The Dead and the Beautiful

by Cheryl Crane

  “About what? No . . . when?” Nikki asked quickly.

  “Just before lunch. The director sent us home. Amondo and I went to Spago.” (Amondo was the patient man who had served as Victoria’s assistant, secretary, bodyguard, driver, and sometimes companion for nearly two decades.) “I had a lovely celery and apple soup and the duck confit,” her mother went on. “You and Jeremy should go there. For lunch. Lunch was excellent and not as pricey as dinner. ” Victoria whispered the last words.

  Nikki shook her head. She would have laughed were it not for the police and ambulance and fire truck on the street and Ryan’s body in the lounge chair. His unseeing blue eyes. “And you never heard from anyone on the set the rest of the day? No . . . news?”

  “What news? I just turned my phone on. Let me get my glasses. They’re here somewhere. Ah.” There was a pause. “It says I have seven missed calls. I don’t know how to check those,” she said dismissively. The phone beeped several times in Nikki’s ear. “Come for dinner, Nicolette, and I’ll tell you all about Diara and her little fit. She may find herself unemployed if she’s not careful. Seven.”

  Ollie whined in the back of Nikki’s car.

  “Mother, I might have a . . . situation. I might not be—”

  “Nonsense. You never come for dinner anymore. Not when there’s just the two of us. Casual . . . but not too casual, darling. You know how I dislike denim.”

  Before Nikki could respond, Victoria hung up. Nikki could just picture her mother riding in the back of her white Bentley, giving Amondo instructions as to what streets to take, even though she hadn’t driven a car in twenty-five years, and punching random keys on her cell phone. Victoria was smart and a quick study when she wanted to be, but for some reason she remained stubborn about cell phone use.

  Nikki tossed her phone on the car seat and punched the Start button on her Prius. She’d have to go to her mother’s and tell her about Ryan. But first, she’d go to Jeremy’s and make sure Alison was okay.

  Dombrowski had let Alison go, but she hadn’t liked how he acted. What did he know that he hadn’t been saying? And what had possessed Alison to run like that when he said she could go? Running should never be involved when talking to the police.

  Nikki pulled away from the curb. She had a bad feeling this wasn’t the last time Alison was going to hear from Detective Dombrowski.

  Chapter 4

  “Murdered? And they wanted to talk to you?” Jeremy kept his voice down so his three children, all in the family room doing homework or coloring, didn’t hear, but he had some tone in his voice.

  He, Alison, and Nikki were all standing in his massive kitchen in his home in Brentwood. Nikki was making pancakes on the stove while bacon spit in a tray in the oven. She didn’t usually play this role in Jeremy’s home, but the kids had to eat and Alison was certainly in no state to cook. Jeremy had just arrived. So Nikki had declared it breakfast night. It was one of the uncharacteristically fun things she remembered her mother doing for her as a child. Of course, on breakfast night, Victoria had never actually cooked the breakfast for dinner; there was a housekeeper to do that. And they had eggs Benedict. Nikki’s breakfast for dinner tonight involved a box mix and the addition of eggs and water.

  Jeremy looked at his sister, sitting on a stool at the granite counter. She had her head in her hands.

  “Did you see Ryan Melton? Dead?” he asked.

  Alison shook her head. “I didn’t see anything,” she whispered.

  Jeremy glanced at Nikki. He was good-looking, but all-American good-looking—part of the reason he had been so popular as a teen. He had never been gorgeous in a Ryan Melton kind of way, but he was tall and had nice brown hair and dark eyes a girl could lose herself in. What was most attractive to Nikki about Jeremy—what had always most attracted her, even when they were kids—was that he was a super-nice guy. Jeremy was kind, loyal, smart—he was the whole package.

  Nikki flipped a pancake. It was supposed to look like Mickey Mouse’s head. It was for Jeremy’s youngest, Katie, who would be five the following month. One of Mickey’s ears tore off. Nikki neatly cut off the other with her spatula and ate the ears.

  “She’s upset, Jeremy. You need to stay calm.”

  He frowned. “I am calm. I’m just asking my sister why the police wanted to question her about someone’s murder.”

  Nikki answered for Alison. “Because she was in the house today.”

  “When it happened?”

  “No. No, of course not, right, Alison?” Nikki asked. Both she and Jeremy looked at his sister.

  “I don’t know when he was killed.” Alison spoke each word slowly, as if in a daze . . . slowly, as if she needed to form the words in her head before being able to say them. “I don’t know anything about what happened. I only know what I did. I took his dog to the dog park, along with Ollie and Stan. I took the dog back to the house. I let him loose in the house. I hung up the dog leash and left the house.”

  “See. She was there. Doing her job. That’s why Tom . . . Detective Dombrowski questioned her.” Nikki gestured with the spatula, then flipped another pancake.

  Jeremy exhaled. He never wore his white lab coat home, but he was still in a shirt and paisley Ralph Lauren tie. “And you told the detective that? That you didn’t see anything?”

  “Yes,” Alison said.

  “And you really didn’t?”

  “Jeremy?” Nikki turned to him, surprised. “That’s a terrible question to ask.”

  “Not as terrible as it might sound.” He glanced at his sister, who had dropped her head to the counter again. “Considering previous events.”

  Alison didn’t answer, and the look on Jeremy’s face suggested this wasn’t the time for Nikki to ask what he was talking about.

  “Why don’t you go in and see the kids?” Nikki suggested. “Alison said Jocelyn stayed after school for something, but she’s getting a ride home, so no one needs to pick her up. I’ll finish here. Then I have to run. Mother’s for dinner. Unless you need me to stay?”

  “We’ll be fine. Thanks, hon.” He rested his hand on Nikki’s shoulder and gave her a sweet peck on the cheek before walking out of the kitchen.

  Alison waited until her brother was out of the room to speak. She lifted her head to look at Nikki. She was a mess. The little bit of mascara she had been wearing had run and then smeared under her eyes. Her face was swollen and blotchy from crying. “He hates me,” she said in a girlish voice.

  Nikki tossed pancakes from the frying pan onto a white serving platter. Every dish in the kitchen was white or yellow. The kitchen, renovated by Jeremy’s wife in the early stages of her cancer treatment, was very French Country: a brick floor, honey yellow walls, granite countertops, distressed white cabinetry, ceramic tiles, and rustic urns. Copper pots hanging from a rack over the enormous island added to the ambience.

  “Jeremy doesn’t hate you,” Nikki said. “That’s ridiculous. He loves you.”

  “He thinks I’m lying.” There was a tremor in her voice. Again, the little voice.

  “He doesn’t.” Nikki poured more batter into the frying pan, giving the Mickey Mouse head another try.

  “Didn’t you see the way he looked at me?” She sniffled. “He’s never forgiven me. He doesn’t believe people can change.”

  Nikki turned to Alison. “Forgiven you for what?”

  She slipped off the stool, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” she said softly. “You’ll know soon enough.”

  “Murdered? And you were there? Good heavens, Nicolette,” Victoria said. “People are going to be afraid to associate with you.”

  Nikki slid back in her chair and reached for her water glass. They were eating on Victoria’s stone terrace, but it was Waterford all the way. The everyday Waterford, of course. “I had nothing to do with the murder. Alison called from Ryan’s house. She was dropping off his dog when the guy who cleans their fish tanks found him. She was scared, and Stan and Ollie were with her
. What was I going to do? I had to go.”

  “You could have sent Jeremy.”

  Nikki sipped her water. “He was with a patient. Alison needed me.”

  “She’s a needy one, that girl.” Victoria lifted a tiny sliver of filet mignon to her mouth. “Poor Diara. Makes the fight she had with Kameryn on set today seem meaningless.”

  Victoria had told Nikki about the fight even before Nikki was through the front door, but there really weren’t many details to give. “And you don’t know what they were arguing about?” Nikki asked.

  “No, the only thing I heard was Diara telling Kameryn that she better keep her mouth shut. That was when the shoving started.”

  “But they’re friends?” Nikki asked.

  “Best friends, from what I’ve seen on the set.” Victoria was quiet for a moment. “Did anyone say how Ryan died?”

  “No.” The image of him sitting in the lounge chair, his blue eyes unseeing, crossed her mind and she shivered, even though it was a warm evening. “His body was on the pool deck. In a chair. I didn’t see any obvious wounds.”

  Victoria met her gaze, Bordeaux blues to Bordeaux blues. “You saw him dead?”

  “Just for a second.” She looked away. She knew what Victoria was thinking now. About the first body they had seen together. Nikki had been young and foolish. Rebellious. Her mother had warned her time and time again to be careful whom she associated with. But it was Victoria who had come to her rescue that night. Victoria who had called her attorney and then the police. In that order.

  Nikki’s gaze drifted back to her barely touched dinner plate. “I didn’t ask Detective Dombrowski.”

  “Alison doesn’t know? The girl was there.”

  “She says she never saw Ryan, or the guy servicing the fish tanks. He’s the one who called 911.”

  “But she was in the house at the same time as the fish-tank man?” Victoria patted her mouth with a pressed, white linen napkin and returned it to her lap. “And he didn’t see her?” She gave a little sniff. “Someone’s lying.”

  Nikki cut her eyes at her mother. It was twilight and the scent of roses drifted on the warm breeze. Victoria’s gardener, Jorge, had a way with roses and somehow managed to keep them blooming from spring to autumn. “What makes you say that? The house is pretty big and there’s a front and rear drive. Alison let the dog in through the front. The fish-tank guy was parked around back.” She used her fork to poke at her wedge salad. The blue-cheese dressing Ina made was delicious, but she wasn’t all that hungry.

  “Maybe the fish-tank guy killed him, then laid in wait for Alison to arrive so he could point the finger at her,” Victoria theorized.

  “Mother, no one is pointing any fingers at Alison. What would make you say such a thing? She was questioned. Routine stuff.” Nikki didn’t know why she was defending Alison so hardily. Jeremy had been acting so strangely. What did she not know about Alison?

  Victoria sat back in her chair, pushing her plate away. She was wearing her typical comfy evening attire: a white jogging suit and pearl earrings. It was a very casual evening; she wasn’t wearing one of her strings of pearls. A pair of dollar-store reading glasses hung on a very expensive white gold chain from her neck.

  “Do you think the girl had anything to do with Ryan Melton’s murder?” Victoria asked pointedly.

  “Of course not. And she’s not a girl. She’s a grown woman. She’s only a few years younger than I am.”

  Victoria gave Nikki a look Nikki knew all too well. Victoria would never accuse anyone of being stupid; it wasn’t in her nature, but she was more than willing to tell you when you were behaving or speaking foolishly. “Nicolette, some women are always girls.” She looked out over the rippling pool. Stan and Ollie were both sitting on the edge, watching something. Maybe a stray leaf the pool boy had left behind. “Not everyone is as fortunate as you and I.” She looked at Nikki with those breathtaking blue eyes of hers. “To be born women. You were never a girl.” She looked away, her mind seeming far off for a moment. “Nor was I.”

  Nikki gazed out over the gorgeous manicured lawn and gardens. The white tents, fountains, and twinkling lights were gone. There wasn’t a single cigarette butt or a fluttering paper napkin to be seen. There wasn’t a speck of evidence left of the party Saturday night or the celebrities who had attended. “I don’t think Alison had anything to do with Ryan’s death,” she said quietly. Honestly. “I think she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Victoria waved dismissively. “But you’re going to leave that all up to Detective Dombrowski. Aren’t you, Nicolette? You’ve learned your lesson after your last two encounters with dangerous murderers?”

  “Aren’t all murderers dangerous?”

  Victoria smiled sadly at her daughter. “Not all, darling.”

  Friday morning, Nikki was punching buttons on the copy machine in the copy room in the Windsor Real Estate office, cursing under her breath at it. “There’s no paper jam,” she declared to the machine. She lifted the top of the scanner and closed it none too gently. She pulled out the paper tray and shoved it back in. Then she pushed the Copy button again. The display screen flashed “paper jam.” Again.

  Nikki growled out loud.

  “Need some help there?”

  Nikki turned around to see Detective Cutie-Pants standing in the doorway. He was wearing another expensive suit and holding two paper cups of gourmet coffee from a shop down the street.

  “Hey. What are you doing here?” she asked suspiciously. She had a bad feeling he hadn’t just been in the neighborhood.

  “Bringing you coffee.” He offered one cup. “Vanilla latte. I took a guess.”

  She accepted the cup. It was a good guess. She loved vanilla lattes.

  “And fixing that paper jam, if you like.” He motioned to the copy machine with his cup of coffee.

  She groaned impatiently. “It doesn’t have a paper jam.” She sipped from the cup. It was perfect.

  “Suit yourself.” He raised his cup as if in toast and took a sip.

  She had that bad feeling again. “You didn’t come to bring me coffee, did you?” she asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  She walked past him, through the doorway. “Come on.” Whatever he had to say, she suspected she didn’t want her colleagues to hear it.

  He followed her down the hall to the tiny office she had once shared with her good friend Jessica. He closed the door behind him.

  She took her chair behind her desk. He didn’t sit. She looked up. “It’s about Alison.”

  He nodded. “I wanted to give you a heads-up. This is totally off the record.”

  The bad feeling just kept getting worse.

  “We’ve got a warrant for her arrest.”

  For a moment Nikki got that light-headed feeling you got when receiving bad news. It was an all-too-familiar feeling. It was as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Nikki remembered feeling this very same way the morning her mother came to tell her that her father had been murdered in New York City. Victoria and John Harper had been divorced for years, but Nikki had seen the tears in her mother’s eyes. Victoria had still loved John Harper. She guessed she always would.

  “I don’t understand,” Nikki said when she was able to breathe again. “The fish-tank guy found the body. He called it in. What about him? Maybe he killed Ryan.”

  “Did Alison tell you how Ryan was killed?”

  Nikki made herself look up at the detective. She didn’t answer.

  “He was strangled. With a dog leash.”

  Chapter 5

  “A dog leash?” Nikki murmured.

  “We’ll have to wait for the autopsy and lab reports, but we’re pretty sure—I’m pretty sure—that’s what was used. The assailant approached from behind the lounge chair where Mr. Melton was sitting, dropped the leash over his head, and tightened.” Dombrowski crossed his fist over his coffee cup and pulled back, making a motion as if to strangle someone with a rope. Or a dog
leash.

  Nikki’s bad feeling turned to slight nausea. She closed her fingers around the paper coffee cup. Felt its warmth. “That doesn’t mean the dog walker did it.”

  “Her fingerprints on the leash came up as a match.”

  “Wait,” she said, confused. “You fingerprinted Alison?”

  “Didn’t have to. She was already in the system. Priors.”

  Nikki was quiet for a second. She didn’t know what priors Alison could have had. Was this what Jeremy was referring to the other day when he suggested Alison might not be telling the truth? “Okay, that does sound incriminating.”

  “Thus the warrant.”

  “But she’s the dog walker. Her prints are on Stan’s and Ollie’s leashes, too.”

  He drew his eyebrows together. “Laurel and Hardy had leashes?”

  She almost smiled. She was surprised by how many people didn’t make the connection. “My dogs, Stanley and Oliver. Alison walks them, too. They were with her the day Ryan died. She took them and his dog to the dog park.”

  “The dogs tell you that?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Her story’s shaky at best, Nikki.” He actually seemed to feel bad about it.

  “You sure you have the right leash?” She took a sip of the coffee. “Maybe you’ve got the wrong leash. I have half a dozen, at least.”

  “We confiscated five from the Melton/Elliot house. We’ll check them all, but I’m fairly certain we have the right leash. It matched the ligature marks on his neck.”

  Ligature marks. Nikki hadn’t noticed marks on Ryan’s neck. She had been too busy looking at his gorgeous, dead face. At the objects around his chair, assuming they might hold significance: the drink glass, the laptop, his sunglasses. “Do you know when he was killed? The beverage in the glass was still cold.”

  Dombrowski arched one eyebrow.

  “I noticed that the glass was still sweating a little when I walked out onto the pool deck.”

  She got a half smile. “Good pickup. I saw that, too. There was actually still a sliver of ice in the glass when I arrived. The ME will give us an approximate time of death, once he does the autopsy, but I think Mr. Melton was killed less than an hour before the 911 call was placed by the guy servicing the fish tank.”