by Cheryl Crane
“Edith, dear.” Victoria opened her arms.
Victoria was dressed in a calf-length black skirt, amazing knee-high boots that looked like they had come out of the riding ring, and a pearl-gray short-sleeve sweater; pearls around her neck, of course, and big Jackie O sunglasses that were absolutely adorable on her petite face.
“It seems foolish, in these circumstances, to say I’m sorry.” Victoria kissed both of Edith’s cheeks as she embraced her. Real kisses, not air kisses. “But I am.” She stepped back. “For all of it. The whole darned mess.”
“Thank you so much.” Edith pressed her lips together. “Please, sit down and join me. Thompson couldn’t be with us.”
“Voice lesson?” Nikki piped in.
“Voice lesson.” Edith indicated that they should have a seat at the table. “I’ve got lemonade, but we can have something stronger, if you prefer.”
“Lemonade is perfect.” Victoria took a seat first, Edith and Nikki followed.
“From our own lemon trees,” Edith added, nervously. She lifted a glass pitcher and began to pour lemonade into glasses of ice.
“Thank you so much.” Victoria took a dainty sip. “Divine,” she declared. She took another sip and then pushed the glass away.
Nikki could tell by the look on her mother’s face that she was about to launch into some sort of speech. Nikki had asked to let her question Edith herself, but she knew in her heart of hearts that there was little chance of that.
“I truly did come to offer my condolences, Edith. And I genuinely am sorry for what Rex has done to your life. Before and after his death. Both of them,” she added. “But in truth, I came because I’m concerned for you, now that I’ve learned some details of Rex’s death. And I understand he really is dead this time. My Nicolette saw his body herself.”
Nikki saw no need for that detail, but it was too late now. She took a gulp of lemonade.
“You’re concerned for me?” Edith asked. She didn’t even try her lemonade. She knew she was in the hot seat.
“I am.” Victoria nodded her regal chin. “Because, honestly, it doesn’t look good, Edith. We all know that chit Jessica didn’t kill him. She had no motive. And if you kill a man, you don’t drag him into your own apartment and then call the police. You dispose of the body. Or you set up someone else to take the fall.”
Edith just sat there looking at Victoria. Victoria kept talking. “The police always look at the wife, dear. In the end, it’s nearly always the wife who’s done the bastard in. Pardon my French. You saw Twice Shy, didn’t you?” she asked. “I played the widow, Melissa.”
Edith nodded.
“And look what happened to her.”
“Mother, there are no firing squads anymore,” Nikki said, feeling compelled at that point to interrupt. “We execute humanely, by lethal injection.”
“Untrue, Nicolette.” Victoria turned to her, indignantly. “Utah still gives its citizens the right to death by firing squad. Ronnie Lee Gardner.”
Nikki wondered where on earth her mother gleaned information like that. Somewhere in all the magazines, she imagined. “I’m sorry for interrupting,” she apologized. “Go on with what you were saying to Edith.”
“Yes.” Victoria turned in her chair. “As I was saying, I’m concerned. And that’s why I came to you. I know that you knew that Rex was still alive.” She held up a finger, indicating Edith was not to speak. “You called the Sunset Tower Hotel on Friday, October first, and left a message for him. For ‘Mr. Atlas.’ You knew he was alive, Edith.”
“How did you—” Edith looked at Nikki, then back at Victoria. “So what if I did know? I didn’t kill him, Victoria.”
“No, but you lied to the police. You told them you didn’t know he was still alive.” She moved closer to Edith. “Not that anyone would blame you.” She looked right at her, big sunglasses to big sunglasses. “So if you didn’t kill him, you need to come clean with me and tell me exactly what happened that weekend. And then, perhaps, I can help you out of this mess.” She sat back, folding her hands neatly in her lap.
Edith looked at Nikki, then back at Victoria. “I don’t understand how this is any of your business,” she said, sounding as if she might burst into tears.
“It’s my business, dear, because my daughter has made it her business, for whatever reason.” She fluttered her hand. “The reason doesn’t matter, at this point. What does matter, dear, is why you lied.”
Edith hung her head. “Why do I feel so awful? I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t create this mess.”
Victoria patted Edith’s hand. “There, there. Give yourself a moment.” She pushed Edith’s untouched glass toward her. “Have a drink of your lemonade. Should I have Chessy or Shondra bring us some vodka?”
Edith took a drink of the lemonade and slowly set down her glass. She removed her sunglasses and rubbed her red eyes. “You don’t know what it was like being married to him, Victoria. The lies, the cheating. It was an embarrassment. And what could I do? Divorce him? I’ve never been anything but Rex March’s wife.” She was quiet for a moment. “So, was I glad when that plane went down and the police told me he was dead? I’m ashamed to say I was. For the first time in my adult life, I was going to do what I wanted. I was going to live for me. And then Thompson came along . . .” She smiled bittersweetly. “I know you think it’s ridiculous, a woman my age with a man like him, but I love him.”
“You don’t have to tell me about a ridiculous love,” Victoria said. “I’ve been married nine times, Edith. But we’ll save that for another conversation.”
Nikki couldn’t resist a smile. How her mother could be so compassionate and at the same time so . . . Victoria, she didn’t know. She had this way about relating everything to her own experiences; the crazy thing was that it usually made sense.
“Did Rex call you when he arrived in town?” Nikki asked.
“Of course not.” Edith ran her finger along the rim of her glass. “I was always suspicious of the plane crash because there was no proof, you know. No body. He always said he wanted to go out with a bang.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Like everything else, his bang was fake.” She exhaled. “But I didn’t know for certain that he was still alive. He never contacted me after the plane went down. Then . . .” She hesitated.
“Spit it out, dear,” Victoria suggested. “You’ll sleep better tonight.”
Edith exhaled again. “Friday, the day before the party, I got a call that my credit card had been used to rent a car at the airport. You know, it was one of those automated calls from the credit card company. There was nothing wrong with the card, but they were just checking to be sure I had used it. My assistant, Anita, took the call. When she asked me about it, I told her I would take care of it.” She made a fist. “I just knew in my gut when she said it was a rental car that it was Rex.”
“So Rex rented a car at LAX Friday, October first.” Nikki wanted to be sure she had all the facts straight. She’d be checking on this whole car rental thing.
Edith nodded. “He thought he was being clever. Rex always thought he was clever, but he wasn’t. He rented the car at a kiosk, but I closed his credit card accounts when he was supposedly killed. So instead of using cash, the cheap bastard put it on my credit card. He thought no one would ever check.” She shrugged. She was wearing a pretty lavender tunic and gray slacks with pearls à la Victoria around her neck. She’d dressed for the visit. “He probably would have been right if it hadn’t been for the random call from the credit card company.”
“So how did you find him?” Nikki asked.
“I just guessed where he would stay. He always took his chippies to the Sunset Tower Hotel. Girls. Young girls. The ones barely of legal age. Never adult women. Women like me.” Her voice broke.
“Put your sunglasses on, dear.” Victoria handed them to her. “The sun is bad for crow’s feet.”
Edith gave a little chuckle as she slipped on her glasses.
“So you called the Sunset
on a hunch,” Nikki said.
“Yes. I asked for Mr. Atlas’s room. He always checked in as Mr. Atlas.” She glanced at Nikki. “A tribute to his overinflated ego.”
Nikki nodded, but didn’t speak.
“So I asked for Mr. Atlas and, lo and behold, I find that he has checked in. Probably wearing one of those stupid disguises he used to use. He didn’t answer the phone. Who knows who he had in his room with him,” she said bitterly.
Edith took another drink of lemonade before she continued. “I suppose Rex eventually got the message that Mrs. Atlas had called. He didn’t call me back, but the next day, Saturday, the day of the party, he let himself in at the front gate.”
“He tried to use an old security code,” Nikki injected. “The one you were using at the time of the plane crash.”
Edith looked at Nikki. “How did you know—”
“Not important, Edith,” Victoria interrupted. “Go on with your story.”
Edith hesitated, then surrendered and continued. “I didn’t know how he got in until Monday, when the security company called. At that point, it no longer mattered. Rex just showed up in my bedroom suite the afternoon of the party. I was alone. Thompson was in his own suite. Rex startled me half to death. I don’t know how he got in without any of the staff seeing him. There was a lot of confusion that day, because of the party.”
“So you argued?” Nikki asked.
“Yes, we argued! He tried to sweet talk me, but I wouldn’t let him touch me. I was just praying Thompson wouldn’t come in and do something crazy, like kill him.”
Victoria looked at Nikki and raised eyebrow.
“Thompson didn’t kill him, Victoria,” Edith said firmly. “It’s not that I wanted Rex dead. I just wanted him out of my life. Permanently. And I told him that. He said he hadn’t meant for me to ever know he was alive. He came back to see Ramirez. Apparently, there were money issues.”
Victoria looked at Nikki. Nikki kept quiet.
“Rex said he was leaving the next day and that I would never see him again, if I would just wire him some money every few months.” She looked up at them. “Honestly, I was willing to do that to get rid of him. I couldn’t risk losing Thompson. Not for Rex.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Rex asked me to wait a month and then fire Ramirez and find a new lawyer. Of my own choosing. I was to get all the residuals and then just send him half. It seemed fair enough. And then, of course, he asked that I not tell anyone, not even Thompson, that he’d been there. Or that he was alive.”
Nikki thought about what her mother’s manicurist had said about overhearing an argument with a man that was not Thompson. But Shondra had said Edith had argued with Thompson and that he’d left in a huff and not come back until the party. Nikki decided to follow a hunch. “But Thompson saw him.”
“Yes. As Rex was leaving. I kept Thompson from going after him, but we had a terrible fight.” There were tears in her eyes again. “I was so afraid when he left on his motorcycle like that, that he was going after Rex. That he would do something terrible.” Realizing suddenly what she had said, Edith pressed both hands on the table. “Thompson did not kill Rex. He would never kill a man. Not even for me,” she murmured.
Victoria looked directly at Edith. “Be entirely honest,” she said. “Did you follow Rex? Did you kill him?”
Edith surprised Nikki by laughing out loud. “No, I didn’t kill him. There was no need. He didn’t want anyone to know he was alive. He was too pleased with all the publicity his death had created. He was too proud to ever want his fans to know that he duped them. No,” she said with what seemed like complete honesty. “As long as I sent the money to his love shack in Tahiti, I was certain I would never hear from him again.” She opened her arms. “So there it is. My confession. Please tell me you believe me, Victoria. I need to know that you know that I’m not a killer.”
Victoria took one of Edith’s hands in both of hers and smiled her gorgeous smile. “Believe me when I say I hope you didn’t do it.”
Chapter 23
Back at her real estate-turned-P.I.-office, Nikki learned that getting the information on the car Rex rented at LAX was far easier than she expected. Calling as Edith’s assistant—who was still enjoying her new grandbaby in Tulsa—she learned that Rex had rented a white Mercedes 350 SL on that Friday. The creepy thing was, it was returned to the airport on Sunday. On time. There was no record of who returned it, but the guy she talked to assured her it was clean, with no belongings left inside. Surely he would have mentioned it if there had been blood on the seats. He didn’t say anything about the police. Just to be sure she hadn’t missed anything, Nikki got the name of the attendant who had received the car that Sunday. Ray had called in sick, but Nikki made a note in her BlackBerry to call him on Wednesday.
Nikki also found out from a call to Julius, whose number was now in her cell, that even though Rex didn’t check out, he left no suitcase or articles of clothing in the room . . . except for a large lady’s hat. Julius dug it out of lost-and-found and his girlfriend identified the chapeau as the one that the Pretty Woman had worn the night she served Mr. Atlas.
Seeing a note she’d jotted down about the autopsy report, Nikki next called Rob and left him a cryptic message, asking “Detective Bastone” if he could get a copy of the “paperwork” they had discussed. She wasn’t sure if there would be anything in the autopsy report that would help her, or what she was going to do with the information, but it just made sense for her to know if there were any interesting details.
Her last call before going out to show two homes was to Jeremy. He was at work, but she wanted to leave him a message. She had a little surprise for him. The night before, when she’d been riding home with Mother (Victoria had insisted Amondo drive them in the Bentley), Victoria had handed her an envelope with two courtside tickets to see the Lakers Saturday night. It was a pre-season game, but Jeremy loved basketball. Victoria thought it would be a fun date and even went so far as to offer to find an “overnight babysitter.”
As Jeremy’s phone rang, Nikki dug for a power bar in the top drawer of her desk. It was already three and the only thing she’d eaten today was some whole wheat toast she’d shared with Oliver and Stanley at seven a.m., after their morning walk, and the lemonade at Edith’s. Her stomach was growling.
“Hey.”
“Jeremy!” Nikki pulled a slightly flattened bar from her drawer. “I wasn’t expecting you to pick up.” She laughed, a little flustered.
“Well, it is my cell phone, hon.”
“But you’re working. You never answer your phone when you’re working.”
“My three o’clock crown prep cancelled. I’m running down to the bookstore to get a book on science fair projects.”
“Science fair projects! I love science fair projects.”
“Good. I’ll put you in charge. Our first one is due November first.”
She could hear traffic in the background.
“What’s up?” he asked. “It’s not like you to call in the middle of the day.”
“I wanted to see if there was any way you could get away Saturday night . . . for a date.”
“With you?” he teased.
“Very funny.”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to check the kids’—”
“To see the Lakers,” she interrupted. “Courtside.”
“You’re kidding! Let me guess, Victoria got tickets?”
“Who else?” She laughed. “You don’t think I have those kinds of connections, do you? Apparently, she was shopping in La Perla for camis and ran into one of the owners of the Sacramento Kings.”
“Only your mother can make that kind of connection over underwear,” Jeremy said.
“Only my mother. So the Kings are playing the Lakers and I’ve got tickets. Can you go?”
“Definitely, maybe.” He groaned. “I hope. This is really nice, Nikki. Of you and Victoria. I’m almost sure I can make it happen. Can I let you know?” he said hopefully.
“Sure. And if you can’t make it, I’m sure one of my newfound friends, like the bellhop at the Sunset Tower Hotel, can.”
“What?”
She laughed. “Never mind. Go buy your book on science fair projects. Call me tonight after you put the kids to bed.”
“Will do.”
Nikki grabbed her Prada and the power bar and ran for the door.
Both showings were a bust. She showed the first client an opulent home in Bel Air built in the style of an eighteenth-century French palace with two-story columns, gilded moldings and striking chandeliers. The client didn’t realize that a French palace (a style she said she adored) would be ornate. She was looking for a contemporary home—something she had not told Nikki when they’d spent an hour discussing her likes and dislikes. The second client didn’t like anything about the Italian villa in Beverly Park. With nine bedrooms, fifteen bathrooms, and twenty-six thousand square feet, the client was afraid the home wouldn’t be large enough for her four-member family.
Making appointments to show both clients additional houses over the next three days, Nikki finished her day job and then headed for Ramirez’s office. It would be seven by the time she arrived, but she wasn’t looking for Ramirez. Not yet. She was hoping she might bump into someone in the building working late, maybe a security cop or a janitor. She needed to find someone who had seen Ramirez, or Rex, or better yet, both together, the night Rex was murdered.
Nikki walked up and down the street in front of Ramirez’s office building and the one next door. The buildings were unusual for L.A.; they actually had their own parking lots. Most office buildings had gone to parking garages ages ago. By this time of evening, the lots were almost empty. Nikki walked into the lobby of Ramirez’s building. There was no security desk—too small a building, probably. According to the directory, there were only seven offices in the building. Nikki was standing near the elevator, considering going up to Ramirez’s floor just to snoop around, when she heard someone coming down the hall. She turned around to see who approached.
