Deadly Dues (31 page)

I pushed on the door and peered inside.

Mitzi's apartment was magnificent. Huge windows overlooked the river and, in the distance, the mountains. Her sunken living room was an exotic mix of neutral carpet and furniture, and wildly exotic, colourful cushions, tapestries and throw rugs. An elephant danced with a giraffe on one wall, in a work by an emerging African artist. Wild hippos made cute with rabbits on bright pink and green cushions. Her ceramics, in glass cabinets, had always made me drool. Meissen. Beswick. Moorcroft. She even had a Galle vase. The fact that she hadn't sent it off to Sotheby's told me that she was not as desperate as I was for dough.

Mitzi's décor always inspired. She had more money than I had, but I always suspected that even if she had only a few dollars, she would splat her walls with vibrant images that reflected her personality. Mitzi had style, vitality and individuality. She vibrated with life and fun.

She had accumulated an impressive mix of classic, trendy, retro and cutting-edge art, all the pieces reflecting her wild personality. There was a laughing, let-it-rip quality about her choices, which made you feel you were in the presence of a free, although (in my experience) somewhat cash-register, spirit.

After my quick glance at her foyer and living room, I ventured further.

“Hey, Mitzi.”

Silence.

I contemplated the door behind me and craved a quick retreat. I should just run wildly in all directions, given the grim events of the past few days. But I wanted to give Mitzi her due, even though it might be misplaced. What if I did run wildly in all directions, and discovered later that she had been hanging on to the railing of her patio in the throes of a suicide dive, waiting for my intervention? Given the nice sums I had earned from her ferocious negotiations, however distant in the past they were, I owed her.

I walked further into the luxury condo. The art on the walls usually made me pause in admiration, but today I had more on my mind than art.

“Mitzi?”

I felt as if I were being lured into the spider's web. But I trusted Mitzi. She would never hurt me. Would she?

I peeked into her dining room, with the huge arts-and-crafts table that had hosted so many extravagant dinner parties, including the famous event that had landed me the role in Doggie Doggie Bow Wow. Mitzi had suggested I lug along a sheepdog from the animal shelter. That evening snagged me a contract and brought me a new best friend, Horatio, who, thanks to Mitzi and me, had become a famous dog.

There was nothing on the brilliantly polished dark table except a bowl of fruit so bright she must have had the apples and oranges special-ordered for the condo and then glazed in just the right colours.

I swung the kitchen door open. Stainless steel appliances from which Mitzi's ad hoc servants served up meals gleamed back at me. The only item on the pristine tiled counter was an open can of gourmet hot chocolate, with a spoon sitting in it like a flag.
Oh, Mitzi, you can be so messy sometimes
. On the stove, steam rose from a stainless steel pot of water. The burners were off.

Mitzi was here, and up to her high-calorie routine. But where was she?

I walked down the hall toward her very favourite place in the world.

“Mitzi?”

I was beginning to get freaked out. I fondled my cell phone.

I pushed open the door to her bedroom.

Her huge pink bed was pristine, with the big pink and peach pillows arranged artfully. An armchair with a peach chenille throw sat by the door to the balcony.

“Mitzi?”

I peeked in the door to what had once been an adjoining bedroom, and was now the home of her shoe collection. Mitzi's appetite for shoes was like Pavarotti's for pasta. Her shoe closet was twice the size of the bedroom of an average person, with huge racks of shoes, beautifully arranged and meticulously labelled with designer and point of purchase.

“Mitzi?”

The dozens of racks reached to the ceiling. There were six shelves on every rack, and each shelf contained two dozen shoes, adding up to at least a thousand pairs of shoes in the room. There were four racks on rollers on the carpeted floors, so that Mitzi could move them around and instantly spot her shoes for the day.

What I spotted was Mitzi. On the floor.

“Mitzi!”

I ran to her. She was wearing purple silk pajamas with a subtle peach weave. She was lying face down by a row of Enzo Angiolini, her copper curls looking more Little Orphan Annie than high-powered agent.

“Mitzi!”

I lifted her head, then lowered it gently back to the floor when I realized she was still breathing. She was burbling little snores. Damn. I had played so many emergency room nurses but had never actually done any CPR.

I sat back on my heels and stared intently at Mitzi. She must have passed out from the exertion of reaching for a pair of shoes on a higher rack. I could see the seniors' reacher she kept on a hook on the wall. She should have used that. I put my hand into my purse for my cell to call 9-1-1, when I noticed a pair of shoes beside me.

A pair of shoes with feet in them.

This was not a good thing.

My eyes fixed on the shoes, then slowly travelled up the legs. Good legs. Black miniskirt. Gap, maybe. Black T-shirt, Hugo Boss! My eyes continued upward. Lots of cleavage.
Oh no!
My eyes reluctantly continued their journey to the face, and I saw what I dreaded. Sherilyn.

Even worse, she was holding a stiletto. And it wasn't a heel. It was a knife.

“Hi, Sherilyn,” I said cheerfully. I started to dimple, but aborted mid-dimple when I remembered that dimples drove her nuts.

She stared at me. Her face was white and blank. Even her pink lipstick was a lighter shade than usual.

“Hey,” I said, thinking I was doing a good job of sounding casual. “Mitzi seems to have fainted. Maybe we should call the paramedics.”

“Mitzi didn't faint,” Sherilyn said calmly, in a voice that sounded like a parody of
The Stepford Wives
. I figured now was not the time to give Sherilyn my review of her performance, especially since she had once had aspirations as an actor.

“Oh,” I said. I tried really hard to stifle my nervous reflex of dimpling, as I knew it would really annoy Sherilyn, and she was the one with the stiletto—and, not to put too fine a point on it, not a shoe but a knife.

“I drugged Mitzi,” smiled Sherilyn. “It was so easy. She loves Ghirardelli chocolate. All I had to do was heat up some cocoa and add a sedative. She'll be out for hours.”
Mitzi? I thought. With her addiction to every kind of sleeping pill and tranquillizer? I'm surprised anything as lame as a run-of-the-mill sedative could conk her out.

Let's keep this jolly conversation going.

“Why would you do that? Mitzi's such a riot when she's awake.”

Not a great comeback, but acceptable given the circumstances.

Sherilyn looked at me calmly.

“Lulu, you really have to realize that people aren't as stupid as you think they are. And that you aren't as smart as you think you are.”

That hurt a little bit.

She continued, twisting her pink lips into a weird, cold smile.

“All you are is an ex–dog-food shill. And not a very good one.”

I took exception to that. I was very good at what I did.

“Excuse me,” I said, forgetting that she had the weapon and I had the brains. The brains that had forgotten about discretion being the better part of valour.

“I was very good in those commercials,” I said. “Horatio and I were a great team. The ad agency was over the moon, the numbers were great, Bow Wow's sales tripled during the run, and we won more awards than any other ad in the last ten years.”

She was temporarily stunned by this aria. Did I think she was going to throw down the knife and beg my forgiveness? I am an optimist, but not an idiot.

She didn't throw down the knife. Instead, she took a step towards me. I instinctively stepped back, but the huge mound of plumpness that was Mitzi blocked my escape. My hand was still in my bag, trying to get a grip on my cell.
Poor Mitzi. I might end up dead on top of her, and how would she explain it to the police?

I kept staring at Sherilyn with wide, innocent, stunned, don't-hurt-me-I'm-only-an-actor eyes, while my fingers finally found the keypad. I tried to punch in 9-1-1 without looking, but my hand was shaking, and the damned cell flew out of the bag and landed on Mitzi's ear.
Sorry, Mitzi!

I tried another angle. Sherilyn was looking at the cell and shaking her head, as if I were too much of an idiot to take seriously.

“What do you have against Mitzi?”

Sherilyn looked at me with sharp contempt.

“Nothing. Mitzi will do anything for a dollar. I told her I wanted you for the schoolteacher in the Brad Pitt Western, and she was practically panting.”
Schoolteacher? Brad Pitt? Good for you, Mitzi!

Whoa.

Silly Mitzi, falling prey to Sherilyn because she thought it might help me. Silly me, roaring over here with doubts about Mitzi. At least we would die friends.
What a great final scene in a movie. I began to plan my wardrobe and co-star.

“Wake up!” hissed Sherilyn, jabbing the stiletto in my direction. “You actors. Pretending to pay attention while your mind wanders all over the place. You are even stupider than fat old Mitzi.”

I could have sworn I saw Mitzi's plump little fingers twitch at this, but as she was on the ground and I was upright and staring into Sherilyn's scary eyes, I might have been mistaken.

“Give me the key.”

Sherilyn took another step toward me. I backed up, and felt my heels hit Mitzi's ample tummy.
Whoops. Sorry, Mitzi, but my options are limited.
I lost my balance and fell back against a rack of Nine West shoes in appealing pastels. I threw my arms back and grappled at the shelves, but the rack wasn't budging. Why did I have to fall on the only rack that wasn't on wheels?

“You and your dimples,” she said.
What did dimples have to do with this? She's brandishing a knife the length of a knitting needle, and talking about dimples? She should get a life!
“Stan liked dimples.” She paused, and I saw a flash of pain zigzag across her face. “And Stan's dead.”

I nodded. What else could I do?

“And he liked dimples.”

This sounded not only repetitious, but ominous. Could have fooled me that Stan liked dimples, but argument didn't seem like a good plan right now. Escape was infinitely preferable, but I was trapped between Sherilyn and Mitzi and the rack of shoes. Plus, although I was in coward mode right now, I didn't want to leave Mitzi. Shades of the noble (but doomed) lady I played in a period drama, in which I flung myself in front of the herd of galloping horses to save my delicate childhood friend from doom. Yes, it was horrible writing, but sometimes you take the gigs you get offered.

The stiletto was closer to my face now.

“I knew Stan must have given you the key. I knew you would do anything for that stupid dog and I waited outside your condo so many nights, hoping that big, clumsy, hairy buffalo would come out on his own.”

Big, clumsy, hairy buffalo?
I was outraged. Insulting me was one thing. Insulting Horatio was in an entirely different category.

“I grabbed him when I saw him running around outside your condo.”

I just had to ask. “How did you get him? He's too big to carry.”

“Garlic. You told me at the Arts Club reception how he was hooked on garlic croutons and garlic shrimp. Lord, you're a boring conversationalist.”

This exchange was going downhill fast. First I was stupid, then I was boring?

“All it took was some garlic toast and he piled into my car. I had to fumigate it after. And then he messed up my entire patio and threw up into my best flower pot.”

“I hope it wasn't the cheap supermarket garlic toast. That always gives him indigestion.”

“I paid a hundred and fifty dollars for that pot. They told me it was designer.”

Poor Horatio. Trapped with Sherilyn, and with a big-time case of tummy troubles. How much worse could this get?

“I always wanted to get at your dimples, Lu,” said Sherilyn. “Now I have a chance to really carve into them—and give you some new ones, too.”

A very unappealing thought. I inconsiderately stepped on Mitzi's leg as I squeezed myself against the rack of Nine West. The stiletto was way too close to my face.

I looked down and saw Mitzi's cute little hand, with its own dimpled plumpness, grab Sherilyn's ankle and yank with the force of a woman who has just been described as fat, old and stupid. Sherilyn swayed for a tick-tock moment, then fell backward onto her behind. It was a wonderful sight.

And even more wonderfully, Sherilyn's head landed on a Hugo Boss boot. She hissed out a little breath and was very still. We could see her bosom (who couldn't?) moving up and down, so we knew she wasn't dead.

“Mitzi! Mitzi! Mitzi!” I sounded like a broken record, but in moments of extreme stress one throws art out the window and gets back to the basics. “Are you all right?”

I pulled and pushed until she was sitting, leaning against the rack of shoes.

“I guess.”

“Why did you e-mail me to come?”

“I didn't. It was Sherilyn. I'm such a dope. I thought she wanted to negotiate a role for you. She insisted on making me hot chocolate, and I felt sort of funny. Then she shoved me into the shoe closet and said she'd hack off all the heels of my shoes unless I told her my e-mail password. Next thing I knew I was lying here and listening to that terrible dialogue.”

“Not mine.” I tried not to sound offended. So childish.

“Yours was pretty bad, but hers was awful,” said Mitzi.

I decided to move on, because I knew Mitzi was right, in her new self-assumed role as dialogue critic.

“We should tie her up,” I said. “Then we can call the police.” I yanked some laces from a pair of Mary Quant vintage boots and knelt down to tie Sherilyn's hands and feet.