Kyle let out a laugh. “She’s here to pop your cherry, okay?”
“I—I thought she was an actress,” Joey stammered, totally flustered.
“Did you hear me say she wasn’t?”
Patrick and Lou stood across the table from them listening with keen interest. So did Elliot and Boyd.
“Just go upstairs to your room, okay?” Kyle told him. “She’ll join you up there in a few minutes. You can do anything you want to her. Anything you’ve ever dreamed of doing when you’re lying in bed at night spanking your monkey. Her awesome bod is all yours. Greatest birthday present ever, right?”
Joey gaped at Kyle in horrified amazement. “That’s disgusting. You’re disgusting!”
“Hey, what did I just tell you about that mouth of yours?” Patrick snarled, moving toward Joey with his fists clenched.
Joey gulped in fright. So much fright that I had no doubt Patrick was in the habit of knocking him around. “That I—I shouldn’t be rude.”
“Right, that you shouldn’t be rude. Do we need to have ourselves a conversation?”
“No, sir. May I please go up to my room and read now?” Joey asked, his voice quavering.
“Yeah, go on,” Patrick said disgustedly as Joey fled inside. Patrick sampled the guacamole, munching on a blue corn chip thoughtfully. “I still say that boy’s a faggot.”
“Nope, don’t think so,” I said.
“Well, hell,” Kyle said. “If he doesn’t want to tap Trish then I may have a go. That tight little ass of hers rocks me.”
“Me, too.” Lou smacked his lips. “A party’s a party, right?”
“A party’s a party,” Kyle agreed. “Help yourself.”
“Hey, who are you to be giving him permission, dickwad!” Patrick hollered at Kyle. “This is my fucking house, not yours! If Lou wants her he can have her. And so can I!”
“Whatever you say, Patrick.” Kyle held his hands out palms up, a gesture of appeasement. “You’re the man.”
“Damned straight,” Patrick said, suddenly peering at Kyle with a mystified expression on his chiseled face. “Do I know you?”
“Kind of. I’m Kyle, Kat’s brother, remember?”
“Oh, right, right. Thought you looked familiar,” he said, wavering very unsteadily. He had to plant his hand on the table to keep from toppling over. “Lou, everything’s starting to spin around . . .”
“No prob, Pats.” Lou promptly produced a prescription bottle and razor blade from his little blue nylon bag. Opened the bottle and dumped a generous heap of coke onto the glass surface of the table. He began cutting it into lines with the razor blade.
“Hey, take that somewhere else,” Elliot said to them disapprovingly.
“Mind your own fucking business, bozo,” Patrick shot back.
“I am minding my business. I happen to manage Monette’s career. This is a family affair. There are kids here.”
Boyd, meanwhile, stared goggle-eyed at the four, five, six lines of coke on the table.
“All set, Pats,” Lou said. “Anyone got some folding scratch?”
Kyle pulled a five-dollar bill from the pocket of his shorts. Lou took it from him, rolled it into a tight little straw and handed it to Patrick, who bent over and snorted up two lines. Boyd watched him, looking extremely uneasy.
But not as uneasy as Maritza, who’d come out onto the patio to lay a dozen ears of corn on the grill.
Patrick grinned at her. “You want some of this, hon?”
“No, Senor Patrick.” She dumped the corn hurriedly onto the grill and scurried back into the kitchen.
“This is very inappropriate behavior, Patrick,” Elliot said insistently.
“I just told you, fat man—butt out.” He swiped at his nose, sniffling. “Help yourself, Lou. You, too, Kyle.”
“Thanks, don’t mind if I do,” Kyle said, waiting for Lou to snort up two lines and pass him the rolled-up bill. Then he finished off the last two lines.
“I think I’ll go wash up for lunch,” Boyd said hoarsely. He went inside, walking very rapidly.
“Will you please put that damned stuff away before you-know-who comes back?” Elliot pleaded. “Because, I am telling you, she will hit the roof.”
“Keep your shirt on.” Patrick wiped the last traces of coke from the table with his finger and rubbed his gums with it.
Lou returned the pill bottle to his zippered bag, then handed Patrick two capsules of those so-called mineral supplements. Patrick washed them down with a gulp of tequila.
By then you-know-who had returned from her Aintree Manor house tour with Kat and Trish, who were chattering like excited schoolgirls about how totally amazing the house was.
“What’s wrong, Elliot?” Monette demanded, noticing at once how uncomfortable he appeared.
“Not a thing,” Elliot said, chuckling nervously.
She spotted Danielle and Reggie in the pool together, then glanced around, frowning. “Where’s Joey?”
“Went up to his room,” Patrick said. “He’s turning into a goddamned hermit. Ought to do something about that, Queenie.”
“Is that right?” she responded testily. “Exactly what do you suggest?”
“I want to see the house, too,” Kyle said, his eyes gleaming at Trish. “Will you show me around?”
Trish looked at him with eyes that were suddenly very old and tired. “Sure, whatever.”
She led him inside, Kyle staring hungrily at her tight butt in that little white bikini she had on.
Lou was staring at it, too. “Okay if I join the tour, Pats?”
“Knock yourself out, Lou. Just stay downstairs, okay? Upstairs is for family only.”
Lou started inside, squeezing his way past Kat in the kitchen doorway, where she was talking quietly and purposefully to Boyd, who was listening to her and nodding his head. A moment later, she and Boyd slipped away to stroll the estate’s grounds together, Kat still talking, Boyd still listening.
Elliot yanked a white linen hankie from the pocket of his magenta warm-up pants and dabbed at his forehead, which was damp with perspiration. Then he puffed out his cheeks and plopped himself down in a chair at the table.
“I have to take a humongous piss,” Patrick announced to no one in particular.
“Thank you for sharing that with us,” Monette said. “Please, don’t let us stop you.”
He let out a huge laugh. “Wouldn’t think of it, Queenie,” he assured her before he went staggering inside.
Monette let her breath out slowly. “I’d say we’re doing fabulously well so far. Joey’s hiding in his room. Patrick’s bombed. His so-called friends are wandering around my home doing God knows what. It’s another idyllic Saturday afternoon here on Rockingham Avenue.” She pulled an opened bottle of Sancerre from one of the ice-filled tubs and poured herself a glass, taking a sip of it as Maritza came out to turn the corn on the grill. “How is lunch coming, Maritza?”
“The onions and peppers are frying on the stove,” she answered quietly. “Should I put the steaks on?”
“Yes, why don’t you? And thank you for your hard work and your patience. We’ll get through this. Somehow.”
Maritza went back inside, returned with a huge platter of marinated flank steaks and began to lay them, sizzling, on the hot grill.
Reggie and Danielle climbed out of the pool, wrapped themselves in towels and hurried up the path toward us, their wet faces shining in the bright sunlight.
“Mom, do we have time to go up and change?” Danielle asked.
“Absolutely,” Monette assured her.
They dashed inside, Reggie murmuring something to Danielle under her breath and Danielle responding with a giggle.
Me, I decided to swim some laps before lunch, mostly so I could be by myself for a few minutes. I’d had just about enough of people. I took off the khaki shirt I was wearing over my swim trunks, dove in the deep end and began to swim, enjoying the cool, clean water. It made for a pleasant contrast to how soiled I felt
being around Patrick, Lou and Kyle. Kat was another class act. She and “cousin” Trish. The whole lot of them made me sick. But I’ve discovered over the years that I always feel sick as soon as I’ve spent more than twenty-four hours on the left coast’s so-called beautiful dreamland full of so-called beautiful people. My body, mind and soul yearn to be back in authentically filthy, noisy, smelly, freezing cold New York. Back where I belong.
I swam, Lulu running alongside me barking her head off. Over on the patio, Elliot seemed to have taken over as temporary grill master. Monette and Maritza had both gone inside the house. Elliot stood there all by himself, tongs in hand, flipping the steaks with dutiful care. Even though the man was now the head of a multimillion-dollar production empire, he’d spent the first half of his career as a shlepper of small-time comic talent. For a man like Elliot, there was no such thing as a job that was beneath him. He’d been asked to work the grill. He was working it.
I swam. Lulu barked. She barked so loud that I almost didn’t hear the gunshots.
Almost.
Chapter Seven
There were two of them. They came from inside the house.
Then came silence.
I stopped swimming. Lulu stopped barking. Over on the patio, Elliot froze, tongs in hand, and stared up at the house.
The silence was broken by the hollering of the paparazzi crowded outside of the gate, their voices amped by a whole new level of hysteria. Quickly, I got out of the pool and grabbed a towel.
That’s when I heard the second set of shots. Two more.
I dashed toward the house with the towel around my neck and Lulu trailing right behind me.
Elliot’s eyes were wide with fright. “What the hell was that noise?”
“Gunfire. What do you think?”
“Should we call someone?”
“No need. The cops on the gate heard it. They’ll phone it in.”
“They won’t come check it out for themselves?”
“Can’t. They’ve got a tabloid mob out there to contain. They’ll call for help. We’ve got a few minutes before they get up here. We’d better see what happened.”
I headed into the kitchen. Elliot followed me. On the stove a cast-iron skillet of onions and peppers was cooking on a low flame. A flour tortilla was warming in a second skillet on another burner. There was a package of tortillas and a stack of white kitchen cloths on the counter next to the stove. What there wasn’t was any sign of Maritza.
“She asked me to keep an eye on the steaks while she finished up in here,” Elliot said to me. “I wonder where she went.”
I turned off the flames under the pans and hurried toward the grand front rooms, hearing voices upstairs. Lulu dashed her way up the curving stairway. I followed her.
Reggie and Danielle were standing together in the upstairs hall, both wearing terrified expressions on their faces as they stared down the hall at the big double doors to the master suite, which were closed. Lulu headed straight for the double doors and sat, staring at them.
“Where’s Monette?” I asked them as Elliot came waddling up behind me, still clutching the grill tongs. “What’s happened?”
“We d-don’t know.” Reggie’s voice was quaking with fear. She’d changed from her wet bikini into an old Grateful Dead T-shirt and shorts. I put my arm around her. She nestled against me, trembling.
Lulu continued to sit and stare at the doors to the master suite.
“Did you knock?”
Reggie shook her head.
“Monette . . . ?” Elliot called out. “Everything okay, hon?”
There was no response.
Danielle hadn’t said a word. Just stood there in wide-eyed fear.
“Did you hear anything?” I asked her.
She blinked at me. “Like what?”
“An argument, raised voices?”
She shook her head. “I was in my shower rinsing off the chlorine from the pool.” She wore a pair of blue jeans now with her untucked lavender boyfriend shirt. Her hair was wet. “I was drying off when I heard the shots.”
“And what about Joey? Where’s he?”
“In his room, I guess. That’s where he always is.”
I heard rapid footsteps on the stairs. It was Maritza, who was puffing a bit and looking more than a bit shaken.
“Where have you been?” I asked her.
“In the kitchen, Senor Hoagy,” she replied, her brown eyes avoiding mine. “The peppers and onions. I was stirring them.”
She hadn’t been in the kitchen stirring the peppers and onions. I’d just come from the kitchen. But I didn’t dispute her outright lie. Nor did I say anything about the fact that thirty minutes ago Maritza had been wearing a pale pink dental hygienist’s outfit and now wore a powder blue one. What I did say was, “If you were in the kitchen why didn’t you use the service stairs?”
“I tried, but the door to the senora’s suite is locked,” she explained, snatching the grill tongs from Elliot. “You told me you would keep turning the steaks. They are burned now. No good to eat.”
“I don’t think anyone will be eating lunch,” I said to her.
Now I heard more footsteps on the stairs. They belonged to Lou, Kyle and Joey’s seventeenth-birthday present, Trish.
“I heard shots,” Lou growled. “What’s going on?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Where have you been?”
“Hanging out in the room with the pool table in it.”
“That would be the billiard room. You were shooting pool?”
“Why is that any of your business?” Kyle demanded. “And where’s Kat?”
“No idea,” I said, noticing how flushed and sweaty all three of them were. They all gave off the same musky animal smell, too. They’d been having themselves a three-way, which is to say that Trish had been doing both men at once, and the doing hadn’t been gentle. She had blotchy red finger marks around her throat, fresh abrasions on her knees and her white bikini was on a bit crooked. I wondered if they’d been making use of the Eartha Kitt sofa. The romantic in me wanted to think they had.
“What’s Pats up to?” asked Lou, who—just this once—wasn’t clutching his blue nylon zipper bag full of drugs. Must have stashed it somewhere in that room with the pool table in it. “Where is he?”
I could hear the LAPD sirens way off in the distance now. The first responders were on their way. Lulu was still parked in front of those double doors to the master suite, staring right at them.
“Stay here,” I said to the others, starting down the hallway toward the suite. I knocked.
“Who is it?” Monette responded in a calm, clear voice.
“It’s Hoagy, Monette. Are you all right?”
“Perfectly fine, thank you.”
“May I come in?”
“Are you alone?”
“Lulu’s with me. No one else.”
“You and Lulu may come in.”
I opened the door and in we went. It smelled faintly of gunpowder in there. The windows were wide open, a breeze billowing the white lace curtains.
“Please close the door,” Monette said to me.
I closed it, my eyes flicking around as I took in the scene before me. Monette was standing, gun in hand, over the cooling sack of dead meat that until very recently had been one of network television’s biggest stars, not to mention her husband. Patrick lay on his back on the floor next to the bed in his Hawaiian shirt and shorts, bleeding out onto the stylishly worn Persian rug underneath him. He had two bullet holes in his chest, one in his right shoulder and one in his left side. His eyes were wide open. Surprised. He looked very surprised.
The master suite, which had been primped and fluffed enough for a magazine shoot the last time I’d seen it, was a total mess. There were desk and dressing table drawers flung open, items of clothing and jewelry tossed about. And then there was the blood spatter that was all over the ruffled white canopy bed, white linen bedspread and plump white pillows, not to mentio
n the wall behind the bed.
There was also blood all over Monette. Her nose was bleeding profusely into her chambray shirt, which she’d stripped off and held to her nose like a wadded towel. The blood had dripped down her chin onto her tank top and white linen pants. She had long, bloody gouges on her bare forearms—fingernail gouges by the look of them—and red finger marks around her upper arms.
The gun she was holding was a stainless-steel Beretta 9mm with a black textured grip.
“Would you please put that gun down, Monette?”
“Yes, of course,” she responded calmly. Eerily so. Possibly she was in shock. “Shall I hand it to you?”
“Just put it down on the floor.”
She set it down on the rug next to her feet while Lulu nosed around in search of the four shell casings on the floor. She found them with no difficulty.
“Would you like to tell me what happened?”
“Patrick attacked me like a crazy man,” she answered in that same calm voice. “He grabbed me, punched me. He was completely deranged. So I took my Beretta from my nightstand and shot him. I had to. He was going to kill me.”
“How did you two end up alone in here together?”
“I came up here to powder my nose and when—”
“Is that your way of saying use the bathroom?”
“It is. And when I walked in I found him ransacking those drawers like a lunatic. He insisted he was looking for a valuable Rolex Submariner that he’d misplaced. I said, ‘Do you mean like the one you gave to Hector?’ He became outraged and said, ‘Are you telling me that he stole my Rolex?’ I said, ‘No, I’m telling you that you gave it to him. He’s very proud of it.’ Patrick said, ‘He’s lying. I never gave him that watch.’ And I said, ‘Patrick, you don’t remember half the things you do anymore. You’re bombed every waking moment. How dare you show up drunk for your son’s birthday party? How dare you bring your little tramp of a girlfriend? How dare you?’ That’s when he lost it and punched me in the nose really hard. I’ve never been hit in the nose before. It hurts like hell.”
“Yes, it does. Bleeds a lot, too. Here, let me . . .”
She lowered the wadded, bloody shirt from her nose. It was oozing blood from both nostrils and was starting to swell up.
The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes Page 15
