"You know, sarcasm isn't flattering on you, Maddie," Tina told me.
One of my fingers might have extended itself her way, but she'd already turned her back to me, walking to the door.
She slowly opened it and peeked her head out.
Still dark.
Dana and I followed her out of the room, shutting the light off behind us, once again relying on our phones to light our way.
"Let's go," I suggested, my eyes darting down the empty hallway. "There's nothing to see here."
"Sure," Tina agreed. Then she took a step not toward the exit but toward the room next door. "But as long as we're here, let's check out Dog's dressing room real quick."
"Oh, good idea," Dana said.
I sighed. "Fine." No one would have listened to my protests anyway.
Tina pushed inside, and the two of us followed, flipping on the light as we shut the door behind us again.
While Aunty Mae's room was fastidiously tidy, Doggy Z's was the exact opposite. Clothes, papers, headphones, charging cords, and empty dishes littered every surface. The air smelled faintly of fast food and marijuana. Walls were covered with posters and album covers of Dog during his heyday. A sofa in black leather sat along one wall, and a variety of leather belts hung from his makeup table. I didn't want to think about what they might have been used for.
Dana wrinkled her nose. "It smells disgusting in here."
Food wrappers, half-used ketchup packets, old receipts, and empty Invigorate bottles covered the surface of the makeup table.
"You think the police have been through here already?" Dana asked me.
"Probably." I glanced around. "But I doubt they made this mess."
"Wow, what a slob," Tina said, and I could envision an unflattering headline forming in her mind. She picked up an ashtray and took a small sniff. "That's not Marlboros he was smoking."
"Yeah, I figured as much," I said, trying not to inhale the skunky scent too deeply.
Dana walked over to the closet. "This guy had a flannel shirt in every color of the rainbow," she noted.
"Yeah, he used to match his plaids to his bagpipe tartans," Tina said.
Dana and I stared at her curiously.
Tina shrugged. "What? I can't be a Doggy Z fan?"
"You are into bagpipe rap?" I asked. "The kind that degrades women and glorifies casual sex?"
Tina put her hands on her hips. "Yes, I like bagpipe rap. And how about, it's a thought-provoking parody of the gender stereotypes and celebrates a woman's sexual freedom?"
"Wow, you can spin anything," Dana said.
"Thank you."
"Again, not a compliment," I pointed out.
"Just take the desk, will you?" Tina ordered, pointing to a duplicate of the one in Mae's dressing room. Only this was painted black. And had little metal studs glued to the legs.
I did, gingerly moving fast food wrappers and beer cans out of the way to uncover the top of it. I pulled open the top drawer of the desk and was met with dozens of items all thrown randomly together—gum wrappers, pens, lighters, guitar picks, plastic spoons, and even a couple of bagpipe mouthpieces. I was about to investigate further when something moved in the corner of the drawer. If I had to guess, it was of the eight-legged variety. I quickly slammed it shut.
"You okay?" Dana asked from the closet.
I nodded, my heart thudding. "Spider."
"Gross," she agreed.
"He's not much of a housekeeper, huh?" Tina asked, using a Sharpie to move a couple of dirty socks from the sofa.
"Don't they have assistants for that kind of stuff?" I asked Dana as I gingerly pulled open another drawer. Luckily nothing stared back at me from it.
"Sometimes," Dana said, nodding. "Or janitorial, but I know some sets only do that every few days."
"This is just from a few days?" Tina asked.
"That's going in your column, isn't it?" Dana asked, sounding like she wished she hadn't said anything.
"Are you kidding?" Tina replied. "Slayed slob of sexy song lyrics."
I cringed at the reaching alliterations as I turned my attention to the papers in the second drawer. Bills, scripts, some hastily scrawled notes on Post-its, and a pile of fan letters. I picked one of the letters up. It was written on floral stationery with a little daisy in the top left corner.
From my heart to yours, in an instant I knew. We were meant to be one, where once there were two.
"What's that?" Tina asked, gesturing to the note in my hands.
"Looks like some sort of fan letter," I said. "Listen to this: An old flame never dies. It lives on in my heart. Like love from above, never shall it depart."
"Whoa," Dana said. "That's not a fan letter. That's a love letter."
"Who's it from?" Tina asked, coming up behind me to read over my shoulder.
I shook my head. "No idea." I turned it over. "Not signed."
"A secret admirer?" Dana asked.
Tina clapped her hands. "Or maybe a secret affair!"
"He had four ex-wives and countless girlfriends," I said. "I'm not sure he had any secrets left."
"Maybe there's an envelope around here that goes with it," Dana suggested.
"Good idea." Tina started to riffle through the rest of the papers in Dog's desk. "Maybe we could find some sort of address book or contact list and—"
She froze mid thought.
In fact, we all froze as a sound echoed outside the door, coming from the previously quiet set.
"What was that?" Dana whispered.
I shook my head. "I dunno," I whispered back, my heart suddenly thudding in my chest again as I strained to listen.
Tina quickly shut off the lights, bathing us all in blackness.
We all stared at the door. A stream of light appeared between the bottom of it and the floor. Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Growing louder.
Heading straight toward us.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"Hide!" I hissed.
Dana jumped into the closet, sliding behind the flannel shirts. I dove onto the floor behind the sofa, landing facedown on Dog's multicolored shag rug, which sent the aroma of stale weed and sour beer right up my nose. I choked back a gag reflux. There had to be a better hiding place. I scrambled back to my feet, and Dana reached an arm out and pulled me into the closet with her. We crouched down behind two full-length leather coats that also smelled of weed. It must be Dog's signature cologne. A quick flash from Tina's phone revealed her wedged between the vanity table and wall. The light went out, and we were surrounded by darkness again.
My heart pounded so loudly inside my chest I was certain Dana could hear. Had someone seen us come in here and alerted the authorities? Please, please, don't let me come face to face with Ramirez now.
"Maybe it's Aunty Mae," Dana whispered next to me in the darkness.
"Let's hope she has no reason to come in here," I whispered back.
We waited in silence, not daring to breathe.
The click of a door in the distance sounded. Then we heard static followed by a woman's voice coming through a speaker. "Tom? You there?"
"Yes, ma'am." Tom's cheerful voice filtered through the air. From the volume and nearness of it, he had to be directly outside of Dog's dressing room door. "I'm at Aunty Mae's set. Something triggered the silent alarm."
I closed my eyes and thought a bad word.
"See anything?" the voice on the radio asked again.
I held my breath.
"Nah," Tom replied easily. "Must have been the wind or a faulty sensor or something. There's no one here."
I was sure Tom could hear my sigh of relief.
"Well, there's a group at the gate here waiting for you to take them to the Jeopardy! tour," the woman replied.
Tom groaned. "I thought that was canceled for today. Okay. Be right out."
The radio static disappeared, and Tom's footsteps faded into the distance, followed by another click of a door shutting.
"He's gone," Dana whispered.<
br />
We both exhaled deeply, as if we'd been holding our breath for an eternity. "Let's wait another minute to be sure," I advised.
Heavy breathing came toward me in the darkness, and then a light shone on my face. I covered my eyes. "Geez, Tina!"
She gave Dana and me a grin. "Close one, huh?"
I slowly stood, feeling a cramp in my right calf.
Dana stepped out of the closet behind me. "That was too close," she said. "Let's get out of here."
My sentiments exactly. I followed her to the door, a short step behind her. She opened it, peered out, then waved to us. "The coast is clear."
We wasted no time hurrying back through the creepy dining room and kitchen and out into the sunshine. We forced ourselves to walk calmly to the parking lot so as not to attract attention, but it was almost impossible to will my limbs not to sprint guiltily away.
As soon as we got back to Dana's car, Tina pulled her phone out and began typing on the screen. "Thanks for the ride and all, but I think I'm good from here," she said, not looking up.
Dana and I shared a look. "What do you mean 'good'?" I asked.
"Just called an Uber." She put her phone back in her pocket. "I gotta get to the Informer offices before Felix leaves for the day."
I narrowed my eyes at her. "And exactly what story will you be giving Felix to print?"
She gave me her patented wicked grin. Then she dug into her back pocket and pulled out the note I'd found in Dog's dressing room.
"You took it!" I yelled, head whipping back and forth as if Tom the security guard was about to pounce on us at any second.
Tina put her finger to her lips. "Shhh. Borrowed."
"Dude, that is breaking and entering and stealing," Dana pointed out.
Tina paused. Clearly she hadn't thought of it like that until now. "Maybe we should just keep the whole lock picking thing between us," she said.
Which was fine by me. If none of us never mentioned this again, that would be peachy. "As long as you keep Fernando's name out of your column today. For real this time."
Tina paused a beat, but considering she was holding a much juicier story in her hands, she nodded. "Done."
I felt an internal sigh of relief.
"See ya later, girls," she said, walking swiftly toward the pedestrian exit beside the main gate.
"Not if we see you first," Dana said under her breath.
I grinned. "It's like you're inside my head," I told her as we got into the car and Dana cranked up the AC.
"Well, I have to admit one thing about Tina," Dana said, checking her makeup in the rearview mirror. "I do like her angle." She turned to me. "If Dog had a secret lover, that could open up a whole new motive for his murder."
I raised an eyebrow her way. "You think a secret lover killed him?"
She shrugged, pulling lip gloss out of her bag to reapply. "That letter sounded deep. Like whoever wrote it was really in love with him. What if she found out that he'd done something like, oh I don't know, cheat on her?" She sent me a pointed look.
I laughed. "Okay, yes. So far he's cheated on every woman in his life that we've met."
"So, it's not a stretch to say he might have done that to Secret Lover too."
I nodded. "Not a stretch at all. But who is Secret Lover?"
She pursed her lips together, blotting in the mirror. "I wish she'd signed the note."
"Well, it was poetic. Whoever wrote it could rhyme decently, anyway." I flipped the passenger visor down, checking my own makeup as I thought back to the wording. "Wasn't there something about love from above?"
"Maybe she's religious!" Dana said. "Maybe a pastor!"
I couldn't help the snort of laughter that escaped me. "Doggy Z and a pastor?"
She frowned. "Yeah, probably not. Okay, what else did it say?"
I wished I'd had the forethought to take a photo of the note before Tina had whisked it away. "Wasn't there something about an old flame? Like an old flame never dies."
Dana swiveled to face me again. "Maddie, that's it! An old flame. One of his ex-wives!"
"It lives on in my heart," I said, remembering the line. "You could be right," I told her. "Maybe he did reunite with an ex."
"Maybe they rekindled their love, but then Dog cheated on her—"
"Again," I added.
"—right. Again. Which is one time too many, and she snaps and kills him."
"But just which she are we talking about?" I asked.
She sat back in her seat, nibbling on her lower lip as she thought about that one. "Of the three we met, Laura seemed the most broken up at his death."
I nodded. "True. She certainly talked about him as if she still cared."
"But if she'd just killed him, she could have been acting," Dana said, playing devil's advocate.
I shrugged. "All depends on how calculating she is." I paused. "But the other two exes could have been acting too. Pretending to hate Dog, when really at least one of them had been secretly seeing him."
Dana nodded. "Right! And remember how nervous Blakely seemed? It was almost as if she was afraid to spill a secret to us."
"Do you think maybe her secret was an affair with Dog?" I asked.
"The gym's just a few minutes from here," Dana pointed out. "Didn't Blakely say she practically lived there? We could go ask her."
Which did not seem in the least like minding my own business.
But…like Dana said, it was just a few minutes away. And I did have an hour before I needed to pick up the twins. And we did need to drive that direction to get my minivan again anyway. So…
"Okay, let's go see what Blakely has to say."
* * *
Ten minutes later, Dana pulled into the gym's lot and grabbed the last free parking spot. It was obviously prime hours for the Beverly Hills set, who made a career out of going to the gym, the spa, and then back home to tell their personal chef what to cook for dinner.
The bikini-clad receptionist at the front desk informed us that Caitlyn was teaching a Hularobics class. "You're in luck." She smiled. "There are a couple of spots left if you'd like to try it out and join in. They're all in Room C."
"Hularobics?" I asked Dana as we walked in the direction she'd indicated.
Dana just shrugged. "Maybe it's a good core workout?"
I recalled that core workouts were painful and involved a lot of sweating. Two things that weren't a good look on me.
The musical notes of "Tiny Bubbles" greeted us when we walked into Room C, followed by peals of laughter. A group of about 15 women in all shapes and sizes were dancing in a circle around a man seated on a mat playing a ukulele. He was wearing jeans and an orange Hawaiian shirt with large blue flowers printed on it. A multicolored lei was around his neck. He looked like an offspring of Don Ho.
Caitlyn was at the beginning of the conga-like line, stepping in time with the music and shaking her slender hips like a belly dancer. Blakely was behind her dressed in a bright red muumuu. Mrs. Rosenblatt would have been jealous.
"That's it, ladies!" Caitlyn yelled to her class. "Move those hips. Engage that core. Blakely won't be the only one ready for a bikini on the Islands at this rate!"
Blakely laughed in response, mugging a little for the class with her pseudo-celebrity status. Though, as she spotted us, the smile froze on her face and she nudged Caitlyn. Even at this distance, I was certain that I saw emotion flash behind Caitlyn's eyes. She herself was wearing a pink coconut bra with a matching colored skirt made out of plastic straw that looked like it had come from an Easter basket. The other women had similar skirts on over their Lululemon workout wear.
Caitlyn clapped her hands, bringing the swishing skirts to a halt. "Ladies, may I have your attention, please?"
The music and laughter instantly stopped at her request. Everyone turned expectantly to Caitlyn, who gestured to Dana and me.
"Class, we have some latecomers joining us. Please say hello to Maddie and Dana."
There was a chorus of hellos,
but something told me this wasn't going to end well.
Caitlyn folded her arms across her chest. "Let's try one of our more novice routines and see if they can keep up, shall we?"
Uh-oh.
"Oh no, really," I stammered. "We just came to observe."
"Oh, there's no sitting it out in my class, right ladies?" Caitlyn said.
Several women nodded and chimed in, clearly having been on the receiving end of Caitlyn the Taskmaster before.
Caitlyn smirked. "Poiku, keep the music coming."
Poiku grinned and launched into a version of "Blue Hawaii" that would have made Elvis proud. My body froze in panic. I'd so chosen the wrong shoes today.
"Just follow my lead," Dana whispered. She began to wiggle her hips from side to side in time with the music, eyes on Caitlyn as she demonstrated some moves that even some of the ladies in the front row were having a hard time keeping up with.
I followed dutifully behind her, shaking and shimmying parts of me that hadn't moved in years. It wasn't as easy as Dana made it look. My stomach muscles instantly protested, and my rhythm felt off and awkward. I accidentally bumped my hips into the woman beside me, who gave me a dirty look.
"Sorry," I mumbled as Caitlyn took her Hularobics on the move, forming the cong-esque line again as she picked up the pace. I might have imagined it, but I thought I saw her smirk in my direction again as I followed after Dana.
The rest of the group wiggled, shimmied, and sweated, grunting as Poiku's ukulele music filled the room. I caught the toe of my shoe on a mat and almost fell, stumbling forward. Luckily, I managed to stay on my feet. Unluckily, it had taken all of my attention, so I didn't notice the line changing directions, and I plowed headfirst into Dana as she about-faced and sashayed into me.
"Uhn!" We did a nice head butt, and I immediately saw stars before stumbling backward. And falling right on top of Poiku.
The women did a collective gasp.
Poiku grunted and moaned.
The ukulele cracked.
And I could have sworn I heard Caitlyn giggle.
"Maddie, are you okay?" Dana asked, one hand reaching down to help me up as the other went to her forehead.
"Fabulous," I grunted, extracting myself from Poiku. "How do you say concussion in Hawaiian?" I asked.
Jeopardy in High Heels (High Heels Mysteries Book 12) Page 14
