by Laura Levine
His desk was littered with piles of paper, but thanks to my keen powers of observation, I was able to zero in immediately on the most important item there: a box of goodies from Krispy Kreme.
One of them—a jelly doughnut—had been removed from the box and sat on a napkin next to a mug of coffee.
I must admit that doughnut looked mighty tasty, dusted with sugar and oozing jam, the very jam I’d denied myself on my morning CRB.
Carbone plopped down on an unlucky swivel chair that squeaked in protest under his weight.
“What can I do for you?” he then asked, motioning me to take a seat across from him.
“For starters, you can offer me a doughnut.”
Of course I didn’t say that. But you know I was thinking it.
And he certainly could have. He had a whole boxful. Surely, he could spare just one.
But putting all thoughts of doughnuts out of my mind, I turned to the business at hand.
“Someone left this in my shoe,” I said, handing him my Raid death threat, which I’d carefully wrapped in a Baggie.
“Someone left a note in your shoe?” he asked, puzzled.
“It’s a long story,” I said, unwilling to relive the harrowing experience of yesterday’s shoe-shopping expedition. “Just read the note, okay? I’m pretty sure it’s from Dean’s killer.”
He reached into his desk for a pair of tweezers, which he used to pull the paper from the Baggie. Then he quickly perused the doctored Raid ad.
“The way I see it,” I said, “that’s a death threat.”
“Sure looks like it,” he agreed. “But why would the killer be threatening you?”
I was a tad reluctant to tell him I’d been investigating the case, especially since I was working without a PI license. The cops tend to get persnickety about stuff like that.
“I have no idea,” I said, all wide-eyed innocence. “All I know is I’m being threatened.”
“All right,” he said, nodding solemnly. “We’ll have this paper checked out in the lab. If anything shows up, we’ll be in touch.”
Thank heavens he was taking me seriously!
“In the meanwhile,” he added, “I’d advise you to refrain from accosting large women in caftans in the mall.”
Holy Moses. Busted. The mall cop must’ve checked out what I’d told him about Dean’s murder and wasted no time ratting me out to the cops. Quel tattletale.
“Will do,” I said, blushing I don’t know how many shades of red.
I got up, eager to make my exit.
“Just one more thing before you go,” Detective Carbone said.
Oh, foo. Now what?
“Care for a doughnut?” he asked.
How nice. The guy had manners, after all.
“I couldn’t help but notice you’ve been staring at them since the minute you sat down.”
“Was I?” I replied coolly, more than a bit miffed at his zinger.
He held out the box, and I eyed a sugar-dusted jelly doughnut longingly.
“The jelly doughnuts are great,” he said, following my gaze.
But you’ll be proud to know I didn’t take any of his stupid doughnuts. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
No, sir.
I hung tough, and took an apple fritter instead.
* * *
Next stop, Artie Lembeck.
As Nikki’s boyfriend, he certainly would have known about the Skinny Kitty shoot and could have easily zipped over to poison Dean’s cat food.
Maybe that champagne at Dean’s funeral had been a gift to himself for a murder well executed.
Back in my Corolla, I fished around in my purse till I dredged up the business card he’d given me at the funeral. Then I made my way over to the International Headquarters of Lembeck Enterprises, which turned out to be Artie’s apartment in West Hollywood.
After parking in front of Artie’s building, a shabby stucco affair with a row of dusty azaleas out front, I made my way up the front path, careful not to stumble over the deep cracks in the cement.
Pressing the button for “Lembeck” on a rusted intercom, I soon heard Artie’s voice come on the line amid a blast of static.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Jaine Austen. We sat next to each other at Dean Oliver’s funeral.”
“I remember you! The cheese puff lady. So nice you could stop by. Come on up!”
What an enthusiastic welcome. I must have made quite an impression on him. Evidently, I’d been able to convey empathy for his plight as a victim of Dean’s cheating ways while scarfing down my cheese puffs.
He buzzed me into the lobby, where I boarded a creaky elevator to his apartment on the second floor.
Artie was waiting for me at his front door, grinning broadly, clad in a white apron. With his wiry red curls spronging out in all directions, he had the slightly crazed look of a mad scientist.
For a minute, I wondered if he’d recognize me from the Coast Café, but apparently he’d had eyes only for Nikki last night. He gave no indication whatsoever that he’d seen me staring at him at the restaurant.
“Come in!” he said, ushering me into a tiny living room crammed with cartons. “Excuse the mess. I’m afraid my apartment doubles as a warehouse for my inventions. I’m so glad you decided to stop by and check them out.”
No wonder he seemed so happy I’d shown up. He thought I was there to buy something.
“It’s a good thing you came when you did. I was just about to start brewing a fresh batch of Bilk, and once I get started, I can’t break for anything.”
“Bilk?” I asked, puzzled.
“Beer, made from milk!” he said, beaming. “Let me show you.”
He led me into his galley kitchen, every square inch of which seemed to be taken up with pots, barrels, hoses, burlap bags of malt and hops, and gallons of milk.
“Bilk is the alcoholic beverage of the future!” Artie was gushing. “It’s a fantastic source of calcium. The only beer that gives you a buzz while it builds strong bones!”
“How very interesting,” I said, forcing a smile.
“C’mon,” he said, leading me back out to the living room. “Let me show you my other inventions. All available to order in bulk at low, low wholesale prices.”
Oh, gaak! I’d just walked into an infomercial.
“Here’s my latest,” he said, grabbing something from one of the cartons. “My motorized ice cream cone.” He held up a squat-bottomed plastic cone. “It’s got a motor inside that spins the cup so you don’t have to waste energy licking around the cone. Genius, huh?”
A plastic cone? Was he crazy? Half the fun of an ice cream cone is eating the cone when it’s all soft and mushy with melted ice cream.
“Only nineteen dollars and ninety-nine cents! Twelve ninety-nine if you buy two hundred or more.”
Twenty bucks for an ice cream cone? Over my dead fudge ripple.
“And here’s my combination lipstick holder and dog whistle,” he said, holding up what looked like a tube of lipstick with a tiny whistle welded to it.
“Lipstick holder and what?” I asked.
“Dog whistle,” he said with a proud nod. “No woman should be without one. Say you’re alone in the dark, walking to your car, and a strange man approaches. You whip out your lipstick. Your potential attacker thinks you’re merely applying makeup. But then you blow the handy-dandy dog whistle, and every stray dog in the vicinity comes running to your rescue, instantly scaring off your would-be assailant.”
Clearly I’d stumbled into a Twilight Zone where bad ideas came to die.
“And look,” he said, whipping out yet another item from one of his goody cartons. “My two-way toothpaste! With a cap at both ends. No more squeezing the end of the toothpaste tube! Only two dollars and ninety-nine cents. One ninety-nine for orders of five hundred or more.”
Just what I needed. Five hundred tubes of two-way toothpaste.
“So what’s it going to be?” he asked, rummaging around
his coffee table for an order pad.
No way did I want to plunk down my hard earned cash for any of this nonsense, but I needed to stay on his good side.
“I’ll take the motorized ice cream cone,” I said, hoping the high ticket item would earn me extra brownie points.
“How many?”
“Just one. But I’ll be sure and tell all my friends about it.”
“Great!” he said, handing me a lime-green cone. “And what the heck? I’ll throw in a lipstick holder dog whistle. I just happen to have a few thousand extra in my closet. Not one of my better sellers.”
No surprise there, I thought as I shoved it into my pants pocket.
Reluctantly I handed him a twenty-dollar bill, which he snatched away with record-breaking speed.
Why did I get the feeling this was the first sale he’d made in many a moon?
“Well, thanks so much for stopping by,” he said, his hand on my back, propelling me toward the door. “I really should be getting started on my Bilk.”
I couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not without questioning him.
“Now that I think of it,” I said, stalling for time, “I could use a tube of two-way toothpaste.”
“Dandy!” he said, springing back for his order pad.
As he started to write out the order, I asked, as casually as possible, “So was Dean involved in any of these inventions?”
Artie barked out a bitter laugh.
“Are you kidding? The only thing Dean ever invented was his résumé.”
“Everyone agrees he was a terrible guy,” I said. “But still, it’s hard to believe someone hated him enough to kill him.”
“Clearly you didn’t know him very well.”
“I was there when it happened. My cat was in the commercial. It was pretty horrible, watching him die like that.”
“Some people would’ve paid top dollar for front row seats.”
“I don’t suppose you saw anyone sneaking into the studio kitchen that day, did you?”
He looked up from his order pad, suddenly on guard.
“What makes you think I was at the studio?”
Time for an itsy bitsy fib.
“Nikki told me you two were dating, and I thought maybe you dropped by to say hello.”
“I was nowhere near the studio. I was here in my apartment, brewing up a batch of Bilk.”
He looked me straight in the eye, and it seemed to me like he was telling the truth. Then again, I believed the Bloomie’s saleslady who sold me a vat of cellulite vanishing cream, so what did I know?
“I’m surprised Nikki told you about our relationship. We tried to keep it a secret from Dean and Linda. We were afraid Nikki wouldn’t get the job if Dean knew she was dating me.”
“Nikki and I got sort of close on the shoot, and I guess she figured she could trust me not to blab.”
If I told one more lie, I’d turn into Deedee.
But thank heavens, Artie seemed to buy my story.
“Yeah, we had to keep everything hush-hush. Even though he dumped Nikki, Dean was the kind of guy who didn’t want anyone else to have her. What a selfish bastard,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “Always cheating somebody. Not long before Dean died, I heard rumors that he and Linda signed a multimillion-dollar deal for some new cat toy Dean claimed to have invented.”
I remembered the toy Linda had given Prozac to play with on the shoot, the catnip yarn. I bet that was the toy they sold.
“Lord knows who he stole that idea from,” Artie was saying. “But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Dean had been planning to cheat Linda out of her half of the profits. Linda was a full-fledged partner in the business, you know. But that wouldn’t have mattered to Dean. He’d rip off his own wife without a second thought. He was already cheating on her with the Pink Panther. Why not rob her blind in the business, too? That’s how he operated. A born con man.”
His rant was cut off just then by his cell phone ringing.
He picked it up and smiled when he heard the voice at the other end of the line.
“Nikki, honey. Guess who’s here? Your friend Jaine Austen. I didn’t know you told her we were dating.... You didn’t tell her . . . ?”
Oh, dear. My cue to skedaddle.
And with that, I grabbed my purchases and ran—faster than a speeding motorized ice cream cone.
* * *
Driving home, I kept thinking about that multimillion-dollar cat toy deal.
Artie believed Dean was trying to cheat Linda out of her half of the profits. But if that were the case, and Dean wanted to get his hands on Linda’s share of the money, Linda would have been the one murdered, not Dean.
And suddenly I wondered: What if it was the other way around, and it was Linda who’d been trying to cheat Dean?
I flashed on the image of Zeke sitting side by side with Linda at the funeral. At the time, I assumed Zeke was the one madly in love. But who’s to say Linda wasn’t head over heels in love, too?
What if all the while Dean had been cheating on her with the Pink Panther, Linda had been burning some mattresses with Zeke?
Was it possible that her tears for Dean had been a highly perfected act, that she’d killed her husband to ace him out of a lucrative business deal? With Dean dead, Linda would be getting every one of those multimillion dollars. Not to mention avoiding a messy divorce.
Two perfect motives for murder.
I swerved over to the curb, inciting several angry honks—and a colorful assortment of four-letter words—from my fellow motorists. When the curses died down, I took out my cell phone and called Artie. After apologizing profusely for lying about my friendship with Nikki, I begged him to answer one final question.
“That multimillion-dollar toy deal Dean and Linda signed. Do you know for a fact if the deal ever went through?”
“No,” Artie said. “It was just a rumor.”
Damn. If only I knew for sure.
I hung up with a sigh, and left Artie to brew a fresh batch of Bilk.
Chapter 25
Two bombshells were waiting for me on my voice mail when I got home from Artie’s. The first from my schizo Romeo, Jim Angelides:
Hey, Jaine. Hope you haven’t forgotten about the Toiletmasters Fiesta Bowl tonight. Pick you up at seven. Arnold says Hi, and to wear something sexy.
What with all the hoo-ha of the murder, I had forgotten about the Fiesta Bowl. I’d been planning to call Phil with an excuse to get out of it, but I’d long passed the expiration date for excuses. No way could I cancel at the last minute and offend Phil. Who, by the way, was the voice behind message number two.
Jaine, sweetheart. Looking forward to catching up with you tonight at the Fiesta Bowl. Jim’s so excited. He can’t wait to see you again. And by the way, I still haven’t gotten the copy for the Touch-Me-Not brochure. Think you can e-mail it to me by the end of the day?
Ouch. Once again, I’d been so caught up in Dean’s murder (see hoo-ha excuse above), I was woefully behind on the Touch-Me-Not brochure.
I absolutely had to hunker down at my computer and get cracking.
Which I did.
And after several sweat-filled, Oreo-fueled hours, I finally managed to send off my magnum opus (Touch-Me-Not: The Hands-Free Flush of the Future) to Phil.
My brochure winging its way through cyberspace, I sat back with that feeling of exhilaration that comes with a job well done. Or, in my case, a job done thirty seconds under deadline.
But my glow of accomplishment quickly faded when I checked my watch and saw that it was 6:45. Jim said he’d pick me up at seven. Which left me all of fifteen minutes to get ready.
Oh, well. No big deal. So what if I looked crappy? The last thing I wanted to do was encourage the guy.
Off I shuffled to my bedroom where I threw on skinny jeans, white silk blouse, silver hoop earrings, and my trusty Manolos. I didn’t even bother to corral my curls into a ponytail. Instead, I left them loose and wild in what I hoped the Toiletmasters ga
ng would think was a Boho Botticelli look.
As a concession to Phil, I slapped on some lipstick. But that’s as far as I was willing to gussy up.
Just as I was blotting my lipstick, I heard the dreaded knock on my front door.
It was Jim, of course.
If I hadn’t known about his precarious mental state, I would have thought he looked pretty darn terrific in khakis and a sport jacket, his blue eyes sparkling, his surfer blond hair spiked with gel.
The guy was like a human Snickers bar—smooth and yummy on the surface, totally nuts inside.
I blinked in surprise to see Arnold in the crook of his arm, dressed in a teddy bear tux.
“Hello, Jaine,” Jim said. Then, in Arnold’s high-pitched voice, he added, “Hubba hubba, baby cakes!”
“You’re bringing Arnold to the party?”
Jim nodded wearily. “He refused to stay home.”
Then, catching sight of Prozac sprawled on the sofa, Jim asked, “How’s your kitty? Still depressed?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Maybe Arnold can cheer her up. He’s good with cats.”
With that, he went over to Prozac and waved Arnold in her face, making kitchy-koo noises as Arnold.
Prozac lobbed him a look of utter disdain.
Somewhere out there, buddy, there’s a padded cell with your name on it.
“Let me get my purse,” I said.
“You’re not going like that, are you?” came Arnold’s falsetto whine.
“What do you mean?” I asked, turning around to face him.
(Can you believe I was actually having a conversation with a stuffed animal?)
“You’re not wearing any makeup. Sorry, babe. But you can’t get away with it. You need blush, and you need it bad.”
“I’ve got a fabulous combination foundation/blush/ concealer out in my glove compartment!” Jim cried, back in his own voice. “I’ll go get it!”
And before I knew it, he’d tossed Arnold on the coffee table and was dashing out the door.
I didn’t even want to think about what Jim was doing with a combination foundation/blush/concealer in his glove compartment. Instead, I headed for the kitchen for the weensiest sip of chardonnay to help me face the hours ahead.
