“I swear to God if you take one more picture of me, I’m going to kill you.”
He grinned, showing off his slightly crooked teeth. “Can I quote you on that, love?”
I felt my left eye starting to twitch. I took a deep breath and counted to ten. Then counted to ten again. I was pretty sure that strangling him with his own camera strap would be bad funeral etiquette.
“What are you doing here anyway?” I asked instead.
Felix shrugged. “Paying my respects.”
“You didn’t even know Hank!”
“Did you?” he asked, leaning in.
I narrowed my eyes. “Oh no. No. you’re not getting a story out of me, pal.”
“Too late.” He grinned. Then shot another picture.
“Stop that!” I yelled, waving away the little flying specks of light. “I’m going to go blind.”
He cocked his head to the side, narrowing his eyes as he stared at me. “You’ve got a little something…” he trailed off, pointing to his upper lip.
“Yes, I know! I’m growing a mustache. Okay? So freaking what? You want to make a story out of that? Oh, I know, how about calling me the hairy yeti woman of Los Angeles, that oughta sell copies for you. Hey, maybe you’ll even be up for a Pulitzer. So, go ahead, take a picture of me with my big fat hairy lip. I dare you.”
Felix’s lips quivered, threatening to explode into full blown laughter any second.
“Uh, actually, I think it’s grass.”
“Huh?” I put my hand to my lip. Sure enough, I came away with three little blades of green grass. Mental forehead smack.
“Oh.”
The laughter broke free, and Felix shook with it, his entire body spasming as he clicked away, taking a series of pictures he’d have to caption “Woman dies of embarrassment – police investigating the role of lip hair in her untimely demise.”
Before I could make any more of a fool of myself in front of the press, I turned and hobbled over to where Marco was chatting up his Material Girl.
“I have to go,” I whispered. “Now!”
* * *
I waited while Marco and Madonna exchanged phone numbers, hugs, jelly bracelets, and a series of air kisses, then dragged him and Dana back to the Mustang where we all piled in. (Me behind the wheel this time as I still had an indentation of cardboard Elvis’s microphone on my tush.) I pulled the car back onto the main road and out to the 15. True to my word, we were leaving Vegas. But… I had one quick little stop to make first. Regis’s Salon. I had a four thirty lip waxing and after the embarrassing monologue I’d given Tabloid Boy about my Yeti lip, there was no way I was going to miss it this time. I glanced down at my watch. 4:22. I eased the gas pedal just a little further down, zipping by a sports car in the left lane.
“Slow down,” Marco whined. “Dahling, this car is a classic. She’s not a dragster.”
I ignored him, passing a pick-up on the right. It may be a classic, but I was on a mission.
“Seriously, Maddie, slow down. Elvis keeps falling in my lap,” Dana whined from the backseat.
Nothing doing. We were two exits from the Strip with a minute and a half to spare. I could make it this time. The next time Ramirez pulled one of his surprise lip-locks, I was going to be smooth as a baby’s behind.
Then the unthinkable happened. Blue lights flashed in my rearview mirror.
Marco turned around. “Uh oh.”
‘Uh oh’ was right. I spun my head around. “Shit!” A police car was glued to my bumper. He turned on his siren and motioned for me to pull over.
“I told you to slow down,” Macro said.
I gave him the death look as I eased the car over to the right shoulder.
The police car parked behind me. I looked at my watch. 4:29. Shit, shit, shit!
The highway patrolman motioned for Marco to roll down the passenger side window. He was in his late thirties with a pronounced mid-section and wore mirrored aviator glasses and a little brown Magnum P.I. mustache. He placed his hands on his hips and popped a piece of gum between his teeth. “License and registration, ma’am.”
Marco opened the glove box and fished around for the registration while I searched my purse for my driver’s license.
“I’m sorry, was I going too fast?” I asked, batting my eyelashes at him.
“License and registration,” he repeated. Clearly he was not into the flirtatious blonde routine. Damn. In L.A. that shtick killed.
Marco finally found the registration and handed it over to the officer. I was still searching.
“Look, maybe I was going just a teeny tiny bit too fast, but I had a really, really good reason. See, I’m late for an appointment and I can’t miss it this time.”
I looked up. No sympathy at all.
“I mean, it’s very important,” I said, still rummaging through my purse as I pleaded my case. “I have a waxing I’m late for. I’m not sure if you’ve ever had one, but they’re essential to preventing a mustache.”
Officer Magnum twitched his upper lip and did a little grunt.
“Oh! I mean, not that some people might not want a mustache. Mustaches can be wonderful. You for instance look stunning in one. Very hip. Right, Marco?”
Marco nodded. “Right.”
“See, on you it looks fantastic. But on a woman, well, not the same effect. Women have to wax. Take your mother, for instance, I’m sure she waxes all the time.”
He clenched his jaw and gave me a hard stare.
“Not, of course, that your mother needs to wax. I mean, I’m sure she’s not at all hairy. She’s probably a very hairless woman in fact. I mean, not totally hairless because then she’d be bald which wouldn’t be very attractive either. Which I’m sure your mother is. Attractive that is, not bald.”
Officer Magnum took off his mirrored glasses and narrowed his eyes at me. “Li-cense and reg-is-tra-tion,” he said, sharply annunciating each syllable.
“Right.” I dumped the contents of my purse onto my lap. Bingo. My license fell out and I handed it to him.
“Hairless mother?” Dana asked, poking me from behind as the officer walked back to his car with my ID.
“What?” I shrugged. “I was nervous.”
Marco just shook his head at me.
I looked down at my watch, watching the digital numbers tick by. 4:32. 4:33. “Come on, come, on, come on,” I chanted. If he would just write me the dang ticket already there was still a chance I could make it to the salon before the next appointment.
Finally Officer Magnum got out of his squad car again. He put his shades back on and made purposeful strides to the driver’s side window, one hand on his utility belt.
“Ma’am, I need you to get out of the car.”
Marco and I looked at each other. Huh?
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“Ma’am please step out of the vehicle.” His hand hovered over his revolver.
“Look, I’m sorry for the crack about your mother. I’m sure she’s a very lovely person. Really. Just the appropriate amount of hair.”
“Ma’am, please don’t make me ask you again.”
“Maddie,” Marco whispered. “I think he’s serious. You better do it.”
I bit my lip, feeling my heart sink down to the tip of my toes as I realized I might never see the end of this upper lip ‘dust.’ I slowly opened the driver’s side door and stepped out.
“Look, officer, I’m sure that whatever this is about-”
But before I could finish, Officer Magnum had my arms twisted behind my back and was clicking a pair of handcuffs on my wrist.
“Hey!”
“Hey!” Marco and Dana echoed in unison from the car.
“What’s going on here?” Dana demanded.
“Maddison Springer,” the officer recited as he clicked a second cuff on my wrist. “You’re under arrest.”
“Under arrest! For speeding?” I asked, my voice going into mezzo soprano range.
Officer Magnum spun me ar
ound to face him, his mirrored glasses reflecting the look of fear and confusion on my face.
“No. You’re under arrest,” he repeated, “for the murder of Bob Hostetler.”
Chapter Fourteen
In a place where both laying down your life savings on twenty-two black and selling your body at the rate of thirty bucks an hour are legal, you have to do something pretty bad to end up in the Clark County lock up. Which didn’t make me feel terribly comfortable around my cellmates. (My cellmates! Ugh! A phrase I could have happily gone my whole life without using.)
A homeless lady wearing a head full of dreads (and not the sexy Lenny Kravitz kind but the matted-with-gobs-of-who-knows-what kind) sat on a sparse wooden bench in the corner talking to herself. Next to her was a 200 pound black woman who looked like she’d gone three rounds with Oscar De La Hoya. And lost. If she was the one in prison, I shuddered to think what the other guy looked like. She was wearing a red pleather mini skirt and stained white bra. Nothing else. I tried not to stare as I sat down on the opposite side of the holding cell, next to a thin woman in a Motorhead T-shirt scratching at the imaginary bugs on her arms.
After Officer Magnum had handcuffed me and shoved me into the back of his squad car (with a ‘watch you’re head, ma’am,’ the sole response to my frantic questions of, ‘what the hell do you mean, murder?’) I was transported to the Clark County holding, where I was fingerprinted (and now had black smudges on my blouse next to the grass stains), photographed, then searched from head to toe by a woman who was the spitting image of Jim Belushi (talk about someone in need of a waxing). Then they’d taken my purse, cell phone and, worst of all, my shoes, citing the heels were high enough to qualify as weapons. Instead, they gave me these little blue paper booties to stick over my feet before shuffling me off to my cell.
All in all, it qualified as the most embarrassing incident of my entire life. Even winning out over the junior high school Valentine’s dance where I shared my first French kiss with Benny Winetraub. During which our braces got stuck together, resulting in a metal lip-lock that lasted until the principal called Benny’s orthodontist to cut us apart. On a scale of one to ten, the Benny incident ranked a nine for most embarrassing moment ever.
Being booked for murder was a thirty five.
“Springer!” Mizz Belushi called.
“Yes!” I jumped up so quickly my itchy friend yelped.
“Let’s go.”
“Oh thank God,” I said as she unlocked the door and led me out. “See, I told you this was all just a big mistake.”
She smirked. “Hmph. We’ll see about that.”
Then, much to my disappointment, instead of leading me back down the hall to the room where I’d abandoned my pumps, she walked me through a series of doors into a tiny room with peeling gray paint and buzzing fluorescent lights overhead. It held one long table, four metal chairs, and a huge mirror covering the length of one wall.
Uh oh. I watched Law & Order, I knew this room. This was where they shined those bright lights down on people and fed them soda after soda without letting them go to the bathroom until they finally cracked and confessed to everything.
I hesitated in the doorway.
“Don’t I get one phone call?” I asked.
Belushi snickered. “You watch too much TV.” Then she sat me down at the peeling laminate table. “You wanna soda or something?” she asked.
Gulp. See, what did I tell you? “No, thanks.”
She just shrugged, then walked out, shutting the door behind her.
I cautiously looked around the room. No bright spotlights. No video cameras in the corner. The only thing that screamed ‘interrogation’ was the big one-way mirror. I stared at it. I admit, I was curious. Of course I’d seen these things a hundred times before on TV, but I’d never actually seen one in person. I slowly stood up and walked over to it, wondering if there was anyone watching me from the other side.
“Hello?” I whispered, doing a little wave at the reflective surface. No answer. I took a couple of steps closer, squinting to see if I could make out anything on the other side. Nothing. I put my nose right up to the glass and smushed my face into it. Still couldn’t see a thing.
Unfortunately, Belushi picked that moment to come back into the room. I jumped back from the mirror as the door popped open.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Nothing.” I pulled my sleeve down and rubbed a nose print off the mirror.
“Uh huh,” she said, believing me about as much as I believed no one was watching this whole exchange from the next room. She gestured to the table and I obediently sat down in one of the metal chairs as two more men entered the room. The first was a short guy in brown slacks and a short sleeve button-down that looked like it came with a free pocket protector. His bald head and sparse mustache bore an uncanny resemblance to Detective Andy Sipowicz from NYPD Blue and his round figure just barely made it through the door.
But my gaze didn’t stick with Sipowicz for long, my attention immediately falling on the second guy as his broad shouldered frame walked through the door.
Ramirez.
I had never been so glad to see anyone in my entire life. I would have jumped up and hugged him had he not been giving me the death look.
Ramirez and Sipowicz sat down on the opposite side of the table, the portly detective placing a lined, yellow notepad out in front of him.
“My name’s Detective Romanowsky,” he said, doing a Jersey accent. “You already know Detective Ramirez. We need to ask you a few questions about your activities over the past two days. Before we begin can I get you a soda?”
“No!” I blurted out.
Sipowicz jumped in his seat.
“Uh, I mean, no thank you.” I bit my lip, looking to Ramirez. He wouldn’t actually let them do the soda-no-bathroom routine on me, would he? I searched his face for any sign of leniency but he just stared back doing his stony Bad Cop.
“Okay, then. Let’s start with your whereabouts this afternoon,” Sipowicz said, pen poised over the notepad.
I swallowed, my mouth feeling like sandpaper. “I went to a funeral and was on my way to the salon and after that I swear I was going to leave Vegas,” I said, addressing Ramirez’s poker face.
Sipowicz raised one eyebrow. “So you were on your way out of town when the officer picked you up?”
“No, wait. I mean, I didn’t try to leave leave. Not like I was skipping town ‘cause I did something bad or anything. I was just going away. With a totally guilt-free conscience. Okay, well, maybe I feel a little guilty for lying to my mother about the whole Palm Springs thing, but that’s a whole different kind of guilt. I mean, that’s the I’m-going-to-have-to-endure-dinner-at-her-house-for-a-month-straight-to-make-up-for-it kind of guilt. Not the someone-died-and-I’m-not-taking-the-rap-for-it kind. Not that I want to take the rap for this. I don’t. Because I didn’t do it. Which is why I wasn’t fleeing at all. I was just leaving. Slowly. No fleeing.”
Sipowicz raised the other eyebrow.
I looked to Ramirez, desperation bubbling into my voice. “You believe me don’t you?”
But all I got in return was Bad Cop.
See, here’s the thing: last summer when I kind of got involved in that murder investigation, Ramirez had, for a fraction of an instant, believed I had something to do with it. In his defense, I did suspiciously keep turning up in the vicinity of dead bodies. But I’d hated the fact that he doubted me, even for a second. And now that our tongues had done the mambo together, I hated that blank, give-away-nothing stare of his even more.
My hands fidgeted in my lap as I waited for him to say something. (Anything!)
Finally he broke his silence, turning to Sipowicz. “Could you give us a minute?”
The balding detective looked from Ramirez to me. Then shrugged. “All right. I’ll be outside.”
I waited until the door clicked shut behind him before pleading my case again. “You have to believe me,” I blurt
ed out. “I didn’t kill anyone! You know I wouldn’t do that.”
Ramirez sighed, rubbing one hand across his face. “Of course I know that. Jesus, Maddie, why can’t you just go shopping or get your hair done like a normal girl?”
I did an internal sigh of relief. Okay, so the comment was sexist on so many levels, but at least someone knew this was all a big mistake. “Then why am I here?” I asked. “What happened to Bobbi?”
“Bob Hostetler’s body was found this afternoon in your father’s garage.”
“But that’s impossible,” I protested. “I was just-” I paused. Oh my God, the bag of fertilizer! I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I hadn’t tripped over a soil treatment. I’d tripped over Bob!
“You were just what?” Ramirez leaned his elbows on the table, his eyes narrowing in on me.
“I was just… talking about Bobbi the other day.”
Ramirez shook his head. “Look, now is the time to come clean with me, Maddie. Your fingerprints are all over that house and the crime scene unit found half a credit card with your name on it wedged in the back door.”
Damn! My Macy’s card! In my haste to slip past Unibrow, I’d forgotten all about it.
“And,” Ramirez continued. “… the shoe print of a size seven high heel was found next to the body. Any guess whose?”
“Jimmy Choo’s?”
Ramirez ground his teeth together. “Yours.”
“Okay, I can explain.”
“Oh, I bet you can.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”
Ramirez tilted his head from side to side, working a whole new set of kinks out of his neck. “Nothing. Go on.”
Considering he had handcuffs and I was currently a ward of the state, I let it go. “Okay, well, I just went to the house to talk to Larry. Only he wasn’t there so I thought I’d have a little look around, so I tried to get in the back door, but picking a lock with a credit card is a lot harder than it looks on UPN and it broke. So I tried the side door and that one was open, so I went in and looked around. That’s how my prints got there.”
High Heels Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1-5) Page 43