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shoes.”
    “What?”
    I slipped the crystal t-straps off, losing four inches of height instantly. “Take these. They’re sevens, and they’re designer originals. They don’t match your dress exactly,” I said, taking in her bright turquoise outfit, “but they’re better than going barefoot.”
    Betty took a shoe in one hand, turned it over, inspected all sides. “Nice,” she finally said. “Okay, I’ll trade.” She slipped her broken shoe off, along with the matching pump on the other foot, and swapped with me.
    “I have to say, I’m not used to heels this high,” she said, suddenly towering over me in my stilettos. “Between these and the suffocating unitard I’ve got on under this dress, I’ll be lucky if I can make it onto the stage.”
    I nodded. “I hear ya. The Spanx are horrible, aren’t they?”
    Betty laughed. “Oh, honey, I’m about twenty years past Spanx. I’ve got industrial grade latex holding this body in. I tell you, I’m suffocating under here.”
    I paused, staring at her. “Wait - what did you just say?’
    Betty blinked. “What? What did I say?”
    “Latex,” I repeated. And then I knew just how Peach had died.

    * * *

    “It was the latex suits she made,” I told Dana three hours later as we rode in Ricky’s limo to the post-awards party.
    It had been all I could do to contain my theory to myself as I watched one star after another thank everyone they’d ever met from their agent to their third grade music teacher all through the show. Never had an awards show crawled by so slowly. But by the time I finally met up with Dana again in the lobby, I was sure I knew exactly what had happened that morning at the Pleasure Den.
    “What about the latex suits?” Dana asked, leaning in.
    “Gage said Peach was creating an original line of latex wear. Well, suppose she was making something new that day, something that wasn’t quite finished, and, when she went to try it on, it got stuck on her. The latex is so tight and unforgiving, all it would take would be a few seconds of it covering her face and she wouldn’t be able to breathe. She’d pass out and suffocate with the latex costume on.”
    “But the police didn’t find her wearing any latex,” Dana pointed out.
    I nodded. “I know. Someone must have come in and seen her dead like that. They took the suit off and stabbed her, making it look like she’d died from stab wounds instead of suffocation.”
    “But why would anyone do that?” Ricky asked. “I mean, dead is dead. What’s the difference how it happened?”
    “None, to Peach. But it made a difference to the suit.”
    Dana raised an eyebrow at me. “The suit?”
    “Remember how Gage told us the latex was a huge seller? Chances were if someone died in one of their latex suits, it would affect business. Big time. If it got out that the suits weren’t safe, the shop was finished.”
    “So, Gage did it! Wow, how did you figure that out?”
    “Well, I had a little help,” I admitted. “I called Ramirez during the musical number and told him about the latex. He did some digging through the evidence CSU collected from the shop and found a latex suit in the trash that had Peach’s DNA all over it. It also had Gage’s fingerprints. When they confronted him with the evidence, he broke down and confessed.”
    “So he found her in the suit?”
    I nodded. “He immediately realized what it would mean for the shop, so he ditched the latex and stabbed her with a box cutter from the store room to make it look like she’d died that way.”
    Dana bit her lip. “But he didn’t really kill her. I guess the Sex Shop Murder was really just the Sex Shop Tragedy.”
    “That’s right.” I nodded. “Peach’s death was purely an accident. Everyone was right. She really was too sweet for anyone to have wanted to hurt her.”
    “Poor Peach,” Dana said, looking down at her hands. “What a way to go.”
    “And her partner. Gage?” Ricky asked. “What’s going to