This Pen for Hire

by Laura Levine

  “I’m not so sure that the guy they arrested really killed Stacy. I’ve interviewed him, and he seems pretty harmless.”

  “Stacy needed someone to take care of her.”

  Yeah, right. Like Hells Angels need training wheels.

  “Stacy was careless. She didn’t watch out for herself. Like that time with the peanut oil.”

  “Peanut oil?”

  “Stacy was allergic to peanuts. Actually, she was allergic to lots of stuff. Peanuts. Strawberries. Pollen. Perfume. But the worst was peanuts. Just one peanut could make her violently ill. Every time she ate out, she had to ask the waiter if the food was cooked in peanut oil. I can’t tell you how many times she’d forget to ask.

  “Then one night, after she dumped me, she went out with Andy to a Thai restaurant. She forgot to ask about the peanut oil. The next thing you know, she was in the emergency room.”

  He ran his fingers through his mop of dark hair. “If she’d been with me, that never would’ve happened. I would’ve remembered. They pumped her stomach and kept her in the hospital overnight. Do you think Andy stayed with her? No way. The bum left her there, all by herself, and went running back to his wife. Stacy called me the next day and asked me to come and get her. She asked me. Not Andy. Doesn’t that mean that I was the one she really loved?”

  He looked at me pleadingly, desperate for the answer he wanted to hear.

  “Sure,” I obliged. “I bet she really did love you.”

  His eyes shone with gratitude.

  “I know this is painful for you, Devon, but aside from Andy, can you think of anybody else who might have killed Stacy?”

  “Heck, no. Everybody loved her.”

  Right. Another keen observer in the Love-Is-Blind Department.

  “Anyhow,” he said, somewhat uncomfortably, “you’re not going to write about what happened yesterday, are you? I’m up for a part in a soap, and I can’t afford any bad press right now.”

  “No, I can honestly say I won’t be writing about you in the newspaper.”

  He grinned an endearing lopsided grin, exposing a mouth full of fabulous caps. With his jet-black hair, luminous brown eyes, and slightly crooked smile, he was an undeniable doll. I doubted he’d be sitting on the shelf for very much longer.

  “I guess that’s about it,” I said. “Thanks for talking with me.”

  We shook hands, and I got into my car.

  “Wow,” he said, eyeing the dents in my Corolla, “they sure don’t pay much at The New York Times, do they?”

  I smiled weakly and put my car in gear. As I headed toward the exit, I saw that the lot had started to fill up. The cocktail hour crowd. It was just five-thirty, and already there were three black BMWs parked there.

  I turned and saw Devon, waving good-bye.

  He seemed like a nice guy. But in the words of that wise old philosopher, Bullwinkle J. Moose, things aren’t always what they seem in Frostbite Falls.

  It was very possible that Devon MacRae took a black BMW from the Palmetto parking lot, drove over to Stacy’s apartment and bludgeoned her to death, then drove back just in time to grin his endearing lopsided grin and pocket a ten-dollar tip.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Prozac and I were snuggled in bed, going over the facts of the case. Okay, I was going over the facts of the case. Prozac was licking her privates. Some mammals have all the luck.

  I’d decided to tackle this whole thing methodically, by jotting down detailed notes on a legal pad. Here’s what I jotted:

  —Stacy Lawrence, aerobics instructor and seductress extraordinaire, dumps her boyfriend for a big-time Hollywood agent, and gets her skull bashed in with a ThighMaster.

  —Suspects? Scads.

  —Don’t forget to buy Q-Tips. And Oreos.

  Okay, so my mind wandered a little. Clearly, this jotting shtick wasn’t working. I tossed my legal pad aside and decided to let my mind wander on its own. I started going over my list of suspects, beginning with my own personal fave—Andy Bruckner.

  I remembered what Devon said about Stacy’s allergies. About how she almost died at that restaurant with Andy because neither one of them remembered to ask the waiter if the food was cooked in peanut oil. But what if Andy had remembered, and kept his mouth shut?

  “How’s this for a scenario?” I asked Prozac. “Maybe Stacy was beginning to be a problem, threatening to spill the beans to Andy’s wife about their affair. So Andy takes her to a Thai restaurant, with plenty of peanut-based dishes on the menu, and conveniently forgets to ask the waiter about peanut oil. Sure enough, she orders a dish cooked in peanut oil and has a violent reaction. Only, unfortunately for Andy, she doesn’t die. So he has to take more drastic measures. Like bonking her brains out with a ThighMaster.”

  I looked over at Prozac for approval. But she just went on licking herself, unimpressed with my powers of deduction.

  Then I remembered my hissy fit with Andy’s assistant at the Creative Talent Agency. Maybe I shouldn’t have threatened to go to the police. If Andy Bruckner had killed Stacy to keep her from blabbing to his wife, what would stop him from killing me?

  Suddenly I felt scared. What an idiot I’d been. Why didn’t I just pin a bull’s-eye to my chest and hand Andy a gun?

  I reached out to Prozac, who, sensing I could use a comforting body to curl up with, promptly leapt off the bed and fled to the living room.

  I finally managed to calm myself down with a few deep-breathing exercises, and a large glass of chardonnay. After all, I told myself, several people in the waiting room at CTA heard me threaten to go to the police. If I were to turn up dead, Andy would be the first person the cops would question. Surely Andy wouldn’t take that kind of chance. He might be a killer, but he wasn’t stupid.

  And besides, it was possible that Andy wasn’t the killer. It could easily have been Devon. I’d seen his temper in action at the cemetery. He said he’d been crazy about Stacy. Maybe crazy enough to kill her, in one of those if-I-can’t-have-her-no-one-else-can fits of passion.

  And what about Jasmine Manning? And Yetta Kolchev? Either one of them could have killed Stacy in a jealous rage. And Lord knows how many other women out there had boyfriends or husbands seduced by Stacy. Any one of whom could have flipped out and taken revenge with a ThighMaster.

  My brain was overloaded with possibilities, all of them sounding pretty damn plausible. I had plenty of theories. What I didn’t have was evidence. Not a shred of the stuff.

  I thought about my conversation with Devon MacRae in the parking lot. I had a feeling that he’d said something important, something I should have been focusing on. I sensed that he’d given me an important clue, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Trust me. This detective business is a lot harder than it looks on TV.

  I flopped back on my bed, feeling a bit overwhelmed. I was lying there, wondering about the nature of good and evil, and whether or not I had any ice cream in my freezer, when the phone rang.

  It was Howard.

  “Guess what,” he said. “I’m out on bail.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “My mom had to mortgage our house to put up the bond money.”

  Oh, jeez.

  “My attorney says he’s pretty sure he can get me off. He’s a really nice guy. And very enthusiastic. I’m his first case out of law school.”

  Double jeez.

  “Anyhow, I called to thank you. Detective Rea told my attorney how you came to see him and put in a good word for me. I really appreciate that.”

  “Believe me, Howard, it was the least I could do.”

  “You’re the only one who came to visit me in jail. Except for my mom, of course.”

  How utterly pathetic.

  “So I’d like to take you to dinner, to thank you.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to. Really. I thought we could have Chinese food. I know this really nice restaurant on Fairfax. The House of Wonton.�
�

  “Sounds great,” I lied.

  “Meet you there tomorrow at five? I’ve got an early-bird coupon.”

  “Terrific,” I lied again.

  I got off the phone, suffused with pity. Poor Howard. The guy goes out on what probably was the first date of his life and winds up getting arrested for murder. I thought back to what he’d told me, about discovering the body. How he walked into Stacy’s dark apartment, confused and concerned, smelling her perfume in the air, and wondering where she was. How he called out to her and, getting no answer, walked down the darkened hallway to her bedroom, only to find her lying there, covered in blood. What a nightmare. And it was all my fault.

  I decided to ease my guilt with my good buddies Ben & Jerry.

  A half hour later, I was sitting in my kitchen, staring down into an empty carton of Chunky Monkey, when it hit me: the important clue Devon had given me in the parking lot. All evening long it had been buzzing around my brain like an elusive housefly. And now it stood still just long enough for me to figure out what it was.

  Devon said Stacy was allergic to lots of things. Peanuts. Pollen. Strawberries. And perfume!

  Howard said he smelled perfume in the apartment the night of the murder. If Stacy was allergic, the perfume couldn’t have been hers. Someone else had to have been in her apartment that night.

  And I had a pretty good idea who it was.

  I spent the next day putting the finishing touches on my Toiletmasters brochure. A few of my zippier headlines were “Tanks for the Memories” and “Commodes Sure to Bowl You Over.” (Hey, I never said I was Shakespeare.)

  At about four o’clock, I headed over to the Century City Shopping Mall. Century City used to be part of the back lot at Twentieth Century Fox movie studios. Where Academy Award–winning movies like The Grapes of Wrath, Gentleman’s Agreement, and All About Eve were once made, you can now buy a Gap T-shirt. Inspiring, isn’t it?

  I was walking past Bloomingdale’s, remembering the good old days when I could actually afford to shop there, when who should I see coming toward me but Elaine Zimmer, loaded down with Laura Ashley shopping bags.

  “Elaine,” I called out. “Hi.”

  She stared at me blankly.

  “Jaine,” I prompted. “Jaine Austen.”

  “Oh, right,” she smirked. “How are things at the LAPD? Or The New York Times? Or wherever it is you’re working this week.”

  I had the grace to blush.

  “Daryush was furious when the cops told him you’re not really with The Times. Apparently he told his whole family in Russia he was going to be in the paper.”

  Ouch.

  “So how are things going with your ‘investigation’?”

  “Great,” I lied. “And you?” I eyed her shopping bags, bulging with Laura Ashley linens. “On a shopping spree, I see.”

  “Yes,” she beamed. “I’m moving into Stacy’s apartment next Saturday.” She was about a thousand times chirpier than the last time I’d seen her. “Well, I’ve got to run. They’re having a white sale at Bloomie’s.”

  She waddled off, her shopping bags bouncing at her side. Now that she was about to move into the apartment of her dreams, she was one happy camper.

  What a difference a death makes.

  As I watched Elaine disappear into Bloomingdale’s, I remembered the bloodstains I’d seen in her laundry basket. Was it possible that Elaine killed Stacy to inherit her apartment? Or maybe it wasn’t about the apartment. Maybe Elaine killed Stacy simply because she hated her. Maybe Elaine was sick of being a short, stumpy woman no one looked at twice, sick of seeing women like Stacy get everything they wanted in life just because they were beautiful. Maybe she got so fed up with the injustice of it all that she went a little bonkers, like one of her patients in the psychiatric ward.

  Lost in thought, I made my way along the mall—past kamakaze shoppers, harried moms, and anorexic fashionistas. I arrived at my destination, a tiny shop that sold “all natural” body oils. I browsed through the fragrances, wondering why on earth anyone would want to smell like “Birch Bark” or “Henna Root.”

  Finally I found the fragrance I was looking for.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The House of Wonton is a tiny joint on Fairfax Avenue, sandwiched between a Kosher butcher shop and a used-clothing store.

  I showed up for dinner at 5 P.M., while the sun was shining, and most civilized people were still digesting their lunch.

  At first I thought the restaurant was empty. But then I saw Howard waving to me from a booth way in the back, next to the kitchen. Poor Howard. The restaurant was deserted, and they still gave him a crummy table. That’s the kind of guy he was.

  I headed over to join him.

  “Hi, Howard,” I smiled, sliding into a cracked vinyl banquette.

  Howard looked paler and thinner than I remembered him. I guess an all-expenses-paid vacation in the county jail can do that to a guy. His cuticles were practically raw from where he’d been picking at them.

  “It’s good to see you, Howard.”

  “You, too.” He stared down at his paper placemat. The man clearly had a thing about making eye contact.

  “So how’s it going?” I asked.

  “Great. Just great. Well, not really. I got fired today.”

  Oh, God. Poor guy. My guilt count skyrocketed.

  “Really?”

  “My lawyer says we can sue them, just as soon as he gets me off the hook for this murder thing.”

  “Right.”

  “Anyhow, I’m really very grateful that you came to visit me in jail. Like I said on the phone, you were the only one who did.”

  “How about we order some drinks?” I needed one desperately.

  “The meal comes with free tea.”

  “How nice.” I smiled weakly. Howard was obviously not a drinker. Or a spender. I flagged down our waiter, a young Asian kid even skinnier than Howard, and ordered a Tsing Tao beer.

  “The drinks are on me,” I insisted.

  “Thanks,” Howard said, “but I’ll stick with tea.”

  The waiter shuffled over with a lukewarm beer, which he poured into a piping-hot glass, straight from the dishwasher. As it turns out, that was the highlight of the meal. Howard ordered a Number Sixteen (a glutinous combination plate of chow mein, fried rice, and egg roll). I picked at my Special Ingredient Lo Mein, fairly certain that the special ingredient was rubber cement.

  “Don’t you like your food?” Howard asked, as I pushed my lo mein around on the plate.

  “Oh, no,” I said, forcing myself to swallow a mouthful. “It’s great.”

  “Mom and I were just here the other night.”

  Why did I get the feeling that I was eating their leftovers?

  “I guess you and your mom are pretty close, huh?”

  “Yeah. She’s my best friend. Aside from you, of course.”

  Oh, God. That one just about broke the needle on my pity-o-meter.

  Howard took a sip of tea and sighed deeply.

  “I doubt I’ll ever get anybody to go out with me now.”

  “Don’t say that, Howard. You’re a very nice guy.”

  “Oh, come on. Dating was bad enough before. But now that I’ve got an arrest record, it’s a joke.”

  “I’m sure there are plenty of women who’d love to go out with you.”

  “Oh, yeah? I bet you wouldn’t date a guy like me.”

  “Of course I would.”

  “How about Saturday night?”

  “What?”

  Good Lord. Where did that come from?

  “You said you’d go out with a guy like me,” he said, for once looking me straight in the eye. “So I’m asking you out.”

  “I thought it was a hypothetical question,” I stammered. “I didn’t think you actually meant me. Specifically.”

  “I knew it. I told Mom you wouldn’t want to go out with me. She told me I had to lower my sights and not keep trying to date unattainably beautiful women. S
o I thought of you.”

  Great. In the market for a geek? Call Jaine.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to go out with you, Howard. It’s just that . . .”

  What? What could I possibly tell him to get rid of him?

  “. . . I’m engaged to be married.”

  “You’re engaged?”

  “Yes,” I lied shamelessly.

  “Oh.”

  The look of disappointment on his face was palpable.

  “But if I weren’t engaged, I’d go out with you. Honest.”

  “You would?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, trying with all my might to sound like I meant it.

  Howard wanted to believe me, I could tell. He had the same hopeful look in his eyes that I get when the Clinique lady promises me a new lipstick will change my life.

  “C’mon,” I said. “Let’s open our fortune cookies.”

  Our fortune cookies, baked some time in the Ming Dynasty, had the consistency of dried mortar. I practically needed an ice pick to get mine open.

  Howard smoothed out his fortune and read it to me. “You will meet a cute brunette. You will give her money. She is our cashier.”

  Howard blinked. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said, looking around. “There’s no cashier here.”

  “I think it’s a joke, Howard.”

  “Oh. Right. Now I get it.” He smiled wanly. “So what’s your fortune?”

  I rummaged through my cookie shards, but my fortune was missing.

  Howard looked spooked. “That’s bad luck,” he said.

  I felt a small frisson of fear pricking the hairs at the back of my neck. I told myself I was being crazy. Nothing bad was going to happen to me. Except possibly indigestion from that lousy lo mein.

  “Howard, before we go, there’s something I want to ask you.”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  I reached into my purse and pulled out the bottle of body oil I’d bought earlier at the mall.

  “Remember how you said you smelled perfume in Stacy’s apartment the night of the murder?”