High Heels and Holidays (22 page)

“You're avoiding facing what you feel and fear, Margaret, and in your usual way, with an attempt at humor.”

“I wasn't funny? I thought the M&M's and cigarettes were kind of funny,” Maggie said, then gave it all up as a bad job. “Why are we talking about dying? I sure don't want to talk about dying.”

“You know, Margaret, it is often a comfort to know that one will be leaving something behind when he or she dies. Something of themselves. Some mark that proves that, yes, they were here.”

“Well, I do have my books. I'll be leaving my work behind.” Maggie had a quick thought about Francis Oakes, the recently deceased Francis Oakes. That had been his legacy, a few books. A few very forgettable, probably out-of-print books. And wasn't that a cheery thought?

“Yes, of course, your marvelous books. Is that it, Margaret? Perhaps you'd want more. Something more personal? Children, perhaps?”

Maggie blinked. “Children?” She thought about Alex and his, their, special circumstances.
Here's your daddy, sweetheart—he's not really real, I made him up, but we're just going to run with that, okay?
Wasn't that just swell. Man, talk about a way to screw up the next generation! “Children . . .”

Dr. Bob pushed back his French cuff and looked at his watch. “Well, that's it for this week. Same time next week, or would you rather go back to our usual Monday morning sessions?”

“Wait a minute,” Maggie said as the good doctor pushed on the arms of his chair as if to stand up. “That's it? I'm to be sympathetic but neutral with my parents, someone might be out to get—
kill
me, so I should think about what I might leave behind if he does? That's it? Oh, and the sugarless fudge,” she said, getting to her feet. “Can't forget the fudge, can I? No, Dr. Bob, I will not see you next week. I think we need a break. Maybe even a clean break. Children? Yeah, just what I wanted to think about. Merry Christmas!”

Chapter Seventeen

“H
ere you go, sport. Merry Christmas.”

Saint Just neatly snagged the gaily wrapped box before it could do serious damage to his solar plexus and fell into step beside Maggie, who seemed hell-bent on going somewhere, somewhere far away from him.

“Allow me to hazard a guess. Your session with Dr. Bob was not all you'd hoped?”

Maggie sliced him a look that chilled the air between them below that of the actually rather fine, sunny December morning. “I'm not speaking to you.”

“Actually, my dear, you are. You just did.”

“Don't split hairs with me you, you
traitor
. And get us a cab.”

“Oh, dear,” Saint Just remarked with a sigh. “Obviously your Dr. Bob is not a man of his word.”

“Oh, he's a man of a
lot
of words,” Maggie said, climbing into the backseat of the cab Saint Just had neatly summoned to the curb. Once they were both settled in the backseat and Saint Just had given directions, she asked, “What were you thinking? Why did you go see him? To rat on me?”

“An interesting choice of words,” Saint Just said as he reached across Maggie to take hold of the seat belt strap, as she seemed rather preoccupied at the moment with subjects other than her safety. “In truth, my dear, I had two reasons for dropping in on the good doctor. One, I wished to see this man who has been a part of your life for so many years—”

“And what did you think of him?”

“I found him to be an interesting mix of intelligence, avarice, and, perhaps, an inflated sense of self-consequence.”

“That's nice. He thinks you're a nutcase,” Maggie told him, not without a hint of satisfaction in her voice. “Possibly certifiable.”

“Indeed.”

“And arrogant.”

Saint Just merely smiled. “My second reason for visiting the gentleman had to do with our . . . Rat Boy. I wished Dr. Bob's educated opinion on the potential seriousness of the threat. That, of course, was before we'd been informed of the unfortunate demise of Francis Oakes.”

“Well, there's a first—you, asking for help. And what did he say?”

“He said I should tell my hypothetical friend that, yes, there could exist reason for real concern.”

“Your hypothetical friend. Hoo-boy. That's how you presented everything? Hey, well, that wasn't transparent, was it? But, if Dr. Bob knew I was your hypothetical friend, why didn't he let me know he knew? I
told
him someone might be trying to kill me and all he wanted to know was how that made me
feel
.”

“Perhaps there are limits to the man's unprofessionalism?”

Maggie nodded. “Yeah, that's probably it. Or he thinks we're both past saving and headed for padded rooms.”

“There is always that,” Saint Just agreed as the cab slid to the curb and he handed the man a ten-dollar bill, refusing change. “And here we are, the domicile of one Valentino Gates. Shall we? Oh, and forgive me for not mentioning this sooner, but I was a bit distracted.
Left
-tenant Wendell phoned this morning to report in. I believe he's feeling somewhat guilty for not taking our theory more seriously last night.”

“That's an understatement. He barely listened to us.”

“He did, however, listen to Bernice this morning. She gave him the list of authors for
No Secret Anymore
, as well as their whereabouts, as best we know them, and he was kind enough to contact Kimberly Lowell D'Amico in Missouri—who did not, it would seem, receive her own dead rat and poem. Which, I'm afraid, has put the good
left
-tenant back into the ranks of the unimpressed as regards our theory.”

“Oh, great,” Maggie said as Saint Just held open a thick wooden door that probably owed half that thickness to several generations of paint. “Though that doesn't really prove anything. All the rats were sent to authors in and around the city. All that could mean is that Rat Boy didn't trust dry ice to get one of his macabre little presents all the way to Missouri without being discovered along the way. Then again, considering the state of the New York post office, the damn rat could still be there.”

“That's true enough,” Saint Just agreed, having located Gates's apartment number on one of a row of mailboxes in the narrow foyer. “Third floor. Shall we climb?”

“Like we have a choice in this dump? Back to the packages. Those packages had to cost a lot. The dry ice. The postage. Rat Boy could have run out of postage.”

“Or rats,” Saint Just supplied helpfully, earning himself a speaking glance from his beloved as they paused at the second-floor landing.

“Funny. So do you agree with Steve now?”

“Unfortunately, no. I would rather believe that geography played a part in our unsub's plans.”

“Unsub. Unknown subject. Next you'll say Feebies for F.B.I., and then I'll have to hit you,” Maggie said, still leading the way up the stairs. But once at the third-floor landing she turned back to him, her expression troubled. “What are we going to say to this Valentino Gates guy, anyway? Hi, did you send me a dead rat?”

“A rather direct approach, but I doubt the man will then immediately fall on our necks to confess to murder. To be truthful, I haven't thought much beyond meeting the man, sizing him up as it were, taking his measure.”

“Oh, well, that's fine then, as long as you have a
plan
, bright eyes,” Maggie said, her sarcasm marred only by the fact that she was slightly out of breath from the climb.

Saint Just raised her hand to his lips. “Being romantically involved with a gentleman supposedly makes women soft and malleable. May I say how delighted I am, sweetings, that you are proving the exception.”

“Hey, take it somewhere else you two, you're blocking the landing.”

Saint Just looked behind him to see a rather large man standing two steps below them on the stairs. A rather large, angry man with forearms like hams and apparently the disposition of a warthog, with the manners to match. It was as if he and Maggie somehow had been transported to the Regency-era dregs of Piccadilly. Fairly certain the answer to his question would be in the negative, he nevertheless inquired: “Valentino Gates?”

“Think you're funny, don't you? Do I look like that pansy?”

The growled reference rather baffled Saint Just, but he decided to assume the question had been rhetorical and did not require an answer. “Well, then, sir, please don't allow us to detain you any longer from what I am convinced is your very important business.” He stepped back slightly, allowing the man to step onto the landing. “Ah, obedient as well. There's a good fellow. Be on your way now.”

“Oh, jeez, how did I know this was going to happen?” he heard Maggie half groan from behind him. “Hold onto your knickers—here we go.”

“Think you're smart, don't you?” the large man said, looking down at Saint Just, who had slightly mistaken the man's height if not his breadth. “How'd you like a quick trip down to the second floor, pansy boy? I can arrange that, you know.”

“Excuse me, but you really don't want to try that,” Maggie warned, pushing herself back into the corner. “Trust me in this one, Popeye.”

“Popeye? And aren't you the funny bitch,” the man said, distracted by the sight, Saint Just believed, of a woman clad in clean clothes and possessing all her teeth. “Whaddya say you and me get rid of this clown and have us some fun?”

“Hey, that's original. I never heard that line before. Alexander? Stop playing with the nice gentleman and let him go away.”

He'd brought this on himself, Saint Just knew that the moment he'd first opened his mouth and heard himself spouting those lines from one of his books—words Maggie originally had put in his mouth. Only one more example of his knowledge that he was, thanks to Maggie, invincible. Which did not mean that Maggie was, or that he himself couldn't end up rather
creased
at the conclusion of this encounter.

Which did not, as it happened, keep him from neatly inserting his cane between the buffoon's legs as the fellow stupidly attempted to advance on Maggie, and then bringing it up with a considerable amount of force. After all, even a gentleman should be allowed a little fun from time to time.

The thud of the man's body hitting the landing, to be followed by his rather high-pitched whimpers, served as their introduction to Valentino Gates, who opened his door to check on the commotion.

“Mr. Gates?” Saint Just asked, raising his voice above the whimpers, inclining his head to the slightly-built man with the look of a poet whose greatest wish would be the opportunity to starve in a garret. “Mr. Valentino Gates?”

“Ah . . . er . . . yes, I suppose so.” Gates looked down at the man who was now rather inelegantly grasping his most private parts as, bent double, he did his best to climb to the next landing. “What did you do to Quentin?”

“Quentin?” Maggie deserted her corner. “You'd think he would have gotten himself a nickname. Butch, Spike—something. No wonder he's so angry. I'll bet he had the snot beaten out of him on the playground every day before he grew that big. By the way, nice job, Alex.”

“Thank you, my dear, I do my best.”

Valentino Gates looked ready to bolt. “Who
are
you people? And . . . and what do you want from me?”

Saint Just was fairly certain Quentin wouldn't be back for an encore any time soon, but he'd already made up his mind about Valentino Gates. The man had all the spunk as well as native intelligence of a sea sponge, and couldn't possibly have killed anyone. It was best to simply make up some farradiddle out of whole cloth and then take their exit as quickly as possible.

With a wink to Maggie, who he knew could be trusted to follow where he led—not happily, but she would follow, and only afterward verbally tear a strip off his hide—he said brightly, “Mr. Gates, a fair question. Yes, most definitely. Allow me to explain, my good sir. We are members of the Francis Oakes fan club, Manhattan division. Ah, poor Francis. I am Blakely, Alexander Blakely, acting president, and my companion here is our recording secretary, Miss Kelly, Miss Ma—”

“Velma Kelly,” Maggie interrupted, sticking out her hand to the astonished-looking man. “We inquired at Toland Books as to who, locally, had written fan letters to Mr. Oakes in the past, and your name was among those given to us. We're taking up a collection to help with the . . . um . . . the arrangements, and wondered if—”

“Velma Kelly? Isn't that the name of one of the characters from that movie,
Chicago
?”

“Broadway musical. It was a Broadway musical before it was a movie.”

“Who cares? You're no Catherine Zeta-Jones, I know that. What's the other one's name? You know, the blonde with the chubby cheeks? She was really cute.”

“Mr. Gates,” Saint Just said quickly, because Maggie had opened her mouth again and he was fairly certain Valentino Gates would not be happy with whatever she chose to say. “The donation?”

“Yes, you said that. A donation for arrangements. What arrangements? And, for the record, I never wrote a fan letter to that pitiful hack. He couldn't write his way out of a paper bag. And they turn
me
down?”

Saint Just and Maggie exchanged looks, Saint Just's one of wry amusement, Maggie's one that very clearly telegraphed her feeling that they'd been wasting their time.

“Mr. Oakes was killed a few days go, Mr. Gates,” Saint Just said, then watched for the man's reaction. “Murdered. Murder most vile, one might say.”

Valentino Gates staggered backward, but then seemed to collect himself, although he had gone quite pale. “I . . . I didn't know. Murdered? Gee, that stinks, doesn't it?”

“Yes, indeed. It's not for public knowledge, you understand, but we've been led to understand that the sad event took place very shortly after Mr. Oakes received a rather disturbing package.”

“Package,” Gates repeated.

“A rather disturbing package.”

“Disturbing,” Gates repeated.

“A rather disturbing package containing a dead rat and a threat.”

“Threat? You mean . . . you mean a threat to
kill
him?”

“No, a threat to
not
kill him,” Maggie said, her sarcasm level rising once more. “Of course a threat to kill him.”

“I . . . I don't know anything about that. I . . . I've got to go now.” Gates dug into his pocket and came out with a ten-dollar bill. “Here—for Oakes.”

Once the door had closed, Saint Just held up the bill. “Lunch is on Valentino, if your appetite doesn't extend beyond hot dogs on the street.”

“You're impossible,” Maggie told him as they headed back down the stairs. “But did you see the look on the guy's face when you started talking about the package and the threat? I thought he was going to pass out. Oh, no, he knows nothing about any package, does he? Oh, and he didn't even know Francis is dead. You caught that, right? That's the one part I believe. Nobody's that good an actor.”

“I agree,” Saint Just said, holding open the door to the street, then enjoying his first breath of air in some ten minutes that did not contain the pungent aroma of incontinent cats and, he believed, week-old cabbage. “Mr. Gates is officially removed from our list of suspects in the death of Mr. Oakes. He is not, however, removed from the list of those who might have had something to do with the package and threat. In fact, I believe he has just leapt to the top of the latter list. Or do you disagree?”