10 Suspect in High Heels

by Gemma Halliday

  "No!" I shouted. "No one is giving anyone a piece of anything."

  "Did you hear how he insulted your great-great-grandmother's grandmother's grandmother's word?" Mom said, turning to me. The anger had receded from her face, and I now saw tears backing up behind her eyes.

  I shook my head. "Clearly he was mistaken," I told her. Though whether I believed that or not, I wasn't sure. The truth was, my great-great-grandmother hadn't been all together there at the end. Honestly? There was a good chance Carrington was right about the hatpin. "Maybe we should just go."

  "What about my fertility goddess?" Mrs. Rosenblatt said, holding up the Green Goblin. "I haven't got it appraised yet."

  I took a deep breath. I counted to 10. "Fine. We'll get the fertility thing appraised."

  "Goddess"

  "Whatever." I did another 5 count, but it wasn't doing much good. "Look, maybe we should just take a few minutes to get something to eat and cool off." And I still really had to go to the bathroom.

  Mom nodded. "It is lunchtime."

  Having diffused that bomb, I sent Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt toward the concession stands set up in a smaller room off the main convention hall as I went to find the nearest restroom.

  I took care of business, freshened up my Raspberry Perfection lip gloss, and did a couple of powder puffs at the sheen that had developed on my forehead during Mom's altercation. Then I left the ladies' room and found a quiet hallway to quickly check in on the twins, who were at home under the watchful eye of my best friend, Dana.

  Dana Dashel and I had been joined at the hip since junior high, having gone through the awkwardness of high school together as well as the struggles of adulting—me starting a career as a footwear fashion designer and her spending years as a struggling actress-slash-almost-everything-else. Luckily, those days were mostly behind us, as I was finally designing my own collections for fancy boutiques in Beverly Hills, and Dana was landing actual paying roles on TV and film on a regular basis.

  I swiped my cell on and waited while the phone rang on the other end. And rang. And rang. Just when I was sure it was about to go to voicemail, I heard my bestie's voice pick up.

  "Maddie?" Dana said, clearly out of breath.

  "Yeah, it's me," I told her. "Where was it this time?"

  I heard Dana chuckle on the other end. "Top rack of the dishwasher."

  I laughed out loud. Recently, Max, the male half of my two-year-old twins, had taken to hiding cell phones. I had a feeling he was trying to tell us something about our inattentiveness as parents. But now it had become a game, and we were never quite sure where the ringing would come from in the house. "Good thing you didn't run a load."

  "With these two around? I'm lucky to be able to find the dishwasher, let alone use it."

  I grinned again. Parenthood was a never dull journey. "So how are the monsters doing?" I asked.

  "Oh, they're fine. Ricky, however, might need a stiff drink when we're done."

  Ricky Montgomery was Dana's boyfriend as well as a rising Hollywood star. He and Dana had met when we'd been undercover on the set of his TV show, and he'd publicly proposed to Dana on the air in one of the most romantic moments I'd ever been fortunate enough to witness. However, that had been over two years ago. And he was still dragging his feet about setting a wedding date. In an effort to push him toward domestic life, Dana had volunteered the two of them to babysit the twins while I'd gone antiquing.

  "Is Ricky okay?" I asked, putting my finger to my other ear to block out the dull hum of noise from the convention center floor.

  "Oh yeah," Dana assured me. "He's fine. Tired. And he's learned the hard way not to ever wear Armani around a potty-training toddler." She stifled a giggle on the other end. "But everything's cool here. How's the Extravaganza?"

  I gave her the CliffsNotes version of our adventure so far. By the time I got to Mom threatening Carrington, she was in all-out laughter.

  "Sounds like your two are even more trouble than these two," she said. "By the way…"

  I strained to hear her as her voice trailed off.

  "Sorry. I'm having a hard time hearing you," I said, realizing how true that was. Somehow the dull hum of noise around me had risen to mild roar status.

  "I just wondered how…Max should get…or is there something else?"

  "What?" I yelled into my phone. I stepped out of the hallway onto the main floor, and the hairs on the back of my neck started to stand on end. The noise had reached a deafening level, converging around one of the back rooms I'd seen lucky patrons with unique items being pulled into. Someone was shouting for security, people with clipboards were running back and forth like headless chickens, and I noticed several women sobbing.

  "Um, I'm having a hard time hearing you. I'll call you back," I told Dana, swiping my phone off.

  I grabbed the arm of a woman in a headset as she bustled past me.

  "Excuse me, what's going on?"

  Her face was pale. "It's Carrington." She gulped audibly, eyes darting side to side, almost as if she wasn't sure she should say the words out loud.

  But finally she did.

  "He's dead."

  CHAPTER TWO

  If there was anything in this world worse than standing in a two-hour line next to a woman holding a bag full of clowns, it was standing in a room full of antsy antiquers waiting to be questioned by the police as possible eyewitnesses in a murder.

  The giddy excitement in the air had turned to solemn whisperers and suspicious glances as the police now used the existing lines to question possible witnesses instead of appraising antiques.

  "Excuse me, ma'am?"

  I looked up to find a tall police officer in a blue uniform addressing my mom. He had a shock of red hair, and his face was covered in a fine dusting of pale freckles.

  "Y-yes?" she asked on a shaky voice.

  "The detective would like to speak with you. Could you please come to the front of the line?"

  "Well, it's about time!" Mrs. Rosenblatt cut in. "My corns are killing me."

  Officer Freckles' eyebrows pinched together momentarily, as if trying to erase that mental picture. However, he gently led Mom forward by the elbow to the front of the line.

  "Isn't it nice that we're getting some preferential treatment?" Mom whispered to me, giving me a wink.

  I wasn't so sure. In my experience, there was only one reason a homicide detective wanted to talk to you…and it wasn't a good one.

  I realized soon enough why we had been called to the front of the line, as the officer led us to a booth that had been sectioned off by blue curtains with a sign above reading Porcelain Appraisals. As the officer pulled aside the curtains, I saw it had been turned into a makeshift interrogation room. A plainclothes detective sat on one side of a folding table, which was still covered in small porcelain miniature figures, most of them in various states of undress. A boy looked like he was peeing into a fake fountain, a Venus Di Milo look-alike bore her breasts on a half shell, and two figurines in jade were wrapped up in each other in what I could only interpret as the aftereffects of a fertility goddess statue. The whole thing might have even been slightly comical if I hadn't known the detective sitting behind the table. Intimately.

  Detective Jack Ramirez was tall, dark, and dangerously handsome. He also happened to be my husband.

  "Hi, honey," I squeaked out, doing a little one finger wave in his direction.

  All I got back was a grunt. Clearly he was not happy to be here.

  His dark hair curled just a couple weeks past needing a haircut at the nape of his neck, and his normally brown eyes were almost black as they homed in on me from his unreadable Cop Face. His jaw was clenched, and a little vein was threatening to bulge at the side of his neck as he stared me down.

  Officer Freckles indicated a trio of folding chairs for the three of us to sit on, and then he hightailed it out of there. Lucky Officer Freckles. I itched to join him.

  "Oh, Jack, thank goodness you're here," Mom gushed at hi
m, clearly not used to being on the business end of Cop Face. "They're saying that appraiser is dead!"

  Ramirez cleared his throat, his expression softening a little as he turned it on my mom. "Unfortunately, they are right."

  Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt gasped as one.

  Ramirez looked at me, his expression a perfectly intimidating poker face. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about this, would you?"

  "Who, me?" I asked in my most innocent voice. Which wasn't too difficult to pull off, since I actually was innocent. Clearly, I hadn't had anything to do with the death of the grouchy appraiser. But the truth was, this was not the first time I had ever found a dead body. In fact, my friends had started to joke that I was a bit of a dead body magnet. It totally wasn't my fault. You know how some people have all the luck when it comes to snagging great parking at the mall or hitting the ATM at just the right time to avoid any lines? I mean, you don't blame them for always getting the prime parking places or fast cash, right? So it was totally not my fault that I just happened to be in the vicinity of people when they happened to be murdered by other people. I mean, it wasn't like I actually caused any of these murders myself. I was an innocent bystander.

  That was my story, and I was sticking to it.

  Unfortunately it was a story my husband had heard several times. And he'd never been a fan of it.

  "I'm guessing the fact that you're here means that he didn't kill himself, right?" I asked my husband.

  He nodded, his jaw tight. "It's being investigated as a death under suspicious circumstances," he said, giving us the standard line.

  I steeled myself for more questioning, but instead he turned toward Mom. "You knew the appraiser?"

  "M-me?" she stammered, clearly not ready for the question.

  "I'm told you had a conversation with him prior to his death?"

  "Conversation" was a nice way of putting it. I felt a slight unpleasant niggling in my gut that my husband wasn't asking for no reason. Mom had had a rather loud argument with the man. Right before he'd been killed. But surely no one would think Mom had anything to do with—

  "Wait—you don't think I had anything to do with this?" Mom asked. For all her quirks, Mom was one smart cookie.

  "Me?" Ramirez asked, putting a hand to his chest. "No. I know you didn't have anything to do with this, Betty."

  I narrowed my eyes at my husband. "But…"

  Ramirez sighed, as if he was wishing he was anywhere but there. "But, several witnesses came forward saying that you had an altercation with Mr. Carrington just before the victim expired."

  "It was just a silly argument," I jumped in. I paused, something occurring to me. "Security cameras!"

  Ramirez turned to me.

  "Surely you can check the security cameras. They were all over the place." I'd noticed several near the various booths as I'd stood in line.

  But Ramirez shook his head. "There were cameras, but they were specifically trained on the booths and tables. Carrington was killed in one of the back rooms."

  Drat. So much for that.

  Ramirez turned to my mom. "So, I have to ask, what was that argument about?"

  Mom bit her lip. It was a habit I was ashamed to say I'd inherited from her. I resisted the urge to nibble my lip gloss right off along with her.

  "It was about her hatpin," Mrs. Rosenblatt supplied. "That smarmy snake of a phony appraiser said it was fake."

  Ramirez raised an eyebrow in her direction. "A hatpin?"

  Something in the way he said it made that niggle in my belly turn into a full-blown rumbling. "Why do you ask?"

  But he ignored me, turning again to Mom. "I take it you disagreed with Carrington's appraisal?"

  "Darn tooting!" Mrs. Rosenblatt said, nodding supportively toward Mom, who still wasn't saying much. "That hatpin has been in her family for generations. It's an heirloom. That man wouldn't know real diamonds if they came out of his rear—"

  "Please," Mom cut her off just in time. "The man is dead."

  Ramirez coughed. If I had to guess, it was to cover a laugh.

  "But it's true about the appraisal," Mom said, nodding, her feathered bangs bobbing up and down on her head. "He was completely mistaken."

  "And, he was completely alive when we left him," I added for emphasis.

  Ramirez cleared his throat. "Okay, take me through what you did next."

  "Well, I—" I started.

  But Ramirez cut me off. "Not you, Maddie."

  I shut my mouth with a click, turning to Mom.

  Her eyes darted between us, clearly not comfortable with all of the scrutiny. "Well…Dorothy and I," she said, nodding in Mrs. Rosenblatt's direction, "went to go get something to eat. Soft pretzels. You know, to calm down and regroup before we got into the Sculptures line to get her fertility goddess appraised."

  Ramirez's eyes went up again.

  "She's African," Mrs. Rosenblatt filled him in. "One look at her is all it takes to get a girl knocked up."

  Ramirez did a cover-up cough again. "Okay, so you went to go get pretzels. Together, correct?"

  Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt both nodded vigorously.

  "There was no point where you left each other's sides, correct?"

  Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt both stop nodding. They shared a sidelong glance at each other.

  Uh-oh.

  "Well…" Mom started.

  "Well what? Do you have an alibi or not?" I asked, getting antsy.

  Ramirez shot me a look that clearly said Ixnay on the interrogation-nay. I made a zipping-my-mouth-shut-and-throwing-away-the-key motion.

  "Well," Mom said again. "The pretzels made Dorothy thirsty. So she did get up to go get a frozen lemonade at one point. But she came right back. It was only a couple of minutes."

  Ramirez let out a deep sigh, leaning back in his chair.

  While this hole in Mom's alibi wasn't good, I could tell by the look on Ramirez's face that there was something else too.

  "What?" I asked him.

  He looked up and locked eyes with mine for just a moment. This time it wasn't his Cop Face. It was the face of a husband who felt terrible about the news he was about to break to his wife.

  Double uh-oh.

  Ramirez turned to Mom. "Tell me more about the hatpin that you had appraised by the victim."

  "Uh, well, it was silver."

  Ramirez closed his eyes, his eyebrows drawing together in a frown. "It didn't happen to have a flower shape at one end with some gems in it, did it?"

  "Why do you ask?" I jumped in.

  Ramirez opened his eyes and gave me that sympathetic look again. "Because that's exactly what the murder weapon looked like."

  Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt did the simultaneous gasp thing again. In fact, I might have joined them, the air suddenly collapsing out of my chest.

  I felt my eyes ping-pong between Ramirez and Mom. "It couldn't have been. Mom, you put the hatpin back into your purse, right?"

  "I-I thought I did." She bit her lip again, turning to Mrs. Rosenblatt. "Dorothy, I did put it into my purse, right?"

  Mrs. Rosenblatt's massive shoulders jumped up and down, making the hibiscus on her muumuu dance. "Sure. I mean, where else would you put it?"

  "Did you have your purse with you the whole time? Did you set it down anywhere? Are you sure you put the hatpin in? Could you have left it at the appraisal table? Could it have fallen out?" I felt myself starting to hyperventilate.

  "Calm down. Breathe," Ramirez instructed.

  I shut my mouth and breathed deeply through my nose. I heard Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt doing the same thing beside me.

  When I finally got my breath under control, I turned to my husband. "Jack, you don't seriously believe that my mom had anything to do with this?"

  There was that sympathetic look again. I was starting to miss Cop Face. "Your mother was in an altercation with the victim moments before he was killed. With a murder weapon that belongs to her. At this point, Maddie, I'm not sure it matters what I believe."


  * * *

  After assuring me that he'd do everything he could to look into what really happened, Ramirez cleared us to go home as he stayed behind to sort out the mess. While part of me itched to know what the crime scene techs swabbing every surface of the appraisal tables where uncovering, I knew that the most helpful thing I could do was get Mom home and let my husband do his job.

  I spent the better part of the car ride grilling my mom about just how the hatpin had escaped her purse. The truth was, none of us had been paying that close attention to our belongings at the time, all three of us riled up by the argument with Carrington. But Mom swore she hadn't seen anyone near her purse. Apparently she did realize how incriminating that statement looked for her.

  I dropped Mom off at home and Mrs. Rosenblatt off at the senior center in Santa Monica, and was treated to the comforting sounds of utter chaos as I walked to the front door of my own bungalow in West LA. I could hear Max screaming something about flinging boogers, and Livvie, the female half of my twins, screaming something about catching boogers, and Ricky screaming that if anyone flung anything again, they were sitting in time-out.

  "Honeys, I'm home," I called, carefully setting my vintage shoes down on the entryway table as I walked into the eye of the storm.

  Immediately screams ceased from two out of three directions, and Livvie and Max attacked my legs with hugs, kisses, and little pudgy fingers. I had to admit that after the afternoon I'd had, it was more than welcome. I knelt down and returned the hugs and kisses and added in just a couple belly farts for good measure. Once the twins had had their fill, they ran off happily toward the sound of Mickey Mouse from the TV in the back bedroom.

  I straightened up to find my babysitters looking a bit worse for the wear. Ricky's normally artfully tousled hair was actually tousled, standing on end and possibly caked with a little yogurt on one side. There was a suspicious stain on his pants, and it looked like Livvie had applied red marker to his fingernails. And his fingers. (We were working on hand-eye coordination.) Dana didn't look too much better—barefoot, strawberry blonde hair in a messy bun, a brown streak of ambiguous origin across one cheek, standing in the middle of a tiny-person tornado that included toys, Cheerios, juice cups, and discarded clothing. If I had to guess, an afternoon with my kids hadn't so much pushed Ricky toward domestic bliss as it had given Dana second thoughts.