Murder Gets a Makeover

by Laura Levine

The Sugar Shack turned out to be one of those “eat here at your own risk” joints a few blocks from the beach, packed with twentysomething surfer dudes swilling beer and watching ESPN on big-screen TVs.

  A banner strung over the bar announced: JELLO WRESTLING AT 3 PM. TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS GRAND PRIZE MONEY.

  I’d checked out the event online and got there fifteen minutes early so I’d have time to talk with Cindy before the fight began.

  Seeing no sign of Jello anywhere, I asked the bartender where the wrestling was taking place.

  “Out in the patio,” he said, nodding toward the back of the bar.

  I zigzagged my way past scarred wooden tables, the floor sticky beneath my feet, out onto a cement patio, where more revelers sat swilling booze at wooden benches.

  At the far end of the patio, a bunch of bikini-clad beach bunnies with fab bodies and serious boobage were milling around a vat of what turned out to be lime-green Jello.

  I picked out Cindy right away, due to my finely tuned powers of perception—and the fact that she was wearing my CUCKOO FOR COCOA PUFFS tee.

  Unlike the beach bunnies, Cindy was a towering blonde with Brunhilda braids, bulging muscles, and biceps of steel.

  (Think Godzilla in a sports bra.)

  As I approached, I heard her screaming into her cell phone.

  “What do you mean, you can’t make it? So what if you’ve got food poisoning? Take a Tums!”

  She clicked off the phone in disgust, not the happiest of campers. I sensed this might not be the best time to chat with her, but I was desperate to get my tee.

  “Hi, there!” I chirped, with my brightest smile.

  “What the hell do you want?” she grunted in reply.

  “The CUCKOO FOR COCOA PUFFS T-shirt you’re wearing. I’m the rightful owner of that shirt.” Trying to be as diplomatic as possible, I added, “Your ex-roommate Gloria told me you must’ve accidentally taken it when you moved out. So I’m sure you won’t mind giving it back to me.”

  At which point, the bar’s manager, a deeply tanned man in a Hawaiian shirt, came over to the Jello vat and announced, “Ten minutes till fight time, ladies.”

  “Sure, I’ll give you your T-shirt,” Cindy said to me when he’d gone.

  “Great!”

  She was so much more reasonable than I thought she’d be.

  “But only if you wrestle in the Jello with me.”

  “What??”

  “The gal I’m supposed to fight can’t make it because of some stupid food poisoning, and I want to win that two hundred bucks prize money.”

  “But I’m in no shape to fight someone like you.”

  “Ya think?” she said, eyeing my body and clearly finding it wanting. “No worries, though. I’ll go easy on you. Just moan and groan and pretend I’m beating the stuffing out of you. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  “But I’m not dressed for the fight,” I said, pointing to the skinny jeans and blouse I was wearing.

  “No problem.”

  She took me by the hand led me back into the bar.

  “Hey, Tony,” she said to the guy in the Hawaiian shirt, “you got any clothes in your lost-and-found locker she can wrestle in?”

  “No bikinis!” I piped up.

  (The only one who gets to see my body in broad daylight is my gynecologist.)

  Tony looked me over—like Cindy, none too impressed—and headed off down a corridor. Soon he was back with a pair of men’s swim trunks and a beer-stained T-shirt.

  At least I hoped it was beer.

  “Go put these on,” Cindy said, shoving me in the direction of the ladies’ room, a filthy hole, certain to have been graded Z by the Health Department.

  Gingerly, I began changing into my fighting togs, hoping to avoid any communicable diseases and wondering what sort of low-life dufus lost his swim trunks at a bar.

  But on the plus side, at least the trunks covered my thighs.

  On my way out of the ladies’ room, I ran into a beach bunny, hobbling along on crutches.

  “I hear you’re wrestling Cindy today,” she said to me.

  “That’s right.”

  “Watch out. She fights dirty. I wrestled with her a couple of weeks ago and wound up with these,” she said, nodding at her crutches.

  I gulped in dismay, but reminded myself of Cindy’s promise to go easy on me.

  By now, most of the beer-swilling surfer dudes had left the bar and gathered around the Jello vat in the patio, where Tony stood, beaming.

  “Welcome, everybody,” he said, “to the Sugar Shack’s Jello wrestling contest, featuring some of the world’s most sexy-licious beach bods!”

  The audience hooted in approval.

  Nobody was going to win any Political Correctness awards in this crowd.

  “Remember the rules,” Tony said. “Three matches. Three minutes each. Audience votes on the final winner.”

  The first two wrestlers got in the vat, and instantly my fears were dispelled. These gals weren’t wrestling, only pretending to tackle each other, assuming positions usually seen on a porno site, showing off their boobage and booties whenever possible.

  Clearly I had nothing to worry about. Cindy would pretend to tackle me, and I’d pretend to be overwhelmed, and before long, I’d be sailing off into the sunset with my beloved COCOA PUFFS tee.

  As we waited our turn, Cindy proceeded to badmouth the other contestants, pointing out whose boobs and butts had been surgically enhanced.

  Now the second team stepped into the vat, where, after a few moments of Jello tossing and sex posing, a contestant named Brandi “accidentally” lost her bikini top, sending the crowd roaring with gleeful lust.

  “Attention-grabbing slut,” Cindy muttered through clenched teeth.

  Eventually Brandi retrieved her bikini top, and it was our turn to frolic in the Jello.

  Tony stepped up to announce us.

  “And now, going up against Cindy ‘The Bulldozer’ Bukowski . . .”

  The bulldozer? Gulp. I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “. . . is newcomer Eleanor Roosevelt.”

  You didn’t think I was going to use my real name, did you? I had a reputation to protect. Besides, I figured none of these bozos even knew who Eleanor Roosevelt was.

  Cindy and I stepped into the vat of Jello, Cindy’s jaw clenched, a most terrifying glint in her eyes.

  Suddenly I felt like a poodle in a dogfight.

  “You’re going to go easy on me, right?” I whispered.

  Wrong!

  Before I knew it, she was shoving me down on my fanny and pelting me with Jello, then hauling me up only to shove me down again.

  For one of the few times in my life, I was grateful for the extra padding in my tush.

  Three minutes didn’t seem very long when Tony was explaining the rules of the game, but now, with Cindy yanking me around the pool by my hair, it seemed like an eternity.

  Some of the more sensitive bozos in the crowd, feeling sorry for me, called out, “Go, Eleanor, go!”

  But I was incapable of putting up a fight, simply counting the seconds till this nightmare was over. As I was pulling myself up from the goo for about the fifth time and thinking things couldn’t possibly get any worse, I saw Cindy charging at me, head bent, like a bull. The next thing I knew, she was head-butting me in my tummy.

  Once again, I was grateful for my extra padding, but even so, I felt like I’d just been hit by a battering ram. Crumpling to my knees and gasping for air, I watched as Cindy strutted around the Jello vat, crying “I win! I win!”

  But, in fact, she did not win.

  When it was time for the guys to vote, Brandi won by a landslide. Even I got more applause than Cindy. Which seemed to irk her no end.

  Flicking Jello off her massive biceps, Cindy grumbled about her loss, claiming the contest had been rigged.

  None too happy myself, I said, “You told me you weren’t going to hurt me. You lied.”

  “Of course, I lied.” />
  “But why? You didn’t have to hit me so hard; you would’ve beat me anyway.”

  “Yeah, but then it wouldn’t have been any fun,” she smirked.

  Okay, this bimbo had just crossed a line. I could feel my blood starting to boil.

  “I wrestled you, Cindy. Now I want my T-shirt.”

  I reached for the tee where she’d tossed it on the ground, but before I could grab it, she snatched it up.

  “Forget about it,” she said, still smirking that irritating smirk of hers. “I changed my mind. I’m keeping it. Just try to get it,” she added, waving it in front of me.

  That did it. Something within me snapped. This ghastly woman had mauled me and shoved Jello into every orifice on my body. She was a liar and a bully.

  Now it was my turn to play the role of El Toro.

  Head bent, I charged at her gut and landed with a most satisfying thump.

  “Oof!” she cried, stumbling to the ground.

  Wasting no time, I grabbed my COCOA PUFFS tee.

  “You lose!” I said, waving the tee in victory for about a tenth of nanosecond before I saw her scrambling to her feet.

  Snatching my jeans and blouse, I was off like a shot, but she was a lot faster than me. She would’ve caught up with me for sure, if that darling woman with the crutches hadn’t shoved her crutch in Cindy’s path, sending her sprawling.

  And so, at long last reunited with my CUCKOO FOR COCOA PUFFS tee, I sprinted back to my Corolla—my heart full of joy, my lungs full of sea air, and my ears full of lime Jello.

  Chapter 28

  It took me three rounds with my shampoo bottle before I finally got rid of the Jello in my hair. And don’t get me started on the rest of my body. I practically needed exploratory surgery to get rid of the stuff lodged in my various nooks and crannies.

  I’d finally scrubbed away what I hoped was the last shard of Jello and climbed into my sweats when the phone rang.

  “Jaine, sweetie.” Tatiana Rogers’s voice came sailing across the line.

  I wondered why the stylist on the skids was calling. Maybe she had another lead for me. Her last tip about Lacey Hunt as a possible blackmail victim proved to be quite a gold mine.

  But no, she had no leads to offer. It turned out to be a sales call.

  “I’ve found the most delicious dress for you,” she cooed. “A stunning black cocktail number in your size.”

  “Really, Tatiana, I can’t afford your prices.”

  “I know, darling. That’s why I’m prepared to let this treasure go for just fifty dollars!”

  Underneath her cooing, I could hear a note of desperation in her voice.

  My heart went out to her. She must have been really struggling to make ends meet. Besides, tomorrow night was that charity gala honoring Prozac, and I could use a new dress to wear.

  “Won’t you come have a look at it?” she pleaded. “I know you’re going to love it.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  And so the next day I tootled out to Tatiana’s place in the Valley. She came to the door dressed once again in a kimono, a frothy pink cocktail in her hand.

  “Entrez, entrez!” she said, waving me inside with a flourish. “Strawberry daiquiri?” She held out her drink for my inspection. “They’re marvelously healthy. All that fiber from the strawberries!”

  “Thanks, but I’m good.”

  “Okay, let me find the dress for you.”

  Reluctantly she put her drink down on a wobbly end table and began rifling through the clothing rack that took up so much space in her tiny living room.

  I remembered the sleazy leopard-print number she showed me the last time I was there. I wasn’t betting the rent that this new offering would be any better, and so I was pleasantly surprised when she cried “Voilà!” and showed me her find: a tasteful little black dress with sexy spaghetti straps, fitted at the bust, flaring out into a flattering A-line skirt.

  “A bargain,” she said, “at only seventy five-dollars!”

  “On the phone you said it was fifty.”

  “Did I? I don’t recall saying that. Oh, well. We can always negotiate a price later.”

  Talk about your bait and switch.

  “Why don’t you try it on in here?” she said, leading me to her bedroom, a cramped shoebox of a room with an antique brass bed barely visible under a mountain of clothing. Clothes were strewn everywhere—on the bed, the floor, the dresser. The place looked like Nordstrom Rack after a tornado.

  “Excuse the mess,” she said. “It’s the maid’s day off.”

  Oh, please. The last time this place saw a maid, I was in diapers.

  “I’ll give you some privacy while you change.”

  Thank heavens she wouldn’t be sticking around to ogle my cellulite.

  As she handed me the dress, her cell phone rang. She reached into the pocket of her kimono to retrieve it, her eyes lighting up when she looked at the screen.

  Eagerly she accepted the call.

  “Lacey, darling!” she cried. “How marvelous to hear from you! Of course I’m available,” she said as she tripped back out to the living room, practically walking on air. “I can’t wait to get started.”

  It looked like Tatiana was about to be reunited with her treasured client.

  Alone at last, I got undressed and slipped on the little black dress. When I checked myself out in the mirror on Tatiana’s closet door, I was thrilled with what I saw, especially the way this clever little dress camouflaged my dreaded hip-thigh zone.

  I twirled around, thinking how much fun it would be to wear this on a date with Justin, and melted at the thought of him sliding the spaghetti straps off my shoulders.

  Wrenching myself from what was turning out to be quite a steamy daydream, I changed back into my clothes.

  I was definitely going to spring for fifty (or even seventy-five) bucks and buy the dress. As I reached down to pick it up from the bed, something peeking out from the clutter caught my eye: A patch of bright red leather. Unearthing it from a pile of stretched-out bras, I saw it was a handbag, its supple leather trimmed with gold.

  Something about the bag looked familiar; I was certain I’d seen it before. And then I remembered. It was the same red Birkin bag I’d seen at Bebe’s studio, the day Tatiana came barging in, furious with Bebe for stealing Lacey away from her. I remembered Tatiana’s rant about giving the bag to Bebe, only to have Bebe repay her by walking away with half her clients.

  I snapped it open, and sure enough, there was Bebe’s name embroidered on the bag’s lining.

  And it was at that exact moment that Tatiana came sailing into the bedroom, her kimono billowing out behind her.

  “Fabulous news!” she gushed. “Lacey’s signed on with me again!”

  The bubble of joy she’d been riding on burst, however, when she saw the Birkin bag in my hands.

  “What the hell are you doing with that?” she asked, whisking it away from me.

  “I was just about to ask you the same question. This bag belonged to Bebe. Her name’s embroidered inside. What’s it doing here in your bedroom?”

  Her eyes darted around the room, as if hoping to find an answer somewhere in the rubble of her belongings.

  Finally she thought of one.

  “Bebe gave it to me. She felt so bad about stealing Lacey away from me, it was her way of making amends.”

  “Get real, Tatiana. Since when did Bebe ever feel bad about any of the stunts she pulled? The woman was a world-class sociopath.”

  “Okay,” she sighed, seeing I wasn’t buying her story. “I took it from her studio the night of the murder. I came back to have it out with Bebe once and for all, but when I got there, she was already dead. So I grabbed the bag and ran. But I didn’t kill her.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that.

  And then a most unpleasant thought occurred to me:

  If Tatiana had killed once, surely she was capable of doing it again. Maybe right here, right now, in her pigsty of a bedroom. Heck
, it would take them months to find my body underneath all this clutter.

  “You don’t believe me,” she said, fire burning in her eyes. “You think I killed her.”

  “Of course, I believe you,” I said, eager to appease her.

  But she wasn’t about to be appeased.

  “You’ve got some nerve!” she shrieked, her face now an alarming shade of puce. “Coming here in your tacky elastic-waist pants and accusing me of murder!”

  With veins throbbing and eyes bulging, this was one furious lady. I looked around at the many wire hangers scattered around the room and prayed one of them wouldn’t soon be wrapped around my neck.

  “Honestly,” I said, skittering past her out into the living room, “I wasn’t accusing you of anything. So why don’t I just come back tomorrow for the dress,” I said, grabbing my purse from the sofa, “and I’ll be on my way.”

  “Forget it!” Tatiana shrieked. “I’m not selling you anything, you meddling bitch!”

  The veins in her neck now thick as Boy Scout knots, she grabbed her monster clothing rack and—in a moment I won’t soon forget—shoved it right at me.

  Adrenaline flowing, I managed to dash outside in the nick of time, cringing at the sound of the heavy metal rack as it crashed into the front door.

  Chapter 29

  Idrove home, badly shaken by my close encounter with a clothing rack.

  By now, Tatiana had catapulted to the top of my suspect list—Number One with a bullet.

  But I couldn’t forget about my other would-be killers: Like Miles and Anna. With Bebe out of the way, they were free to pursue their race into each other’s arms—and to enjoy all the money they were sure to inherit. And what about Lacey, my freckle-faced blackmail victim, who had to be breathing a lot easier with Bebe out of the way? And Heidi, who’d practically been Bebe’s indentured servant, now free to work her dream job at the studio?

  No, Tatiana wasn’t the only one who could have wiped out Bebe—not by a long shot.

  My suspect list quickly faded away, however, when I got home and found a text from Justin:

  Dinner at my place tomorrow night?

  Yesyesyesyesyesyes!

  Call me!

  His wish was my command.

  Instantly I tapped his number into my phone.