Killer in High Heels

I looked up. No sympathy at all.

“I mean, it’s very important,” I said, still rummaging through my purse as I pleaded my case. “I have a waxing I’m late for. I’m not sure if you’ve ever had one, but they’re essential to preventing a mustache.”

Officer Magnum twitched his upper lip and did a little grunt.

“Oh! I mean, not that some people might not want a mustache. Mustaches can be wonderful. You for instance look stunning in one. Very hip. Right, Marco?”

Marco nodded. “Right.”

“See, on you it looks fantastic. But on a woman, well, not the same effect. Women have to wax. Take your mother, for instance. I’m sure she waxes all the time.”

He clenched his jaw and gave me a hard stare.

“Not, of course, that your mother needs to wax. I mean, I’m sure she’s not at all hairy. She’s probably a very hairless woman in fact. I mean, not totally hairless because then she’d be bald which wouldn’t be very attractive either. Which I’m sure your mother is. Attractive that is, not bald.”

Officer Magnum took off his mirrored glasses and narrowed his eyes at me. “Li-cense and reg-is-tra-tion,” he said, sharply enunciating each syllable.

“Right.” I dumped the contents of my purse onto my lap. Bingo. My license fell out and I handed it to him.

“Hairless mother?” Dana asked, poking me from behind as the officer walked back to his car with my ID.

“What?” I shrugged. “I was nervous.”

Marco just shook his head at me.

I looked down at my watch, watching the digital numbers tick by. 4:32. 4:33. “Come on, come on, come on,” I chanted. If he would just write me the dang ticket already, there was still a chance I could make it to the salon before the next appointment.

Finally Officer Magnum got out of his squad car again. He put his shades back on and made purposeful strides to the driver’s side window, one hand on his utility belt.

“Ma’am, I need you to get out of the car.”

Marco and I looked at each other. Huh?

“Why? Is something wrong?”

“Ma’am, please step out of the vehicle.” His hand hovered over his revolver.

“Look, I’m sorry for the crack about your mother. I’m sure she’s a very lovely person. Really. Just the appropriate amount of hair.”

“Ma’am, please don’t make me ask you again.”

“Maddie,” Marco whispered. “I think he’s serious. You better do it.”

I bit my lip, feeling my heart sink down to the tip of my toes as I realized I might never see the end of this upper lip dust. I slowly opened the driver’s side door and stepped out.

“Look, officer, I’m sure that whatever this is about-”

But before I could finish, Officer Magnum had my arms twisted behind my back and was clicking a pair of handcuffs on my wrists.

“Hey!”

“Hey!” Marco and Dana echoed in unison from the car.

“What’s going on here?” Dana demanded.

“Madison Springer,” the officer recited as he clicked the second cuff on my wrist. “You’re under arrest.”

“Under arrest! For speeding?” I asked, my voice going into mezzo-soprano range.

Officer Magnum spun me around to face him, his mirrored glasses reflecting the look of fear and confusion on my face.

“No. You’re under arrest,” he repeated, “for the murder of Bob Hostetler.”

Chapter Fourteen

In a place where both laying down your life savings on twenty-two black and selling your body at the rate of thirty bucks an hour are legal, you have to do something pretty bad to end up in the Clark County lockup. Which didn’t make me feel terribly comfortable around my cellmates. (My cellmates! Ugh! A phrase I could have happily gone my whole life without using.)

A homeless lady wearing a head full of dreads (and not the sexy Lenny Kravitz kind but the matted-with-gobs- of-who-knows-what kind) sat on a sparse wooden bench in the corner talking to herself. Next to her was a 200- pound black woman who looked like she’d gone three rounds with Oscar de la Hoya, and lost. If she were the one in prison, I shuddered to think what the other guy looked like. She was wearing a red pleather miniskirt and stained white bra. Nothing else. I tried not to stare as I sat down on the opposite side of the holding cell, next to a thin woman in a Motorhead T-shirt who was scratching at the imaginary bugs on her arms.

After Officer Magnum had handcuffed me and shoved me into the back of his squad car (with a “Watch your head, ma’am,” the sole response to my frantic questions of, “What the hell do you mean, murder?”), I was transported to the Clark County holding, where I was fingerprinted (and now had black smudges on my blouse next to the grass stains), photographed, then searched from head to toe by a woman who was the spitting image of Jim Belushi (talk about someone in need of a waxing). Then they’d taken my purse, cell phone and, worst of all, my shoes, citing that the heels were high enough to qualify as weapons. Instead, they gave me these little blue paper booties to stick over my feet before shuffling me off to my cell.

All in all, it qualified as the most embarrassing incident of my entire life, even winning out over the junior high school Valentine’s dance where I shared my first French kiss with Benny Winetraub. During which our braces got stuck together, resulting in a metal liplock that lasted until the principal called Benny’s orthodontist to cut us apart. On a scale of one to ten, the Benny incident ranked a nine for most embarrassing moment ever.

Being booked for murder was a thirty-five.

“Springer!” Mizz Belushi called.

“Yes!” I jumped up so quickly my itchy friend yelped.

“Let’s go.”

“Oh, thank god,” I said as she unlocked the door and led me out. “See, I told you this was all just a big mistake.”

She smirked. “Hmph. We’ll see about that.”

Then, much to my disappointment, instead of leading me back down the hall to the room where I’d abandoned my pumps, she walked me through a series of doors into a tiny room with peeling gray paint and buzzing fluorescent overhead lights. It held one long table, four metal chairs, and a huge mirror covering the length of one wall.

Uh oh. I watched Law & Order; I knew this room. This was where they shined those bright lights down on people and fed them soda after soda without letting them go to the bathroom until they finally cracked and confessed to everything.

I hesitated in the doorway.

“Don’t I get one phone call?” I asked.

Belushi snickered. “You watch too much TV.” Then she sat me down at the peeling laminate table. “You wanna soda or something?” she asked.

Gulp. See, what did I tell you? “No, thanks.”

She just shrugged, then walked out, shutting the door behind her.

I cautiously looked around the room. No bright spotlights. No video cameras in the corner. The only thing that screamed “interrogation” was the big one-way mirror. I stared at it. I admit, I was curious. Of course I’d seen these things a hundred times before on TV, but I’d never actually seen one in person. I slowly stood up and walked over to it, wondering if there was anyone watching me from the other side.

“Hello?” I whispered, doing a little wave at the reflective surface. No answer. I took a couple of steps closer, squinting to see if I could make out anything on the other side. Nothing. I put my nose right up to the glass and smushed my face into it. Still couldn’t see a thing.

Unfortunately, Belushi picked that moment to come back into the room. I jumped back from the mirror as the