Killer in High Heels (26 page)

“Honestly, I didn’t mean to shoot him,” Mom said, her hands still shaking.

“You didn’t shoot him,” I reassured her. “He’s just a little zapped.”

She looked at me, her voice going into soprano range. “Zapped?”

“Don’t worry, he’ll be fine,” Dana said. “Rico said the jolt only lasts for a couple of minutes. Right, Marco?”

Marco shuddered as if he only knew too well.

“Well, I’ve got a feeling he’s not gonna be too happy when he wakes up,” Mrs. R. said, scrutinizing Monaldo’s face. His legs did a little jimmy thing.

“In that case, I suggest we go
now.
” I dragged Mom away by the arm, her eyes still glued to the crumpled form on the floor, and ushered our little band of accidents waiting to happen out the door.

I’d like to say we made an inconspicuous group as we made a beeline for the club’s front doors, but between Marco’s slinking, Mom’s state of catatonic shock and Mrs. Rosenblatt’s three hundred-pound frame clad in shower-curtain chic, we might as well have been carrying a flashing sign that read SUSPICIOUS PEOPLE HERE. Luckily, this was Vegas, and, though we incurred a couple of stares, no one tried to stop us.

We were almost to the front doors when Mom snapped out of her stupor and yelled, “Wait!”

We all halted, Marco running into the back of Mrs. R. with a little moan.

“What?” I asked.

Mom pointed to the office. “I left the cell phone in there.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll buy a new one,” I said, pushing her toward the door. Just a few more feet and we were home free. Monaldo would wake up none the wiser and Ramirez would never know my pinky swear was worth less than flip-flops on a Payless clearance rack.

“But my prints are all over that one!” Mom protested.

I paused. Damn. She had a point. Not that Monaldo looked like the type to keep fingerprint dust in his back pocket, but Ramirez might. And I knew for certain Detective Sipowicz did. Considering the way I’d already gotten on the LVMPD’s bad side, I wasn’t sure I wanted to chance another encounter with Mizz Belushi and the soda-pushers.

“Fine,” I conceded. “I’ll go get it. You guys go to the car, and I’ll meet you there.”

Mom nodded, letting Dana lead her out the front doors and into the sunlight again. I waited until I saw Mrs. Rosenblatt bring up the rear, waddling to safety, before I spun on my heels and ran as quickly as my strappy slingbacks would allow back to the office.

I paused a moment outside Monaldo’s door, putting my ear to the wood and listening for any signs of movement inside. Nothing. I did a two count before reassuring myself he was still out and slowly pushed open the door.

He hadn’t moved from his crumpled heap on the floor, though his limbs were convulsing like he’d stuck a finger in a light socket. Which, I guess technically, he kind of had. I tippy-toed into the room, carefully stepping over Monaldo’s twitching form, and grabbed the stun gun, slipping it into my purse. Then I tippy-toed back out, keeping one eye on the drooling wise guy. I shuddered to think what he’d do if he woke up. The phrase “limb from limb” came to mind.

I shut the office door behind me and skittered back down the hallway, out onto the main floor of the club again. I was just gearing up to sprint the last few feet to the front doors when I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled into my ear.

Oh, crud. But with the way my luck was going, I shouldn’t have been surprised. In fact, I was starting to think they should rename Murphy’s Law, Maddie’s Law. Anything bad that could happen, did happen. And usually to me.

I slowly turned around to find Ramirez giving me the death glare—arms crossed over his chest, vein in his neck bulging, jaw clenched so tight he could crush diamonds with that thing.

“Uh…hi?” I did a little one-finger wave at him.

“Hi?” he gritted through clenched teeth. “Is that the best you can do?”

I gulped. “Hi there, handsome?”

He looked to the ceiling and muttered something in Spanish. Probably praying to the saint of ditzy blondes again for the patience not to strangle this one.

“See, I can explain,” I said, knowing I was gonna have to talk fast to get myself out of this one. “I was going to stay in the room. I really was! But then the latte was so good, and I really needed a change of underwear, and it had been such a long night with the tossing and the turning and the trying not to maul you with my leg stubble. So I went to the New York, New York, and I was just going to be a second, but then Dana told me about the visions, and we had to stop Mom, but we were too late and she’d already zapped Monaldo.”

Ramirez narrowed his eyes at me, that vein in his neck pulsing double time. “
Zapped
Monaldo?”

I nodded. “Just a little. He should be waking up soon.”

He opened his mouth to say something (which I’m pretty sure involved more naughty words), but was interrupted as the cell phone on his belt chirped to life.

He looked down at the readout. “Shit. Monaldo.”

I gulped, my eyes instinctively going to the hallway where any minute I expected to see a red-faced, jimmylegged mobster with a gun.

“See, I told you he’d be waking up soon,” I said, trying to put a positive spin on things.

Ramirez ignored the comment, instead doing another growl slash glare thing and grabbing me by the arm. He steered me around the bar, carefully avoiding the private offices, and through the maze of mostly empty tables, toward the back of the club.

“Where are we going?” I asked as I stumbled over my feet, trying to keep up with him. “Hey, not all of us have 6′1″ long, I-can-leg-press-a-Buick strides, you know.”

“
I
am going to convince Monaldo he was not just zapped by some nosy blonde’s mother,” he answered, not slowing his pace any. “And
you
are going to wait for me. Then I am going to drive you to the airport and personally put you on the first plane back to L.A. Got it?”

“But what about Hank and Bobbi and Lar—”

But Ramirez cut me off, giving me that death look again.

Right. Never mind.

He pushed me ahead of him through a door in the back of the club leading out into a small parking lot behind the building. A handful of cars filled the spaces, mostly second handers spotted with an impressive variety of dents and dings. Two long black Town Cars that I recognized as Monaldo’s preferred method of transportation were parked in the spaces up front. In the back corner of the lot sat Ramirez’s black SUV. He marched me in front of him and unlocked the doors with his remote before shoving me into the backseat.

“You,” he said, pointing a finger at my nose, “stay.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not a puppy, you know.”

His eyes narrowed again. “No, you’re not. You’re a little pain in the ass that’s driving me up a wall. And, by the way, you’re also running precariously close to being hauled downtown for obstruction of justice, assault with a semi-deadly weapon, and pissing off an officer of the law.”

“You made those last two up.”

His eyes narrowed into fine slits. “Don’t try me.”

I gulped. Trust me, trying Bad Cop’s last nerve was not high on my list of to-dos.

“I’m sorry,” I said instead.

His eyes softened just a little, his jaw relaxing as he rubbed one hand over his eyes. “Maddie, you make me crazy, you know that?”

“I know. And I’m sorry,” I said again.

He shook his head. Then let a little half smile play at the corner of his mouth. He reached one hand out and fingered a lock of my hair. “It’s a good thing you’re so cute, you know it?”

Generally I’m not fond of being called cute. Cute is for drooling babies, dogs in sweaters and cartoon teddy bears with rainbows on their bellies. I prefer “beautiful,” “sexy,” even “da bomb” in certain situations. But somehow, delivered with Ramirez’s husky growl and dark bedroom eyes, the word “cute” instantly switched my lever from cold to hot in two seconds flat.

Suddenly being in the backseat of his car didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

His hands left my hair, snaking around my middle as his lips moved in slow motion toward mine. The heat from his body suddenly washed a menopause-worthy hot flash right through me. His tongue brushed against my lower lip and he let out a low groan. Or maybe I groaned. I wasn’t sure which. In fact, I wasn’t sure of anything except the warm, wiggly feeling settling somewhere in my panty region and the fact that I was a freaking idiot for not sleeping with this guy last night. Seriously, what was I thinking?

His hands slid down my arms, encircling my wrists as his thumbs caressed slow, small circles on my skin. He was kissing me in earnest now and I was so engrossed in the heady rush of hormones Mr. Big Guns had coursing through my body that I didn’t even realize what he was doing until I heard the unmistakable click of metal on metal.

“What the—?”

I broke our lip-lock just as I felt something cool circle my left wrist. I looked up. Ramirez had handcuffed both my hands to the headrest of his car.

My turn to give the death glare. Remember that whole cold-to-hot thing? I could go the other way too. Much faster.

“What the hell is this?” I yelled, jingling the two-inch metal chain between my wrists.

“This,” he said, gesturing to the handcuffs, “is to make sure you’re still here when I get back.”

I stuck my chest out, mustering up as much indignation as a woman handcuffed to an SUV could. “Are you saying you don’t trust me?”

Ramirez pinned me with a look. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”

And with that he shut the car door and I heard the automatic locks click down as he walked away.

Great. Oh, this was just
great!

I admit, in those lonely weeks of waiting for my phone to ring, I’d played out more than one scenario involving me, Ramirez, and a pair of handcuffs. But none had ended like this! That was it. This whole couple/non-couple thing we had going on was so not happening. If he though he could treat me this way and still get a sneak peek at my sexy Frederick’s lingerie, he was more delusional than both Mrs. Rosenblatt and her spirit guide!

Men. They were nothing but trouble anyway. I mean, really, look where the men in my life had gotten me. Handcuffed, fingerprinted, jailed…then handcuffed again! That’s it, I washed my hands of the whole lot of them. In fact, I was actually looking forward to flying home, sitting in my cozy studio and spending the evening alone with Joanie, Chachi and the Keebler elves. Now those were my kind of men.

Minutes ticked by, during which my hands grew increasingly numb and my list of tortuous ways to get back at Ramirez grew increasingly longer. I was up to number five (stuffing rotten eggs down the seats of his precious SUV) when my purse rang on the seat beside me. I looked up at my hands. Crap. I shimmied my butt over to the far side of the seat and lifted the purse strap with my foot. Had I actually attended Dana’s Power Yoga classes instead of just signing up and blowing them off in favor of a pint of Chunky Monkey, I might have been able to lift my purse high enough to grab the phone with my teeth. As it was, I made it to my belly button before the strap slipped off my foot and the bag fell to the floor. Luckily, my cell spilled out onto the floor mats. I slipped off one slingback and managed to hit the “on” button with my big toe.

“Hello?” I shouted in the direction of the floor.

I leaned as far down as I could to hear the response. It was faint, but I could make it out.

“Maddie, it’s Felix.”

Fabulous. Speaking of men I’d like to seek revenge on.

“What do you want?” I shouted, stretching my head down between my knees to hear the response.

“I need to talk to you.” He paused. “Are you alone?”

I looked around the backseat. Unfortunately.

“Yes. Why?”

“Because I have someone here who wants to speak to you.”

I heard noise as the phone was passed. Then an all-too-familiar voice rose up from the floor mats. “Maddie, honey?”

I froze.

Larry.

Chapter Seventeen

“Larry!” I shouted, leaning so far south metal cut into my wrists. “Where are you?”

He hesitated. And I feared for a minute I’d lost the connection.

“Larry? Can you hear me?” I asked, my voice starting to go hoarse from shouting.

“I need to talk to you,” he finally answered, so quietly it was barely more than a whisper. “But I don’t want to do it over the phone. Can we meet somewhere?”

I looked back up at the handcuffs.

“Uh…I’m kind of tied up at the moment. Can’t you just tell me what’s going on now?”

“No. No, it’s too…I’d feel better doing this in person.”

I sighed. “I’m not exactly mobile at the moment.” Understatement alert.

“Fine,” Larry responded. “I’ll have Felix come pick you up.”

“No, I—”

But he’d already handed the phone back to Felix. “Maddie, where are you, love?” he asked.

“No,” I shook my head at the phone. “No, you can’t come here. Ram-uh, Bruno will be out any second.”

Felix paused. “What’s going on over there?”

I sighed. “I’m handcuffed in the backseat of Bruno’s car.”

I wasn’t sure being so far away from the earpiece, but I could have sworn I heard Felix laughing. “Kinky.”

“No, not kinky. False imprisonment. And quit laughing!”

I think I heard him snort. “Okay, where exactly is this car?”

“The employee parking lot of the Victoria Club.”

“Give me five minutes.”

“No, Bruno will be back any—” But he’d already hung up.

I hit the end button with my big toe. So much for my date with the Keebler boys.

I watched the numbers on Ramirez’s dash clock crawl by, all the while keeping one eye on the back door of the Victoria. If Ramirez came out before Felix got here, I had no doubt he’d make good on his promise to shove me onto the first flight home, and I’d miss my one chance to see Larry. Maybe forever. I wondered what Larry wanted to tell me. I hoped something bad about Monaldo. Really bad. As in bad enough for the Feds to arrest him and end this whole
Godfather
meets
Tootsie
my life had become. Then I could go back to my
real
life where my biggest worries included finishing the Rainbow Brite jellies on time (which, the longer I stayed in Vegas, was becoming a bigger worry), sitting in traffic on the 405, and wondering when those adorable wedge sandals were going on sale at Macy’s.