Killer Heels (8 page)

Cassady grimaced. “Thank you, Melissa Rivers.”

It was seven o’clock in the morning and I should have been standing there counting my blessings that I had two such good friends who were willing to be up, dressed, and in my apartment taking control of my life at that wretched hour. But I was not in the most altruistic of moods at that moment, so what I was doing was standing there, wrapping myself up in my bathrobe and hating the contents of my closet. Hating my waistline and thighs was next on the list, but that’s such a natural progression it hardly needs mentioning.

My apartment’s not bad by New York standards, but the bedroom was feeling a little small this morning with all three of us in there and my being cranky. I actually love my apartment. I’m in the West 40’s, I get a little morning light, and the bathtub’s not in the kitchen. I’ve been here three years, but I still haven’t progressed past the framed movie posters and bookcases-wherever-possible level of decorating. I need to paint, but I keep changing my mind about how dramatic to be, so I keep putting it off. The apartment’s in transition and so am I.

“It’s breakfast,” Cassady said.

“So, a moderately plunging neckline,” Tricia suggested.

“I don’t want him looking at my breasts,” I muttered.

“Yeah, I can see that,” Cassady nodded.

“Excuse me?” My less-than-perfect mood had the slam-sensors working overtime.

Cassady grimaced at me now. “I’m agreeing that it would be distracting. What did you think I meant?”

With a good night’s sleep, I might not have thought she meant anything, but this comment combined with her question while we were strolling through the lingerie department at Saks a week ago—had I ever thought about a Wonderbra?—put a different spin on it. Clearly, she was trying to find a way to tell me, “You think my breasts are too small.”

Cassady blinked slowly so I had time to appreciate how ridiculous a statement she thought that was. “I try very hard not to think about your breasts at all, but it’s hard, given their sheer perfection and outright magnificence.”

“Then why did you ask me about a Wonderbra last week?”

Cassady took a moment to dial back to our shopping trip, then shrugged. “Idle curiosity. Molly, I could ask you right now if you’ve ever had sex with two men at a time, but that doesn’t mean it’s something I think you should run out and do as soon as possible.”

She was right. I was being overly sensitive. Tricia was being wide-eyed and quiet. “What?” I felt compelled to ask her.

“I was waiting for you to answer the question.”

“About the men or the bra?” Cassady asked.

“Both, actually,” Tricia replied.

“Ooookay. If you two would like to follow me, we’ll be moving back over to the subject of my clothes.” I put down my cup of coffee and gestured at my closet.

“I’d go for the purple Wonderbra and the white lawn blouse.” Cassady doesn’t let go of things easily—except men.

“You’re not being very helpful,” Tricia cooed with a little hint of warning thrown in.

“I don’t think she wants my help,” Cassady cooed back.

“Left to her own devices, she’ll go in her bathrobe and we can’t have that, can we?” Tricia sniffed. They really love each other. It can take people a while to realize that because they snipe at each other with the greatest of ease and come off like enemies. But it’s really more like sisters.

“She works for a fashion magazine, she can always proclaim she’s starting a trend. What’re you wearing to bed these days, Moll?”

“An extra large Redskins T-shirt,” I confessed, pulling a nice, classic pair of black slacks out of the closet. I wasn’t sure whether Tricia’s gasp was in response to the T-shirt confession or to the slacks. “Now that I live here, it’s the only time I can wear it. I know better than to wear it out on the streets and invite bodily harm from Giants fans.”

Tricia was, however, reacting to the slacks. She ripped the hanger out of my hand and jammed the slacks back into the closet. “No.” Tricia is one of those potentially annoying women who is always perfectly accessorized, down to her color-coordinated underwear, no matter the occasion or lack thereof. Yes, I work for a fashion magazine—a lifestyle magazine with a large fashion section, that is—but I have been known to wear a pink bra with purple briefs. I even own white. But I know when to wear it—basically, when I am absolutely certain that no one else is going to see it. And while Detective Edwards was unquestionably gorgeous, I was pretty much in a white cotton mood right now.

I like sleep. I enjoy sleep. More importantly, I need sleep. I try to keep myself properly caffeinated so the world doesn’t have to experience me without sleep, but every once in a while, the timing’s off. Like this morning. I’d just spent five hours with Helen and Yvonne, which would classify as a debilitating activity if it occurred on a sunny afternoon. The fact that it had transpired in the middle of the night only added to the difficulty.

Actually, while I was there, adrenaline did a lot of the work and I was able to keep any of us from jumping out windows, emptying medicine cabinets, or otherwise causing damage to self or companions. Though I thought about causing Yvonne some damage more than once. But now that I was home, I had that awful adrenaline hangover thing going, where your head feels like it’s still vibrating because you just stopped screaming and your extremities start to fill with molten lead. Fortunately, I was ten ounces into a pot of Kenya Gold, so hope was in sight.

“You really need to get over the Redskin thing,” Cassady suggested. We both grew up in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC; we discovered that during Contemporary American Literature freshman year of college, and the friendship was launched. Cassady doesn’t have much use for professional sports, but I continue to spend sixteen Sundays a year hoping that this will be a Super Bowl year. I like to think of those Sundays as an indication of a hopeful, optimistic heart. Cassady considers them a waste of time. This from a woman who will date married men.

“This is a date,” Tricia insisted, selecting a teal silk blouse. It’s a great blouse, with a top button that’s in just the right place for a black, front-clasp bra but a bit too low for your basic white back-clasp.

“No, it’s not,” I insisted, guiding her hand back. Tricia and Cassady looked at each other and laughed. Warmly, but they still laughed. I gulped another two ounces of coffee. “He has date potential, but this is not a date. And I’m not going to dress like I think he’s taking me out to dinner when I’m meeting him for breakfast to discuss my dead colleague.”

It came out a little harsher than I meant it to, but then again, it should sound harsh to say “dead” and “colleague” together. Part of the adrenaline burning off was also the reality setting in. I’d had a really long night and I’d learned a lot. Many things I could have quite nicely continued living without knowing, but too late now.

Right after I found Teddy, I thought I understood how awful his death was. When we told Helen, I realized it was even more awful. And then when I sat with Helen and Yvonne at three o’clock in the morning while Helen tried to dial her parents’ phone number so she could tell them, I thought I was going to shriek and not stop. Her agony was so palpable and I wanted so desperately to do something, even take it on myself, to relieve it for even a moment. And I couldn’t. Because the only thing that could make it better for her would be to bring Teddy back from the dead and I know my limits. Most of the time.

I wasn’t sure any of us were going to make it through the night. But once Helen had called Teddy’s parents, her own parents, and her sister, she actually settled into this kind of dignified Zen deal which was pretty impressive to see. She started getting super-organized, making lists of who else to call, who to call right away and who to call once the sun came up, who would be offended if they heard after someone else. Maybe it was shock, maybe she just ran out of tears, but she kept going, she kept thinking, and I admired that. I would have scammed pharmaceuticals from my visitors, curled up in the fetal position, and moaned for at least three weeks.

Of course, when her sister Candy arrived from Queens at about five o’clock, Helen went to pieces again, but she was entitled. Especially since Yvonne had been hovering over her most of the damn night, despite my best efforts to get her to heel. When she wasn’t suggesting that I write a series of articles for the magazine on how to deal with this kind of situation, Yvonne was grabbing Helen and telling her, “We all loved him so much.” It wasn’t helpful. I finally came up with the multi-purpose idea to send Yvonne out to an all-night pharmacy to get some Valerian and anything else she thought might be helpful (the pill case in her Prada handbag having proven to be deplorably empty). You’d think Eisenhower had asked her to take Omaha Beach all by herself. She seized upon the mission with frightening zeal, kissed us both about eight times before she left, and raced off.

The door was barely closed behind her when Helen asked me, “So what do you really think happened to my Teddy?”

The question threw me and so did the cool, clipped way she asked it. There was something in her tone that I couldn’t quite place, but it made me uncomfortable. Still, I’d never been with someone who was going through what Helen was going through, so I figured I needed to let it go and answer the question. But how honestly did I want to answer it? “I’m not sure,” I told us both.

“Whoever did it should burn in hell.” She said it with that same tone and the unsettled feeling spread through my stomach. I semi-nodded and she gave me this tight little smile. The unsettled feeling turned to an ice cube and I thought—
she knows something
.

I actually wished, for the briefest moment, that Yvonne were still there. I had this odd sense of dislocation and I needed to orient myself to a third party to get steady again. I started to change the subject, for my own comfort, and then realized that if I was serious about solving this crime, I couldn’t flinch at the first queasy moment. But I couldn’t suddenly go all Phillip Marlowe on her either. Maybe I could ease into it and start with the classic table-turning that keeps a discussion with a boyfriend so entertaining. “What do you think happened, Helen?”

Her jaw locked and her expression cooled appreciably. I forced myself to meet her gaze and to not apologize, which I readily do in most awkward social situations, occasionally even when I know it’s not my fault but I want the moment to pass. If she was offended, she was going to have to explain why. “I think my life is over,” she finally answered, just a few degrees warmer.

Dear Molly, how do I keep going when the most important thing in my life has vanished?
I get this question, in various permutations, way more often than I should when you figure most of my readers are in their twenties and should be able to take a few more kicks in the teeth from life before needing dentures.

“No, it’s not,” I said gently. “It’s going to be hard, but you can do this.”

“The question is, do I want to?” Her tone didn’t get any warmer, but she started to tear up. I couldn’t quite tell if they were tears of sorrow or anger, even when she continued, “I can’t tell you what it feels like to be in this place and so full of regret.”

“Regret about what?”

She looked at me really hard for a really long moment as she weighed some pros and cons. I’m pretty sure she was going to tell me, but the phone rang and made us both jump. I started to answer it for her, but she grabbed it, as eager to end our conversation as she was to start another one. It was Teddy’s brother Charlie in Minneapolis. Helen began to bravely recite the facts as she knew them and I backed off.

I slipped into the kitchen, seeking a glass of water. What I really wanted to do was see what kind of ice cream Helen kept in the freezer or, better yet, what kind of wine Teddy kept in the fridge, but my good breeding prevented me from being a total pig. You wait for the wake to stuff your face. I did open the fridge in the hopes of finding cold bottled water and found myself staring at carryout containers from Costa del Sol. So she really had ordered in. That much of her alibi stood up.

The word “alibi” trailed a little flush of guilt in its wake. On a visceral level, I knew Helen had nothing to do with this, yet, here I was, sneaking a peek inside the bag. Had she ordered for one or for two? The crinkling of the plastic bag sounded like a tarp flapping in the wind as I listened with one ear to make sure Helen was still on the phone. Inside, there were two foil carryout dishes. I pried up the cardboard cover of the top one: it held a few beef medallions in Madeira and some stray slices of vegetables. Leftovers. I eased the dish up to inspect the one underneath, holding my breath as Helen seemed to stay silent too long, then breathing again as she sobbed anew into the phone.

The second dish was full. Paella, beautifully presented given that it was for takeout. Now, a woman who can’t finish one entreée isn’t going to order two. And you don’t order something with shellfish in it a day ahead unless you like flirting with intestinal distress. Helen had ordered it for Teddy in the hopes that he’d be home early enough to eat it. She’d thought he was coming home. Whatever the regret was, she hadn’t given up completely. She knew something, but she hadn’t killed him.

Yvonne returned while Helen was finishing up with Charlie and then Candy arrived. I knew I was not going to get Helen back to confessional mode with her sister around. Candy has four kids under the age of nine, one of those expansive women who always smells of cookie dough and carries safety pins in her purse and mothers everybody. That’s probably what Helen needed most right now, so it was a perfect time for Yvonne and me to get ourselves home.

Helen made me promise to meet her at the police station at ten to help her through the identification and all that stuff. Candy didn’t leap in and tell me that it wasn’t necessary, that she would take over from here, so I confirmed I’d meet the two of them at the station. Yvonne waited a moment to see if Helen would ask her to be there, too, but Helen hugged us both and thanked us for helping her through the worst night of her life. It actually choked me up, but it seemed to tick Yvonne off. She left her shopping bag with goodies on the coffee table and practically marched me to the elevator.