Gemma Halliday - Alibi In High Heels

I raised an eyebrow. Compared to what? A neon sign? "Where's he taking you?" I asked instead, propping myself up on my elbows.

"Some fancy schmancy place on the Champs Elysees. He says they got the best authentic French cuisine in Paris. Though, I told him there's no way I'm eating a snail. I got them suckers in my garden back home. They are not food."

I had to agree with that one.

"So can you help?" Mom asked.

I looked down at Mrs. R's outfit again, suddenly wishing I had a pair of sunglasses handy. "How much time have you got?"

"I'm meeting him at nine."

I looked at the digital clock by my bedside. 8:40.

"Then we better get moving."

I followed Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt through the adjoining door back to their room, filling them both in on my latest discoveries about Felix as I instructed Mrs. R to go wash off the make-up (over my mother's protests).

"Oh, we have news, too!" Mom said, sitting up straight on the bed as I rummaged in the closet for something a little less "subtle" to wear. Unfortunately, this was Mrs. Rosenblatt we were talking about and it was slim pickings.

"You'll never guess what Pierre told us last night. Apparently, after they found Felix and the necklace in Gisella's room, the police searched the place from top to bottom. They found three other pieces of jewelry stuffed into pockets."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

The theory of Gisella the jewel thief was becoming more plausible. "You had said that four designers besides Jean Luc reported missing pieces. Did they find the fourth?"

Mom shrugged. "Not as far as Pierre knew."

Mrs. R piped up from the bathroom. "I'll bet she passed 'em along to her fence already. They're probably circulating the black market right now."

While Mrs. Rosenblatt tended toward overly dramatic language, I couldn't help thinking she might be right. This time.

"If so, that means her partner has to be someone in Paris. Gisella wouldn't have had time to fly them somewhere else without Jean Luc noticing she was gone," I said, flipping through muumuu after muumuu.

"Which brings us back to her accomplice being someone she knew here," Mom said, even as I started mentally going down my suspect list. I had to admit, her agent still seemed the most likely candidate.

"How about this one?" I held up a red and orange printed muumuu that could almost pass for tropical chic as Mrs. Rosenblatt came out of the bathroom, her cheeks a freshly scrubbed pink.

She made a face. "You sure that's better than the green one?"

I nodded. "I've never been so sure of anything in my life."

I paired the dress with a red leather belt that gave Mrs. R's Pillsbury Doughboy figure some semblance of a waist, and a red cardigan borrowed from Mom's side of the closet. Granted, Mrs. R had about a hundred pounds and several inches on Mom, so the sweater didn't exactly close in front, but it was stretchy enough that she could fit her arms into it and it broke up the floral some. After trading in Mrs. R's palm trees for a pair of tasteful ruby dew drops from my own wardrobe and applying a thin swipe of dusty beige shadow over her eyes (just to the brow bone), she looked pretty darn good, even if I did say so myself. Except for the Birkenstocks on her feet. There wasn't much I could do about those. Luckily, as long as she didn't lift up her skirt and bust out with the Cancan, the muumuu was almost long enough to cover them up.

"Well, what do we think?" she asked, twirling in front of the full-length closet mirror.

Mom clapped her hands, giving her sign of approval. "It's lovely. Maddie, you are a lifesaver."

"If this doesn't get me laid tonight, I don't know what will."

I cringed. Big time TMI.

I left Mom and Mrs. R putting the finishing touches on her hair – hairdresser I was not, she was so on her own there – and dragged my tired self back to my room. Where I stripped off my clothes, threw on my ducky jammies, and crawled into bed, visions of jewel thieves, murderers, and unfortunately, post-menopausal women in muumuus getting lucky, all sloshing together in my brain as I fell into a restless sleep.

Somewhere around midnight I awoke from a dream of Ramirez's granite features invading my sleep. At two a.m. it was Felix's lips that jostled me awake. Three-thirty had pink and green palm tress dancing through my subconscious. And by the time I dreamed of myself, on my knees, pleading with Ramirez not to walk away from me again, I woke up to find it was five-fifteen and I didn't have the energy to dream anymore.

Instead, I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed and into a long hot shower. I did a blow dry and hairspray thing, adding an extra layer of mascara afterward in hopes of disguising the sleepless night bagging under my eyes. I did a swipe of Raspberry Perfection along my lips and threw on a pair of jeans, a stretchy black knit top and a low black wedge heeled sandal. A wedge didn't really count as a heel, right? It was more of a platform.

I ordered a pot of coffee and a brioche from room service and made myself wait until 8:30 before hopping into a cab and making my way the few block to the Hotel de Crillon, where I promptly took the elevator to the fourth floor and knocked on Donata's door. I paused, listening for any sign of movement from the other side. None. I waited a beat, then knocked again. Still nothing.

I looked down the hall and spied a maid's cart three doors down. I hobbled over to the open door of the room, where a young, dark haired woman in a pink starched uniform stretched to its limit over her ample derriere was making the bed. I cleared my throat and knocked on the doorframe to get her attention.

"Excuse me," I called.

She looked up and said something in French.

"I'm sorry, I don't speak French," I said, doing an apologetic, palms up thing.

The woman nodded, then smiled and responded in heavily accented English. "I said there are extra soaps on the cart. Take all you like."

"Oh, thanks. But actually I was wondering if I could ask you a question about room 405."

She scrunched up her nose, shaking a pillowcase out. "I suppose."

"Have you cleaned that room yet this morning?" I asked, wondering if maybe Donata was an early riser.

She shook her head. "I did not need to. No one had slept in it last night."

"Why not?"

She shrugged. "I believe the woman checked out."

I mentally banged my head against the wall. "Checked out? Do you know when?"

"Yesterday sometime."

"I don't suppose you happen to know where she went?"

She shook her head, grabbing a clean set of sheets from her cart. "No. Sorry."

Rats.

I thanked the maid, ducking back out into the hallway.

Okay, time to try Plan B.

I pulled my cell out of my purse and dialed the Plaza's main number as I rode the elevator back down to the lobby. I asked for Angelica's room and, after a moment, the woman at the switchboard put me through and I heard the number ringing. Four rings into it, Angelica's sleepy voice answered.

"Bon jour?"

"Hi, Angelica, it's Maddie."

There was a pause on the other end as if the name didn't register this early in the morning. "Maddie?'

"The shoe designer for Jean Luc's show."

"Oh. Right. The killer."

I rolled my eyes. "Listen, I was wondering if you knew where Donata went? She checked out of her hotel room yesterday."

I heard Angelica yawn on the other end. "She flew back to Milan. She said she had some urgent business to take care of and that she'd be back in time for the show. Why?"

"I just wanted to ask her something about Gisella," I hedged. "Speaking of which, why didn't you tell me that you and Gisella shared an agent?"

She was quiet for a moment. "Look, I know it looks like I was jealous of Gisella," she said. "But I wasn't. I mean, yeah she and I were always competing, but I thrived on it. I didn't mind. It kept me on my toes, you know?" she said, throwing another Americanism out.