by Laura Levine
I was standing there, admiring my tootsies in a pair of lace-up espadrilles—on sale for just thirty-nine dollars—when suddenly I realized I’d lost track of my hundred-dollar Nikes. (Yes, I’d paid full price for them, under the influence of a particularly hunkalicious shoe salesman.)
I raced back to the rack where I’d first kicked them off, but they weren’t there.
Could I possibly be at the wrong rack? Frantically, I started weaving up and down the shoe racks, looking for my abandoned running shoes. But they were nowhere to be found.
Desperate, I grabbed a passing sales clerk, a harried guy whose arms were piled high with shoe boxes.
“You’ve got to help me!” I wailed. “I’m looking for a pair of white Nikes. Size seven and a half, with a small ketchup stain on the front right toe.”
The sales guy blinked, boggled.
“Sorry, ma’am. We don’t sell stained shoes.”
“No, no. I don’t want to buy them. I already own them. I put them down to try on some sandals, and now I can’t find them.”
A look of disbelief crossed his face.
“What’re you, nuts? You think I’m going to run around looking for a pair of shoes you already own?”
Okay, so what he really said was: “I’ll keep an eye out for them, ma’am.”
And he was off like a shot to wait on his paying customers.
Just when I was getting panicky, wondering how I was going to walk back to my car barefoot, I looked over at a nearby clearance bin and spotted a familiar white running shoe poking out from the pile.
I raced over, and sure enough, it was my Nike with the ketchup stain on the toe. Practically swooning with relief, I grabbed it eagerly, then started rifling through the bin, searching for its mate.
Alas, I searched in vain.
But then I happened to glance over at the woman next to me—a hefty bruiser who bore an uncanny resemblance to the late, great Ernest Borgnine—only to see her jamming her foot into my size seven and a half Nike.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but these Nikes aren’t for sale. They’re mine.”
“Like hell they are,” she growled. (And a most unpleasant growl it was, too.) “I saw them first.”
With that, she started tugging at the shoe in my hand. Her biceps, I noticed, were the size of rump roasts.
I had to do something to stop her. In a tug-of-war, she was bound to win.
“Honest,” I cried. “These shoes are mine. Look! There’s a ketchup stain on the toe from a Quarter Pounder I ate the other week.”
Eyes scrunched, she peered at the stain.
“I don’t care,” she proclaimed. “It’s a small stain. And the price is right.”
I saw now that a stray $19.99 sticker had attached itself to the shoe. No wonder she wanted my Nikes so badly.
“Okay,” I said. “But I should warn you. I’ve got a terrible case of toe fungus. Highly contagious.”
“What?” Quickly, she kicked off the shoe she’d been wearing. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “It’s hardly ever fatal.”
Her eyes wide with fear, she slipped on her own shoes and hurried off into the crowd.
Yes, I know it was a dirty trick, making her worry like that. But she’d been such a pill, I thought she sort of deserved it, don’t you?
Thrilled at last to be reunited with my Nikes, I headed over to a nearby chair to put them on.
Slinging the espadrilles I’d been wearing over my wrist, I put on the shoe Ms. Borgnine had worn, and I was quite annoyed to realize that she’d stretched it out a tad. Then I picked up the other shoe, the one that was in the bin. But when I tried to slip it on, I felt something blocking my toes. I reached in and pulled out a piece of paper. It was a page torn from a magazine, folded up to fit in the shoe. I unfolded it to see an ad for Raid. The headline read RAID KILLS BUGS. But whoever had shoved the ad in my shoe had crossed out the word “bugs.” So now it read simply:
RAID KILLS
A chill ran down my spine when I saw that the words “You’re Next” had been cut out from a newspaper and pasted underneath.
Oh, hell. Clearly I’d just received a billet-doux from the murderer.
I whirled around, looking to see who could have left it. But everyone looked so ordinary, so innocent. Just a mom with a toddler in a stroller, an old lady with a cane, and some teenyboppers giggling over something on their cell phones.
But then, over by cosmetics, I saw a large woman in a caftan, her arms loaded with bangles, hurrying out of the store.
Deedee! Emmy must have told her I’d been checking up on her. And now she’d come to scare me off.
By the time I’d finished tying my laces, she was gone. I raced out of Nordstrom and spotted her down at the other end of the mall.
For one of the few times in my life, I actually ran in my running shoes.
Deedee was walking fast, but not fast enough.
Pushing my way past surprised shoppers, I finally caught up with her, grabbing her by the elbow.
“I know you’re the killer!” I shouted.
By now a small crowd had formed around us. Which made it all the more embarrassing when the woman in the caftan turned around to face me.
Of course, as all you “A” students have probably already guessed, it wasn’t Deedee, but some innocent shopper with a penchant for loose fitting apparel.
I would have offered her my profuse apologies, but I never got the chance.
Because just then a security goon showed up and hauled me off to mall jail.
Not for assaulting an innocent shopper.
But for shoplifting a pair of lace-up espadrilles—which, I now realized, I still had dangling from my wrist.
Chapter 23
“I swear I wasn’t trying to steal the espadrilles!”
I was sitting in a windowless cubbyhole in the bowels of the mall, across from my arresting officer—a stocky mall cop, with sweat stains the size of Staten Island under his arms.
“I was just trying to catch the killer,” I continued, pleading my case.
“What killer?”
“The person who poisoned the Skinny Kitty.”
He shook his head, confused.
“You’re looking for someone who killed a skinny cat?”
“No, no. Skinny Kitty is a cat food, and the guy who invented it got murdered. And now I’m trying to track down his killer.”
“You some sort of detective?” the mall cop asked, giving his armpits an energetic scratch.
“Part-time semiprofessional,” I nodded.
“Semiprofessional?” He shot me a skeptical look. “From what I’ve seen, I’d say barely professional.”
Ouch. That hurt.
At which point there was a timid knock on the door, and the shoe salesman I’d flagged down at Nordstrom poked his head in.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked the cop, whose name, according the tag on his shirt, was J. Schulte.
“You recognize this woman?” asked J. Schulte (or, as I liked to think of him, The Sweater).
“Yes, she was trying to find a pair of seven-and-a-half Nikes with a ketchup stain on the toe.”
The Sweater blinked, puzzled.
“Nordstrom sells stained shoes?”
“No,” I piped up. “They were my shoes. I took them off to try on the espadrilles, and then I couldn’t find them and when I finally did this lady who looked like Ernest Borgnine was trying them on, and I had to pretend I had toe fungus so she’d give them back to me, and then I saw Deedee, at least I thought it was Deedee, and I’m pretty certain she’s the killer since her husband didn’t die of a heart attack like she said, but food poisoning just like Dean, so naturally I ran after her, only it turned out not to be Deedee after all and I didn’t realize I still had the espadrilles until you showed up and arrested me.”
I tend to babble when I’m nervous.
But fortunately, my stream of chatter was cut off by the
phone ringing.
The Sweater answered it and motioned me out of the room.
I spent the next few minutes sitting in a tiny waiting area, under the watchful eye of a female security officer who in a former life had no doubt been an NFL quarterback.
After what seemed like a small eternity, I was summoned back to the august presence of The Sweater.
“I tried to pass on your story as best I could to the security executive at Nordstrom,” he said. “You’ll be happy to know they’re not pressing charges.”
Thank heavens for those wonderful people at that fabulous store!
“In fact,” he said, “they feel so bad that you’ve had such a stressful experience, they want you to have this.”
With that, he handed me a business card.
How nice. Feeling guilty for having me falsely arrested, I bet they were offering me the services of a personal shopper!
But then I looked down at the card, which read:
DR. ALICE RUDNICK
PSYCHIATRIST
“They suggest you seek counseling ASAP,” The Sweater said. “Preferably with meds. I personally would recommend heavy doses.”
Well! Of all the nerve! Implying that I was a raving loony.
I was so angry, I stomped right out of the security offices straight to my Corolla, fuming all the way.
Okay, so I stopped off for a Mrs. Fields cookie.
And the espadrilles.
And a flirty sundress.
Oh, hell. I was as bad as Kandi.
* * *
I don’t know what possessed me to go on that crazy shopping spree.
I guess Dr. Alice Rudnick would say it was some sort of escape mechanism, that I shopped to forget the death threat I’d just received and the snake pit of danger my life had become.
But as I hauled my goodies back to my Corolla, whatever temporary respite I’d gotten from my shopping spree vanished, and a fresh wave of fear flooded over me.
I remembered all too well my Raid death threat, which lay like a burning ember in my pants pocket, and made a mental note to bring it to the cops the first thing in the morning.
Right then, though, all I wanted was to go home and soak in a nice relaxing tub, preferably with a glass of chardonnay at my side.
Back at my apartment, I found Prozac draped across my armchair.
“Oh, Pro!” I wailed, kicking off my Nikes. “I’ve had the most ghastly afternoon. I got a death threat from the killer, and I almost got arrested for shoplifting.”
Through slitted eyes, she lobbed me a world-weary look.
Yeah, right. Whatever. At least one of us can get arrested in this town.
I headed to the kitchen for a rendezvous with my good buddy Mr. Chardonnay and had just pulled the bottle from the fridge when I heard the unmistakable sound of Lance banging at my door.
“Jaine, it’s me. Open up!”
Clutching my bottle of chardonnay, I hurried to the door and opened it to find Lance looking utterly dejected, Mamie at his side.
He staggered in, still in the same outfit he’d worn that morning, his blond curls limp, his polka dot tie askew.
Mamie, trotting in behind him, made a beeline for Prozac’s tush, which she began sniffing amiably.
“Horrible news,” Lance groaned. “Mamie didn’t get the part.”
“Oh, no!” I tsked in sympathy. “Want some chardonnay to ease the pain?”
“Thanks,” he said, grabbing the wine and glugging it straight from the bottle.
So much for my rendezvous with Mr. C. Why the heck hadn’t I poured myself a glass before I answered the door?
“What a nightmare!” Lance said, plopping down on the sofa, cradling the wine in his lap.
“Mamie didn’t fetch her newspaper on cue?”
“We didn’t even get that far. Remember the trick I taught her to impress everybody? Picking up her toy Hermès bag and trotting around with it?”
“Vividly,” I nodded.
“Well, it turns out the ad agency producer is a dedicated fashionista. She had a bag just like Mamie’s. Only hers was the twelve-thousand-dollar original. When I told Mamie to go get the Hermès purse, instead of picking up her prop bag like we’d rehearsed, she went straight for the producer’s twelve-thousand-dollar jobbie, snatched it up in her jaws, and got dog spit all over it.”
“Oh, gaak, no!”
“The producer went ballistic, and Mamie got so discombobulated, she wound up taking a tinkle on the director’s leg.” He paused to take another slug from my wine bottle. “Needless to say, she didn’t get the gig.”
“I’m so sorry, Lance.”
“Not only that, Deedee dropped her as a client. Poor Mamie,” Lance said, shaking his head. “She’s positively brokenhearted.”
I looked over at Mamie, still sniffing Prozac’s rear.
Trust me, the only brokenhearted one in that duo was Lance.
“I suppose I’ve only got myself to blame. I’ve taught Mamie to be so discerning, it’s no wonder she went for the real bag.”
At that moment, the discerning dog in question had abandoned Prozac’s tush and was now industriously licking my big toe.
Prozac gazed down at her with pitying eyes.
Welcome to my world, fluffball.
“What a day from hell,” Lance moaned. “I can’t possibly think of a more horrible afternoon.”
“I can. You could have gotten a death threat from a killer and almost been arrested for shoplifting.”
“You poor thing,” he said, swimming up from the depths of his own misery to wallow in mine. “Tell Uncle Lance all about it.”
And I did. I told him about losing my shoes and finding the death threat in my Nike and running after the ersatz killer with a pair of Nordstrom espadrilles and winding up in mall jail.
When I was through he shook his head, tsking.
“Espadrilles? Really? Jaine, honey. They’re so last year.”
“Lance, will you please focus? I just got a death threat from a killer.”
“You know what you need, hon?” he said.
“A bottle of chardonnay without your drool all over it?”
“A fun night out. We both need one.”
Which is why an hour later we were sitting on the patio of the swellegant Coast Café on the beach in Santa Monica, sipping martinis and looking out over the glorious Pacific Ocean.
How wonderful it was to loll among the rich and pampered, watching the sun go down and sucking the pimentos out of our olives.
Soon our martinis were doing their job, and our cares of the day were fading away.
“I suppose it’s all for the best,” Lance said, waxing philosophical. “I’m not sure Mamie and I are cut out to be stars, anyway. You know, life in a fishbowl, constantly fighting off the paparazzi. I’m definitely the kind of guy who needs his privacy—Oops. Hold on a sec while I take a selfie of me and my martini to post on Instagram.”
We ordered the cheapest thing on the menu for dinner—hot dogs with fries.
I proceeded to swan dive into mine with gusto, while Lance flirted shamelessly with our gorgeous young waiter.
Lance was right. It was good to get out, especially on such a lovely night at the beach, the sun setting in a glorious ball of orange, the ocean breezes soft as velvet against my cheek. So what if my hair was now the consistency of a Brillo pad, and the carbs from my fries were frolicking gaily on my hips?
That ghastly death threat seemed like a distant memory—Dean’s murder a million miles away.
I was sitting there, nestled in my bubble of contentment, when I saw a couple being seated at a secluded table in a corner next to a potted palm. Something about the woman’s cap of shiny blond hair looked familiar. And then I realized it was Nikki, the food stylist. She reached across the table to hold hands with her date. This must be the boyfriend she mentioned, the guy she hooked up with after Dean dumped her, the one she was so in love with.
I glanced over to check him out and almost cho
ked on a fry to see that it was Artie Lembeck, Dean’s former business partner—the redhead in the baseball cap who’d brought champagne and cheese puffs to the funeral to celebrate Dean’s passing. The guy who claimed Dean had cheated him out of his rightful fortune.
So Nikki was dating Dean’s arch-rival.
I’d sort of written her off as a suspect, but now I wondered if Nikki was the killer, after all.
Had she blasted Dean’s Skinny Kitty with Raid as payback for swindling her beloved?
Or had she merely phoned Artie and had him come over to do the job himself?
Suddenly I felt chilled.
And it wasn’t from the cool ocean breezes—but from the realization that I’d not escaped the murder. Not one bit. I was still very much in the thick of it.
For all I knew, at that very moment I was sitting just a potted palm away from the killer.
Chapter 24
I spent a good half hour on the phone the next morning tracking down the detective who’d come to question me after the murder, the barrel-chested guy with the scar on his cheek. His name turned out to be Ken Carbone, and he agreed to see me at 9:00 a.m. that morning.
After a diet breakfast (cinnamon raisin bagel with butter, no jam), I headed over to his precinct in Hollywood, where I gave my name to a cop at the front desk and was instructed to wait.
I then proceeded to cool my heels for what seemed like a small eternity, sharing a bench with a stunning man in high heels and short shorts who was there to report a stolen wig.
“My Joan Collins Dynasty model!” he moaned in dismay. “They snatched it right off my head. I tell you, it’s just not safe to walk the streets anymore!” Then, with a sly wink, he added, “Right, hon?”
Of all the nerve! He thought I was a hooker!
“I’d lose that COUNT CHOCULA T-shirt if I were you, doll. You’re not gonna score any johns in that getup.”
Before I had a chance to defend my virtue, our tête-à-tête was interrupted by Detective Carbone, who came striding over in drill sergeant mode.
“Ms. Austen!” he barked. “Follow me!”
I leapt to my feet and hurried after him as he led the way to his desk in a large open bull pen of a room.
