High Heels Are Murder (22 page)

Josie patted the camera. “I think you better. Unless you want your husband to see these.”

“No!” Fiona said.

“Why don’t we come in, so you can sit down?” Alyce said, and pushed forward.

Fiona stepped back and the two women were inside. All three automatically headed for the kitchen, where a fat baby was crying herself into a red-faced frenzy in her high chair. A toddler was chewing on something.

“Adam,” Fiona said to the toddler, “what do you have?”

Adam said nothing.

“Spit it out,” his mother commanded. “Right now.”

Adam spit a rubber-coated paper clip into her hand.

“Bad boy,” she said.

Adam joined his little sister in a crying chorus. It took soothing talk and animal crackers before both children calmed down. At last, there was silence. Adam began rolling a truck over his animal crackers. The baby drooled contentedly in her padded chair.

“Coffee?” Fiona said, as if she was hosting a kaffeeklatsch.

Josie saw it was ready on the warmer. “Yes, thanks,” she said. She watched Fiona carefully, just in case she slipped something into the cups.

“About Mel,” Alyce said.

“Please. I don’t have much money,” Fiona said. Her
voice shook slightly. “We just moved here a year ago. Trip is doing well in the public-relations department at the insurance company, but—”

“We don’t want money,” Josie said. “We want information. We’re looking into Mel’s death.”

“Are you with the police?” Fiona asked.

“No, we’re trying to help Cheryl,” Josie said. “We know you were one of three women who worked for Mel, and we know what you did for him.”

Fiona blushed scarlet and looked down at her hands. She started chipping the pale pink polish off one nail.

“We’re mothers, too,” Alyce said. “We’d never tell anyone. We know it could cause problems with your husband. But we need your help. Cheryl needs your help.”

Alyce’s soft voice and large, calm presence seemed to reassure Fiona. She stopped chipping at her nail. “Cheryl’s in trouble, isn’t she?”

“Why do you say that?” Josie asked.

“Because Mel was pressuring her into doing something she didn’t want to do,” Fiona said. “He did that to all of us. He started out saying we wouldn’t have to do anything except spend some time with men who appreciated pretty feet. They would pay for our company, just to watch us walk around. We couldn’t believe it. But it was true, at first, anyway. We both needed money and it seemed so easy and so harmless.

“But Mel asked us to do a little more each time. Would I wear patent-leather heels? Would I wear fishnet stockings? Garter belt and hose? Ankle-wrap stilettoes?” She stopped, as if afraid to say what she did next.

“Then you worked in his fantasy room,” Alyce said. It was the right guess.

“You know about that, too?” Fiona said.

“I was in it,” Josie said. “It didn’t look so bad.”

Fiona looked relieved. Now the words came spilling out. She talked as if her confessional flood would wash away all she’d done. “It wasn’t. All we had to do was play customer. Mel wanted us to wear garter belts and stockings, or sometimes plain white cotton underwear.”

Josie remembered sitting on that footstool. Mel and
his kinky pals could look right up the women’s skirts. Josie wondered if Fiona knew that.

“We pretended we were shopping for shoes,” Fiona said. “The men would take turns playing salesman. It was so childish, I couldn’t take it seriously. We got paid for our time and we got to keep some of the shoes. All Mel’s friends liked the shoe salesman game.”

“There were other games?” Josie asked.

“Sometimes we’d play valet parking. We’d have to drive up in front of Mel’s house in a car he let us have for the evening. It was always a sports car. Once he used a classic E-type Jaguar from the 1960s. A silver one with a long nose and the most beautiful purr. Another time it was a new red Corvette. Then a black Ferrari.”

All low-slung cars, Josie thought. All difficult for women in skirts to crawl out of.

“Mel’s friends would pretend to be the valet car parkers. They’d hold the door while we scooted out of the car. They wore khaki uniforms with their names embroidered on the pockets. Mel would tell us what to wear at those, too. Sometimes it was full skirts and white panties. Other times it was tight slit skirts, fishnet stockings and patent-leather heels. Once it was clear plastic shoes, the kind you can see through, with rhinestones on the heels. I hated those. They looked cheap.”

“Did Mel have any other requirements?” Josie said.

“All the women had to be blond and wear a size seven shoe. Mel thought that was the perfect size. He said women’s feet were getting bigger and bigger. He complained young women’s feet looked like skis, they were so huge. I hope I’m not insulting you.”

“I wear a size seven,” Josie said.

“I wear a ten,” Alyce said.

“He also wanted women with no bunions, corns or calluses on their feet. We’re hard to find,” she said proudly.

Leaves me out, Josie thought. Her toes had been tortured walking the malls.

“I didn’t mind the games at all. But then Mel talked me into walking on men. It’s called trampling. Sometimes I wore heels. Other times I wore boots. I had a
lot of requests for Mary Janes. There was a pair of Joan & David Mary Janes that really drove the men wild. Some wanted me to get rough. I didn’t like to hurt the men, but they begged me.” She was as wide-eyed as her son.

“And they paid you?” Alyce said.

“Well, yes.” She lowered her eyes. “It seemed so silly, but it made them happy. I thought we could stop there, but then Cheryl and I made that video—”

“What video?” Josie said.

“I’m too embarrassed to talk about it,” Fiona said. “If my husband found out, he’d kill me. But I wasn’t unfaithful. It wasn’t a dirty movie. It’s not sex. Not sex as we know it, anyway. Cheryl and I refused to do the serious sex stuff. That paid the most. Paladia Henderson-Harrison did that.”

“Paladia is the executive?” Josie said.

“Yes. She needed money really bad. She’d made a lot of bad investments. She was going to lose everything: her house, her BMW, her kids’ college funds, maybe even her job. She was afraid her children would have to go to public school. Mel’s shoe business was the fastest way to recoup her losses. Cheryl and I weren’t that desperate. I wanted some nice furniture and Cheryl had a little gambling problem.”

“What’s serious sex?” Alyce said.

“She actually … you know … would … you know … get them excited with her … you know … toes and then they’d … you know.”

Josie thought she knew.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Fiona said righteously. “Cheryl wouldn’t, either. But Mel kept making more and more demands and they got stranger and stranger. Cheryl started meeting this preacher in motel rooms to watch shoe movies.”

“What are shoe movies?” Josie said.

“There are certain movies that have special appeal to foot freaks. They love
Pretty Woman
—all those scenes of Julia Roberts in high heels and boots. They go crazy every time they see her in the thigh-high patent-leather boots. That Marilyn Monroe movie,
The Seven Year Itch
,
where she gets her toe stuck in the bathtub faucet is another secret foot-fetish movie. And old episodes of
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle
.

“The best part for the shoe freaks is it’s perfectly acceptable to watch those movies, but they see all sorts of secret stuff regular people don’t. Mel’s friends also watch lots of MTV. There’s a Sheryl Crow video where she wears Mary Janes and then takes them off and goes barefoot. Drives foot freaks crazy.”

“So that’s why Cheryl was meeting the preacher at the motel,” Josie said. “He was watching the shoe-freak special.”

“I wouldn’t do it,” Fiona said. “I was afraid someone I knew would see me going into that horrible motel with another man. There’s no way I could explain it. Cheryl said I worried too much. Nobody from West County went to those motels, and if they did, they couldn’t talk about it. But her Tom isn’t jealous like my husband, Trip. I couldn’t risk it.

“Mel’s requests were getting odder. I wasn’t sure how Cheryl and I were going to get out of this, especially after we made that video. He told us it was for his private enjoyment, but then he found a distributor. He was going to sell it on the Internet and in adult stores. Cheryl and I were so upset. You can’t see our faces in the video, not really, but you’d recognize us if you knew us. I wanted to quit right then, but I couldn’t. Mel said he’d show Trip the video.

“I don’t care if I never get a new sectional sofa,” Fiona burst out. “I’m glad Mel is dead. I hope he died slowly and painfully.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Josie, Alyce and Fiona suddenly realized the house was too quiet. The baby was contentedly sucking on a pacifier, but Adam was no longer crushing cookies with his trucks.

“Adam! Where are you?”

Fiona padded off through the first floor on a search. She found the little boy in the guest bathroom. “Get out of that toilet! What are you doing unwinding the toilet paper? Look at that. A whole roll all over the floor. It’s time-out for you, Adam. You’ve been warned.”

A whining Adam was plopped on a pint-sized chair in a corner of the kitchen. This set the baby crying.

“I really can’t talk anymore,” Fiona said.

“Just one more request, then we’ll go,” Josie said. “We need Paladia’s phone number and office address.”

Fiona ripped some paper from a pad on the kitchen counter and pulled a pen out of a cup. She thumbed through the phone book, then recited the information while Josie wrote it down.

“We’ll find our own way out,” Josie said.

“And we promise to keep quiet,” Alyce said.

A frantic Fiona could only nod as she struggled to comfort the bawling baby. Adam was peeling the paper off the wall by his time-out chair.

Back in the SUV, Alyce said, “Forget the sectional sofa. I would have spent the money on a nanny. That little guy, Adam, is a terror, and the baby has the lungs of an opera singer.”

“It’s only one o’clock and we’ve terrorized two people. Shall we go for three?” Josie asked.

“Better do it today before I lose my nerve,” Alyce said.

Josie opened her cell phone and dialed Paladia’s number. “Hi,” she said. “Fiona gave me your name. I have a little money to invest, and she said you could help me. I know it’s short notice, but I’m going to be in Clayton this afternoon and wondered if you could see me for a few minutes? In half an hour? Thank you so much. No, no, I’ll have to leave by two o’clock. I have a daughter to pick up at school. I promise I won’t take more than half an hour.”

Paladia worked in one of those huge glass towers in suburban Clayton. A receptionist showed Josie and Alyce into Paladia’s corner office.

Josie looked around at the vast dark desk and the sweeping view of downtown Clayton. Tasteful but dull flower prints lined the wall. Photos of Paladia’s children decorated her desk: a dark, skinny teenage boy with an engaging grin and a chunky girl with braces. There was no man in any photo. Paladia’s coffee mug said,
world’s best mom
.

Paladia’s office was perfect and perfectly lifeless, a model for any executive.

I could have had an office like this if I’d finished college, Josie thought, and was glad she didn’t. It would be like living in a cage. She enjoyed her freedom too much, even if her feet were sore at the end of the day.

Paladia did not seem like the stuff of fetish fantasies. She was a fortyish woman with generous hips, a matronly bosom and short, sensible brown hair. Her dark suit was well cut and professional. Josie sneaked a peek at Paladia’s shoes. She wore prim black pumps with two-inch heels. Josie would lose her in any crowd waiting for the elevator. Paladia was Ms. Middle Management.

Suddenly, Josie realized Paladia’s attraction. Men who dreamed of doing bizarre and humiliating things to their hated female bosses could take out their fantasies on this woman. Poor Paladia. She earned her money the hard way.

Paladia folded her hands and put on a professional smile. “Now,” she said, “how can I help you, ladies?”

“You can tell us about Mel Poulaine,” Josie said.

Paladia was smarter and tougher than Fiona and the preacher man. Her face didn’t lose color. The only sign that she was under stress was that one eye twitched.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Paladia said.

Josie held up her camera. “Sure you do. I have the photos of you and one of Mel’s pals.”

“Fine. Let me see them,” Paladia said. She was cool as January in Iceland.

“Uh,” Josie said. She was caught. This time, her bluff didn’t work.

“Exactly what I thought,” Paladia said. “There are no photos. I suggest you leave immediately, before I call security.”

They left in an embarrassed silence.

Tough woman, Josie decided, and quite capable of murdering Mel.

“She’s guilty,” Josie said.

“Of what?” Alyce said.

“I’m not sure,” Josie said. “But Paladia didn’t act innocent. She never said, ‘What photos?’ Or ‘Why are you threatening me? I’ll sue your socks off.’ She knew there were no photos. I bet Paladia searched the guys before she had sex with them.”

“She probably took the men somewhere she knew was free of cameras,” Alyce said. “Someplace where she felt secure. A version of Hal’s nest by the airport.”

Alyce unlocked her SUV with a little chirp, and Josie climbed up into the big vehicle and settled herself wearily in the soft leather seat. She watched a soda can bounce off their tire. The lot had seemed clean when they parked and rushed in to see Paladia. Now Josie noticed wind-blown plastic bags clinging to the shrubs, small clusters of trash and a broken beer bottle.

Josie felt squirmy-embarrassed over the scene in Paladia’s office. She’d learned something from that awful visit, but she didn’t know what.

Mostly, she felt sorry for the woman. Paladia was a high-powered executive. What had she done to get herself into such a mess? What did she have to do to get out of it? Josie couldn’t imagine being at the mercy of Mel. She could hardly stand to have him touch her foot, much less anything else.