High Heels Are Murder (13 page)

“Here’s something else I don’t get,” Alyce said. “Why drive to East St. Louis when there are newer and better casinos close to her home?”

Cheryl’s SUV headed steadily west into the rich suburbs. Soon she was driving in a pack of pricey cars, blending back into her perfect life. By four o’clock, Cheryl turned into the babysitter’s subdivision. Josie and Alyce cruised by and saw Cheryl carry a smiling Ben to her SUV. His chubby arms were wrapped around his mother.

“We don’t need to follow her any farther,” Josie said. “Cheryl’s going home.”

“Me, too,” Alyce said. “I want to hug my husband
and child. I want to take a long shower and get that neon glare out of my eyes. What a horrible afternoon.”

“I guess you won’t be going with me tomorrow,” Josie said. “I don’t blame you.”

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it,” Alyce said.

Alyce dropped Josie off at her car. Josie drove home in silence. What was she going to tell Mrs. Mueller? Should she say her daughter had a gambling problem?

I’m blowing this all out of proportion, Josie thought. Cheryl went to a casino one day. She lost a little money. Okay, she lost a lot of money, but that doesn’t make her an addict.

But she seemed so at home there, a voice whispered. She’s done this before.

So what? Maybe Cheryl went to casinos to blow off steam. Being perfect had to be a burden. The casino was an escape, the last place where her mother and her neighbors would look for her. Was it more acceptable to spend seven hundred bucks for shoes or for the slots?

Josie couldn’t answer that question.

But she did know one thing: It was too soon to tell Mrs. Mueller.

The old woman came out on her porch when Josie arrived at her own flat. Mrs. Mueller looked like trouble. Her dress was the same iron gray as her hair. It could have been a prison matron’s uniform, except for the black silk rose on her bosom.

“Come inside,” Mrs. Mueller said. “I want to talk to you.”

Now that she was Josie’s employer, Mrs. Mueller was issuing orders, not asking favors. Josie followed, mostly out of curiosity. She hadn’t been inside her neighbor’s house since she was fifteen and her mother made her apologize for the flaming dog doo.

The house had changed very little. The living room was still twice the size of Josie’s and carpeted in pale green. The carpet was protected by plastic runners. The runners were covered with throw rugs. There were more pictures of Cheryl on the mantel than Josie remembered, plus new photos of Tom and baby Ben.

Those were the only major differences. The lamp-shades
still had their original cellophane covers. The curtains were a welter of draped, looped and pleated fabric. The pale green couch still had those slippery plastic slipcovers, installed at great expense when Cheryl reached puberty. They weren’t meant to save the couch, but Cheryl’s reputation. Any boy who dared make out with Cheryl would slide right off the couch.

“What did you find out?” Mrs. Mueller said.

“Nothing really interesting,” Josie said. One look at Mrs. Mueller’s determined face, and Josie knew she couldn’t mention the casino yet. Mrs. M would drive straight to Ballwin and confront her daughter. That would put Cheryl permanently on her guard.

“Well, did she go to the babysitter’s house?” Mrs. Mueller demanded.

“Yes, she dropped off Ben about eleven and drove around. I followed her until four p.m., when she picked him up, but the results are inconclusive. I’ll know more tomorrow.”

Mrs. Mueller gave Josie a look that made her feel fifteen again. It wasn’t a good feeling. “I’m counting on you, Josie. And so is your mother.”

Josie heard the threat.

A worried Jane greeted her daughter at her door. She’d picked up Amelia from school, then started dinner. A big pot of stew simmered on Josie’s stove. A salad smiled on the kitchen table. Both were welcome surprises, but Josie knew the meal came with a price.

Jane started stirring the stew, mostly for something to do. “Did you find out anything?” She put down the wooden spoon and began wringing her hands, anxious for an answer.

What were the ethics of revealing client information to your mother? Josie wondered. She decided not to say anything. Jane was putty in the wily clubwoman’s hands. She might accidentally let something slip to Mrs. Mueller.

“Too early to tell,” Josie said.

Amelia was suddenly standing in the kitchen. Josie swore her daughter could dematerialize. The kid winked. She knew her mother was lying.

“You rest up until supper’s ready,” Jane said, too cheerfully. “You’ve had a long day.”

Josie couldn’t rest. She’d been cooped up in the twilight world of the casino. She wanted real air. “Come on, Amelia, let’s go for a bike ride,” she said.

“It’s cold,” Amelia said.

“Bundle up and we’ll go for frozen custard.”

That twisted logic appealed to her daughter. Amelia ran for her coat, shrieking, “I want chocolate.”

“You’ll ruin your dinner,” Jane said.

“We’re going to have dessert with dinner,” Josie said. “We’ll just eat it first. Riding bikes will give us an appetite for stew.”

Mother and daughter escaped into the frosty November night. Josie liked riding down her street, peeking into the golden squares of window light, seeing people eat dinner and watch TV. They seemed safe and normal.

Amelia and Josie stopped for tall frozen-custard cones at Mr. Wizard’s on Big Bend. Oddly, it did warm them up.

“How was the Gettysburg Address?” Josie asked. She licked the drips off her cone.

“Mom, that’s gross,” Amelia said. “Use your napkin. I got five out of six.”

“Not bad,” Josie said. The napkin stuck to her fingers.

“Senator Harry Palmidge is coming to speak to our class about Lincoln,” Amelia said.

“You mean your school,” Josie said.

“No, Mom, just our class.”

“A United States senator is speaking to a bunch of third graders? Your classmates’ parents must be major donors.”

“Mom, you’re so cynical.”

“No, I’m a realist. Trust me, Amelia. Senators never spoke to my grade school class in Maplewood.”

“Did anyone talk to you?” Amelia said.

“Just the cops, telling us to stay out of jail.”

“Did it work?” Amelia grinned.

“I haven’t been arrested yet,” Josie said.

But the lecture hadn’t worked for Cheryl, Josie thought. She’d been arrested for pushing a policeman,
and there might be worse in her future. Josie shivered. She didn’t like what she saw today. The sight of Cheryl, hypnotized by the slots, scared Josie. It hit too close to home. She wanted her mom to get her precious flower chair. Then Josie wanted to go back to the malls where she belonged.

“Let’s go home,” she said, suddenly chilled to the bone. “Grandma will be worried.”

After Amelia was in bed, Josie went on the Internet to read about women gamblers. They had other problems besides their addiction. Men didn’t take them seriously. Jeez, Josie thought. Even women addicts couldn’t get equal treatment.

One woman in Gamblers Anonymous wrote, “The men did not know what to do with the women who came to the meetings. Some were literally chased away after being hit on or intimidated by the men and made to feel ‘less than.’ The women were new to the GA program and their gambling was different. They were told that bingo, slots, video poker and the lotteries were not real gambling.”

That’s exactly what Alyce and I did, Josie thought. We made jokes about granny gamblers.

The newsletter woman had solved her problem by starting a Gamblers Anonymous group for women. Men tended to be action gamblers, she wrote. They bet on skill games like poker. Women were escape gamblers. “We play luck games like bingo, the lottery, slots or video poker machines. We gamble first as recreation, then as escape from problems.”

But what did Cheryl want to escape? Josie thought. Her mother? Her life? Her husband? Maybe all of the above.

The newsletter woman was smart and strong. She knew she had a problem and she got help. Josie found hundreds of news stories about St. Louisans who weren’t so lucky. They stole fortunes to feed their gambling habits—and got caught.

A bookkeeper embezzled more than two million dollars. A husband and wife extracted more than a million dollars from their companies. A brewery employee filed
four hundred thousand dollars in false expense-account reports. Would these people have stayed honest if the casinos never came to town?

The wretched criminal roll call continued. The occupations sounded like a high school career day: A bank vice president. A lawyer. A stockbroker. The director of a children’s charity. A church pastor.

Some pilfered a few thousand. Others made off with millions. All the money was lost gambling. Josie wondered what happened to their wives, husbands and children. How did they live with the shame and loss?

She couldn’t read any more. She felt sick. In her mind, she saw a chubby blond boy reaching for his mother—and a homemaker shoving bills in a slot machine.

What did Cheryl do to get her gambling money?

“I know why Cheryl was gambling in Illinois,” Alyce said. “At least, I think I do.”

Alyce and Josie were back for a second day of surveillance. This time, Alyce’s SUV was parked on a hilly street above Cheryl’s house, where they had a good view of her garage. It was nine o’clock in the morning. Tom was long gone, but Cheryl hadn’t come out yet. Her garage door was shut tight. The paper was still on the lawn.

The whole subdivision had an abandoned look. Except for a plumber’s truck, nothing was moving.

“Missouri has stricter gambling laws than Illinois,” Alyce said. “You can only lose five hundred dollars every two hours in this state. Most Missouri casinos have two-hour gambling sessions. If gamblers lose five hundred bucks in one throw of the dice, they have to sit out till the next session.”

“So you think Cheryl was in Illinois to do some serious gambling,” Josie said. “Makes sense. She dropped half a grand in an hour yesterday. If she’d been in Missouri, she would have had to wait sixty minutes before she could lose the other two hundred. What a weird law. Does that wait make any difference?”

“It makes gamblers crazy,” Alyce said. “It makes them cross the river and throw away their money in Illinois.”

“Well, by gambler’s logic, the wait would cost Cheryl money,” Josie said. “She would have missed her winning
streak. Of course, she lost her winnings, along with another two hundred bucks.”

“But that’s not how gamblers think,” Alyce said. “Are you warm, or is it just me?” She unbuttoned her coat and lowered her window.

“No, it’s definitely hot in here,” Josie said. “St. Louis weather is perverse. Yesterday it was thirty. Today it’s going up to sixty. The sun is already beating down on the windshield. Plus, you’re wearing that long black wig. Wigs are always hot. This blond one I have on today itches like crazy.”

“This wig is part of an old Halloween witch costume. I didn’t want Cheryl to recognize me. How do I look?” Alyce said.

“Uh, different,” Josie said.

The black wig made Alyce look older and, well, witchy. Josie would forget about the wig for a few minutes. Then she’d be startled by the spooky black-haired woman beside her. Alyce looked like she told fortunes for a living.

“Different how?” Alyce said.

“You look less Episcopalian,” Josie said, scratching delicately under her wig with a pen. “More mysterious.”

Alyce laughed. “It’s too dark for me, isn’t it?”

“You look a little washed out,” Josie said. “But Cheryl will never believe you’re the blonde from the casino yesterday. Your SUV is a good cover, too. There are at least three like it on this street. But I’m still not sure why Cheryl gambled in Illinois.”

“Because of the Missouri loss-limit law,” Alyce said. “It’s supposed to control problem gambling. It keeps gamblers’ losses down to six thousand dollars a day—or forty-two thousand a week—or one hundred sixty-eight thousand dollars a month.”

“Some control,” Josie said. “I’d be bankrupt in less than a week.”

“A lot of high rollers think the loss-limit law cramps their style. Illinois doesn’t have as many hassles. The Missouri casinos are screaming bloody murder. They claim they’d make another three hundred million a year
if the state got rid of the loss-limit law, and that would generate another sixty-something million in tax money.”

“Our esteemed lawmakers will cave in for that kind of money,” Josie said.

“Idiots,” Alyce said. “They never count the other costs. We’ll spend all that money and more catching the crooks created by gambling.”

“You won’t believe the crime casinos cause,” Josie said. “I found a zillion stories about people who embezzled money so they could gamble. Accountants, brokers, church people, lawyers—”

“One of those lawyers was a partner at Jake’s firm,” Alyce said.

“You’re kidding,” Josie said.

“I used to talk to him at the Christmas party,” Alyce said. “Nice guy. Always showed me pictures of his kids. He took eight hundred thousand dollars from an old woman’s trust account—after he used up his home equity, cleaned out his children’s college fund, and ran up forty thousand dollars in credit-card debt. He went to prison.”

“That’s horrible. What happened to his family?” Josie said.

“They lost their house and filed for bankruptcy. His wife, Michelle, is barely hanging on. She’s selling real estate.”

“The last refuge of an abandoned West County wife,” Josie said.

“She’s not in West County anymore,” Alyce said. “She’s living in some awful box by the airport with the kids.” The black wig sat on her head like a dark spell. Josie could feel her friend’s mood darkening, too. “Michelle used to have a life like mine—charity work, a nice house, a nanny.”

“Didn’t she know her husband was gambling at the casinos?” Josie said.

“He said he had to work late,” Alyce said. “All our husbands work late. He had the credit-card bills sent to his office. Michelle had no clue he was a compulsive gambler until it was too late. She divorced him once she found out, but her credit was ruined.”

“Not to mention her life,” Josie said.

“You think St. Louis is this big family city,” Alyce said. Her pale face was blotchy red with anger. The black wig looked frizzy in the heat. “Actually, we’re the eighth-largest gambling market in the country. Gambling is everywhere. But we go around pretending it doesn’t—”