuts
. You jumped into bed with him, didn't you? You left here, took him to your place, and . . . and—”

“Had my wicked way with him. Twice,” J.P. supplied helpfully, holding up two fingers. “Hi, reds,” she said as she sat down on the couch Steve had just vacated. “Little Mary Sunshine here is all bent out of shape, but you understand, don't you? Chances like that hunk in there don't come along every day at our age.”

“Even every year,” Bernie agreed. “You have to excuse Maggie, she's gone celibate on us.”

“I have not!” Maggie protested a nanosecond before she realized she should have kept her mouth shut, because now both women were eyeing her curiously.

“Steve?” Bernie asked, and then shook her head. “No, can't be Steve.” She turned more fully toward Maggie, all ten red-tipped fingers clutching the back of the couch. “You did it! You finally did it. Well, hot damn!”

“Finally did what?” J.P. asked. “Or is that finally did
who
?”

“I think you're both twisted. You're sick and twisted,” Maggie said, feeling her cheeks grow hot. “And if you say anything, Bernie, if you so much as hint, I'll—Alex. I didn't hear you come in.”

“Have I just missed something? Sterling won't be joining us, by the way,” he said smoothly, handing her a bottle of wine. “He's still rather overset from his adventures earlier today. Ladies,” he ended, bowing to J.P. and Bernie, and then inclined his head to Steve and McCrae. “As we're all here, shall we begin?”

“Yeah, Blakely, let's do that,” Steve said, gesturing at Alex with his beer can. “Start with Maggie's rat, why don't you.”

“You're off duty,
Left
-tenant?” Alex inquired, indicating the beer can with yet another slight inclination of his head. “Very well then, concerned friend to concerned friend. Yes, I was alerted to the fact that Maggie had received a package while we were still in England, the full gravity of which I did not comprehend, more's the pity, until we learned of Mr. Oakes's sad demise. Unfortunately, it would seem that others who received similar packages also did not preserve them intact. I did, however, manage to retrieve the enclosed note, which I most happily entrust to you now.”

Steve took the clear plastic bag and held it up to the light. “You touch it?”

“
Left
-tenant, I vow, you wound me to the quick,” Alex drawled, and Maggie had to bite back a laugh.

“Right, the junior G-man,” Steve grumbled. “How could I forget that. Okay, I'll turn this over to the techs, but we already struck out on the fingerprints we found on the note in Oakes's apartment—nothing on file—and the paper is the kind you can buy anywhere in the city.”

“True,” Alex said, neatly opening the bottle he'd brought. “However, printers are rather individual, so if you were to locate a suspect, a comparison would go a long way in proving our case.”

Maggie winced, knowing Alex was showing off, and that Steve was going to blow. Which he did.

“Look, Blakely, I've tried to be nice, but don't push, okay? One, I already know about printers. And two, this damn well isn't
our
case. It's
my
case, and I'm only here because I care about Maggie.”

“A true friend,” Alex agreed, “as we both are well aware, and honest to a fault. I must say, we all appreciate your candor.”

Steve sort of . . .
deflated
right in front of Maggie, and she shot a quick questioning look at Alex, whose expression was one of wry amusement. What was going on here?
Something
was going on here. Man, she hated being left out of the joke—except she was pretty sure this joke wasn't funny. Why did she get the feeling—much as she hated the term, it sure was succinct—that there was some sort of private pissing contest going on here between the two men?