High Heels and Homicide (7 page)

“Mr. Peppin, of course. How…charming,” Saint Just said with another slight nod and a smile—not having the faintest idea what the man was talking about. Clearly he was going to have to correct that lapse, and quickly. He then repeated the introductions he had begun with Sir Rudy.

By now, all eyes were on the newcomers, except for those of the woman who was still on the carpet, although now she was lying on her side, her head propped in one hand, her other hand sliding caressingly down the side of her breast and onto her hip as she smiled only at Saint Just.

Nothing all that out of the ordinary there. He had been very carefully created to have that effect on women. It was a gift. Occasionally a curse.

Arnaud seemed remarkably unimpressed to learn that the author and her entourage had arrived. Saint Just knew this because the man turned his back to him and said, “Relax, people. Joanne will handle this. It's only the writer.”

Saint Just immediately and quite automatically put his right arm straight out to his side, and Maggie's advancing body immediately and very predictably slammed against it.

“Only the writer?
Only
the writer? Hey, cue ball, let me tell you a—”

“Ms. Dooley! Oh, how thrilled I am to meet you! I heard you were coming. I'm Sam Undercuffler, screenwriter.”

Saint Just lifted his quizzing glass to his eye and inspected Undercuffler as he scurried over to them. The young man was depressingly brown. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown slacks; brown tweed jacket with brown suede patches at the elbows. The barrel of a cheap brown pipe protruded from his jacket pocket. His brown shoes, lace shoes, were badly in need of reheeling and a good polish.

“Oh, so good to meet you, Ms. Dooley—Cleo. May I call you Cleo? I adapted your book for the screen. Well, you probably figured that out, since I said I'm the screenwriter. Oh, would you listen to me? I'm just so excited to finally meet the creator of the brilliant Saint Just Mysteries. The brilliant creator of the brilliant series, I should say. I'm playing with an idea of my own, for my own television series, you understand, but I know you wouldn't want to hear about that. Would you? Please, if there's anything you want, anything you need…”

Saint Just stood amused as Maggie tried to get her hand back from the screenwriter, who was still pumping it with all the enthusiasm of a dairy maid only three churn strokes away from butter. “Two writers. Together. Members of the same literary fraternity. Why, he even looks so much the writer, doesn't he? Isn't this wonderful,
Cleo
? I imagine you two will have
so
much to talk about.”

Now, sometimes Maggie said
bite me
, out loud, so everyone could hear her. But sometimes she could say
bite me
without actually uttering a word. Her facial expression was more than enough. This was one of those times.

Still, when she did speak, it was to say hello to Sam Undercuffler, smile politely, ask him to please call her Maggie, and agree that it was wonderful that two writers could be here, each with their own hand in the creation, as it were.

Poor girl. That had to have been painful.

“Well, come on, come on, there's lots more to meet,” Sir Rudy said from behind them, actually giving Sterling a little push so that he stumbled farther into the room.

“I'll take care of this, Sir Rudy. Thanks anyway,” Arnaud said, then clapped his hands. “Okay, people, listen up. It's introduction time. Raise your hand when I call out your name, and let's get this over with. I've got things to do.”

“And yet again…charming,” Saint Just said quietly.

“Yeah,” Maggie agreed. “I feel so warm and fuzzy…so wanted.”

“Okay…right. Here we go,” Arnaud continued, either slightly deaf or just not caring what anyone else might say; Saint Just was fairly certain it was the latter. “You met the writer. Sam, back up, you're blocking my view. Okay, over there. The tall guy who looks like an English valet? He's our English valet, Clarence. Real name, Dennis Lloyd. Raise your hand, Dennis.”

The man bowed, and Sterling waved to him.

“Next up, Sterling Balder.”

“Hullo?” Sterling said, his arm still raised in midwave.

“I don't think he means you, Sterling,” Maggie said, squeezing his hand.

“That's me! Over here on the couch! Perry Posko, otherwise known as Sterling Balder.”

Saint Just looked at the actor, then at his own Sterling Balder. They were very nearly a match, from their likewise thinning hair to their spectacles, to their pudgy waistlines, to the open, trusting grins on their faces.

“Good casting,” Maggie said. “Clarence and Sterling both. That's encouraging, right?”

“I imagine so,” Saint Just said, leaning closer to her. “I do have a few reservations about the gentleman in front of the mantel. Is he wearing makeup?”

“Tanning booth. Bet you,” Maggie said, then shut up when Arnuad pointed to a rather tall, definitely dark gentleman who seemed to be studiously ignoring everyone.

“Evan? Over here, Evan. That's Evan Pottinger, our Lord Hervey. The villain, but you know that.”

Saint Just bowed yet again. “Delighted, I assure you.”

“Completely and totally unimpressed, I assure
you
,” Pottinger drawled, then turned his back on everyone.

“Method actor,” Arnaud said. “He's getting into the role. Everybody thinks they're De Niro. Evan wants to wear the costumes and everything. Wants everyone in costume. Pain in my ass, that's what he really is.”

“How very droll,” Saint Just drawled as well, amused, and certainly not ready to reveal that he had no idea what a method actor was. “I believe I should like to see that.”

“Well, you won't. Period costumes cost a fortune, and we're only renting them from the company that supplied
Sense and Sensibility
. I'm not going to have anyone dribbling gravy all over them.”

“Ah, my good sir, a
true
gentleman would never dribble.”

“Too bad, gorgeous. Because I could lick it all up for you,” the leotard-clad beauty said from the floor, so that Saint Just had no recourse but to look at her, watch as, catlike, she uncurled herself and stood up. “Hi. I'm Nikki Campion, and I'm the love interest. Just call me Nikki.”

“That would be my honor, Nikki,” Saint Just said, fairly certain that if Miss Campion were to hold out her hand and he was to bow over it, kiss it, his life expectancy could most probably be measured in the minutes it would take for Maggie to get him alone and kill him.

So wasn't he lucky that Miss Campion didn't hold out her hand? She merely pressed herself up against him, went up on tiptoe, and kissed him on his left ear. “If you screw as good as you look, see me later,” she breathed into that ear, then turned and walked away in a manner that left no doubt that she felt every male in the room watched her every step.

Sir Rudy made a sort of whimpering sound in his throat, turned on his heels, and quit the room.

Saint Just looked at Maggie—not that he, the perfect hero, was actually afraid of the woman—and was surprised to see her looking at him in some sympathy.

“I'd be pretty disgusted by having to watch that, and hear it—the woman obviously doesn't know how to whisper—except it wasn't your fault. And because we're down to the last man, that one very tanned and blond man has to be playing Saint Just. You want to call that nice Miss Browning with the tinkling-bells laugh and ask her to book us on the next plane home? I can't believe you want to stick around to watch surfer dude over there in action as you.”

Saint Just would have blanched if he was the sort who blanched. He turned his attention to the man awkwardly lounging at the mantel just as the fellow made some sort of flourishing motion and then went to rest one elbow on the mantel, missed, and nearly came to grief before righting himself.

“I have to work with this,” Arnaud said, shaking his head, as obviously he'd also seen the actor's clumsiness. “Troy? Give us a wave, why don't you, and try not to kill yourself when you do it. People, meet Troy Barlow, our Viscount Saint Just. Our blond beachboy turned dark-haired, sophisticated sleuth. Does Hollywood know casting or what?”

Sterling nearly danced in place. “I know him! That's Brick. Brick Lord. He's in one of my favorite soap operas. He's Dyson's identical twin brother, and Brittany thinks Dyson's the father of her unborn child, but it's really Brick who—oh, my!”

“I play both parts, yes,” Troy said, advancing only as far as the couches, where, as Saint Just manfully stifled a wince, he sat down with all the grace of a lobster navigating an escalator. “You thought Brick and Dyson were really twins? You hear that, Nikki? I'm a working actor. A craftsman. While you're humping transmission repairs.
Now
do you understand why my name comes first on the credits?”

Nikki looked at Arnaud, pouted. “You told me last night that you'd fix that, Arnie.”

“That'll teach you to screw short, bald men,” a female voice said, behind Saint Just. “Like he's in charge of credit placement? I am, sweetheart. And don't bother shaking that silicone at me because I don't think you're that hot.”

Saint Just stepped to one side to allow a slim woman as tall as Bernice Toland-James—as thin as Bernice, as red-headed as Bernice, presenting as powerful a presence as Bernice—to push past everyone, to pose directly beneath the main chandelier. “Joanne Pertuccelli here. In charge of production. Who the hell are you people?”

“Oh, no, not again. I'm getting bored,” Maggie said in her marvelously mulish way that so endeared her to Saint Just. “Is anyone else going to crawl out of the woodwork or are you it? Because this is the last time I want to hear, ‘Oh, it's only the writer.'”

“You're Cleo Dooley? Name looks pretty decent above the title. Good use of
O
s.” Joanne frowned, fingering the large silver stopwatch that hung around her neck on a long, black, braided band. “You don't look like a writer.”

“Yeah. I get a lot of that one, too,” Maggie said as Sterling, a man who learned from experience, prudently stepped behind Saint Just. “Thanks heaps, Joanne. I take it you're also in charge of public relations? I mean, I was hoping for a welcome like that after a long flight and the rain and everything. Thanks so much. Really.”

“I think that's probably sufficient, Maggie,” Saint Just warned quietly, taking her arm and leading her across the wide expanse of faded Aubusson carpet, toward the drinks table, where Evan the Villain was already in residence, still studiously glowering and ignoring everyone.

“Touchy,” Joanne called after them. “Hey, nice ass, handsome.”

“Is she talking to—”

“No, Sterling, I believe not, so you can spare your blushes,” Saint Just said as Maggie, always put in a good mood by the so-innocent Sterling, grinned. “Besides, as gentlemen, we'll ignore the lady's lapse into crudity.”

A nervous giggle caught Saint Just's attention, and a moment later, a gum-chewing young lady with hair too blonde to be genuine pushed herself out of a chair in the farthest corner of the room. “Hi, I'm Marylou Keppel. I heard the introductions, before, but Arnaud always forgets me, unless he needs something. I'm the gofer.”

“I…I beg your pardon?”

“You know. If somebody needs something? Gofer it, Marylou. Go-find it, Marylou. Go-get it, Marylou. Gofer. Oh, I stand in sometimes, I prompt. Tight budget on this one. But mostly? Mostly I'm a gofer.”

“How…how wonderful for you, I'm sure,” Saint Just said blankly. “Maggie? Isn't that wonderful for Miss Keppel?”

“You're dying here, aren't you, Alex?” Maggie asked, then laughed. “But, hey, you wanted to come.”

“Excuse me,” Joanne Pertuccelli said from behind Saint Just. “I still don't know who you two are. Who authorized you to be here?”

Maggie covered her mouth with her hand, pretended to cough as she said, “Time to turn on the charm, big boy.”

As if he had to be told.

“Ah, Miss Pertuccelli, a thousand pardons,” Saint Just said, bowing to the woman, taking her hand—a litte awkward, having to reach for the thing—and raising it to within an inch of his lips. “You see before you Miss Dooley's inspiration, immodest as that is to say. Her distant English relation. I am Alex Blakely, on whom the Viscount is patterned, and with me is my dear friend and compatriot, Sterling Balder. We…we travel
everywhere
with Miss Dooley.”

“Really?” Joanne said, obviously not impressed, which was, in fact, quite lowering to the perfect hero, the irresistible-to-women perfect hero. He consoled himself with the sure knowledge that her heart must be otherwise engaged, making all other men invisible to her. “Just so you know, you're not included in her expense account. Arnaud? Hey—Arnie! This weather is costing us big money. What are you going to do about all this damn rain?”