Murder Has Nine Lives

by Laura Levine

  Chapter 19

  By now Prozac had reached the depths of her depression, slinking around the apartment like an extra from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a lifeless automaton, a shell of her former self.

  She clawed me awake for her breakfast the next morning, barely grazing my nightgown, looking down at me with glazed eyes.

  Time to feed me, I guess. But if you want to sleep an extra twenty minutes, go for it.

  I gulped in dismay. What happened to my pampered princess, stomping on my chest, demanding her chow?

  Thank heavens Emmy, the Reiki healer, was stopping by that afternoon. I only hoped she’d be able to rouse Prozac from her funk and bring back the fractious furball I knew and loved.

  I actually did roll over and fall asleep again, and for the first time in I don’t know how long, I slept until ten. I must admit, it felt divine.

  At this point, the old Prozac would have been yowling for her breakfast at ear-shattering decibels. But today she just followed me as I padded to the kitchen and sloshed some minced mackerel guts in her bowl.

  Leaving her pecking at her chow, I headed for the front door where I was happy to find my unsullied newspapers—along with a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a note from Lance.

  So sorry about taking your paper yesterday. Here’s half a dozen chocolate glazed doughnuts with sprinkles on top. Love & kisses, Lance.

  See? Lance may be a tad self-centered at times, but his heart’s in the right place. That’s why I love the guy.

  P.S. I ate most of the sprinkles.

  Damn that man!

  Back in my kitchen, I nuked myself some instant coffee, then settled down with The New York Times crossword puzzle and a single Krispy Kreme doughnut. Yes, that’s all I was going to allow myself. One chocolate glazed doughnut with most of the sprinkles missing. Not a bite more.

  Twenty minutes later, I’d finished the puzzle and both doughnuts.

  Okay, so I had two. You would have, too. They were scrumptious. And they couldn’t have been very fattening, what with all the sprinkles missing.

  And besides, I’d make up for the extra calories with a superlight lunch. I’d order the bacon ranch salad at McDonald’s. Only 190 calories!

  Come to think of it, as long as I was saving so many calories at lunch, there was no reason I couldn’t have another doughnut now, right? With all those sprinkles missing, it was practically a diet doughnut....

  This is why you should never bring me doughnuts.

  After scarfing down half a third doughnut, I finally tore myself away from the Krispy Kreme box and headed for my bedroom to get dressed.

  I comforted myself with the thought that the chocolate on my doughnuts was filled with energizing endorphins.

  And that morning, I was going to need all the energy I could get. Because I’d made up my mind to confront Deedee and demand the thousand bucks she owed me.

  * * *

  I’d left Deedee about half a dozen messages, none of which she’d returned. Which left me no alternative but to drive out to Hollywood and corner her at work.

  When I showed up at the House of Wonton, they were just getting started on the lunch crowd. The hostess, clad in a turquoise capri set with sequined butterflies flitting across her chest, waved me through to the back.

  Marching across the restaurant, I was determined to hang tough with the ever-elusive Deedee. I’d simply tell her I wanted my thousand-dollar kill fee, and I wanted it now.

  I stomped down the hallway past the kitchen, picking up a few choice curse words from the cooking staff, and arrived at Deedee’s door. I knocked sharply. Then, without waiting for permission to enter, I flung the door open to find Deedee sitting at her desk, her chopsticks askew in her hair, eyes closed, clutching a crystal to her chest.

  “Deedee?” I said.

  No response.

  “Deedee?”

  Still no response.

  If she thought she could get out of paying me my money with some sort of fake meditation act, she was nuts.

  Just as I was about to reach over and yank the crystal from her hands, her eyes flew open.

  “Jaine! How long have you been standing there? I’ve just been communing with my crystal in my never-ending search for inner peace.”

  Yada yada. Blah blah blah. What a load of poo poo.

  “Thank heavens you stopped by!” she added, with what looked like a genuine smile.

  I must admit, I was taken aback. I was expecting a rat caught in a trap, not someone who actually seemed happy to see me. Maybe getting my kill fee wouldn’t be so tough, after all.

  “I know who killed Dean!” She beamed with pride.

  “You do?”

  Well, this was good news. I could wrap up this case and concentrate on getting a decent pair of strappy sandals for my trip to Hawaii.

  “Who was it?”

  “Dean.”

  Huh?

  “I’m convinced it was suicide,” Deedee said, with a confident nod. “Dean was an evil man, cheating on his wife, threatening to ruin my career and Ian’s. So careless with other people’s lives. It all caught up with him. Somewhere deep in his soul he had a spark of conscience. A spark that grew over time into an unbearable burden. Then, overcome with remorse over his evil ways, he decided to end it all.”

  “So he killed himself by poisoning his own cat food?” I asked, oozing skepticism.

  “Admittedly an unusual way to go, but people do strange things.”

  She picked up her crystal and gazed into it, a faraway look in her eyes.

  “Dean reminds me a lot of my ex-husband. Elmore. A selfish man, thought only of his own carnal desires. Started having affairs almost from the day we got married. Then one day a tall redhead named Ursula walked into our office. She had a poodle she wanted to get into show business. The dog was terrible. Could barely find his own tail. But Elmore signed the dog anyway. I should have known then it was all about Ursula. Before long, he’d left me for her. A year later he had the nerve to invite me to their wedding.

  “He never thought I’d show up. He just sent me the invitation to rub salt in my wounds. That’s the kind of person he was. But I went with my head held high. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me unhappy.

  “When he saw me at the reception, something powerful happened. After all those years of being selfish, his conscience finally kicked in. I could see it in his eyes. He knew he’d done wrong. He knew he’d sinned.”

  Her eyes shone with a feverish intensity.

  “I wasn’t surprised when he keeled over at the wedding dinner. They said it was a heart attack. But I knew better. It was his conscience. He couldn’t live with the despicable human being he’d become. The stress of it all killed him. He did it to himself. Just like Dean killed himself.”

  Wow. This was serious loony tunes chat. Any minute now, she’d be telling me her chopsticks were receiving signals from outer space.

  “That’s my theory anyway,” she said modestly.

  “I’ll be sure to keep it in mind. But actually, Deedee, there’s another reason I stopped by. The same reason I left those seven messages on your phone.”

  “You left me seven messages?” She blinked in fake confusion. “Well, gosh. I never got them. Darn cell phone. Always on the fritz. Last time I ever buy my electronics at Toys‘R’Us. Haha.”

  “I want to talk to you about my kill fee from the Skinny Kitty shoot. According to my contract, you owe me a thousand dollars.”

  “Oh, that,” Deedee said with a wave of her caftanned arm. “Honey, you can’t get paid until Dean’s estate is settled. That could take weeks or months. Maybe even years.”

  At which point, she started shuffling papers on her desk, pretending to look them over. I could tell it was all an act, because the paper she was studying so intently was upside down.

  “I promise to call the minute I hear anything about your money,” she said, her eyes refusing to meet mine.

  “You do that.”
<
br />   “And think about my suicide theory.”

  “I’ll give it all the thought it deserves,” I assured her.

  Which was, of course, none.

  * * *

  I headed back out into the restaurant, seething. The nerve of that woman, yapping about her husband’s lack of conscience when clearly hers had disappeared some time along with the Tyrannosaurus rex.

  I was muttering a colorful stream of four-letter words I’d picked up from the cooking staff when suddenly I noticed a customer in a Miami Dolphins baseball cap. I didn’t much care about the guy. Or his cap. What my eyes were riveted on were the steaming fried rice and egg rolls on his plate.

  Good heavens, they looked dee-lish.

  But I couldn’t possibly think of eating Chinese food, not after the two and a half doughnuts I had for breakfast. No way! Absolutely not! As soon as I left the restaurant, I was heading straight for McDonald’s and a 190-calorie bacon ranch salad.

  Reluctantly I tore my eyeballs away from Mr. Dolphin and continued toward the front of the restaurant.

  As I approached the reception desk, the hostess smiled at me, her sequin butterflies glittering in the sunlight streaming in from the street.

  “Have a nice day,” she said.

  “Okay, you talked me into it. I’ll have some fried rice and an order of egg rolls.”

  She blinked, puzzled.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d like to order some food. Fried rice and egg rolls. To go.”

  “Fine,” she said, nodding.

  “And throw in some fortune cookies!”

  Oh, Lord. I can’t take me anywhere.

  The hostess wrote out my order and handed it to a passing waiter. Then she turned to me and asked, “You’re Deedee’s client, aren’t you?”

  “Sort of,” I nodded.

  “Watch out,” she warned. “She’ll rob you blind.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Untrustworthy lady,” she tsked. “Always late with her rent. I let her stay here only because I feel sorry for her. Her husband left her for another woman. Then he died. Terrible tragedy.”

  “I know. She was just telling me. He had a heart attack.”

  “Heart attack?” She shook her head vehemently, sending her sequined butterflies aflutter. “No, no heart attack.”

  “Then how did he die?”

  “Food poisoning. Just like the Skinny Kitty man.”

  Well, how do you like them wontons?

  Ten minutes later, I left the restaurant with my fried rice, egg rolls, and a hotter-than-ever murder suspect.

  Chapter 20

  You’d expect a Reiki healer to be a New Age-y gal in yoga pants, dripping with kabbalah bracelets, right? Not Emmy. I blinked in surprise when she showed up at my doorstep, a frumpy fortysomething with tightly permed hair and a housedress straight out of the Ethel Mertz collection. She strode into my apartment in no-nonsense orthopedic shoes, a massive tote bag slung over her shoulder.

  “So nice to meet you,” she said, grabbing my hand in a firm handshake.

  Then instantly she pulled away, frowning.

  “What’s that goo on your hand?”

  “So sorry. I was eating an egg roll. I’m afraid my hands are a little greasy.”

  “Egg rolls, eh?” she said, giving my body the once-over.

  “In case you’re interested, I also do special healing for weight loss and appetite control.”

  “Oh?” I replied, more than a hint of frost in my voice.

  “Just something to consider.”

  With that, she tossed her tote down on my sofa and took out an oversized appointment book.

  “I never go anywhere without this baby,” she said, tapping it with pride. “Don’t believe in computers. Soul-sucking hotbeds of negative energy.”

  Cancel that grant from the Bill Gates Foundation.

  “Now, let me see,” she said, riffling through the pages of her appointment book. “If I remember correctly, I’m here for . . . ?”

  “Prozac.”

  “Why on earth would I need any Prozac?” she bristled. “I’m perfectly happy, thank you very much.”

  “No, Prozac is my cat.”

  “Really? Most unusual name,” she said, eyebrow raised in disapproval. “If you ask me, pharmaceuticals are an insidious crutch destroying the moral fiber of this nation.”

  She certainly was chock-full of opinions, n’est-ce pas?

  Then, consulting her appointment book, she said, “I see here that Prozac is depressed.”

  “Very. She was supposed to star in a cat food commercial, but everything fell apart, and she hasn’t been the same since. In fact, your client Deedee was there at the shoot. She’s the one who referred me to you.”

  “Deedee,” Emmy beamed. “Such a lovely woman. Such a noble spirit.”

  Could she possibly be talking about the same unscrupulous cat doper who’d conned me out of a pricey lunch at the Peninsula?

  But then I realized that this was a golden opportunity to confirm Deedee’s alibi.

  “Deedee told me she had a phone appointment with you the day of Dean Oliver’s murder. In fact, she was on the phone with you when Dean was killed, right?”

  Emmy shot me a steely glance.

  “I’m sorry, but I never give out confidential information about my clients. I’m sure you’ll come to appreciate that if you ever consult me about your eating issues.”

  The woman was really beginning to get on my nerves.

  “Now where’s your kitty?” she asked, tossing her appointment book back in her tote.

  “In my bedroom.”

  I’d left Prozac lounging on the bed next to a cashmere sweater, hoping the lure of the expensive wool would stir her out of her funk.

  “Right this way,” I said, leading Emmy to my bedroom, where we found Prozac sprawled out on the bed, staring dully off into space in Stepford Kitty mode, my cashmere sweater untouched at her side.

  “Prozac, honey,” I cooed. “Look who’s here. It’s Emmy, the Reiki healer.”

  Emmy’s pinched face softened at the sight of her.

  “Oh, my,” she tsked. “That’s one sad little cat.”

  At this, Prozac seemed to take umbrage, lobbing Emmy a withering glare.

  Talk about sad. Where’d you get your outfit? A thrift shop in Odessa?

  “Well, let’s get started,” Emmy said, scooting Prozac to the edge of the bed. “With human patients, I usually do hands-on healing. But with animals, I don’t make contact with the body. My hands will just hover over your beloved animal, transmitting the healing energy from my palms.”

  She held out her arms, palms cupped over Prozac, eyes shut in concentration.

  Prozac sniffed the air, her pink nose twitching.

  Hey, lady. Ever hear of deodorant?

  Emmy continued to hold her hands over Prozac, moving them above her body, in a trancelike state.

  Prozac looked up at her, baffled.

  All this hand hovering, and no belly rub? What good is she?

  Something told me this Reiki thing was going to be a bit of a bust.

  But it needn’t be a total waste of time. I remembered the appointment book in Emmy’s tote bag, where she made notes about her patients. A quick peek inside would tell me if Deedee was really on the phone with her at the time of the murder.

  “Excuse me,” I whispered, eager to get back out to the living room. “I’ve got something in the oven I need to check on.”

  Of course, the only thing I ever used my oven for was to warm my socks on a cold winter’s day, but Emmy didn’t need to know that.

  “For Pete’s sake,” she snapped, eyes springing open. “You’ve broken the healing chain. I need absolute silence for this to work.”

  From the bed, Prozac practically rolled her eyes.

  For this to work, lady, you’re going to need a miracle.

  Apologizing profusely for breaking Emmy’s healing chain, I scooted out, promising there
’d be no more interruptions.

  Once in the living room, I made a beeline for her tote.

  So eager was I to get at Emmy’s appointment book that I whipped it out with just a bit too much fervor. Oh, crud. I watched in dismay as the massive tote tipped over, sending its contents clattering to the floor.

  “What the hell was that?” Emmy shouted from the bedroom.

  “So sorry!” I cried out. “Just dropped a pot. No more noise from now on. I promise!”

  I spent the next few minutes on my hands and knees, retrieving lipstick, tampons, tissues, Diet Coke, and—of all things!—a bag of Reese’s Pieces.

  (And she had the nerve to make cracks about my eating habits!)

  At last I’d shoved everything back in the tote. Grabbing the appointment book, I thumbed through the pages until I got to the day of the murder.

  Sure enough, between eleven thirty and noon, I found Deedee’s name. So she had been on the phone with Emmy.

  And then I saw, scrawled under Deedee’s name, the cryptic letters “KD.”

  I began to ponder what this could possibly mean when I heard Emmy clomping down the hallway from my bedroom.

  Quick as a bunny, I bolted over to her tote to stash the book away. But I was not quite quick enough. Just as I was shoving it inside the tote, Emmy came barging into the living room.

  “All through!” she chirped. “The treatment doesn’t take much time with small animals like Prozac.”

  Then she saw me frozen to the spot, still clutching her purloined appointment book.

  “Hey, what’re you doing with that?”

  With the dazzling sangfroid I’m known for, I replied: “Um . . . er . . . uh . . .”

  Suspicion oozing from every pore, Emmy stomped to my kitchen and flung open the oven door.

  “So this is what you were cooking?” She held up a pair of long-forgotten gym socks. “What are you going to serve them with? A side of shoelaces?”

  She stood scowling at me, arms clamped across her ample chest.

  “You didn’t come out here to check anything in your oven. You came out here to snoop in my appointment book.”

  “Okay,” I confessed. “I needed to find out if Deedee was really on the phone with you on the day Dean Oliver was killed. I’m a suspect in his murder, and I’m trying to track down the killer.”