Death on Heels (3 page)

Vic raised one eyebrow, the one Lacey usually raised at him. “Then there was Muldoon.”

“Dodd Muldoon! Are you serious? My old boss?” Dodd Muldoon was the editor, publisher, and resident maniac who ran the Sagebrush daily newspaper.

“Don’t know why you’re surprised. You suspected him of all kinds of skullduggery.”

“But not murder! And you never told me?” She leaned against the wall, her head reeling.

“Didn’t come up. Muldoon always seemed to know too much about that murder, information that was never released.”

“As terrible a journalist as he was, Muldoon probably had sources.”

“He was up to his eyeballs in dirty business. He was even named in a couple of assaults.”

“Assaults?”

“No one ever pressed charges. He has friends in high places, you remember. He became a real nuisance in the bars later on, trying to pick up women, usually very young women.”

She remembered a puffy middle-aged man with a talent for making her snarl. Lacey nodded slowly. “Muldoon tried to put the moves on women at the paper. But never me.”

“You have that endearing way of sending out death rays from your eyes, sweetheart.”

“Blame the nuns. I don’t know about Muldoon. He can be sleazy, but a killer?” She found the idea unsettling.
She knew once the seed had been planted, she would worry it into a full-blown tree of suspicion. “But I could believe that before Cole Tucker.”

Vic shrugged. “Well, the prosecutor believes otherwise. Lacey, I don’t want you there. You’re too emotionally involved to be objective about this.” She scowled. He sat down on the bed, still holding her boot. “It isn’t because you’re still in love with him, is it?”

“I’m not in love with Tucker. But a part of me will always love him.”
But if he was a killer?

“What if he’s still got a thing for you?” Vic started fiddling with the loose heel again.

“Got a thing for me? Yeah, right! That would explain why he married someone else six weeks after I left town. Six weeks to the day, Vic. And, adding insult to injury, on Valentine’s Day! Because he adored me?” The whole episode still made her cheeks burn.

“Darlin’, you don’t understand men. It was a grand gesture. He couldn’t marry you, so it didn’t matter who he married. And see how long it lasted? Divorced in a year.”

The first time Lacey Smithsonian saw Cole Tucker, he ambled through the newspaper offices to buy a legal notice for his ranch, buying or selling some piece of land. He was all cowboy charm and sinewy muscles, wrapped snugly in tight, faded jeans, a fur-lined jean jacket, and beat-up cowboy boots. He was the Old West come to life, with a swagger that was electric.

Tucker had honey-colored hair and deep brown eyes. He stared straight at Lacey with frank appreciation and interest, yet he seemed a little shy too. But before he left, the cowboy tipped his hat to her and said he’d get back to her later. They dated for almost two years, until she couldn’t take Sagebrush for one more forty-degrees-below-zero winter’s day.

She could not remember her first kiss with Cole Tucker, and that bothered Lacey.
You’re supposed to remember the first kiss, aren’t you?
What she remembered best was the very first time she saw him, when their eyes
locked. That moment was stronger than a kiss—at least Cole’s kiss.

Vic and Lacey’s first kiss, on the other hand, was something she would never forget. It was her last New Year’s Eve in Sagebrush. Lacey had just that day said no to Tucker’s marriage proposal and he didn’t take it well. He had to take care of business out on the ranch, instead of taking her out that evening for the last night of the old year. So Lacey headed to the biggest local nightspot, the Red Rose, with a girlfriend from work. She didn’t intend to dance, but she wasn’t about to stay home on New Year’s Eve and cry over Cole Tucker. And that handsome chief of police, Vic Donovan, was there.

Vic had asked Lacey out so many times she’d lost count. It was a running joke between them, Vic asking, Lacey turning him down. For good reason. One, she was going out with Tucker. Two, Vic was still technically married, and Lacey had always been a stickler for details. Three, because she was afraid she wanted to say yes to Vic just a little too much. And four was more than a technicality. It would be a colossal conflict of interest for a reporter to date the chief of police, and cub reporter Lacey Smithsonian had ethical standards. So the answer was no, again and again.

But at midnight that New Year’s Eve, the dark-haired, green-eyed Sean Victor Donovan somehow materialized right in front of her on the dance floor at the Red Rose. In the clamor of bells ringing and horns honking and the country band playing “Auld Lang Syne,” Vic reached for her and kissed her, and he drove all thoughts of Cole Tucker from her mind.

“You could have had me,” Vic interrupted her thoughts.

“You were married.”

“Separated! I was getting a divorce.” He waved her one found boot in the air for emphasis. “You ever heard of it? D-I-V-O-R-C-E.”

She gazed up at Vic’s handsome face. “Didn’t matter. I’m Catholic.”

“Lady, you are the toughest grader I’ve ever known.”

“Again: blame the nuns,” she said. “You’re just lucky you got married in some drive-through wedding mill in Vegas.”

“It wasn’t a drive-through. Not quite. Still, it doesn’t count in the church.” He was a Catholic boy and he knew his ecclesiastical loopholes as well as she did. “What happens in Vegas, stays in—”

“And what about Montana?” Vic’s bleached-blond ex-wife, Montana McCandless Donovan Schmidt, was a sore point for Lacey. Montana had made a last-ditch effort to win Vic back less than a year ago, right in Lacey’s face, and on Lacey’s turf. She’d failed, but Lacey would never let it go.
One of my flaws.

“Montana is history. You know that.”

“Ha! You think I’ll rest easy knowing your ex-wife is lurking around Sagebrush, ready to pounce on you like a hungry lioness and drag you back to her lair?”

Vic chuckled and tossed her boot from hand to hand. “I’ll never even see her. She’s living in Steamboat. A million miles from Sagebrush.”

“More like fifty, Chief.” Though the chic upscale ski resort of Steamboat Springs did seem a million miles and several decades distant from Sagebrush. “And your man-eating ex will hear about your arrival. On the neighborhood tom-toms.”

“Lacey Smithsonian, you are ridiculous, but cute. Besides, I’m sure Montana is busy hooking some other poor fish.”

The bootheel was looser; he had made it worse with his worrying. “You’re the prize marlin, sweetheart. And I’m going,” she said. “Now where is my boot?”

“Lacey, about that boot of yours— Where do boots always go to hide over at
my
place?”

“Under the bed!” She dived to the floor and shoved aside the small mountain of shoes she’d excavated from her tiny closet. She crawled halfway under the bed and Vic heard her victory whoop. Lacey emerged flushed and grinning, triumphantly holding aloft the other cowboy boot. “I knew I asked you over for some good reason.”

Vic was still frowning. “That’s the other thing—” He held out both hands, the boot in one hand, the heel in the other. “Oops. I broke off your bootheel. Sorry.”

Lacey grabbed the two pieces out of his hands. “Oh, Vic! Don’t talk to
me
about being death on heels! You—you
boot breaker.
”

“Look what you did to my boots!”

“I’ll buy you some new boots. You can use them to stomp all over me.”

Lacey glared at Vic. “Don’t tempt me, and I’m still going to Sagebrush tomorrow.” She hugged her boots to her chest, one boot with a heel, one without.

Vic reached out for the heel. “Maybe I could fix—”

“Drop it right there, mister. Do not touch one more thing.” He backed away, hands in the air.

Lacey and Vic stared each other down. They carefully sat on the floor in her bedroom, surrounded by shoes and clothes and boots and Lacey’s half-packed suitcase. He put his arms out for her in apology and she relented, snuggling into his embrace.

“I have to go. I already told Mac I needed some time off. He was grumpy about it, but I promised to write him a feature. On Western wear or something.” Lacey sighed. For a Westerner she realized she didn’t really know much about Western wear, aside from her cowboy boots and owning a couple of snap-front shirts.

Fashion reporting for
The Eye Street Observer
was not exactly Lacey’s dream job. Writing for a second-string D.C. paper might not give her access to the New York or Milan fashion shows, but at least she could more or less create her own beat and follow her nose for news. Nevertheless, her editor, Douglas MacArthur Jones, balked when she asked for an immediate leave of absence.

“What? Are you crazy?” His trademark bushy eyebrows
were saying NO, NO, NO. Light bounced off his dark balding head, distracting her. “And you really went out with this guy in Colorado? I don’t know, Smithsonian. You’ve never had to leave the East Coast to find a killer before,” Mac said.

“There was Paris. And New Orleans.” Lacey moved papers around so she could sit down for the argument.

“Okay. That time. But aren’t there enough degenerates in the District to amuse you? You have to go running off to—where the hell is this place? Purple Sage, Colorado?”

“Sagebrush. Thanks for your support, Mac. I know this guy. He’s not a killer.”

“Ha. You say that now. You involved? He’s a killer.” Mac shifted in his chair and reached for a brownie decorated with bright green shamrock icing.

Lacey had personally snagged Mac one of these rare delicacies from the paper’s food editor, Felicity Pickles. Lacey even presented it to Mac on one of Felicity’s shamrock-festooned paper plates. The brownies looked nauseating to Lacey, but they were undoubtedly gooey and delicious. When Mac had something sweet to eat, he was sweeter to deal with. Usually.

“What I’m saying, Smithsonian,” Mac continued after a large bite, “is that you keep running into trouble when you least expect it, and now you want to run off to the ends of the earth to see a man who’s already been arrested for murder. This is asking for trouble, isn’t it? This is a good idea
why
, exactly?”

“Sagebrush, Colorado, is not exactly the ends of the earth,” Lacey protested, though it certainly felt like that to her. And
maybe
she had once or twice
happened
to say something like, “I used to work in this little town at the ends of the earth.” How dare he use that against her?

“You’re chasing trouble, Smithsonian. You
know
there are murdered women. You
know
this guy could be their killer. You know and I know you’re going to get into some kind of mess. This is way off your beat.”

“Cole is not a killer. And I’m not going to get into any
trouble. I just want to be there for the arraignment. I’ll grab some interviews with the sheriff and prosecutors, I’ll try for an interview with Tucker, and then I’ll come back and, um, write something about it.”

Mac cocked one bushy eyebrow, a warning sign over his scowling café au lait face.

“Convince me you
need
to do this trip, Smithsonian. We are a local newspaper, you remember? We cover the Nation’s Capital, not every crime and criminal to the very ends of the earth.”

“I’m owed the time, Mac. I have leave coming.” She paused. “How about a feature article? Subjective, interpretive journalism. Something like ‘Cowboy Justice in the West.’”

The bushy brow softened with editorial interest, but not quite soft enough. “What about your Crimes of Fashion column? And your Fashion Bites?”

“Cowboy clothes,” Lacey said, thinking fast. “And you keep telling me to take some time off, Mac. Mostly when you’re mad at me, true, but couldn’t I do it now, before you get mad at me again?”

“You’re getting there,” Mac growled. “I suppose you’ll have to go.” Out came his best martyr impression. “We’re short staffed, you know. Hiring freeze.” Then his exaggerated sigh. “Send me some column inches when you have a chance. If you’re not in some damn ridiculous fix. Or in jail.” She rose from her chair to leave quietly. Saying one more word might be pressing her luck. “And Smithsonian—”

“Yes, Mac?”

“First sign of trouble, you call me. You hear me? Don’t cowgirl off alone on one of your nutty adventures. Danger is not in your job description. You write about shoes and purses and dresses. Hats and haberdashery.” He picked up some brownie crumbs lingering on the paper plate. “Write me something about—cowboy hats.”

“Cowboy hats? Like Stetsons?” She thought she must have misunderstood.

“They’re classic, don’t you think?” He stared off into space, somewhere out on the range, far beyond the Beltway.
“Had one when I was a kid. You could call it cowboy couture.” He smiled at his own cleverness.

There had been black cowboys ever since there was an American frontier, but even though Douglas MacArthur Jones grew up in California, Lacey couldn’t see her African American editor riding the range. Not any range, anywhere. All he ever rode was the copydesk. And his reporters.

“I’ll see what I can do, Mac. And really, I don’t foresee any trouble.”

“Then you’ve got your eyes closed.” He scowled. “Get out of here. Stay safe.”

“Just for the arraignment, right?” Vic’s words broke into her reverie, and his hands began an all-too-brief massage of her neck and shoulders, easing the tension that had settled in like a long-term leaseholder. “You’re not going to stage a jailbreak or picket the courthouse or something, just because you think Cole’s innocent, are you?”

She threw him a give-me-a-break look over her shoulder. “Why, sweetheart, you’re the only man I’d stage a jailbreak for.”

Vic kissed her. “I’ve been waiting to hear you say that. You’re my Get Out of Jail Free card.”

“Don’t stop rubbing my neck. You missed a spot.”

Vic stopped anyway. He grabbed his black leather jacket and headed reluctantly toward the door. “Gotta go. My flight leaves in a couple of hours.”

“I wish we were going together. I’ll see you Sunday.” She opened the door for him. He paused, and stroked her face.

“You got your way with Mac. What about your friends? Stella’s going crazy with that wedding thing. Think she can do it without you?”