by Laura Levine
With no time to do my usual search for a free parking spot, I pulled up to the valets and tossed them my keys, racing into the sports club just in time to see Miles heading down a hallway.
I barreled past a Mr. Universe wannabe at the reception desk, who shouted:
“Hey, this club is for members only. Where do you think you’re going?”
“To catch a killer!” I cried, scurrying across the lobby and down the hallway in search of Miles.
Sure enough, there he was, up ahead of me.
As I charged after him, I passed a janitor who cried out something to me in Spanish.
“Sorry!” I said, waving him off. “No hablo español.”
By now, Miles had pushed open a door at the end of the hallway and headed inside.
Seconds, later, I was shoving my way past the same door.
At which point, a bit of a commotion broke out.
“Wrong room, lady!” someone yelled.
I looked around, and I realized I’d stumbled into the men’s locker room.
So that’s what the janitor had been trying to tell me.
All around me, guys were reaching for something to cover their privates. Others, not so shy, were happy to let it all hang out.
But I ignored them all (well, almost all—I’m only human), determined to nab Miles.
I soon spotted him from behind as he opened his locker door.
“Miles Braddock!” I called out. “I hereby make a citizen’s arrest, charging you with the murder of your wife, Bebe Braddock!”
It was then that Miles turned around. And for the first time, I got a good look at his face.
Dammit! It wasn’t Miles, but a cigar-chomping stranger.
“Gosh, I’m so sorry,” I stammered. “I thought you were someone else.”
“You can arrest me any time you want, sweetheart!” exclaimed one of the patrons in the locker room who hadn’t bothered to cover up—a beer-bellied fellow with the most alarming man boobs.
I had no time to reject his nauseating offer. Because just then two security guys showed up and grabbed me by my elbows, not so gently escorting me to the lobby, where, after taking down my name and address from my driver’s license, they ejected me from the premises, warning me to never again darken their doorstep.
I slinked over to my Corolla, red-faced with shame. I had made an utter fool of myself in a room full of wealthy naked men—not to mention the Mr. Universe receptionist, who’d called after me on my way out:
“You need to work on your glutes!”
And as if all that weren’t bad enough, I had to fork over thirteen dollars for valet parking.
Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of your I ♥ MY CAT sleepshirt.
* * *
Okay, so the guy I’d been following wasn’t Miles and I’d just embarrassed myself big time in front of a bunch of naked strangers. But I couldn’t deny the fact that someone, undoubtedly Bebe’s killer, left that noose in my car.
Time to pay a visit to Detective Denzel Washington.
I fished his card from my purse and made my way over to his precinct, a concrete block of a building not far from the sports club in West L.A.
Inside the fluorescent-lit reception area, I waited to talk to the desk sergeant while an elderly lady in front of me insisted she’d been a victim of mail theft because she hadn’t received a birthday card from her best friend, Eloise.
“Eloise and I have been friends since fourth grade in Minot, South Dakota, and she’s never once missed a birthday. That card was stolen, all right. And I know who did it. That awful Mr. Engel across the street! He’s had it in for me ever since Mr. Sniffles, my chihuahua, took the teensiest poop in his driveway.
“I insist on a thorough investigation!” she cried. “Tampering with the mail is a federal offense!”
The desk sergeant nodded wearily and suggested that she might want to contact Eloise to find out if she actually sent the card.
“Of course she sent the card! Eloise would never forget my birthday.”
He continued to listen to her blather with the patience of a saint. Me, I wasn’t so patient. I wanted to send her a birthday card myself, just to shut her up.
She finally stepped aside to fill out some paperwork, and at last it was my turn.
“Can I help you?” the sergeant asked.
I gave him my name and told him I needed to speak to Detective Washington immediately.
“I’ve got important evidence in the Bebe Braddock murder case.” I held up the noose, stashed in one of the many eco-friendly reusable shopping bags I keep in the trunk of my car, always forgetting to actually bring one into a store.
He nodded and told me to take a seat while he put in a call to Detective Denzel, muttering something about a crazy lady. I couldn’t tell if he meant me or the mail theft gal who was still painstakingly writing down the details of her missing birthday card.
Minutes later, Detective Washington came out to greet me in a rumpled white shirt, his tie loosened at the neck. He led me into a large room past a bunch of other cops to his workstation.
The nameplate on his desk read DENZEL G. WASHINGTON, and I couldn’t help wondering if the G stood for George.
“You caught me at the end of my lunch break,” he said, gesturing for me to take a seat across from him.
Indeed, I saw a McDonald’s bag in his trash, a few remaining fries poking out of the bag.
I can never understand people who don’t finish their fries. Don’t they realize that if not properly composted, these fries emit noxious, high-calorie gases into the air? Now I have no hard evidence, but I’ll bet a lot of global warming is caused by people like Denzel George Washington.
Save the planet! I felt like telling him. Finish your fries!
“Ms. Austen?”
Denzel was looking at me questioningly.
Oh dear. He’d asked me something, and I’d been so caught up in my internal rant about uneaten fries, I hadn’t heard him.
“So where’s that important piece of evidence?” he asked.
“Here!” I whipped out the noose from my shopping bag. “Someone broke into my car and left this hanging from my rearview mirror.”
“I see,” he said, frowning.
Reaching into his desk drawer, he took out a rubber glove and put it on before taking the noose from me and slipping it into a plastic evidence bag.
“I’ll have it tested for fingerprints, but I suspect the only prints we’ll find will be yours. Whoever left this in your car most likely wore gloves.”
Gaak! Why the heck had I touched the darn thing with my bare hands? Why hadn’t I used a tissue? You’d think I’d have learned my lesson after my whole fingerprints-on-the-murder-weapon fiasco.
“Who do you think might have done this?” he asked.
“Bebe’s killer, of course. Trying to scare me off.”
“Scare you off? From what?”
“I may have been nosing around,” I confessed, “asking a few questions about the murder.”
His brow furrowed in disapproval. As I’ve learned from past experience, the police don’t exactly love it when you interfere in their murder investigations.
“Not very wise,” he said. “Best leave the questioning to us, okay?”
“Absolutely,” I lied.
“So what did you discover during this investigation of yours?”
I told him about Miles’s affair with Anna, Tatiana’s threat to get even with Bebe for stealing her clients, about the cut on Anna’s hand, and Lacey possibly being blackmailed by Bebe. I didn’t mention Heidi’s wire horse, still grateful for my fabulous haircut and unwilling to throw her under the bus.
I was expecting Denzel to be taking copious notes, but he just nodded, as if nothing I said was news to him.
So much for my groundbreaking detective work.
“Once more, Ms. Austen, I urge you to leave the investigating to us. Homicide is serious business, and you don’t want to find yourself on the
wrong end of a murder weapon.”
“Absolutely,” I lied again, my fingers crossed firmly behind my back.
No way was I going to let go of this case, not until the real killer (and not yours truly) was locked up behind bars.
“One last word of advice,” he added, as I got up to go.
“Yes?”
He gazed at me sternly.
“Stay out of men’s locker rooms.”
Damn. Those security goons had ratted me out to the cops.
I nodded, shamefaced, and hustled back to the reception area, where the elderly mail theft lady had found her missing birthday card.
“How about that?” she was saying to the desk sergeant. “It was here in my purse all along!”
At least her mystery had been solved.
Mine, I’m afraid, was far from over.
Chapter 23
In case you’re wondering whatever happened to Justin, so was I. I hadn’t heard from him in days. Which is why my heart did a little flip-flop when I checked my phone in my car and saw a text from him.
Justin:
Free tonight?
Inviting me out at the very last minute? An absolute No-No. No way could I possibly say yes.
Me:
Sure!!
Not only that, I added a happy face emoji.
Justin:
Great! My friend invited me to an art gallery opening. Pick you up at seven?
Me:
Perfect!
Justin:
Don’t bother eating dinner. They’re serving great hors d’oeuvres.
Good news indeed. Free chow—and Justin.
I couldn’t wait to dig into both.
* * *
If truth be told, I’m not much of an art buff. (My idea of a creative masterpiece is a Ben & Jerry’s hot fudge sundae.) But that night I was lost in fantasies of my exciting new life as an art aficionado, some day strolling through the Louvre arm in arm with Justin, sneaking smooches in deserted corridors.
I checked myself out in my full-length mirror, dressed in what I hoped was art gallery chic—skinny jeans, black turtleneck, dangly silver earrings, and my trusty Manolos.
Prozac, who’d ambled over to stand next to me, purred in approval.
Looking good, girl!
Needless to say, she was looking at herself.
Justin showed up at seven, scrumptious as ever, sporting his TEAM BEBE bomber jacket, dimple flashing.
He eyed me appreciatively and kissed me lightly on my lips, a feathery touch that sent shivers down my spine.
“Preview of coming attractions,” he whispered.
This idyllic moment was shattered, however, when Prozac came hurtling over, wedging herself between us, batting her big green eyes at Justin, in full-tilt coquette mode.
Hello, handsome! Wanna spend the night feeding me bacon bits?
She clung to his ankles like a barnacle, but somehow I managed to wrench her away and deposit her on the sofa, only to be met by a chorus of indignant meows.
Which I promptly proceeded to ignore.
“Shall we?” I said, grabbing my purse and herding Justin out the door.
From the sofa, Pro lobbed me the royal stink eye.
I’ll get you for this.
I had no doubt she would. I fully expected to find a hairball on my pillow that night.
But all I cared about at that moment was climbing behind Justin on his motorcycle and wrapping my arms around his scrumptiousity. By now, I was getting used to riding on the motorcycle and had only mild heart palpitations as we zoomed across town, weaving in and out of traffic.
Our destination was an art gallery on Santa Monica’s Main Street, a strip of terminally hip restaurants and shops. Justin parked between two BMWs, and as we made our way to the gallery, I looked in the window of a bistro at a guy biting into a thick, juicy burger. It was all I could do not to run in and grab it out of his hands.
Frankly, I was starving.
I’d had nothing, absolutely nothing, to eat since lunch.
Not even a single Oreo. For once in my life, I’d reined myself in, saving my appetite for those delicious hors d’oeuvres Justin had promised.
The gallery turned out to be a large box of a space with walls painted a stark white. A sign in the window told us we’d arrived at FUN-TOPIA!
“This exhibit should be terrific,” Justin was saying. “Very avant-garde, cutting-edge. Not your stuffy old traditional paintings.”
The first thing I noticed when we walked inside was a sandbox full of Styrofoam peanuts. Next to that, some randomly tossed cardboard boxes. And beyond that, Ken and Barbie in miniature coffins.
If this was art, I was a marine biologist.
“So what do you think?” Justin asked with an eager smile.
“Never seen anything like it,” I managed to say.
“C’mon,” he said, grabbing me by the hand. “Let’s check out my friend’s work.”
He led me toward the back of the gallery, past a skeleton at a keyboard (Beethoven De-Composing) and a replica of the Mona Lisa made out of jelly beans.
I actually liked the jelly bean Mona Lisa, although it had the unfortunate effect of reminding me just how hungry I was.
“Justin, sweetie!” a hoarse voice croaked out.
I turned to see a tall, painfully skinny woman in a flowy black caftan waving at Justin. With her chalky face, lank black hair, and blood-red lipstick, she looked like she’d just stepped out of an espisode of The Munsters.
“Welcome to Fun-topia, darling!” she rasped, throwing her bony arms around Justin. “So glad you made it.”
“Great to see you, Tacoma,” he said when she finally let him go. “Meet my friend Jaine.”
Tacoma looked me up and down with a tepid smile, clearly writing me off as the artistic philistine that I was, and instantly turned her attention back to Justin, linking her arm in his.
“So what do you think?” she asked, gesturing to a bunch of empty wine bottles lying in a pile of dirt. “I call it Planet of the Grapes.”
“Fascinating,” Justin murmured.
Then she pointed to a series of pizza boxes glued together so they rose up from the floor in a slant.
“Guess what I call this one?”
“The Leaning Tower of Pizza?” I asked.
“No,” she snapped with a withering glare. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
“And finally, my personal favorite.” She pointed to a jigsaw puzzle with a single piece missing. “This one I call Despair. ”
“Wow,” Justin said, “these are blowing my mind.”
Really? There went my fantasy of us touring the Louvre together.
While Justin and Tacoma were admiring the jigsaw puzzle, my eyes lingered on those pizza boxes, thinking how yummy a pizza would taste right then. Or better yet, that burger I’d seen on the way over. Where the heck were all those wonderful hors d’oeuvres Justin had talked about?
I looked around the gallery for signs of food, but saw nothing except for the jelly bean Mona Lisa. If the damn thing weren’t shellacked together, I’d have been tempted to run over and eat her enigmatic smile.
Then, just as I was losing hope of ever finding anything edible, I spotted a waiter circulating with a tray of goodies at the far side of the gallery.
I willed him to come our way, but that didn’t seem to be happening.
Meanwhile, Tacoma held Justin in a vise-like grip, trashing the other artists and gabbing about mutual friends.
I was just about to sprint across the room to the waiter when Tacoma said, “I heard Bebe Braddock got killed.”
“Yeah,” Justin said. “What a shocker, huh?”
“Not to me,” Tacoma replied. “I knew it was happening.”
What the what?
“I remember the night vividly. I was at the Brentwood Country Mart and ran into Heidi, Bebe’s hair and makeup gal. Heidi was supposed to exhibit one of her pieces here tonight, but they didn’t have room for it. Anyhow,
as we were chatting about Bebe and what a ghastly woman she was, I suddenly sensed Bebe’s life force being snuffed out of her. I’m psychic, you know. I get these insights all the time. And sure enough, the next morning, I saw on the news that Bebe had been killed the night before.”
She continued blabbing about her psychic abilities and how they enriched her “art,” but I’d stopped listening.
The waiter had made his way to our side of the gallery. Like a shot, I was at his side.
“Vegetarian lettuce wrap?” he asked, holding out a tray of the most paltry hors d’oeuvres west of a gulag.
How depressing, I thought, popping one in my mouth.
As I stood there chewing on my lettuce, still wishing I were biting into that juicy burger, I flashed back on what Tacoma said about running into Heidi in Brentwood the night of murder.
Hold on.
What the heck was Heidi doing in Brentwood? Heidi lived in the Fairfax district, miles away. And if you remember, she said she’d been home all night, working on her vacuum cleaner giraffe. She’d lied about her alibi. Heidi wasn’t home all night. For at least part of the night, she was at the Brentwood Country Mart, just a wire hanger’s throw from Bebe’s studio.
* * *
Over at her exhibit, Tacoma was still clinging to Justin, blathering about her psychic powers. “I can predict earthquakes, you know,” she was saying.
I didn’t have the energy to join them, so I wandered aimlessly past “art” that looked like stuff dumped at the curb on garbage day—all the while on the alert for a passing waiter. But the only food I saw were those jelly beans on the Mona Lisa.
I was thisclose to prying some loose when I spotted my salvation, over in a far corner of the gallery: A big beautiful vending machine!
In a flash, I bolted my way past the art lovers, praying the machine would have something decent to eat. At a joint like this, it’d probably be filled with celery sticks.
But no, as I approached the machine, I saw it had actual candy inside. My eyes zeroed in on a Snickers bar for a dollar. I reached in my bag and pulled out my wallet. Damn. All I had was a ten, and the machine only accepted singles and quarters.
