by Laura Levine
“Date?”
“For your party? Your little soiree?”
Was it my imagination, or did I detect a hint of skepticism in her voice?
“Oh, right. My party. It’s, um, next Saturday night. But I need to speak with Fortuna right away.”
“Of course. I’ll have her give you a call. As soon as I get your deposit.”
“What?”
“Your deposit. Two hundred should cover it.”
Two hundred bucks? For a woman who couldn’t find the fortune in a fortune cookie? She had to be kidding!
“Silly me,” I said, pretending to look in my purse. “I forgot my checkbook. Why don’t I just drop the check in the mail the minute I get home?”
“No need for that,” she said, her smile stiffening. “We take credit cards.”
Forget it. No way was I about to rack up a two hundred–dollar charge. Surely there had to be a way around this.
I was desperately trying to think of one when I heard a car alarm go off outside.
Which gave me an idea.
“Oh, dear,” I said, once more rummaging in my purse. “My wallet! I must’ve left it in the car.”
“Oh?” By now, Cynthia was positively oozing disbelief.
“I’ll be right back!” I cried as I dashed out the door.
Once in the hallway, I made my way to the elevator. But I did not get on. Instead I waited several minutes and then came hurrying back to Cynthia.
“Here I am,” I said, waving my wallet.
She looked up, surprised to see me. Clearly she’d had me pegged as a party-planning deadbeat.
“That’s wonderful,” she beamed, reaching for her card swiper.
Time to put my plan into high gear.
“By the way,” I said, “do you happen to drive a green Jaguar?”
“Yes, why?”
“When I was in the parking lot just now, I saw the tow-away guys hooking it up to their truck.”
“What??”
And just like I hoped she would, she jumped up and charged out the door.
The minute she was gone, I pulled out Fortuna #4’s photo from the looseleaf binder. Like most actors’ head shots, it had her resume printed on the back.
And right there at the top was her real name, Marla Mitchell, along with her contact information, which I quickly jotted down.
Then I slipped into the hallway and hid in the stairwell, peeking out from behind a crack in the door until I finally saw Cynthia Hardwicke stomping back to her office.
I figured under the circumstances it was best that we not bump into each other.
My ancient Corolla was lucky to have a steering wheel, let alone a GPS system, so I made a quick pit stop at my apartment to change out of my Prada togs and google directions to Fortuna’s place. After printing them out, I put in a call to make sure she was home.
Thank heavens for out-of-work actors. She picked up on the first ring.
“Sorry, wrong number,” I said when I heard her voice. No sense warning her of my impending visit.
Fortuna/Marla lived in North Hollywood, a quasi-hip, formerly dreary part of town referred to as NoHo by realtors desperate to unload foreclosed property. I pulled up in front of her apartment building, one of those spit-and-promise jobs that seem to spring up overnight in L.A. like mushrooms in the rain.
A sign out front said, VALLEY VIEW APARTMENTS. But one of the Vs was missing, so it now read ALLEY VIEW APARTMENTS. Quite fitting, since the lucky residents in front had a scenic view of the bowling alley across the street.
After pressing all the buttons on the security intercom, somebody buzzed me in and I made my way to Marla’s first floor apartment. The faint sounds of sitar music drifted from inside.
I rang the bell and heard someone padding to the door.
“Who is it?” a woman I hoped was Marla called out.
“It’s Jaine Austen.”
“Isn’t she dead?”
For the 9,876th time in my life I cursed my parents for not naming me something sensible like Hortense or Esmeralda.
“Not that Jane Austen. We met at Bunny Cooper’s party. You told my fortune.”
The door opened a crack and Fortuna/Marla peered out.
“Oh, right.” She smiled. “I remember you. You were one of the nice ones.”
She swung open the door, a skinny thing in yoga pants and a big slouchy T-shirt, her dark hair swept up in a careless ponytail. Out of her gypsy garb and heavy make-up, she seemed a lot less exotic than she had the night of the party.
“How did you ever find my address?”
“Marvin Cooper gave it to me.”
I figured it was best to leave my good buddy Cynthia Hardwicke out of this.
“Gee, I didn’t know he had it. Usually Cynthia is so strict about giving out our contact info. Well, come on in. I was just meditating.”
I followed her into her living room, where a yoga mat was unfurled on the floor. Indeed, the place felt like a mini-ashram, with batik throws on her furniture, a serenity waterfall burbling on an end table, and the heady aroma of patchouli wafting in the air.
“With all the rejections I go through as an actor,” Marla said, sitting cross-legged on her yoga mat, “I don’t know what I’d do without my meditation. It really helps me get centered.”
“I’ll bet,” I said, centering my tush on her batik-covered sofa.
“Want some birch bark tea?” she offered, ever the polite New Age hostess. “It’s a great bowel cleanser.”
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
“How about a stress ball?” She held up a red rubber ball. “Just squeeze it, and release all your tension.”
“That’s okay,” I said, opting to remain tense as well as uncleansed.
“Well, I really appreciate your stopping by, Jaine. You won’t regret it. I’ve improved a whole lot since you saw me. I’ve been channeling my Gypsy Persona in acting class and I’m much more convincing.
“So when is your party?” she asked with an eager smile.
Oh, dear. She thought I was there to offer her a job.
“Actually, Marla, I’m not having a party.”
“You want me to read your fortune for real? That good, I’m not.”
“No, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Bunny Cooper’s murder.”
“What are you, some kind of private eye?” she asked, giving her stress ball a squeeze.
“I guess you could say that.”
“I once played a detective on TV. My character got killed before the first commercial, though.”
She sighed at the memory of her aborted television appearance.
“So what did you want to know?”
Looking down at her on the yoga mat, so slim and delicate, her veins showing beneath her translucent skin, I was beginning to wonder if she was even capable of murder.
But I pushed aside my doubts and plowed ahead, going straight for the jugular.
“I have a witness who overheard you call Bunny a sadistic bitch who’d ruined your life.”
“Who told you that?” she gasped.
“It doesn’t matter, Marla. All that matters is that I have a witness.”
“I didn’t call her a sadistic bitch,” she said softly, staring down at her stress ball. “I called her an evil bitch.”
“So you already knew Bunny before you showed up at the party?”
“We worked together at the same modeling agency. It’s no secret that I didn’t like her. Nobody did. She was always bad-mouthing the other models, trying to steal our bookings.”
“Sounds like Bunny,” I conceded. “But how did that ruin your life?”
“Bookings weren’t all she tried to steal. Bunny liked to steal men, too,” she said, giving her stress ball an anxious squeeze. “One day we were sent out to the same catalog shoot. My car was in the shop, so my boyfriend, Charlie, took me to work. When he came to pick me up, I wasn’t quite ready. And Bunny moved in for the kill. The next thing I knew Char
lie broke up with me. He told me he couldn’t help himself, he’d fallen head over heels for Bunny.”
So Marvin hadn’t been the first man Bunny had stolen from another woman. And something told me there’d been plenty of others, too.
“Two months later, she dumped Charlie for someone else. She never wanted him in the first place. It was all a game to her. She just wanted to take him away from me. Charlie was so devastated, he got crazy drunk one night and lost control of his car on the coast highway. Drove it straight through a guardrail over a cliff. He was dead before the paramedics even showed up.”
She blinked back the tears welling in her eyes.
“I’ve never loved anybody like I loved Charlie, and she took him away from me. Forever.”
Sure sounded like a motive for murder to me. But I still couldn’t picture her getting up the gumption to pull it off.
“When I showed up at the party that night, I had no idea it was Bunny’s house. I just knew I was going to see a Mrs. Cooper. I wanted to throw up when I saw her in that palace of hers, strutting around in her designer shoes, bragging about her Maserati and her swimming pool and her stupid Marilyn Monroe glasses. She stuck me in that tiny room, lording it over me like I was some kind of peasant. My god, I wanted to kill her.
“But I didn’t, of course,” she added hastily.
She looked up at me with wide gray eyes, and for the life of me I couldn’t see her as a killer. I figured the worst she was capable of was sending out bad vibes.
But she had an undeniably strong motive to want Bunny dead. I had to play hardball.
“Oh?” I said. “So then what were you doing out on the patio that night?”
“What are you talking about?”
Time for a little fib.
“I have another witness who saw you out on the patio alone with Bunny’s drink.”
“That’s a lie!” she said, jumping up from her yoga mat, her face flushed red.
“I’m sick and tired of being accused of things I didn’t do!” she shrieked. “I was nowhere near that patio! I didn’t poison Bunny’s stupid martini. And I didn’t steal that sweater, either. I don’t care what the security guard at Bloomingdale’s says. I didn’t even know it fell into my purse!”
It was then that I glanced down and saw a stream of gel oozing out of her stress ball. My god, she’d squeezed that thing so hard, she’d broken the casing.
Far from being a delicate little flower, Marla Mitchell was one angry lady. And apparently a bit of a kleptomaniac, too.
Maybe she was capable of murder, after all.
After adding Fortuna to my growing list of suspects, I hightailed it to the nearest KFC for a much needed spot of lunch and was now chomping on an Extra Crispy chicken breast, musing on how frustrating this case was turning out to be.
I had suspects coming out of the woodwork, but no proof whatsoever. If only I could dig up a witness who’d seen somebody slip out onto the patio.
But as you well know, all the party guests had been too engrossed watching me make a fool of myself in Bunny’s guest bathroom. Once more, I wracked my brain trying to remember if there’d been a face missing from the crowd gawking at me. I shut my eyes to visualize the scene, but all I could see was that water gushing from the broken faucet.
That and the KFC fudge brownie parfait I’d been eyeing for dessert. It looked mighty tasty.
Oh, for crying out loud. What was wrong with me, thinking about dessert at a time like this? I’ll bet S. Holmes never sat around thinking about fudge brownie parfaits when he had a murder to solve.
I needed to question the other guests at the party. Maybe one of the Barbies saw or heard something incriminating. Maybe one of them was even the killer.
I made up my mind to scoot home the minute I finished my chicken and get that guest list Marvin had given me. But as luck would have it, the minute I finished my chicken, Kandi called me on my cell.
“You’ll never guess what happened!” she shrieked, in high panic mode. “It’s a miracle I’m still alive!”
“What’s wrong?”
“We just had a bomb scare at the studio.”
“No!”
“Maggie the Maggot found an unmarked sealed box in the ladies’ room.”
Maggie the Maggot, for those of you who’ve never seen Kandi’s show, was one of the many talented thespian insects on Beanie & the Cockroach.
“She swears her ex-husband sent it. They went through the divorce from hell, and when Maggie got custody of their dog, her ex vowed to get revenge…. Wait a minute—greatnews!”
“They defused the bomb?”
“No, even better. We get the rest of the day off. Let’s meet at Century City and go to the movies.”
I couldn’t possibly go to the movies. I had to get cracking and question those Barbies.
“Absolutely not, Kandi. I’m way too busy.”
“Don’t be silly. Meet you at the cineplex in a half hour.”
“Make it an hour. I’m out in the valley.”
Yes, I know I shouldn’t have caved. But the thought of spending the next few hours with someone who neither knew nor loathed Bunny Cooper was really quite appealing.
Polishing off the last of my chicken, I wiped my hands with a moist towelette and headed back over the hill to Century City.
Okay, so I headed back to the counter, where I ordered that fudge brownie parfait.
But right after that, I headed over to Century City.
Chapter 22
The west side of Los Angeles is the rich side of Los Angeles. And nothing says money quite like the parking lot at the Century City mall.
I parked my humble Corolla amid the BMWs, Mercedes, and Lexus SUVs jamming the lot, and took the escalator up to the land of Tiffany key rings and seventy-five dollar T-shirts.
I was trotting along, checking out the shoppers and marveling at the wonders of plastic surgery, when I spotted a petite, dark-haired woman heading my way. Something about her looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her face.
And then I realized it was Lupe, clacking along in heels, tailored slacks, and a blazer. I hadn’t recognized her out of her uniform.
“Lupe!” I waved.
Lost in thought, she looked over at me, startled.
“Oh, hello, Ms. Jaine.”
Up close, I could see she was wearing make-up. With her shiny hair set free from its usual bun, and a hint of blush on her cheeks, she was really quite attractive.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked. Somehow, I couldn’t picture her forking over seventy-five bucks for a T-shirt.
She looked around furtively.
“Can you keep a secret?”
I happen to be extremely reliable at keeping secrets. (If you don’t count the fact that I’m blabbing everything that ever happens in my life to you.)
“Absolutely,” I assured her.
“I’m here for a job interview.”
With that, she broke out in an excited grin.
“I got a call from a friend of Ms. Bunny who said she heard what a good cook I am. And now she wants to meet me. If she hires me, she’s going to pay me three times what Mr. Marvin is paying me!”
Which, according to my lightning calculations, would put her in a tax bracket three times greater than mine.
“Not only that, she promised to get me a green card!”
“That’s wonderful!”
“Of course, I hate to leave Mr. Marvin,” she sighed, a frown furrowing her brow. “He’s been so good to me. But I need the extra money. And the green card.”
“I’m sure he’ll understand.”
I doubted it would be too much of a blow to him, not with Ellen back in his life.
“I’d better hurry,” she said, checking her watch. “We’re supposed to meet at the food court, and if I get the job, we’re going supermarket shopping so she can show me what foods she likes.”
“Well, good luck!”
After all the crappola she’d put up with
from Bunny, she deserved some.
“Thank you, Ms. Jaine. I only hope she likes me.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure everything will work out fine.”
Which just goes to show how little I knew.
Kandi was waiting for me in the lobby of the cineplex with two tickets to one of those romantic comedies she’s so fond of. You know the kind, where a size 0 heroine who in real life could have her pick of any guy in the world sits home alone Saturday nights in impossibly adorable pajamas, eating ice cream straight from the carton and never gains an ounce. Then she meets Mr. Cutie Pie, and after a few funny misunderstandings the two of them wind up in a liplock with Nat King Cole crooning in the background.
“So how’s my little bomb threat survivor?” I asked as we rode the escalator up to our theater.
“Actually, the whole thing was a blessing in disguise. That pompous idiot who plays the cockroach is driving me nuts. The guy spends two weeks playing Hamlet in summer stock and suddenly he thinks he’s Sir John Gielgud. If he asks me one more time what his motivation is, I’m going to spritz him with Raid.
“Hey, want anything to eat?” she asked, catching sight of the concession stand. “My treat.”
“Oh, no, thanks, honey. I just had lunch.”
I was not about to let a single morsel past my lips. Not after the cholesterol festival I’d just packed away. So, while Kandi ordered a vat of buttered popcorn, I settled for an anemic Diet Coke.
“Sure you don’t want anything?” Kandi asked, as the kid behind the counter rang up our sale.
“Not a thing,” I said, vowing not to touch a single kernel of her popcorn.
We found our theater and climbed the steps to one of the upper rows. Thank heavens Century City has stadium seating. Which, if you ask me, is the best thing to happen to movies since Raisinets. The way the seats are raked, you’re practically guaranteed an unobstructed view, even if, as so often happens, an inconsiderately tall lunkhead plops down in front of you at the last minute.
Comfortably ensconced in our seats, with about fifteen minutes till the movie started, we settled in to gab.
“So how’s your true love?” I asked.
“What true love?”
“The doctor you met on line at Starbucks. The Scrabble lover. The one you were going to marry.”
