Slay Bells and Satchels (Haley Randolph Mystery Series)

by Dorothy Howell

  Okay, that was a total lie. Ty didn’t even know about the Staffords’ party, or if he did, he hadn’t mentioned it to me. But he’d be okay with going. His family had been perched high atop the L.A. social ladder for generations and routinely involved itself with this sort of event.

  “You do? That would be lovely,” Mom said.

  Right away, I saw her thoughts turn like a laser-guided bomb to my relationship with Ty. He was handsome, wealthy, and successful, which made him among the most highly-coveted bachelors. I knew she was thinking wedding.

  “How is Ty?” she asked.

  “He’s great,” I said.

  Okay, that was sort-of a lie. I had no idea if he was great or not, since I hadn’t heard from him in a while.

  I knew I had to change the subject again before Mom started making suggestions for my head piece and bouquet.

  “Do you have a dress for the Staffords’ party?” I asked. “I’d love to see it.”

  “Oh, well, of course.”

  Mom set her wine glass aside and rose from the chaise. I followed her upstairs as she blabbed on about something. I, of course, ignored her with practiced ease, a skill I’d learned at a very young age which had served me well at every job I’d had, every class I’d taken, and every meeting I’d attended.

  The house had been built back in the twenties or thirties, maybe. It had high ceilings and expansive spaces, statuary niches, dark wood and hand-carved crown moldings. A few years ago, Mom had knocked out some of the walls in the back of the house and created a huge master suite. It had four walk-in closets—one for each season—and another tiny one that my dad was allowed to use.

  Mom had consulted with a decorator for weeks—eventually driving the old gal to abandon her chosen profession and go to work as a Wal-mart greeter—and had finally decided on a color scheme of beige and white. One of Mom’s talents—or gifts, as she likes to call them—was recognizing the subtle differences between ecru, beige, eggshell, cream, tan, linen, and taupe, and neon white, snow white, bright white, winter white, alabaster, ivory, and just plain white.

  I’m pretty sure that’s on her résumé.

  “I don’t know whether I should wear the gold Halston, or the red YSL,” Mom said, throwing open the doors of one of her closets.

  I settled into a chair—I’m pretty sure it was alabaster—near the patio doors that overlooked the flower garden.

  “Red for this time of year?” I asked. “Are you going patriotic?”

  Mom froze. She turned to me with an on-my-god look on her face.

  I get that a lot.

  “The event is a fundraiser for Christmas,” she told me. “The theme for the evening is Christmas. Everyone will be dressed in Christmas attire. Black tie. Had you forgotten that?”

  Yes, believe it or not, I had.

  This seemed like an excellent time to change the subject.

  “I met an actress the other day,” I said.

  Luckily, Mom had gotten distracted by the gowns in her closet and didn’t ask any questions about how or where. I’d never actually gotten around to telling her that I worked for Holt’s. I never got around to telling my mom a lot of things.

  I’m not even sure she knew where I lived.

  “So I was wondering,” I said. “Did you ever want to be an actress?”

  Mom came out of the closet with a silver beaded Gucci gown.

  “Acting? Oh, no, never,” she said. She held the dress up, tilted her head left, then right. “It’s very demeaning. Living hand to mouth, barely making ends meet, borrowing money from friends and family. Actors spend most of their time looking for work, trying to get an agent.”

  “The actress I met was working as an extra,” I said.

  “Even worse,” Mom said. “Background people are herded around like cattle, yelled at, talked down to. They’re underpaid, sometimes.”

  “It doesn’t sound very glamorous,” I said.

  Mom held the gown in front of her and studied her reflection in the mirror. “And, of course, there’s the issue of the casting couch,” she said.

  No way was I talking about sex with my mom.

  I sprang out of my chair.

  “I’ve got to get to class,” I said.

  Mom knew I attended college—although I’m not sure she knew which one—but she didn’t know I wasn’t taking any classes during the summer quarter, allowing me to use my all-time favorite excuse to leave most any place, at most any time.

  “I’ll add Ty and me to the Staffords’ guest list on my way out,” I said, heading for the door.

  Mom said something but I didn’t hang around long enough to listen.

  I went downstairs to the room at the back of the house that Mom used for an office. It was decorated in browns and deep reds, with just a touch of pewter. A big mahogany desk sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by pictures of herself.

  I pulled up a chair and logged on to Mom’s computer. I’d figured out her password long ago—her own name—so I had no trouble accessing the file containing the guest list for the charity event at the Stafford house.

  Nobody got into one of these things without an invitation, and nobody got an invitation unless they were somebody, or knew somebody. Putting Ty and me on the list wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, but adding Jack’s name would create two different problems.

  First, if I used his real name and something went sideways while he was searching the house for little Hope, everything could be traced back to not only Jack and Brooke, but also the Pike Warner law firm.

  Second, if I used his real name nobody would know who he was, somebody would question why he’d been invited, and everything might hit the fan after all.

  I knew how to get around both of those problems.

  I pulled up Mom’s email and scrolled through her inbox until I found messages referencing the guest list. Just as I’d expected, Mom was being Mom. The other members of the committee had sent her the names of those people who would attend. Mom had just cut and pasted them onto the list.

  That’s my mom’s idea of heading up a committee.

  I clicked on the file containing the guest list. On the drive over here I’d come up with a new identity for Jack, one that would let him walk through the Staffords’ front door with ease, though I still thought rappelling onto the roof from a helicopter would be more fun.

  I entered his name on the list as “Jackson Blair.”

  I pulled up Mom’s email again and dashed off a quick message announcing to the other committee members that Jackson Blair, entrepreneur and philanthropist, and owner of Blair Group International in South Africa, had graciously accepted her invitation to attend blah, blah, blah. I signed Mom’s name and hit “send.”

  Yeah, okay, this was a little risky but I felt like I had it covered.

  If someone mentioned it to Mom—and I knew someone was bound to do just that—I was sure she’d roll with it. The list had over one hundred names on it and she couldn’t possibly know every one of them.

  Occasionally, Mom’s vanity came in handy.

  With the party just days away, I doubted Ty would be back from New York in time to attend.

  Of course, if he’d ever call me, I’d know.

  But no way was I staying home—not with Jack there. I wasn’t missing out on a totally cool clandestine investigation with a totally hot private detective—oh, and I wanted to get Brooke’s daughter back for her, of course.

  I added Ty’s name and my name to the guest list, then logged off of Mom’s computer and left the house.

  Everything was in place, everything had been done.

  All I needed to do now was find a fabulous gown to wear—and an awesome handbag, of course. The Breathless wasn’t right for this occasion, but I knew there was a purse out there somewhere that was.

  I headed for the mall.

  Chapter 6

  Leaving Mom’s house, I called my best friend Marcie and asked her to go shopping with me. She couldn’t make it because of a
family thing. It was a major disappointment, but we decided to get together later. She promised to bring this month’s Cosmo. It was their Quiz Blow-Out issue, and we absolutely had to find out where our lives ranked on important matters such as flip-flops, up-dos, little black dresses, finding a boyfriend, keeping a boyfriend, and, of course, dumping a boyfriend.

  I was tempted to hit the mall on my own. I hadn’t bought a new purse in a while and the Breathless was burning in my brain like a star atop a Christmas tree, but I fought it off.

  I can be strong like that when I have to.

  Instead, I phoned Jasmine. I told her Nikki had given me her number, and gave her the whole my-friend-needs-a-roommate story. She said to come over. I hit the Starbucks drive-thru and got a mocha frappuccino—my favorite drink in the entire world—then headed out the 210 toward Canyon Country.

  I hung a right off of Soledad Canyon Road onto Camp Plenty Drive and parked at the curb outside her apartment building. You could tell the complex had been there for thirty years, or something. The buildings were stucco with red tile roofs, the trim painted an I-love-the-80’s green.

  I left my car and followed the sidewalk back into the complex, then hoofed it up some steep concrete stairs to the second floor. The place looked clean enough and the area seemed safe.

  Jasmine answered the door. I expected her to look pretty much like the other elf actresses, and she did—mid-twenties, brown hair, brown eyes, able to squeeze into size two blue jeans without holding in her stomach.

  “Yeah, great, come in,” she said, after I introduced myself.

  I stepped into her living room. A little kitchen was off to the left, and I saw a hallway that I figured led to the bathroom and bedrooms. Vertical blinds covered the windows and the slider that led to a balcony.

  The place was small and furnished with a couch covered with a worn-looking quilt, TV tables for end tables, a television sitting on a wooden crate, and a beanbag chair with duct tape running up the side and across the top. A laptop was set up on a card table. There were lots of framed photographs and a few decorator items. Everything was probably discount store or flea market finds, but I figured it was the best she could afford. Still, the place looked cold and empty.

  I guess she really wanted to become an actress if she was okay with living like this.

  I mean that in the nicest way, of course.

  “Want something to drink?” Jasmine asked, heading for the kitchen. “I’ve got some soda.”

  “Just water,” I called. “I’ve had too many sodas today already.”

  That wasn’t true, of course, but I felt guilty drinking anything that cost her actual money.

  I ambled over to the card table and looked at the framed photographs surrounding the laptop. They were mostly shots of Jasmine and her friends, laughing, mugging for the camera, wearing shorts outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater, super short dresses outside a club, and bathing suits at the beach, each outfit fully accessorized, of course. My gaze jumped to their handbags—old habit—and I noted a Dooney & Bourke barrel, a Prada hobo, a Gucci tote and a Burberry satchel—all knock-offs.

  I spotted another photo on the floor half buried under a stack of Jasmine’s headshots. I picked it up.

  It was a picture of McKenna. I’d only seen her that one time, dead, stuffed inside the giant toy bag, but I recognized her. In the photo she was at a party at someone’s house, dancing. Her dress was hiked up a little, her arms were in the air, her long red hair was swinging. She was alone on the dance floor. In the background, a crowd of people were holding drinks, talking, laughing. I didn’t recognize any of them.

  Sensing Jasmine behind me, I turned and held up the photo.

  “I guess you heard about McKenna,” I said.

  She passed me a glass of water. “It’s all over Facebook.”

  “You two used to be friends?” I asked, even though I already knew.

  “Roommates,” Jasmine said. “McKenna didn’t have a lot of friends.”

  I laid the picture aside. “She looks popular here,” I said.

  “She was popular until you got to know her,” she said, then nodded toward the hallway. “You want to see the bedroom?”

  The tour didn’t take two minutes. Jasmine pointed out the shared bathroom. The bedroom she wanted to rent out contained a mattress set on a frame and a chest of drawers somebody had painted purple and covered with ’N Sync stickers.

  I caught a glimpse of Jasmine’s bedroom next door. A mattress lay on the floor. Her clothes were stacked on a couple of TV trays.

  These weren’t exactly five-star accommodations, but everything was clean, and I guess if you were desperate—which I figured most actresses were—this was at least a roof over your head.

  “So this friend of yours,” Jasmine said, leading the way back to the living room. “She’s got a job, right? She’ll pay her half on time?”

  “Sure. No problem,” I said. “She had a couple of questions.”

  Jasmine plopped down on the couch and curled her legs beneath her.

  “I don’t care what she does as long as she pays me on the first,” she told me.

  Okay, now I was feeling kind of bad for pretending I knew someone who wanted to rent the room. But what could I do except roll with it?

  “How come McKenna moved out?” I asked, as I sat down on the other end of the couch and put my glass on the card table. “Does the apartment have, you know, unwanted roommates like bugs or something?”

  “McKenna was always late with her rent money. She got way behind. I had to make up the difference because it’s my name on the lease,” Jasmine said. “Then she skipped out on me.”

  “She didn’t pay you? Not at all?”

  “Bitch,” Jasmine muttered.

  She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and began fiddling with it.

  “Do you think McKenna’s family might make it right?” I asked, trying to bring her back to our conversation.

  “I doubt it,” she said, glancing up from the phone. She shook her head. “And I was close—so close—to getting the cash from McKenna.”

  “She got a job?” I asked.

  “She got struck by lightning,” Jasmine said, turning back to her phone. “A role in a sitcom. Prime time. A major network. Starting at twenty grand an episode.”

  “Twenty thousand dollars? Every week?” I might have yelled that.

  “Don’t ask me how, but she got it,” Jasmine said.

  “So what the heck was she doing working as an elf at Holt’s?” I asked.

  I mean, jeez, if I had a job pulling down twenty big ones a week I wouldn’t even drive past a Holt’s store, let alone go inside.

  “Production hadn’t started yet. She needed money. But mostly, I think she liked being around the rest of us so she could brag,” Jasmine said. She turned back to her phone, then said, “Hang on a second. I have to submit for this audition.”

  I leaned forward a bit to try and see what she was doing, and asked, “You can get an audition on the Internet?”

  “If you don’t have an agent,” Jasmine said, working her phone.

  “Like Extra Extra?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “A lot of productions will take actors who aren’t in the Screen Actors Guild yet. They post casting notices. I signed up for this service so I can submit my headshot and acting résumé directly to the casting director, and try to get an audition.”

  “Did McKenna do that, too?” I asked.

  Jasmine huffed and said, “Look, McKenna was a bitch. She treated me like trash. She treated everybody like trash. She skipped out on me and moved in with this guy who had the serious hots for her—not because she cared about him. She didn’t. She just used him because she needed a place to live.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, which was just as well since Jasmine kept talking.

  “And when she got her big break, that sitcom role, she became an even bigger bitch,” Jasmine said. “Throwing it in everybody’s face
about how she was going to hire a personal assistant, buy a condo on the beach, vacation in Europe, start doing movies. She went on and on about what she’d wear to all the award shows, about how great her life was—when the rest of us are lucky if we eat three times a day.”

  Jasmine looked angry—and I can’t say that I blamed her. Still, what better time to push her for a little more info?

  “So if you needed money so bad, why did you cancel on the elf thing at Holt’s?” I asked.

  Jasmine fumed, bouncing her fist off her thigh, staring off at nothing like she was remembering every bad thing McKenna had ever done to her.

  “Did you come to the store that morning at all?” I asked.

  A few more seconds passed, then Jasmine sat back on the couch.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off like that about McKenna,” she said. “It’s just that I want this so bad. I want to act. It’s like some crazy passion that I can’t control. Did you ever feel that way about something?”

  Did designer handbags count?

  “And my mom.” Jasmine’s emotions spun up again. “She’s ragging me big-time to give up on trying to make it as an actress and move back home. To Scottsdale.”

  “Ugh,” I said. Scottsdale was probably a really nice place, but not if your dream was to become an actress.

  “Yeah. And she keeps talking to me about this guy I went to high school with who’s going to inherit his dad’s Kia dealership in like fifty years, or something, like that’s going to lure me back home.”

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “Look at this.”

  Jasmine launched off the couch, and pulled a gift box from under a stack of magazines on the floor beside the TV.

  I recognized the logo. My heart began to beat faster.

  She ripped open the box and thrust a Coach wristlet at me. I took it, cradled it in my palms, giving it the tender, loving care it deserved. I caressed its supple leather, breathed in the rich aroma.

  There’s nothing like the smell of a new handbag.

  “Mom sent me this thing with a note telling me that I could have nice stuff like this all the time, if I came home and married boring-to-the-bone Kia guy,” she said, throwing the box into the floor. “It’s a Coach—”