I shook my head. "No. Reinforcements are on the way. My mom is coming to watch them for a couple of hours."
"Thank God."
"What?" I asked, leaning in.
"I said, 'Thank God.' Geeze, are they okay?" Dana asked.
I picked Max up, patting his back. Were they okay? I wondered. Had I been leaving them with sitters too much? Did they realize I was leaving again? I bit my lip, guilt hitting me. The sensation was starting to become my constant companion.
I didn't have much time to contemplate it though as the doorbell rang, followed by a head popping in the door.
"Hello?" Mom said. "Anyone home?"
"I assume that's a rhetorical question," I answered, shouting over Livvie's cries this time.
"Oh, what's wrong with my babies?" Mom asked, coming into the room cooing. Mrs. Rosenblatt, in a screaming orange muumuu, followed a step behind her. Mom grabbed Livvie from me, patting her on the back. Amazingly, the cries ceased immediately.
An odd sensation fluttered in my stomach.
"How did you do that?" I asked.
Mom blinked at me. "Do what?"
"Make her stop crying?"
She shrugged. "Oh, my grandbabies just know when grandma's here. Don't you, you wittle, bitty, wovey, dovey," she said, making kissing faces at Livvie.
I felt a frown settle between my eyebrows as Mrs. R picked up Max, and his cries stopped too. He burped, then did a big, delighted smile at her. Great, even the psychic had a better touch than I did.
"Thanks for coming to watch the twins," I told mom, trying not to take their sudden angelic behavior personally. "I know I've been asking you to babysit a lot lately."
Mom waved me off. "Don't worry a bit about it. I'm tied to my phone this afternoon anyway."
I raised an eyebrow her way. "Do I want to know why?"
"A hot auction," Mrs. R explained. "She's got the eBay app on there."
I thunked the palm of my hand on my forehead. "Mom, you are dangerous with that phone."
She frowned at me. "That's what Ralph says, too. But," she said, pulling the item in question from her purse, "he'll be changing his tune when he sees what I got him for our anniversary."
I almost hated to asked but… "What did you get him?"
"An Armani blazer. Only worn twice!"
Poor Faux Dad.
* * *
Leaving the babies in Mom's very capable hands, and Mom in the questionable clutches of her online shopping habit, Dana and I got in my minivan and hopped on the 101.
The city of North Hollywood is known for three things: discount electronics of dubious origin, AA meetings on every other block, and porn studios that number in the hundreds. Usually Magnolia was as far north as I traveled along Laurel Canyon, and as we passed a homeless guy with a shopping cart full of stray cats, I remembered why.
The Bayshore Inn was located a few blocks north of Chandler, in the neighborhood known as "Little Tijuana". Their sign was faded, the paint on the side of the building peeling, and the landscaping limited to a lone cactus propped up against the door to the front office. We parked next to a rusted iron gate that circled a big cement hole in the ground which might have been a pool at one point but was now playing host to a couple of kids in skinny jeans and beanies on skateboards. The guest rooms were all on one main level, circling the pool. I counted twenty from where we stood.
"So, which one do you think our Russian is in?" I asked.
Dana shrugged. "Let's go ask," she suggested, gesturing to the motel office.
"You really think he'll just tell us?" I said, trailing along behind her.
"Trust me, I can get it out of him," she assured me, fluffing her boobs up in her T-shirt.
I followed her into the main office, which smelled like stale burritos and cigars. Behind the counter sat a guy with long, stringy blonde hair, a week's worth of beard, and tattoo sleeves down both arms. He looked up as we walked in and did a long once over on each of us.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
Dana shot him her biggest, brightest, movie star smile and leaned her elbows on the counter. "Gosh, I sure hope so," she said, her voice dripping with enough sugar to attract flies.
"Need a room?" he asked.
"Maybe," Dana said coyly. "But we wanted to ask you a few questions first."
He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. "You do, huh?"
"We were wondering if you could tell us about a guest," I jumped in.
The guy shook his head. "Our guests like to stay private, you know?"
"Oh, I know," Dana said, leaning farther forward so her boobs peeked out the top of her V-neck T. "But if you could do just this one little favor for us, we'd so appreciate it." She punctuated the last bit by licking her lips and giving him a seductive stare, full of all kinds of unspoken promises.
The guy shook his head. He looked from Dana's girls to me. "Is she for real?"
Dana frowned. "Yes, I'm for real."
"Look, chica, you're in day-old sweats, and I can smell you from here."
Dana gasped, doing an armpit sniff. "You can't!"
The guy did a lopsided smile. "You gonna try to seduce info out of me, you gonna have to do a lot better than..." He paused, waving toward Dana. "...this."
She narrowed her eyes. "I'll have you know I had my hair hot-oiled for forty minutes yesterday. It's silky smooth."
The guy turned to me. "What do you girls really want?"
"We need info on a Russian guy staying here."
"We got lots of guys staying here. I don't pay attention to particulars."
"He wears a diamond earring. And has a thick accent," I added.
"Sorry. Not ringing any bells."
I grabbed my wallet out of my purse and threw a twenty down on the counter. "Remember yet?"
He rolled his eyes.
I added another twenty. "Now?"
He shrugged. "I'm getting closer."
I sighed, draining my shoe fund for the month as I added another twenty. "That's all I have. Take it or leave it.
His hand reached out and took it, shoving my cash into the back pocket of his jeans. "Fine. Your Russian guy is in room twelve. Bottom floor. But I haven't seen him all day."
"Thanks!" I called, already leaving the office.
Dana sulked behind me. "That's it, I'm losing my touch. You know, between two-thousand-one and two-thousand-eleven I didn't get a single parking ticket. I used to be able to seduce my way out of anything. Now I can't even get a sleazy motel manager's attention."
"Relax," I told her. "His lack of interest had more to do with your outfit than a lack-of-touch."
She paused. "Are the sweats really that bad?"
"Yes."
"Geeze, you didn't have to answer so quickly."
"It's time for tough love."
"Fine, I'll go home and change after this," she mumbled.
"Shh," I said, approaching a door with the number twelve affixed in rusted numbers.
She shushed, following me as we both listened for any sound from the other side. Nothing.
"Maybe Sleazy Guy's right. Maybe he's out," Dana whispered.
"Maybe he's sleeping," I said, trying to peek between the curtains in the windows. No such luck. They were cheap, but they were private.
"Maybe we should just wait for him to come back," I said.
But before I could turn back to the car, Dana shot her hand out and tried the door knob. It turned easily in her hand, the door popping open.
We both looked at each other. Anyone who left their doors unlocked in this neighborhood was either stupid or such a bad-ass they were welcoming a fight.
I really hoped he had a low IQ.
"Hello?" Dana called, taking a step into the room. I followed a tentative step behind her. "Anyone here?" she asked.
The curtains were pulled and the lights turned off, making it dark despite the sunshine outside. It smelled musty, like it had been shut up for awhile, and a sour scent hung in
the air, like food left out too long.
I covered my nose against the cloying odor as I took in the surroundings. A small TV sat on a dresser. The bed had a floral spread in a pattern made to hide stains, and the floor was done in matted brown shag.
"Hello? Russian guy?" Dana called again. Though, in the shoebox sized room it was clear we were alone.
"Let's get out of here," I said, fear prickling the back of my neck. As much as I wanted answers about Irina, I did not want to surprise a potentially lethal guy in a dark room. Somehow the sunshine outside was feeling much safer.
"Okay. But let's just take a quick look around first," Dana said, moving farther into the room instead. "Maybe there's something here with his name on it."
Despite the nagging fear in my throat, I did, opening a dresser drawer as Dana checked the nightstand. I found underwear, socks, a couple pairs of jeans, and a handful of condoms.
"Nothing here," I said. "You?"
Dana shook her head, straightening up. "He's our guy though. He's been to the Glitter Galaxy," she said, holding up a stained cocktail napkin bearing the familiar logo.
"Good. Let's go ask about him there some more," I said, suddenly preferring the bright, loud atmosphere of the strip club to the too-quiet sensation in the dark room.
"Lemme just check the bathroom," Dana protested, going to a door to the right of the closet. "Maybe he has a prescription with his name on it or something that he…" she trailed off, going stiff in the doorway.
That fear prickle kicked into overdrive. "What?" I asked, coming up behind her.
Though she didn't have to answer as I peeked over her shoulder and saw for myself.
Lying on the bathroom floor, legs twisted underneath him, was a dark haired guy with one sparkling diamond stud in his right ear.
And one wet, red bullet hole in his chest.
Chapter Fourteen
I blinked, listening to the sound of my own heart beating like a jackhammer in my chest, Dana gasping, and someone screaming at the top of her lungs. It took me a minute to realize the screamer was me. When I finally paused for air, I grabbed Dana by the arm.
"We gotta get out of here."
She nodded dumbly, still making little gasping sounds, as we turned and sprinted to my car. We jumped into the nice, safe mini-van, locked the doors, and put our seatbelts on just for good measure. I stared out the windshield at the now ajar door to room twelve.
"Ohmigod, he was dead," Dana said, stating the obvious.
My turn to nod dumbly.
"Like, shot dead."
I nodded again.
"You think we should call the police?"
I shook my head violently from side to side. "Ramirez will kill me. Let them do it."
Our screams had already alerted several of the other motel guests. Two guys in leather pants emerged from room twenty, a woman in platforms and spandex from room ten, and from the room next door to our dead guy, a Hispanic man in a cowboy hat. Chances were that in a matter of minutes, the police would already be here. And any way that brought the police and didn't involve Maddie being the body-finder was a road to marital bliss.
"Come on, let's go before the press arrive," Dana said, her mind going in the same direction as mine. Only her nemesis was a perky blonde reporter.
I rolled the engine over and peeled out of the parking lot, making a sharp left onto Tujunga. It wasn't until we hit the freeway that my hands stopped shaking.
"I need a milkshake," I declared to the world at large.
Dana spun on me. "Maddie! You're on a diet!"
"Dana, I just found a dead body. If I don't get some kind of comfort food into my system soon, I may go into shock."
She bit her lip. But she must have seen the irrefutable logic in my statement as she said, "There's a Foster's Freeze on Glenoaks Boulevard. Make a right."
I did. Ignoring the obvious fact that my friend's junk food addiction had gone into overdrive if she knew where the nearest Foster's was.
Two chocolate milkshakes with extra whipped cream and cherries later, I was starting to feel human.
That is, until my cell buzzed in my purse. I picked it up, checking the readout. Ramirez.
Was I bad person that I let it go to voicemail?
Instead, I pointed my car toward home. After the sight I'd seen, I needed to see my babies, to hold chubby little feet in my hands.
As soon as I walked in the door, I immediately felt better, the sight of my familiar home, my happy babies playing on the floor, and my mommy (yes, in a crisis she was still "Mommy") soothing some normalcy back into me.
I picked up the nearest baby, snuggling up against his soft, pudgy cheek.
He immediately started crying.
"It's okay, sweets," I said, jiggling him gently up and down. Only he clearly didn't agree with my assessment of the situation, yelling louder. "Come on, Max, it's Mama," I told him.
"Uh, Mads," Mom said. "That's Livvie."
I looked down at the crying baby swathed in neutral yellow. I peeked in the diaper. Sure enough, I had a girl.
"Oh my God, I don't even know my own kids anymore!" I wailed.
"Don't worry," Mom said, taking the baby from me. (Who immediately stopped crying, by the way.)
"I'm a horrible, absent mother!"
"They're just tired," Mrs. Rosenblatt reassured me. "A little nap, and they'll be as good as new."
I hoped she was right as I watched Mom settle both babies in their swings before taking her departure.
Only as soon as the front door shut behind them, the twins started crying again.
It took an hour of bottles, burps, and binkies before they finally calmed down again, content to sit in their carriers and watch Dora the Explorer (Okay, it really wasn't that bad of a show.) until they fell asleep.
It wasn't until they were finally settled in their cribs for the night that I was finally ready to process what we'd found in the motel. I curled up on my bed with a cozy blanket and a pad of sketch paper. At the top I wrote, "Russian with diamond earring NOT murderer". Whatever his connection to the Sokolov girls, clearly, he couldn't very well be our killer if he'd just gotten himself killed.
I tapped my pencil against the paper. So who was?
Irina had been talking about buying votes with our Russian guy. Right after that, she and Katrina had argued about money. Had the money been for the votes? Something else? Ling had mentioned that Kat had a temper. Had it been bad enough to kill both her sister and the Russian guy? And, if so, where was she now?
And then there was the small nagging question of how did Katrina manage to get onto the DWC set the day she'd killed Irina? Granted, she'd visited with her sister the day before, but, as I well knew, unless you were specifically on that day's list, it was no easy task to get in.
So who had been on the list?
I flipped to a new page on my pad and wrote down Kaylie's name. The Teen Mom had already confessed to us that she was ratting on her fellow stars for money. She was desperate for cash, and now that Irina was out of the picture, Kaylie had a good chance of winning the title and the prize money that went with it. Had she been desperate enough to kill Irina over it? It was possible. Though I wasn't sure how the dead Russian guy fit into all of that.
However there was one person who might have had it in for both Irina and the diamond studded guy.
I wrote Shaniqua's name down. Shaniqua had accused Irina of pulling a cheating scheme with the Russian by buying foreign votes. Clearly Shaniqua had been upset over it. But had she really killed over it. Twice?
And then there was Ricky.
I stared at the paper, not quite able to make myself write his name down. Did I honestly think he had it in him to kill someone? No. Not really. But he had no alibi, all the means in the world, and even a possible motive if he'd been sleeping with Irina and didn't want Dana to find out. Though, Ricky would have to be awfully stupid to kill Irina in his own dressing room and then not even come up with an alibi. And the Ricky I kn
ew wasn't Einstein, but he wasn't that dumb.
So, who was?
I chewed the end of my pencil and drew some shoe doodles on the side of my pad of paper. I tapped the eraser on my lips, did some productive staring at the ceiling, but nothing brilliant came to me.
I was just putting the finishing touches on a doodle of a slingback with a studded ankle strap when I heard the front door open.
"That you?" I asked, peeking into the living room to find my husband. I stole a glance at his face, trying to gauge his mood. As in, did he know his wife had fled the scene of a crime that afternoon?
"Yep," came Ramirez's answer. "Sorry I'm late. I tried to call, but your phone went to voicemail."
I glanced up at the clock. I hadn't even realized how much time I'd spent doodling. It was after eight. "No problem," I told him. "I was just going to start dinner. Hungry?"
"Starving. I haven't eaten since lunch," he said, following me into the kitchen.
I bit my lip, hoping that finding a dead Russian in a motel room hadn't been the cause. "Rough afternoon?" I asked tentatively.
He nodded, pulling a beer from the fridge and cracking open the top. "Very." He paused, taking a long drag. "How was your afternoon? The kids give you any trouble?"
"Nope!" Mostly because they were with my Mom, but I didn't feel compelled to add that. "You make any headway on Irina's case?" I asked, steering the conversation away from my exploits.
But Ramirez shook his head. "No, I got called out on something else."
"Oh? Anything interesting?"
"Not really. Shooting at a motel in North Hollywood."
I froze. "Oh," I squeaked out. "Who?"
"Some Russian guy."
I turned away, sure my face had guilt written all over it.
"The police have any leads on the shooter?" I managed to ask, opening the freezer and studying the contents to avoid eye contact.
"Several witnesses saw a couple of women leaving the scene."
I closed my eyes, and felt my knees go weak. "They did?" I squeaked out.
"Yeah, but no one was close enough to get a description. Besides, the witnesses weren't real reliable. Couple of junkies and a prostitute."
Danger in High Heels Page 12
