The moment it was out of my mouth, I wished I could take it back. I mean, who was I to say LeBrandi didn't swallow a fistful of pills without water? Maybe she had super-slick saliva that slid those suckers straight to her stomach. Maybe she just opened her throat and shook 'em down whole. Or maybe she'd gotten up, put all the pills in her hand, walked clear down to the bathroom, and downed them a few at a time while she gulped water under the faucet.
Right.
And what about the banging? I mean, you don't usually bang like that against a wall if you're drugged up with sleeping pills. You don't do that if you're dying of natural causes, either. Well, unless maybe you're choking, but I hadn't noticed any boxes of bonbons or half-eaten sandwiches waiting to be bagged and tagged as evidence.
No, you bang against a wall like that in a struggle. In a fight.
In a murder.
And if she was murdered, well, who in the world had wanted her dead?
The obvious choice sizzled like a branding iron against my brain. I jerked back and tried to run from the idea. It had to be someone else! It had to be. I raced through some other possibilities, starting with Max. LeBrandi had Max's brooch in her sock drawer and… and that was an obvious dead end. Max didn't even know that the Honeymoon Jewels were missing until a little while ago.
Okay. Hali and Reena. Yeah! They'd been really upset with LeBrandi. But in my heart I knew—this was stretching things way too far. I mean, you don't kill someone over calling you or your mother a Jamaican Jailer.
Then it flashed through my mind that really, it could be anyone. Anyone at all! Someone could have come in through the window—no, there was no window. Okay, the door. I got up and checked the doorknob and then the jamb. No splintered wood, no stressed or pried-up metal. Whoever had come in had just walked in.
As I factored in the security system, the possibilities were coming down fast. Twelve women, plus Inga and Max, and Hali and Reena. And even though I didn't know anything about most of them, I did know a lot about one of them. Someone who was desperate enough and determined enough to do something as drastic as murdering LeBrandi.
My mother.
It was a horrible, panicky thought, but it rang so completely true. Getting the part of Jewel meant everything to my mother. It would mean she was a “real” actress, and it would mean getting away from Max—from the whole prospect of marrying Max and from the danger of being found out. For my mother to admit now that she was Lana Keyes, truck-stop waitress from Santa Martina, would kill her. Absolutely kill her.
She'd also been gone—mysteriously gone—at the exact same time I'd heard the thumping from LeBrandi's room. And when I'd mentioned the thumping, my mother had wanted me to believe that I'd imagined it.
And what a quick and easy diversion the vial was! All she had to do was throw the pills out.
Or flush them down the toilet.
And even though she'd been very upset—even though she'd looked shocked and pale and frightened by LeBrandi, dead in her bed—I was starting to get the picture that my mother was an actress.
A very good actress.
I stood there panting for air, not knowing what to do. It was a perfect setup. My mother's fingerprints, her strands of hair, fibers from her clothes—any evidence that might be used against her couldn't be used against her. They were all things that you'd expect to find there. It was her room.
And her alibi would be airtight, except for one pesky little thing.
Me.
Hali pulled me out of my train wreck of emotions. “What are you doing over there?”
I came away from the door. “N-nothing.”
“Well, what were you saying?”
I shook my head. “Never mind. It was stupid.”
But Marissa's caught on. “Wow,” she says, but then adds, “Well… she could've gone down to the bathroom. Sleeping pills don't kill you right away, do they? There'd be time.”
I try to sound confident as I say, “Yeah. I'm sure you're right,” but in my heart there's a cloud the size of Kansas moving in, and it feels heavy and dark.
And evil.
And for the first time in my life, that little part of my brain that helps me figure out what to do is quiet. Completely quiet. It's not knocking or nagging, not shaking or flagging. It's like a mute in there, arms crossed, eyes closed.
I wished with all my heart that I knew there was no way my mother would have killed LeBrandi. But I didn't know that. She'd made a new identity, complete with fake ID, phony newspaper clippings, and concocted acting credits. She'd spun herself into this person I barely knew and sure wouldn't trust.
Hali puts her fists on her hips and says, “Are you suggesting…,” then shakes her braids and mocks me with, “… foul play?”
I kind of toe the carpet with my high-tops and mumble, “Well, are they gonna … you know, check into it or something?”
“Why should they? Pills on the dresser, girl in the bed….” She rolls her eyes. “And I don't see any blood around here, do you?”
I shake my head, but what I'm thinking is, Just the way Lady Lana likes it.
“So you wanted to help? Here,” Hali says, then heaves me the giant wad of bedding off my mother's mattress. She points to the other two bundles and says to Marissa, “You get one and I'll get the other. The chute's past the stairwell at the end of the hall. In a cubby on the left.”
I followed them like a zombie down to the end of the hall. And just before we turn left, Marissa points to some double doors straight ahead and says, “What's in there?”
“His Majesty's suite. He lets me in once a week so I can clean.” Hali sneers. “The prince.”
“Lets you in?” Marissa nods at the security panel. “He's got a different code?”
“What, are you kidding? He's Max.”
The laundry chute's just a big wooden cabinet door that swings down instead of to the side. Hali pulled it open, crammed her bundle in, and away it whooshed. Marissa did the same, and when hers had disappeared she giggled and said, “Cool! Where's that go?”
“Down to the laundry room, right by the kitchen.”
“But it doesn't just plop. You can hear it slide!”
Hali gives her a weak smile. “Work here a week. The thrill will be gone.” She holds the chute open for me. “Well? That your new security blanket or what?”
I pried my arms open and dumped my bundle, and as it whooshed happily down to the laundry room, that big cloud in my heart got two shades darker.
Marissa asks Hali, “Is there, you know, any possibility of maybe getting something to eat around here?”
Hali nods her head in my direction. “You think that's what her problem is?”
Marissa shrugs. “Could be.”
“A little cup of cocoa wouldn't cut it for me, either. Come on.”
She leads us downstairs, through Little Egypt, past the dining hall, and into the kitchen, where Reena's working away at a large stainless-steel sink, rinsing plates with an overhead sprayer. When she sees Hali, she shuts off the water and tries to talk to her, but Hali just steams right past and says to us, “Let's get the wash going first, okay?”
She pushes through a white metal door, and we follow her into the laundry room, where our wads of bedding are poking out beneath the laundry chute's swinging door. Hali says, “Separate those, would you? Sheets and cases, blankets, and spreads.”
So Marissa and I pull the bundles completely out of the chute and separate them as Hali stomps around, ratcheting the dials and pulling on the water in all three washers. Then she takes a huge container of liquid soap and glub-glubs some into each machine, not even bothering to measure. “Sheets and cases in this one, spreads in this one, and blankets here.”
Marissa scoops up the blankets. “You think these'll all fit?”
Hali nods. “I know they'll fit. Just cram 'em in there.”
I tried not to think about it. I just picked up the pile of sheets and pillowcases, walked them over to the machine, and stuffed t
hem around the agitator. And I kept reminding myself that really, there was no evidence, so it was fine to wash the bedding. F-I-N-E, fine. But still, as the sheets swished back and forth beneath the growing tide of suds, I felt like an accomplice.
An accomplice to murder.
And I felt like I couldn't tell anyone about it. Not even Marissa. It was too horrible. Too unbelievable.
And too embarrassing.
I mean, how many people do you know whose mother would go and kill someone—not for love or hate or revenge or even raving mental lunacy, but so that she could play an amnesiac on a soap?
Welcome to my nightmare.
Hali clanged the lids closed and headed back to the kitchen, saying, “So, what can I get you girls? Eggs? Toast? Waffles?”
I almost said, Nothing. But then I realized that I was starving. Starving for something I wasn't going to get in Reena's kitchen—or probably in all of Hollywood.
Oatmeal.
Grams' oatmeal.
All of a sudden I missed her like I never had before. She was like her oatmeal—warm, hearty, and dependable.
My mother, on the other hand, was like some fancy, finicky soufflé—beautiful on the outside, full of nasty asparagus tips and onions on the inside. And where oatmeal can hold a spoon straight up in a hurricane, little things like drafts and clanks and bumps will collapse a soufflé into a pathetic heap of unresponsive goo.
And I was busy wondering how a person as fragile as a soufflé would go about killing someone when Marissa nudges me and says, “Sammy? What do you want?”
I just blinked at her.
“For breakfast?”
“Oh, doesn't matter.”
So Marissa says to Hali, “Anything's fine. Whatever's easy.”
“What's easy is cereal. Two bowls of that?”
I say, “Sure,” and Marissa—who's dying for waffles, toast, and eggs—says, “Uh…sure” too.
So Hali scoots around the kitchen, banging and clanging her way around her mom. And Reena's trying to talk to her with her eyes, but Hali's not making contact. Instead, she calls over from a cupboard, “You got a preference? It's mostly oat bran and whole-grain stuff like muesli. Oh, wait! There's Rice Krispies. You want those?”
Like Rice Krispies could hold a spoon straight up in a hurricane. Please.
But Marissa says, “Sure,” so Hali pulls down the box and shoos us over to a small plank table that's pushed up against the wall. We sit at each end of it while Hali clanks bowls and spoons in front of us, thumps down a gallon of milk, slides a sugar bowl across the table, and flips us some napkins. And as she's doing all this, she's moving faster and faster, and I can just see her stewing about something, getting madder and madder.
“Hali,” I whisper. “What is going on? What are you thinking about?”
She stops and looks at me and then literally seethes, “Like it would've killed the creep to spring for tuition.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” she snaps, and then stares. Just stares. Not at us. Not at what's on the table. Just kind of through everything, off into some private dimension. And when she comes back to earth, she looks at each of us, says, “That Nazi!” then flies around the kitchen, slamming drawers and cupboards until she's got her own cereal-chomping equipment. She scoots up a chair, sits down between us, and says, “Pass the Krispies.”
Take snap-crackle-pop, add scoop-shovel-slurp, and you've got what Hali did through three big bowls of Rice Krispies before she belched and started on a fourth. And just as she's sprinkling on the sugar, I look up and freeze because there in the kitchen doorway, with her hands on her hips, is Inga.
Inga the Angry Mummy.
And even though it's a big kitchen, she's filling the whole thing with big bad mummy vibes like you wouldn't believe. And there's no doubt about it—they're aimed straight at Hali.
Hali scowls at her. “What's your problem, Inga?” Inga's yellow eyes pop right open, and over from the sink, Reena gasps, “Hali!”
Inga steps into the kitchen. “My problem? It would appear my problem this morning is you.”
Hali laughs. Just throws her head back and laughs. “You got no idea how right you are.” Then suddenly she stops laughing and stands. “The help's not supposed to be eating on the job, is that it? I gotta clock in and clock out to have a snack? This whole arrangement is a joke.” She points to Reena. “She's a joke. You're a joke. Your brother's a joke. This whole place is one big stupid joke.”
Reena whispers, “Hali, please….”
“They're Nazis, Mama!”
It was like setting the Mummy's fuse. She fizzed and spattered at the mouth while her eyes got bigger and bigger beneath her bandages. And for a minute there I thought she was going to explode and plaster the room with cotton shrapnel. “Nazis? You ignorant, insolent child! How dare you!”
Reena races over to Hali, grabs both her hands, and pulls her away from the Gauze Grenade, pleading, “Hali, go. Go to the house. I'll be there in a minute.”
Hali shakes her off but then bursts into tears and charges out of the kitchen. And the door's barely swung closed when whoosh! it swings back open again.
Now, I was expecting it to be Hali, charging in for another attack, but it wasn't Hali. It was the Plaid Rabbit. Only she wasn't looking like a rabbit anymore—well, except for that nose of hers, twitching away. But she wasn't hopping around. She was shaking. “Inga! Do you know where Max is?”
Inga hadn't quite defused. “No! Why should I know where he is?”
“I've got to find him! Do you have any ideas?”
“Did you check his office?”
Twitch. “Yes.”
“Did you knock?”
“Yes.”
“His suite?”
“Yes!”
“Then I don't know—go look around!”
But Tammy doesn't leave. Instead, she looks over her shoulder, then steps completely into the kitchen, holding the door with the palms of both hands as it swings closed behind her. She leans forward and whispers, “There are two policemen and a homicide detective here, Inga. They want to talk to Max.”
“A homicide detective? What for?”
I held my breath and waited for the words I knew were coming next.
“LeBrandi didn't overdose on sleeping pills … LeBrandi was murdered!”
NINE
Now, you would think that when someone comes into a room and makes the announcement that a person's been murdered, this would be a time for people to faint or gasp or cry out in disbelief. But nothing like that happened. Tammy's hands stayed plastered to the door, Reena clutched a dish towel, squeezing one end like she was milking a cow, and Inga just stood there, frozen like a museum piece. The only sound was the quiet swish-swish of the washing machines next door.
Marissa nudges me across the table and whispers, “You were right!”
I couldn't even look at her. I just stared into my cereal bowl and felt myself shrivel up inside.
Finally Inga says, “Surely there's been a mistake!”
Tammy shakes her head. “She was suffocated.”
“Come, now! How can they tell that? And they've only had her a couple of hours!”
“Look, Inga. They took a blood test, all right? And it came back negative for drugs, all right? Other than that, I don't know! Go ask them yourself, would you? I can't find Max, so you go talk to them!”
Inga says, “Take me to them,” and off they go.
When they're gone, Reena takes a deep breath, hangs up the dish towel, and leaves, too.
Marissa says, “Why would someone have killed her? Who would've killed her?”
I just keep looking down at my soggy cereal, wishing with all my heart that I didn't know.
Marissa drops her voice and raises her eyebrows. “Oh, this is creepy. This is just too creepy! It happened, like, right next to us. I mean, if there wasn't a wall there, we'd have seen the whole thing! God, who do you think did it? Do you think it's someone who lives
here?” She raps me on the head with her knuckles. “Sammy? Knock, knock! Are you in there?”
I mumble, “Yeah. I'm right here.”
She stares at me. “What is wrong with you?”
I sit up a bit and say, “Nothing. I'm fine. How am I supposed to know who killed LeBrandi?”
“But …” She looks at me and shakes her head. “Don't you even care?”
“Well, sure. Okay. So who do you think killed LeBrandi?”
“I don't know, but I'll bet it has something to do with that brooch.”
“The brooch?”
“What if that stone is a ruby? My mom's got a necklace that my dad gave her—it's a single ruby set in a hanger, and it's nowhere near the size of the stone in that brooch, but still, it was real expensive.” She leans in a little and drops her voice. “And what was LeBrandi doing with the brooch if Opal stole it in the first place?”
I blinked at her. I'd been so wrapped up in my mother that I hadn't even thought about it, but she was right. Maybe LeBrandi had stolen the brooch from Opal. And maybe Opal knew it and was so mad about it that she'd come back for revenge.
But how'd she know to go to my mother's room? That didn't make sense at all. But maybe they had talked. Maybe she did know! Maybe my mother hadn't killed LeBrandi after all!
It was like Marissa had pulled a rip cord to my brain. I could feel it sputter to life, smoking and choking my old thoughts out, revving up until it was running clean and strong and fast. “Okay. Opal stole the jewels out of Max's drawer—LeBrandi saw them or found out about them somehow, and managed to lift the brooch off Opal before she moved out. Or maybe she blackmailed her for it. You know, I won't rat on you if you cut me in?”
Marissa nods. “Okay, but then what?”
“Well, the jewels are hot. You can't wear them, so they're only valuable if you can find someone who's willing to buy them off you.”
We look at each other and at the same time we whisper, “Seventy-seven curio!”
Marissa says, “Maybe it's a street address?”
I count on my fingers, 7-7-C-U-R-I-O. “A phone number?”
Marissa points to a telephone mounted on the wall near a fire extinguisher. “You want to give it a try?”
Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy Page 7
