Homicide in High Heels (17 page)

"Of course not," I assured her, even though
I was a little bummed at not having extracted anything juicy from
her yet.

I wandered over to a rack of clothing near
the dressing rooms, browsing through pastel, chiffon tops. I picked
up one in a pale peach color that was cut on the bias, holding it
up in front of me.

"That cut is very on-trend for spring,"
Blonde Number Three piped up from behind me.

I turned to face her eager customer-service
smile. "It's lovely," I said.

The Blonde nodded. "You're the shoe
designer, right? Maddie Springer?"

I nodded, sending her a questioning
look.

"I overheard you and Liz talking," she
admitted.

I raised an eyebrow. An eavesdropper might
be useful.

I nodded. "Yes, I'm thinking of selling my
line here. I see you do a good business?"

"Oh, sure, we're always packed," she
said.

"Have you worked here long?" I asked.

Blonde Number Three shrugged. "A few
months."

"So, then you worked here when Lacey was
here?" I asked, lowering my voice the appropriate amount when
speaking of the dead.

But if the Blonde was spooked by mention of
a dead coworker, she didn't show it. She just nodded her head, her
extensions bobbing down her back. "Sure. But she wasn't here very
long."

"Oh, really?" I asked. "What happened?"

Blond Number Three smirked. "She was
fired."

I raised an eyebrow. This was a tidbit no
one had mentioned. Liz had made it seem like Lacey had quit when
she'd started dating Bucky. "Do you know why?"

She frowned at me. "Well, I don't know
for sure
why
,
but I can tell you that Kylie," she
said, pointing to Blonde Number One at the register, "heard
something about some unaccounted for money."

"No!" I said, doing a little gasp which
wasn't all acting on my part. Had Lacey been stealing and that's
why she was fired? Or…was it the other way around? Maybe Liz had
been skimming money from her own business. If Lacey had found out,
and Liz fired her for it, I could see Lacey not losing sleep over
blackmailing her former boss.

"Did Lacey tell Kylie this?" I asked.

Blonde Number Three shook her head. "No, she
overheard an argument between Lacey and Liz in the back room. But I
do know that Lacey was for sure fired."

"You do?"

She did the extension-bobbing nod again.
"Yep. I ran into her at dinner at City Walk, like, a week ago."

My ears perked up at the mention of the
trendy City Walk. Was this the "girl's night" that Bucky said he
and Lacey had fought about?

"What did she say?"

"She told me Liz totally gave her the boot.
We didn't really get into it too much, though, 'cause she was out
with that ball player whose name I can never remember."

"The ballplayer—you mean with Bucky Davis?"
I asked, confused.

Blonde Number Three laugh-snorted, the sound
coming out a cross between a horse whinnying and a two-year-old
blowing raspberries. "No. God, everybody knows Bucky Davis. No, it
was some other guy. Tall but has kind of a gut."

I felt my heart rate speed up. "Ratski?"

She stabbed a finger at me. "That's the one!
I totally didn't get why Lacey was out with him. He's, like, way
old and kinda smarmy. I mean, if I had Bucky at home, trust me, I'd
be at home!"

My mind reeled over the possible reasons
Lacey would be having dinner with Ratski…and lie to her boyfriend
about it. Had Lacey been meeting Ratski to extract blackmail from
him? Or had she been seeing him behind his wife's back? While it
was certainly possible Liz's "unaccounted for" money had something
to do with Lacey, it was now starting to look like there could have
been one other baseball wife who might have wanted Lacey out of the
way badly enough to kill her.

Beth Ratski.

Blonde Number Three brought my attention
back to present, asking, "Did you want to try that on?" She
gestured to the blouse in my hands.

I looked down, almost having forgotten my
browsing cover. I shoved the blouse back on the rack. "No thanks.
But…" I couldn't help myself. "…do you have those kitten heels in a
seven?"

The first thing I did when I got back to my
car was dial Dana's number. She picked up on the third ring with a,
"Hello?" followed by loud noises in the background.

"Hey, it's me. Is this a bad time?"

"Nope. Just getting a makeup touch-up
between scenes at the moment. Today's my big trial where I get a
hooker off."

I stifled a giggle at her pun.

Lady Justice
was based on the concept
of a lawyer who inadvertently becomes an advocate for female porn
stars, fighting for their rights in a male-dominated industry. At
least, that was how
Variety
put it. Dana and her cast &
crew usually just referred to it as the "porn lawyer show."
Clearly, sex sold, because
Lady Justice
had been one of the
top rated shows on the network for the new season. My fingers were
crossed they picked it up for another thirteen episodes. As much as
Dana loved being "movie star Ricky Montgomery's girlfriend," she
was ready to step out of his shadow.

"I was hoping you were on the Sunset Studios
lot today. I need to get in to see Beth Ratski. She should be
filming her interrogation scene this afternoon."

"Ooo," Dana cooed. "New development?"

I quickly filled her in on what Blonde
Number Three had told me about seeing Lacey out with Ratski.

"What a jerk. He really can't keep it in his
pants, can he?" Dana said.

I nodded as I turned on my car and let the
welcomed air conditioning wash over me.

"Do you think you could put me on the list
at the gate?" I asked.

"Sure. I've got to shoot another scene right
now, but then we'll be breaking for lunch around noon. Ricky's
supposed to meet me here, too, so we can all go eat together."

"Perfect," I agreed. I heard more noise in
the background and someone shouting.

"Hey, I gotta go. They're calling me on the
set. See you later," Dana said, as she hung up.

I looked down at my cell. It was just past
eleven, which gave me almost an hour to brave the traffic toward
the studios. I decided to take the long way there, doing a little
drive-by experiment.

Ratski all but told Dana that the gym alibi
was a joke last night. Which left Bucky, Ratski, and Blanco alone
at the time someone was tampering with Lacey's tanning booth. It
begged the question: just how far from Fernando's salon was this
gym?

I pulled up a web browser on my phone. After
a little surfing of the tabloid sites I found out that Bucky was
frequently seen leaving the L.A. Fit Gym, which I had never heard
of. While my best friend Dana was an exercise devotee all the way,
I had a definite love-hate relationship with gyms. I love to avoid
them and hated to go. Google told me it was located on Blake
Street, and according to my GPS, it was only a mile from
Fernando's. Of course, in L.A. a mile could mean a two minute drive
or twenty, depending on the time of day and what part of town it
was in. I pulled my car into traffic and pointed it toward
Fernando's.

Twenty minutes later, I was slowly driving
past Faux Dad's salon, which, sadly, looked as deserted as ever. I
spied Marco through the front windows, idly picking at his
cuticles. As tempting as it was to park, storm in, and yell at him
for dropping a cotton candy machine in my living room at 7 AM, I
instead noted the time on my cell and continued on toward Blake
Street.

Six minutes later I was idling in the
parking lot of L.A. Fit. Any of the three players could have made
their way to Fernando's, slipped in the back door to add the poison
to the tanning solution, then made their way back here in under
half an hour. All the killer would have had to do was find out when
Lacey was going tanning, then casually suggest a trip to the gym to
the other two to create an alibi.

Which left me back at square one. Again.
Plenty of suspects, plenty of motives, no alibis. I really hoped
that Ramirez was making more headway on getting that warrant than I
was today.

With that depressing thought, I jumped back
on the 2 toward Hollywood, and, after braving both the tourist
traffic and the Wilshire corridor lunch rush, I finally made my way
up to the gate of the Sunset Studios. True to her word, Dana had
put my name on the visitor list, and the guard waved me through,
gesturing to the massive parking lot to the right where I swapped
out my real car for a golf cart. I hopped in, slowly motoring my
way toward Studio 4B.

Quite frankly, I wasn't sure what I was
going to ask Beth when I got there. It seemed a little forward to
come right out and say, "Did you kill Lacey Desta because she was
sleeping with your husband?" Even hinting that Lacey might've had a
relationship with Ratski was treading on thin ice. I knew the
Baseball Wives might not be the sharpest crayons in the box, but
Dana and I were likely to lose our "girl talk" status if we didn't
tread lightly.

Unfortunately, any ideas I had of hinting at
her husband's infidelity disappeared as soon as I parked my golf
cart and entered the studio. Standing next to the crafts services
table, with an arm around his wife, was Ratski himself.

I paused suddenly wondering what to do now.
Ratski was sure to recognize me the second he saw me. I ducked into
a narrow hallway to the left and took refuge behind a rack of
sparkly cocktail dresses. I watched Ratski shove a donut into his
mouth, licking the icing off his fingers one by one, as I wondered
how to get Beth alone. I spied Laurel and Hardy standing on their
X's, already being miked. It wouldn't be long before Beth was
called to set.

"I told you to keep quiet about it."

I froze. I slowly peeked out from behind the
wardrobe rack and spied Kendra Blanco on her cell, stomping down
the empty hallway. Her lips were tight, her forehead pulled taught
in a way that suggested if she could frown through her Botox, she
would.

"That's not good enough!" she hissed into
her phone.

I ducked down lower, hoping I'd hit the
eavesdropping jackpot. Kendra was clearly upset about
something.

"Look, we had a deal. I've kept up my end,
now you keep up yours." She paused. "Well, you better do something!
The cops are nosing around enough. I don't need them looking at
me."

I felt an eyebrow rise. And just why would
the cops look to Kendra?

"Oh, you better care," she spat into the
phone. "You and I both know that if I go down, I'm taking you with
me."

With that she stabbed her phone off and
stalked back onto the set.

I moved out from my wardrobe hiding place.
Very interesting. Just what was Kendra afraid of "going down" for?
Did it have something to do with Lacey's murder? The fact that she
didn't want the cops looking into it was a good sign it wasn't 100%
on the up and up. Whatever "it" was. I bit my lip, wondering just
who had been on the other end of that call.

I didn't have long to contemplate that as my
cell vibrated with the text from Dana.

Ricky and I on our way to meet you

I quickly texted back that I'd meet her out
front.

I slipped out from my hiding place, keeping
one eye on Ratski as I made my way back out into the assaulting
sunshine. Two minutes later I spied Dana and Ricky approaching.
Something seemed to be in the air today because the two of them
were arguing as well. An odd occurrence for them. Ricky had
proposed to Dana just a few months ago, and ever since then you
would swear that the two had already started their honeymoon phase.
Only today it looked like the honeymoon was on hiatus, Ricky's
features pulled into a frown, Dana waving her hands rapidly in the
air.

I took a step forward, hesitant to
interrupt.

But as it turned out, that wasn't an issue.
Ricky stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the open doors to
Studio 4B.

"You!" Ricky pointed an arm toward the
doorway.

I whipped my head around just in time to see
Ratski and Beth emerging.

Ratski's eyes bounced from Dana to Ricky.
"I…I…" Ratski started.

"You were putting the moves on my fiancée
last night!"

Uh-oh.

"Uh…" Ratski's eyes shifted to his wife with
a deer-facing-the-business-end-of-an-SUV look in them.

So much for me delicately broaching the
subject of her husband's infidelity. I watched her reaction
carefully. If I had to guess, confusion was the overriding emotion
playing across her face. "John?" she asked.

"I…I don't know what he's talking about,"
Ratski protested,

"Like hell you don't!" Ricky yelled back.
And like a shot, Ricky closed the few feet between them, cocked his
right fist back, and hit Ratski square in the nose with a blow that
sent him reeling backwards.

Ratski fell backwards, knocking into a
wardrobe rack by the door and taking down a dozen dresses with him
as he hit the ground. Dana shrieked, diving for Ricky. Beth
shrieked, diving for Ratski. And two guys in security shirts
appeared from inside the studio, rushing out at the sound of the
screams.

"Ohmigod! Oh, my poor pooh bear," Beth
cried, trying to disentangle Ratski from the mess of cocktail
dresses and pant suits.

"Poor pooh bear, my ass," Ricky shouted.
Though all of Dana's hours at the gym were paying off. She had him
around the waist, just barely able to hold him back from hitting
Ratski again. "You stay the hell away from my fiancée, you got
that, pal?"

"I don't know what you're talking about,"
Ratski sputtered again, scrambling to his feet.