Homicide in High Heels (10 page)

I streamed every episode of
Baseball
Wives
that Amazon had, trying to come up with any clue as to
who Lacey could have targeted. But by the time I got to the last
season, I'd had my celebrity gossip fix for the year but hadn't
narrowed my suspect field any. Cheating husbands, backstabbing
socialites, money, sex, rehab. It seemed that airing their dirty
laundry was number one on the wives' list of to-dos. It all led to
ratings. So what secret would they kill to keep?

I was just finishing up the last episode
when my cell rang, displaying Marco's number.

"Hey," I said, picking up.

"You home, Maddie?"

"Yes," I hedged. "Why?"

"Good. We're on our way over."

"We?"

"Ling and I."

"To what do I owe this visit?" I asked, my
suspicion radar humming.

"Clown auditions."

I prayed I'd heard him wrong. "What did you
say?"

"Sorry, bad connection. Be there in ten!" he
called, then hung up.

I sat staring at my cell, waffling between
the options of grabbing the kids and hightailing it out of there
before Marco showed up or locking the doors and pretending we
weren't home after all. In the end neither seemed likely to work.
Marco had a key, and there was zero chance of getting two toddlers
out the door in under ten minutes.

Instead, I made another pot of coffee and
was fortifying myself with a fresh cup when I heard a knock on the
door.

"Yoo-hoo," Marco said, not bothering to wait
for me to answer before stepping inside. Today he was a vision in
Day-Glo orange pants in a paisley print, and a turquoise muscle
T.

"Please tell me that connection was
really
bad and I didn't hear you mention clowns," I told
him.

He shook his head. "No, I didn't say
clowns."

I sighed with relief. "Oh good."

"I said
clown
. Singular."

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"I hope this is quick," Ling said, pushing
into the room behind him. She was dressed in a tube top, tube
skirt, and looked like she'd applied about a tube and a half of
pale pink lipstick. "I gotta get in for the lunch crowd. Those
truckers tip big when we have the lunch buffet."

I really hoped she was talking about chicken
wings.

"Okay, don't hate me—" Marco said, settling
himself on the sofa.

"Too late."

"But it turns out we can't get Johnny Weir.
Something about the Ice Capades and a contract and, blah, blah,
blah. Anyhoo, I've got the next best thing. A clown!"

I blinked. "How is a clown the next best
thing to an Olympic figure skater?"

Marco waved me off. "The agency said they
were sending their top performer over, so we're auditioning him
today."

"You know, the twins really don't need a big
performance," I told him, glancing at Max. He was lying on his
back, currently enthralled with his big toe. "They're pretty easily
entertained."

Marco gave me a horror stricken look. "How
can we have a children's birthday party without a clown? Who will
man the balloon animal station?"

"You're right. Let's just cancel the whole
thing."

"Not funny, Mads," he said, wagging a finger
at me.

I didn't have the heart to tell him I wasn't
joking.

I was about to plead my case in earnest when
the doorbell rang.

I shot Marco a look. "You sent the clown
here
? To my house?"

Marco was wise enough not to answer, instead
scuttling to open the door.

On the other side stood a six foot tall,
broad shouldered guy who looked like he belonged on the gridiron
more than the circus train. He was dressed in a pair of yellow
spandex pants, a polka dotted shirt, and had an afro of bright red
hair that perfectly matched his round, red nose. His face was
painted white, his wig was a little squished on one side, and I
noticed a bicycle helmet dangling from his right hand and a
messenger bag slung over his left shoulder.

"Hey. This the party place?" he asked, his
voice a deep baritone.

"It is! Send in the clowns!" Marco said,
then giggled at his own joke.

I didn't even try to hide my eye roll.

The linebacker clown came in and looked
around. "Nice place. Cozy."

I narrowed my eyes. Was the clown commenting
on the size of my house?

"I'm Marco, this is Ling, and these are the
guests of honor," Marco said, gesturing to the twins.

The clown waved at them. Max and Livvie eyed
him suspiciously. Smart kids.

"And this is, Maddie," Marco told him,
gesturing my way.

"Hey. Big Red," he said. Then he stuck his
hand out to shake mine and a spray of confetti flew out of his
sleeve.

"Oh, geeze," he said, trying to stem the
flow of colorful paper flying all over my living room carpet.
"That's not supposed to come out until later. I think I got a hole
in my sparkle bag or something on the way over. Sorry about
that."

"No problem," I gritted out, mentally
calculating if I had time to vacuum before the twins' nap.

"The agency said you were their best clown,"
Marco said, whipping out a notebook, all business.

Big Red nodded, his wig flopping up and
down. "That's right. Of course, I was second best, but Sparky quit
last week. Got a regular gig on Nickelodeon as a singing pirate.
Lucky bastard."

"Right. So we're very eager to see what you
can do," Marco said. He sat on the sofa and crossed one leg over
the other in his casting-call mode.

"You want me to juggle or something? I'm
real good at juggling. I've been practicing." He looked in his bag,
a frown taking over his painted features. "Shoot. I musta lost one
of my balls on the trip over. I gotta ride my bike on account the
DUI I got," he explained. "Sometimes I lose stuff when I hit a
bump."

I did some more eye rolling, more teeth
gritting, more shooting daggers in the direction of one fab party
planner.

"Hey, you got something else I could
juggle?" Big Red asked.

"How about eggs?" Ling suggested. "I'm sure
Maddie has some eggs."

"That sounds messy—" I started.

But Ling was already on it, scouring my
refrigerator. "I got some! How many you want?"

"Three. Let's start with three," Big Red
said. Ling shoved three brown eggs in his hands, and the clown
stuck his tongue out in concentration. "Okay, here goes nothing."
He tossed three eggs into the air.

And caught one.

The two others landed on the coffee table
with a crack, splat, and gooey yellow yolks dripping down the
legs.

Both twins giggled and laughed.

"Hey, what do you know, I'm a hit," Big Red
said, smiling wide.

I shot him a glare.

"Okay, so honestly? I've only been juggling
for a few days. I'm kinda new to this clown gig. I used to be a
soap actor. You want me to do a monologue for you? I'm really good
at that."

"No," I said.

"Yes!" Ling and Marco said, clapping their
hands.

"
María
, yo te quiero, pero
tu marido
me va a matar
."

We all stared blankly at him.

"Well, it was a Spanish soap. But they tell
me it's really good."

Mental forehead smack.

"Hey, you want me to try juggling something
else? I could try melons?"

"No!" I shouted.

"Maybe you could do something other than
juggle? We're having a very classy affair here, so we want a show
that sizzles," Macro said, doing jazz hands in the air.

"Oh, I can sizzle," Big Red said, nodding
again. "I got all kinds of sizzling tricks. Check this out—I'm
about to disappear before your very eyes."

I should be so lucky.

Big Red pulled something round from his bag,
did some gesture in the air with his hands, and threw the round
thing on the ground. A huge puff of smoke engulfed him.

I coughed, the smoke overwhelming my
cozy
room. When it finally cleared, Big Red was gone. Or,
almost gone. I could still see the top of his red wig peeking out
from behind Ramirez's La-Z-Boy.

"Where's the big clown?" Ling asked the
twins in a sing-song voice.

They blinked in response, and I had a
feeling they were about as confused at why this might be
entertaining as I was.

"Shoot," Big Red called from behind the
chair. "There's usually more smoke. I usually have more time to
hide. This thing must be broken." He grabbed the round ball from
the floor and shook it. More smoke poured into the room. Only this
time it was accompanied by a loud bang and sparks that jumped onto
the La-Z-Boy.

"Fire!" Marco yelled.

Ling grabbed a sippy cup and dumped Livvie's
morning apple juice on it. I grabbed a pillow and whacked at it.
Big Red threw the remaining egg at it.

We looked down. There was now a soggy,
smoking black hole in the center of Ramirez's favorite chair.

I looked up at the clown.

"Oh man. I hate it when that happens," he
said.

"Out," I gritted through my teeth. "Get the
clown out now."

"Uh, maybe you better go," Marco said,
pushing Big Red toward the door.

"Maybe we need a new agency," Ling
suggested.

"No. Clowns."

* * *

Once the clown, the stripper, and the queen
(who promised me he'd somehow work a new easy chair into the party
budget) were gone, I got the kids down for a nap and was just about
to attempt cleaning up the living room when Ramirez walked in the
door.

His eyes went from the gooey egg mess on the
table to the confetti-strewn carpet to the hole in his chair. "And
how was your morning?" he asked,

"Ha. Ha. Very funny. It's all Marco's
fault."

"I'm not even going to ask," he said.

"That's a good plan," I agreed, grabbing a
wet cloth from the kitchen and attacking the egg yolk first. "So
what did Tox have to say?" I asked, turning the conversation from
my inability to keep the house as spick and span as Mr. Mom.

"Well, it was very interesting. Lacey was,
as we suspected, poisoned."

"No surprise there."

"What was surprising was the type of
poison."

"What was it?"

"Methylated phenylethylamine."

I paused. "In English, please."

Ramirez grinned. "Amphetamines."

I frowned. "Like, meth?"

"Close," Ramirez told me. "Methamphetamine
has almost the same chemical properties, but it also contains a
whole bunch of other crap, too, which does nasty things like rot
your teeth and make you see bugs crawling on your skin. What tox
found in Lacey's system was more pure amphetamine."

"So how was it used to kill her?"

"The best the ME can tell, it was liquefied
into a concentrate, then added in high doses to the spray. At the
levels the ME found in Lacey's body, he figured she inhaled the
spray, and the stimulant caused a massive heart attack almost
instantly"

"Ouch." I pictured Lacey's contorted body
lying on the tanning booth floor, immediately feeling sorry for her
even if she was a gold digger and a blackmailer. "So how would our
killer get his hands on some of this stuff?"

"Well, that's where it gets easy. Actually
amphetamines are pretty widely used. They're in some prescription
drugs, like the ones used as ADD medication, as well as sold on the
street as recreational drugs. They give the user a jolt of energy,
sort of like drinking four espressos all at once."

"Which would be super handy if you were,
say, a baseball player in need of a pick-me-up," I mused out loud,
my mental wheels turning.

Ramirez nodded. "Definitely. Amphetamines
have been used for years by athletes. Ballplayers called them
greenies, and guys have been using them since the earliest days of
baseball. Heck, in the eighties, you'd be hard pressed to find a
guy
not
using them. They're officially banned now, but that
doesn't stop players from trying to fly under the radar. Rumor has
it greenies are making a comeback in baseball lately."

"So it's likely one of our players could
have easily had enough on hand to poison Lacey."

Ramirez nodded. "It's very likely."

"Okay, what about this: do any of the
current Stars players have a history of using drugs?"

The corner of Ramirez's mouth quirked up a
notch. "I can think of one. John Ratski. He was suspended a couple
of years ago after testing positive for PEDs."

"PEDs?"

"Performance-enhancing drugs."

"Like the ones used to kill Lacey?"

Ramirez nodded again. "But before you get
too excited, like I said before, it's likely a lot of players could
be using the exact same thing. Just because Ratski has a history
with drugs doesn't mean he killed Lacey with them."

"But it's a place to start," I protested.
"Can't the police search his locker or something?"

"Not without a warrant. And to get warrants,
Laurel and Hardy need probable cause. Some sort of evidence
pointing to suspicion of our persons of interest before a judge
will sign off."

I pursed my lips. If my one encounter with
them was any indication, I had a bad feeling Laurel and Hardy were
looking in a different direction for the killer—namely Faux Dad's
salon. But, while the police might need a warrant to snoop through
Ratski's life, I didn't.

I was gonna need backup for this one.

* * *

An hour later, Dana and I were at the
players' entrance to the Stars Stadium where the same security
guard stood sentinel with his clipboard.

If Ratski was using greenies as a way to
enhance his on-field performance, chances were he had the stuff
readily available before each game—like stashed in his locker.

I'd called Kendra earlier, asking if there
was any way she could put our names on the security guard's list.
Unfortunately, I'd heard the suspicion even louder and clearer than
when we'd previously talked as she'd asked me just why I needed
access to the stadium again. I'd lied and told her that I'd
accidentally left my cashmere
Magaschoni
sweater behind the last time I'd been here and was hoping I could
run in and grab it. Considering it was pushing eighty degrees
outside, the lie was flimsy. But luckily it appealed to her sense
of fashion—no designer label left behind!—and she'd agreed.