High Heels and Holidays

Chapter Eight

Tagging along with Bernie to the Hamptons for the weekend had proved an excellent way to keep tabs on Maggie, keep her within his sight at all times, but did little to improve her mood, as she had barely spoken to Saint Just, obstinately staying in her room to read J.P. Boxer's manuscript (which she adamantly refused to talk about), and to do some research on the Web about what she'd informed him had become known as the War of 1812 between England and America.

She'd been thinking, or so she'd said, of having Saint Just become involved in exposing some sort of scandal and murder having to do with the Crown's dealings with American Indians, and promises made and broken, and—well, she'd been rather vague, but Saint Just was sure she'd abandon the idea by the time they returned to Manhattan, so he didn't press her. Only if she came up with a title would he begin to pay attention, for then he would know she was serious.

There simply were times when a gentleman does not push, and this, definitely, was one of them. Besides, she hadn't been hounding him for the reason he'd been keeping her so close, and since he didn't have an answer for her—at least one he wished to give her—Saint Just was content to spend his own weekend reading books by Michael Connelly, and in deep admiration of the man's clever creation, Harry Bosch. Rough around the edges, Harry was, but definitely intriguing. Although the man seemed to have little luck in his love life, which may, Saint Just was loathe to think, have given the two fictional men something in common, if only that both their creators sometimes delighted in making their creations suffer.

They returned to the city Monday at noon, traipsing into the lobby of the condo building while Socks went off to park Maggie's car in the garage a block away. Paul, who usually worked the night shift on the door, was behind the desk in the lobby, having stopped by to ask Socks to cover for him on Saturday night so he might attend a Christmas party with his girlfriend.

Saint Just and the others knew this because Paul told them so, even though no one had asked why he was there and could not have cared less, if truth be told. Paul was not Socks, not by a long chalk, and had definitely been hiding behind the door when the good Lord had been handing out common sense. In fact, he'd just three weeks previously opened the door to Mrs. Tannenbaum's condo for a "delivery man," and then assisted the miscreant in carrying out the woman's television set and stereo equipment.

Yes, Paul was a treasure.

"Got a package here for you, Ms. Kelly," he said as an afterthought, just as the elevator doors opened.

"Oh, thanks, Paul, I—"

"I'll take that," Saint Just said, neatly relieving the doorman of the package just as Maggie was about to grab it.

"Hey," Maggie said, lunging for the package, "give me that. It's mine. Does it have your name on it? No-o-o. It's got my name on it—I can see my name from here. And Paul said so. Give."

"I am not Wellington, Maggie," Saint Just said, taking the package over to one of the couches in the foyer and placing it on the table in front of him, already pulling the tab on the large brown postal bag.

"True. Him I can lock in my bedroom if he doesn't—never mind, I don't want to go there. And cut it out. Don't open that, Alex. I know what it is and—oh, cute. Really cute. Happy now?"

Saint Just returned the clear plastic bag containing something pink and lacy into the padded envelope and handed both to Maggie, feeling somewhat silly, but not about to let her know that. "So sorry. I ordered something in your name, as you already had an account, but this clearly isn't personalized stationery, is it?"

"No, it clearly isn't," Maggie told him, grabbing the package. "It's my free buy-two-get-one-free bra, damn you. And who said you could use my Internet accounts, huh? God. I'm going upstairs. Do yourself a favor and don't follow me!"

"That was unfortunate, wasn't it?" Sterling commented, speaking to Henry, who was happily running on the small wheel in the travel cage Sterling held up at eye level. "But we'll forget we witnessed anything, Henry, as a favor to Saint Just, who must be horribly embarrassed."

Saint Just looked at his friend. "I overreacted, I agree," he admitted. "This can't go on, Sterling, even if the esteemed NYPD is satisfied with a pronouncement of suicide. I'm going to have to tell Maggie about the dead rats."

Sterling quickly lowered Henry's cage to his side. "Please, not in front of the children and all of that. But I agree, Saint Just. As you still harbor some reservations after speaking with the good lieutenant again, Maggie definitely must be told of your concerns, and of the R-A-T. I must say, I was rather disappointed in your decision to keep everything so very close to your own breast."

"I made a mistake, Sterling, and I freely admit to that mistake. Not with Wendell, but with Maggie," Saint Just said, amazed to hear himself so humble. "At the same time, I cannot rule out the possibility that I am overreacting, seeing bogeymen where there are none. She and I are ... we're at the moment tussling with something rather disconcerting for both of us, and I didn't want to complicate matters, at least not until I'd done some digging, come up with some clues. Harry Bosch often labors under similar circumstances, you know, and he has always managed to persevere. So shall I."

"But you haven't, have you? Come up with clues, that is."

"No, Sterling, I can truthfully say I have not, especially after delaying my investigation by haring off to the Hamptons in the mistaken notion that I was doing the right thing. Tell you what I'll do, my friend. I'll give myself one more day to arrive at some answers on my own, and then I will tell Maggie everything I have learned."

"She'll forgive you," Sterling told him rather kindly.

Saint Just raised one well-defined eyebrow. Pity? From Sterling? Pity? From anyone? He, the intrepid, indomitable, unflappable Viscount Saint Just was being looked upon as an object of pity? Well, that tore it, didn't it? Perhaps Maggie was right to keep his fictional self flitting from flower to flower, rather than having him tumble into love. Love seemed to take the edge off a man, make him vulnerable, make him ... fallible.

"Sterling?" Saint Just asked after a moment. "Would you mind terribly carrying up my bag as well as yours? I do believe I would like to take a walk."

Sterling was still looking at him as if he might offer his shoulder, friend to friend. "Of course, Saint Just. Go, walk, clear away the cobwebs and all of that. Henry and I will watch over Maggie for you."

How very sweet, how very lowering. "Thank you, Sterling, you're a good friend," Saint Just said, inclining his head in a slight bow, then heading out onto the street, already knowing his destination. He walked confidently, his armor that of his well-tailored clothes, his black cashmere sports coat ample covering on such a crisp, sunny day, his red sweater vest and the whimsical sprig of holly he'd tucked into his buttonhole his tributes to the Christmas season. He also carried with him the gold-tipped sword cane he tucked under his arm, his outfit completed by the jaunty tilt of the wide-brimmed, low-crowned black hat Maggie teased him about but nevertheless admitted looked exactly right on his head.

Yes, he knew precisely where he was headed, and he'd probably put off the meeting much too long as it was.

He was off to see Dr. Robert Lewis Chalfont, known to Maggie and others by the unfortunate appellation of Dr. Bob. Maggie had been seeing the psychiatrist for approximately five years, at first to help rid her of her nicotine addiction—the man long had been a sad failure at that—and then to help her work through her unfortunate problem with her family, which Saint Just could have told him was a lost cause, as the problem did not lie with Maggie, but with that family.

Still, Dr. Chalfont had encouraged Maggie to realize there were things she could not change so it was better to learn what he called coping skills. As Maggie's coping skill with her brother, during their recent Thanksgiving visit to New Jersey, had consisted of telling Tate Kelly "where to get off," Saint Just was fairly sure all Maggie needed was confidence in her own strengths.

She had no idea how very wonderful she was, how very talented, or how very competent. Hadn't that been the reason he'd given Sterling for their appearance on this plane: to help Maggie reach her full potential?

It had only taken one good look at her, one touch of her hand on his, to realize that he'd been lying to Sterling, and to himself. He simply wanted to be in Maggie's life. A part of that life ...

Saint Just tipped his hat to a pair of middle-aged ladies who seemed to appreciate his kindness. Yes, he was a kind man. When he wanted to be. Kind enough to wish to thank Maggie for creating him.

Or, as he'd heard someone say with typical American forthrightness, he'd wanted to jump her bones.

But laudable or not, he was here now, and evolving, as he persisted in telling Maggie, and he'd progressed far beyond the rather crude notion of simply seducing her. Far beyond.

Saint Just stepped inside the large office building, removed his hat, and made his way to the fourth floor. Once there, he entered a small, unimaginatively decorated anteroom empty of other inhabitants, and used the head of his cane to knock on a door marked Private.

He had no worries that Dr. Chalfont would not be there, and immediately available to him. He was, after all, a fictional hero, and fictional heroes rarely had to come back a second time, try again. Now Maggie? She would have been disappointed if she'd hoped to see Chalfont at this precise time, which was rather all right, as Maggie had necessarily grown accustomed if not resigned to frustration, as most people do. Heroes, however, were entirely another matter; their lives ran much more smoothly.

The rather fleshy man who opened the door a few seconds later wore an air of distraction and a woefully unfortunate choice of brown tweed jacket and blue slacks. "Yes? I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't take walk-in patients."

"I am Saint Just," Saint Just said, giving his name its French inflection—Saint Juste —then brushing past the man and into the good doctor's elaborate inner sanctum, which was decorated, in his opinion, in consequence fausse.

Dr. Chalfont closed the door. "Are you now?" he asked in an annoyingly professional tone, walking across the deep burgundy carpet and lowering his bulk into a large leather chair. "Margaret's Saint Just?" he asked, using the American inflection. "Indeed."

"Yes. Indeed," Saint Just drawled, leisurely strolling about the office, employing the tip of his cane to align the top magazine with the others in a rather tall stack on one of the tables. "I thought it was time we two met." He turned, struck a pose of the sort he would hold himself to when gracing his hostess's Regency drawing room, and rather looked down his nose at the psychiatrist. "Met, sir, and had ourselves a small chat. To be perfectly honest, if descending into amazingly applicable cant, I've come to pick your brain if I might."

"Indeed?" Chalfont repeated. "Cant? Is that the same as slang, Saint Just? English for slang? That is, you're actually Alexander Blakely, Margaret's distant English cousin, correct? Not really Saint Just."

"Is that what you think?" Saint Just countered silkily, his smile deliberately nonthreatening. He had been aware of Dr. Chalfont during the time he'd resided solely in Maggie's head, but he hadn't actually been out in the world until he'd poofed, as Maggie called it, out of her head and into that world. Curiosity had prompted him to read rather extensively on this thing called psychoanalysis, and answering a question with a question had been a part of what he'd learned. And how nice to turn the tables on the good doctor. "Please, tell me about that, how you came to that conclusion, that is. Take your time."

"You're an amusing man." Dr. Chalfont adjusted his glasses on his nose. "I think, Mr. Blakely, that you may possibly have allowed yourself to rather, well, merge your personality with that of Maggie's famous Viscount Saint Just, yes? Interesting. Really. And not as uncommon as you might think." He swiveled to face his desk and began paging through his appointment book. "I happen to have an opening as of this morning—a full hour free every Thursday afternoon. That should work nicely for us, Mr. Saint Just. Let me just pencil you in?"

"I don't believe it will be necessary for us to meet again, thank you," Saint Just said, seating himself in the chair beside the large desk and placing his cane against the corner. "I am here on a hypothetical."

Dr. Chalfont smiled knowingly, and then quickly covered his mouth as he faked a cough. "I see. You're here for a friend?"

"If that makes you more comfortable, certainly—I'm here on behalf of a friend," Saint Just said, fingering a brass paperweight in the shape of a fat goldfish. "This hypothetical, if you please? Would you consider, for instance, a person who sends a vaguely threatening letter to be a real danger to, as you say, my friend?"

Dr. Chalfont punched at the bridge of his glasses once more. "What sort of threatening letter? You'll have to elaborate."

"Certainly. A badly composed poem containing a vague threat, tucked up with the badly decomposing body of a rat. Would you consider that to be a warning of worse to come, or the onetime communication from, shall we say, a disgruntled admirer, so that this friend should not overreact to the incident, as some might unfortunately do? In your educated opinion."

"Margaret? Someone's sent something like that to Margaret?"

"Tut-tut. Doctor, please, we're dealing in a hypothetical, remember?"

The good doctor leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. "If you insist. Very well, Alex—may I call you Alex, or do you insist on Saint Just?"

"I am amenable either way. Now, please, come, come—should my hypothetical be concerned, or be comforted with the notion that barking dogs rarely bite?"

"That's difficult to say. Nearly impossible, I'm afraid. Think of recent history. John Lennon, for example. There, it was the silent dog that barked, wasn't it? But there are other stalkers, other aberrations, most obviously the sort that targets an estranged spouse or girlfriend—for the sake of argument, we'll assume this person is male. Then we can see escalating violence, increased threats or avowals of undying love and, finally, the intent to actually kill. But that's not limited to spurned admirers, or to those who might feel betrayed or angered by the person they're stalking. There are many variations of what is basically the same theme—you did me wrong, and now you're going to pay for it. If I could—is it perhaps possible for you to show me a copy of this poem?"

"There's no need, as I have committed it to memory." Saint Just recited the few lines, then inclined his head to the doctor, indicating that it was once again his turn to speak, hopefully constructively.

Dr. Chalfont scribbled the lines on a yellow tablet. "You're right, that is fairly terrible. Perhaps to call special attention to the veiled threat at the end? And the rat? Perhaps a sort of ... visual aid? Something disgusting enough to bring the point home, that point being that Mar—that is, that your hypothetical is on a par with a rat. Hmmm, rat. There are so many connotations, you know."

"Yes, I've delved into that myself," Saint Just said. "To rat one out—to inform on someone, betray someone's trust, or desert someone. Rats carry disease, there's that, and the association with plague, destruction, death. There is something else. The note was signed, but I can't make head nor tails of the why of calling oneself Nevus."

"A mole? This person calls himself a mole?"

"A congenital pigmented area of the skin, yes. A birthmark. It is puzzling. But the primary question remains—how real is the potential for danger, for an escalation of, shall we say—violence?"

"Truthfully? I'd be concerned," Dr. Chalfont told him, folding his hands on top of the yellow pad. "Mostly, I'd be concerned that a gentleman who has been known to be rather flamboyant—several recent incidents come to mind, all of them recorded for television news, as I recall—might think to take it upon himself to handle something like this on his own, without calling in the authorities. I'd be concerned that a man who seems to associate himself rather closely with a fictional hero might begin to believe himself a hero. That wouldn't be the case, would it? For Margaret's sake, I sincerely hope not."

Saint Just smiled and got to his feet. "Doctor, it has been a pleasure, and I thank you. But now I must be going, as I have another visit to make yet this afternoon. Good day."

"Wait!" The doctor got quickly to his feet. "Does she know?"

Saint Just picked up his cane, tucked it under his arm. "She will, I can promise you that. I was already fairly confident of my own conclusions, but do appreciate your professional input. Again, sir, good day."

"And Thursday?"

"Completely unnecessary. I know who I am, Doctor. That's never been the problem. It is who or what we may become that often is outside our control. The trick, I believe, is to know that, and even to embrace that uncertainty."

"Yes, but—"

Saint Just closed the door behind him and headed for the street once more, using his cane to hail a cab, as he was anxious to move on to his second stop, the apartment of one recently deceased Francis Oakes.

It was a long cab ride to Oakes's place of residence on West 133rd Street, a depressingly brown building that housed the man's attic-level apartment. The total lack of a doorman or any sort of security, however, made it a simple matter for Saint Just to climb the several flights and employ a credit card to pop the flimsy lock, and within moments he was inside the apartment.

He checked the door once he was inside, and saw that Francis Oakes had not one but four different security locks on the inside of the door. Once inside, with the bolts turned, the man would have been totally secure, right up until the moment he was convinced to open the door to the person who might, possibly, have been his killer.

At least Saint Just's search wouldn't take too long, as the apartment consisted of one reasonably sized room, with a most pitiful excuse for a bathroom tucked in under the eaves. Either Oakes had not been a very tall man, or he had showered on his knees.

There wasn't much in the way of furniture, but there were many, many books; stacked on the floor, piled up on the windowsill, shelved in makeshift bookcases. With his latex gloves in place and using the tip of his cane as he poked and probed, Saint Just was careful to protect himself from the fingerprint dust that seemed to be on every surface. At least someone had thought to make some sort of an investigation of the man's demise—and that might prove helpful at some point.

He found Oakes's four titles, all in paperbacks with particularly lurid covers, sitting by themselves on one shelf: An Axman Cometh, Killing All The Way, Twice Upon A Crime, and King Konked. Saint Just was not impressed. He did, however, remove the books from the shelf, planning to take them with him, for what reason he did not yet know.

It was only after he'd finished with the rest of the room that Saint Just stood at the scarred oak table in the very center of it and looked up at the open beamed, peaked ceiling. And there it was, what was left of the thick rope Oakes had used to hang himself; the medical examiner must have simply sliced through the rope to cut down the body, then left the remainder knotted to the thick beam.

Saint Just mentally reviewed Oakes's actions. Scrape marks on the bare wood floor, and a small rug caught and out of place as it fairly hugged one of the four legs, told him that Oakes had moved the table from its usual place in front of the window in order to use it to climb up and secure the rope.

After that, it would be a simple matter of fastening the noose about his neck and then stepping off the edge of the desk. Crude, but effective.

And all because someone had sent the man a dead rat and some bad poetry?

At least that's what Wendell had told him had been the conclusion of the investigators sent to survey the scene.

The reaction had seemed overly dramatic to something so distasteful but basically no more than malicious. However, now, looking at the man's life as it was represented by this apartment, perhaps the nudge had been all that had been needed to send the man over the edge ... literally.

In any case, Oakes's death would not in itself ring any alarm bells in the heads of the detectives of the NYPD, of that Saint Just was certain. There was nothing Saint Just could see that would make even him suspect murder rather than suicide.

It was the coincidence of it, that Maggie had also received a dead rat in the mail, which still worried him.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

Saint Just turned about to see an unprepossessing young man who looked in need of both a good meal and a good night's sleep—and most definitely a good tailor—standing just inside the room, his hand still on the doorknob. "My goodness, people actually say things like that? You sound very much like some poor soul straight out of an inferior script, my friend. But, to answer your questions, I am a totally harmless fellow, here only to satisfy my curiosity. And you?"

"Jeremy Bickel. Your curiosity about what? Did you know Francis, Mr.—?"

Once again, Saint Just danced around giving the young man his name. "Alas, Jeremy, I'm sorry to say that I was denied that pleasure. I am, however, a friend of one of his acquaintances, a fellow author."

"So?"

Saint Just smiled. "This friend was upset to hear of Mr. Oakes's untimely demise, leaving me with the sad chore of clarifying a few things, a few questions this friend had about the man." He employed a flourish of his cane to indicate his surroundings. "Mr. Oakes was not having an easy time of it, was he?"

Jeremy shook his head. "Francis ... Francis was unhappy, yes. He wanted so badly to be a success."

"Discouraged, was he?"

"You could say that. He wasn't a lot of laughs, you know?"

Saint Just returned to his inspection of the heavy oak table. "Was he a physically imposing gentleman? This is a heavy table."

"Francis? No. He was ... well, maybe this will help. Two years ago some airhead coed from CUNY came up to him on the street, asking for his autograph. Francis was so excited, figuring she'd read his books, you know? But when he handed back the paper she'd asked him to sign, she threw it on the ground, saying he was nobody. You see, she'd thought he was Woody Allen."

"Yes, I do see, thank you. You've given me a good picture of both the man and his circumstances," Saint Just said, conjuring a mental picture of the slightly-built director. Moving this large table would have presented a challenge for a man built like Francis Oakes, but not to a determined man. "That had to have been discouraging."

"You could say it was the straw that broke the poor guy's back. He never left this apartment after that. Two years. And then I ... well, it's no secret, I told the cops. I ... broke up with him three weeks ago. I still brought him food, did his errands when he needed me to, but I told him, I couldn't go on the way he wanted anymore—never going out anywhere, never doing anything ..."

"Giving the man motive to end his existence, yes," Saint Just said, noting a clearer area of the table, where the crime investigation team must have dusted for prints around something the approximate shape of a shoe box. "The delivery of the dead rat and the threatening poem? That must have been the topper for him, yes? Or at least what the police would have concluded?"

Jeremy nodded, wiping at a tear on his cheek. "I killed him. Well, I didn't kill him, but you know what I mean. I'm sick about it. I'm just here to pack up his stuff, you know, maybe sell it to help pay expenses? Not that there's much."

Saint Just wasn't giving Jeremy his full attention, as something the young man had said earlier was insistently nudging at his brain. "You said Francis had not left the apartment in two years?"

"About that long, yeah. Agoraphobia. He had it bad."

"And you did all of his shopping for him, is that correct?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Saint Just aimed his cane at the high ceiling. "That rope is new. Am I to conclude that you purchased it for him?"

Jeremy looked up at the rope, blinking rapidly. "No. Why would I buy him a rope? What would Francis do with a—oh, God." He looked at Saint Just, his thin face going pale. "He didn't go out. Not Francis. I knew him, and he wouldn't go out on the street. And he'd never go into a store. No, not Francis. It ... it was like he was paralyzed, you know, somewhere inside his mind? He got as far as the landing once or twice, but then he'd start to shake, feel sick, and I'd have to bring him back in here and have him breathe in a paper bag, poor guy. No, sir, he didn't go out, he didn't buy that rope. He didn't have a credit card, he didn't order anything on-line—nothing. I did it all. I didn't buy him a rope. And I never saw a rope here before. Never."

It was time for Saint Just to deflect the young man away from what, to him, was the most logical conclusion. "Perhaps he had someone else purchase it for him?"

But, alas, young Jeremy didn't bite, as he was already much too busy chewing on quite another theory. "Who? He didn't know anybody. Well, he knew people, students he wrote papers for—but that's it. They said he killed himself, sir. Because of the rat, you know, and the threat. I broke it off with him, the rat showed up, and Francis just couldn't take it anymore, you know? He lost it, you know? That's what they told me. But he didn't kill himself, did he?"

"Now, now, Jeremy, we mustn't leap to conclusions."

"The hell we can't! And don't tell me he had another boyfriend, because that's not true. Somebody killed Francis. He didn't kill himself because of me, or that package somebody sent him. It was murder. We could ... we could have a serial killer, right here at CUNY. Christ! I gotta go."

"Jeremy, wait—" Saint Just shook his head, then picked up the paperbacks and headed for the door. "The good left –tenant is not going to be best pleased with me, I believe," he said to the room at large. He had not introduced himself to young Jeremy by name, but even a cursory description of a tall, well-dressed Englishman carrying a cane would not overtax Steve Wendell's powers of deduction.

Saint Just reached into his pocket and pulled out his gold watch. Five o'clock. It takes time for rumors to find their way about town, more time for them to come to the attention of the constabulary or, as is inevitable, the media. Still, at best, he had less than twenty-four hours before Maggie would know everything.

Not a man afraid of females, Saint Just had to admit to himself that he only began to feel slightly better once he'd decided to stop and pick up some New York strip steaks for his Foreman grill (the new, improved, Next Grilleration G-5, in candy apple red). He'd treat her to steaks, salad, crusty Italian bread, one of his most choice wines from his growing collection—and then a small confession.

It seemed a workable plan ...