by Laura Levine
She hauled herself up from the depths of the sofa and started for the kitchen.
The minute she was gone, we all started buzzing.
“What the hell is going on?” Ashley said.
“Maybe she’s got her period.” I threw out lamely.
“Oh, please,” Pam said. “Nobody ever got their period that bad. Except possibly Lizzie Borden.”
“She’s pissed at Marybeth about something,” Doris said.
“Yeah,” Colin grinned. “Isn’t it great? I hope she rips her to shreds.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like the bathroom,” I suggested.
“No way,” Pam said. “Rochelle loves everything Marybeth does. If Marybeth told Rochelle poop was pretty, she’d buy it and frame it.”
“The old Rochelle,” Colin corrected. “Something’s changed.”
Rochelle came out from the kitchen with the guacamole in a stainless steel mixing bowl. She hadn’t bothered to transfer it to her fancy chips ’n dips serving piece. She dumped it on the coffee table, then carelessly ripped open a bag of chips.
“Dig in, gals,” she said, stepping over the chips that had fallen on the carpet. “Sorry the guac’s turned brown, but it’s been sitting in the fridge since four o’clock this afternoon. Oh, well. Tough tacos.”
And with that she plopped back down onto the sofa and went back to sucking on her margarita.
What with the atmosphere being so strained, nobody had much of an appetite.
Nobody except me.
I dug into the guacamole with gusto. But it wasn’t nearly as nice as it had been last week. Not only was it brown on top, but it was missing all those giant chunks of avocado. It had been pureed in the blender too long, so it looked more like pea soup than guacamole. And it had a strange, greasy aftertaste.
Between the greasy brown guacamole and the burnt empanadas, I was glad Pam and I had stopped off at the Jack in the Box. I only wished I’d ordered extra cheese on my Jumbo Jack. I was just reaching for a handful of chips when Marybeth came sweeping back into the room.
“The dogwoods look super!” She beamed at Rochelle. “Just super. The perfect finishing touch.”
Rochelle sat silently, her shoulders hunched, running her finger around the rim of her margarita glass.
By now the tension in the room was so thick you could cut it with a hacksaw. But Marybeth, still pretending everything was peachy keen, perched herself down next to Rochelle and announced:
“Guess what, everybody! I’ve got yummy news.”
Rochelle looked up from her margarita glass.
“Screw your yummy news.”
Marybeth’s smile vanished.
“What?”
“You heard me,” Rochelle said. “Screw your yummy news. We’re all sick of your sunshine blather.”
Marybeth could no longer pretend that nothing was wrong.
“Rochelle, what’s got into you?”
“No, the question is, what’s got into you, Marybeth? Or should I say, who’s got into you?”
A faint blush crept into Marybeth’s cheeks.
“Listen up, everybody,” Rochelle said, taking a healthy slug of what had to be her fourth margarita. “I’ve got news. Big news. I was right about Marty. He is having an affair. I found this in his underwear drawer, right next to a package of condoms.”
She pulled out a photo from the pocket of her sweatpants and tossed it onto the coffee table.
Ashley, who was sitting closest to it, picked it up and gasped.
“Holy Moses!” she said, and passed it around. It was a color photo of Marybeth, sprawled out on what looked like a motel bed, wearing nothing but a smile and a pair of crotchless panties.
Now any decent human being would have had the grace to look ashamed. But not Marybeth. She just sat there with that infuriating smile on her face.
“It’s true,” she said, her chin raised in defiance. “Marty and I are in love. We’ve been seeing each other for months. We knew we were meant for each other from the day our eyes met over the heated towel racks.
“Poor Rochelle.” She tried to put a comforting hand on Rochelle’s knee, but Rochelle flicked it away. “Face it, honey. Your marriage was over way before I came along. Marty outgrew you years ago. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else.”
She reached for the bowl of guacamole.
“You’ve got to look on the bright side, Rochelle. It’s not the end of the world. It’s the start of a whole new beginning. Remember. Today is the first day of the rest of your life!”
If she uttered one more cliché, Strunk and White would rise from their graves and throttle her.
“Would somebody pass me the chips?” she chirped.
Like an automaton, I passed her the chips.
We all watched, amazed, as, without a shred of remorse, she scooped a wad of guacamole onto a chip.
“Rochelle, sweetie. This is probably the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Rochelle stared at her with glazed eyes.
“Drop dead,” she said, her voice hard with fury.
“I know you don’t really mean that. You’ll forgive me in time. You’ll dance at my wedding. You’ll see.”
Marybeth popped the chip in her mouth and chewed happily for a second. Then suddenly her fresh-scrubbed cheeks turned a most unbecoming shade of gray. The next thing we knew she was on the floor, writhing in pain.
“Peanuts,” she gasped. “Somebody put peanuts in the guaca—”
But she never did get to finish her thought. Because by then she was dead.
So much for dancing at her wedding.
Chapter 9
We all stood there, frozen, staring at Marybeth, who for once had nothing positive to say. Then Rochelle started wailing at the top of her lungs. The angry Rochelle had vanished; the old Rochelle was back and scared half out of her mind.
“Oh, my God!” she cried. “Does anybody know CPR?”
Doris got down on her knees and felt for a pulse.
“It’s too late for CPR. She’s gone.”
At which point we all joined Rochelle in her hysteria and started babbling.
Someone with her wits about her (it certainly wasn’t me) called the police, and minutes later, we heard sirens screaming. In no time, the place was swarming with cops. They ushered us across the foyer into the dining room while they scurried around, taking pictures and bagging items for evidence.
From my seat at the dining table I saw one of the policemen pick up the X-rated photo of Marybeth from the coffee table. He nudged one of his fellow officers and showed it to him. How ironic, I thought. Not long ago, Marybeth was posing naked in a motel bed for Marty. Now she was posing dead for a bunch of cops, on a carpet she’d probably chosen herself.
The detective on the case, Lt. Luke Clemmons, was a skinny guy with wire-rimmed glasses and a cowlick popping up from a bad haircut. He looked more like an encyclopedia salesman than a man who poked around dead bodies for a living.
He led a sobbing Rochelle back to the living room and sat her down in an armchair, a respectful distance away from the corpse. Then he took out a pad and pen from his pocket protector and began asking questions.
I strained to hear snippets of their conversation: “Deathly allergic to peanuts…. She was fine before sheate the guacamole…. in my husband’s under wear drawer, under a package of condoms.” After that tidbit, she broke out into a fresh batch of tears.
Soon after that I saw an officer approach the homicide detective.
“Sorry to interrupt you, Lieutenant,” I heard him say, “but look what we found in the garbage.”
With rubber gloves, he held up a bottle of peanut oil for the detective’s inspection.
So that’s how Marybeth was killed. Not with peanuts. But with peanut oil.
As the medics rolled in a gurney and a body bag, a trim blonde officer with her hair in a ponytail bustled into the dining room and wrote down our names and phone numbers. She told us we could go,
but that we’d soon be wanted for questioning.
We headed out into the foyer and I could hear Rochelle telling the skinny detective, “I swear, Lieutenant, I didn’t put the peanut oil in the guacamole. You’ve got to believe me!”
But I saw the way he looked at her, the way he checked out her T-shirt with its I’m Out of Estrogen and I’ve Got a Gun message. For the time being, at least, Rochelle had Prime Suspect stamped all over her.
“You’ve got to excuse me now,” she said, running her fingers through her already wild hair. “I really must clean up my kitchen. It’s a mess.”
“Now’s not the time to be worrying about your kitchen, ma’am,” the detective said gently.
That was for sure. Now was the time, if I was not mistaken, to be calling her attorney.
Doris stayed behind to keep Rochelle company until her ratfink of a husband got home. “I’d like to punch his lights out,” Doris hissed. “And I would if my arthritis wasn’t acting up.”
The rest of us headed outside, where the cool night air felt wonderful against my cheeks. The last thing I heard as I walked out the door was one of the cops saying, “They call themselves the PMS Club. Sure looked like one of them had a case of runaway hormones tonight.”
Ashley, Colin, Pam, and I started down the driveway to our cars.
“How do you like that?” Colin said. “After all those years of putting flags in her empanadas, Rochelle finally flipped out.” He shook his head in disbelief. “What do you bet the cops arrest her? After all, Marybeth was boffing her husband. She had the perfect motive for murder.”
She wasn’t the only one who had a motive, I thought. Hadn’t I overheard Colin saying that he wanted to “kill that bitch” for giving someone else the partnership he thought he deserved?
“It’s so hard to believe,” Ashley said. “Meek little Rochelle.”
“Yeah,” said Colin, “but you saw how angry she was tonight. It was like she was a different person.”
“You’re right,” Ashley echoed. “A different person.”
With deep sighs, we exchanged good nights, then got in our cars and drove our separate ways.
“I just can’t picture Rochelle as a killer,” I said to Pam, as we headed back to Hollywood in my Corolla.
“I know. But like Colin said, she was awfully angry tonight.”
“Yes, but you saw how horrified she was afterward, when she realized Marybeth was dead.”
“Do you think it’s possible she killed her in an insane rage, then came to her senses when she realized what she’d done?”
“I guess it’s possible,” I conceded. “But I don’t believe it.”
“But if she didn’t do it,” Pam said, “who did?”
“Anyone who had access to the guacamole after she made it. She said she made it at four o’clock. And Marybeth was killed at about nine. That’s five hours for someone to sneak into the kitchen and add the oil.”
“Omigod!” Pam shrieked.
I slammed on my brakes and swerved to the side of the road.
“What’s wrong?”
“I just realized,” Pam gasped. “If it’s not Rochelle, it’s probably one of the other club members!”
“Interesting insight,” I said, pulling back into traffic. “Not interesting enough to total my car. But interesting.”
Pam continued, oblivious to my sarcasm. “I mean, everybody was wandering around, upstairs and downstairs, in and out of the bathroom. Any one of them could have wandered into the kitchen when Rochelle was out of the room.”
“That’s true,” I said. “One of them could have done it. After all, nobody really liked Marybeth.”
“But not enough to kill her,” Pam said, shaking her head in disbelief.
“I’m not so sure about that.”
I told her about Colin’s angry cell phone conversation.
“He was really pissed at Marybeth for passing him over for that partnership. Not only that, he was at the house a whole half-hour before any of us got there. He said he came to do the toilet paper. But how long does it take to change a roll of toilet paper? He could’ve easily gone down and doctored the guacamole.”
We rode in silence for a while. I was lost in thought, imagining Colin tiptoeing into the kitchen with a roll of quilted peach toilet paper in one hand and a bottle of peanut oil in the other, when Pam let out another piercing scream.
Once again, I slammed on my brakes, setting off an angry volley of honks from the cars behind me.
“What is it now?”
“I’m sorry, Jaine. But it suddenly occurred to me: What if the cops think you or I did it?” She bit her lip in dismay. “Damn. The last thing I need on my new resume is murder suspect.”
“Not to worry,” I reminded her, as I started up the car again. “We were with each other the entire time. We both know we were nowhere near that guacamole. We’ll swear to it on a stack of Bibles.”
She sat back with a sigh of relief. But that didn’t last long. Seconds later, she let out another panicked squeal.
“Now what’s wrong?” This time, I went right on driving.
“What if the cops think we’re lying to give each other alibis?”
Now it was my turn to panic. Pam was right. The cops might think we were in cahoots. If for some reason Rochelle turned out to be in the clear, I could be a suspect in a murder case.
Just my luck to join the PMS Club the week before the murder.
Which just goes to prove that there’s no such thing as a free margarita.
Chapter 10
The next morning, Marybeth’s murder was splashed all over the news. Obviously some blabbermouth cop had leaked the story to the press.
The headline in the L.A. Times was the most sedate: INTERIOR DECORATOR MURDERED IN BRENTWOOD. But the TV news guys were having a field day. The PMS Murder was what most of them were calling it, with phrases like Killer Guacamole and Homicidal Hormones thrown in for added chuckles.
Thankfully none of the club members’ names were mentioned. We were described only as “a group of wealthy Westside socialites.”
“How do you like that, Pro?” I said to Prozac, who was sprawled out on the sofa, licking her privates. “Bet you didn’t know you were living with a wealthy Westside socialite.”
But Prozac didn’t bother to look up. She’d been giving me the cold shoulder ever since I tried to feed her some low-cal liver for breakfast. She’d looked at it like I’d just dropped a turd on the floor and began wailing like a banshee. But I hung tough. And eventually she gave up and stalked off to the living room.
For once, I’d shown her who was boss. True, I wound up eating my breakfast in the bathroom, perched on the edge of the tub, afraid of the dagger looks I’d get if she saw me eating my bagel dripping with butter. But the point is, I didn’t back down and feed her the Bumble Bee Tuna she was gunning for.
I was just tiptoeing back to the kitchen for another bagel when the phone rang. I picked it up warily, afraid that maybe an enterprising reporter had tracked me down for a statement about the murder.
“Ms. Austen?” An unfamiliar male voice came on the line. It was a reporter, all right.
“Who’s calling, please?” I said, lowering my voice an octave, intending to tell him he’d reached the wrong number.
“It’s Andrew Ferguson, from Union National Bank. Can I speak with Ms. Austen, please?”
Damn. Why did I have to lower my voice? Now he thought I was a guy. He probably thought I was married. Or living with a man—either that, or a very masculine woman. Not that it mattered what he thought. After my marriage to The Blob, I’d sworn off men forever, or at least until they invented one who remembered to leave the toilet seat down. But still, for some unaccountable reason, I didn’t want Andrew to think I was taken.
“Right,” I said, my voice still lowered. “I’ll go get her.”
I waited a few beats, then came back on the line in my normal voice.
“Hello, Mr. Ferguson.” Then I calle
d out, as if to someone else, “Thank you, sir, for fixing that leak!
“Sorry,” I said, getting back on the line. “The plumber was here fixing a leak. That’s who answered the phone. The plumber.”
“Really?” Andrew asked, puzzled. “Do you always let plumbers answer your phone for you?”
“Oh, we’re good friends. In fact, we’ve known each other for years. I wouldn’t let anybody else near my drains.”
“He’s your friend, and you call him ‘sir’?”
“Yes, that’s short for Sirhan. Sirhan, the plumber. Fabulous guy.”
Would somebody please shut me up???
“Well, the reason I’m calling,” Andrew said, “is that I wanted you to come back for another interview.”
He wanted me back! In spite of my cotton crotch on his desk!
“I’d like you to show your writing samples to our CFO. Do you think you could stop by around eleven?”
“Absolutely!”
“Just ask the receptionist to show you to Sam Weinstock’s office.”
After thanking him profusely, I hung up and did a little happy dance.
“Guess what, Pro? He wants me back for another interview! Even after your scurrilous pantyhose trick! So there, you evil spawn of the devil!”
I scooped her up in my arms and planted a big wet smacker on her nose.
Forget it. I’m still mad at you.
Then she wriggled free from my arms and jumped back on the sofa.
“Be that way. See if I care. You can sulk all you want, but you can’t rain on my parade.”
With that, I tootled off to the bathroom, where I wiped bagel crumbs from the bottom of the tub and ran a bath.
I sat in the tub for a good twenty minutes, up to my neck in strawberry-scented bath bubbles, dreaming of what I’d do if I got the job at Union National and was bringing home forty thou a year. I’d buy a new car, that was for sure. Maybe even put some money down on a condo. I’d upgrade my computer and treat myself to a decent haircut which would magically transform me into a striking beauty, which would make me utterly irresistible to Andrew Ferguson, and before long we’d be locking eyeballs over a hot Xerox machine.
