High Heels and Holidays (20 page)

“Nothing more than earlier, no, Sterling,” Saint Just told his friend as they all four climbed into the cab Socks had hailed with his usual expertise. “Maggie has just belatedly realized that she may have somehow become the target of a killer. Happily, we are here to protect her.”

“Protect me, yes. But don't smother me, okay? I mean, I'm not one of those stupid women who say, oh no, I refuse to stop living my life, change my routine, when they know damn full well some depraved stalker with a machete and a hockey mask is out to kill her. I mean, I'm not
stupid
. But I've got Christmas staring me in the face in a couple of weeks. I've got things to do.”

“So, first on the list, my dear, would be to solve the crime, yes?”

Maggie blinked several times, and then a slow smile lit her face. “Exactly! And did you see Steve back there? Tomorrow is soon enough for him to hear the other authors' names and just how we put it all together? Oh yeah, he's all hot to solve the case. Not! He's playing patty-cake with Christine Mun-something, that's what he's doing. Well, you know what? We're going to solve it
for
him.”

“Because you need something to do, because having something to do—anything to do—is better than locking yourself in your condo until the miscreant is locked in a cell.”

“You betchum, Tonto!”

“She is woman, hear her roar,” Socks piped up from the front seat. “Have I ever told you guys how much I like being a part of the gang?”

“We have a gang?” Sterling asked, concerned. “A coterie, perhaps, but a gang? Isn't that above all things wonderful! Should we have a name? Gangs have names. I know this because Vernon and George used to belong to a group called the One-hundred-and-thirty-fifth Street Hell Warriors. Although Mary Louise told me it was purely a social club. Still, I think we should have a name.”

“Maggie's Menagerie,” Maggie suggested drily, sliding across the cracked leather seat and into Saint Just as the cabbie took the turn too fast.

“Alex's Allies,” Saint Just teased, if only to see some color coming back into her pale cheeks. “Blakely's Boys—oh, wait, that rather leaves you out, doesn't it, my dear? Shame on me. Very well, we'll be all-inclusive, shall we? A bit you, a bit me? We'll call ourselves Saint Just's—”

“We're here,” Maggie said, cutting him off. “And it's Maggie's Menagerie, end of discussion. At least give me the illusion that I'm in charge of
something
in my own life.”

Chapter Sixteen

M
aggie barreled into the foyer of the building ahead of everyone else, still trying to come to grips with the obvious. The obvious that should have been obvious from the beginning. And not one obvious, but two.

Obvious One: She never should have gone to bed with Alex. Twice. She most definitely shouldn't have taken up his invitation to call him
darling
in front of Steve. But that was just all too, too bad. Mistake or not, and even though he drove her crazy half the time, she was keeping him.

Obvious Two: She was walking around with a target on her back. The object of a deranged killer, because underanged killers don't send rats to people. A nut job was after her, and he'd already killed poor Francis Oakes. Knocked him senseless and then strung him up like a chicken in one of those grocery store windows down in—“Daddy?”

Evan Kelly stood up slowly from the lobby couch, his smile bordering on sickly. “Hello, pumpkin,” he said quietly, then sort of held out his arms, sort of didn't . . . leaving the option of hugging him or just standing there gawking at him up to Maggie.

Who stood there and gawked at him.

“Is something wrong? Mom? Is something wrong with Mom?”

The graying, slightly built man held out his hands—to ward off Maggie's fears, she supposed. “No, no, pumpkin, your mother is fine, just fine. Well, as fine as a woman can be when she's just discarded her husband of nearly forty years.”

“She did
what
? She threw you
out
? Ohmigod. How . . . how long have you been here?”

“I . . . I'm not sure,” her father answered, looking both frazzled and distracted. “A little over an hour? I told that fellow over there I was here to see you, but he didn't know where you were. Why?”

Maggie needed a target, that's why. It was stupid, but either she exploded over something or she'd start thinking about how she'd suddenly become a sort of pseudo-orphan, a child of divorce . . . and, not unimportant to consider, a woman who was soon going to have her father bedding down in her guest room and her lover sleeping across the hall. The whole thing stank from any angle she wanted to see it from.

“Paul!”

The part-time doorman looked up from his copy of
Guns And Ammo
and blinked at her. “Huh?”

“You left my father sitting down here for over an hour? He told you who he is, I know he did. Why didn't you let him into my condo?”

Paul, who was a manly man, an imposing, dangerous figure, but only in his dreams, got off his stool behind the podium and hitched up his uniform pants. “Couldn't do it, miss. Against the rules. Can't be too careful who you let upstairs, you know.”

“Was it against the rules a couple of weeks ago when you let those robbers into—hell, I don't remember his name. You helped the crooks carry out a wide-screen TV, for cripes sakes! But my father? Oh, no, not my father. What? He's got the look of a criminal? He's got a dangerous glint in his eyes behind those bifocals? Maybe he's carrying concealed Metamucil? You have got to be the
worst
—”

“Mr. Kelly, what an unexpected pleasure,” Alex said, deliberately walking between the cringing, clearly terrified doorman and Maggie the Terrible. “Maggie neglected to tell me you'd be visiting the metropolis.”

Maggie deflated. What was the point, anyway, except to delay the inevitable. “Mom threw him out,” she told Alex, then headed for the elevator. “Come on, let's all just go upstairs and figure this out, all right?”

“Hello, Mr. Kelly,” Sterling chirped, just entering the lobby in his usual happily oblivious way, Socks right behind him. “Do you remember me? Sterling. Sterling Balder. You and I had the drumsticks on Thanksgiving. Oh, and this is my friend, Argyle Jackson. Socks, say hello to Maggie's father.”

Socks stepped forward, extending his hand. “We've met once before, I think, sir, when Maggie first bought the condo. Good to see you again, sir.”

“Yes, thank you.” Evan Kelly smiled weakly, and then turned to Alex, who had already secured the man's one small piece of luggage. “What is he wearing? Is he in a Broadway show of some sort? He walks the street like that?” He shook his head. “I don't understand New York.”

Maggie grinned at Socks, who for the first time that evening seemed to believe he might want to cover his crotch with his hands. “Come on, Dad. I'll make you something to eat—I've got lots. Oh,” she said rather inanely, she knew, as everyone piled into the elevator and the door slid closed on Socks, who waved good-bye with only one hand, “But I don't have any puffed rice. . . .”

Fifteen minutes later, with everyone settled in Maggie's living room, all of them watching Evan Kelly spoon potato salad into his mouth, she finally asked for details, even though she didn't want to hear them.

“You know your mother can be . . . well, difficult,” Evan told her with a weak smile. “And determined. Most certainly determined. When she gets an idea into her head, there's no getting it out again.”

“I've wondered where you acquired that particular trait, my dear,” Alex said from his perch on the back of the couch as he lifted a glass of wine to his lips.

“Right,” Maggie shot back at him, but quietly. “She's down, very nearly out, so hey, here's an idea—why not stomp on her? Thanks, Alex—just what I needed, to be compared to my mother.”

Sterling was clearly upset over the entire matter. “You allowed her to banish the master from his own hearth? Oh, sir, excuse me for being so blunt, but you really shouldn't have countenanced that. I am a bachelor, I admit, and probably designed to remain so, but my own father gave me copious advice on the rights and privileges of a gentleman. One of those rights, sir, is the assurance of his own chair by his own fireside. Oh, and a female as companion and helpmate. But, sir, not in charge. Never in charge. I think you should be best served to return home right now and assert your rights.”

Maggie had joined Alex behind the couch. “Part of me agrees with Sterling,” she told him, “while the modern woman in me wants to tell him he's a chauvinist pig who ought to remember he's now in the twenty-first century. The last part of me, of course, is laughing its butt off at the idea that Dad would ever stand up to Mom.”

But, it would seem that Evan Kelly agreed with Sterling. “It's as much my house as it is hers, isn't it? Not that it belongs to either of us,” he added, the spine he'd momentarily straightened somewhat collapsing again against the soft cushions. “She's probably already called Tate, and told him all about his horrible father, and demanded that Tate call me and tell me never to darken his door again.”

“Tate really owns the house, remember? Scoring points with Mom and Dad for being the good son, while at the same time using the house as a great investment that's going to make him big bucks someday,” Maggie reminded Alex. “And, since my big brother has made an art out of playing one parent off the other for as long as I can remember, Dad probably has it right. Which leaves Dad to—”

“Move in with his favorite daughter?”

“Oh, Alex,” Maggie said, sagging against him. “We've got to do something to get those two lovebirds back together.”

“Because you are a possible target for a killer and your father could somehow become an innocent victim?”

Maggie frowned, suddenly remembering what, only an hour earlier, had been the biggest problem in her life. “Oh, right, that, too. I was thinking more of the idea that Dad would be here all the time . . . and Sterling's across the hall with you all the time . . . and I know I said we shouldn't do what we did, but let's get real here, Alex, okay? Nobody only takes two bites of an apple.”

“I adore it when you try to avoid speaking frankly on what should be a simple subject for two people who have so recently been intimate.”

Maggie winced, barely holding back from clamping a hand over his big mouth. “Would you shut up?” she growled at him. “I
write
that stuff—I don't
say
that stuff. I most especially don't say that stuff with my own
father
sitting on the other side of the room. Cripes, Alex . . .”

Evan Kelly swallowed down another mouthful of potato salad, having already explained that his wife had shown him the door before dinner, and looked at Maggie. “I don't know how she knew.”

Maggie's eyes nearly popped out of her head—they actually
hurt
as she looked at her father. “She
knew
? She knew what, Dad?”

“About Carol, of course,” Evan said, leaning forward to put down his empty bowl. “I was listening on the extension when she called you to tell you about Carol. That's why I knew I could come here. I knew you'd understand.”

“Well . . . well, you guessed wrong, Dad,” Maggie heard herself say, then winced, because she certainly wasn't helping her dad here, was she. “I mean, I understand that Mom can be . . . difficult. But to have an affair? After forty years? That is what we're talking about here, right? An affair? With . . . with a little chippie named Christine—I mean, Carol.”

“Feeling a tad confused, my dear? Allow me to clarify for you. Christine would be the
left
-tenant's little chippie.”

“Shut up. That was
not
a Freudian slip,” Maggie told him, then left him and returned to the couch, to sit down facing her father. “Are you going to divorce Mom and marry this Carol person? Because, hey, I'm fine with that. I mean, I'm grown, I'm gone—I have nothing to say about what you guys do. Although Maureen's probably going to figure out that that leaves her to take care of Mom, and she's either going to run away to join the circus or double up on her happy pills.” She raised her hands. “But, hey, that doesn't matter, either. Your life, your decision. Tate will have a cow—that could be fun—and Erin? Hell, talk about ducks and backs.”

“Excuse me? Maggie, you're really upset, aren't you?” her father said, clasping his hands together on his knees. “You left us, all of you, except Maureen, who probably should have. What does it matter what your mother and I do? I love Carol, Maggie, and your mother knows it.”

“Oh, God, you weren't supposed to say that,” Maggie told him, rubbing at her stinging eyes. “You were supposed to ask me to help you get back with Mom. You've been married forever. You've got four kids. You . . . you have a
history
. You can't be in love—you're
married
. This is just a . . . an infatuation. Some midlife crisis thing. Why can't you just go home, buy a silk shirt and a gold neck chain, maybe a red sports car, and forget about this Carol woman?”

“Pardon me for interrupting your litany of suggestions, but Maggie? Your message light is blinking,” Alex told her. “Perhaps messages from your mother? She may be worried about your father?”

Maggie jumped to her feet and leveled an accusing finger at her father. “Yes! Yes, that's what it is! You left her all alone, and she doesn't know where you went, what you're doing, how you are—all that stuff. She wants you home, Dad. You two can work this out, you'll see. Counseling! Yes, that's what you need—counseling.” She looked at Alex. “Hit the button, okay, and turn up the volume.”

Alex inclined his head in agreement and pushed the appropriate button on the answering machine a second before Maggie's brain kicked into Slightly More Rational Mode and she realized that her mother hadn't left a “nice” message since answering machines had been invented.

There were three messages. All from Alicia Kelly.

Message One: “Tell that no-good philandering tomcat that his clothes are on the back porch where the neighbors won't see them.”

Message Two: “Evan? I've closed all our joint accounts. You're now as fiscally bankrupt as you are morally depraved.”

Message Three: “Margaret, inform your father that he has a dentist appointment tomorrow at two.”

Well, at least the woman had been succinct.

Maggie, in a move born of desperation, latched on to that third message. “Aha! You hear that? She's worried you'll miss your dental appointment. She
cares
.”

“Maggie, sweetings, let it go,” Alex told her, putting his hands on her shoulders and gently guiding her toward the hallway. “Your father looks tired. I suggest you let me help you prepare the guest room for him, and we'll all revisit the situation in the morning.”

She dug in her heels. “We can't do that, Alex. I'm a target, remember? You're the one who reminded me. I can't take the chance of exposing my dad to danger. I'll get him a room somewhere.” Ducking out from under Alex's hands, she returned to the living room. “Dad, I'm going to get you a hotel room, all right? Just until we see how things go once Mom calms down.”

Evan Kelly got to his feet, which wasn't that imposing a sight, as he and Maggie might both be slightly built, but they were the Lilliputians in a family of near giants, his own wife topping him by a good three inches, as a matter of fact. “Margaret, I don't think you heard me. I love Carol. I am not going back to your mother. Not unless she apologizes.”

Maggie shook her head, just to make sure her brains hadn't come loose and might rattle around inside her skull. She didn't usually take her mother's side in anything—she'd
never
taken her mother's side in anything— but this one hit her somewhere in the “we're fellow females” place where she lived. “You
love
this Carol person, but you want Mom to apologize? For what?”