High Heels Are Murder (16 page)

“The slots! Those are for old ladies,” Mrs. Mueller said.

“They’re one of the most profitable forms of gambling. Women like them,” Josie said. “Cheryl lost seven hundred dollars on the Royal Duchess.”

“My daughter went to East St. Louis!” Mrs. Mueller found that even more shocking than Cheryl’s gambling.

“She also went to the Prince’s Palace in Maryland Heights. She lost at least five hundred dollars there.”

“She’ll ruin her family,” Mrs. Mueller moaned. “I saw that news story about the housewife who gambled away her house and then killed herself. Tom makes a decent salary, but he can’t afford twelve hundred dollars in two days. She’ll bankrupt them. Where is she getting that kind of money?”

“I have an idea, but I need a little more time,” Josie said. “In the meantime, I’d like your nephew George to check out a license plate for me.”

“Anything,” Mrs. Mueller said.

Josie gave her the minivan’s plate number.

“Does this belong to a man?” Mrs. Mueller said.

“Yes,” Josie said. “But there could be a perfectly innocent explanation.”

“I hope you’re going to keep following Cheryl until you find out what’s happening,” Mrs. Mueller said. Her tone said, You will if you know what’s good for you.

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Josie said. “Cheryl may suspect someone is following her. It’s best if I back off on her surveillance for a day or so. If your
budget allows it, I want to spend a day investigating from a different angle. Mel had a housekeeper named Zinnia Ellis. She’s a Maplewood woman. Do you know her?”

“Zinnia. The name is familiar. Wait. Yes, I know her. She works the church bake sales. Goes to nine o’clock Mass. A very devout woman.”

“Good,” Josie said. “I want to talk to her. She may know something about Mel and Cheryl.”

“I will give you the extra day, if you’re really planning on doing something. Or are you just taking my money?”

“So far, I haven’t seen any money from you,” Josie said. “That includes the fifty-five dollars I advanced for the baby car seat and the sitter. Don’t threaten me, Mrs. Mueller, then ask for my help. I’ll tell you when I have something.”

Josie slammed down the phone. I’m enjoying this way too much, she thought.

“Josie!” her mother said, wringing her hands again. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s better than okay, Mom,” Josie said.

Jane’s shoulders were hunched. She seemed to shrink inside herself. She’s so afraid, Josie thought. Is she frightened of that old biddy next door or afraid I’ll screw up?

“GBH, Mom,” Josie said, giving her mother a hug. Jane seemed so frail, more fragile than Amelia. She was old, tired and disappointed. “It will work out, Mom. I promise.”

Amelia stared at the two grown-ups. Both were acting crazy. “I’m going to my room,” she said.

The phone rang half an hour later. “That will be Mrs. Mueller with an apology,” Josie said smugly.

But it wasn’t. Her mother’s boyfriend, Jimmy Ryent, was calling.

“Jimmy,” Jane said. Josie noticed the color rising in her mother’s cheeks and the way she curled her gray hair around her finger. “What am I doing next Saturday night? I’m not sure, Jimmy. Let me check my calendar.”

Josie’s mom sat there, staring into space. She was making him wait, according to the ancient rules of dating
she grew up with. She finally spoke into the phone again. “I just happen to have the evening free. Dinner and a movie? What time?”

A date. Josie’s mother was making a date. Mom didn’t have to worry about what to do with Amelia. Jimmy could spend the night if he wanted. I’m jealous of a sixty-eight-year-old woman, Josie thought. I should be. She has more of a love life than I do. This is a new low.

A contrite Mrs. Mueller called back at eight o’clock. “Your appointment with Zinnia is set for tomorrow at ten. But you’ll have to go to that Mel person’s house. The police have released it as a crime scene, and the heirs want Zinnia to supervise the cleanup. You couldn’t pay me to walk through that door.”

But she would pay Josie.

“Zinnia’s left your name with the guard at the Olympia Park gate,” Mrs. Mueller said. “Josie, thank you for doing this.”

Progress at last. Mrs. Mueller was actually being polite.

Alyce couldn’t go with Josie to Olympia Park the next day. She had to take her baby to the pediatrician. Josie missed her friend. As she pulled up to the guard’s box, she wondered what Alyce would make of this place. The entry gates were phallic white limestone towers, like something designed by Ludwig of Bavaria. Even before Freud, didn’t people know what a penis looked like?

The guards found Josie’s name on the list and directed her past a lake with white swans. Peacocks fanned their gaudy tails and screeched in Olympia Park.

Mel’s gray-white stone house was even more impressive than the photos in the paper. The arched entrance belonged to a mausoleum. Topiary in pots lined the drive and the doorway.

This was a shoe salesman’s house?

Josie parked in the circular drive. The housekeeper met Josie at the door. Josie wasn’t sure what a Zinnia would look like, but the name seemed to fit her. She was a sturdy woman of about sixty, with an open, pink face. Zinnia seemed as old-fashioned as her namesake. She had her hair in a neat bun. She wore sensible shoes
with thick, square heels. Mel would never get caught in the back room with Zinnia’s footwear. Josie liked the woman’s hands. They were neat and capable.

Josie stepped inside Mel’s mansion and stared. It was the biggest house she’d ever been in, bigger than the Maplewood Library or St. Philomena’s Church.

Zinnia seemed used to this reaction. She launched into a tour-guide spiel. “The house was built more than a hundred years ago,” she said. “The staircase is heart of oak, built by German artisans brought over for the 1904 World’s Fair. The stained-glass window on the landing is ten feet high. It is the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany.”

Normally, Josie would have admired the golden-haired maidens dancing in a field of lilies. Now all she saw was their intricately entwined bare feet. The window was a fetishist’s delight. The oak staircase led down to a marble floor. If Mel had landed on that, his head would have cracked like an egg.

Zinnia must have followed Josie’s eyes to that cold, hard floor. “I found Mr. Mel at the foot of that staircase, poor man. Blood was everywhere. The police took the carpet.”

Zinnia pointed high up on the wall near the first landing, where there were faint brownish smears and splotches on the pale wallpaper. “The blood was all the way up there. I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed, but I can’t get it all off. It will have to be repapered. That’s what made the police suspicious, you know. The way the blood was so high on that wall. It meant Mr. Mel was standing when he was hit on the head. He wasn’t killed by a fall.”

“That’s dreadful,” Josie said. “Do they know what killed him?”

“They won’t say. But there’s a Tiffany paperweight missing from the hall table. I knew Mr. Mel was dead the moment I saw him. I called for an ambulance just the same. His diamond watch was broken in the fall. It stopped at eight thirty-two.

“I found him at nine forty-five that same night. It was a terrible shock, but I’m glad Mr. Mel wasn’t alone all night long.”

Zinnia slid open the giant pocket doors and led Josie into a double parlor. The room had enough gold brocade furniture for four or five living rooms, marble busts on columns, and a walk-in fireplace. Over the fireplace was an oil portrait of a blonde with her hair in a thirties style. She wore a slinky satin evening dress and strappy heels. Her even-featured blank young face could easily pass for pretty.

“Mr. Mel’s mother,” Zinnia said. She smiled for the first time, and Josie saw large yellow teeth.

Josie wondered if that picture gave Mel his lifelong preoccupation with shoes. “Very nice,” she said. “You know Mrs. Mueller from church, right?”

“A fine woman,” Zinnia said. She stood in the center of the room. She did not offer Josie a seat, nor did she take one. It was not her place.

“Do you know her daughter, Cheryl? The police say your employer had wine with Mrs. Mueller’s daughter in this room. They found the glasses in the sink.”

“That’s what I heard, but I’d gone home for the evening,” Zinnia said. “I only came back because I forgot my purse. I’m getting so forgetful. I tried to call Mr. Mel, but he didn’t answer his phone. Now I know why, poor man. I couldn’t wait until morning. I had to know if my purse was there. I had a hundred dollars in cash in it. I let myself in, and saw my purse right where I’d left it in the hall. Then I saw Mr. Mel. There was no sign of Miss Cheryl.”

“Had you seen Cheryl here before:”

“Yes. Several of Mr. Mel’s best customers visited him,” Zinnia said. “Nice young women, all of them. Well behaved. I wouldn’t have worked here if anything funny was going on.”

“You don’t think he was having an affair with Cheryl?”

“Certainly not.” Zinnia’s round pink face flushed a deeper shade. “Miss Cheryl sat right here in this parlor, every time I saw her, and behaved like a proper young lady. I didn’t listen in on their conversation, but they seemed to be talking business.”

“Shoe business?” Josie said.

“Some kind of business. Something about building a bigger customer base and finding the right people. Mr. Mel asked her if she wanted to make another one, and she said she’d have to get a larger percentage of the profits this time.”

For someone who didn’t listen in, Zinnia heard a lot.

“Any idea what they were talking about?”

“I have no idea. I was busy with my duties. But it would take a dirty mind to make something evil out of that conversation.”

“Were Mel and Cheryl arguing or angry?”

“No. There was nothing wrong with that discussion in any way.”

“The police think that Mel paid Cheryl for sex.”

Zinnia’s face flushed with indignation. “I don’t believe that, not for a minute. I never saw any of that kind of behavior, and I told them so. I changed Mr. Mel’s sheets. I wouldn’t stand for any monkey business in this house. Mr. Mel was a good employer, even if I didn’t agree with his hobby.”

“You mean his fascination with feet?” Josie said.

“Feet, legs, stockings, shoes. He has a whole walk-in closet full of women’s shoes. He said it was because of his work. The police took most of them.

“Mr. Mel used to have parties for his friends. I had nothing to do with them. I’d come in the next morning and there would be women’s shoes all over the place. Mr. Mel had to clean those up himself. I wouldn’t touch them. Sticky, some of them were.”

Josie’s stomach twisted.

Zinnia kept talking. “Do you know some of those old fools tried to drink champagne out of an open-toed shoe? I said, ‘Mr. Mel, there are some things I will not do. Cleaning champagne out of a stranger’s shoe is one of them.’ He told me there was nothing in the Bible that prevented a man from appreciating a woman’s feet. But it still wasn’t natural.”

“Did the police take anything else besides his shoe collection?” Josie said.

“Oh, yes. His computer. And boxes of magazines, newsletters, photographs, videos and DVDs. I was glad they took those disgusting things out of the house.”

Josie really wished Alyce was here. Maybe she could make sense of what Zinnia was saying. On one hand, the housekeeper insisted nothing “funny” was going on and everyone was perfectly behaved. On the other, Mel was giving wild champagne parties for his pals, and Zinnia refused to clean up after them. And Mel had “disgusting” videos.

Did Zinnia have an unspoken agreement with her boss: As long as she didn’t see any indiscretions, they didn’t exist?

“Those other young women you saw here, do you know their names?” Josie said.

“I certainly do,” Zinnia said. “Respectable women, every one of them.”

That word again. Zinnia was using it way too often. Was she trying to convince Josie or herself?

“One was an important executive, Paladia Henderson-Harrison. She wore the most beautiful suits. Tailored, they were. Must have cost a fortune. The other was a homemaker, a friend of Cheryl’s. She had an old-fashioned English name, like in a mystery. Fiona. That was it. Fiona Christie. She had two children, a boy and a girl. I’ve seen their pictures.”

“One more question,” Josie said. “Where did a shoe salesman get the money for a house in Olympia Park?”

“Mr. Mel inherited the house from his mother. But he was a rich man in his own right. Mr. Mel wasn’t always a shoe salesman,” Zinnia said. “He was on Wall Street for years. That man was a financial wizard. Made a fortune, he did. Enough so he could quit and work his dream job.”

“Which was?” Josie said.

“Why, selling shoes.”

“I’ll show you Mr. Mel’s fantasy room,” Zinnia said. “It’s where he had his parties.”

She led Josie up the grand stairs, moving lightly as a young woman. Josie was puffing by the second landing.

“How high are we going?” Josie hoped she didn’t sound like she was gasping for air. It was humiliating to be in worse shape than a woman thirty years older.

“Only to the fifth floor,” Zinnia said.
It wasn’t five flights of stairs. It was more like ten or fifteen. These stairs had more switchbacks than a mountain road. After the magnificent oak staircase ran out, they took the back stairs. These steps were painted a practical brown and studded with rubber treads.

“You’d think Mr. Mel would put in an elevator,” Josie said.

“His mother wouldn’t hear of it,” Zinnia said. “She thought an elevator was pure laziness. She always said walking was good for your health.” Zinnia steamed ahead, living proof of the power of walking. She had muscular calves and well-toned arms, probably from carrying vacuum cleaners up five flights.

“It’s cheaper than a StairMaster.” Josie wheezed like an asthmatic. She vowed to ride her bike every day. How did she get so out of shape?

“When did Mel’s mother die?” Josie said. Probably when she reached the top floor, she thought.

“In 1999, at the age of eighty-two. But Mr. Mel would never disobey her wishes. He hardly changed a thing after she died.”

Did he put in the fantasy room before or after Mom climbed the stairway to heaven? Josie was afraid to ask.