Imitation of Death

by Cheryl Crane

  She lifted one shoulder. Took a sip of her latte. “I was just talking to somebody I knew who was there. I heard Eddie was . . . under the influence.”

  Wezley hung his head. “I feel so guilty about that. I should have been a better friend.” He looked up again. “Addiction is a terrible monster. It eats your soul.”

  “You knew Eddie from rehab, right?”

  He seemed stunned she knew that. He took a moment to answer. “I did. Eddie and I . . . we’d hoped to stay on the path of sobriety together.”

  “So, you guys stayed friends after rehab?”

  “To offer each other support. His family, I don’t know that they fully understood the demon that possessed Eddie.” He looked away, deep in thought. “I guess Eddie wasn’t ready to leave rehab.” Then he looked back at her. “You . . . you said you spoke to someone who had been at the party. Do you mind if I ask why?”

  She hesitated. “I’m not convinced my mother’s gardener did it,” she said carefully.

  “Interesting.” He looked up, offering a handsome smile. “Well, I’m glad we have this cleared up. I have to run because I have a meeting, but I just felt awful all night.” He rose. “I just couldn’t have lived with myself if I hadn’t straightened things out between us, Ms. Harper.”

  She rose. “Nikki.”

  He nodded. “Nikki. Well, it was nice to see you again.” He offered his hand and shook hers. “Have a good day.”

  She raised her cup to him. “You, too,” she called.

  And wondered what he was really up to.

  Chapter 21

  Nikki had such a busy day, with two houses to show in Holmby Hills and a potential client meeting in Bel Air, that she barely had time to catch her breath. She certainly had no time to actually think about Wezley Butterfield’s visit, or everything she’d learned about Eddie’s death.

  Which seemed to be nothing.

  When she’d investigated Rex March’s murder, she’d felt as if she’d moved from clue to clue, but this seemed to be a big pile of unrelated incidents. Or maybe it was a pile of puzzle pieces and she simply needed to put the pieces together.

  Despite Nikki’s busy day, she hoped to make it back to Roxbury in time to catch Rocko, and allow a few minutes to dress, do her hair, and put on makeup for the evening.

  Nikki walked in the front door to find Victoria discussing, with Amondo, the kind of glassware she wanted at the bar that evening. She had a beautiful, expensive collection of colored Depression glassware that she used only on special occasions. Or when the mood struck her. Tonight, apparently, it did.

  “I don’t know that we need to serve martinis,” she was saying. “Do we know if the Pinkett Smiths even drink martinis?”

  “I can call one of his assistants, if you like,” Amondo offered. He turned to Nikki. “You’re home early. You won’t be in such a rush.”

  “For once,” her mother put in.

  “Mother, do you have any connection to Justin Bieber?”

  “Beaver? What an unfortunate surname.”

  Nikki snickered. “Bie-ber. He’s a young singer. Preteen fan base.”

  Victoria didn’t crack a smile. She’d been to the hair salon and her face was already made up for the evening. She wore a white jogging suit and pristine white canvas sneakers. Her “get things done” outfit.

  “I’ve no idea. Amondo?” She turned to him. “Do we have Justin Bie-ber associations?”

  “I can check into that.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’ve become a fan,” Victoria said.

  “No.” Nikki headed down the hall. “But I know someone who is. I think he’s in town next month. Is there any way we can get a couple tickets?”

  “I’ll look into it tomorrow,” Amondo offered.

  “Thanks!” Stanley and Oliver greeted her halfway down the hall, but didn’t seem all that excited to see her. They were on their way to the kitchen; Cavies on a mission. Nikki could smell something delicious before she even walked into the room.

  “Ina, how are you?” The dogs trotted past Nikki, knowing they had a better chance of getting a treat out of Ina.

  “Tired,” the housekeeper said, pulling cartons of cream and sticks of butter from the refrigerator. “I had two mowers break down this morning, one worker call in sick, and another who went for lunch and didn’t come back. I don’t know if he got hit by a bus or went to Mexico to visit his mother.” She passed Nikki the butter and cream. “On the counter.”

  Nikki felt so awful for her. She could see the stress of her son’s being in prison, all over her face. Ina was still in jeans and a Jorge & Son t-shirt with an apron thrown over it.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” Nikki asked.

  “Not unless you can make mini artichoke-and-Gruyère quiches,” Ina quipped, snapping a piece of carrot from the refrigerator in half. The dogs ran to her and sat at attention.

  “Is the pool guy still here?”

  “Should be. Here or at the Bernards’. His van is still in the back.” Ina tossed pieces of carrot to Oliver, then Stanley.

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you to help you get ready for the evening, Ina.” Nikki stopped at the closed French doors. “I’m serious.”

  Ina turned to her. “That detective was next door again today.”

  “Was he?” she asked. “How do you know?”

  “We housekeepers, we have our ways.” She turned around. “Don’t dawdle. Your mother will want you to greet her guests at the front door.”

  “I’m not dawdling,” Nikki called. “I just want to speak to the pool guy for a sec.”

  Seeing that snack time was over, the dogs trotted to Nikki.

  “Stay here, guys,” she ordered, giving them each a pat. Then she slipped out onto the terrace, closing the doors behind her. No sign of Rocko, but she saw his white van parked next to Ina’s Honda.

  Nikki wandered out to the pool. It was a beautiful spring afternoon. The lawn looked immaculate; the pool sparkled. She walked around to the side yard and peeked through the gate.

  Rocko was vacuuming the Bernards’ pool. Lissa was lying out in a very tiny yellow bikini. Nikki hesitated. She needed to talk to Rocko, but privately. She hadn’t been expecting anyone to be outside at the Bernards’.

  She could wait for Rocko to come back to get his van, but she didn’t know how long he would be at the Bernards’ and she needed to get upstairs and get ready. She didn’t have a lot of time. She walked through the gate.

  “Lissa,” she called.

  The young woman had been reading Cosmo. She glanced up, through big, dark glasses. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” Nikki spotted Melinda’s bathing cap on a lounge chair. (She wore it to protect her blond hair; she swam laps every morning.) “Um . . .” She looked at Lissa. “Do you know if Melinda’s home?” she asked casually, knowing very well she wasn’t, as they’d passed on Roxbury on Nikki’s way in.

  “Nope. You just missed her.” She reached for an icy glass and turned a page in the glossy magazine. She was reading an article entitled “10 Ways to Drive Your Partner Wild in Bed.”

  Nikki glanced in Rocko’s direction. Like anyone who provided services in Beverly Hills, he knew how to pretend he wasn’t listening . . . even if he was.

  “So . . . how is everyone? How’s your mother?” Nikki asked.

  Lissa shrugged. “Not sleeping at the Beverly Wilshire. So, fine, I guess.”

  Nikki nodded.

  “You mind moving a little this way?” Lissa waved Nikki in front of her.

  “Oh, sorry. Am I blocking your sun?” Nikki sidestepped.

  “Nah. Mr. M.’s view.” She lifted her chin in the direction of the property across the street. “He’s up in his little perch watching us. He has a telescope. Creeper.”

  Nikki glanced over her shoulder. Mr. M. had agoraphobia and hadn’t been out of his house in at least twenty-five years. He made a hobby of watching his neighbors from a third-story cupola on the house. Victoria
had known him in the fifties when he’d been a handsome, rising film star, and they had once costarred in a movie. He kept himself busy by watching the comings and goings of his neighbors, and supposedly photographing them. Victoria wasn’t all that fond of him of late. She suspected he’d been the culprit when an unflattering photo of her without makeup, hair standing on end, had been published in a tabloid.

  Nikki spotted Mr. M. and raised her hand and waved.

  “Oh, God,” Lissa groaned, slumping down in the chaise. “Please don’t encourage him.”

  Nikki glanced at Rocko, who was still paying them no mind.

  “Is he taking pictures?” Lissa squinted. “Can you tell?” She sat up. “Because if he’s taking pictures of my cellulite, I swear to God, I’ll sue.” She got up, grabbed her glass, and pranced away. “I’m having another vodka and tonic. You want one?”

  “No, no, I’m good.” Nikki watched as the young woman went into the house. If Rocko noticed, he still didn’t respond.

  “Kids today.” Nikki chuckled.

  Rocko glanced up for the first time. He was maybe thirty years old and looked like a pumped-up surfer: blond hair, board shorts and flip-flops, a tight tee with a hibiscus on it. Very good-looking.

  “Nikki Harper,” she introduced. “Victoria Bordeaux’s daughter.” She hooked a thumb in the direction of Victoria’s house. “I think we’ve met before.” She walked around the pool toward him, eyeing the Bernards’ house. Lissa had disappeared inside. “At least said hi.”

  “Nice to meet you.” He had scooped a couple of bugs from the pool with a net and was dumping them into a white bucket.

  “Crazy week here, huh?” Nikki remarked.

  “Always crazy in Beverly Hills,” he said.

  “Yeah, but this was worse than usual. Eddie’s murder. Do you know Jorge? I mean, have you met him? The police have the wrong guy.” She glanced back at the Bernards’ house.

  He followed her gaze. He seemed to have become nervous. “I gotta get something out of my van.”

  Nikki followed. “I heard you were here the other night. At the party.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” He turned around. The look on his face wasn’t exactly menacing, but he wasn’t happy, either.

  “Jorge’s my friend. I think the police are pinning the murder on him because everyone in Beverly Hills wants a quick answer. I’m trying to find out what happened.”

  He started walking again.

  “You were here that night,” she said.

  Rocko halted and turned around again. “So what? You think I killed him? I’m sure you heard about the fight Eddie and I had months ago at The Python Club. But I was done with that. It was over.”

  “So you didn’t fight with him Friday night?”

  He frowned. “No. No way.”

  She glanced back at the Bernards’ house. Lissa had definitely said Rocko and Eddie had fought the afternoon of the party.

  “You didn’t . . . exchange words Friday?” Nikki asked.

  “No.” He exhaled. “Look, I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but you’re going down the wrong path. We had words that day, yes, but I wasn’t at the party. That morning, Mrs. Bernard called and left a message saying there was something wrong with the pool filter. I stopped by to take a look at it and people were already starting to arrive. It was like three in the afternoon.” He gestured. “There were girls lying all over, you know, sunbathing.”

  “Okay,” Nikki said.

  “I was checking the filters poolside and Eddie comes over, he’s wasted, and he wants to pick a fight. He accused me of crashing his party.”

  “But you weren’t?”

  “I didn’t want anything to do with his dumb-ass party. I came because my client called.”

  “So . . . you and Eddie?”

  “He got in my face. He pushed me.”

  “You push him back?”

  “No. I walked away.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He stepped through the gate, onto the Bordeaux property.

  Nikki really needed to speak to her mother about locking that gate. And a security system. She heard a door open and saw Lissa exiting the back of the house . . . carrying a fresh drink.

  Nikki stood there for a minute, debating what to do. She really needed to get dressed and the ponytail wasn’t going to do for evening attire.

  She marched back across the yard. “Didn’t you tell me that the pool guy got into a fight with your brother the day of the party?” she asked Lissa.

  Lissa sat back down on the towel stretched over the chaise. “What?”

  “You told me the other day that the police ought to be looking at Rocko, the guy who cleans your pool, because he had a fight with your stepbrother the afternoon he was murdered.”

  “So?” Lissa said, and took a sip of her drink. “I saw Eddie shove him.”

  “Did you see Rocko shove him back?”

  Lissa rolled her eyes and took a sip of her drink. “I don’t know. Whatever. Did Rocko tell you what the fight at The Python Club was about?” she asked with a snicker.

  Nikki hesitated. “No.”

  “Eddie punched Rocko during an argument after Eddie and Rocko had sex.”

  “Eddie . . .”

  “Yup,” Lissa said with great satisfaction.

  “I didn’t realize Eddie was—”

  “He said he wasn’t.”

  “So . . . why the fight at The Python Club?”

  Lissa adjusted her sunglasses. “I guess Rocko was running his mouth and Eddie got pissed because he didn’t want anyone to know he had sex with a guy. Eddie was the one who started it. My girlfriend Clover saw the whole thing. She was there that night. Eddie punched Rocko.”

  Nikki didn’t know what to believe and what not to. “Then Rocko had Eddie arrested?”

  “Yeah, but Rocko dropped the charges after Daddy Warbucks paid Rocko off with a Ninja motorcycle.”

  “Daddy Warbucks?”

  “Abe.” She smiled. “I love Annie. The musical.”

  “Ah.” Nikki nodded. “You happen to know Rocko’s boyfriend’s name?”

  She shook her head, reaching for a magazine. “But he works at that coffee shop on Sunset in West Hollywood, the one near The Roxy.”

  Nikki glanced at her watch. She needed to dress. She glanced up at the house across the street and Mr. M. As she watched him watching her, she wondered if he had been up there the night of the party. Had he seen anything? There was only one way to find out.

  Nikki crossed back to her mother’s property, then out the front gate, which was open because the servers assisting Ina had just been let in. She walked across the street to Mr. M.’s lovely three-story home. Built in the forties, with his widow’s walk, it looked like it should be on a spit of land jutting out into the ocean in Maine, rather than in Beverly Hills. Mr. M. had no gate; he had no security system.

  Nikki walked up and rang the doorbell. She didn’t expect Mr. M. to answer his door, but she didn’t expect a gal who looked like she belonged at the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills to answer, either. She was wearing a short, tight black dress with the body to fill it out, black stiletto heels, and a tiny, frilly white apron.

  “Hello,” the young—barely out of high school—woman said cheerfully.

  Nikki smiled the smile. “Hi, I’m Nikki Harper. My mom lives across the street.” She pointed in the direction of the house. “Victoria Bordeaux.”

  There was no recognition on the blonde’s face.

  “Mr. M.,” Nikki chuckled, “that’s what we call him—”

  “That’s what I call him, too,” she said in a ditzy voice.

  “I was wondering if I could speak to Mr. M.? Just for a minute?”

  “Please wait.”

  Nikki was hoping she might be invited in, but the young woman closed the heavy black-and-gold door.

  She was back in a matter of minutes. “Sorry,” she said. “Mr. M. isn’t seeing visitors.�
��

  “You told him it was me?” she asked.

  The young woman bobbed her head. “He said he wouldn’t see you.”

  “Did he . . . say . . . why he wouldn’t see me?” Nikki asked.

  “He doesn’t see guests,” the blond bombshell said sweetly.

  “I see.” The smile again. “Well, could you please send Mr. M. my regards and tell him I’d really like to speak to him? That I’ll only take a moment of his time.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she sang. “Have a nice day!” She started to close the door, then opened it again. “Oh! Mr. M. asked me to ask you how Ms. Bordeaux is. I didn’t realize she’s the woman we watch on DVDs all the time. Mr. M. loves Ms. Bordeaux’s movies. He once starred in one with her, did you know that?”

  She was so sweet and seemed so . . . dumb . . . that Nikki couldn’t help but smile. “Actually, I did.” She started to back down the steps. “Please tell Mr. M. that Mother is doing well and that I’ll call on him again.”

  “Okay.” The woman smiled and closed the door.

  Nikki sprinted down the steps and out the driveway. If she wasn’t home and downstairs before Will and Jada arrived, she’d be in big trouble.

  Chapter 22

  “Ellen, so glad you could make it,” Nikki said when Ellen approached her and Jeremy. Victoria had just called for her guests to join her downstairs in the screening room, so everyone was on the move.

  Victoria had built the screening room in the basement of her home in the days before media rooms were all the rage. There, she held movie night weekly, hostessing celebrities and political and social icons. The room sat twenty-five privileged viewers and was a thing of beauty, imitating the grandest theaters of bygone years. Decorated tastefully in an art deco style, with gilt trim and comfortable velvet seating, Nikki still felt a little thrill every time she joined her mother and her guests there. Some of her best childhood memories centered around the screening room. It was there where she had seen her mother’s first movies and shared her first real kiss with Jeremy when she was fourteen.

  Nikki was glad she could finally catch a minute with Ellen. She’d waved to Ellen earlier, but had been so busy chatting with Victoria’s guests that she hadn’t had the opportunity to do more than wave across the room. “This is my Jeremy,” she introduced. “Jeremy, Ellen Mar.”