Killer Blonde

by Laura Levine

  I drove over to SueEllen’s the next day, still trying to get used to the idea of Daddy with a dead squirrel on his head. I wondered what Mom’s latest plan was for getting rid of it. I only hoped it didn’t involve decapitation.

  But all thoughts of my parents vanished when, trekking down the hallway to SueEllen’s bathroom, I spotted Larkspur O’Leary coming out of one of the bedrooms. Which struck me as odd since, as far as I knew, SueEllen got her massages in her massive bathroom.

  What was even more odd was Larkspur’s appearance. Her face was flushed, her lipstick was smeared outside her lip line, and her long blond hair was disheveled, as if someone had just whipped it with an egg beater. And, to top things off in the Odd Department, she was hastily buttoning her gauzy pink blouse.

  Call me Sherlock, but she had all the earmarks of a woman who’d just been having sex. Or, as The Blob used to call it, Fandango.

  “Hi, Larkspur!” I chirped.

  She looked up from her blouse, and smiled nervously.

  “Oh. Hello, Jaine,” she said, quickly pulling the door shut behind her.

  The woman reeked of Aramis aftershave. I knew it was Aramis because that’s what The Blob used to wear when he was in the mood for Fandango. I used to try to convince him a shower would be a more effective aphrodisiac, but to no avail. Only one of the many reasons we are no longer man and wife.

  Anyhow, Larkspur was reeking of the stuff.

  And then I remembered: Hadn’t Brad smelled of aftershave the other night? Now that I thought about it, I was almost certain it was Aramis. Was it possible that Larkspur was having a thing with Brad? Had he dashed home from school for some extracurricular activity with his mother’s masseuse?

  “So, Larkspur,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  “Oh, super,” she said, a nervous smile plastered on her face. “Just super.” Then she looked at her watch, and pretended to be surprised. “Wow. Would you look at the time. I’m late for my next appointment. Gotta run.”

  And that she did, like a scared rabbit, down the hallway, her masseuse’s table clunking against her thighs.

  I stared at the door to the room she’d just come out of, debating whether or not to open it.

  Don’t be a fool, Sensible Me said. Brad could have you fired.

  So what? said Nutcase Me. I don’t like this crummy job anyway.

  This went on for a minute or two, Sensible Me arguing with Nutcase Me. In the end, as she always does, the Nutcase won.

  I opened the door. Just a few inches, enough for me to peek inside. The room, undoubtedly once a bedroom, had been converted into a home gym. Loaded with big-ticket exercise equipment. But the most important thing about the room, as far as I was concerned, was the floor-to-ceiling mirror covering one of the walls. Because that’s where I saw the reflection of Larkspur’s lover hiding behind a stairmaster, zipping his fly.

  And no, it wasn’t Brad.

  It was his father, Hal.

  Hoping Hal hadn’t seen me in the mirror, I sped down the hallway to SueEllen’s bathroom. I scurried inside and was surprised to see the tub was empty. SueEllen had abandoned her perch in her marble throne, and was taking a shower. I could see the foggy outline of her fabulous body getting sprayed from all sides by multiple shower jets.

  “Hi, SueEllen,” I called out.

  She popped her head out the shower door, her hair caught up in a terrycloth turban.

  “Oh, hi, Jaine. We won’t be working in the bathroom today.”

  If my tush could talk, it would have shouted Hallelujah.

  “We’re going shopping. You can take notes in the car.”

  I had no idea what SueEllen was going shopping for. But I knew one thing she needed: a new masseuse.

  There are families in El Salvador who live in houses smaller than SueEllen’s Bentley.

  I sat in the front seat with her, as she navigated the hundred-thousand-dollar tub over to Heidi’s school.

  “I’m throwing Heidi a party for her birthday tomorrow night,” SueEllen explained, “and we need to buy her a dress. By the way, I hope you can come to the party. Poor thing has no friends.”

  She sighed, a weak imitation of someone feeling sympathy.

  “Of course,” she added, “it’s no surprise Heidi’s so unpopular, given the way she looks.”

  “What’s wrong with the way she looks?”

  SueEllen laughed. “Have you got a couple of hours?”

  “No, really, SueEllen. She looks fine to me.”

  SueEllen gave me the once over, taking in my unruly mop of hair, my generous thighs, and my elastic waist jeans.

  “I suppose she would look fine to you.”

  Ouch.

  “But to a kid her own age, she’s got loser written all over her. Anyhow, she seems to like you. So how about it? Will you come to the party?”

  “Of course. I’d be happy to.”

  “Marvelous, and if we’re short on waitresses, you won’t mind giving a hand, will you?”

  Argggh. What an aggravating woman.

  “Sure,” I said, through gritted teeth.

  “I’m glad that’s settled. Let’s get back to the book, shall we?”

  I took out my steno pad, ready for action.

  “I’ve got the most marvelous recipe for pot au feu,” SueEllen gushed. “Actually, I got it out of a Julia Child cookbook, but we’ll just change a few ingredients and no one will know the difference.”

  As she rattled on about Julia’s pot au feu, my mind wandered back to the scene in the gym. So Hal Kingsley was having an affair with Larkspur. Frankly, I didn’t blame him. Making love to SueEllen would be like mating with a piranha. I wondered if Hal had seen my reflection in the mirror. If so, would he think of an excuse to fire me? Oh, well. There was nothing I could do about it.

  Several recipes later, we arrived at Beverly Hills High, where SueEllen parked in a fire zone and ran in to get Heidi, who was waiting for her at the principal’s office.

  “I told them it was a family emergency,” SueEllen said, winking at me as she got out of the car.

  Minutes later, she came sailing back out, Heidi shuffling along behind her, looking a lot like Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking. I guess she must have known what was in store for her.

  SueEllen piloted the Bentley over to Neiman’s, where she handed it over to the valet parking attendant.

  “Good afternoon, Señora Kingsley,” the valet greeted her.

  Wow. When the parking guys at Neiman’s know you by name, you’re one serious shopper.

  We headed up to Designer Dresses where a regal stick of a woman was waiting for us. This was Mrs. Hansen, SueEllen’s longtime personal shopper. Mrs. Hansen reminded me of a black and white photo, her milky white skin and white-blonde hair in sharp contrast to her near-black lipstick and black sheath dress.

  “Hello, Heidi,” Mrs. Hansen cooed. “Getting ready for your big party?”

  Heidi nodded miserably.

  And then the torture began. It wasn’t quite child abuse, but it was close. Mrs. Hansen hustled Heidi into a dressing room and proceeded to parade her out in a series of unflattering designer dresses, some of which cost more than my Corolla. All of this was accompanied by a running commentary from SueEllen, who sat in an overstuffed chair passing judgment on each fashion disaster.

  “That’ll never do,” she’d say, shaking her head. “Terrible! It makes you look like a blimp.” And so on.

  Of course they looked terrible, I wanted to shout. These dresses were made for skinny fashionistas with serious eating disorders, not chubby fifteen year olds.

  At one point, she said to Mrs. Hansen in a stage whisper that could be heard in Pomona, “She won’t be so bad once she gets her nose fixed.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “and you won’t be so bad once you get your tongue ripped out.”

  Okay, so I didn’t really say that. But I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to. Instead, coward that I was, I just stood there, letting her chip away at Heidi’s self-e
steem until the poor kid was on the verge of tears. And the crazy thing was, there was nothing wrong with Heidi’s nose. True, it wasn’t as skinny as SueEllen’s, whose nostrils were the size of sun-flower seeds, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. Really, if I could’ve strangled SueEllen and gotten away with it, I would have.

  Finally, SueEllen chose an unflattering blue dress with a fitted bodice that emphasized Heidi’s burgeoning waistline.

  “Naturally, we’ll have to let out the waist,” Mrs. Hansen said.

  “Naturally,” SueEllen echoed, rolling her eyes.

  “We’ll have it ready for you first thing in the morning, Mrs. Kingsley.” And then, turning to Heidi, she said, “You’re a mighty lucky girl to have such a generous mother.”

  “She’s not my mother,” Heidi said quietly.

  “Yes,” SueEllen chimed. “Don’t you know? I’m the wicked stepmother.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” were the words I wish I’d been brave enough to utter.

  Heidi was back in the dressing room with a seam-stress, being fitted for alterations, when SueEllen’s cell phone rang. She whipped it out of her purse eagerly, as if she’d been waiting for the call.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, her voice suddenly softening. “Yes, I’ll be there…. See you then.”

  Then she plopped her phone back in her purse, and checked out her face in a pocket mirror.

  “Jaine, sweetie,” she said, fluffing her hair. “I’ve got an important business appointment I really must keep.” She handed me three twenties. “Here’s cab money. Be a dear and take Heidi home, will you?”

  I nodded mutely as she gathered her things and strode off toward the escalator.

  I hoped her heel got caught in one of the slats.

  After a while, Heidi came out from the dressing room, looking about as perky as a Vietnam vet.

  “Where’s SueEllen?” she asked.

  “She’s gone,” I said.

  I could practically feel the relief flooding her body.

  “She said she had a business appointment. She gave us money to take a cab home.”

  We took the escalator down to the first floor and were making our way past the $80 socks and $300 barrettes, when suddenly I heard someone call my name.

  “Yoo hoo, Jaine!”

  It was Lance, waving at us from the shoe department.

  “Who’s that?” Heidi asked.

  “My neighbor. He works here. C’mon, let’s go say hi.”

  I brought Heidi over and introduced her to Lance.

  “Lance, this is Heidi Kingsley.”

  “SueEllen Kingsley’s daughter?”

  “Stepdaughter,” we both corrected him.

  “What’re you guys doing here?”

  “Getting a dress for Heidi,” I said. “Tomorrow is her birthday.”

  “Really?” Lance grinned. “Happy birthday, cutie pie.”

  How sweet. He called her cutie pie. I could have kissed him for throwing her a compliment. The poor kid probably hadn’t had one in years.

  Heidi blushed with pleasure.

  “You gals want to try on some shoes?”

  Lance knows how much I like trying on shoes I can’t possibly afford.

  “How about it, Heidi?” I asked. “Want to?”

  She shrugged indifferently.

  “Oh, come on!” Lance said. “It’ll be fun.”

  And it was. Lance brought out box after box of outrageous shoes, and we tried them on, giggling.

  “You’ve got beautiful feet,” Lance told Heidi. “Such a slender instep.” Another compliment. She soaked it up like a sponge.

  After a while, two actual paying customers approached, elegant Japanese women with feet the size of Prozac’s.

  “Guess we’d better go,” I said. Heidi and I put our shoes back in their boxes, and I hugged Lance goodbye.

  “Thanks,” I whispered in his ear. “You’re the best.”

  “That’s what Jim tells me,” he whispered back.

  “Bye, cutie,” he said to Heidi, who once more blushed with pleasure.

  Heidi and I headed out to Wilshire Boulevard to look for a cab, no easy feat. Finding a cab in Los Angeles is like finding a fat person in Malibu. We decided to walk over to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, in the hopes that some cabs would be lined up out front. We hadn’t gone very far when I remembered what SueEllen said about Heidi having no friends.

  “Hey,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “Let’s not go home yet. Let’s hang out for a while. Okay?”

  Heidi nodded.

  “Feel like a frozen yogurt?”

  She nodded again.

  “Well, let’s go get one.”

  She looked out at me from under her fringe of bangs, and smiled. A beautiful smile that warmed my heart. And you know something? Lance was right. She really was a cutie pie.

  It was one of those picture perfect days in Southern California, the kind of day that makes people back East kiss their storm windows goodbye and move out here, only to find themselves stuck in freeway traffic for the rest of their lives.

  Heidi and I were strolling along, eating our frozen yogurts and counting the anorexics on Rodeo Drive, when Heidi said, “It wasn’t really a business appointment.”

  “Huh?” I murmured, my attention momentarily distracted by a quatrillion-dollar emerald ring in Tiffany’s window.

  “SueEllen didn’t really have a business appointment. She’s probably meeting Eduardo.”

  “Eduardo?”

  “Her lover. He lives out in Venice. Calls himself an artist. Paints the most putrid stuff.” She ran her plastic spoon along the swirls of her yogurt. “SueEllen is his sponsor. If by ‘sponsor’ you mean someone who boinks his brains out on a regular basis.”

  “How do you know for sure they’re having an affair?”

  “Brad caught them doing it out by the pool house. And you should see them when he comes to the house for dinner. They play footsies under the table. It’s disgusting.”

  She took a spoonful of yogurt and shuddered.

  “Does your father know?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “But I think Daddy’s having an affair, too. With Larkspur.”

  SueEllen and Hal were quite the couple, weren’t they? They reminded me of the joke about the guy whose wife had been cheating on him for years, and didn’t find out about it until his mistress finally told him.

  “I hope Daddy divorces SueEllen and marries Larkspur. She’s a ditz, but at least she’s nicer than SueEllen.”

  Hell, Attila the Hun would be nicer than SueEllen.

  “I knew SueEllen was trouble the first time we met. She and Daddy took us to Disneyland. She spent the whole ride down to Anaheim rubbing Daddy’s thigh. Brad and I could see it from the backseat of the car, and she knew we could see it. It was like she was telling us, he’s mine and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  She paused to eat another spoonful of her yogurt. I’d long since finished mine and was scraping the dish for the soupy stuff.

  “Daddy knew we didn’t like her, so he married her while Brad and I were away at summer camp. We never even knew about it until we came home. There she was, standing at the front door, smiling that bitchy smile of hers. And then, when I went upstairs and saw what she did to my room, I hated her more than ever.”

  “What did she do?”

  She shook her head, still miserable at the memory of what happened.

  “You see, the thing is, I really loved my room. The ceiling was sky blue with clouds painted all over it. My mom painted it, before I was born. After my mom died, I’d lay in bed at night and look up at the ceiling, and it was like my mom was there in the room with me. It was the one thing I had left of her. And SueEllen took it away. While I was gone, she’d painted over it. A hideous hot pink. She said she saw a picture of a room just like it in Vogue.”

  “What a bitch,” I blurted out.

  “When she asked me how I liked it, I told her the truth. That I hat
ed it. And ever since then, she’s treated me like crap. I can’t wait till I’m eighteen and go away to college.”

  By now we’d walked the length of Rodeo Drive, past the Hermès scarves and the Gucci handbags and the Louis Vuitton luggage.

  “Heidi,” I said, “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but what happened to your mom?”

  “Cancer. She died when I was ten.”

  “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”

  Her eyes welled with tears.

  “Why couldn’t SueEllen be the one who got cancer?”

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say to take away the pain, so I squeezed her hand, and hoped it would comfort her.

  “What would you like to do next?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, shrugging.

  “Sure it does,” I insisted. “We’re going to have fun if it kills us.”

  She managed a weak smile.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s go to the Museum of Television and Radio. It’s right around the corner. I go there all the time after school.”

  We tossed our empty yogurt dishes into a trash can and headed around the corner to the Museum of Television and Radio. A stark white minimalist building, the museum has an amazing collection of vintage TV and radio shows. You pick out the show you want, and watch it on your own private console.

  For the next few hours Heidi and I sat watching TV shows of yesteryear. I whiled away the time with two of my comedy favorites, Lucy and Alf. Heidi’s choices proved to be very interesting: My Little Margie and Bachelor Father.

  Bachelor Father is a show about an orphaned teenage girl living with her unmarried uncle. My Little Margie is about a young woman living with her widowed father. Not a stepmom in sight.

  You didn’t have to be Sigmund Freud to figure out that Heidi would have given anything to be like these girls and have her father all to herself.

  Chapter Six

  “First kick them in the groin. If that doesn’t work, try gouging out their eyes.”

  Kandi was sitting across from me at Paco’s Tacos, sipping a margarita and plying me with self-defense tips. Ever since she started her martial arts class, she’d morphed into an encyclopedia of dire warnings.