Lucky Stars

by Jane Heller

  “Agreed.”

  I grabbed the phone and called Mom. “No answer at her place or on her cell,” I reported after getting voicemail messages at both numbers. “I guess I’ll have to try her at Victor’s.”

  I dialed his number and got the answering machine. “What about calling Jeanine, her publicist,” said Jack. “Won’t she know where Helen is?”

  “She might.”

  Jeanine answered after the first ring. “Your mother’s gone out of town,” she said, sounding apologetic, probably because she’d heard I’d been given the silent treatment.

  “When will she be back?” I asked.

  “Not for two weeks.”

  “It’s not Sex and the City again, is it?”

  “She’s not working, Stacey,” said Jeanine. “She’s spending some private time with Victor.”

  Private time? I felt my pulse quicken. “I see. Do you know where he took her?”

  “Yes.” She gave me the gory details, then apologized again. I guess she was sorry to have to be the one to clue me in.

  “Now what?” I said after I hung up and gazed helplessly at Jack.

  “Why? What did Jeanine tell you?”

  I reached out for his hand and clasped it tightly. “My mother has driven up to the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito with Victor. Why? Because they’ve eloped, Jack. They’ve arranged to tie the knot during the last part of their stay. In other words, the same woman who told me to avoid unsuitable men like the plague has just run off to marry one.”

  thirty

  Boy, did I feel slighted—my own mother hadn’t even invited me to her wedding. But mostly I felt panicked, so I reached for the phone to call her at the hotel.

  “She’ll only hang up on you,” Jack reminded me. “We’ve got to approach this some other way.”

  “You’re right. Let’s get in the car and drive to Montecito. We’ll show up with Rosa’s scrapbook and stop her from making the mistake of her life.”

  “How will the scrapbook change her mind about Victor? He’ll just explain away the photos of him and Karen. He’ll make up another one of his ridiculous stories and your mother will buy every word and she’ll end up accusing you of causing trouble again. The only person who can confirm that Victor actually committed a crime is Rosa. We need her to tell us what happened to Karen.”

  “Then let’s get in the car and drive to Beverly Hills,” I said. “With Victor gone, she might be more inclined to help us. We’ll butter her up, fill her head with visions of her spectacular movie career, promise her she’ll never have to cook a single meal again. If she goes shy on us, we’ll ask Carlos what happened to Karen.”

  “Worth a try.”

  We drove to Victor’s, rang the bell, and waited a few seconds. Eventually, Vincent, the smiley chauffeur, answered the door—a surprise, given that it was Carlos who usually functioned as the gatekeeper.

  “Hi, Vincent,” I said, then introduced Jack. “Is Rosa around? We’d like to talk to her.”

  “Sorry. She’s not here. Neither is Carlos. When I arrived at the house this morning, I was told they had quit.”

  “Quit?” I said.

  “That’s what Quentin, the projectionist, told me. Since Mr. Chellus is on vacation with your mother, I wasn’t able to ask him why they quit or where they went.”

  Jack and I glanced at each other, knowing full well they wouldn’t have gone anywhere with their big show business career in the offing. What’s more, it was odd that Vincent hadn’t accompanied my mother and Victor to Montecito, since he was both Vic’s chauffeur and bodyguard.

  “It sounds as if they left very suddenly,” said Jack. “And no one knows where they went or how they can be contacted?”

  He shook his head. “It’s strange, I agree, but they didn’t leave a forwarding address, according to the rest of the staff. Everybody’s upset, because those two were such popular members of the household. They will definitely be missed.”

  We thanked Vincent and walked back to Jack’s car. “I’m completely blown away by this,” I said. “Victor must have found out that Rosa gave us the scrapbook and silenced her and Carlos.”

  “Which is code for ‘had them murdered’?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him. He could have disposed of them the way he disposed of Mary Elizabeth and Karen—the way he’s planning to dispose of my mother.”

  Jack put his arm around my shoulders. “Try to stay calm. The bad news is that Victor could be a killer. The good news is that he doesn’t kill women on his honeymoons, judging by past history, so we’ve got a little time to play with. Let’s concentrate on what to do now.”

  “There’s only one thing we can do, since Rosa and Carlos have disappeared and taken the truth about Karen with them: our next stop should be the Beverly Hills police.”

  “And tell them what? That we think the cook and the manservant at Victor’s house met a violent end? That we think the woman in a scrapbook did, too? That we think your mother will be his latest victim, even though she went away with him voluntarily? They’ll laugh us out of the building.”

  “But we’ve got the photos of Karen and Victor,” I said hopefully.

  “That’s all they are, Stacey—photos of a woman Victor married, if you believe Rosa, who is no longer here to explain herself. The truth is, we have nothing the police will buy.”

  “Couldn’t we make them investigate Victor?” I said.

  “For what? You saw what happened when you looked into the drowning of Mary Elizabeth. You and Maura found nothing. The autopsy on her was clean. Victor wasn’t under suspicion.”

  “But now we’ve learned that he lied about being married only once; that he hid the fact that he was married to another woman.”

  “They don’t put people in jail for lying about being a two-time loser,” said Jack.

  I sighed, knowing he was right. “If the police won’t help us, we’ll have to come up with some other way of rescuing Mom,” I said. “We’ll have to get our own proof that Victor murdered both women and then drive up to Montecito and tell her.”

  I took time off from work at Cornucopia! and got down to the business of finding out more about Victor’s newly discovered second wife. Unfortunately, all my phone calls led nowhere. No one at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee knew anything about Karen Chellus. Her wedding to Victor was too long ago to be in their files, they claimed, which meant they had no forwarding phone numbers or addresses for the happy couple.

  Next, I surfed the Internet, scouring the archives of newspapers in Wisconsin for an obituary of Karen. I found nothing, which led me to conclude that Victor must have killed her in some other part of the country, the maniac.

  I reported my lack of progress to both Jack and Maura later that day. The three of us had convened at my apartment, where I had intended to cook them dinner but was so caught up in the hunt for my mother’s fiancé's second dead wife that I’d forgotten to go grocery shopping. Luckily, Jack brought in Chinese.

  “You did a search of the newspaper archives for Karen?” he said, passing the pu pu platter.

  “I did, and I couldn’t find a trace of anybody named Karen Chellus.”

  “There’s your problem,” said Maura.

  “Where’s my problem?” I said.

  “You searched the papers by inputting her married name. You should have searched for Karen Sweetzer, too. She could be one of those women who keeps her maiden name.”

  What was the matter with me? Maura was absolutely right.

  I grabbed an egg roll, bolted up from the table, and went straight to the computer. I combed the newspapers’ websites and did searches for Karen, using her maiden name—to no avail.

  “I struck out again,” I reported when I returned to the kitchen. “No obit. Nothing.”

  “Okay, forget the obit,” said Jack. “Just do a regular search for Karen. There are dozens of sites where you can find people’s phone numbers and addresses.”

  “But she’s dead,” I reminded him. �
�Why would her phone number and address still be listed?”

  “You can be dead and be listed,” Maura maintained, “the same way you can be dead and get mail. I’m still getting letters at my house for the guy who used to live there, and he’s been dead for years.”

  “Besides which,” Jack added, “we don’t know how long she’s been dead. Victor could have killed her recently—like after he met your mother and decided he needed to subtract a wife before adding another.”

  “A cheerful thought,” I said.

  “Let’s call the names at the numbers you’ve got there. At the very least, maybe whoever answers will tell us something interesting.”

  His suggestion was a stretch, and we all knew it, but, since no one had a better idea, we gathered around my phone as I prepared to dial. There were two listings for Karen Sweetzer in the Milwaukee area. The first one turned out to be a number that was disconnected.

  “See?” I said dejectedly. “It’s an old number. A useless number.”

  “There’s one left,” Maura said. “Call it, Stacey.”

  I called it. A woman answered.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m trying to find out about a person who may have had this number before she died. Her name was Karen Sweetzer.”

  “I’m Karen Sweetzer, and I’m very much alive,” she said indignantly. She had one of those raspy, whiskey voices, which only contributed to her hostile tone. Of course, I’d forgotten that it was two hours later where she was, given the different time zone, so maybe, I’d woken her up and she had good reason to be hostile. “You’re Karen Sweetzer?” I said.

  “Yeah, but the better question is who are you?”

  “Oh. Sorry. My name is Stacey Reiser and I’m calling long distance from Los Angeles.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Stacey Reiser, from Los Angeles or anywhere else,” she snapped. “Goodbye.”

  “No! Wait!” I said before she could hang up. “Could you give me just another second?”

  “Why? If you’re one of those telemarketers, I’ll tell you what you can do with your sales pitch at this hour of the night.”

  “I’m not a telemarketer, I swear,” I said. “I’m just trying to get information about a Karen Sweetzer who was married at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee a few years ago.”

  Silence.

  “Karen?” I said. “Are you there?”

  More silence.

  “Please, Karen. This is urgent. Are you by any chance the same Karen Sweetzer who got married at the Pfister four years ago? To a man named Victor Chellus?”

  “Okay, honey. Now you’re really pissing me off. I’m not discussing my marriage to Victor. Not with you. Not with anybody. Got it? That nightmare is in the past and that’s where it’s gonna stay.”

  So she was Victor’s second wife, but she hadn’t been murdered. I was relieved. Sort of. Still, my head was starting to pound. I never expected Karen to be alive. I really, truly believed he had killed her, killed both his wives. But perhaps he had simply dumped her, and his sin was one of omission rather than murder.

  “Please,” I said. “It’s very important that I talk to you about Victor. You see, I had no idea you existed. He never told my mother he was married to anyone except Mary Elizabeth.”

  “Your mother? What does she have to do with all this?”

  “My mother is Helen Reiser, Karen. You know, the ‘Make No Bones About It’ Lady from the Fin’s tuna commercials?”

  “Helen Reiser is your mother?” She nearly broke my eardrum screaming this into the phone. “I adore her. She’s so real. She reminds me of my own mother, may she rest in peace. But what does she have to do with Victor?”

  “She’s about to marry him, Karen.”

  “No way. She’s too smart to get taken in by a bastard like him.”

  “A year ago, I would have agreed with you, but ever since she came to Hollywood and became a star, she’s lost all common sense when it comes to men, to most things, in fact.”

  “Well, how can I help?”

  “You can tell me why Victor never mentioned you to anyone, including my mother, who’s under the impression that he shares everything with her.”

  She laughed scornfully. “Victor is afraid to mention me, afraid somebody will start asking questions about me.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Like what that monster did to me and why.”

  “I don’t understand, Karen. Did you have a disagreement with Victor about how much alimony he was supposed to pay you? Are we talking about a bitter divorce trial or something?”

  “Alimony? I wouldn’t take a penny from him. I don’t want anything to do with him. I wouldn’t even be talking to you about him if I didn’t think your mother was in danger.”

  “So you agree that she’s in danger? I’ve been trying to warn her for months and she won’t listen. The subject has become such a battleground that she’s stopped speaking to me.”

  “That’s Victor for you, coming between family members like that. The same thing happened to me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but tell me, Karen: how is my mother in danger? Did Victor hurt you when you two were married?”

  “Hurt me? He tried to kill me!”

  “He what?”

  “Well, it was that Latin heartthrob who tried to kill me.”

  “Carlos?”

  “Yeah, but he was just following orders and couldn’t delegate. I’m only alive today because Victor couldn’t get decent help.”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s get more specific here, Karen. Tell me exactly what happened. My mother’s life depends on it.”

  “What happened was that Victor and I had a volatile relationship right from the get-go. I always suspected that he married me for my money, but he was such a flatterer that I bought his act Still, I was insecure and it didn’t take a lot of alcohol to bring out the worst in me. One night I picked a fight with him. I baited him about Mary Elizabeth, the first wife. I accused him of marrying her for her money, too. I backed him into a corner and the next thing I knew he was admitting that he did marry her for the bucks and that he killed her in order to have the bucks for himself and that, if I didn’t keep my mouth shut, I would find myself in the same predicament.”

  “My God, Karen. Why didn’t you go straight to the police after he said that?”

  “Because I figured it was just the booze talking. And because I loved the jerk.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Turned out it wasn’t the booze talking. Carlos was in charge of supervising the other members of Victor’s staff, including Vincent, the chauffeur, who took care of all the cars. I found him working on my Mercedes one day and asked what the problem was. He said Carlos told him to check the oil or something. I got into the car a few hours later and what do you know? As I was on my way to Saks, the brakes failed, and I ended up wrapped around a tree. I was supposed to die, but I didn’t. I survived, and the minute I was out of that hospital, I was on the phone to my lawyer dissolving the marriage.”

  “But if Victor really tried to kill you, why didn’t you go to the police then?”

  “With what proof? My car had bad brakes. I couldn’t make anyone believe that Victor caused the car to have bad brakes. You know what a smooth talker he is. Who’s gonna believe a boozy bitch like me over Mr. Hollywood Snake Oil Salesman? And then there was the issue of publicity; I didn’t want any. My father was a pillar of the community and the family didn’t need a scandal. I’d given them enough headaches over the years, including marrying a man they didn’t trust from day one.”

  “So Victor really tried to kill you.”

  “You got it.”

  “And he admitted to killing Mary Elizabeth?”

  “He claimed he got Rosa to do it. You’ve met the senora, I assume?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing. She was as corrupt as the rest of them. The night of Victor’s big confession, he told me she put something in Mary Elizabeth’s food
—something that killed her. Apparently, Rosa always prepared them a cooler full of treats to take on their sailing trips. Mary Elizabeth had a lot of food allergies, he said, so she liked to bring her own meals whenever possible. The day she supposedly drowned, Rosa must have given her something she wasn’t allowed to eat, and that was the end of her.”

  “And whatever it was didn’t show up in the autopsy,” I mused. “It’s amazing that Victor got away with what he did.”

  “Not so amazing, honey. That man always gets away with what he does. He’ll never get nailed.”

  “Oh, yes he will. And I’m going to be the one to nail him. Thanks to you, my mother won’t end up like Mary Elizabeth.”

  “Thanks to me? I already told you. I’m not telling my story to the police.”

  “Forget the police. My mother doesn’t need the negative publicity any more than you do. Police lead to reporters and photographers and TV cameras. If they all got hold of the fact that she? was about to marry a criminal, her career as the straight-shooting Fin’s Premium Tuna Lady would be history. She’d be the butt of jokes, lose her credibility, wonder why her phone has stopped ringing. She’d be devastated to find out what it’s like to fail in this town.”

  “That would be messy, wouldn’t it?” said Karen.

  “Very. In addition to the professional fiasco, there would be an emotional toll on her if the cops burst in on her love nest and dragged Victor away in handcuffs. She might go into denial. She might view him as a martyr. She might refuse to believe he did anything wrong. She might even think I put the police up to arresting him, just to come between them. That’s what she believes about me anyway—that I can’t bear for her to be happy.”

  “So what’s the solution? You can’t let her go ahead and marry Victor.”

  “You’re right. I can’t. So I guess the solution is for her to catch him in the act of being a liar and a cheat, to discover for herself what a creep he is. The revelation will knock her for a loop no matter how I handle this, but I might be able to soften the blow just a little if I arrange it so she sees him for who he really is and then breaks it off with him—herself. That’s the only way she’ll emerge with a shred of self-respect, with any sense of empowerment.”