High Heels and Holidays (7 page)

Chapter Five

“G
in,” Maggie said, discarding a six as she laid down the rest of her cards with a flourish. “That's twelve million dollars you owe me, Sterling. You don't want to play anymore, do you?”

“No, I suppose not. But we could do something else, couldn't we?”

What was going on here?
Something
was going on here, that was for sure. She decided to see if she was right. “I could grab my jacket and we could go to the park, see if your friends are there. You could stay with them, let them pelt you with snowballs, and I could go do some shopping. I don't have a single gift bought yet, you know. How does that sound?”

Sterling's complexion turned white, then rosy red. And the guy wondered why he couldn't win at cards? “Oh. Oh, no, Maggie. I shouldn't think you'd want to go shopping
alone
. We could go together, I suppose? Although it's fairly cold outside, and it's so nice and warm in here. We should stay here. Yes, I think we should stay here. It's better here. Alex would want to know where we are, don't you think?”

“Where did you say Alex is, Sterling?” Maggie asked as she stood up, stretched, then walked over to admire her tree, hoping she sounded only politely interested, and not like she wished Sterling would go find Alex, and then the two of them could go somewhere. Like to the moon. Right after one of them told her what the hell was going on.

Alex had “joined” her for breakfast, which meant that he'd come strolling in with the morning newspaper and a suggestion that she consider bacon and scrambled eggs as a fine start to another lovely crisp, sunny December day.

The pans were still soaking in the sink, damn him, and she'd given in to the urge to try the homemade plum jam Socks's mother had sent over a month ago and she'd been pretending hadn't been sitting in the cabinet. Stop smoking, gain ten pounds, lose two, eat plum jam, and gain back three. It was just the way the world worked....

She'd kicked Alex out at noon, after a morning spent discussing the debacle that had been their trip to England, and within moments Sterling was at the door, volunteering to help her with the rest of her Christmas decorations. Not one to turn down a volunteer, they'd spent the next hour setting out Maggie's favorite pieces, winding fairy lights around two of her fake potted plants, and then dragging all of the empty boxes to the freight elevator and back down to the basement storage area. After that, Sterling pulled a deck of cards from his pocket and sat down at the game table in one corner of the room, as if digging in for the duration—whatever the duration was.

When Sterling didn't answer her question, Maggie finished adjusting one of the crystal bells on the Christmas tree and turned to look at him. He was wearing the Santa hat again, and admiring his reflection in the mirror. “You look very nice, very festive. Getting in the spirit, are you?”

Sterling frowned, pulling off the hat. “I don't think so, no,” he told her, dropping back onto one of the couches. His sigh was deep, and heartfelt. “It's all this crass commercialism, you understand.”

Biting back a grin, Maggie decided it was time to pull up a couch of her own and try to take a peek inside Sterling's mind. “Crass commercialism? Where did you hear that, Sterling?”

He spread his hands. “Everywhere. It's all about gifts, and decorations, and more gifts and . . . well, and more gifts. It's all very depressing. Almost enough to put a person into a sad decline.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Maggie said, rubbing her chin. “What would you like Christmas to be about, Sterling?”

He shrugged, looking at her over his gold-rimmed glasses. “I'm not sure. I . . . well, I just don't think your Santa Claus helpers should be selling watches and purses and such on street corners, do you?”

“You mean they should be giving them away instead?”

Sterling's expression went unnaturally stern. “No, I don't think I mean that at all, Maggie. But should Santa Claus be
selling
things?”

“I'm sorry, sweetheart,” she said, reaching for her nicotine inhaler. She was pretty sure she'd been a nicer person when she smoked. “There are other Santas, you know, Sterling. Santas who collect money for, uh, for those less fortunate.”

“Tell me,” Sterling said, leaning forward on the couch, and Maggie found herself giving him a thumbnail sketch of holiday charities and holiday Santas, all of which served to return a smile to Sterling's unusually sad face.

“Okay,” she then said, clapping her hands together as she got to her feet. “Now what do you say we give the tree one last inspection, and then I think I'll go take a shower?”

Sterling got to his feet and walked over to stand beside Maggie as the two of them looked the tree up and down.

Maggie reached out after a few moments and bent one of the smaller branches on the artificial tree so that the tassel on one of the ornaments could hang straight. “That's better.”

“It all looks very nice, even if it isn't real,” Sterling agreed. “You really do like Christmas, don't you, Maggie? And all the fol-da-ral.”

“Fol-da-ral? Wow, Sterling, that's a good one. But, yes, I do like it. I adore Christmas.”

“Even when you get it wrong,” Sterling said, and then quickly clapped his hands to his mouth.

“Excuse me?” Maggie rather glowered at Sterling as he backed away from her. “And why does that sound like you opened your mouth, Sterling, but Alex's voice came out?”

“Oh, no. No, certainly not. Surely not.”

Maggie made come-to-me-speak-to-me gestures with her hands, and Sterling backed up another step. “What did he say? He had to have said something. God knows he's always got to say something.”

“Well,” Sterling said, forced to stand still now that he'd inadvertently cornered himself between Maggie and the back of the nearest couch, “you just made a simple mistake, that's all. Nothing important, really. Oh, you know what, Maggie? I think I forgot to feed Henry. Poor thing, running on that wheel of his all day. He must be famished. I really must be going now, and surely Saint Just will be back at any time. It's already past three, isn't it? So that's all right.”

“Right, it's past three. And we'll get to that next, Sterling—why it's all right, whatever
it
is, because Alex will be home soon. But for the moment, let's get back to me getting it wrong. Getting what wrong, Sterling? Where? How?”

“It's . . . um . . . not that it wasn't an honest mistake. . . and you were much less experienced at the time and . . . why, anyone could make the mistake . . .”

Maggie reached into her pocket, took out a fresh nicotine cartridge, and held both it and the nicotine inhaler up in front of Sterling. She opened the empty inhaler and dangled the cartridge over it, just as if she was going to drop a bullet into a gun. “I've been good. I've been sucking air, Sterling, for three days. Don't make me use this.”

“You had a Christmas tree in a book years before Christmas trees ever came to England,” Sterling told her quickly, then took a quick breath. “There, I've said it. Now put that away, Maggie.”

Maggie slipped the two plastic pieces and the cartridge back into her jeans pockets. “I what? No, that's impossible. I research everything. Sure, I make a few mistakes, who doesn't? But Christmas trees? Everybody has Christmas trees.”

“We didn't,” Sterling told her, obviously feeling more confident now that Maggie had holstered her nicotine inhaler. “Yule logs. Holly berries. Crape myrtle. But not trees. Yet you mention one, in some detail, actually, in one of your Alicia Tate Evans books. Saint Just pointed it out to me.”

“I did? Oh, wait. Yeah, I remember now,” Maggie said, nodding. “Alex read my Alicia Tate Evans books?”

“No, I don't believe so. At least not for several years.”

Several years? Maggie felt a shiver ice-skate down her spine as she fumbled in her pocket for all the pieces of her addiction. Alex hadn't even been here several years ago. As of about seven years ago, he hadn't even been invented, the Saint Just mysteries hadn't been invented. “Run that one by me again, please, Sterling.”

Sterling looked as comfortable as a balloon in a room full of pin cushions. There was nowhere to go where he wouldn't end up in trouble. “Um, he hasn't read them at all?”

“Not at all,” Maggie repeated, fitting the cylinder into the holder. “But he knows about them.”

“Yes. Precisely. Not me, of course. I came later. The finishing touch, as it were, that made the rest of it possible. Well, I should go feed Henry.”

“Oh, stay a while, please,” Maggie told him quietly, and Sterling, who had been eyeing the door, slouched against the back of the couch. “I want to hear all of it. Now.”

“But there's really nothing to say, Maggie. You know Saint Just lived inside your head until he decided to come out.”

“No, I don't know that, Sterling. It's what I've been told, but I don't
know
it. As a matter of fact, I try very hard not to think about it.”

“You really shouldn't, if it makes your head hurt, or any of that. I hadn't lived there quite so long—in your head, that is—and Saint Just was already firmly in residence when I got there. I once asked him how long he'd been with you, and he said he'd been there since the beginning.”

Now here was something she hadn't heard before. “From the first day I began writing? Is that what you mean? What he means? That he's been the glimmer of an idea in my head for as long as I've been writing?”

“No, from the beginning, Maggie. I think, now that I consider the thing, he mentioned the word . . . um . . . puberty.”

“Oh, God,” Maggie said, staggering over to her desk chair and collapsing into it. He'd been with her that long? She'd been measuring men against him ever since she'd first looked at Jimmy Gilchrist and decided maybe boys weren't all dopes? Except they'd all turned out to be dopes, hadn't they? Dopes, or duds. All these years, she'd never found one, not a single one, who could measure up to, live up to . . . to the imaginary man living in her head? Maggie blinked, trying not to faint. “He's been with me that long?”

Sterling was on firmer ground here, it seemed. “Oh, yes. Evolving, you understand. And then, at last, you named him, which he appreciated very much by the way, for it's just the name he would have chosen for himself.”

“
Just
the name, huh? The Viscount Saint Just,” Maggie heard herself say over the ringing in her ears. “All along? All these years? I'd been . . .
building
him?”

“Your perfect hero, yes. I am just delighted that you chose to make me believable as well, or else I shouldn't be here, should I, and where would Henry be without me?”

“Hungry,” Maggie muttered, waving Sterling toward the door. She needed to be alone. She needed to think about this. “Wait! There was something else, wasn't there? Oh, right, I remember. Alex was here this morning, you showed up the moment he left, and now you're concerned as to when he'll be back, because you want to be gone. I'm being babysat, Sterling, aren't I?”

“I'm afraid I don't understand the term,” Sterling said, now backpedaling toward the door. “Truly, I don't.”

“Oh, yes, truly you do,” Maggie said, already calling up her search engine on the computer. “But never mind. I'll figure out the why of it on my own.”

Sterling escaped, and Maggie typed a few words into the search engine, and then clicked on one of the articles that appeared. Christmas trees were introduced to England from Germany around 1841. Maggie's books, those written as Alicia Tate Evans and those written as Cleo Dooley, all dealt with the Regency, 1811–1820. She'd written about a Christmas tree in one of her Alicia Tate Evans books, and nobody had caught it. Not her, not the copy editor. None of her half dozen fans of those older books. Nobody.

“Well, now, that's embarrassing,” Maggie said, cupping her chin in her hand as she called up her Solitaire program. There was no sense getting involved in anything else, not with Alex bound to show up for babysitting duty any moment.

Where could she take them? Some place that had the potential to drive him crazy would be nice, some place that would bore him out of his mind up until the moment she melted into a crowd and watched as he went nuts looking for her . . . which would serve him right for growing in her mind.

“Since puberty? Jeez . . .”

Chapter Six

S
aint Just's meeting with Steve Wendell had been, at the very least, interesting. At the very most, it had been unsettling, not that he had been about to inform the good lieutenant of that particular reaction to hearing the NYPD's conclusion as to the details of the passing of one Francis Oakes.

Even hearing what he'd heard, Saint Just had been reluctant to share his own knowledge with the man, as it would seem to serve no clear-cut point. What Steve had given him was another small piece of a puzzle that, unfortunately, now had only two or three pieces, not even enough to make all four corners, let alone a reasonable border he could then fill in as his investigation proceeded.

Which, to Saint Just, along with the firmly held conviction that he was more than capable of both protecting Maggie and solving any case with which he might be presented, was enough to tuck away any thought of mentioning the package that had been delivered in Maggie's absence.

After all, if he, the Viscount Saint Just, could not as yet prove whether or not there had been a crime committed, what hope did the New York City Police Department have? Less than none, Saint Just had decided.

So he'd thanked Steve for the information and then asked him about his evening with the unknown Christine, and then gently chided the man when he'd told him they'd had a “great” night. They'd gone to Brooklyn. On the subway. To go bowling.

There'd never been any hope for the man if Steve had been serious in his pursuit of Maggie Kelly. None. Saint Just knew he could picture Maggie in Brooklyn. He could even picture her bowling. He could not, however, picture Maggie Kelly voluntarily on a subway at night, traveling to Brooklyn to bowl, even if her date did carry a pistol.

“Christine has her own ball and shoes,” Steve had told Saint Just, obviously pleased to impart what had to be a part of the woman's attraction.

“As do you, I'm sure,” Saint Just had responded smoothly. “A match fashioned in heaven, Wendell, you lucky devil.” He'd then reminded Steve that Maggie was not to see him or even hear from him for at least another few days—part of that “letting her down slowly” idea he'd planted in the man's head—and the two men had parted ways.

Whether Steve Wendell had believed everything Saint Just told him, swallowed it all whole, or whether he was playing the simpleton again remained to be seen. It was difficult to know with the lieutenant.

Then again, the man had used the never to be repeated opportunity of a first date and first impression to take the woman of his choice—egad—bowling.

“I have an idea,” Maggie said now, interrupting Saint Just's reverie as he sat at her computer, catching up on a few of the news blogs he enjoyed. “Let's go bowling.”

He swiveled slowly on the chair and lifted his quizzing glass to his eye as he looked at her. “Surely you jest,” he said, seeing the unholy gleam in her eyes. “Ah, heaven be praised, you do.” He let the quizzing glass drop to the end of its black grosgrain ribbon. “I must say, for a moment there, Maggie, you had me worried about you. Wearing shoes worn by hundreds before you? I think not. Perhaps if we were to equip ourselves with all of the necessary paraphernalia, but surely not until then. Whatever possessed you that you even mentioned such an unpalatable idea?”

Maggie shrugged. “I don't know. I'm not sure I even like bowling, to tell you the truth. I think Steve mentioned it when he called a while ago. He went bowling last night with some of his buddies from the station.”

Saint Just dangled the quizzing glass between his fingers for a few moments before sliding the thing into the breast pocket of his sports jacket. Once again, he thought, he'd underestimated the good lieutenant. Or overestimated him. “Indeed. I had been wondering about the man's absence. Silly me, I'd assumed he was fully occupied pursuing dangerous criminals, and too busy to visit us.”

“Visit
me
,” Maggie corrected, “and he is busy. We barely had time to talk when he finally returned my call.”

“Ah,” Saint Just said, getting to his feet. “You phoned him.”
And he lied to you
, he added silently.
How wonderful. The man is digging his own grave, and all I did was to innocently hand him the shovel.

Maggie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I
phoned
him. What of it? And why are you back here anyway? Because if you think I'm feeding you again, you're crazy.”

“On the contrary, my dear, it is my intention that Sterling and I should feed you. May I suggest Bellini's?”

“You can, but I don't want to go there,” she told him, doing a quite good imitation of Mary, Mary, quite contrary. “I want to go to the
Fêtes de Noël
. But you don't have to go, I can go alone.”

“No, no, quite the contrary, my dear. I'm sure Sterling and I would be delighted to join you. Precisely what do the citizens of this fair city consider a
Fêtes de Noël
?”

“It's a . . . it's a fête. They set it up in Bryant Park—that's on Forty-second Street, behind the library. It's really nifty. Shops. Lots of them. Terrific striped tents everywhere, and a huge Christmas tree. All sorts of good stuff. I can wander in those shops for hours.
Hours
, Alex. I'm sure we can grab something to eat somewhere on the way to the park. Hot dogs? Yeah, hot dogs would be great. I love hot dogs in the cold, don't you? Oh, right, I forgot—you don't. And, hey, one of those fat pretzels for Sterling? I like the smell of roasting chestnuts, but I don't eat them. The custom is English, I believe—even during Regency times, unlike Christmas trees, which weren't introduced to England until about 1841. Then we'll shop till we drop and you can help me carry it all home. Yeah, it'll be so great to have you guys to carry my packages for me. I'll go tell Sterling. It'll be a hoot.”

“A hoot, of course. Sterling would enjoy a hoot, I'm sure. And your enthusiasm seems even to have caught me up in the notion of just such an adventure. Indeed, I can scarcely contain myself.”

“Okay, okay, so it isn't Covent Garden at the height of the social season. You're still going, darn it.”

“Ready when you are, my dear.” Saint Just politely got to his feet, and then watched her as she fairly stomped from the room, leaving the door open to the hallway as she knocked on the door across the hall. He heard her call Sterling's name—cheerful little dickens that she was—and then disappear inside the other condo.

At which time Saint Just lifted the quizzing glass out of his pocket once more and began swinging it back and forth as he cudgeled his brain for a reason behind Maggie's too-chipper-by-half demeanor. She'd certainly gotten the bit between her teeth once she'd begun talking about this fête, hadn't she? Talking nineteen to the dozen, just as if he might interrupt her to suggest some alternate entertainment.
Nifty? A hoot
? And that business about the history of Christmas trees?

Oh, yes, either she had slipped a gear and begun babbling—which he sincerely doubted—or the woman most definitely was up to something.

Or knew something.

Steve Wendell could have spilled the soup. That certainly had to be one consideration.

Except that Maggie didn't know about the rat she'd received, or the note. Having Wendell tell her about the circumstances surrounding Francis Oakes's demise may have upset her, but there was no way she could possibly connect Oakes's death with herself.

Besides, if she did know that he had asked Wendell for information she would not be smiling at him, be acting in the least cheerful, or even coy. She would have greeted him at the door with her Irish up and accusations that would have been, at the bottom of it, rather well justified.

But she hadn't. She'd been determinedly smiling ever since he'd come back from his quick meeting with Wendell, never once asking him why he'd planted himself in her condo, with what had to appear to be no intention of ever vacating it again.

Ergo, Saint Just decided, the woman knew nothing. Well, almost nothing. She knew that he and Sterling were suddenly sticking to her like a mustard plaster. Sterling, bless him, was not known for his powers of discretion or his ability to hold tight to a secret, even if all Sterling knew was that Saint Just wanted Maggie watched.

Which meant, Saint Just concluded, that Maggie was about to punish him and then, being Maggie, find some way to slip from his grasp while they were at this Bryant Park she'd mentioned. Mentioned? No. Thought about. Considered. Decided upon as the best place for both her punishment and her revenge.

The woman was a menace.

How he adored her!

“We're back, and we've got company. She was just coming off the elevator,” Maggie said, skipping back into the living room, too cheerful by half. “Did I forget to tell you that Bernie said she'd love to go with us?”

“Wrong, twinkle-toes,” Bernice Toland-James corrected, brushing at the sleeve of her full-length sable coat (the one she had two years previously protected from a splash of red paint by pulling out her stun gun and doing a little
proactive protesting
of her own). “I said that if I have no other alternative, I might as well go, satisfy the inner masochist in me or something. And since the alternative was to have dinner with an overzealous agent
and
pick up the tab—and do both while sober—I suppose a visit to Bryant Park is doable.” She pulled her stun gun from a pocket of the sable. “At least I'm dressed for it.”

“Bernie, there are people, very serious people, who object to other people wearing fur,” Maggie said. She was one of them, but at the same time she objected to fur, she also objected to destroying private property in order to make one's point.

“I know that, Mags,” Bernie said, sliding the stun gun back into her pocket. “But as I tell everyone, it was already dead when I found it.”

“Right. Fifth Avenue roadkill sable. Happens all the time.”

Sterling appeared in the doorway, already buttoned up to his chin in his brown corduroy jacket, his beanie hat on his head. “Saint Just, your cane,” he said, handing over the gold-topped sword cane and accepting his friend's thanks.

“You'll need a topcoat, Alex,” Bernie told him. “It's cold as hell out there.”

“But, Bernie,” Sterling questioned, frowning. “Hell would be hot, correct? Oh, wait, that's one of those things you people say, but don't mean the way you say them, isn't it?”

“He's very literal, Bernie, remember? Don't confuse him,” Maggie whispered as she stepped past her friend, slipping her arms into a navy peacoat she'd had for five years and still loved dearly. “Damn,” she said, looking down at the front of the jacket as she began to button it. “Napoleon slept on it again. Look at this—it's covered in hair, and I don't have a single damn idea what I did with my lint brush. Wellington probably ate it.”

“Too bad,” Bernie told her. “That much white fur could get you your own can of red paint.”

“Funny,” Maggie groused, pulling off the coat. “Now I have to find something else. I'll be right back.”

“That will take a while,” Bernie told Saint Just, who was just slipping into the black cashmere topcoat Sterling had fetched for him, along with a pair of black leather gloves and an approximately eight-foot-long, thin white silk scarf Saint Just wrapped twice around his throat. “She only owns one winter coat. I know how much money she makes. I sign the checks. She still thinks it's all going to disappear one day and she'll be back to tomato soup and peanut butter sandwiches. Plus, that old coat is warm and comfortable, or so she tells me—not to mention that she has all the fashion sense of a twelve-year-old. Make the woman buy a new coat, Alex. A
grown-up
coat. Please!”

“But not fur,” Saint Just said, pulling on his gloves. “I'll see to it. Bernice? Have you heard anything else about the sad demise of that Oakes fellow?”

“Me? No, nothing. What did you learn? Is there a story there, one I can put out as I reissue his books?”

“I'm afraid I really know very little,” Saint Just told her. “Although I have been giving the matter considerable thought. He committed suicide, surely, or else we would have read more about the death in the newspapers, correct? But what prompted the man to take his own life? It's an intriguing question, don't you think?”

“No, not really, at least not enough to warrant reissuing his books. I'm sorry for him, but he's dead. Maybe he just found out he had some terrible disease. Maybe he was being evicted. Maybe he got a depressing fan letter,” she said, shrugging. “Hell, who am I kidding? The man hadn't written a word in years, and what he did write was a long time ago. Who'd be sending him fan mail, good or bad?”

“Okay, I'm ready.”

Saint Just had been about to ask Bernice a question concerning fan letters, but it went completely out of his head when he turned to see Maggie reenter the living room.

“My, aren't we . . . original,” he drawled as Maggie stomped her feet into a pair of high brown leather boots.

And the boots were fine. So were the dark brown slacks she'd tucked inside those boots.

It was from there on up that things became a tad . . . dicey.

“What?” Maggie said, spreading her arms as wide as the several layers of clothing she wore would allow. “It's a sweatshirt.”

“It's several sweatshirts,” Bernie corrected, circling her friend. “Which one has the hoodie? I can't tell. But you might want to reconsider wearing the white one on top. You look like a Michelin tire commercial.”