High Heels Are Murder (25 page)

“You don’t have an alarm system,” Alyce said.

“Yes, I do,” Josie said.

“Show me the keypad.”

“I don’t have a keypad. It’s an analog system,” Josie said. “Follow me.” Josie headed for the kitchen. The cleaning fumes hit them like a slap. Josie opened the basement door, and a musty smell boiled up from the stairway. It was almost refreshing after the Lysol and Windex.

Josie pulled on a string. The single lightbulb showed a set of battleship gray stairs. The two women clip-clopped down the wooden steps. The basement had white-stone-and-concrete walls and a cement floor, like many old homes in the area. There was a washer-dryer, boxes of baby clothes and Christmas decorations, and an overhead clothesline. The windowsills were lined with dead geraniums in clay pots and aluminum pie pans.

“That’s my home alarm system,” Josie said, pointing
to the windows. “Those pie pans would make a heck of a racket if anyone tried to open the basement windows. When I lock up for the night, I put these at the top of the stairs, propped against the door.” She held up four battered pots and an ancient turkey roaster.

“Plus, I have these in front of all the doors.” She held up a sturdy metal folding chair. “Guaranteed to trip any intruder.”

“Josie, that’s not an alarm system,” Alyce said.

“It is. It’s as old as the city and nearly fail-safe.”

“Sure it is,” Alyce said. “That’s why they sell your system in the Yellow Pages.”

“Modern burglars can override keypads, but they don’t know to look for my system. My pots, pans and chairs will catch them by surprise. They can’t cut the phone wires on this. My system will never have a power failure. I admit I don’t use it much, but I’ll activate it tonight. I promise.”

“Have it your way,” Alyce said and sighed. But Josie could see she was only half convinced. “Are we going to follow Cheryl tomorrow?”

Josie headed back up the basement steps and Alyce followed. At the top, she put the pots on the top step, turned out the lights and locked the door. “I don’t know,” Josie said. “I need to see if Mrs. Mueller wants to spend any more time and money on this.”

“Has that old bat paid you yet?”

“Not a dime,” Josie said. “Not even the fifty-five dollars she owes me for the babysitter. Can I get you more coffee?”

“No, thanks. I have to get home. You should get some money from that woman before you do any more work,” Alyce said. “She won’t appreciate you otherwise.”

“Good idea,” Josie said. “I keep thinking about what I’m doing for Mom and forget what’s in it for me.”

“I swear, you need an agent. Or a keeper. I bet you haven’t thought about this, either,” Alyce said. “We’ve followed Cheryl all over the metro area. We’ve seen her gambling and meeting men in motels and strange apartments.”

“Yep,” Josie said. “So?”

“If we’re doing this, the police probably are, too,” Alyce said. “The cops have already taken her in for questioning, arrested her on some trumped-up charge to get her fingerprints, and searched her house for a murder weapon. Cheryl has to be a serious suspect. What do you bet the police are tailing her?”

“I didn’t notice a tail,” Josie said.

“If they were any good, you wouldn’t. We didn’t follow her every minute. How do we know the police aren’t watching her right now?”

“They may not have to,” Josie said. “All the cops have to do is get her cell phone records. Cheryl’s whole life is in those numbers. They’ll find the shoe freaks, the babysitter, the friend who picks up the baby at Bonnie’s.”

“Everything but the casinos,” Alyce said. “She doesn’t call them.”

“I don’t know if the cops are following her or not, but there’s no point in us tailing Cheryl for another day,” Josie said. “We know where she goes. It may be a different man or another casino, but it’s the same old thing.”

“Cheryl’s wild life is duller than my domestic one,” Alyce said.

“Her mother won’t think so. Mrs. Mueller will faint dead away when she finds out. You know what the hardest part of this job is? Figuring out how much to tell Cheryl’s mother.”

“Why not tell her everything?” Alyce said. “That’s why she’s paying you.”

“I can’t do it,” Josie said. “Mrs. Mueller is a mean old witch, but I still can’t break her heart.”

“She doesn’t have one,” Alyce said.

“She does when it comes to Cheryl. Her mantel is a shrine to her daughter. She worships Cheryl.”

“Don’t you think she’d rather hear it from you than the police?” Alyce said. “Isn’t that why she really hired you? Mrs. Mueller doesn’t like you. She never has. She wants you to tell her what she doesn’t want to hear—so she can keep on hating you.”

Might as well give Mrs. Mueller a good reason to hate me, Josie thought. Alyce is right. I’ll tell her everything about Cheryl. But if she doesn’t like it, she’s not killing this messenger.

Josie waved good-bye to Alyce from the porch, then went inside and called Mrs. Mueller. There was no answer. Mrs. Mueller’s voice mail ordered Josie to leave a message and she obeyed.

Josie had another hour before her mother came home with Amelia. She cleaned the house so her mother wouldn’t wonder why the kitchen smelled like a pine forest and the rest of the flat was closer to an old gym shoe.

By the time Jane came home with Amelia at three thirty, Josie’s flat was a welter of lemon polish, floor wax, cleanser and ammonia.

“Pee-yew,” her daughter said. “Gross. What have you been doing, Mom?”

Josie was slightly put out that Amelia didn’t recognize the perfume of household cleaning products.

Jane, still in her Stepford Mom role, smiled like her heroine, Harriet Hilliard Nelson. “The house looks lovely, dear, so fresh and clean,” she said. “You must be exhausted. I have a nice pot roast for your dinner, with new potatoes, baby carrots and little peas.”

“Sounds like you invaded a nursery,” Josie said, then caught her mother’s hurt look.

“GBH,” Josie said, and gave her mother a hug. “I’m thrilled you’re fixing me dinner again.”

Jane put on her ruffled apron. Josie wished she wouldn’t. It made her nervous. She wanted her old life back. She wanted to spend her days at the malls, then pick up her daughter at school. She missed her conversations in the car with Amelia.

She missed her mother, for that matter. Lately, Jane did seem like a robot sometimes. On the other hand, the pot roast was fork tender and the carrots and potatoes roasted just the way Josie liked. The lemon meringue pie was nearly six inches tall and lightly browned on top.

Best of all, the good cooking smells wiped away all memory of the yellow-toothed rat. Well, almost all.

“Didn’t we used to have some apples on the table?” Amelia said.

“I ate them,” Josie lied.

“Mom, that was a dozen apples.”

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” Josie said. “I’m almost two weeks ahead.”

“Oh, Mom, I can’t get a sensible conversation out of you,” Amelia said.

“Dessert, my dears.” Jane carried the massive pie like a glass sculpture. The meringue wobbled slightly.

“Yum,” Amelia said.

The phone rang. For once, Josie beat her mother and her daughter to the phone, and the call was actually for her. Josie recognized the voice instantly. The hysteria was new.

“Cheryl has been arrested,” Mrs. Mueller said. “You were supposed to help her, Josie Marcus. Now my little girl is in jail and it’s all your fault.”

“What?” Josie said.

“You heard me,” Mrs. Mueller screamed into the phone. “Cheryl’s been arrested. Quit standing there like an idiot and do something.”

How did she know I was standing? Josie wondered. “I’ll be right over,” she said, and hung up the phone.

“What’s wrong?” Jane placed the pie carefully on the table, as if she couldn’t trust herself to hold it in the event of bad news.

“Cheryl’s been arrested,” Josie said. “I’m going next door to Mrs. Mueller’s.”

“I should go with you,” Jane said, untying her apron.

“No, stay here with Amelia, Mom. Mrs. Mueller will talk more freely around me.”

That was the polite way to put it, Josie thought, as she threw on her jacket. Mrs. Mueller never saved her words, especially the harsh ones.

It was a cold night and Josie shivered as she crunched across the frost-slick grass. She was giving up fresh pie and coffee for a tongue-lashing from Mrs. Mueller. If that old biddy didn’t come through with Jane’s committees, Josie would take her apart bone by brittle bone.

Mrs. Mueller was waiting at the front door. Josie didn’t even have to knock.

“Come in. We can’t waste time,” she said, and led Josie to her kitchen. Josie liked the ancient Mixmaster and the Magic Chef stove, which must have been purchased when Mrs. M was a bride.

“Sit,” Mrs. Mueller said.

Josie sat at the heavy oak table. Mrs. Mueller had a coffee cup at her place, but she didn’t offer Josie any.

Mrs. Mueller paced. She was angry, but Josie couldn’t tell who or what put her in that state.

“What happened? Why did they arrest Cheryl?” Josie said.

“The police found her shoes,” Mrs. Mueller said. Pace. Pace.

“What shoes?” Josie said. Cheryl had tons of shoes. This wasn’t making any sense.

“Cheryl’s Bruno Maglis. They have her DNA inside the shoes, so the police know she wore them. His blood is on the soles—that Mel person. The police are saying Cheryl killed him.”

Mrs. Mueller was pacing faster now, growing so agitated Josie thought she might wear a hole in the linoleum.

“Where did the police get the shoes? I thought they’d already searched her house,” Josie said.

“They did. The police say they found these shoes at
some sort of love nest. They got a search warrant. They say my Cheryl went there with a married man. She didn’t.”

She did, Josie thought. Should I tell her mother about the closet full of shoes? Mrs. Mueller might be happier with garden-variety adultery.

“Um, was the apartment out by the airport?” Josie said.

“Yes,” Mrs. Mueller said. She stopped pacing and stared at Josie. “How did you know?”

“I followed Cheryl there,” Josie said.

Mrs. Mueller shut her mouth like a trap and went back to pacing. She knows, Josie thought, but she doesn’t want to.

“Tell me about the bloody shoes,” Josie said.

Pace. Pace. Pace. “The police did some sort of test on the floor at that Mel person’s house and some shoe prints showed up.”

“Luminol, probably,” Josie said. She was a big
CSI
fan. Mrs. Mueller’s words hit her. Cheryl had walked in the dead man’s blood. Josie’s stomach lurched. This was wretched. Had some kinky game gone wrong?

Josie realized Mrs. Mueller was still pacing and talking. “Someone tried to wipe up the bloody shoe prints with Windex,” Mrs. M said. “The prints weren’t visible to the naked eye, but they showed up faintly after this test.”

“And Cheryl’s shoes matched the ones in the prints,” Josie said.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Mrs. Mueller said. “The prints aren’t all nice and clear, like on
CSI
. But they found Mel’s blood on her soul.”

Josie almost said, “How can they do that?” when she realized Mrs. Mueller meant “sole” as in “shoe sole.”

“They also found a partial bloody shoe print under the body. They’re saying Cheryl rolled the body over, then put it back, and that’s how her shoe print got under it.”

“Oh, boy,” Josie said.

“She didn’t kill him,” Mrs. Mueller said fiercely. She stood her ground and faced Josie. “She didn’t do the
other things they say, either. Cheryl swears she was never unfaithful to Tom.”

Depends on your definition of adultery, Josie thought. She couldn’t imagine standing at the altar and promising to “love, honor and never walk on another man till death do us part.”

“But she’s changed her story a little,” Mrs. Mueller said. “My Cheryl didn’t lie to the police. Not really. But she did hold back a little bit of information. Cheryl admits she was at that Mel person’s house. She had a glass of wine and she passed out. She wasn’t drunk. Cheryl wouldn’t get drunk. She thinks he drugged her wine.

“When she woke up, Mel was lying at the foot of the steps in a pool of blood. She ran over to him. That awful man was dead. She checked to make sure. That must have been when her shoe print got under his body. Cheryl must have stepped in his blood.”

Josie saw Mel in the shoe store, with his jaunty boutonniere, then imagined stepping in his blood wearing $250 shoes.

“There was blood everywhere,” Mrs. Mueller said. “Head wounds bleed a lot. Cheryl admits she tracked some blood on the hall floor. She noticed her bloody shoe prints, went out to the kitchen and found some Windex to wipe them up. She took the wineglasses to the sink, emptied and rinsed them. But she left a partial print on one. The police found traces of some sleeping drug in one glass. That proves she was telling the truth, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Josie said. “They could also say that Cheryl drugged Mel, then killed him. What does Cheryl say happened next?”

“She got out of there. She couldn’t help Mel. He was definitely dead. She was afraid. She ran. I know it looks bad, but she wasn’t thinking clearly,” Mrs. Mueller said. “She was woozy from the drugs. She was a married woman alone in a man’s house.”

A dead man’s house. “What was she doing there in the first place?” Josie said.

“She won’t tell me,” Mrs. Mueller said. “But her reaction
was perfectly natural. She was confused. She saw all that blood and panicked.”

A panicked woman wouldn’t stop to rinse the wineglasses and scrub the floor. She’d run as fast as she could. Head wounds do bleed a lot, but only if the person is alive, Josie thought. Did Cheryl abandon a dying man? Did she watch him bleed out? She didn’t bother calling 911 to give an anonymous tip.

At best, she was coldhearted. To Josie, she sounded guilty.

“You’ve got to find out what really happened,” Mrs. Mueller said. “There’s more to her story, but she won’t tell it to me. You’ve got to help her. I’m begging you. I’ll double your pay. I know my little girl is innocent.”

Josie winced when she saw the morning paper. Even Cheryl didn’t deserve this headline: