Homicide in High Heels by Gemma Halliday

I could
see out of the mesh hole that was Marilyn's mouth.
    "Uh, wow, look at the time. I gotta go," I
heard Dana say on the other side of the door.
    "What's your rush, doll?"
    It was now or never. I opened the door and
quickly wobbled my way into the players' locker room, bouncing off
the doorframe a little as I did. Marilyn's head must've weighed
fifty pounds, easy.
    "Hey, watch it," Ratski shouted as I tipped
toward him. I noticed his right eye still bore a purple-ish ring
around, courtesy of my husband.
    "Sorry," I mumbled. Then I grabbed Dana by
the arm. "Come on, you're late for practice," I told her, hoping
she played along.
    "Practice?" Dana asked
    "You know, for the celebrity halftime
show."
    Dana blinked at me. "Uh…seventh inning
stretch?"
    "Yeah that's what I meant," I said, feeling
Ratski's eyes on my back. "Come on, let's go." I shoved her ahead
of me, almost knocking her over with my giant head as I waddled
toward the door.
    We made it into the hallway without
incident, and several wrong turns and collisions with the corridor
walls later, we finally made our way to a door marked "West Parking
Lot Exit." I ditched the costume in an empty office, and we made a
break for it back into the warm sunshine.
    Unfortunately as I blinked against the
natural light, I realized we'd lost our way in the underground
maze.
    "Crap," I said scanning the vast empty
parking lot on the west side of the stadium.
    "I don't see our car," Dana stated.
    "Yeah, that would be in the east lot."
     
    * * *
     
    After a half-mile hike back to the car, both
Dana and I were sweating and panting. We both agreed that our first
order of business was cold drinks. We drove to the nearest Jamba
Juice—me ordering a Peach Pleasure with frozen yogurt on the side,
and Dana ordering a fresh squeezed orange juice with a wheatgrass
shot on the side.
    "You were so right about Ratski, Mads," Dana
told me sipping her OJ across from me in the blessed air
conditioning of the Jamba bar. "He is a total pig. Please tell me
you got something on him?"
    I shook my head. "Sorry. Nothing in his
locker screamed drug use. The only thing I found was a love letter
from his wife which was interesting but hardly a smoking gun.
    Dana scrunched up her nose. "Poor Beth. Here
she's writing him love letters, and he's asking me out."
    I raised an eyebrow. "He asked you out?"
    "Oh yeah." She nodded. "He slipped me his
card and said his wife has a book club meeting tonight, so if I met
him for dinner he'd make me his 'MVP' all night long." Dana made a
gagging motion with her index finger then shook off invisible
Ratski cooties.
    I bit my lip, that teeny tiny little light
bulb going off in the back of my head again. "What would I have to
do to persuade you to keep that date?"
    Dana shot me a horrified look. "Maddie, what
would I tell Ricky?"
    Ricky Montgomery was Dana's fiancé, who,
like her, was an actor. Only Ricky had already achieved movie star
status and was currently shooting an action movie starring as a
Marvel comic book character. And the only thing hotter than Ricky's
shirtless pecs on a thirty-foot tall movie screen was his jealous
temper where Dana was concerned.
    I shook my head. "I'm not saying you should date date him. But it could be a great way to pump him for
information about whether or not he's using."
    Dana sighed. "I guess. But are we sure that
Ratski is even the one who killed Lacey? I mean, if these
performance enhancers are so easy to get, it could be any one of
the players?"
    I slurped at my Jamba, sucking extra hard to
get a large piece of peach up the straw. "Okay, let's play devil's
advocate for a moment and say that Lacey was killed by someone
else."
    "Someone she was blackmailing over
something," Dana added before pounding back her wheatgrass shot.
Amazingly she didn't even shudder.
    "How about this," I started. "What if Lacey
found out one of the other players was using PEDs and threatened to
go public with that info."
    Dana nodded. "That would be