Homicide in High Heels (28 page)

I grinned. "Yeah, you probably should
have."

* * *

"Ohmigod, Maddie, I can't believe you
actually ran onto the field!" Marco said the next day at Fernando's
salon. Turns out almost being killed by a psycho Baseball Wife is
as hard on a manicure as getting hit by a foul ball. I was getting
my nails repaired, and I was happy to report that three out of four
of the chairs beside me were filled as well. News of Beth's arrest
had been shot across the gossip universe at light speed, along side
news that it was the stepdaughter of Fernando's salon owner who had
caught the killer. While I wasn't sure I should take sole credit
for bringing Beth to justice, Ramirez was just happy someone other
than Laurel and Hardy was in the spotlight.

"The truth is, my fingernails fared better
than my shoes," I told Marco. "I think I left a heel at second
base."

Marco tsked, clicking his tongue.
"Sacrificed in the name of justice." Then he bowed his head in a
solemn moment of silence for my shoe.

"So what now?" he asked. "Is it true that
Beth confessed everything?"

I nodded, repeating what Ramirez had told me
that morning after coming back from the station. (After being
reinstated, by the way. It turns out that all the charges Ratski
was levying against my husband magically disappeared the moment his
wife was arrested for murder.) "Beth's claiming temporary insanity,
saying that living a lie all these years took a mental toll on
her."

"So how did she do it?" Marco asked. "How
did she actually administer the poison?"

It was a good question and one the police
had asked Beth, too.

"Turns out that Beth had been planning this
for some time and was just waiting for the right day. She found out
Lacey's salon schedule right from the source. Then she picked a day
when she knew Lacey would be here tanning and the Baseball Wives
would be on set. Beth actually deliberately loosened wires around
Kendra's car battery the night before, so that she'd be late to the
set. Beth made a big deal of pointing out that she was missing. So,
while everyone was looking for Kendra, Beth slipped away to
Fernando's."

"Where she slipped in the back door and
added the lethal dose of amphetamines to the tanning solution in
Lacey's booth," Marco finished for me, then did a shudder. "I'm
never tanning again."

"That makes two of us," I agreed. "Actually,
I heard Mom and Ralph talking this morning, and he said he's
thinking about discontinuing spray tans. Just too creepy to send
another client into that booth."

"Amen to that," Marco agreed. He paused,
moving the LED to my other hand. "I just have one question?"

"Shoot," I told him, inspecting my shiny
nails.

"If Schwimmer admitted that Ratski was
paying Lacey five-thousand a week in hush money, where was the
other five-thousand she deposited each week coming from?"

I grinned at him. "You didn't think Ratski
was the
only
person Lacey was blackmailing, now, did
you?"

"Get out!" He smacked me on my arm.

I laughed. "Okay, I'll admit, I didn't
figure that part out either."

"Who was it?" Marco asked, leaning in close.
"Kendra? Liz?"

"Actually, kind of both of them."

Marco sucked in a breath. "I've died and
gone to gossip heaven. Do tell."

"Well, it turns out Beth wasn't lying when
she said something was off about Liz's finances. But it wasn't
about
missing
money, so much as
extra
money."

Marco raised an eyebrow. "Go on."

"Ling was right about the quality of bags
Liz was selling. Liz would order bags from the designers, but then
she'd order knockoffs of the same bags from overseas. She'd sell
the knockoffs in her store, then sell the original bags to another
boutique."

"She was double dipping!"

I nodded. "That's where Kendra came in. She
admitted that she has a friend who owns a boutique in New York.
They were shipping the real designer items to her, acting as a
distributor, then selling the fakes at Liz's boutique. That's what
I'd overheard Kendra talking about on the phone at the studio. And
that loan that Beth said she overhead Liz asking for from Kendra?
It wasn't actually a loan at all, but capital for their venture to
purchase the fake bags."

"She admitted all of this?" Marco asked.

"According to Ramirez, as soon as the police
started questioning the wives, Kendra sang like a canary."

"Talk about fodder for a great
Baseball
Wives
episode."

I nodded. "If the two of them can stay out
of jail, they'll be sweeping the ratings for sure."

* * *

You don’t want to now.

After my nails were Passion Pink and my toes
had been soaked, scrubbed, and hot stone massaged, I made a quick
stop at the
Informer
's offices to drop off my press pass and
apologize for dragging their good name through the mud. Almost
literally. There was still grass and mud stuck in the lanyard.

Then I pointed my minivan toward home. I'd
had enough of being the detective in the family, and I was looking
forward to an afternoon of just being Mrs. Mom.

I pulled my van into the driveway and got
out, listening at the door for the telltale signs of crying in
stereo. Only there was nothing but quiet. Of course it was quiet.
The kids were with Super Dad.

I stuck my key in the hole and pushed the
door open.

"I'm home," I called out.

I stood in the doorway and blinked at the
chaos in front of me.

The twins were on the floor finger painting
with chocolate pudding (Oh, God, please let that be chocolate
pudding!) on the newly cleaned rug. Livvie only had one sock on,
and Max was missing a shirt. Both of them had their hair sticking
up at odd angles, and I thought I detected a Cheerio stuck to the
side of Max's face. Toys were scattered in every direction, and
there was a loud noise coming from the laundry room.

"Jack?" I asked, stepping in a little
farther into the house, looking for Mr. Mom himself.

He emerged from the laundry room, the
sleeves of his black shirt rolled up to his elbows, arms covered in
soapsuds, the front of his jeans smeared with something yellow, and
I thought I saw a Cheerio in his hair as well.

I took a step forward, unable to suppress
the grin taking over my face. "How's everything, honey?"

Ramirez blinked at me, giving a stunned look
that quickly faded into defeat.

"You caught me. We haven't had a chance to
clean up yet. I didn't expect you to be home so quickly."

"Dana canceled lunch. Her shoot went long."
I paused, pulling the Cheerio from his hair. "Rough morning?" I
asked.

A lopsided grin tugged at one corner of his
mouth, "Babe, it's always a rough morning around here."

"Really?" I quirked an eyebrow at him. "And
here I was thinking you were Mr. Mom."

"Mr. Mom?"

"Well, every time I came back from
investigating something, you had the house immaculate, the laundry
done, the kids looking like tidy, sleeping angels. I give up. How
did you do it?"

The grin turned sheepish and Ramirez averted
his eyes. "Busted," he finally said.

"Busted?" I quirked the other eyebrow.

He threw his hands up in the air tossing
little bits of soapsuds onto the carpet. "All right. The truth is,
the first day you left us alone, I overloaded the washing machine,
I put the wrong soap in the dishwasher, Livvie swallowed a
dime—which by the way, was a
ton
of fun when it came out the
other end, and Max got a rubber eraser stuck up his nose—narrowly
avoiding a trip to the emergency room."

I blinked, trying not to laugh.

"That's when I broke down and called in
Mama," he admitted. "She and The Aunts have been here helping every
day since."

"Every day?" I asked. The sneaky little rat
had called in the big guns: Grandma.

"Okay, not every day," he conceded. "One day
she was busy. So I called your mom."

I couldn't suppress the laugh any longer.
"That's parenting cheating, and you know it!"

"Oh, yeah. I cheated big time. I'm man
enough to admit it." He grinned at me. "Babe, I don't know how you
do this every day. It's the hardest job ever."

I came in for a hug, ignoring the soapsuds.
"It is also my favorite one," I told him.

"Honestly? Mine, too," he whispered into my
hair. Then he leaned down and gave me a long, lingering kiss that
made all thoughts of kids, party planners, and murderous baseball
wives disappear.

When we came up for air, I looked over my
shoulder at the twins, who were still gleefully
finger-painting.

"Would it be wrong to call your aunts to
come watch them for just
one
more day?" I asked
suggestively.

Ramirez's face broke into a wicked grin. "If
that's wrong, I don't ever want to be right."

* * * * *

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* * * * *

Gemma Halliday is the
New York Times
and
USA Today
bestselling author of the
High Heels
Mysteries
, the
Hollywood Headlines
Mysteries,
the
Jamie Bond Mysteries,
the
Tahoe Tessie Mysteries,
as
well as several other works. Gemma's books have received numerous
awards, including a Golden Heart, two National Reader's Choice
awards, and three RITA nominations. She currently lives in the San
Francisco Bay Area with her boyfriend,
Jackson Stein
, who
writes vampire thrillers, and their three children, who are
adorably distracting on a daily basis.

To learn more about Gemma, visit her online
at
http://www.gemmahalliday.com

Connect with Gemma on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/gemmahallidayauthor

* * * * *

High Heels Mysteries
:

Spying in High
Heels

Killer in High
Heels

Undercover in
High Heels

Christmas in
High Heels
(short story)

Alibi in High
Heels

Mayhem in High
Heels

Honeymoon in
High Heels
(novella)

Sweetheart in
High Heels
(short story)

Fearless in High
Heels

Danger in High
Heels

Homicide in High
Heels

Hollywood Headlines
Mysteries
:

Hollywood
Scandals

Hollywood
Secrets

Hollywood
Confessions

Twelve’s Drummer
Dying

Jamie Bond Mysteries
:

Unbreakable
Bond

Secret
Bond

Bond
Bombshell
(short story)

Lethal
Bond

Tahoe Tessie Mysteries
:

Luck Be A
Lady

Hey Big Spender (coming soon!)

Young Adult Books
:

Deadly
Cool

Social
Suicide

Wicked Games (coming soon!)

Other Works
:

Play
Nice

Viva Las
Vegas

A
High Heels Haunting
(novella)

Watching
You
(short story)

Confessions
of a Bombshell Bandit
(short story)

of the first
Jamie Bond
Mystery

by Gemma Halliday & Jennifer
Fischetto:

"Pick one."

Two eight-by-ten glossy photos dropped onto my
desk.

I looked up. "Excuse me?"

Paul Levine, my weedy looking attorney, sighed, then
sank into the imitation leather chair opposite my desk. "You've
been running in the red for the last three months. You've got a
balloon payment on the business loan coming up, and this month you
pulled in fifty percent less revenue than last. Unless you want to
drown in your own debt, you need to fire someone." He gestured
again to the two photos. "Pick one."

I glanced down at the two pictures. A leggy brunette
and an all-American-girl blonde. I shoved them back across the
desk.

"No way."

Levine did another deep, theatrical sigh. "I had a
feeling you'd say that."

"Look, business is just a little slow."

"It's a tortoise, Jamie."

"It's been the off season."

"There's an 'on' season for infidelity?" he asked,
doing air quotes with his fingers.

"We'll take out some ads."

"Which cost money. Something, my dear, that you
don't have."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "I'll think of
something."

Levine leaned forward, the overhead lights shining
unattractively off his bald spot. "Let's face it, people just
aren't getting divorced these days. With the economy the way it is,
women would rather turn a blind eye to their husbands'
indiscretions than try to exist on half his income. It's cheaper to
stay together and pretend to be happy."