Killer in High Heels (13 page)

Ditto for me, pal.

“Uh, sorry to interrupt,” Dana said, looking from my dangling bra to Ramirez’s untucked T-shirt. “But we were worried about you.”

I could feel my cheeks filling with heat. Though whether it was a flush of suppressed hormones or embarrassment I’d be hard pressed to say.

“No problem. I was just leaving anyway,” Ramirez said. He shot me a heated look. “Tomorrow night?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak for fear of blurting out something totally inappropriate. Like, “Wait. Stay. A couple more seconds and I swear I’ll have that belt buckle figured out!”

“Mmm, mmm! Honey, that man is deeeeee-lish,” Marco said, watching him go.

“What is he doing here?” Dana asked. “What about The Oath?”

“Screw The Oath, honey. That man is H-O-T hot! Whew!” Marco began fanning himself.

Once I got my hormones back under control, Dana raided the minibar and I filled them in on what Ramirez had told me. Which wasn’t technically breaking my promise to him. He had said the information didn’t leave the room. And we were still in the room. See? Promise kept. (Sort of.)

Dana was such a good friend she didn’t even say “I told you so” when I got to the part about Monaldo’s family connections. Okay, well I might have seen her mouth it to Marco behind my back while I went for that second mini bottle of tequila, but my head was fuzzy enough by then I couldn’t be sure.

Once we’d drained the minibar, I slipped into my ducky pajamas and flopped onto the rollaway. I closed my eyes, visions of Larry in fake Gucci boots overlaid with Monaldo’s soulless eyes and the black tarp covering the unfortunate Hank. Worst of all, as I drifted off to sleep, I was assaulted by visions of Ramirez, drippy candles, soft music, and our perfect first date.

From the depths of a fabulous dream about Ramirez’s tongue doing acrobatics across my stomach, I heard the William Tell Overture erupting from my purse. I automatically reached for my cell. Ouch. A pain shot up my left side. I rolled over. A pain shot up my right side. I gingerly pulled myself up on my elbows, rubbing my neck. It felt like I’d fallen asleep sitting up in one of my Irish Catholic grandmother’s formal dining chairs. I blinked a few times. No dining chairs. It was worse. I’d slept on the lumpiest rollaway in the entire state of Nevada. I rubbed my neck, cringing, as I pulled my phone out of my purse.

“Hello?”

“Maddie? It’s Mom.”

Yikes! I sat straight up in bed. Then whimpered as pain shot up both my right and left sides.

“Uh, Mom. Wow. Hi.”

“Hi, sweets. I’m so glad I caught you in. How is Palm Springs?”

“Right. Palm Springs.” I glanced around the motel room. Marco was snoring like a little piggy beneath his frilly blue mask and Dana was sprawled sideways across the other double, her limbs dangling off the side. “It’s great. Really. Really. Great.” I cringed. I hated guilt.

“Oh good. I’m so glad you’re having a nice time. Did you visit that little boutique on Palm Canyon yet? The one that sells those hand-painted abalone shells?”

“Uh, no. Not yet.” Which wasn’t a total lie, right?

“Oh, you absolutely must. They are so darling! So what have you seen so far?”

“Oh, not much.” Right. If you didn’t count the feathered drag queens and shoe-trafficking mobsters.

“Well, honey, I’m so glad you decided to do this. You really needed a vacation. And I was just pleased as a pickle to hear that you’re out there dating again. It’s not good for you to be alone too long.”

Tell me about it. “Uh huh.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to call and say hello. I know we had a bit of a…disagreement before you left, and, well, I just…wanted to say hello.”

I cringed, feeling guilt niggle at the back of my mind again. This was about as close to an apology as Mom got. “Mom, about Larry—”

“Right.” She plowed right over me. “I’m so glad you’ve put that behind you.” A statement. You
have
put that behind you.

“Uh huh.” I rubbed my neck again. Was the pain actually getting worse?

“And I’m glad you’re having fun. Do you want me to come by and water your plants while you’re gone?”

“No, Mom, I don’t have any plants.”

She paused. “What do you mean, you don’t have any plants?”

“I don’t have any. They always die, so I have plastic ficus in the corner. No real plants.”

She paused again. “Don’t be silly; everyone has plants. I’ll go buy you one.”

Yep, the pain was definitely getting worse. I tilted my head to the side and groaned.

“Maddie, are you all right?”

“Yeah. I just slept on my neck the wrong way.”

Mom giggled on the other end. “I understand. I remember the first time Ralphie and I went away for the weekend together. I ‘slept’ in all kinds of funny positions.”

Okay, ew. “Uh, Mom, I have to…”

“In fact, there was this one time, we ‘slept’ in this airplane bathroom. Have you ever heard of the mile-high club, Maddie?”

Ew, ew, ew! “Wow, gee, I have to go now. I’ll call you later, Mom. Bye.”

I quickly hung up and flung the phone on the bed as if it had mom-sex cooties. Not the image I wanted to wake up to.

I flopped back down on the pillows and closed my eyes. But thanks to years of Catholic-ingrained guilt, I couldn’t go back to sleep. Even though I knew it was for her own good, I hated lying to my mother. Mostly because I knew sooner or later she’d find out. I remember one Christmas when I was ten and snuck into my mom’s closet to peek at all my presents. I had been so careful to put each and every one back in exactly the same place. Then Christmas morning I awoke to find a note saying Santa didn’t like little girls who peeked. I still had no idea how she found out. But somehow she always did.

I sighed, giving up on sleep, and hobbled into the shower instead. I spent an eternity standing under hot water, letting the steam and heat ease the tension out of my neck, then threw on a pair of white cargo capris, a hot pink baby T and my pink Charles David kitten heels. By the time I’d done the blow-dry and makeup (heavy on the makeup to compensate for my slightly enlarged nose), I could almost stand up straight. Almost.

“What’s wrong with your neck?” Dana asked me, stretching the sleep out of her limbs as she flipped on the casino channel.

“The rollaway,” I moaned. “Have you got any aspirin?”

Marco yawned. “You look like Quasimodo.”

I poked a finger at him. “Just for that, you’re on rollaway detail tonight, princess.”

Marco pouted but knew better than to argue with me before coffee. “Fine. Anyway, I’m off to Egypt today, ladies,” he informed us. “I’m going to see Tut’s Tomb at the Luxor. You know they’ve got real gold replicas of the jewels Queen Nefertiti wore for sale in the gift shop. I’m thinking of a tiara.”

I made a mental note to tell Ramirez there was at least one person on the planet girlier than I was.

“Anyway, after Tut’s Tomb, I’ve got a hot date.” He did a middle-schooler giggle. “With Madonna. He’s taking me to the Venetian. Is there anything more romantic than Venice?”

I had a sudden image of Ramirez and myself holding hands in a gondola and tried to shake it off before I turned middle-schooler like Marco.

“Would you do me a favor?” I asked him instead.

“Anything, dahling.”

“Would you ask Madonna if she knows where Bobbi lives?” I didn’t like that nobody at the club had seen Bobbi in days, but before I went totally paranoid over it, I figured it was a good idea to make sure he wasn’t just home with the flu.

“Consider it done.”

While Marco headed into the bathroom for his morning ritual of cleanser, exfoliant, and pearl-infused moisturizer, I flipped through the booklet of hotel services and found the number of the Regis Salon on the concierge level. No way was I going on a romantic gondola-ride first date with Ramirez with an upper lip that looked like a drag queen’s. (Yes, I know he’d said “dinner” and not “an evening in Venice,” but this was my fantasy and I could play it out wherever I wanted.) A woman doing a nasally Fran Drescher answered, and after flipping through her appointment book said she could squeeze me in at four.

That settled, I lay back on the bed and thought about my conversation with Ramirez last night.

From what he’d said, it was clear now that Larry did, in fact, need my help. Was he working for Monaldo in the sole capacity of a feathered showgirl or was there something more to it? I wasn’t altogether certain, but the way Turtleneck had shoved a gun in my face when I mentioned Monaldo’s name didn’t speak of the normal employer-employee relationship. Tot Trots for example, had only threatened to shoot me once, when I’d been three weeks late with the Pretty Princess Mary Jane sketches. And, in their defense, I’ll admit they were late because my favorite boutique in Venice Beach was having a huge going-out-of-business sale that month and, well, a girl’s got to have her priorities.

So all this left me with the question: What exactly was my dad doing for Monaldo? Or, more importantly, what kind of proof of my dad’s involvement with Monaldo were Ramirez and the ICE going to find? As much as I wasn’t sure how I felt about Larry, I didn’t particularly want my next memory of him to be through prison bars.

“Dana, do you still have Officer Baby Face’s number?”

She looked up from her TV lesson on beating the roulette wheel. “Sure. Why?”

“Do you think you could ask him for Maurice’s address?” Larry had been reluctant to talk to me. But I had a feeling that the whimpering Turtleneck might be an easier nut to crack.

She shrugged. “Worth a try.”

Dana fished the number out of her purse and gave him a story about wanting to send flowers to the partner of the deceased. I’m not sure if he actually bought it, but apparently his desire for Dana outweighed fear of his supervisors, because twenty minutes later Dana had a date to meet Officer Baby Face for drinks that night and I had a tall latte, two aspirins and the address to a condo in North Vegas.

Chapter Nine

Maurice’s condo was in an older part of town where the buildings were all a sun-bleached ivory color that might have once, in a former life, been anything from sandy yellow to rosy sand. The address Officer Baby Face gave us was on the corner of Rancho Drive and Silverado Parkway, a two-story affair with Mediterranean arches and lots of peeling stucco. The walkway was flanked by bunches of dead grass and trampled succulents, and through a rusted gate I could see a courtyard with two faded lawn chairs lying on their sides. The entire building had a feeling of being dried out and used up. Apparently Maurice’s paycheck wasn’t quite enough to buy his way into the Sand Hill set.

I parked at the curb and did a quick makeup check in the rearview mirror as I went over what I’d say to Maurice. Considering that the last time I’d seen him he’d pointed a gun at me, I wasn’t entirely looking forward to this interview. But on the other hand, my father may very well be using his go-go boots to outrun the Mob, so I didn’t feel I had much choice. As fortification, I added another layer of mascara and a thick swipe of Raspberry Perfection lip gloss.

“Ready?” I asked Dana as I puckered my lips in the mirror.

Dana pulled her stun gun out of her purse. “Ready.”

“Dana!”

She jumped in her seat. “What?”

“What are you doing with that thing?”

She blinked her wide eyes at me. “What? It’s just a little protection.”

“Condoms are a little protection. That thing is dangerous.”

Dana waved me off. “Oh please. It’s harmless. Marco just didn’t know how to use it.”

I eyed the cell stunner. “And you do?”

“Of course,” Dana said, clipping the phone onto her belt. “I used one last year in that sci-fi flick I did with Ben Affleck. I was Alien Girl Number Three.”

“And they gave you a real stun gun?”

“Well…” She puckered her eyebrows. “At first they gave me a real gun. But then there was this little incident and they said it would be better if I had a prop. But it totally looked like the real thing and I swear by the end of the shoot I was totally a master of that prop gun.”

“Little incident?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “What kind of incident?”

Dana waved me off. “Oh, it was nothing. Just a misunderstanding. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

Why is it that when someone says “trust me,” I always feel less inclined to do so?

But before I could stop her, Miss Alien Girl Number Three was out of the car and walking up the pathway to Maurice’s front door.

I followed her, silently praying to the saint of stun guns that hers wouldn’t go off as I walked between the lawn chairs and dried grass to unit 24A. Dana rapped on the door. I heard footsteps approaching from the inside, but the door stayed firmly shut. As the seconds stretched on, I got that creepy feeling that someone was watching us through the peephole.

Dana knocked again, louder this time. Finally the door opened a crack and Maurice’s tiny eyes peeked out.

He was dressed this morning in gray slacks and a black blazer over another turtleneck, this one in somber charcoal. Mourning colors. Though I noticed he still wore those hideous tasseled loafers. His eyes held a red-rimmed look, like he’d been crying nonstop since yesterday, and they darted back and forth, sweeping the area behind us as if we might have brought the fashion police with us.

“You again. What do you want?” he asked, his voice nasally and strained.

“I was wondering if we could talk to you for a few minutes. I’m worried about Larry.”

Maurice’s eyes shifted from Dana to me, then back again. Finally he shrugged, a sad, defeated little move of his shoulders, and stepped aside to let us in.

It was immediately apparent who had decorated the house in Henderson. The same blend of flowery, stainfriendly furniture dominated the living room. Only in Maurice’s tiny condo, the bright fabrics and large wooden furnishings looked cramped and out of place. It struck me that Maurice was a housewife without a house.

As in Henderson, everything was immaculately clean and the air held a thick odor of Windex and potpourri. The little yapper dog I’d seen at Larry’s bounded out from a back bedroom and began circling our legs. He did a series of high-pitched barks and wagged his tail at me like I was the bacon fairy. I had to admit, he was kinda cute. As long as he didn’t drool on my shoes.