Mayhem in High Heels (12 page)

"Well what are guests supposed to give you?"

"Um... regular plates?"

She shook her head, giving me a look like I'd just suggested Dixie cups.

"Look, we're not really the china type of people," I explained. "I mean, it's not like we're giving Kleinburg style dinner parties. Most days it's takeout pizza."

"Maddie it's not for
you
."

"O-kaaaaay. Then it's for...?"

Dana shook her head at me, silently giving off the 'you're hopeless' vibe. "You're supposed to pick out a china pattern when you get married so that everyone can buy you that stuff for your wedding, then you can put it in a curio, where your children will admire it their whole lives, and you can leave it to them when you die so they'll always have that reminder of your wedding day."

I stared. "Um. Right. That makes total sense now."

Dana sighed. "Oh, well." She linked her arm through mine and propelled me toward the parking garage. "At least there's always your anniversary. You know, it's never too early to start registering for that."

Lord help me.

* * *

By the time I got back to my studio the sun was just starting to set over the water, creating one of those picture postcard perfect California moments as vibrant oranges and pinks melted into the deep aqua horizon. I wistfully sighed at the thought I'd soon be coming home to a nice little suburban pad instead of my ocean-side escape. Not that I was knocking living with Ramirez. The stay three-nights-at-my-house-then-I'll-stay-three-nights-at-yours thing we'd been doing the last few months since returning from Paris was a pain in the butt. More than once I'd had the perfect outfit picked out only to realize I'd left that pair of shoes in his closet.

But there was some tiny part of me that, despite how happy I was merging from a Me to an Us, was going to miss Me's view.

I parked my Jeep in the drive and trudged up the flight of stairs, happy to see a light on under the door. Amazingly, Ramirez had beaten me home. I slipped my key in the lock, turning the handle to find my guy standing at the kitchen counter hunkered over a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

He raised his head, licking milk from his lower lip. "Hey."

"Hey. You're home early," I said, planting a kiss at the corner of his mouth. Mmm. Kellogg's flavored. Yum.

"Just came by to change my clothes."

"Oh. Right." I tried to hide my disappointment.

"You're disappointed."

Hey, I didn't say I tried
hard
.

"No, it's fine," I lied. "I understand."

"Hmm," he said. But let it go. "Another box came." He gestured to the coffee table. A brown, rectangular package almost as long as the table itself.

Despite feeling just a little frustrated that Ramirez's plans for the evening didn't include spooning with me while we watched
American Idol
, an unopened gift always lifted my spirits.

I checked the return address. My grandmother.

In a large Irish Catholic family there is no greater sin than being single. At every family gathering since I started menstruating, my grandmother regaled me with stories of how she'd had nine children before the age of thirty. As I marched through my twenties unmarried, the stories turned from tales of my ancestors to warnings that my ovaries were drying up like little barren prunes.

Which is why Grandmother had actually fallen to her knees, grabbed her rosary, and said a prayer of thanks when I'd shown her my engagement ring. Her last single grandchild was finally tying the knot. And to a good Catholic boy no less. (Okay, a Catholic boy at any rate. The jury was still out on the "good" part.)

I grabbed my scissors and dug into the package, ripping away tape and fishing around in the layers of packing peanuts until I came away with a soft bundle wrapped in pink tissue paper.

"What's that?" Ramirez asked around a bite of flakes.

"I don't know." I untied the pink ribbon, and out fell a white lacy dress. Size zero. And no, not as in supermodel zero. I mean zero. As in zero-to-three-months baby sized. Underneath it sat a tiny white bonnet with lacy frills down the side and a pair of matching booties.

I looked up at Ramirez, horror bubbling in my throat. "I-I think it's a Christening outfit."

He coughed, choking on his cereal. "A what?"

"A Christening outfit. For a baby."

"Why would she give us that?" He froze. "Wait, you're not pregnant, are you?"

"No!"

He let out a long sigh. "Jesus, don't scare me like that."

"My grandmother's just a little... overanxious." I turned the frilly outfit over in my hands. "You think maybe we should have registered for china?"

Ramirez gave me a blank look.

"Never mind." I shoved the box into the corner next to my crystal duck gravy boat. Did my family know how to do gifts or what?

"So, when are you coming home?" I asked, purposely changing the subject.

"I probably won't be back until late. We've got some leads to follow tonight."

I raised one eyebrow. "Oh?"

Ramirez gave me a warning look. Then stuffed an oversize mound of flakes in his mouth, crunching down with purpose.

"Oh, come on. I'm good at this stuff. I could help," I said, rushing on while his mouth was too full to argue. "In fact, I'll bet I know something you don't know about Gigi."

He paused midchew. Then narrowed his eyes at me and swallowed loudly.

"Please don't tell me Lucy and Ethel have been on the case again?"

"We prefer Cagney and Lacy. But, yes, as a matter of fact we have."

Ramirez shook his head and muttered something in Spanish under his breath.

"What was that?"

"You don't want to know," he responded.

He was right, I probably didn't.

"Do you want to hear what we learned or not?"

He turned around, abandoning his cereal, and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the counter with an assessing stare. "Okay. Shoot, Cagney."

"Ha ha. Very funny." But I filled him in on everything I'd learned so far from Allie, Mitsy, and Summerville.

His bad-cop poker face remained firmly in place until I got to the part about Dana and me ambushing Summerville in his office.

"Wait," he said, holding up one hand. "Are you telling me that you told Seth Summerville you were working with the police?"

"Um, well, technically Dana told him that. But I'm pretty sure he didn't believe it."

He shook his head and started muttering in Spanish again.

"Quit doing that. At least swear at me in a language I can understand."

"Maddie, these are high-profile people with high-profile lawyers and short fuses. You can't just go impersonating an officer like that. You know how much trouble you could get into? If he pushed it, you could get arrested for something like this."

I bit my lip. I hadn't actually thought about that.

"Not to mention," he continued, picking up steam now, "piss a lot of people off. You know what happens when you go prying into people's personal lives?"

"Um, I figure out their motives and eventually find the killer?"

He shook his head. "You end up getting shot at, stabbed, kidnapped, drugged..." He ticked off on his fingers. "Do I need to go on?"

No, he didn't. Because I couldn't argue that all of those things had, indeed, happened to me. "But you have to admit, it's always led to the killer before. Without me, who knows if you'd have solved those cases," I countered instead.

He did a laugh-slash-snort thing. "I think I would have managed."

"So, what, you're saying I've never been any help to your cases before?"

"Maddie, you are not a police officer. You are a fashion designer. You draw little shoe pictures all day."

My turn to narrow my eyes. "You make it sounds as if I use crayon. I'll have you know designing shoes is very hard work. It takes a lot of skill and years of training. Not to mention the business savvy it takes to get your own line going. Not just anyone can do it."

Ramirez rolled his eyes.

"I saw that!"

"Fine. I'm sure drawing shoes-"

"
Designing
shoes," I corrected him. Loudly, I might add.

Another eye roll. "Fine,
designing
shoes, is very hard, very important work."

"Now you're just being sarcastic."

He threw his hands up in the air. "What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to say that what I do is every bit as challenging as what you do."

He cocked his head to the side, a smirk playing at his lips.

He wasn't going to say it.

I could feel adrenalin pumping through my veins, every feminist bone in my body rankling. Okay you wanna play hard ball, pal? Fine. Let's play.

"Okay, you think anyone can do my job? Let's see
you
do it?"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. I bet you that I'm better at police work than you are at designing shoes."

"Oh, you do, do you?"

I crossed my arms over my chest. "Yep."

He shook his head as the smirk turned into a full bodied grin. "Okay, what do you have in mind, Springer?"

"You let me investigate Gigi's death-"

He opened his mouth to protest.

"-without impersonating any officers."

Reluctantly, he shut it with a click.

"At the same time, you have to design a pair of high heels. If the heels are fab, you've proven your point. But if I catch Gigi's killer, I win and you have to admit that what I do takes skills, and you actually have respect for my intellect."

Something flickered behind his eyes. "You know I respect you, Maddie."

"I 'draw little shoe pictures'? Yeah, right. I'm feeling the admiration in big steaming piles."

He bit the inside of his cheek and cocked his head to one side, unable to come up with a decent rebuttal to that one.

Finally he said, "And exactly what do I get if I win?"

Damn. I hadn't thought that far.

"What do you want?"

His faced morphed from doubtful to devilish in seconds flat, a wicked smile dancing in his eyes.

"Oh no. No way am I making a bet for sexual favors," I said, quickly shutting those unspoken thoughts down.

"Okay, then," he said, the mischievous look undaunted. "How about this: I win and you promise never, and I mean never, to stick your cute little nose into one of my cases again."

"But-" I protested.

But he ran right over me. "No more following witnesses, no more questioning suspects, no more Lucy, Ethel, Cagney or Lacey."

I bit my lip. Those were high stakes. But this little game of chicken had escalated beyond Gigi and worrying about the wedding. It had become apparent that if I ever wanted him to take me seriously, there was only one answer to his question. I clenched my jaw and thrust my chin toward the ceiling, trying to stretch an extra inch out of my 5' 1 1/2" height.

"Fine."

"Fine?"

"
Fine
."

Surprise flickered across his features. As if he hadn't expected me to woman-up to the challenge. I felt a little lift of pride already. Ha! Take that pal. You're playing with the big girls, now.

"Good," he said. "Then you don't mind if we up the stakes a little."

Oh swell. "As in?"

"As in I not only design a pair of shoes, but you have to wear them to the wedding."

I felt my face drain of color. "My wedding shoes?"

He nodded, that self-satisfied smirk returning. "Yep."

"But I already picked out a pair." They were a simple white satin with a cross cut woven pattern along the top. Elegant and stylish all in one three-inch package.

Ramirez shrugged. "Okay, then all bets are off. And you stay the hell away from the Van Doren case."

He turned back to his abandoned bowl of cereal.

"Wait!" Dammit. I scrunched my eyes shut, sucked up every last ounce of pride I had, and said a silent good-bye to my perfect wedding outfit. "Fine. You can design my wedding shoes."

I opened my eyes and crossed the room, sticking my hand out at him. "Do we have a deal or what, Ramirez?"

For half a second I thought he might back out. Common sense and the thought of having his cases Maddie-free on into eternity warring behind his dark eyes.

Finally he shoved his palm into mine.

"Deal."

I shook on it, silently gulping down a little voice telling me I was going to live to regret this.

Chapter Nine

The next morning I awoke to the sound of jackhammers digging away up the street. I rolled over to see that I was once again alone.

Feeling just the teeniest bit abandoned I got up and trudged to the coffee maker. Another yellow post-it was stuck to the side.

Took sketch book to work. Will call your manufacturer this morning. Happy hunting.

XOXO

R

I stuck my tongue out at it. But since he had made coffee again, I couldn't hate him too much. Instead, I showered, dressed in a cute pair of capris, peep-toe sandals and a white cashmere sweater, and, with renewed energy, picked up where I'd left off with my suspect list yesterday.

Paul Fauston, the baker.

I took Santa Monica east, past the 405 and into Beverly Hills. I was just veering into the left lane to avoid a pickup with Playgirl bunnies on the mud flaps when I spotted a flash of blue in the rearview mirror.

I narrowed my eyes.

He wouldn't.

I accelerated, pulling two car lengths ahead and moving back over into the right lane. Two beats later a blue Dodge Neon followed my lead, tucking itself behind a silver SUV filled with kids who kept sticking their hands out the window.

That bastard. He was.

Thinking really bad thoughts, I wove in and out of traffic past Wilshire, trying to lose him. But since I was a blonde in a conspicuous red Jeep and he was a guy who was used to dealing on the shady side of life, by the time I pulled off at Beverly he was right on my bumper, not even attempting to be sneaky now.

I pulled my car up to the curb in front of Fauston's Bakery and got out, slamming the door behind me.

Felix unfolded himself from his little Neon and shot me a smile that I supposed was meant to be charming.