High Heels Are Murder (21 page)

For some reason, that prospect didn’t thrill Josie. Her engagement left her feeling oddly passive, while her mother and Andy planned her future.

One afternoon, Josie and Andy were having a TGIF lunch at O’Connell’s Pub with some friends. Andy was discussing bottom-line benefits when Josie saw Nathan standing by the dark wood door. His hair was the color of wild honey. He walked with a confidence Andy would never have, even when he became managing partner.

A woman at Josie’s table waved Nathan over. He sat next to Josie, stole her french fries, and talked about flying. “I’m a helicopter pilot, a good one,” he said. “I have to be. One wrong move, and I’m flying a piano.”

Josie thought that was funny. She didn’t remember when she left O’Connell’s with Nate, but she never forgot their moonlit helicopter ride over the Mississippi River that night. It was a romantic dream.

Josie gave Andy back his investment diamond in the same dreamlike trance. She skipped classes to fly with Nathan to New York for lunch at the Four Seasons. They hopped over to Breckenridge for snowboarding, then flew down to Florida for sailing and stone crabs.
Nate took her everywhere, except on the trips to his hometown, Toronto. The Canada trips were business, he said.

Josie thought the helicopter business must pay well, because Nate had a Porsche, a Harley and an Infinity sound system, along with an insatiable desire for exotic places.

School seemed dull after her adventures with Nate. Josie shrugged off the concerned questions from her teachers and the frantic warnings from her mother. They meant nothing when she was with her high-flying lover. Nathan never talked about “supporting strategic business objectives.”

With Nate, she was a different woman, passionate and inventive. Her old life seemed gray and dull. She could hardly stand her cramped student apartment with its tired curtains and paint the color of dirty teeth. She invited Nate for dinner, then realized she had to do something to brighten her place.

Josie bought a hundred candles. She would have done better to spend the money on curtains, couch covers, and throw pillows, but she came home with more than three hundred dollars’ worth of tall tapers, tiny votives, and fat pillar candles. She borrowed every candleholder her friends had, then used all the saucers, wineglasses and plates in her apartment. She lined the windowsills, the coffee table, the kitchen table, and the fireplace with candles.

Nate arrived as she was lighting the last one. Her drab little room was transformed into something glowing and mysterious. “Why are you wasting your time burning candles, when you can set me on fire?” he said as he kissed her.

“I’m burning down my old world,” she said.

“Welcome to our world,” he said. “We made ourselves—all the fire and all the shadows.”

They made glorious love by candle glow.

In the harsh morning light, Josie saw the box of condoms by the bed had never been opened. She spent a week scraping dripped wax off the tables, floors and chairs. She wondered why her apartment didn’t burn
down, but she knew. She and Nate were children of the gods—rich, beautiful and infinitely lucky.

Josie discovered she was pregnant about the time Nate was arrested for drug smuggling in Canada. Nate went to prison and was barred from entering the United States. Josie never told him he had a daughter. She never talked with him again. It hurt too much to think that her glamorous lover was a common drug dealer.

Amelia thought her father had been killed in a crash. It was true, Josie thought. My life crashed the day Nate was arrested.

Josie refused to give up her daughter, the product of her wild love. Amelia was a flawless child, born of a perfect time in Josie’s life. Andy would have taken her back and married her, but Josie had lost her desire for a bottom-line boy. A house in the burbs seemed tame after all she’d almost had.

To Jane’s horror, Josie dropped out of college. After Amelia was born, she became a mystery shopper so she’d have time to be with her daughter. Josie paid a high price for her reckless romance, but she wasn’t unhappy with her life. She just didn’t trust herself with men. They were either dull and sweet like Stan, or wild and crazy like Nate.

Josh was the first man who’d sent sparks flying since Nate. Now she worried that Josh and Nate were too much alike.

They’re not, she told herself. They have nothing in common. Nate was a pilot. Josh is a writer.

With a drug-dealing past, whispered a voice.

A past he’s paid for, she told herself. Just as I’ve paid for mine.

“And how will you pay for this?” the saleswoman said. Josie looked startled, then realized the clerk was talking about the candle.

“MasterCard,” Josie said.

“Could I interest you in some Jo Malone potpourri?” the saleswoman said. “It’s only forty-eight dollars.”

For a brief snick in time, Josie almost said yes. Forty-eight dollars sounded reasonable after $345 candles. That was the trap of mystery-shopping the exclusive
stores. Josie could easily lose track of reality and blow a day’s pay on frivolities.

“Not today,” Josie said. Or tomorrow, either. She’d made her choices nearly a decade ago and she couldn’t change them now.

After Josie safely returned the candle to the Plaza Frontenac store, she checked the time, then made an appointment by cell phone. Next she called her friend, Alyce.

“What sleazy place are we visiting today?” Alyce said. “Should I wear a Hazmat suit?”

“We’ve had enough casinos and no-tell motels,” Josie said. “It’s time for spiritual enlightenment. I’ve made an appointment for pastoral counseling.”

“What? Have you lost it?” Alyce never raised her voice, but she was almost shouting into her phone.

“I’ve found it,” Josie said. “We have an appointment to see Cheryl’s good friend, the pastor of the Hillwood Heights Evangelical Church. But I don’t think the Reverend Zebediah Smithson is interested in the shoes of the fisherman.”

“Oh, him,” Alyce said. “The man who’s saving the wrong kind of soles.”

Hillwood Heights church was a flat brick building with a stubby white spire. A sign announced the pastor’s Sunday sermon:
LET WIVES BE SUBJECT TO THEIR HUSBANDS—FOLLOWING GOD’S WORD IN THE MODERN WORLD
.

The church’s sanctuary was a sunny room with tall windows and light wood. The pastor’s office was at the end of a dark hallway that smelled of cooked coffee from countless meetings.

“Good thing this is a church,” Alyce said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t go down this hall without my pepper spray.”

Josie knocked on the office door. “Come in,” an orotund voice said.

The pastor was wearing another sober suit and a matching expression. He wasn’t handsome, but that somehow made him seem trustworthy.

The Reverend Zebediah Smithson sat behind a big wooden desk, like the Lord’s CEO. Josie saw his eyes flick downward to her shoes, and was glad she wore her
dullest rich-lady flats. She lowered her eyes modestly and hoped Alyce didn’t start giggling. She’d lose it for sure.

“I called you for spiritual advice,” Josie said, sitting in one of the visitors’ chairs. Alyce glided to the other. “I’ve brought my friend with me. I prefer she accompany me when I’m going someplace I don’t know.”

“A woman’s virtue is a pearl above price,” the pastor said, his voice growing deeper and rounder. “Chaperones have fallen out of favor with the modern woman, but I’m a preacher of the old school. I tell my flock what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. Women’s libbers try to stop me, but I know that wives should be subject to their husbands. It says so in the Bible. And a woman’s virtue should be protected, for her sake and his.”

“Is that why you met a married woman in that nasty motel by the airport?” Josie said.

She heard a sharp intake of breath from Alyce, but she didn’t dare look at her friend.

The Reverend Zebediah started choking as if he’d swallowed a peanut down the wrong pipe. His eyes bulged and his face turned a devilish red.

“Whoa, there, Reverend,” Josie said, slapping him on his broad worsted back. “I don’t want you clocking out on us now, especially since you haven’t had time to ask the Lord for forgiveness for your sins.”

“I—I committed no sin. It was your evil woman’s mind that saw my Lord’s work as a sin.”

Josie pulled out her camera. “I was there, Reverend. In the parking lot. Would you like me to show your congregation the photos of you entering a motel room with a blonde in red high heels? I think they’d jump to the same conclusions I did. It didn’t look like any pastoral counseling session I’ve ever seen. By the way, where did you get the money to pay that woman?”

“The pastorate’s discretionary fund,” he gasped. His color had faded from stroke red to flamingo pink.

“Going to motels doesn’t show much discretion, Reverend,” Josie said. “But I don’t care what you were doing with the blonde or her red shoes.”

“We watched a movie together,” he said. “A PG-13. That’s all. I’ll swear on the Lord’s holy altar.”

“I wouldn’t want to risk a lightning strike in your church,” Josie said. “We passed a TV and a VCR in your fellowship hall. You could have watched the movie there, if it was such a virtuous activity. But you didn’t, did you? You wanted to get Mrs. Red Heels off alone. When the Lord said to follow in his footsteps, I don’t think that’s what he meant.”

“I swear—”

“Don’t,” Josie said. “I don’t want to know what happened in that motel room, Reverend. I only need to know one thing: What were you doing the night Mel Poulaine was murdered?”

“You think I’m a killer?” The orotund voice shrank to a sibilant squeak.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Josie said.

“This is outrageous! You are accusing a servant of the Lord, woman. I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“No, you don’t.” Josie held up the camera. “It’s me or the church board, Reverend. I’ll e-mail them the photos. Your choice.”

The Reverend Zebediah was sweating now, just as he had on the afternoon at the motel. “I didn’t. I—When was he killed?”

Josie noticed he didn’t ask who Mel Poulaine was. Guilty, guilty, guilty. “Last Monday evening, between seven and nine,” she said.

The reverend seemed to relax slightly. “I was at the Ladies’ Auxiliary meeting from seven until eight in the fellowship hall. Then there was a board meeting in the same place starting at eight. It was supposed to be over at ten thirty, but it became quite heated. We were discussing the contract for the new roof, and one board member thought it should go to his brother-in-law. The meeting lasted until twelve thirty. I have the minutes here. My secretary just typed them.”

He rummaged around on his desk and pulled out some typewritten sheets.

“Let me see,” Josie said.

“You don’t trust me?” he said. Some of the thunder was back in his voice.

“No,” Josie said, grabbing the paper out of his hand. She skimmed the minutes, checking the date. It was the right night. Then she found the crucial sentence: “The meeting was called to order at eight o’clock. Present at the meeting were the Reverend Zebediah Smithson …”

“You’re innocent of this crime, anyway,” Josie said. “Go and sin no more.”

The Reverend Zebediah bristled, then looked relieved. His color was now a lobster pink.

Josie looked at his red, sweating face. “Better get right with God, Reverend,” she said. “I’m not sure you’re long for this world.”

Alyce didn’t say a word. She glided out of the room with her odd, floating walk. She unlocked the SUV in silence. It was only after she pulled out of the parking lot that Alyce and Josie erupted into ungodly howls of laughter.

“I can’t believe you told the reverend he wasn’t long for this world,” Alyce said.

“That guy’s going to have a stroke any day now with his stupid sneaking around,” Josie said. “Miserable hypocrite. I’m sorry he didn’t kill Mel. I’d love to see him sweating in a cell.”

“Josie, you’re a bigger bluffer than any poker player. You never took a photo of Cheryl and the minister,” Alyce said.

“No, I didn’t. The Reverend Zebediah was blinded by his guilty conscience,” Josie said. “The Lord didn’t send him enough enlightenment to ask to see those photos.”

“It’s barely noon, and we’ve already ruined the Reverend Zebediah,” Alyce said. “Who do we destroy next?”

“Let’s go for a perfect homemaker,” Josie said. “Fiona Christie—the woman who took in Ben when Cheryl was on a winning streak.”

“Oh, good, we get to see the Christie mailbox again,” Alyce said. “I may personally rip off that stray apostrophe.”

“And make the world a better place,” Josie said.

Except for the errant apostrophe, the Christies’ home could have been on a real estate calendar. The paint gleamed, the rubbery zoysia grass was raked, and the windows shone in the cold November sun.

Fiona, the foot fetishist’s delight, answered the door wearing a fleece sweat suit and pink flip-flops. Josie thought she had exceptionally small, dainty feet. Each toe was painted shell pink.

A baby was crying, and Fiona had that harassed look peculiar to mothers of toddlers. Josie could see a large entrance hall with crayon scribbles on the wallpaper. A baby gate blocked the pale beige living room, which was two shades darker than Cheryl’s showcase. Fiona’s signed oil paintings were full-rigged ships. Otherwise, the rooms were identical.

The dining room had a gigantic lighted china cabinet. Josie wondered what those tender toes had done to get it.

“I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow,” Fiona said.

Alyce and Josie looked at each other, nonplussed.

“If you give me a moment, I’ll collect the rummage sale items from the basement,” Fiona said.

“Oh, we’re not here for that,” Josie said. “We wanted to talk about Mel and his ten little friends.”

The color drained from Fiona’s face as if someone had pulled a plug. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice quavered.

Josie held up her camera. “I have the photos right here,” she said.

Fiona never said, “What photos?” Josie feared she might faint on the spot.

“I—I can’t tell you. I—I—” she stopped, too frightened to continue.