Pampered to Death

by Laura Levine

  Through an open doorway I caught a glimpse of an adjoining bedroom.

  So this was where Olga lived.

  Scattered on a nearby étagère were several sterling-framed photos of Olga in better days, arm in arm with a distinguished older man. Probably her deceased husband. In one picture they were sitting on a sofa in front of the fireplace in the lounge. Back when it was their living room, and not a gathering place for paying guests.

  To think this vast estate was once Olga’s private residence, and now she was reduced to living in two cramped rooms.

  No wonder she was such a grouch.

  Then another picture caught my eye. A publicity shot of Olga, back when she was a wannabe starlet. I was stunned by how sweet she looked, no trace of hardness in her blue eyes or wide smile. Her thick blond hair, unbound from Valkyrie braids, flowed freely to her shoulders.

  She’d been a beauty, all right. Every bit as pretty as Mallory.

  Surely she must have resented Mallory’s rise to fame. Enough, I wondered, to propel her to murder?

  Behind me I could hear her grow more desperate as she tried to keep her skittish customer from jumping ship.

  “Honestly, Mrs. Washton, you and your poodle will be perfectly safe during your stay.... Why don’t I give you a twenty-five percent discount as a show of good faith? . . . Fifty percent? . . . And extra dog treats for Tinkerbell?” Then a deep sigh. “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way. Maybe some other time.”

  She hung up with a groan and raked her fingers through her hair, unleashing rebel tendrils from her braids.

  “If this keeps up, I should be out of business by next Tuesday.”

  “I’m sure the police will find the killer soon,” I offered feebly.

  At which point she remembered I was one of her inmates.

  “Shouldn’t you be in aerobics class?” she scowled.

  “I just popped by to tell you there’s a rip in my patio screen.”

  “Okay,” she nodded. “I’ll take care of it. Anything else?”

  You bet there was something else.

  “You may have heard,” I said, clearing my throat, “that I’ve been making some inquiries into Mallory’s death.”

  By now I figured the whole world knew.

  “Shawna mentioned you were some kind of P.I., but I thought she was joking.”

  I forged ahead, choosing to ignore that zinger.

  “Like I said, I’ve been investigating the murder. It was pretty horrible the way Mallory was strangled, huh?”

  “I can’t pretend I liked the bitch, but she certainly didn’t deserve to die like that.”

  “Lucky thing she went when she did, though.”

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked, flexing her biceps in a manner that made me distinctly uneasy.

  “Only that if Mallory had lived, she might have made good on her threat to ruin The Haven.”

  “Wait a minute, honey.” She got up from behind her desk, a forbidding figure in denim overalls and Gestapo work boots. “You’re not accusing me of killing Mallory, are you?”

  I edged closer to the étagère, figuring I could always bop her over the head with one of her sterling frames if she attacked me.

  “Um . . . now that you mention it,” I stammered, “I have it on good authority that you were seen running out of the spa therapy center around the time of Mallory’s murder.”

  “What good authority?”

  I didn’t like the way that vein in her neck was throbbing.

  “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you were seen at the scene of the crime.”

  I reached for one of the frames, just in case of violence, but much to my relief, no fisticuffs ensued.

  “Okay,” she sighed, slumping down into a nearby armchair, “so I went to Mallory’s cubicle. I was going to throw myself on her mercy and beg her not to trash The Haven. But I swear she was dead when I got there.”

  She looked up at me with those still beautiful blue eyes, and there was something in them that made me want to believe her.

  “So I panicked and ran. And then when Shawna discovered the body, I decided to keep my mouth shut and pretend I’d never been there. But I can assure you,” she said, the starch returning to her spine, “you are barking up the wrong suspect. I did not kill Mallory Francis.”

  I looked around her tiny living room, crammed with relics of a happier life, and at that moment, in spite of all the hell Olga had put me through, I couldn’t help feeling a spark of pity for her.

  “Who was it who saw me at the spa therapy center, anyway?” she asked.

  Ordinarily I wouldn’t want to cause trouble between an employee and her boss, but in Delphine’s case, I was willing to make an exception. Frankly, I was surprised the little extortionist hadn’t already tried blackmailing Olga for her silence.

  “It was Delphine.”

  “Why, that rat!” she cried, banging her fist down on her desk. “I knew the kid was trouble the minute I hired her. She refuses to do hospital corners on the sheets. Can’t fold a towel to save her life. Sells food to the customers behind my back—”

  “You know about that?”

  “Of course I do. I’d fire her in a minute, but I can’t find anybody to work that cheap. So I’ve put up with her food cart, her affair with Sven, her goofing off on the job—”

  “Whoa. Back up a sec. What affair with Sven?”

  Olga rolled her eyes in disgust.

  “Delphine wasn’t here two weeks before she was making a play for him. Bragged about it to me. Said Sven was going to leave Shawna to marry her. But that all stopped when Mallory showed up. He dropped Delphine like a hot potato.”

  Holy Mackerel. That sound you just heard was yet another suspect popping up. Was it possible Delphine bumped off Mallory?

  Maybe she hadn’t been in Harvy’s room when she saw Olga running from the spa therapy center. Maybe she’d been hiding nearby in the shrubs, just waiting for her chance to race in and bump off her rival for Sven’s affections.

  “Now that I think of it,” Olga said, interrupting my thoughts, “that gives Delphine a motive to kill Mallory, doesn’t it?”

  For once, the Diet Nazi and I were on the same page.

  In a burst of defiance, I did not go to aerobics class. Instead, I decided to have a little chat with my Merry Maid from Hell.

  I roamed around until I found her in Clint’s room. At least I assumed it was Clint’s room, from the barbells on the floor and the Victoria’s Secret catalog on the night stand.

  Delphine was not, as you might imagine, busy making the bed or dusting the armoire. Rather she was stretched out on said bed watching The Price is Right, munching on some M&N’s. And draped around her neck was a hot pink feather boa.

  “Ahem.” I cleared my throat to let her know she had company.

  Muting the TV, she looked up at me with mild curiosity, not the least bit guilty about having been caught goofing off.

  “Shouldn’t you be in aerobics?”

  “Shouldn’t you be vacuuming?”

  “I decided to take a break,” she shrugged. “How do you like the boa?” She ran her fingers over the pink feathers. “Yummy, isn’t it? I found it in Clint’s dresser.”

  With that, she got up and sashayed around the room, working the boa like a seasoned stripper, which heaven knows she might well have been.

  “You should see what fabulous teddies he has!”

  Without batting an eyelash, she opened one of Clint’s dresser drawers and took out a gossamer confection of creamy lace, holding it up in front of her.

  “If only we were the same size,” she sighed, tossing it back in the drawer.

  “Do you make a practice of snooping in other people’s drawers?” I asked, bristling with righteous indig.

  “Sure do. Gotta have some fun at this crummy job. By the way, you could use some new undies.”

  For crying out loud. The kid had all the scruples of a hedge fund manager.

  “Thank
s. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “So what can I do you for?” she asked, plopping back onto Clint’s bed, her dirty sneakers on his duvet cover. “I’m running a special on American cheese sandwiches. Just thirty bucks and I throw in a bag of chips.”

  Tempted as I was to spring for some chips, I managed to restrain myself and get down to the business at hand.

  “I know all about your affair with Sven,” I announced.

  “So?” She picked up Clint’s Victoria’s Secret catalog, and flipped a page.

  “So I know you were crazy about him and wanted to marry him. But then Mallory came along and ruined everything.”

  “Me? Crazy about Sven?” She barked out a brittle laugh. “That’s nuts. I was just in it for the blazing mattresses. I knew he’d never leave Shawna. Sven’s practically got an umbilical cord attached to his abs.

  “Besides,” she sniffed, “I’m not about to wind up with some tacky aerobics instructor. When I settle down, the guy’s gonna have an ‘–illionaire’ at the end of his name.”

  “So it didn’t bother you when Sven began fooling around with Mallory?”

  “Oh, please. I couldn’t care less.”

  She went back to reading Victoria’s Secret, doing her best to look cool and collected. And it would have worked, too.

  If she hadn’t been reading it upside down.

  Oh, she was bothered, all right. Maybe even enough to have strangled the life out of Mallory.

  I was heading for the door, wondering if I could possibly nab a bag of chips en route, when Delphine called out to me.

  “I wouldn’t go around spreading rumors, Jaine. I once read about a woman who spread rumors, and she wound up strangled with her own elastic-waist pants.”

  To drive home her point, she tightened the boa around her neck.

  “Get my drift?”

  Did I ever.

  Next thing I knew, she’d be leaving a horse’s head in my bed.

  And charging me for it.

  Chapter 23

  Olga stayed barricaded in her office the rest of the afternoon, no doubt trying to stem the tide of customers canceling their reservations. If she had indeed murdered Mallory to save her spa, it looked like her plan had backfired.

  So I took advantage of the Diet Nazi’s absence to hole up in my room with Prozac and a supply of snacks I picked up on an emergency run to Darryl’s. In spite of my stern lecture to myself the other night, I’d been hoping to run into my deli doll, but was disappointed to see a strange clerk at the counter. Oh, well. What did it matter? Darryl wasn’t interested in me anyway.

  Time to focus on the murder.

  By now my head was spinning with suspects. Everywhere I turned, a new one seemed to pop to the top of my Most Likely list. What I needed was to sort things out in my mind. And at times like this it often helps to write out the facts of the case.

  So after a nourishing snack of peanut butter on Ritz crackers, I hunkered down with my laptop. Unfortunately I made the mistake of checking my e-mails first. You’d think by now I would have learned to Just Say No to anything from Shoptillyoudrop and DaddyO. But like a freeway rubbernecker unable to avert her eyes from an accident, I just had to find out what happened next in the disaster-thon known as my parents’ lives.

  Gaak! Can you believe Daddy showing up on TV in his I My Gnome boxer shorts? Not to mention setting fire to the men’s room!

  It’s a wonder he hasn’t been exiled to Boca Raton.

  But I couldn’t think about Daddy now. After a tad more peanut butter (it’s a protein, you know), I bit the bullet and wrote out my suspect list.

  Here’s what I came up with:

  My Suspects

  By Jaine Austen

  KENDRA FRANCIS. Mallory’s doormat of a sister. After years of abuse, had she finally snapped? Hoping to inherit a bundle, had she tossed her drugged tea outside her cubicle window and strangled her sister with a piece of kelp? Were those scratches I’d seen on her chest really from Armani, or from Mallory fighting for her life?

  HARVY. Mallory’s personal hairstylist and head cheerleader. Mallory was about to pull the plug on the salon of his dreams. According to Shawna, he was missing from his cubicle at the time of Mallory’s murder. Was he back in his room, as he claimed, getting an aspirin? Or across the hall with Mallory, strangling the life out of his boss from hell?

  SVEN. Studmuffin aerobics instructor with the morals of an alley cat. Cheating on his wife with both Mallory and Delphine. And Lord knows how many others. Clearly a rat of the highest order. But why would he want to kill Mallory? He was the one person at The Haven having fun with her.

  SHAWNA. Sven’s long-suffering wife. Says she was in the gym arguing with Sven while the murder took place. But she could have easily slipped into Mallory’s cubicle to strangle her rival in romance with a deadly hunk of kelp.

  CLINT MASTERS. Cross-dressing macho action superstar. Mallory was about to the spill beans about his penchant for ladies lingerie. Says he was in his room at the time of the murder. But who knows if that’s true? Maybe he slipped out of his lace teddy and snuck over to the Spa Therapy Center to choke the life out of the woman about to wreck his career.

  DELPHINE. The larcenous maid. Semi-threatened to wring my neck with a boa feather. A bit of theatrical bravado? Or had she really meant it? Was my little highway robber a killer, too? Had she wiped out Mallory to save her relationship with Sven? NOTE: Anyone who charges thirty bucks for an American cheese sandwich is a hot suspect in my book.

  OLGA. Aka the Diet Nazi. Resented the hell out of her former friend. Swallowed her pride year after year as Mallory showed up at the spa to lord it over her. But then Mallory had threatened to destroy The Haven. Had Olga resorted to murder to save her spa? She admits she was at the scene of the crime, but claims Mallory was already dead when she got there. (Also claims to be a health food nut, but we’ve seen her swan diving into a Sara Lee. So we can’t exactly trust her, can we?)

  SARA LEE. Should have picked up some at Darryl’s. Why didn’t I think of it? Possible to dash out before cocktail hour? Nah, too tired now. Maybe later—

  Okay, so my mind wandered. That happens occasionally to us part-time semi-professional P.Is. The important thing is that I’d taken the time to write out my thoughts.

  And after carefully reading over my list, one thing was certain—

  I still had absolutely no idea who the killer was.

  With a weary sigh, I reached for some more peanut butter.

  “Yoo hoo, Jaine!”

  Cathy’s eyes lit up the minute she saw me walk into the lounge for “cocktails.” She waved me over to where she was sitting across the room from the others, who were well on their way to getting blitzed on vodka-enhanced celery fizzes.

  My tush had barely made contact with the chair when she broke the news.

  “I finally figured out who the killer is!”

  “Who?”

  “Al Qaeda!” she replied in a hushed whisper.

  “Al Qaeda? Why on earth would Al Qaeda want to kill Mallory?”

  She paused dramatically to pluck a “radish rumaki” from the plate of crudités in front of us.

  “Remember in Revenge of the Lust Busters how Mallory single-handedly fought off those Arab terrorists, armed with nothing but an emery board and her bullet-proof bustier?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Well,” Cathy said, chomping down on the rumaki, “I bet Al Qaeda took offense and sent a secret operative to kill her! Makes sense, right?”

  Only to a space cadet like Cathy.

  “If you ask me, Jaine, I think we should call Homeland Security!”

  If you ask me, we should’ve called the nearest psychiatric ward.

  “And I know who it is! The Al Qaeda operative!”

  “Who?” I asked warily.

  “Clint Masters!”

  I looked across the room where Clint was chomping on a carrot stick.

  “Clint? A secret terrorist?”
/>
  “Yes,” she nodded with assurance. “His room is next to mine and the other day I saw him walk out onto his balcony in a long white silky robe. Just like Arab men wear. I could’ve sworn I saw some sequins on it. But that must have been my imagination.”

  Oh, Lordy. I couldn’t possibly tell her that her Arab terrorist was merely a cross-dresser. The next thing I knew, she’d be blabbing the news to the gang at the Piggly Wiggly and before long it would be all over the tabloids. For all I knew, Clint was a perfectly innocent sexual deviant, and I wasn’t about to ruin his career.

  “Movie star by day,” Cathy was saying, “Al Qaeda operative by night. Don’t those guys each get forty virgins for every westerner they kill?”

  She clutched my arm in an iron grip.

  “My God, Jaine. We could be next! We’ve got to stick together and never let each other out of our sight!”

  Okay, this was where I drew the line. No way was I going to spend the next few days with this delusional talkaholic glued to my side.

  “Look, Cathy. I seriously doubt Clint is a member of Al Qaeda.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course! They do all sorts of background checks in the movies. If Clint were a terrorist, they would have found out long ago.”

  I had no idea if any of this was true, but she seemed to be buying it.

  “Gee, I didn’t know that.” She sighed wistfully, reluctant to give up her roll as a Great American Crimefighter. “I guess I’d better cancel Homeland Security, huh?”

  “Good idea.” I nodded. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an important call I really must make. Catch you at dinner, okay?”

  Before she could object, I scooted into the lobby and out the front door, my cell phone glued to my ear, pretending to be talking, just in case she was watching.

  Outside, I headed down the main path, past the parking lot, and came across a small wooded lane.

  Don’t ask me why I decided to go walking down a deserted lane when I knew there was a killer on the loose. Maybe I figured I was safe because three of my top suspects were back in the lounge, scarfing down radish rumakis.