Killer Heels (17 page)

“We’ll wait,” I told him, and pulled Tricia behind me into Yvonne’s office. Fred scrambled up out of his chair and tried to block us, but he wasn’t quick enough. He stood in the doorway, hands on hips, and scowled at me as I pointed for Tricia to sit on Yvonne’s torture rack of a couch. Wherever Yvonne and Teddy had their rendezvous, it wasn’t there. One of them would have been limping noticeably a long time ago.

“This just isn’t right,” Fred protested.

“It’s not like Tricia and I are going to strip down and make 900 calls, Fred. We’re only gonna sit in here and gossip like good girls.” I crinkled my nose at him because he seemed like the sort of guy who’d respond to that and eased him out the door. Normally, I wouldn’t give Fred’s orientation a second thought, but at this moment, I wished he would be deeply interested in going back to his desk and imagining Tricia and me naked, cooing into Yvonne’s phone for $4.99 a minute. Instead, I had no doubt that he was going to stay on the other side of the door, his ear pressed against it, until the moment Yvonne arrived. I’d have to be quiet.

Yvonne last redecorated her office during her “roots crisis.” Her grandmother died and left her estate to everyone but Yvonne, because Yvonne didn’t seem to need it and didn’t seem to care. Fact is, Yvonne
didn’t
care, but she’d always thought she’d made a good show of caring, so it burned her that her grandmother had seen through her but never called her on it.

In retaliation, Yvonne dove into this demented flurry of antique acquisition, sort of assembling the roots she’d been denied. And then tweaking them along the way. As best one could tell from studying her office, Yvonne was descended from a long line of magnificent Mediterranean creatures who had bequeathed her heavy, dark woods and jewel-toned fabrics. Any rumors about their being Scotch-Irish and coming over in the ’40s were just idle chatter.

Tricia perched on the edge of the sofa, which was designed for creating lower back problems. She looked around uncomfortably, but the deécor had nothing to do with her unease. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“It’s an event, Tricia. You do great events.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about the reception. I’m not sure I can sit here and talk to Yvonne like it’s just another client meeting.”

I threw open the door to check on our surveillance system, but to my surprise, Fred was back at his desk, ear far from the door. He glanced up, annoyed that I dared emerge and taunt him. I flashed him a smile he didn’t buy. He went back to work and I closed the door again.

Tricia was lost in her own thoughts and didn’t even notice as I pulled the little key on the red ribbon out of my pocket and started prowling through the office. “I’ve never been in a room with a murderer before,” she said.

“That you know of?”

“Meaning?”

“That sculptor, two summers ago.”

“Jean-Luc?”

“I was always convinced his next piece was going to feature his mummified mother, front and center.”

“You never said anything.”

“I didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

“Are you looking for the music box?” Tricia let a whole boatload of opportunities to snipe at the dubious character of many of my past loves go sailing right by and jumped to her feet to assist me. I was sniffing around Yvonne’s shelves, trying to find anything that looked receptive to the little key. If it was a music box, so be it. If it was a Barbary buccaneer bobblehead, that was fine, too. As long as it helped me nail Yvonne.

“How will we know when we’ve found the right piece of evidence?” Tricia asked, kindly hopping onto my wavelength.

“I’m figuring it’s like the Supreme Court and porn. When we see it, we’ll know.”

“Try this.” Tricia took a small porcelain box off the end table nearest the office door. It was rectangular, with little claw feet and a hinged lid that was locked with a tiny, heart-shaped padlock. It was way too cute for Yvonne to have bought for herself, especially in her Mediterranean phase, so it was perfectly plausible that it was a love token from Teddy. Love softens your definition of keepsake.

But the key didn’t fit. It also didn’t fit any of the drawers in any of the furniture in the room, desk and credenza included.

I was poised on the brink of thinking I’d actually been wrong when I saw it. It was on the lower shelf of the end table, the one where Tricia had found the cute box. At first glance, it looked like a wooden cigarette box, but it was deeper and more rounded than you’d expect a cigarette box to be. And a little golden keyhole glinted in the bottom panel.

I slid the box out and put it on Yvonne’s desk.

“How lovely. It deserves better placement,” Tricia said, eyes scanning the room for an open shelf.

“We’re snooping, not redecorating, remember?” I slid the key in. It fit. It turned. The lid lifted slightly of its own accord as the catch released. I eased it open the rest of the way and tinkly calypso music began playing.

“Told you it was a music box,” Tricia smiled.

Inside the box, a tiny ceramic woman dressed in a wild, multi-hued outfit of strategically placed feathers and a matching headdress pivoted before a series of mirrors attached to the inside of the lid. I’ve never been to St. Maarten—the men who want to take me away to some tropical paradise are rarely talking farther than Cape May—but I’ve heard they have a pretty cool Carnival, like the one in Rio de Janeiro. This little lady looked like she’d fit right in. But did she hold any secrets?

“There’s no drawer,” I hissed at my music box expert, suddenly feeling the need for absolute stealth.

“Poke around on the bottom.”

I poked and was delighted when the poking at one end caused the other end to lift up. The box had a false bottom. Half of one, anyway. The floor of the box was cut into two pieces, probably to allow access to the mechanism that spun the little dancer. But it also created a very nice hiding place.

“For your real valuables.” I fished the little plank out to be able to view the compartment fully and we were staring at a cardkey. One of those disposable cardkeys hotels use. And if I could just fish it out and turn it over, I could see that this one was from—

“What makes you think? I? Care?” Yvonne shrieked outside her door. Tricia and I nearly impaled each other with our heels, scrambling to our feet. I shoved the music box back together and onto its shelf, flipping the lid down as I straightened up and jammed the silver key into my pocket. The lid on the box didn’t catch and it inched back open as I shoved Tricia across the room, but at least the music didn’t start up again.

Yvonne walked in and looked at us without expression. Fred hovered behind her, peering unhappily. Tricia was using her reflection in the window to fix her hair and I was studying the blowup of the cover of Yvonne’s first issue as editor. How guilty must we look?

“Good morning, Yvonne.” I did my best to look right at her and not at the music box. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a story that kept me awake three nights in a row in third grade, came back to me and I had a sudden image of me throwing myself on the music box, screaming, “There is the hideous syncopation of her silly souvenir!” Fortunately, the image amused me and I turned the smile into a greeting for Yvonne.

I was expecting a lecture for being in her office or for being in her life or something equally dour, but she smiled back. “So sorry to keep you waiting—Tricia.” Yvonne closed the door in Fred’s face and walked right by me to greet Tricia like some long-lost cousin. Tricia grimaced over Yvonne’s shoulder as Yvonne hugged her, rolling her eyes at the open music box.

I nodded in understanding, but what could I do? Yvonne was already turning around to look at me. “You look like hell, Molly,” was the greeting she offered me.

“Glad to hear it, Yvonne, because I actually feel like crap,” I returned. Yvonne fluffed her hair as she put her bags down and it hit me: Her hair was a different color than it had been yesterday. She’d gone about three shades lighter, passing out of the blonde realm altogether and entering some bizarre peach sorbet area. She was late because she’d paid Sacha, her Croatian hairdresser, to get up at the crack of dawn and color her hair for her. Yvonne at nine o’clock was tough enough. I couldn’t imagine Yvonne at 6 A.M. I hoped Sacha made her pay through the surgically altered nose.

“You, on the other hand, look terrific.” I belatedly picked up my cue and eased myself back over toward the end table, hoping to position myself so she couldn’t see the open music box at all.

“No, no. Weeping non-stop. Not sleeping. I look. Like Death itself.”

Behind Yvonne’s back, Tricia rolled her eyes again, which was not helpful at all. I swallowed hard. “Then Death should be on the cover next issue, because you look wonderful.”

“Oh. I touched up my hair.” She touched it with studied nonchalance. “I want to look good for Teddy’s service. Out of respect.” At the mention of Teddy, her eyes went to the music box. I hadn’t gotten across the room fast enough. She saw the open lid and gasped like she’d seen a ghost. A little condom-shaped ghost came to my mind, but I hoped I was alone there.

Yvonne charged over to the music box and scooped it up like it was a wounded puppy. “Why is this open?” Before Tricia or I could endanger ourselves by attempting to lie, she continued. “Damn cleaning people. I should fire them all.”

“Is something missing?” I tried to sound like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, well aware that my Shirley Temple routine had never worked on my mother and had little chance of working on Yvonne.

Yvonne clicked the lid shut, locking the box and returning it to its place. “It just shouldn’t be open. Ever again.”

Tricia closed her eyes for a moment, bracing herself for a client meeting with a crazy woman. I would have felt more sympathetic, but I was puzzling over why the box should never be open again. Because the box was from Teddy and he was dead? Teddy had the key because only he was allowed to open it? Was the cardkey from Teddy? Which hotel?

If I could get Tricia to suggest to Yvonne that they talk in the conference room for some reason, I might be able to get back into the music box and figure out from whence came the cardkey. Short of dumping coffee all over Yvonne’s desk, I couldn’t think of why they’d need to move. I was actually hefting my coffee cup, trying to decide how much of a mess I could make, when the door banged open.

“I beg your damn pardon!” Yvonne barked.

“Y’all go right ahead, but this is vital and will not wait.” Brady Cooper, assistant advertising director, who seemed to be grieving more over his shortened vacation than the death of his immediate superior, stood in Yvonne’s doorway with an armload of files that looked precariously close to cascading onto the floor. Fred stood on tiptoe in an effort to be seen over Brady’s shoulder, a tough task—not because Brady’s all that tall, but because Fred is all that small.

Brady’s a medium guy—medium height, medium build, medium color, medium intellect, medium personality. He does his best to get along, given the fact that he was born without the gene that allows you to laugh. Nothing in the world strikes Brady as funny. He’s not one of these guys who’s in a perpetual rage because of world injustice or anything that pathological and entertaining. He just has no sense of humor. Or sense of irony to appreciate that he can’t even get the joke that he can’t get the joke.

Which, of course, makes him a favorite target for the writing staff and any assistant with a half-decent joke to tell. Or, even better, to play. Something about Brady brings out the junior high school prankster in all of us and we should really be ashamed of how much we tease him, but if he didn’t make it so easy, we’d probably move on.

“I tried—” Fred began behind Brady’s back.

“Not hard enough,” Yvonne growled.

“I understand y’all’re in an important meeting and I do hate to intrude, but we have serious problems which do demand your attention pretty damn fast,” Brady insisted.

“Serious problems?”

Brady hesitated before settling on, “Irregularities.” Brady was uncomfortable that Tricia and I were in the room and didn’t seem willing to say any more until we left.

“Maybe Tricia and I should come back later,” I offered, not expecting the dirty look I got from Tricia.

“It would be very helpful to our timetable if I had a moment for a few decisions to be made,” Tricia said in her most professional tone.

“What do you need decided this morning, Tricia dear?” Yvonne’s eyes were still on Brady and they were worried.

“We need to at least choose a venue so I can arrange a tour for you and Mrs. Reynolds, ideally later today.”

The mention of Helen brought Yvonne’s eyes back around to Tricia. “You pick the venue. You tell Mrs. Reynolds and me when to be there. Thank you.”

We were clearly dismissed even before she wagged her hand in the direction of the door. Tricia was about to protest, but we didn’t have time for futility. Or to get dragged down in whatever was causing Brady’s palpitations.

“Thank you, Yvonne,” I said and ushered Tricia past Brady and Fred and out into the bullpen. Fred detached himself from Brady and attempted to follow us, but I turned and plopped a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “Yes?”

“Did you upset her?” Fred asked with a straight face.

“No, I think you and Brady took care of that,” I said, patting him on the shoulder.

“I thought I heard her shriek, through the door,” Fred pressed.

“Her music box was open,” Tricia explained.

Fred screwed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples. While fully appreciating his pain, Tricia and I exchanged a look of glee: The good and faithful servant was about to explain to us the significance of the music box and its being open.

“God help me, I need a different job,” Fred sighed. Tricia and I exchanged a less gleeful look: Or not.

Fred slunk back to his desk and Tricia and I continued to mine. “Does he drink?” Tricia murmured as we went.

“Wouldn’t you? Why?”

“We could ply him with sweet, girly cocktails and get him to tell us what he knows. Assistants know everything.”

She had a point. The finger that controls the hold button can flip off the whole world. I knew Fred was responsible for all facets of Yvonne’s life—we could all hear her ranting to that effect on a regular basis. But would he be willing to dish about Yvonne and Teddy? I could ask my questions without coming right out and accusing Yvonne of murder. Though maybe Fred already harbored suspicions of his own.