by Laura Levine
“Of course, there are some risks, as there are with all surgeries—”
But before he could tell me what they were, his intercom buzzed. Denise came on the line with a mini-emergency. Apparently the beat-up looking dame in the waiting room had popped a stitch in her eye job.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, hurrying out of the office.
“Take your time,” I said.
And I meant it. What a great opportunity to snoop. When I was sure he was gone, I made a bee-line for the door in the paneling. I had to see where it led. I was just about to open it, when it suddenly occurred to me: What if it led to one of Hal’s consultation rooms? What if I opened the door, and found a naked lady scratching her tummy tuck?
I took my chances and turned the knob.
No naked ladies, thank goodness. The door led to an outside corridor, right across from a stairwell.
Very interesting. Hal said he was at his office the morning SueEllen was killed. But he could’ve sneaked out the back door and down the stairwell without being seen by anyone. Each of his patients would think he was tied up with another patient. Maybe Denise had been in on it with him. Maybe she lied to the cops, telling them he was in the office, when she knew darn well he was speeding across town to keep a date with a lethal hair dryer.
Of course, Hal couldn’t have been the blonde that Heidi saw in the hallway. But maybe the blonde wasn’t the killer. Maybe the blonde was an innocent visitor, and the killer was a dark-haired plastic surgeon.
Or maybe it was Denise who sneaked out Hal’s back door and down the steps. I saw the way she looked at Hal. She was crazy about him. Perhaps even crazy enough to kill for him.
I shut the door behind me and turned my attention to Hal’s antique desk. Did I dare peek in the drawers? After all, he could come back any minute. Oh, what the heck. I went for it. With my eyes constantly darting to the door, I started opening the drawers. Aside from a box of condoms in the bottom drawer, there wasn’t much of interest.
And then I saw it, right there on his desk, for all the world to see (if all the world happened to be snooping in his office). A bill from his attorney. For a two-hour consultation, at a staggering $500 an hour. But that wasn’t the part I was interested in. No, what held my attention was a yellow Post-it, in the upper right hand corner, with a handwritten note: I told you when you married her—you should’ve made her sign a pre-nup.
It looked like the good doctor had been consulting his attorney about a divorce. And he didn’t have a pre-nuptial agreement. Which meant SueEllen could’ve taken him to the cleaners. A perfect motive for murder, don’t you think?
Just then, I heard footsteps down the hall. I sprinted back to my seat, nanoseconds before Hal came striding back into the room.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“That’s okay,” I said, smiling graciously.
“So where were we?”
“You were going to tell me the risks involved in surgery.”
“Oh, right.”
“But before you do,” I said, “maybe we ought to discuss price. I’m not sure I can afford it.”
“Ballpark figure,” he said. “Including the anesthesiologist—eight thousand dollars.”
“Wow, that’s quite a ballpark.”
“If you do your eyes at the same time, you save money.”
“My eyes?”
“Just a tiny lift. It’ll make you look refreshed.”
“But I’m still in my thirties. Isn’t that a little young for an eye lift?”
“Not at all. Plenty of my customers are in their thirties.”
He took out a mirror from his desk and held it to my face. “See? The little lines at the corner?”
My God, he was right. I’d walked into his office with flabby thighs and now, out of nowhere, I had crow’s feet, too.
“I can do both surgeries for $10,000.”
Wow. What a bargain.
“I’m afraid it’s just not in my budget.”
“If your financial situation ever changes,” he said, snapping my file shut, “I’ll be happy to work with you.”
I figured now was as good a time as any to bring up the matter of my unpaid wages.
“Speaking of my financial situation,” I said, “I hate to bring this up so soon after SueEllen’s…um…passing, but I still haven’t been paid.”
“Oh, right,” he said, a flicker of annoyance crossing his face. “How much was she paying you?”
“Three thousand dollars a week.”
He shook his head and whistled softly.
“When I think of all the money she threw away on that book…”
He reached into his desk drawer and took out his checkbook.
“I didn’t work the entire week,” I said. “Just four days. That comes to twenty-four hundred dollars.”
He dashed off a check, and ripped it out of the book. He’d obviously written a lot of these checks. SueEllen had been an expensive trophy wife.
“Here,” he said, handing it to me.
I looked down at the check. He’d given me five thousand.
“That’s for being so kind to Heidi.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Now maybe you can afford me,” he smiled.
Was I imagining it, or was the good doctor flirting with me? Something told me those condoms of his were getting quite a workout.
“Oh, by the way,” he said, as I headed out the door. “We’re having a memorial service for SueEllen at the house tomorrow. Threeish. Please stop by if you can.”
For the first time since he strode into his office, Hal Kingsley tried to look as if he actually missed his wife.
I thanked Hal for his time, and headed back to the reception desk to pay his outrageous $300 consultation fee. As I wrote out a check, I heard one of his patients say, “Dr. Kingsley says I have the face of a twenty-year-old.”
Better give it back, I felt like telling her. You’re getting it wrinkled.
After saying goodbye to the receptionist and my three hundred dollars, I walked out into the main corridor. But instead of going to the elevators, I took a detour and wandered over to the stairwell. I opened the door and poked my head in.
It was deserted, the way stairwells usually are. Personally, I find stairwells creepy; whenever I use one, I’m convinced there’s a sex pervert lurking in a corner waiting to pounce. And I’m probably right. Hadn’t Kandi said something about how people were seven times more likely to be attacked in a stairwell than in an elevator?
But for someone who wasn’t scared of random perverts, it was an excellent way to leave the building without being spotted. True, Hal’s office was on the sixteenth floor, and that was a lot of stairs, but Hal was in good shape. I could easily picture him—or Denise, for that matter—clomping down those steps on the day of the murder.
I wasn’t about to try them myself, though; so I shut the door and headed over to the elevators. Just in time to see Denise getting on.
“Hold the elevator,” I shouted.
She looked up and saw it was me, then hurriedly pressed a button. Something told me she was trying to avoid me, because immediately the door started to close. I stuck out my hand, risking elevator door amputation. But fortunately the door sprang back open, and I stepped inside. I was happy to see that Denise and I were alone in the elevator.
“Hey, Denise.” I shot her a friendly smile, as if she hadn’t just tried to ace me out of her elevator. “Sneaking off work early?”
“No, I’m not sneaking off work,” she said, très pissy. “I’m going down to the coffee shop.”
“I was only kidding,” I said. “I know you wouldn’t sneak off work. You seem like a very devoted nurse.”
“I am,” she sniffed, somewhat mollified.
“That Dr. Kingsley,” I said. “What a dreamboat. He must be so much fun to work with.”
“Our relationship,” she said, like a bad actress reciting her lines, “is strictly professional.”
> Yeah, right. If your profession happens to be call girl.
“I really was kidding before,” I said, trying to ignore her icy vibes. “I didn’t think for a minute you were sneaking off from work. Besides, if you were going to sneak away, you’d be crazy to take the elevator, not with the stairwell so close to your office. That would be the perfect way to leave the building without being spotted.”
I watched her closely for a reaction. But she just stared straight ahead, expressionless. Damn. I was hoping she’d look nervous or worried, something that would confirm my stairwell theory. But her face was a mask. When the elevator door opened, she got out, without bothering to say goodbye.
It wasn’t until the door slid shut that I realized that she got off on the third floor. The coffee shop was in the lobby. Either she got off on the wrong floor by accident because I’d rattled her. Or she got off on the wrong floor on purpose to get away from me.
Either way, she was running scared. Which is something, I imagined, murderers often do.
Chapter Fourteen
I headed home along Olympic Boulevard, wondering if Denise had bumped off SueEllen. I could just picture their final confrontation. (“My man-made boobs are perkier than your man-made boobs!”)
Then suddenly I saw Beverly High coming up on my left. I remembered what Lt. Webb said about Brad having lunch on the football field the day of the murder.
On a whim, I turned left and pulled into the parking lot. The last time I’d seen this many luxury cars was the night of Heidi’s party. Of course, not all them were luxury cars. There were a few old clunkers there, too. Those were parked in the teachers’ section.
I squeezed my Corolla in between a BMW and a Porsche with the vanity license plate HOT BOD. The campus intellectual, no doubt. Then I left the parking lot and wandered past various low slung buildings, until I finally came to the football stadium. At this time of day, it was deserted.
I took a seat in the bleachers and looked out over the empty field. How convenient, that Brad claimed to have eaten lunch here on the day of the murder. If he was the killer, it would be too dangerous to pretend he’d eaten at the school cafeteria. Even if his friends lied for him, he ran the risk that some nerdy kid would come forward and testify that he hadn’t been there at all.
Of course, maybe Brad was telling the truth. Maybe he really did eat lunch out here in the football field.
Back when I was in high school, I never ate lunch in the cafeteria. A hotbed of snobbism, with a caste system straight out of Calcutta, the cafeteria was Hell with mashed potatoes—all the popular kids sitting together, all the nerds sitting together, and all the rest of us, floating somewhere in between, in awe of the caste above us and terrified of being contaminated by the caste below.
Which is why I joined the Art Squad. In a tiny cubicle in the basement of the building, my best friend Mara and I spent our lunch hours painting posters for the dances we never went to and the pep rallies we scorned. How safe we felt, tucked away with our egg salad sandwiches and acrylic paints, far from the frantic jockeying for social status in the cafeteria.
I was busy re-living the bad old days of high school, when suddenly the silence was shattered by shrill laughter. I looked up and saw The Enemy. A dozen or so cheerleaders were ambling out onto the football field for cheerleading practice. These were the girls I’d alternately loathed and envied in high school. The crème de la crème, the school beauties, every one of them sporting flat tummies and perfect hair.
But there was one girl who was prettier than the others. A knockout among knockouts. I recognized her right away. It was Brad’s girlfriend Amber. She stood in the center of the line-up, her blond hair blowing in the wind, like a model in a shampoo commercial.
Out in the center of the field, the cheerleaders picked up their pom poms and broke out into their first cheer:
A ship, A ship, A ship A ship ahoy!
Beverly! Beverly! Oooooooh, Boy!
What a dumb cheer. It made about as much sense as an eye chart. But they belted it out with gusto, secure in the knowledge that girls as beautiful as they were didn’t have to make sense.
I felt like heading back to the parking lot, but I forced myself to stay. I wanted to talk to Amber. And so I sat around for the next forty-five minutes, watching the Beverly High cheerleaders shake their pom poms and flash their panties.
At last, they cheered their last cheer, and were heading off the football field, giggling and tossing their hair. I got up from the bleachers and started walking towards them. Suddenly it was high school all over again. I was The Untouchable approaching the Brahmins. Was it my imagination, or did I hear them suppressing giggles?
I told myself I was being silly. I was a grown woman and would not let myself be intimidated by a bunch of shallow teenagers. I sucked in my gut and walked up to Amber.
“Excuse me, Amber,” I said. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
This time there was no doubt about it. The girls looked at each other and smirked, the patented Popular Girl smirk.
“Do I know you?” she said.
“I’m Jaine Austen. I’m a writer. We met at Heidi’s birthday party.”
“I don’t remember meeting you.”
“Actually, we weren’t introduced, but I was there.”
“So? What do you want?”
Friendly little thing, wasn’t she?
“Can I talk to you? Alone?”
“I’m sort of busy right now,” she said, walking away.
“Maybe your boyfriend will be busy one of these days,” I called after her. “At the state penitentiary.”
That stopped her in her tracks.
“You guys go ahead,” she said to her friends. “I’ll catch up.”
She headed back to me.
“What was that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“It means that Brad Kingsley is a suspect in the death of his stepmother.”
“That’s crazy. The police don’t suspect Brad.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“What have you got to do with all this? I thought you were a writer.”
“I am, but occasionally I work with the cops as a private investigator.”
Okay, so it was hogwash. But she fell for it.
“The police think Brad killed SueEllen?”
“They haven’t ruled him out,” I fibbed. “He said he was with his friends at the time of the murder. But we’re not so sure that’s true.”
“He was with his friends,” she said, defiantly. “I was there, too.”
“You know, Amber, if you’re lying to protect him, you’re an accessory to murder. And in this case, an accessory is not a toe ring. It’s something they put you in jail for.”
If I thought that was going to intimidate her, I was sadly mistaken. Her green eyes narrowed into angry slits.
“Buzz off,” she said. Only she didn’t use the word buzz.
Then she turned and hurried after her friends.
“Nice talking to you, too,” I called out after her.
Looked like I was back to being an Untouchable again.
“Tell me the truth. Do I have crow’s feet?”
I hadn’t forgotten what Hal Kingsley told me about the fine lines around my eyes. Now I sat across from Lance in my living room, sticking out my face for his inspection.
“They’re worse when I smile, see?”
“Yes, you have wrinkles. But so does everybody. I’m telling you, nine-year-olds have wrinkles when they smile. Dr. Hal just wanted to make some extra bucks.”
“Oh, Lance. You’re an angel.”
“That’s what Jim tells me.”
He grinned one of those goofy grins popular with people in love.
“So what’s the latest on the SueEllen Kingsley murder?”
I filled him in on all the details, up to and including the convenient back door in Hal’s office. When I was through, he filled me in on the details of his romance with Jim, up to and includin
g a romantic candlelit dinner for two at the Four Seasons.
Let’s recap here. Kandi gets a romantic Italian dinner and dancing in the aisles. Lance gets a romantic dinner at the Four Seasons. And I get a dead cockroach in my crème brulee.
Life’s just not fair, is it?
After Lance hurried off for yet another date with Jim, I called Lt. Webb. I was surprised to find him still at his desk. It was after six. I thought for sure he’d be out doing Pilates or eating sushi or whatever it is Beverly Hills cops do after work.
“Ms. Austen,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
(Translation: You again? What the heck do you want?)
I told him about the Post-it from Hal’s attorney, and how I thought Hal might have killed SueEllen to save himself an expensive divorce. And how the door in Hal’s office led to the stairwell, and that either Hal or Denise could have used it to sneak out and kill SueEllen.
If you think he was grateful for my input, think again.
“I still think the kid did it,” he insisted.
After we hung up, I poured myself a stiff chardonnay, hoping the good lieutenant would choke on a wonton in his Chinese chicken salad.
Then I called Heidi to make sure she was okay.
“How’s it going, kiddo?”
“Honest answer?”
“Of course.”
“It’s great not having SueEllen around,” she said, sounding more relaxed than I’d ever heard her. “You know what we had for dinner tonight? Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not some tiny ball of poached fish sitting on a piece of lettuce. And the funny thing is, without SueEllen on my case, I’m not eating nearly as much as I used to.
“Not that I’m glad she’s dead,” she added hurriedly. “I’m just glad she’s not here.”
“I understand,” I said.
And I did. Sad but true. Sometimes a death in the family is just what the doctor ordered. And in this case, who knows? Maybe the doctor did order it.
“And now that the police are taking me seriously about that blonde in the hallway, I’m a lot less scared than I was.”
