Kasey Michaels: High Heels and Homicide

Saint Just volunteered to have us remain here, safely out of sight in Manhattan, but Maggie looked at him with such daggers that he quickly rescinded that offer. Besides, we leave for England directly after the parental visit, invited guests of the film company that will be turning the very first Saint Just Mystery into a movie made just to fit television screens. I wonder who will portray me. I hope he isn't pudgy and balding. Then again, I am pudgy and balding .

My Henry will be well taken care of by Mrs. McBedie, who has quite a fondness for mice, thank goodness, although she will insist upon thinking of him as a hamster, a species she considers a more domesticated animal. I am happy to report, also, that I discovered the most lovely new home for Henry, with lots and lots of tunnels for him to run through, and a wheel for him to run on, and a… but I digress. It's a failing.

Bernie will meet us there — in England, dear Journal — along with Tabby, who says an agent's place is at her author's side. Saint Just calls that a tax-deductible hum meant to give Tabby a vacation overseas, but he smiles almost indulgently when he says it. Saint Just, you see, is greatly enamoured of something called loopholes in the American tax codes .

Socks, my very good friend who has taught me all about the Duties of a Doorman, will remain here in Manhattan, to celebrate this uniquely American holiday with his mother, and to toil nightly in the off-off-Broadway play he auditioned for after his paperback-romance cover-model debut proved less than auspicious. I shall miss him, and I have told him he is free to borrow my motorized scooter any time he wishes.

Lieutenant Steve Wendell, also sadly, will not be a part

HIGH HEELS AND HOMICIDE

of our entourage, and I will admit to you, dear Journal, if not to Saint Just, the trepidation I feel at his absence.

For, as you already know, dear Journal, we often seem to have need of a representative of the constabulary.

Respectfully,

Maggie Kelly sat at the desk in the corner of the large living room of her Manhattan condo. Sort of sat. She actually was rather supported by her desk, her headset phone jammed down over her uncombed hair, her forehead pressed to the desktop, her arms hanging on either side of the chair. She looked rather like one of those collapsible dolls, one whose button had been pushed.

She spoke into the headset. «Okay, okay. Once more, with feeling. M, as in moronic . A, as in asinine . R, as in… as in— ridiculousl Margaret. It's Margaret . My name is Margaret Kelly, not Missy. How difficult can this be? You'd think my name was Schwarzenegger. What? No! Not Missy Schwarzenegger! Margaret Kelly! Oh, God—what? No ! Don't put me on hold. I've already been on hold three times, and I already know all the words to «It's a Small World.» Don't put me on—oh, hell…»

«Talking to your knees, my dear? There are some, myself not included, of course, who might consider that a tad eccentric. But, then, I know you.»

Maggie pushed herself upright to glare at Alexandre Blake, the Viscount Saint Just of her best-selling historical mystery series and currently known as Alex Blakely, her supposed distant relative and model for her fictional creation. He lived across the hall now, but had never seemed to be able to understand the concept of knocking first before barging in on her.

She liked having him around, now that she'd gotten her mind around the fact that, heck, he was here. But there were times when she wished he was more of an in and out—no, that might sound a little too sexual—a ' tess-constant presence in her life. Okay, that was better. Not great, but better.

«Why are you always barging in here when I'm at my worst?» she asked him, looking down, to see that she'd buttoned her pajama top incorrectly. Nothing new there… including the faded pajama top that had been her favorite since college, or maybe high school. Junior year. She wore it now over ancient sweatpants, the knees and seat of the pajama bottoms having worn through a few years ago.

«Feeling snarly this morning, my dear?» Alex asked, one well-sculpted eyebrow raised Clint Eastwood style. (She'd thought she'd recreated Jim Carrey's expressive eyebrows, but in the flesh, they were definitely Clint's.) The young Clint of the spaghetti westerns. Young and yummy Clint. And she ought to know, because hidden deep in one of the desk drawers was her physical description of the Viscount Saint Just.

There was a lot of the young Clint Eastwood in the Viscount Saint Just—the lean face, the slashes in the cheeks, the long, sleekly muscular frame—along with snippets of younger versions of Sean Connery (voice in those Bond films), Paul Newman (bluer-than-blue eyes), Peter O'Toole (nose), and Val Kilmer (mouth—oh, dear God, yes—Kilmer's mouth in Tombstone : «I'm your huckleberry.»).

Maggie had set out to create the Perfect Regency Era Hero, and she really did do good work, if she did say so herself.

Except for the arrogant part. The self-assured part, and maybe the brilliant-cutting-wit part. She might have gone a little heavy on those, at least she thought so once her fictional Perfect Hero had morphed into a living twenty-first-century man with all his early-nineteenth-century superior male sensibilities intact.

There were moments lately when she wondered if she could mentally incorporate a few more bits of Hugh Grant into the character of Saint Just, who already had a sexy shock of black hair, and then sit back and watch Alex to see if he'd change. Maybe a little something around the eyes—a small air of vulnerability, maybe?

It was a provocative thought, especially as she'd watched Grant in Love Actually late one Saturday night. Just she and her two cats and her burnt microwave popcorn with extra butter. She led such an exciting social life.

But that was beside the point, as was her on-again, off-again romantic interest in the gorgeous, perfect hero standing in front of her, which was currently very, very off .

«I have a good reason to be snarly,» Maggie said, adjusting the headset, the better to muffle the sound of some twit telling her that she could save time by contacting the company on the Internet. «Tried that,» she mumbled.

Alex made a small, circling motion with his right index finger. «Forgive the question, but is there someone on the other end of that?»

«There have been a lot of someones on the other end of the phone in the past…» she began, glancing down at her watch, to see that it was noon, «… the past forty-five minutes. And if I could talk to someone who has English as their first language, I would probably spend the first five minutes just sobbing my thanks into the phone. They call this a help line?» She turned in her chair, began shuffling through the mess on her desk. «Where's my I Love Lou Dobbs button?»

She felt Alex's hands on her shoulders as he slowly spun her around to face him. «Maggie. Concentrate. Tell me what you're doing… attempting to do.»

She swallowed. Nodded. Swallowed again. Pretended not to notice that someone inside the earpiece was now asking her, musically, if she knew the way to San Jose. «Okay. I'm on the phone with the airline. I get flyer miles every time I charge something with my credit card, and I want to cash them in for our flight. It might have been easier if I'd asked one of the agents for a kidney.»

«You didn't do that, did you, Maggie? That's crass.»

She rolled her eyes. «No, I didn't do that, and I know it's crass, as well as a cheap joke. But I'm going nuts here, Alex. I don't understand what they're saying, they don't understand what I'm saying—and I swear to God, nobody understands all the rules. Look,» she said, grabbing a card from her desk. «See this? This is a coupon for a free companion ticket. I buy one, you fly free. I buy two, two fly free. I understand this. This is fairly basic, right?»