Undercover in High Heels (14 page)

I blinked and realized Ramirez was still talking.

“…and we’ll stop by your place later so you can pick up a few things.”

“You don’t have to do this. I mean, I don’t want to intrude.”

Ramirez’s gaze lingered on the hem of the sheet, flirting with my barely Bs. “No intrusion at all.”

“But what about Tot Trots? I need my drawing table to design. I can’t do that here.”

“I thought you said you finished your last assignment?”

Oh yeah. Right.

“But what about my mother?” I said, grasping. “What will she say if I tell her I’m staying here? You know”—I gestured to the wrinkled sheets—“with you.”

Ramirez’s lips parted in a slow grin. “Honey, your mom offers me condoms every time I see her. I don’t think she’s exactly under the impression that you’re a virgin.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I took another sip of coffee to cover my rising panic. Hearing the G-word last night had been great. Wonderful. Terrific, in fact. But going from girlfriend to cohabiting was a big leap. We’re talking diving-off-the-110-overpass-into-rush-hour-traffic kind of leap.

Again I couldn’t help wondering if it was me or the case he was really interested in. What would happen when this was all over? When Isabel was behind bars and the
Magnolia Lane
killer was doing time in San Quentin? Would Ramirez still be Mr. Attentive,
or was it back to canceling dinner plans and running out on me at the mere chirp of a pager?

I wasn’t certain. But since Horny Chick had had her fun, Neurotic Chick was back, and she decided the only way to know for sure was to call his bluff.

“Okay, ” I heard myself say. “I’ll move in.”

His face broke into a wide grin and he leaned in for a kiss.

“But”—I stopped him, carefully watching his reaction over the rim of my coffee cup—“don’t you think I should have my own key?”

Ramirez paused. “Key?”

“Uh-huh.” I nodded, bobbing my bed-head up and down. “A key to your place. My
own
key. You know, since I’ll be living here and all. That way I can come and go
anytime I want
.”

“I, uh, don’t have a spare copy, ” he hedged.

“No problem. I’ll make myself one.”

I saw him bite the inside of his cheek, his eyes narrowing at me.

I gave him my best wide-eyed-innocent stare.

We sat like that for an agonizing two seconds, until finally he stood and said, “Don’t worry about it. Just leave the front door open.”

Ahnt. Wrong answer, pal.

“But—” I was about to protest.

Only I didn’t get the chance, as Ramirez’s pager came alive on his belt. He looked down, a frown settling between his brows as he read the number.

“Work, ” he said, slipping his cell out of his back pocket.

I sucked on my lower lip, staring into my now-tepid cup of coffee, and tried to stave off the panic at
the fact that my little game of chicken was backfiring miserably.

There was no way I could move in with Ramirez. I was so not ready for him to see the unbuffed, unpolished, drooling-on-her-pillow-at 3-
A.M.
Maddie who woke up with bed-head to rival Don King’s. And I seriously was not ready to have him see the parade of beauty products it took to keep up appearances. What would he say the first time he saw me putting on my pore-cleansing acne mask? Or antiwrinkle night cream? There were some things a man just should not know about a woman until after he’s married (i.e., legally required to love her despite her jumbo-size box of tampons sitting where his issues of
Sports Illustrated
used to be).

I had just about worked myself into a state of hysteria the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since the Black Friday sale at Macy’s last Thanksgiving, when Ramirez hung up the phone and turned to me.

The frown between his brows had worked itself into an all-out scowl.

“I have to go, ” he mumbled, standing up and throwing on his leather jacket. “Now.”

Uh-oh. I didn’t like that tone.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, unconsciously clutching my coffee cup tighter. “What’s going on?”

Ramirez didn’t answer, instead shoving a ring of keys into his pocket and slipping on his holster.

“What? What is it?”

He turned to face me, his Bad Cop look already firmly in place.

“Please?” I asked, really starting to worry now. “You know I’ll find out eventually anyway.”

I’d like to think it was the
please
that softened him, but more likely it was the fact that he knew I was right. “It was my captain.” He paused, rubbing one hand over his eyes and suddenly looking very tired. “They’ve found another body.”

I blinked, my mind going blank as I white-knuckled the coffee cup to keep from spilling it all over Ramirez’s sheets.

“Whose body?” I asked.

But it was too late. Ramirez was already out the door. I sprang up from the bed, wrapping the sheet around my middle as I trailed after him into the living room.

“Wait! Whose body?”

Ramirez was at the front door, shoving his wallet in his back pocket. “Look, just stay out of this, okay, Maddie? You’ve already got some psycho pissed off at you. Just stay here and I’ll be back later.”

“Jackson Wyoming Ramirez, don’t you dare walk out that door!”

Ramirez paused, hand hovering over the doorknob, and raised one eyebrow at me.

“Um, please?”

He shook his head at me, and I could swear the corner of Bad Cop’s lips quivered ever so slightly. “Look, I don’t know whose body yet. They just said they
found a woman in the Central Park section of the lot. She was strangled, just like Veronika.”

I shivered, suddenly cold beneath my thin makeshift toga. “I’m going with you.” I dropped the sheet and grabbed my discarded sundress, cake stains and all, from the living room floor.

“No!” In one quick movement, Ramirez was across the room, grabbing one end of the dress in a tug-of-war. “No way. You are staying here.”

I tugged back. “Like hell I am.”

“Maddie, I’m warning you…”

“Let go of my dress!”

“Not until you promise to stay put.”

“You’re going to stretch it.”

“Then let go.”

“No, you let go!”

“No, you—”

But he didn’t get to finish that thought as the horrible sound of ripping fabric filled the air and I went flying backward, landing on my bare tush on his hardwood floor. I looked down. I had half a cake-stained sundress in my hands.

“You ripped my dress!” I moaned. “This was a discontinued Betsey Johnson summer-collection baby-doll dress! It’s irreplaceable. And now I have nothing to wear!”

For half a second Ramirez looked like he might have been sorry. But as he stared down at me, that wicked grin stole across his face again.

“Well, I guess you’re staying here then.”

That was it; he was dead meat.

I lunged for him, but thanks to his quick copreflexes, he was out the door before I could even peel myself off the floor.

“I am so
not
moving in with you!” I yelled to the closed door. But I was pretty sure he didn’t hear me over the sound of his SUV screeching out of the drive.

Great. Now what?

I pulled the sheet back around my middle and plopped down on the sofa. I stuck one fingernail in my mouth as my mind twisted over just whose body Ramirez was racing to view. Could it be Mia’s? Had the killer really been after her this whole time? Or maybe it was another victim of the killer baby-daddy. Maybe Veronika hadn’t been the only one he was fooling around with. Or maybe it was someone who had seen him offing Veronika. A witness? Maybe it was completely unrelated to anything. A copycat?

I grabbed Ramirez’s space-shuttle remote and tried to turn on the news. But since my technical skills ended at being able to program my Mr. Coffee, all I could get was a giant screen full of snow and static. I gave up, instead grabbing Ramirez’s cordless from the end table and dialing the one person I knew who just might know more than the cops.

“Felix Dunn, ” he answered. I could hear sirens and loud voices in the background.

“It’s Maddie. You’ve heard about the body?”

“Yeah, ” he responded, “I’m at the studios now.”

I held my breath. “Who is it?”

“No idea, love. Police aren’t releasing her name yet. But I saw Mia giving a tearful comment to
Entertainment Tonight
just now, so I know it’s not her.”

I let out a small sigh of relief. I could just imagine what Ramirez’s superiors would say if it had been the show’s star. (Not, mind you, that he wasn’t still on my shit list after the demolition of my Betsey Johnson.)

“Any luck with the PayMate site last night?” I asked.

“Some.” Someone shouted in the background, and I strained to hear what was going on. “I was able to get into their system, but the files are still all encrypted.”

“Can you read them?”

“Not yet. Honestly, I’m thinking the easiest way to find this guy is to catch him in the act when he logs in again. Now that I’m in their system, I can trace back to his address if he stays online long enough.”

“Really? You can do that?”

“You underestimate me, love, ” he said with a hint of humor in his voice. “Problem is, we’d have to know when he’s logging on.”

I chewed my lower lip, an idea brewing. “Hang on; I’m going to put you on speakerphone, Felix.”

After only three tries I found the right button to push on Ramirez’s phone, and the living room filled with the sounds of a Hollywood crime scene.

“Still there?” I yelled.

“Bloody hell, no need to shout, girl.”

“Sorry. Okay, hang on.”

I dug my cell phone out of my purse and dialed Information for Jasmine’s number. Only a 900-number under Jasmine’s Girls, but under her own name, Jasmine Williams, I hit pay dirt.

“Okay, I’m dialing Jasmine, ” I yelled at the speakerphone.

“I’m right here; no need to shout.”

“Sorry.”

I keyed in the number and waited while Jasmine’s phone rang on the other end. She picked up after the third one.

“Yeah?” came her high-pitched Barbie voice.

“Jasmine, it’s Maddie.”

There was a pause. “Who?”

“Maddie Springer.”

Nothing.

I sighed. If I ever got this chick to remember my name, I’d feel it was a life well lived. “The one who popped the boob and is now working with the police.”

I heard Felix snicker from the speaker.

“Oh right. You. Whadda you want?” she asked. I could hear her popping a wad of gum between her bleached white veneers.

“I have a favor to ask. That guy who logged on to see Veronika—could you call me at this number if he logs in again?”

“And why should I do that?” she asked.
Pop, pop.

“Because it may lead us to Veronika’s killer.”

Jasmine snorted. “So?”

Gee, such a loving soul. My eyes roved the apartment as I racked my brain for anything I could barter with. Then they settled on the speakerphone.

“How about a free ad in the
L.A. Informer
?”

I heard Felix shouting, “No!” from the speaker.

“What was that?” Jasmine asked.

“Television. So, what do you think?”

“I don’t know…”

“Uh…okay, how about two months of free ads? Full-page, ” I added.

“Do you have any idea how bloody expensive that is?” Felix shouted from the speaker.

I covered the mouthpiece of the cell with my hand. “Relax, ” I whispered back at him. “I know you can afford it. Besides, think of the story you’ll get.”

Felix did a pained groan, but didn’t say anything.

“So, ” I said into my cell, “do we have a deal, Jasmine?”

“You promise, full-page?”

“Promise.”

“Okay. Fine. I’ll call you the next time he logs on. But I’m warning you, I have no idea when it will be.”

“Thanks, Jasmine!” I said, flipping my Motorola shut.

“We got it, ” I shouted to Felix.

His groan filled the room. “You couldn’t have offered her a free subscription instead?”

I ignored him. “I’ll let you know the second Jasmine calls me. In the meantime, just be ready to track him.”

“This had better be one hell of a story, ” he mumbled. I heard more noises in the background and someone else shouting. “Listen, they’re moving the body. I’ve gotta go if I’m going to get any decent pictures.” Then he paused. “Oh hell.”

“What?” I pulled the sheet up over my shoulders to ward off the sudden chill in the air again. “What is it? What do you see?”

“You’d better get down here, Maddie.”

“Why? Felix, who is it?”

But he’d already hung up.

Shit.

I looked down at my tattered sundress. What were the chances Ramirez had anything in his closet in a size six?

I scooped my cell back up and dialed Dana’s number.

Luckily, Dana was up early, and I quickly filled her in on the morning’s developments. After the appropriate amount of “Ohmigod”s and “He ripped your Bet
sey Johnson!”s, she promised to pick me up in twenty minutes with a new outfit in hand.

In hindsight, I guess I should have been more specific about what kind of outfit. It wasn’t that Dana didn’t have good taste in clothes, just that she tended to have a little bit
different
taste than I did. Me, I wore clothes that made me feel confident, pretty, even sometimes a little kick-butt. Dana tended to wear outfits that either a) were made entirely of workout-friendly spandex or b) were cut low enough to cause car crashes on the 101.

I stared down at the dress in Dana’s hand as she walked in Ramirez’s front door.

“What is that?”

Dana looked from the scrap of fabric (which from here appeared to be both spandex
and
cut to the navel) to me. “What?”

I held it up to my body. It was a formfitting blue dress, hemline hovering somewhere just below my panty line, neckline plunging somewhere just north of that. “Seriously?” I asked, giving her the one-eyebrow thing.

“What?” Dana blinked innocently. “You asked for a dress.”

I did a mental eenie-meenie-miny-mo between a pair of Ramirez’s oversize sweats and the reject from the J-Lo Awards Dresses Collection. In the end, I slipped the dress over my head, hoping my barely Bs didn’t fall out of the neckline clearly designed for someone about two letters larger. I slipped on my pink heels, cringing just a little at how badly they clashed with the electric blue spandex, and grabbed my purse before hightailing it out the door and off to the Sunset Studios.

If it was possible, security was even tighter today than it had been before. And to make matters worse, in addition to the actors, grips, and crew members, the line spanning around the block also included various TV reporters, cameramen, and paparazzi, all vying to get through the metal detectors and into the thick of Hollywood’s hottest story.

Dana and I stood anxiously in line as I tried Felix’s number again. Straight to voice mail. I chewed on a fingernail, wondering just what he’d meant by, “You’d better get down here.”

“Hi, Dana!” A guy in a black cap and jeans passed by us, giving Dana a little wave before finding a spot at the back of the line.

Dana waved back, sinking her teeth into her lower lip as she watched his denim-clad rear retreat.

I nudged her in the ribs. “Who was that?”

“One of the other extras. Carl. Awesome biceps, huh?”

I peeked over my shoulder. “Not bad. Which reminds me”—I gave her a pointed look—“how’s the SA thing going?”

“Right. Um, great. Wonderful, in fact. Fantastic, ” she said with false cheer bordering on Mary Poppins creepy.

“No relapse yesterday?”

Dana shook her head, her blonde hair whipping her cheeks. “Nope. I taught three spinning classes at the gym, went for a four-mile hike, did some Pilates, then dropped Ricky’s car back off at his place last night.”

“Ricky’s place?” I raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m not sure Therapist Max would approve.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, ignoring me as she latched on
to my forearm with a death grip. “Guess what Ricky told me last night?”

“Spill it, ” I encouraged as we inched forward in line.

“Well, after I dropped his car off at his place, he gave me a ride home—you know, he’s such a gentleman that he didn’t even make a move on me at all, and I was totally wearing this short little micromini that, well, I have to say, looked pretty damn hot on me.”

I made a circular get-to-the-point motion with my wrist.

“Yeah, okay. Anyway, we got to talking about Mia and Margo and their whole blowup on set the other day. Well, it turns out that Margo was originally cast for the part of Ashley. Mia was supposed to play Nurse Nan, but she convinced the producers that Margo was too old to play opposite Ricky. She got the parts switched.”

“Wow, Mia really knows how to make friends, huh?”

Dana nodded. “Apparently there’s been bad blood between them ever since.”

I didn’t blame Margo. If I’d lost out on the part of Ashley Culver because some diva had called me old, I’d be pretty pissed too. I was beginning to wonder whether maybe the LAPD was right after all. Maybe Mia was the target in all this.

Which made me wonder again just who was DOA in Central Park.

I shoved that fingernail back in my mouth, chewing anxiously, as Dana and I finally made it to the front of the line. After Billy checked our names against the list, I set my bag down on the conveyer belt, took off my shoes, ring, and necklace and, just for good measure,
unhooked my bra, slipping it out through my right sleeve and dropping it into the front pocket of my purse. I was taking no chances this time.

Feeling confident (especially since I’d made Dana stash her vibrator in the car), I stepped through the metal detector. Nothing.
Nada.
Not a beep. I gave Queen Latifah a triumphant smile.

But, honestly, when was my luck ever that good?

“Miss?” Bug-eyed Billy called out, holding open my purse.

“It’s just my bra, ” I explained. “I didn’t want the underwire setting off the metal detectors.” Again.

Billy peered at me through his Coke-bottle lenses, his jaw set in as hard a line as a jowly eighty-year-old’s can get. Then he sent a warning look to Latifah. “It’s a two-fifteen.”

“A what?” I asked.

But apparently Queen Latifah knew exactly what a two-fifteen was, as she sprang into action, pulling her walkie-talkie from her belt and shouting into it: “Code two-fifteen, we’ve got a code two-fifteen at the west entrance. Requesting backup immediately.”

“Whoa—backup?” My gaze whipped between Billy’s hard stare and Latifah’s frenzied shouting. “What’s going on here?”

I blame it on the fact that I’m blonde, have been a little preoccupied with my crappier-than-a-tractor-full-of-fertilizer love life, and was on a set full of whacked-out actors (not to mention dead bodies) that I didn’t catch on sooner. That I didn’t remember the last time I’d seen Felix and the fact that, in my morning-after glow, I’d completely forgotten all about…