A Corpse in a Teacup

by Cassie Page

  She dumped the fourth bag at the foot of the bed, unzipped it half way and said enough to the patio doors that led to a small deck off her bedroom. She collapsed onto the loveseat and pulled her phone out of her bag. She needed to hear Olivia’s voice before she did one more thing this crazy morning. A quick call, then she had to get back to the Café for work by eleven am. It was her turn to open the Cat for the early lunch crowd. Until then, she had an hour to herself.

  Olivia’s phone threw her directly into voicemail where business-like Olivia requested names, phone numbers and reasons for calling.

  “Ollie Mollie? ‘Tis I. Much to tell. Yes, I know I’ve only been gone a few hours. But we know it doesn’t take long for things to go haywire, does it? Trouble never rests. Your turn. Call me. Love you.”

  The last two bulging suitcases called out to be emptied, but instead, Tuesday stretched out full length on the loveseat and let her knees hang over the arm with a throw pillow under her head. Holley was bugging her. Rather, her dilemma was. Could it be that the M did stand for money and/or movie? Was it possible the body signified something other than a dead person? She should pull out her symbols book, but she was sinking into the ease of her loveseat, the only truly comfortable piece of furniture in her apartment. After a week in Olivia’s luxurious digs, she began to suspect that she needed Olivia’s decorating guidance after all.

  But first, she went over the reading with Holley. It turned out to be very unsatisfying for her. Tuesday had put the cup aside as soon as Holley made her own interpretation, so she didn’t examine the leaves as closely as was her habit. She hated having a client take over a reading. It disturbed her equilibrium and her confidence in her powers. And she was pretty confident in her powers, which she believed she inherited from her grandmother.

  Percentagewise, as far as the accuracy of her readings went, she batted almost a thousand, and sometimes she nailed a situation as accurately as if she had created it herself. But what about Holley’s cup?

  Holley’s tale was preposterous when she thought about it. Who would want to kill her? Why would anyone want her to turn down a part in a movie she hadn’t even been offered yet? Hollywood was cut throat. Actors often said they’d kill for a part in this or that movie, but it was just an expression. Who would kill so you couldn’t accept a role? A competing actress? Maybe, but that was pretty drastic. She didn’t know Director Vitale’s box office track record, but he was no Steven Spielberg. Could a part in one of his movies be worth enough to justify murder as a career move? And Holley insisted a man’s voice had made the threats. Not Ariel’s.

  No, it just didn’t add up. The more she thought about it, the more she believed that what Holley saw in the leaves was accurate. Yeah, it was M for money. Holley seemed to dance on air as she left the Café. She’d probably forgotten all about the scary phone call by now and so would she. That is, if there had ever been one.

  Tuesday squirmed down into her short loveseat, curling around a second throw pillow and giving in to the drowsiness falling over her. A short doze was just what she needed to compensate for getting up at an ungodly hour for her flight this morning.

  Just a little snooze before she changed her clothes and hightailed it to the Café. Her eyes became heavy, and she was just drifting off when her phone rang, jarring her upright. She groaned at the intrusion, but she had a rule. Never ignore a call; it could lead to a client. She squinted at the name. Holley Wood. Tuesday stretched until her back cracked. “Hello?”

  “Tuesday, the worst thing happened. I just got a call from Roger. The camera guy? The other actress who was up for my role? Ariel?”

  “Yeah, what about her?”

  “She’s dead.”

  Chapter Six: The Cavalry Arrives

  Tuesday threw her tote onto Holley’s couch for the second time that morning, then assumed a hands on her hips stance. “Here’s another threat, Holley. And trust me, I will make good on it.”

  She’d made record time in getting back up the hill to Holley’s house. When she saw the wreckage of this latest news on her face, it had lost its rosy glow so that she was pale even under her makeup, and a roadmap of mascara streaked her cheeks, Tuesday wrapped her arms around her. Holley was shaking like a leaf as Tuesday spoke into her ear, softly but with conviction.

  “If you don’t call the police now, I’m walking out of her and pulling the plug on your readings. Maybe you don’t mind being convicted of withholding evidence in a murder case, but I certainly do.”

  Holley hiccupped her question. “What do you mean, withholding evidence? Roger said it was a heart attack. It’s all over Facebook. It’s just so awful. I’ve never known anyone who actually died before.”

  “A heart attack?”

  Tuesday was winging it, but she had watched enough Law and Order that she thought she was on solid ground here. She stretched away from Holley to look into her teary eyes.

  “Holley, you received a murder threat. The police need to know about that. It casts suspicion on whatshername’s death.”

  Holley blew her nose into a tissue that bravely tried to hold the line against her tears, but was failing. She folded it several times before she dabbed her eyes again and said, “Ariel.”

  “Right, Ariel.” Tuesday pawed through her tote and came up with a packet of tissues. She handed them to Holley. “If you have information that could aid in a possible murder investigation, you are required by law to report it. Your threatening phone calls are now evidence. Or, will be as soon as you call the cops.”

  Holley sat down to collect herself, then slowly reached for her phone on the couch. Immediately, she began sobbing. “Why are you so sure it’s murder? I only heard that she died.”

  “Holley. How old was she?”

  “Old. Twenty-four or twenty-five. They use a lot of makeup so she looks younger.”

  “And they think it’s a heart attack? Little old ladies die of heart attacks, not twenty-five year olds. She dies, and you get a death threat. Well, vice versa. Sounds suspicious to me. You have to report this to the police.”

  “I don’t even know how to call the police. How can they help me?”

  She prayed for patience. “911 sweetie. That will get them here in a flash. And you are going to help them. By giving them evidence that will help them find the killer. If there is one.”

  Holley started dialing. “But what do I tell them?”

  “Tell them you’ve received death threats and they may have something to do with Ariel Cuthbert’s murder. No, don’t say murder. Just say her death. I’ll stay with you. It could be a coincidence, but police don’t like coincidences.”

  Tuesday stroked Holley’s back while she made her call, hating herself for her next thought. But she just couldn’t stop the brief flash of glee coursing through her. Was she going to have her own Detective Dreamboat like Olivia’s Detective Richards in Darling Valley? Maybe the LA police department recruited detectives the way LA TV stations recruited news anchors. For their looks.

  Holley hung up the phone. “What do I do now?”

  “Wait for the cavalry to arrive. Are they coming right over?”

  Holley nodded, looking like a sad clown with her streaked makeup.

  “Then we just sit tight. Listen, there’s something I have to tell you. Something I saw in your teacup. When you thought the M was for money or a movie, I let it go. I thought maybe you were right. But my first thought was that the M was for murder.”

  Holley’s complexion went from pale to pale green.

  Tuesday had no experience as a grief counselor, but she trusted her gut and made an executive decision to just throw it all at her, rather than peel the bandage off a bit at a time. “And there was something else. I saw a corpse.”

  “In the Café? I didn’t see anything. Why didn’t you say? Who was it?”

  “No, Holley, not in the Café, in your teacup.”

  “How could a corpse get in my teacup?”

  “Earth to Holley! Are you paying attenti
on? The tea leaves. I saw the M and a body in your tea leaves reading.”

  “Oh no. Does that mean I’m not going to get the part? But wait, if Ariel is dead, then I am going to get the part. Is that what the reading meant? The body was her and the M was for Movie. I’m getting the part.”

  Tuesday had to release Holley and walk around the room before she spoke, which she did in carefully measured tones that took every ounce of patience she had. The wakeup call in the middle of the night was catching up with her.

  “Holley, forget the part for now. We have a murder to deal with. At least something suspicious.”

  Holley said, “I’m so tense,” then bent forward in a downward dog pose. After a long stretch she did a full salutation to the sun, then gave Tuesday a big smile. “There. I can think now. I think I’ll center myself until the police get here.”

  “Good idea, Holley. Do some more yoga. And while you’re at it, can I use your bathroom?”

  Holley pointed the way, then executed a contortion that looked like she had dislocated all of her lower joints. Tuesday flicked on the bathroom light and looked in the mirror. A fright mask stared back at her. She had not washed her face or done her makeup since she woke up at Olivia’s some six hours earlier. Why bother, she had reasoned. Who was going to look at her on the plane? Equally bleary-eyed businessmen too busy with their spreadsheets to notice anyone but the attendant pouring coffee? And then things happened so fast on her arrival that, for once, she had gone an unbelievable five hours without considering her appearance. But if Detective Dreamy were to show up, she needed to look like something better than a drowned rat.

  She fished around in her purse. Drat. In all the confusion of the morning she hadn’t put her makeup kit in her bag. But wait. The array of jars, tubes and cakes of rainbow-colored eye shadow before her was a veritable makeup artist’s dream. Holley seemed to have cornered the world’s market on lip gloss, mascara and blush. Oh, it was a terrible thing to do, and she would never be able to tell her friends. But Tuesday helped herself to foundation, blush, eye shadow, the works. She stepped back to evaluate the finished work of art.

  Yeah, these colors go with pink hair. What doesn’t? She added one more smear of peach flavored lip gloss. Yum, she thought after licking her lips. No wonder Holley seemed addicted to it. When she decided she was ready for her close up, and any good looking detective that might turn up on Holley’s doorstep, she went back into the living room.

  Holley blinked. “You seem different.”

  “Yeah, a little trick my grandmother taught me. I pinch my cheeks when I’m looking bedraggled.”

  Tuesday had to play fair. She looked at Holley’s own bedraggled face and told her to go into the bathroom and fix her tearstained makeup.

  Within minutes the bell rang. Holley raced from the bathroom to the front door, but Tuesday pulled her back. “Hold on, Usain Bolt. Make sure you know who’s there.”

  They both peeked through the shades, saw the rear end of an LAPD car hanging from driveway into the street behind Tuesday’s Civic. Tuesday nodded and Holley opened the door. Tuesday’s heart sank when two replicas of Detective Johnson walked into Holley’s living room, staggering, it seemed, from the armor around their waists. Walkie-talkie, night stick, gun, bullets, handcuffs, holster and the hefty leather belt and buckle itself. Detective Richards was the handsome Darling Valley detective that had worked on Olivia’s case. Just Tuesday’s luck to get his overweight, badly dressed, ill-humored sidekick, Detective Johnson. Two of them.

  The police officers resembled each other so thoroughly that if they had switched seats, she would not have been able to tell. Both well under six feet, well over 250 pounds, not a handful of hair between them and each slightly bowlegged, perhaps from all the hardware around their substantial mid sections.

  Any proximity to police raised the blood pressure of any intelligent human being. Or should, in Tuesday’s opinion, if they were thinking clearly. Her policy had always been to keep her distance from law enforcement. She even refused to date a neighbor one time who worked for the city pound, just on general principals. Yet no matter how hard she had tried to keep an open mind about law enforcement, there was her experience with Olivia and the DV police department to keep it shut tight as a clamshell. To say nothing of the times she’d had to bail her mother out of jail. She would have made an exception for a Detective Delicious, though.

  The uniformed officers introduced themselves and flashed badges. Holley invited them in. They fell over themselves calling Holley and Tuesday ma’am.

  “Hello ma’am,” one of them said, “Officers Brown and Fugate, ma’am, from the LAPD, ma’am. We understand you received some suspicious calls, ma’am.”

  Tuesday said, “This ma’am didn’t.” She pointed to Holley. “That ma’am did.”

  The uniformed duo had even less humor than the Darling Valley guys, but that didn’t seem to matter to Holley. She came alive. Tuesday had never seen Holley except at the Cafe for her readings. Nobody else was there at that hour. Her performance in front of the two men revealed a different side of the girl. Holley had turned on a switch. With Tuesday, discussing the threats, she had been terminally glum. Now she batted her eyes, took deep breaths that made her ribcage rise to display her luscious breasts and did something with her pelvis that looked like a pole dancer’s move. All just to say hello.

  Tuesday’s time in conservative Darling Valley reinforced her belief in her man-catching skills. Of course, she hadn’t actually caught a man in Billionaire Hollow. Most of the men she met there were murder suspects and didn’t deserve her attention. But she saw how people looked at her in her stripes, leopard prints, faux monkey fur and pink hair. All worn together. She made a statement no matter what she wore. But not like Holley just did, especially when she stuck out her hand coyly and purred, “I’m Miss Holley Wood.”

  The bald officer returned the handshake. “Congratulations, ma’am. Going for Miss California?”

  Holley gave him a blank look.

  He said, “I need your name, not your title. Ma’am.”

  Tuesday got it. “That is her name. I’ve seen her driver’s license. Holley Ernestine Wood.”

  He said, “Ernestine?”

  Tuesday said, “After a great aunt.”

  The cop nodded while his partner scanned the living room, the hallway that led to the bedrooms and for good measure, leaned forward for a surreptitious peek behind the couch. Since they didn’t know why they’d been called, Tuesday wasn’t sure what they were looking for.

  “Well, um, Miss Wood. Ma’am. Can you tell me why you called for assistance?”

  Tuesday whispered, “Tell them about the phone calls.”

  Holley did another stretch, a full backbend this time, missing the detectives mouth-dropping looks at one another as she displayed her ripe, bare midsection in front of them, then snapped back up like a rubber band. She fluffed her ponytail, smiled modestly and descended slowly onto the couch, a snake charmer’s cobra winding back down into its basket.

  Both officers coughed away the looks of raw lust on their faces and got down to business. The bald officer noticed Tuesday as if for the first time. He extended his hand and said, “You must be Miss Wood’s er . . . “

  He paused and Tuesday thought if he says, mother, I’ll slug him. She quickly filled in. “Friend. I’m just a friend.”

  He clearly had trouble digesting the names. He repeated them. Miss Holley Wood and Tuesday. “No last name?”

  “No. Just Tuesday.”

  He shook his head as if to clear it of some sticky residue that was gumming up his thoughts. “Okay then, Miss Wood. What can we do for you?”

  As Tuesday feared, Holley began a convoluted tale of auditions, scripts, plot points, personal growth and, for some reason, Tuesday’s recommendation that she go off sugar. So she stepped in.

  “Officer Fugate. Miss Wood received a frightening call last night from a man who told her to withdraw from a film project.”

>   Holley offered, “And then he called back and said he would kill me.”

  “Kill you?”

  “Yeah, if I told anyone about his calling me. But I had already called Miss Tuesday and so I was really worried. And then I find out that Ariel Cuthbert who is also up for the part is dead. Well, I guess she was up for the part. She isn’t anymore.”

  “Can you give us that name again, ma’am”?

  Holley complied and his partner said, “Yeah, we got that one this morning.”

  Tuesday couldn’t name the sense of danger washing over her. Perhaps it was because she feared the officers would nail them for not notifying the police right way. Perhaps they would realize as Tuesday just had that Holley would benefit from the actress’s death and accuse her of murder. Oh no. If she hadn’t insisted that Holley call the police, they wouldn’t be on her trail. So she said, ”We immediately called you. Well, Miss Wood did.”

  “But not last night.”

  Tuesday leaned forward. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You didn’t, rather Miss Wood here didn’t report this last night when the calls actually came in and we might have been able to do some work on a trail still warm. Can you explain that? Why it took you so long to let us know about these threats, after a death that may or may not be connected?”

  Tuesday started to answer, but the cop stopped her. “Miss Wood can speak for herself. Can’t you Miss Wood?”

  Holley gave him a doe-eyed, uncomprehending smile. “Yes, of course. I can what?”

  “Why didn’t you notify us when the calls came in.”

  Holley started to cry. “I was so scared. He said he would kill me. And I didn’t know that Miss Ariel had died. I didn’t know what to do so I called Miss Tuesday. She always guides me. Reads my tea leaves. She has a gift.”