Killer Heels (33 page)

“Yes, you did.”

“Will did it.”

“No, he didn’t, Gretchen. He’s down there on the sidewalk, weeping like a little baby and giving you up so fast. And he’s only talking to Cassady. Wait till the cops get here.”

“Oh, God, they’re coming?”

“Yes, so tell me what happened and I’ll help you with them.”

“Are you sleeping with that detective?”

“Why?”

“Why else would you think they’d listen to you?”

“I’ll do what I can, Gretchen.”

She shifted her weight back and forth anxiously, her mind speeding through alternatives. If she didn’t have a weapon handy, there weren’t that many. Her fingers idly stroked the clothes on the bed, then she made a sudden run at the door. I lunged for her, pulling something in my injured shoulder that was going to hurt for a very long time, but managing to intercept her and knock her down. This Gracie ju jitsu instructor I dated briefly was all about leverage—emotional as well as physical, which is why it was brief—and I remembered his big thing was always taking your opponent’s feet out from under him. We rolled around on the floor in finest catfight fashion, smacking my bad shoulder on the floor a time or two which made me see stars, but I managed to pin her on her stomach, then put my heel in the small of her back for emphasis.

She struggled to regain her composure. “If you don’t know why I did it, then you’re not as smart as I thought you were and I didn’t need to bother,” she spat.

I rose to the bait, not because she’d gotten to me but because I wanted her to think she was in control of the situation so she didn’t develop the need to shoot at me again. “I figured out part of it. You and Will are a couple.”

“Oh, bravo,” Gretchen responded, “since the fact that I’m in his apartment packing my clothes has so many other explanations.”

“You wanted to go into business together. The shoe jewels. Which are a killer idea, by the way, pardon the expression.” I pulled the shoes off her feet and got off her, hoping that in her winded and barefoot condition she wouldn’t try to run again. “And Teddy said he’d help you.”

“That bastard.” She sat up, brushing herself off as much as possible.

“I always thought you kinda had a crush on him.” I sat down across from her, trying to keep this low key.

Tears sprang into Gretchen’s eyes. I was right, but something had changed. “I told him I’d do anything if he’d help us get our business started. We just needed a little boost. Do you know how many people see an ad that appears in
Zeitgeist
? Half a million people.”

“But you didn’t have the twenty grand. So what did Teddy want in return?”

Gretchen flushed crimson. In spite of everything I knew, my heart sank for her momentarily. The oldest currency in the world. Complicated by the fact that she’d had a crush on the guy. “You slept with him?”

Her flush deepened. “That’s just for the models and the executives. He just wanted me to … service him.”

“And you did it?” I asked, in confirmation, not in judgment.

She nodded, tears spilling over now. “Every time he asked.”

“And in return, he was going to pay for your ad.”

She nodded. “But the issue was getting ready to close and he hadn’t done it yet and I confronted him. And he laughed at me. He told me what I’d given him wasn’t worth twenty thousand dollars, so he wanted part of the company, too.” She dissolved into gulping sobs.

I could see it playing out a little too clearly for comfort. “That was Monday night?”

She nodded, pushing to her feet. I nervously rose with her, but she went to the small table in the kitchen area, grabbed the box of tissues, and blew her nose loudly.

“Okay. I get Teddy, but why Yvonne?”

She blew her nose again before replying. “It was stupid, especially because you were so sure Yvonne had killed Teddy. I should’ve let you just screw her up. But Will said we had to get the ad in or it was all over, we were out of money, out of time, everything. I tried to kite a check, but it didn’t work, thanks to Wendy, that bitch.” She pulled another tissue out of the box for the sole purpose of shredding it. “So I asked Yvonne to stake us or I’d tell Helen about the affair and maybe tell the police, too.”

“This was during your supposed shopping trip to Chelsea ?”

“I brought her here, so she could meet Will and see our work for herself.”

“But she said no.”

Gretchen’s face twisted horribly. “Are you kidding? Why would she just say no when she could be wretched and hateful instead? She told me that I was insane to think that I could run a business, have an influence. She said I was never going to be anything more than an assistant and not a very good one at that.”

I’d heard Yvonne say as much to Gretchen, so I knew Gretchen wasn’t exaggerating. And I remembered the smell of bleach when Tricia, Cassady, and I came to the apartment. They’d done their best to clean up, then Will had dropped Yvonne’s body and Gretchen, deliberately bruised, over in Chelsea and ditched the car somewhere. It was all adding up, but I still had trouble accepting it.

“But how did killing Yvonne help you? Brady still wouldn’t let the ad go through.”

“I didn’t exactly think it through, okay? I was taking it one step at a time. And that bitch was asking for it anyway.”

“Okay, Gretchen, she was a bitch, but that’s no reason to kill—”

“How could you understand? You’re doing what you want to do. People don’t treat you like office furniture.”

“There are a lot of people at the magazine who like you, Gretchen,” I attempted.

“That’s why I had to beg you to go shopping with me.”

“I had other things on my mind,” I offered, knowing it was lame even if it was true.

“You’re as bad as the rest of them. Did you ever suspect me of Teddy’s murder? No. I had access, I had opportunity, but you never even thought about me.”

“Are you complaining?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

She went toward the sink to throw away her tissues and it took me a moment to realize what she had in her hand when she turned back around. It wasn’t a huge knife, but it didn’t need to be, given how angry and twisted Gretchen was.

“I could’ve killed you last night,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she was justifying her miss or sincerely explaining it because I wasn’t listening all that carefully, the knife proving to be a major distraction. “I should have.”

“I think it’s really important that you didn’t,” I told her, backing toward the door. “It’ll show the jury that you have the capacity for mercy. And remorse.” Not that that was going to do much for two counts of murder, but we didn’t need to get into that at the moment.

Gretchen wasn’t buying it anyway. “Yeah, right,” she said and ran at me, full force. I tried to scramble back to the door and get out, but I didn’t have time. I threw my hands up instinctively, not thinking about how much it was going to hurt my shoulder and forgetting until the moment that the knife sliced down into them that I was still holding Gretchen’s shoes. The knife buried itself in the left shoe and wouldn’t come free. I used the leverage to yank the knife out of Gretchen’s hand, then swung the other shoe as hard as I could and pump-slapped her in the side of the head. I knocked her off her feet and literally sat on her until the front door banged open and Kyle ran in, gun in hand.

Even though my shoulder felt like it was about to fall off, I held up the shoe with the knife sticking out of it. “Such a shame. They were great shoes.”

20

Dear Molly, I recently
went through an experience—well, a series of experiences that were pretty traumatic. But they were pretty exciting, too. The problem is, I’m not sure what to do now that they’re over. And I’m not sure how to separate my feelings about what happened from my feelings about the people I met during them and vice versa. Truthfully, I’m worried that the feelings might go away now that the experience is over. Or maybe I’m more worried that they won’t. What’s the best way to clear my head and figure out what comes next? Signed, Still Spinning

Cassady raised her glass in the air. “If I may quote Dorothy Parker, ‘Three be the things I shall never attain, envy, content, and sufficient champagne,’” she proclaimed, charging our glasses with more bubbly.

It was Sunday, just after noon, and Tricia, Cassady, and I were having brunch at Sarabeth’s on the Upper West Side. The restaurant is decorated like an old country inn and that, combined with the eons you spend in line waiting to get in, really makes you feel like you’ve gotten away from the city for a moment. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be far away, I just wanted to be distracted for a while, get a little emotional distance at least.

Tricia had wanted to round up all of our friends and have a big party to celebrate my “capture” of Gretchen, but it was too soon and I wasn’t sure it was something I wanted to celebrate anyway. I felt immense satisfaction, but no joy. The whole thing was far more tragic than I had ever imagined it would be when I first stumbled over Teddy. As exhilarating as it was, it had been exhausting, too. So a champagne brunch with my two best friends seemed the perfect way to mark the day. The day after, to be precise.

“What a week,” Cassady sighed.

“Thank God it’s over,” I admitted. “My therapist is in for a big surprise tomorrow.”

“You’re going to write such an amazing article,” Tricia enthused.

I nodded slowly. I was looking forward to writing the article, but I was also looking forward to having more champagne and not thinking about anything else for the rest of the afternoon.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” a voice said, and we all turned in surprise to find Kyle standing beside us. He was carrying a plain white-handled shopping bag that I found intriguing and incongruous.

I hadn’t seen much of him after he burst into Will and Gretchen’s apartment the day before. He’d had work to do and I’d had to give a statement and it all got very crazy and not very pleasant as the reality of it all settled in, so I went home and took my belated Vicodin, turned the bell off on the phone, and shut the world out as long as possible. Since Cassady and Tricia both have keys, that wasn’t as long as it might have been. But I hadn’t seen Kyle again until now.

“How’d you find us?” Cassady asked.

He shook his head. “No more trade secrets. Not until the next case.”

“The next case?” Tricia asked, looking at me.

“He doesn’t mean it,” I told her and turned back to Kyle. “Are you just dropping by?”

He lifted the shopping bag slightly. “I have something for you.”

“Join us,” I suggested, gesturing to our empty fourth chair.

“I can’t stay,” he said with a guarded look, and I realized I knew very little about him—what his obligations might be, who else was in his life other than his fish, any of it. This had not been the best-thought-out relationship, if in fact it was even a relationship. He gestured for me to come with him. I glanced at Tricia and Cassady, who were glaring at me to get up and go with him quickly. Guess I was the only one in this foursome who was nervous about what had happened between Kyle and me.

“Excuse us a minute,” he said to Tricia and Cassady as he walked me away from them. He led me to a little corner by the pastry case, shielding me with his body from all the people going back and forth.

“How are you today?” he asked.

“Still a little lightheaded.”

“The shoulder?”

“It hurts.”

“Will for a while.” He nodded as though he’d answered some question of his own. “A lot’s happened this week. It’s going to take some sorting out.”

I knew he was talking about us as much as he was about the case. “Everything happened so fast.”

“Maybe too fast?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You should take some time and see if it’s something you really want to get into, or whether once was enough.”

“Maybe it’s something we could talk through.”

“Absolutely.”

There was a pause, but it wasn’t nearly as awkward as I would have thought. I did need to take a step back, clear my head, figure out what I was doing. And he got major points for seeing that, even if—especially if—he was feeling the same way.

“I wanted to bring you these,” he said after a moment and handed me the shopping bag. I reached in and took out a shoebox. I opened the shoebox and nestled inside were a brand-new pair of Jimmy Choo Cats, the shoes I’d been wearing when I found Teddy. I tried not to think of how painful a purchase they were on a detective’s salary.

“Kyle, I don’t know what to say.”

“We have to keep your other shoes until the trial and it didn’t seem fair to deprive you. And I don’t think the blood’s going to come out, anyway,” he explained. “If you do want to get together and talk, that’d give you an excuse to wear these.”

I gently put the lid back on the box. “I’d like that.”

“You have my number.”

“I know it by heart.”

“Then I’ll talk to you.” He leaned in and we kissed, the most tender and tentative kiss of our whole crazed, accelerated, ridiculous, wonderful relationship. So far. Would there be more? I wasn’t sure. But since I was looking at a guy who knew when to be quiet, when to be forceful, and when to buy a girl a new pair of shoes, I was going to give it serious thought.

“Tell your friends I said good-bye,” he said and walked away. I stood there, holding the shoebox, so he’d have something to see when he turned around and looked back at the door. He waved, I waved, and then I went back to drink champagne with my two best friends and revel in having made my mark—at least on Manhattan.

Praise for Sheryl J. Anderson’s

KILLER HEELS

“
Killer Heels
, Sheryl J. Anderson’s hip debut mystery, sparkles like fine champagne, an intoxicating mix of wit, perception, and insouciance, and a wickedly clever but genuine depiction of single life in the city.
Killer Heels
will tap right to the top of the Best First lists.”

—Carolyn Hart, author of
Murder Walks the Plank

“A series sure to please
Sex and the City
fans.”