Homicide in High Heels (19 page)

Kiki leaned in close, whispering to me.
"Well, it loosened up the joints at least." She gave me a wink.

"I say we stick with tradition," BillieJo
piped up. "Our Hispanic heritage is very important for us to pass
down to the younger generation. Don't you think, Maddie?" She gave
me a pointed look.

"Uh…yes?"

BillieJo narrowed her eyes at me.

"You
loco
," Mama said, rolling her
eyes. "What is tradition if it tastes bland?"

"Maddie, you are the deciding vote," Kiki
told me. "How do you make your
buñuelos
?"

"Uh…
my buñuelos
?" The truth was, I
made all of my Mexican cookies by going to the bakery three blocks
down from our house. "Well, you know, I really think there's no
wrong way to top a cookie."

Five voices gasped in unison. Mama put a
hand to her heart. BillieJo's eyes narrowed into fine slits. Kiki
grasped onto the counter to keep herself upright.

"Maddie," Mama whispered reverently,
"
buñuelos
are fritters. Not cookies."

Oh boy.

"Is that Margaritas?" I asked pointing to a
pitcher of lime colored deliciousness sitting on the well-worn
kitchen table. Before anyone could answer, I quickly poured myself
a glass and made for the back door.

Luckily, I spied my husband across the yard,
sitting at a long wooden picnic table under a tree strung with
twinkling white lights. The twins were sitting happily on a blanket
on the grass nearby, surrounded by an army of cousins who tickled
their cheeks and spoke in rapid Spanish. The babies giggled
back.

I sank down beside my husband and took a
long sip of my drink, ending in a contented sigh. Tequila had never
tasted so good.

"This was a good idea," I told him.

He nodded and held up his own Margarita
glass in a cheers motion. "How's the house look?" he asked.

I shook my head. "You don't want to
know."

"He's not going to do this every year, is
he?"

"I can't make a promise like that," I told
him.

He grinned and sighed, tossing an arm around
my shoulders. "I'm sure it'll be a wonderful party."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Okay why are
you in such a good mood?"

Ramirez gave me a lopsided grin, holding up
his glass again. "You got a little catching up to do, kid. This
isn't my first round."

I laughed, taking a sip from my own
glass.

"So how was your day?" Ramirez asked.

I quickly filled him in on what I'd learned
at the boutique about Lacey being fired, the "unaccounted for"
money, and her dinner out with Ratski. I was just about to tell him
about Kendra's interesting phone call when my cell buzzed with the
text. I looked down to see Dana's face on my screen and swiped it,
bringing up her message.

Check LA informer website.

Uh-oh.

I quickly pulled up the site on my phone,
fearing I'd find more photos of Dana and Ratski pasted all over the
internet. I had to stifle a giggle when I saw what actually came
up. Apparently one of the extras on the Sunset Studios lot must've
had a phone handy when Ricky went after Ratski, because there, in
bold living color, was a picture of one of the Stars players being
laid out by a "pretty boy" movie star. He'd gotten Ratski just as
he'd gone to the ground, blood trickling from his nose, a look of
complete surprise on his face. Ricky towered over him, looking
every bit the action star.

I quickly shot a text back to Dana.

Ricky okay?

Couple seconds later, her response buzzed
in.

He's great. He's totally trending. his agent
says he should punch more celebrities

I stifled another giggle. (Wow, the
margarita was working its magic!)

"What's so funny?" Ramirez asked, leaning
over my shoulder to take a look at the phone. I showed him the
picture as I relayed the entire scene between the two men. When I
finished, Ramirez chuckled softly, the rumbling sound warm and
vibrating through his chest. "I knew there was something I liked
about that Ricky. I'm assuming Ratski didn't press charges?"

I shook my head. "No. He thought better of
it." I paused. Something about the scene was niggling at the back
of my head. Something that just wasn't right. I took another sip of
my margarita. "His wife, Beth, was beside herself. I feel sorry for
her," I said, meaning it not for the first time.

Ramirez nodded. "I feel sorry for anyone
forced to spend time with that
pendejo
."

I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but I
had a feeling it wasn't a warm-fuzzy.

"Hey, any luck getting that warrant on
Bucky's place?" I asked, sipping my drink again.

He nodded. "Yep. Turns out Bucky had a whole
bottle of his cousin's ADD meds."

I perked up.

"Unfortunately, the crime lab confirmed that
these meds were not the same chemical composition as the stuff that
killed Lacey. Close, but not exact."

"Damn. Did they find anything else?"

Ramirez shook his head. "They did a pretty
thorough search of his place, but didn't find anything to indicate
Bucky pulled the trigger, so to speak."

"Great, so we're back to square one with the
murder weapon."

"Sorry, babe," Ramirez said, nuzzling his
lips into my hair.

And as my husband used his term of
endearment to comfort me, it suddenly dawned on me what had been
wrong with the scene I'd witnessed today.

"She called him pooh bear!" I said, sitting
up straight in my seat.

Ramirez looked over at me. "What?"

"Ratski's love letters. They weren't
addressed 'pooh bear.' They all called him 'shmoopy.'"

"So his wife used a different term of
endearment in her letters?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so. I think
those letters were from someone else."

"Lacey?"

"Possibly." I bit my lip. "But, you know,
everything I've learned about Lacey doesn't suggest that she was
the sentimental type. I have a hard time picturing her writing
schmaltzy letters. Going out to dinner with him, shaking him down
for money, maybe even sleeping with him and threatening to tell his
wife. But those letters were more like love letters than sexting,
you know?"

"Okay, how about scenario number two,"
Ramirez offered. "Ratski was seeing someone else and Lacey found
out about it. Then she blackmailed him, threatening to tell his
wife."

I chewed my lip some more. "I like that
theory."

Ramirez took another sip from his glass.
"All right. So who do we think Ratski was seeing? One of the other
wives?"

I shrugged. Honestly, I really wish I knew.
I didn't see either Kendra or Liz being the type to go for Ratski.
Then again, who was the type to go for Ratski, I had no clue.

Fortunately I knew one person who apparently
had the 411 on all the celebrity gossip. I looked down at the
website displayed on my phone's screen. While Felix Dunn and I
hadn't always seen eye-to-eye, my friendship with the
L.A.
Informer
's editor had, at times, proven useful. I hoped this
was going to be another one of those times.

I woke up with a hell of a hangover,
surrounded by pink sheets covered in Hello Kitty designs. I
blinked, sitting up, and almost knocked over my husband who was
crammed into the twin bed beside me.

"Unh," he grunted, grabbing me around the
middle to keep from hitting the orange shag carpeting beneath
him.

That's when I remembered. After telling Mama
about the disaster at my house, she'd insisted that we spend the
night in BillieJo's old room. BillieJo had given me more of the
eye, which, considering her current Goth craze was almost
disconcerting enough to have me scheduling a hex cleansing with
Mrs. Rosenblatt. But when I weighed her evil eye versus my snake
and clown infested house the evil eye had won, hands down.

"Don't get up. Babies still sleeping,"
Ramirez grunted out, caveman style. His hand strayed from my middle
to cup my panty-clad booty.

I swatted it away. "Not here," I hissed.
Besides the dozen or so eyes of BillieJo's discarded Cabbage Patch
dolls staring at me from the pink dresser by the door, the babies
were slumbering softly in a pack-n-play in the corner.

Ramirez paused, opening one sleepy eye. "You
got somewhere else in mind?"

I swatted him again. "You have a one track
mind," I whispered.

"Yeah, but you love it." He nuzzled his lips
into the crook of my neck.

He had me there. I did love it.

And on any other day, I might have suggested
an early-morning jaunt to the shower. But as it was, the long day
ahead was looming over me. On my to-do list: 1) get a tabloid
editor's help to catch a killer, 2) attend my kids' 1st birthday
party, 3) not kill my party planner. All three seemed equally
daunting at the moment.

I slipped from beneath the sheets, awkwardly
trying to climb over my husband.

"Where you going?" he asked, sleepily
cocking one eye at me.

"I have a couple of things I need to follow
up on," I said, hoping he wouldn't question me more. While I viewed
Felix Dunn as an old friend, Ramirez might have had a slightly
different opinion of the tabloid editor.

My history with Felix had more ups-and-downs
than a Six Flags rollercoaster. I'd first met him after he'd
reported on one of my run-ins with a dead body. Since then, Felix's
and my paths had crossed several times—some of them good, some bad,
but all unforgettable. Felix had been the thorn in my side, my
partner in crime, and I'd even viewed him once or twice as my road
not taken.

There'd been a point before our marriage
when Ramirez and I had almost ended things over my complicated
relationship with Felix. While I had no regrets about the direction
of my life, I knew my husband and Felix were not destined to be the
best of buddies. Which is why, while I wasn't exactly lying to my
husband, I was going to spare him the details of my morning's
plans.

"I promise I'll be back in time for the
party," I reassured him as I scootched to the end of the bed.

Ramirez groaned. "Do we really have to go to
that?"

"Probably." Even though I'd been wondering
the same thing myself.

He grunted and rolled over again, causing
the sheets to fall down his torso. Even after years of marriage, I
couldn't help a warm little flutter in my stomach at the sight of
his bared pecs and six-pack that would make Budweiser jealous. I
briefly contemplated that shower again…

* * *

I'm woman enough to admit it had been a
while since I'd braved the morning L.A. traffic. I twiddled my
thumbs along the 60. I did a little drumming on my steering wheel
to the radio as we crossed to the 101. And I did a little cursing
at the other drivers as I crawled along the 170 into Hollywood
behind an SUV with a stick figure family in the window.

I stopped off at home just long enough to
grab a fresh change of clothes—a pale peach wrap dress that was
soft, summery, and appropriate for both morning snooping and an
afternoon party for tiny tots—and an hour and fifteen minutes later
I was finally pulling into the lot behind the big gray building
that housed the
L.A. Informer
offices. I rode the elevator
up to the second floor, and as the doors slid open I was
immediately assaulted by the sound of computer keyboards clacking
and conversations via speaker phone about everything from Miley
Cyrus's tongue acrobatics to Madonna's latest grill.

I gave myself a moment to overcome the
sensory overload before crossing the crowded newsroom floor to
Felix's glass-walled office in the center. The doors were closed,
but I could see him inside, shouting and waving his arms wildly as
he talked into his earpiece. I did a short rap on the door, causing
him to spin around midsentence. He raised one eyebrow in question
but motioned me in with a wave.

"No, that is absolutely not what I said we
were printing," came Felix's voice, his British accent more
pronounced than usual as he shouted at the person on the other end
of the line. "I said we would be going with the swimsuit pictures,
not the yacht photos." He paused, listening to someone on the other
end of his tirade. "I don't care what her manager said. If she's
going to go traipsing around Belize in a thong, her cellulite is
fair game for our photographers."

Felix motioned me to a chair in front of his
desk as he paused for the unfortunate soul's response again. I sat
self-consciously, crossing one leg over the other as I smoothed
down the skirt of my dress.

"Damn right we are. And you can tell her
manager that, too!" he yelled, hitting a button on his earpiece to
end the call.

Then he turned to me. "And to what do I owe
this unexpected pleasure, Maddie?" His voice was suddenly all
charm, no sign of the previous tirade in it.

Felix was old enough that fine laugh lines
creased his eyes but young enough that he could still pull off a
look of boyish charm when his mouth curved into a lopsided grin.
His sandy hair was slightly tussled, his blue eyes always sharp and
assessing, and since getting the upgrade in occupation from tabloid
reporter to editor-in-chief, Felix's wardrobe had undergone a
slight upgrade as well, morphing from khakis and sketchers to wool
slacks and Oxfords. Though he still sported his white button-down
shirt, open at the collar, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and in
need of a good ironing. His look was casual and somehow polished
all at the same time. It fit considering the
L.A. Informer
was slowly becoming one of Hollywood's premier entertainment news
sources…yet they still ran the occasional story on Bigfoot's
alleged love child with one of the Honey Boo-boo girls.

"I need your help, Felix," I said, coming
straight to the point.