High Heels Are Murder (29 page)

“Where do you think it is?” Fiona said.

“Not sure,” Josie lied. “It’s just a hunch. It may not work out.”

“But you’ll let me know as soon as you find it,” Fiona said.

For a DVD with nothing on it, a lot of people were interested, Josie thought.

“I called for another reason,” Fiona said. “You should have a talk with the babysitter. She knows a lot about Cheryl. Things you should know.”

“Like what?” Josie said.

“It’s better if you hear them from Bonnie,” Fiona said, and hung up before Josie could ask for more.

This was getting twisted, she decided. She’d better call Mel’s housekeeper before it was too late.

“Yes, you can come tomorrow,” Zinnia said. “I’m still staying at the house. I’ll help any way I can. I think it’s
terrible what those reporter people are doing to that poor girl. Nothing went on here. Nothing. I wouldn’t work at such a place. How am I going to get decent work with the hoo-ha over poor Mr. Mel? Answer me that.”

But Josie couldn’t.

It was a sunny morning with only a few scattered reporters when Alyce pulled up at Josie’s house. Baby Justin was safely strapped into his car seat, cooing softly.

“He’ll be good for another hour or so,” Alyce said. “Then you’re going to hear some serious yelling. Where do you think this DVD is at Mel’s?”

“In the pretend shoe store,” Josie said.

“That’s been searched by the police and the killer.”

“They didn’t have my advantage,” Josie said. “They’re not a mom. And speaking of moms, you’re lucky Justin is too young to ask questions. Amelia asked me about foot fetishes last night.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I skated around the issue in an open and adult manner and hoped she’d never bring it up again.”

“That’s how I’d handle it,” Alyce said. “I have a hard time believing this shoe-freak club exists in St. Louis. It belongs in New York.”

“Why?” Josie said. “Do you think New Yorkers invented sin? We have more time for it here and there’s less to do.”

“So New Yorkers say, ‘Hey, honey, want to go to a Broadway show tonight or would you rather walk on me’?” Alyce said.

“No, it’s not like that,” Josie said. “I think we have more pervs here, but they’re hidden. St. Louis isn’t exactly an open culture. Not when you have Mrs. Mueller and Adela watching everything.”

“And taking notes,” Alyce said. “New Yorkers couldn’t keep a diary like Adela did. What would they write down? Cab numbers?”

Once again, Alyce breezed past the gate guards in Olympia Park. She parked in Mel’s circular drive. Some houses seemed forlorn after the owner’s death. Mel’s looked the same. Josie rang the doorbell, but there was no answer.

Josie tried again. The baby stirred restlessly in Alyce’s arms. Alyce’s Kate Spade diaper bag was crammed with baby paraphernalia. Arctic expeditions needed fewer supplies than Alyce and Justin.

“Are you sure Zinnia is expecting us?” Alyce said.

“Ten o’clock sharp,” Josie said. “Maybe the doorbell is out of order.” She knocked hard on the door and it swung open.

“Omigod. The door’s not locked,” Josie said.

“Of course it’s not locked,” Alyce said. “That’s why you live in a gated community. I don’t lock my door, either.”

“Maybe she’s in the back and can’t hear us,” Josie said. She stepped inside, calling, “Zinnia! Zin—”

Josie stopped abruptly. The sight was too awful for her to take in.

“What’s wrong?” Alyce asked.

“Zinnia’s here,” Josie said. Her voice was somewhere between a croak and a whisper.

“Well, that’s good,” Alyce said.

“No, it’s not. She’s dead.”

Zinnia lay twisted on the white marble floor. A dark pool of blood bloomed under her head. No one was there, but Death was a powerful presence. Josie and Alyce stood on the threshold, awed, silent, afraid to enter the house.

Josie was the first to recover. “This is terrible,” she said. “Zinnia worked so hard to clean up that floor. Now it’s a mess again.”

“Josie,” Alyce said sharply. “You’re not making sense. Are you sure there’s no chance she’s alive?”

“Look at her skin, Alyce. It’s gray. Her neck’s at a weird angle. The blood under her head is almost black. She’s been dead a while.”

“I don’t want to look.” Alyce sneaked a peek around Justin’s carrier. “Her skirt’s all bunched up. She wasn’t—?”

“I don’t think so,” Josie said. “I think her skirt got rucked up in the fall.”

“Poor Zinnia,” Alyce said. “Death is so undignified. She’d be mortified to have strangers staring at her underwear.”

“At least it’s clean,” Josie said.

Justin gave a cooing cry. “Omigod,” Alyce said. “My baby. What am I doing? I can’t go in there. I can’t let my innocent child see a murder. He’ll be warped for life.”

“Go sit in the car,” Josie said. “I’ll get the DVD.”

“Then what?” Alyce said.

“Then we’ll get the hell out of here,” Josie said.

“We can’t cut and run,” Alyce said. “What about
Adela, the nosy next-door neighbor? She’s probably at the window with her field glasses, writing down my license plate right now.”

“Damn, you’re right,” Josie said. “You stay here with Justin. As soon as I’m back with the DVD, we’ll call 911. Meanwhile, you may want to call Jake.”

“Are you kidding?” Alyce said. “He thinks we’re mystery-shopping. I’d rather go to jail than let my husband know I’m at a murder scene. Besides, I’ve faked it as your attorney before. I can do it again.”

“We have to get our stories straight,” Josie said. “What are we doing here?”

“I wanted to see Adela about the Junior League,” Alyce said. “We never finished our business yesterday.”

“Yes, but why are we at Mel’s? Wait. I know. I wanted to ask Zinnia about a church committee.”

“Which one?” Alyce said. “Quick. It has to be a real committee. The cops will check.”

Which one had Mrs. Mueller mentioned? “The bake-sale committee.”

“Okay, here’s what you do,” Alyce said. “You don’t talk unless I say so. You don’t change your story no matter how stupid it starts to sound. Now go in there and get that DVD. If someone else shows up, we’ll have an even bigger mess.”

“I’ll be quick. Is Justin okay?”

“Quiet as a little mouse,” Alyce said. That’s when the kid let out a full-throated howl that would have done Pavarotti proud.

“Go!” Alyce said.

“You have anything I can use to cover my hair? A scarf, maybe?” Josie said.

“There’s a stocking cap in the glove box,” Alyce said.

Josie shoved her brown hair under the cap. She pulled a plastic rain poncho out of her purse and put it over her clothes, then slipped on her leather gloves.

“What are you doing in that ridiculous getup?” Alyce shouted over the baby’s furious yowls.

“It’s a crime scene suit. I’m trying to minimize my hairs and fibers.”

“You’ve been watching too much
CSI
,” Alyce said.

“Oh, dear. I’ve found the cause of Master Justin’s distress. It’s diaper time.”

At the front door, Josie stripped off her shoes and tiptoed through the hall in her socks. Josie thought she could see the black cotton fibers shedding from them.

She made a wide circle around Zinnia’s body. That poor, foolish woman, Josie thought. The housekeeper had stubbornly refused to believe her beloved Mr. Mel could do anything wrong. Zinnia’s blind faith had killed her.

As Josie passed the crumpled body, she saw the hall table had been overturned. Smashed china and glass littered the floor. The double parlor door was open to reveal more ruin. Chair cushions were ripped. Drawers were upended. A vase was broken, the flowers scattered on the floor. Even the portrait of Mel’s mother had been slashed.

The kitchen was another wreck, but Josie didn’t take time to survey the damage. She found the back steps and sprinted up five flights, careful not to touch the handrails. She arrived at the top breathless, and ran down the hall to Mel’s special room. Her heart was pounding when she threw open the doors.

Mel’s fantasy room was destroyed. Shards of broken mirror glittered everywhere. The pale pink carpet was torn up, exposing the bare pine floor. Upholstery stuffing poured out of cruel cuts in the pink chairs.

Josie found the slanted footstool lying on its side. The leather pad was unharmed. She prodded it with nervous fingers. It was harder in one section, an area the size of a DVD case. Josie had guessed right. But how was she going to get it out? She didn’t have a knife.

Think. Mel had to get in there. How did he do it?

Josie poked and pulled on the leather pad, but nothing happened. Arrgh! The DVD was right there. She could feel it. She thought of stealing the whole footstool, but the police would know it was gone.

She heard a siren in the distance. The cops would be here any moment. Josie beat on the pad, but it wouldn’t give. In frustration, she thumped the footstool on the floor. The pad slid upward on springs.

“That’s it!” she said out loud. “I found it.”

Mel must have designed this hidey-hole himself. The foam padding in the footstool had been cut out in a jagged rectangle. The DVD fitted into the hole. Josie pulled out a plain black plastic case hand-lettered
TIP TOE THRU THE TWO LIPS
.

Oh, yuck. No wonder someone had killed for this.

I’ve found it, Josie thought. I’m smarter than the cops and the killer combined. Josie nearly did a little dance of triumph around the room, except she’d cut her feet on the broken glass.

Now she had another problem: How was she going to get that DVD past the police?

The wailing siren sounded closer. Were the cops on their way so soon? Josie couldn’t be caught inside the house wearing that outfit. She stuck the DVD in her waistband, then charged down the back steps, her socks slipping on the polished wood. On the second floor, she nearly took a header down the steps, and grabbed the railing with a gloved hand. Then she was out the front door, pulling the rain poncho over her head, folding it back into its pouch. She ripped off the stocking cap and slipped on her shoes.

“Did you get it?” Alyce said. She was changing Justin’s diaper on the backseat.

“Yes!” Josie said. She kept the DVD hidden. She didn’t want Adela Quimby Hodges, the alert octogenarian, to spot it.

Josie no longer heard the sirens. They must have been for another emergency. “We’d better call the cops,” she said.

“Can you do that for us?” Alyce said. “Justin and I are busy.”

Josie sat on the passenger seat and made the call. The 911 operator told her to remain calm and stay on the line. The police would be there in minutes. But Josie was close to panic. Time was running out. Where was she going to hide that DVD? She couldn’t be caught with foot porn. The police would know she’d stolen it from Mel’s home.

She couldn’t put it in Alyce’s SUV. That was the first
place they’d look. Her purse was equally bad. She heard more sirens. This time, they were coming to Olympia Park.

“The police are here,” Josie told the 911 operator and hung up.

“Where’s that diaper?” Josie said.

“What?” Alyce said.

“The diaper. Give it to me. No, not the clean one.”

As the first police car pulled into the circular drive, Josie shoved the DVD into the reeking diaper.

Josie and Alyce didn’t have to act upset. They were both shocked and horrified. The uniformed officers asked them some simple questions. They were sad and slightly teary and gave honest answers. Well, semi-honest. They fudged why they were at Mel’s house.

Then the two homicide detectives pulled up, and the day unraveled like an old sweater. Detective Kate Causeman looked fresh from the pie-baking contest at the state fair. She seemed fairly cheerful for someone at a murder scene. Then she saw Josie, and her face screwed up like she’d swallowed a bad gooseberry. The other detective was Knob Ears, the man mountain who had stonewalled Cheryl. Neither one said a word to Josie.

The two detectives went inside Mel’s house for a short eternity. Baby Justin was becoming fretful. His mother sang to him.

“It’s nap time,” she told Josie. “He’s getting cranky. Those detectives are about to get an earful.”

Finally Detectives Causeman and Knob Ears came over to talk to Alyce and Josie. If a smile was Causeman’s umbrella, Josie was getting a poke in the eye.

“Josie Marcus,” she said. “This is a surprise. When I interviewed you before, you said you didn’t know Mr. Poulaine. You told me you’d only met him when you were in the store trying on shoes.”

“That’s right,” Josie said.

“What are you doing at his house now?” she said.

“Excuse me, Officer. I’m Alyce Bohannon, representing Ms. Marcus.”

Josie’s friend had morphed into a different woman. Alyce was still blond, but she was no longer soft. She seemed tougher, more alert, all business, even with a fussy baby on one hip.

“Do you always bring your attorney to your murders?” Detective Causeman said.

“Ms. Marcus and I were here on business,” Alyce said.

“If you don’t mind, we’d like Ms. Marcus to answer,” Detective Causeman said.

“I’m sorry,” Alyce said. “But I have to be with my client.”

“How do I know you two didn’t kill Mrs. Ellis?” Detective Causeman said. Her partner stayed silent. All he had to do was stand there and he looked scary.

“Zinnia appears to have been dead several hours, Detective,” Alyce said. “We couldn’t have killed her.”

“Oh, so you’re a forensic expert, as well as an attorney,” the detective said.

“Why don’t you ask the woman next door, Adela Quimby Hodges, what time we got here?” Alyce said. “You know she writes down every license plate, along with a car and visitor description.”

“A detective, a forensic expert, and an attorney,” the detective said. “I’d like a talk with such a multitalented woman. Why don’t you come with us to headquarters for a chat?”

“What about my baby?” Alyce said.

“He’ll be well cared for.” Detective Knob Ears spoke for the first time. “We’ll have Family and Children’s Services take your boy into custody.”

“You can’t do that.” The panic on Alyce’s face was painful.

“We can, Counselor,” he said. “We most certainly can. What kind of woman takes a baby along on a B and E? You’re not a fit mother.”