"Where she slipped in the back door and added the lethal dose of amphetamines to the tanning solution in Lacey's booth," Marco finished for me, then did a shudder. "I'm never tanning again."
"That makes two of us," I agreed. "Actually, I heard Mom and Ralph talking this morning, and he said he's thinking about discontinuing spray tans. Just too creepy to send another client into that booth."
"Amen to that," Marco agreed. He paused, moving the LED to my other hand. "I just have one question?"
"Shoot," I told him, inspecting my shiny nails.
"If Schwimmer admitted that Ratski was paying Lacey five-thousand a week in hush money, where was the other five-thousand she deposited each week coming from?"
I grinned at him. "You didn't think Ratski was the only person Lacey was blackmailing, now, did you?"
"Get out!" He smacked me on my arm.
I laughed. "Okay, I'll admit, I didn't figure that part out either."
"Who was it?" Marco asked, leaning in close. "Kendra? Liz?"
"Actually, kind of both of them."
Marco sucked in a breath. "I've died and gone to gossip heaven. Do tell."
"Well, it turns out Beth wasn't lying when she said something was off about Liz's finances. But it wasn't about missing money, so much as extra money."
Marco raised an eyebrow. "Go on."
"Ling was right about the quality of bags Liz was selling. Liz would order bags from the designers, but then she'd order knockoffs of the same bags from overseas. She'd sell the knockoffs in her store, then sell the original bags to another boutique."
"She was double dipping!"
I nodded. "That's where Kendra came in. She admitted that she has a friend who owns a boutique in New York. They were shipping the real designer items to her, acting as a distributor, then selling the fakes at Liz's boutique. That's what I'd overheard Kendra talking about on the phone at the studio. And that loan that Beth said she overhead Liz asking for from Kendra? It wasn't actually a loan at all, but capital for their venture to purchase the fake bags."
"She admitted all of this?" Marco asked.
"According to Ramirez, as soon as the police started questioning the wives, Kendra sang like a canary."
"Talk about fodder for a great Baseball Wives episode."
I nodded. "If the two of them can stay out of jail, they'll be sweeping the ratings for sure."
* * *
You don’t want to now.
After my nails were Passion Pink and my toes had been soaked, scrubbed, and hot stone massaged, I made a quick stop at the Informer's offices to drop off my press pass and apologize for dragging their good name through the mud. Almost literally. There was still grass and mud stuck in the lanyard.
Then I pointed my minivan toward home. I'd had enough of being the detective in the family, and I was looking forward to an afternoon of just being Mrs. Mom.
I pulled my van into the driveway and got out, listening at the door for the telltale signs of crying in stereo. Only there was nothing but quiet. Of course it was quiet. The kids were with Super Dad.
I stuck my key in the hole and pushed the door open.
"I'm home," I called out.
I stood in the doorway and blinked at the chaos in front of me.
The twins were on the floor finger painting with chocolate pudding (Oh, God, please let that be chocolate pudding!) on the newly cleaned rug. Livvie only had one sock on, and Max was missing a shirt. Both of them had their hair sticking up at odd angles, and I thought I detected a Cheerio stuck to the side of Max's face. Toys were scattered in every direction, and there was a loud noise coming from the laundry room.
"Jack?" I asked, stepping in a little farther into the house, looking for Mr. Mom himself.
He emerged from the laundry room, the sleeves of his black shirt rolled up to his elbows, arms covered in soapsuds, the front of his jeans smeared with something yellow, and I thought I saw a Cheerio in his hair as well.
I took a step forward, unable to suppress the grin taking over my face. "How's everything, honey?"
Ramirez blinked at me, giving a stunned look that quickly faded into defeat.
"You caught me. We haven't had a chance to clean up yet. I didn't expect you to be home so quickly."
"Dana canceled lunch. Her shoot went long." I paused, pulling the Cheerio from his hair. "Rough morning?" I asked.
A lopsided grin tugged at one corner of his mouth, "Babe, it's always a rough morning around here."
"Really?" I quirked an eyebrow at him. "And here I was thinking you were Mr. Mom."
"Mr. Mom?"
"Well, every time I came back from investigating something, you had the house immaculate, the laundry done, the kids looking like tidy, sleeping angels. I give up. How did you do it?"
The grin turned sheepish and Ramirez averted his eyes. "Busted," he finally said.
"Busted?" I quirked the other eyebrow.
He threw his hands up in the air tossing little bits of soapsuds onto the carpet. "All right. The truth is, the first day you left us alone, I overloaded the washing machine, I put the wrong soap in the dishwasher, Livvie swallowed a dime—which by the way, was a ton of fun when it came out the other end, and Max got a rubber eraser stuck up his nose—narrowly avoiding a trip to the emergency room."
I blinked, trying not to laugh.
"That's when I broke down and called in Mama," he admitted. "She and The Aunts have been here helping every day since."
"Every day?" I asked. The sneaky little rat had called in the big guns: Grandma.
"Okay, not every day," he conceded. "One day she was busy. So I called your mom."
I couldn't suppress the laugh any longer. "That's parenting cheating, and you know it!"
"Oh, yeah. I cheated big time. I'm man enough to admit it." He grinned at me. "Babe, I don't know how you do this every day. It's the hardest job ever."
I came in for a hug, ignoring the soapsuds. "It is also my favorite one," I told him.
"Honestly? Mine, too," he whispered into my hair. Then he leaned down and gave me a long, lingering kiss that made all thoughts of kids, party planners, and murderous baseball wives disappear.
When we came up for air, I looked over my shoulder at the twins, who were still gleefully finger-painting.
"Would it be wrong to call your aunts to come watch them for just one more day?" I asked suggestively.
Ramirez's face broke into a wicked grin. "If that's wrong, I don't ever want to be right."
* * * * *
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About the author
Gemma Halliday is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the High Heels Mysteries, the Hollywood Headlines Mysteries, the Jamie Bond Mysteries, the Tahoe Tessie Mysteries, as well as several other works. Gemma's books have received numerous awards, including a Golden Heart, two National Reader's Choice awards, and three RITA nominations. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her boyfriend, Jackson Stein, who writes vampire thrillers, and their three children, who are adorably distracting on a daily basis.
To learn more about Gemma, visit her online at http://www.gemmahalliday.com
Connect with Gemma on Facebook at:
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* * * * *
BOOKS BY GEMMA HALLIDAY
High Heels Mysteries:
Spying in High Heels
Killer in High Heels
Undercover in High Heels
Christmas in High Heels (short story)
Alibi in High Heels
Mayhem in High Heels
Honeymoon in High Heels (novella)
Sweetheart in High Heels (short story)
Fearless in High Heels
Danger in High Heels
Homicide in High Heels
Hollywood Headlin
es Mysteries:
Hollywood Scandals
Hollywood Secrets
Hollywood Confessions
Twelve’s Drummer Dying
Jamie Bond Mysteries:
Unbreakable Bond
Secret Bond
Bond Bombshell (short story)
Lethal Bond
Tahoe Tessie Mysteries:
Luck Be A Lady
Hey Big Spender (coming soon!)
Young Adult Books:
Deadly Cool
Social Suicide
Wicked Games (coming soon!)
Other Works:
Play Nice
Viva Las Vegas
A High Heels Haunting (novella)
Watching You (short story)
Confessions of a Bombshell Bandit (short story)
SNEAK PEEK
of the first Jamie Bond Mystery
by Gemma Halliday & Jennifer Fischetto:
UNBREAKABLE BOND
CHAPTER ONE
"Pick one."
Two eight-by-ten glossy photos dropped onto my desk.
I looked up. "Excuse me?"
Paul Levine, my weedy looking attorney, sighed, then sank into the imitation leather chair opposite my desk. "You've been running in the red for the last three months. You've got a balloon payment on the business loan coming up, and this month you pulled in fifty percent less revenue than last. Unless you want to drown in your own debt, you need to fire someone." He gestured again to the two photos. "Pick one."
I glanced down at the two pictures. A leggy brunette and an all-American-girl blonde. I shoved them back across the desk.
"No way."
Levine did another deep, theatrical sigh. "I had a feeling you'd say that."
"Look, business is just a little slow."
"It's a tortoise, Jamie."
"It's been the off season."
"There's an 'on' season for infidelity?" he asked, doing air quotes with his fingers.
"We'll take out some ads."
"Which cost money. Something, my dear, that you don't have."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "I'll think of something."
Levine leaned forward, the overhead lights shining unattractively off his bald spot. "Let's face it, people just aren't getting divorced these days. With the economy the way it is, women would rather turn a blind eye to their husbands' indiscretions than try to exist on half his income. It's cheaper to stay together and pretend to be happy."
"No one can pretend for that long."
"Pick. One," Levine enunciated.
I looked down at the two photos, which incidentally consisted of 50% percent of the Bond Agency. The problem wasn't that I'd over hired. The problem was I knew jack shit about running a business.
Men. That's what I knew.
When I was seven years old Chad Fischer's Mom packed him a Snickers bar in his lunch. And not those fun size suckers. This was a king-sized log of nougat, caramel, and sugar induced highs that would last well past the end of afternoon cartoons. I wanted it. Every kid in second grade wanted it. But I tossed my blonde hair over one shoulder, batted my baby blues at Chad, and promised that he could stand underneath me while my little pink skirt and I did flips on the monkey bars at recess. I got the Snickers. That was my first lesson in how easy men were.
Fast forward a few years, and my fifteen-year-old self was hanging out at the Northridge mall slurping a Jamba Juice when I'd been spotted by Maurcess DeLine, owner of the world renowned DeLine Models. Suddenly I wasn't just working the boys at my school; I was working every guy that bought a magazine with my body on the cover. And getting paid handsomely to do it. I'd been DeLine's top model for over a decade when Maurcess had started to drop hints that my fresh innocence act wasn't cutting it anymore. I was twenty-six. A dinosaur in runway years.
That's when I moved back to L.A. and decided to take over the family business.
Domestic espionage.
Really, there was very little difference between making love to a camera and making a married man forget his vows. In fact, this was sometimes even easier. Men with adultery already on their minds were simple targets. It was like taking Snickers from a second grader all over again.
Unfortunately, getting their wives to pay was a whole other matter.
I glanced at the two photos staring up at me. Truth was, I needed both of these women.
"Cutting back on personnel only means I can handle fewer cases. I don't see how that's going to help me expand the business," I argued.
"We're not talking expansion here, Jamie. We're talking staying afloat. We're talking not filing for bankruptcy."
"I've got a big client tonight. Judge Thomas Waterston. Superior court. If things go well, I guarantee his wife will have her entire bridge club in here by the end of the week."
"Well, you'd better hope that's true," Levine said, rising. "Because your balloon payment is due on the 1st. You've got two weeks, then…" He tapped the photos. "One of them's got to go."
* * *
"Caleigh?"
"What?" She swiveled in her desk chair, turning her wide eyes my way.
"You're on the Peters case. Care to give us an update?" I tapped open the schedule app on my phone and leaned an elbow across the conference table.
She cleared her throat and shuffled the notes in her lap. Caleigh Presley hailed from the south, claiming she was some distant cousin of Elvis's. Blonde, blue-eyed and bubbly, she'd cornered the market on perky. I'd met Caleigh while doing a Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot in Cancun. She'd smuggled a bag of fat free Cheetos onto the set, and we'd bonded instantly. Three years later Caleigh foolishly agreed to go out on a date with Nigel Owens, the top fashion photographer in London. I say foolishly because everyone but Caleigh knew about his particular fetish for bondage and tickling. When Caleigh refused to be molested by his feather duster, Nigel had refused to work with her, calling her "difficult". News that quickly spread to other photographers, her agent, and every high profile account in the fashion world. They'd dropped her like a skydiver without a parachute. Luckily for her, that had been just about the time I'd taken over the Bond Agency, and I'd hired her on the spot.
Not, mind you, that I'd hired her out of any sort of pity. Despite her innocent-little-thing looks, Caleigh spoke five different languages and had the computer know-how to hack into the pentagon. Dumb blonde she was not.
"Right. Peters." Caleigh cleared her throat again. "Well, so far I've followed him to the Venice Boardwalk, Element, and out to dinner twice at Formaggio's."
"And?"
She shook her head. "Nothin'. I'm beginning to wonder if his wife isn't paranoid. So far the guy's a straight arrow. Both the dinners were business meetings, and he didn't so much as glance at a bikini on the boardwalk."
I picked up my coffee cup and swished the dregs around in the bottom, trying to remember if Mrs. Peters had seemed the paranoid type when she'd come in last week. Or, more importantly, the type who would balk at the amount of billable hours we'd spent with nothing to show for it. "What about the club? Element?"
Again, Caleigh shook her head. "Sorry, boss. He ducked in for a drink with a buddy, danced a little, then ducked back out. No funny business."
"Fine. If we don't have anything by Monday, we'll call it off. But take Sam with you this weekend," I said, gesturing to the woman sitting next to her, "and tag-team him. Every man has a breaking point."
Caleigh nodded and made a note on the yellow pad in her lap.
I turned to Sam. "Where are we with the Nortons?"
Samantha Cross had come to me from Brooklyn last year. Long legs, perfect mocha latte skin, and thick dark curls, Sam had been a finalist on the first season of the reality show America's New Hot Model and quickly become the darling of the cover girl world. Until five years later when her boyfriend, Julio, had knocked her up. As if taking a nine month hiatus from modeling hadn't been enough to kill her fledgling career, it turned out Sam wasn't one of those lucky ladies whose bodies miracu
lously snap back after pregnancy. While she was still a knockout among normal people, the two ounces of fat hanging around her lightly stretch-marked belly put a decisive end to her bikini days. So, Sam had packed up the munchkin (Julio was long gone at that point) and headed out to California to make a career change. One I was happy to facilitate. Sam had legs long enough to make husbands forget their vows and, thanks to her military-brat upbringing, knew more about guns than the NRA. And her aim was flawless. Sam could shoot the balls off a fruit fly at fifty yards.
"Mrs. Norton's lawyer," Sam said, "has requested all of our notes."
"Which we will gladly copy for him. Mrs. Norton has gone through three husbands with the agency. What Mrs. Norton wants, we give."
"Of course." Sam nodded. "I think Mr. Norton's lawyers are close to a settlement." Her brown eyes lit up, and she leaned in close. "They offered a 60/40 split plus the house in Aspen."
"Good for her." She deserved it. Especially after her husband had offered to pay Sam fifty dollars for a blow job in the back of his Jag. Sam had been so insulted that he'd offered less than a hundred, she'd actually hauled off and punched him. I made a note in my organizer to edit that part out before handing the footage over to Mrs. Norton's lawyers.
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