The Annie Graceland Cupcakes Cozy Mystery Box Set #2: Books 5 - 7

by Pamela DuMond

  I made my own breakfast and mused whether he could see or hear the spirits of the dead people, just like I did. Then I reminded myself that he was only a cat and I was simply projecting. While felines might be the subject of superstition, accused of being witch’s familiars and claimed to be a source of bad luck, they were, at the end of the day, loveable companions and affectionate pets who tolerated their humans.

  “You’re eating again,” Slice said and reached for my dish. “It looks like a yummy goat cheese omelet with some buttery toast on the side and two strips of bacon. I’m fond of bacon. Please and thank you.”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t share with you because you’re on that new trendy diet,” I covered my plate with my hand. “Did you forget already?”

  “Of course not,” he frowned and peered at his middle. “What’s it called again?”

  “The Breath-arian Diet,” I said. “All the celebrities are on it.”

  “Oh. Right,” he said. “What celebrities?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. What if I’ve lost a little too much weight, like some of those TV anchor people, and the vegetarians, and the aging hippies? I don’t want to end up looking weak, emaciated, or slight. I am a rock star. There’s a certain ideal physique that goes along with that gig.”

  “Steven Tyler from Aerosmith is lean,” I said. “Mick Jagger is wee in stature, and his companion Keith is craggy, but still sexy in his own way. I don’t think rock stars need to age perfectly. Rock stars are just stars. They burn bright and get a pass in the looks department. Even Elvis grew quite chunky and people still lusted after him.”

  “Yes, folks give rockers a pass,” he said. “But in reality, we must still exude virility and sex appeal. We are the poster children for dreams, heartaches, and longing. All the young girls fall in love with a rock star, but at the same time we put a twinkle in their grandmas’ eyes. I think I’ll write a new song about it. Have you seen my black leather notebook? The one that matches my pants.”

  Er—no. That was the one that had gone missing the night he was killed. I suspected that journal had evidence of who killed him as well as why.

  “Why don’t you check next to the coffee table?” I suggested.

  “Right, thank you.” He wandered through the living room peering around magazines and books as he hummed to himself.

  I flipped on the computer and Googled Slice’s name. I didn’t have to scour the online newspapers or gossip rags all that long to discover that Paul the Pervert Vanderveen was hosting a “celebrities and close friends only” memorial to eulogize Stanley Suffington aka Slice.

  I was no stranger to sneaking into places and I was already figuring out my angle when I got an unexpected phone call from Johnny Blackfoot. “Stalking me much?” I asked after I picked my jaw up off the ground. “I thought I made it perfectly clear I never wanted to speak to you again.”

  “You did,” he said. “That’s why I’ll make it brief.”

  “Not brief enough. How’d you get my number? Did you hire one of those weirdo online investigative places and pay them a fee? You’ve got to be careful of those places, you know. They’re click bait. They hire thieves to hack your computer, steal your stuff—”

  “I know.”

  “I highly doubt that you got ahold of my mother back in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. She hates you. She would never have given you my digits. How did you get my number? Did Paul the Pervert have me followed? I don’t care how much money that guy has, I will so drudge up old stuff, I will sell it to the tabloids, he will burn in the fires of damnation, and I will bring him down!”

  “Your number was next to your email on your baking website.”

  “Oh.” I frowned. “What do you want?”

  “It’s not what I want,” he said. “It’s what Paul Vanderveen wants. He’s inviting you and your pal Julia Devereaux to the private memorial he’s throwing in Slice’s honor.”

  “He’s inviting a girl who might be a murder suspect in Slice’s demise,” I said. “That’s ballsy.”

  “As well as one who “used to be a murder suspect” as he loves to remind me.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked, suspecting it was the chick wrapped in bacon.

  “You. You were a murder suspect in the demise of Dr. Derrick Fuller, and Paul Vanderveen can’t quite get over that.”

  “Why not?” I huffed. “That’s ridiculous! He’s got too much time on his hands. Besides, I was completely exonerated.”

  “Maybe in the eyes of the court, but not in the eyes of the world. Paul had a bit of a crush on you back in the day. He remembers you as being young and innocent. He’s fascinated with the juxtaposition of light and darkness as he imagines you as the Cupcake Killer. He can’t quite wrap his head around it.”

  “Let’s make this crystal clear. I baked the cupcake that killed Derrick Fuller. I did not inject it with cyanide. I did not murder him. Jennifer what’s-her-name the nurse murdered him.”

  “But Jennifer whats-her-name the nurse didn’t show up at our band rehearsals twenty years ago in dinky garages and grimy warehouses in Milwaukee with shiny auburn hair and big hazel eyes asking if she could please just hang out and listen to us jam for a while.”

  “I was young and anything would have captured my attention.” I chewed on my lower lip. “You could have showed me a video of a squirrel burying a nut and I would have been enraptured.”

  “But Paul noticed you. You chatted with him when the other girls only wanted to talk to the musicians. You were kind to him. You told him it was super cool that he was arranging our gigs, that he was producing our songs. You told him he was the brains of the operation, and of course he’d find a nice, sexy, smart chick someday because some girls liked boys with the big brains more than they liked the boys with the big—”

  “Egos,” I said.

  “I know. That’s what I keep telling Paul. But he’s fascinated by your dicey past. You became the nut buried into his brain.”

  “I don’t have a dicey past!”

  “He begs to differ. In regards to Julia, our sources at LAPD say that there’s not a shred of hard evidence to link her to Slice’s demise. Wait, I take that back,” Johnny said. “There was a few slices of suspicious ham in a sandwich in Slice’s dressing room that tested positive for salmonella. While tox reports aren’t confirmed yet, he died from a blunt force trauma to the head, not a case of food poisoning.”

  “Fine.” I sniffed. “I can’t speak for Julia, but I’ll show. Where, when, and what’s the attire?”

  “Two days from now. I already sent you an e-vite with the deets,” he said. “About that awful night, Annie. I apologize. It’s haunted me for a while. I’m sorry. I truly am.”

  “You were just doing your job. Actually, you protected me. Got me out of a dicey situation, away from that crowd before someone could snap a pic of me and plaster it all over social media. I should probably thank you.”

  “Not the gig at the UMAs. I was talking about twenty years ago,” he said, “the night you showed up to my place, rang the bell, walked in, and found me in bed with Belinda.”

  “Oh,” I said as my heart dropped into my stomach, memories of the night my teenage dreams were crushed, and my heart smashed into a thousand pieces, flooded my brain. Right—that night. Couldn’t handle going back to that night right now. I covered the phone with one hand and made fake wind noises. “Can’t hear you. Sorry. Brak-bra –bra-ing up. Ta…k. la….ter.” I hung up.

  The last thing in the world I needed was to be reminded of getting my heart broken when I was very young and sweet. It would only remind me of the time I married the wrong guy when I was older, not so sweet, and had my heart broken more permanently the second time. Those wounds were much more serious and harder to heal. It had taken a long time to get over the fact that I caught Johnny Blackfoot lying to me and cheating on me with his real girlfriend. I’d changed that cycle of cheating men for the last time, and I wasn’t going back to it.

 
Chapter 14

  Walk of Fame

  Annie

  Yes, I told Julia about Slice’s memorial at Paul Vanderveen’s estate. Yes, we planned on attending. And yes, you’d better believe we were still hitting the Unofficial Slice Groupie Memorial held in Hollywood the day before.

  The town had its kitschy charms. The Wax Museum was creepy but fascinating. The Hollywood sign high in the hills overlooking the city below was an iconic symbol of the film industry. The celebrity stars lining the Hollywood Walk of Fame sidewalk were a favorite international tourist destination. Folks would even kneel down and take pictures of themselves next to their favorite celebrity named plaques.

  I probably wasn’t a fan of Hollywood because I used to live there with my ex-husband, Mike Piccolino, the cheater. In the old days—gosh that was just a few years ago—I’d gaze down at Hollywood Boulevard from my clean, modern high-rise apartment that I shared with Mike, and wondered how the people that trod the busy streets below dealt with all the craziness.

  Later, when I discovered my former spouse had strayed, I stared down at the busy thoroughfare and wondered how I would recover, how I could live when my marital hopes and dreams were squashed. Now here I was a few years later, still dealing with ghosts of boyfriends past and mysteries of the boyfriend present. Because Raphael Campillio still hadn’t come clean about his relationship to Maria Campillio.

  It’s not like Raphael was keeping our relationship or me a secret. We went to casual get-togethers with his buddies, as well as a few more formal police department gatherings. I’d met his family. His mother was a doll, very sweet, kind to me, and asked if I was a Catholic. I told her I was non-denominational, but open to conversion if the bribe was big enough. I’d shared a few lunches with his sisters: all nice, two were working moms, one a teacher, the other a lawyer. His single sister was a successful screenwriter.

  Perhaps Maria Campillio was a distant cousin who was pissed off that I had skipped his family reunion to go back to Wisconsin to attend the Hot Guys Contest. But, that didn’t make any sense, because younger relatives didn’t really care about those kinds of things. Especially not cousins who were super gorgeous and glamorous, and when you compared yourself to them—because you always did even though you tried not to—you felt as bland as a non-garnished baked potato. I felt a pang of jealousy and wished I could have been the chick wrapped in bacon, because at least I’d have that going for me.

  Julia and I walked down the street, stepping on the celebrity star plaques neatly laid into the sidewalk, as we made our way toward the address given for the Slice Groupie Memorial. The air was warm, a heady mix of city smells: exhaust fumes, rotting garbage, colognes, and the scents from foods of all ethnic persuasions. The air buzzed, probably from the collective frenetic energy of all the folks jammed into this small urban area.

  “That’s got to be it, right there.” Julia wiped the sweat from her brow with one hand and pointed to a crowd of people lined up outside a boisterous watering hole.

  I shook my head. “They’re all wearing Hello Kitty backpacks. I would have remembered that theme in the groupie memorial’s online profile. Besides, those people are hanging out at the Mad Piper’s Room, not Cocktails A Go-Go.”

  “Right.” Julia reached down, rubbed her heel, and then resumed walking. “I’m so regretting wearing these six-inch Manolo heels. I wanted to look nice for the gathering, but I didn’t know we’d have to park so far away.”

  “I circled the block a few times, but they were all filled. I wish we could have found a closer lot, but there’s probably a movie premiere or another awards gig.” I glanced down at my pink Keds and covered a smile.

  She frowned. “No one’s ever going to believe you’re a groupie based on your choice of footwear.”

  “Groupies come in all shapes and varieties, and wear different hats, let alone shoes,” I said. “Besides, I’m not here to join the club, I’m here to investigate. Let the crowd get liquored up and then I’ll be asking the tough, pointed questions. I will guarantee you there will be suspicious people, probably murder suspects at this party. By the way, if I find who killed Slice tonight, I’m not attending the memorial at the pervert’s house tomorrow.”

  “Oh yes, you are,” she said. “Paul Vanderveen’s house was featured in Architectural Digest and the interior was designed by Koko.”

  “The gorilla?” I asked.

  She whapped her purse across my arm. “No, dork. The famous interior designer. She did Brad and Angie’s Silverlake house as well as Jennifer and her dancer boy toy’s Bel Air pad. Besides, I’ve been dying to get inside Vanderveen’s house ever since I saw it in the magazine. His shoe closet was amazing. Hey look—I think I spotted our party.” She pointed to a throng of people holding signs above their head and marching to and fro in a tight rectangle while they chanted, “No! More! Margarine!”

  “That’s some kind of food demonstration,” I said. “Besides, we’re in front of the House of Key Lime.”

  “I adore the House of Key Lime,” Julia said. “They have the best—”

  “Pies,” I said.

  “Guys,” she said and squeezed Slice’s hair voodoo-dad. “I met a smoking hot bartender there about six months ago. Six foot two. Blue eyes. Made the best Between the Sheets cocktail.”

  “That’s got rum in it.”

  “That’s not all it has in it.” She sighed. “We dated for a couple of weeks until he moved back to Spain to become an actor.”

  “What is it with bartenders at trendy bars in Hollywood? They’re always hot and they’re always actors.” I stared at her. “This is a good sign. Maybe you’re finally getting over Slice.”

  She shook her head. “Not possible. He passed less than a week ago.”

  “Possible,” I said. “You hadn’t seen him for twenty years before this weekend.”

  “Confession,” she said. “I’ve been an active, card-carrying member of the Sloupies for years.”

  “The Sloupies?” I asked, but someone latched onto my arm and I skidded to a stop.

  “You ladies look like Sloupies. Well, at least one of you does,” said the overly made up Amazonian chick with the bouffant teased hair. “Are you looking for Slice’s memorial?”

  “Yes we are,” I said. “Sloupies?”

  “Cute name for Slice’s groupies,” Julia said. “Mable, it’s been a while. It’s me, Julia. So nice to see you after all these years.”

  “The infamous Ms. Devereaux,” Mable said and leaned in for an air kiss. “Did you bring the hair voodoo-dad?”

  “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t,” Julia said. “Can’t risk getting mugged by an envious Sloupie at the memorial. How are you holding up?”

  “Not very well,” Mable said and tilted her head at a cute yellow storefront. A twinkling neon sign of a cocktail glass outside the bar’s window blinked the words ‘Cocktails A Go-Go’. “We’re over here.”

  She led the way and we followed her as she opened a gate leading to a side corridor next to the establishment.

  “Why don’t we just enter through the front?” Julia asked.

  “Because Kristy McKristenson’s holding court in the main salon,” she said. “I can’t stand to be around that woman, especially right now. All she ever does is talk about how Slice loved her the most. She’s such a diva.”

  We squeezed past a string of women dressed in their vampy best and arrived at an open-aired back garden terrace. Italian lights strung across pergolas twinkled like little stars as the sun dropped below the horizon. Copious candles, pictures of Slice, flower arrangements, and decorated wooden picnic tables were arranged in clusters and adorned with Kleenex boxes. Discretely positioned garbage pails were filling up with soggy, tear-filled tissues. Uniformed servers circulated with trays of drinks and appetizers, and one handed us each a flute of champagne.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “To Slice,” Julia said as we raised our glasses and toasted.

  Mable downed her bubbly and extend
ed her hand to me. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Mable Mavis. I assume you’re a fellow Sloupie?”

  “She’s an honorary,” Julia said.

  “Annie Graceland,” I said as we shook hands.

  “Name sounds familiar,” Mable said. “I never forget a name, darling. Graceland, Graceland… were you attached to Elvis’s people? You’re too young for—but you know, you could have been part of the fan conventions.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well maybe you should be. Great group of people, those Elvis groupies. Wouldn’t hurt you to join, you know. You get discounts on memorabilia. The tour of the estate. It will come to me, darling. FYI, I do cosmetic makeovers. Make sure I give you my card later, before I get all partied out and forget, okay? I’ve got some tips that could illuminate your better facial features and make your cheeks appear more sculpted and less chubby.”

  “Oh,” I said, crestfallen, not realizing until now that I had fat cheeks. “Will do. Thanks.”

  “Mable, who’s that woman in the green stilettos?” Julia pointed, leaned into me and whispered, “Your cheeks are not chubby. She always pushes her makeup line on unsuspecting victims.” She reached for an appetizer.

  “Can’t say I’ve ever seen her.” Mable glanced around. “The place is filling up. Good turnout of the Sloupies.” She looped her arm through Julia’s. “Strength in numbers, ladies. We need to mourn our man properly, and send Slice off in style. Oh my God! Don’t look now, over my shoulder, directly under the kitchen window, stage left, where the barkeep is refreshing drinks. I do believe Pancetta Carleone is in the house.”

  “Pancetta Carleone!” Julia spit out her shrimp roll. “Holy crap! Wait a minute. Was she at the UMAs? I saw a chick wrapped in bacon wandering the back hallways of the Nokia Theatre during the awards show. It was difficult to see past the thick black eyeliner and the false eyelashes, let alone the crispy meat suit, but now that I think about it, she totally could have been Pancetta.”