Death on Heels (8 page)

“What on earth does he use all this for?” Lacey asked. Her dad had a mania for tools, the way some women had for shoes: collecting them, filling a closet with them, but never wearing them, simply admiring their sparkling high-heeled kingdom, or queendom.

Cherise thought for a moment. “He uses some of it to tie the Christmas tree to the roof of the wagon.”

“Right.” Lacey remembered their annual trip to fetch the Christmas tree…until Rose had found the perfect vintage aluminum tree with a rotating color wheel, to set on the floor near the unused fireplace. She thought it was the perfect holiday decoration for a midcentury modern home, hung with all silver ornaments. The effect was chilly, something the cartoon Jetson family might gather around. Her mother’s idea of vintage and Lacey’s were two very different things.

“What about this?” Cherise picked up one of the ropes and hefted it. “Ride ’em, cowgirl!”

“I give up. Here, this one is better.” Lacey selected a rope that felt heavy enough to toss like a lariat, and she took it to the backyard. Cherise bounced along beside her. Lacey tied the knots and looped the loop. She showed Cherise how to tie the lariat knot, the honda.

“It’s named after a Japanese car? Why?”

“Because Japanese cowboys use it to rope Honda Civics in Japanese rodeos.” Cherise looked doubtful, but right on the verge of taking her big sister’s word for it. Lacey couldn’t help laughing. “Come on, Cherise! It’s Spanish.”

“Spanish for what?”

“Spanish for this knot you tie in a lariat! Now what do you want to throw it at?”

“Dad’s lawn chair.” Cherise dragged the Adirondack chair from the garage to the middle of the yard. Lacey turned on the back door light that stabbed into the dark like an aircraft landing light and illuminated almost the whole lawn. She demonstrated to Cherise how to twirl the lariat and throw the lasso. She had to try it several times before even hitting, but not lassoing, the chair.

“I blame the altitude,” Lacey said. “Everything is lighter this high up.”

“Cool! Let me try!” Cherise was dogged, if nothing else. Cherise hit, but did not lasso, one of her mother’s potted geraniums, and she dissolved into giggles.

“Girls, what on earth are you doing out here?” Rose suddenly stood on the back porch, in her robe, giving Lacey a wave of déjà vu. She was a child again, playing kickball in the dusk. “Get to bed, it’s late. You girls! I swear.”

Giggling like a couple of naughty schoolgirls caught playing hooky, Cherise and Lacey came when they were called. But not before Lacey grabbed the rope one more time and held the coil in her left hand. She lifted her right arm high and started swinging the noose. She let it fly, keeping her wrist and hand straight on her target. Triumphantly, the rope caught. Lacey had lassoed the lawn chair.

Little Britches Rodeo, here I come.

“I miss you already.” Lacey closed her eyes and listened to Vic’s voice. It was like honey. Sweet and warm.

“Me too, darlin’. Every minute.”

“Promise.” Finally alone in that bizarre guest bedroom in her childhood home, sitting on the hard sofa bed, Lacey finally let go of the tension in her shoulders. Most of it. She closed her eyes, the better to conjure up a picture of him.

“I’ll have to catch up with you Monday in the courtroom,” Vic said.

“Monday? But I’m seeing you tomorrow in Sagebrush.”

“Something came up.”

“What?”
Better not be Montana
.

“I’m heading up to Wyoming with the deputy DA. You remember?”

“How could I forget Brad Owens?”

“There’s a girl missing out of Baggs. Teenager.”

“Oh, no.” Lacey didn’t want to hear any more bad news. “How old is she?”

“Seventeen.”

How awful.
“You don’t think there’s a connection to the Yampa County murders?”

“Brad thinks there might be. I’m going to tag along, see if there are any similarities to Rae Fowler and the others. We’re meeting with the girl’s family and the sheriff in Baggs tomorrow night.”

“But if Tucker was in jail—” Lacey allowed herself to hope.

“She went missing a couple of days before they arrested him. Like I said, we’re going to check it out. Best that can happen is she shows up. Maybe she’s just a runaway. I’m sorry, darlin’. I’ll be back in time for the arraignment. Have to be. Brad’s due in court.”

Lacey stretched her neck and back. “Have you seen your ex?” She tried to make that question elaborately casual, but she knew Vic could see right through her. Even over the phone.

Vic hesitated a moment too long. “I haven’t seen Montana.”

“Not
seen
her? But you’ve talked to her?” Lacey sat straight up at attention, wishing she could see his face. Instead of picturing him with his ex. Sometimes her mother was right. Lacey did have an overactive imagination.

“She called
me
,” he clarified.

“And?”

“She wants to meet. A friendly dinner. That’s all.”

“Ha! I knew she’d try something.”
Friendly dinner my eye!
Men really can be dopes,
Lacey thought.
Why aren’t they ever dopes for me? Okay, sometimes…

“She’s not trying anything.” He started to chuckle. “Montana’s concerned about the cabin. The one she bought from me. The roof is leaking.”

“Come to my web, said the spider to the fly.”

“You’re cute when you’re jealous.”

“Should I mention Tucker and say the same thing about you?”

“Sweetheart, Montana and I are just trying to have a civilized divorce.”

“That’s what she’s saying this week anyway.” Lacey was glad he couldn’t see the expression on her face. He wouldn’t like her sneer. “And what did you say to dinner?”

“I said I’d love to. As long as you come with us.”

She sank back against the pillows. “That’s why I love you, Vic Donovan. Did you set a date?”

“Montana said she’ll get back to me.”

And with any luck that will never happen
. “By the way, how did Montana know you were in town?” Lacey studied her daybook, tracing her schedule with her fingers. It was all written down in ink, along with the questions she wanted to ask Tucker. Her friends despaired of Lacey’s Luddite tendencies, but she resisted the siren call of the BlackBerry and iPhone. Computers owned too much of her life already.

“Word travels fast. Apparently she’s friends with Owens.”

“How close a friend?”
The closer the better. Let her throw a lasso on anyone but Vic.

“I’d say pretty close. He wouldn’t talk about it.”

“Owens won’t talk about the time of day without a subpoena.”

Vic chuckled. “You do remember him. I told him I was keeping company with you. He was a little surprised.”

“He remembers me?”

“Hearing your name brought it all back. He recalled that you’d been Cole Tucker’s girl.”

“I can’t believe Owens is still there. Same job too. Yampa County deputy DA. Doesn’t he have any ambition at all?”

“Hey, he’s a nice guy. He always helped out when I was in the PD.”

“He didn’t help out the reporters. And Bradley always looked like his mother dressed him. Even when he wasn’t at work. Crew cut and ironed jeans. I think he’s the only guy in town with starched underwear. That’s just an educated guess, by the way, Vic.”

“Well, darlin’, this case has taken some of the starch out.”

Lacey remembered Brad Owens as fresh faced and eternally boyish. He tried to disappear whenever she showed up: It was her job to hunt him down. It said so on her journalism diploma. Lacey figured Owens’s antipathy
to reporters most likely began with his dislike of the publisher of
The
Sagebrush Daily Press,
Lacey’s former boss, Dodd Muldoon.
What did Owens know about Muldoon? Did he suspect Muldoon too?
she wondered.

“Brad did allow that you were an attractive nuisance,” Vic interrupted her thoughts.

“He’s on my list.” She paused. “Think he’ll give me an interview?”

“Doubt it.”

“Good thing he’ll be in court. Then every word is on the record.”

“That’s my girl.”

They sighed into their phones and signed off. Vic loved her and she was happy.

But as soon as she put her head on the pillow, jumbled thoughts assailed her. They veered from Montana to Tucker to the local officials—who no doubt would refuse to comment—to the few known former suspects in the killing: Dodd Muldoon, Zeke Yancey, and a mysteriously vanished miner. Worries bounced back and forth, in a game of insomniac ping-pong. She finally fell into an uneasy sleep, but her dreams were just a nightmare replay of her thoughts.

Lacey Smithsonian’s

Be a Rhinestone Cowgirl—
Or Just Look Like One

Did you know that high-strutting, tooled leather, stacked-heel boots are not just for cowboys anymore? Sure, the cowboy boots of yore, with their worn leather, scuffed charm, and scars from hard work are still around, but there’s a New Kid Leather in town.

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But the New Kid was never intended to ride the range and rope bulls. These beauties are made for strutting. Show off these boots with your favorite short jean skirt, and they can look devastatingly feminine paired with a dress. You can dance a Texas Two-Step or rock a Boot Scootin’ Boogie in them.

Available in a rainbow of colors and styles, today’s cowboy boots have it all. Bad kitties embossed on the shaft? Screaming skulls with pink bows in tooled leather? Attitude in alligator?

They’re yours. You can fantasize, customize, and
personalize your boots just the way you want, by working with a boot designer.

Be warned: Today’s Western-inspired designer boots aren’t for the fainthearted. They can set the average woman back a month’s salary or more, before taxes. But then, the average stylista wouldn’t be interested in cowboy boots. Would she? These boots are for style mavericks. And while these boots aren’t the norm in Washington, D.C., you will see them in full force in Western and Southern cities, and university towns like Charlottesville, Virginia.

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How to decide? Some tips to keep in mind:

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• Select a heel size depending on how you’ll be wearing the boot. Boots made for walking come in a heel that is between three quarters of an inch and an inch and three quarters. Any higher, and you’ll be doing more riding and strutting—or posing—than walking. The higher the heel, the sexier the strut—but don’t wobble. Real cowgirls don’t fall down. Except sometimes off their horses.
  
• When you try on a cowboy boot, experts say the upper or shaft should be comfortable and
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So ladies, if the boot fits, wear it. Wear your boots with pants, shorts, skirts, and dresses. Wear them with a swagger and a glint in your eyes. Wear them with a purpose. Wear them with an attitude. Wear them walking toward your destiny.

But never wear them with
indifference
.

“You have nothing to worry about,” Lacey assured her parents again before leaving Sunday morning. “There won’t be any trouble. I’ll be perfectly fine.”

“Famous last words.” Rose patted Lacey’s shoulder and smoothed her hair. She sighed dramatically. “I don’t know why you had to work in that terrible town in the first place. There are all kinds of adorable villages in the mountains. You could have worked in Glenwood Springs or Aspen. But no, you had to go to Sagebrush.”

“It was the only reporting job I could find when I graduated from J school,” Lacey reminded her.

“And you look tired. What on earth were you two doing on the lawn last night?”

“The trouble you all got into when your mother went to Washington last October was enough for a lifetime,” Steven chimed in. “Promise your old dad you’ll stay out of trouble. I’ll be out of the country. I won’t be able to help you.”