The Dead and the Beautiful

by Cheryl Crane

  “So you pushed Ryan?”

  She nodded. “And then I snapped Muffin’s leash on his collar and I walked out the door.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Runyon Canyon Park. They like it there, Stan and Ollie. And Muffin was learning to get along with the other dogs. That’s a good time of day. Not too many people there. Rotties can be really nice dogs. He’s just a big clumsy oaf.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “I let the dogs run for a while, and then I took Muffin back to Ryan’s house.”

  “What time?”

  She exhaled. “One, maybe? I had an appointment at three, so I was going to take Stan and Ollie home and be in Bel Air by three. I remember thinking I had enough time, if I didn’t hit traffic on the freeway.”

  Nikki looked at Alison across the table. “What happened when you got to the Melton/Elliot house?”

  “Nothing. I let myself in like I’m supposed to. A lot of my clients don’t make me knock. Most of the time, no one’s home.”

  “Was the door locked?”

  Alison shook her head. “The gates have codes, front and back. If the gate’s closed, the house is unlocked.”

  “But Ryan was home.”

  “Yeah.” She went on, “I let Muffin loose and I hung the leash on the hook in the utility room.”

  “Does he have more than one leash?”

  She made a face as if it was a ridiculous question. “Like, ten. Some are designer leashes. He wears a Louis Vuitton collar.”

  “You know which one you used that day?”

  “Maybe. But I just grab one, any one. I walk him four days a week.”

  “So your fingerprints could have been on the leash that killed Ryan?”

  “Sure. Ryan’s would have been on them, too. He walked Muffin sometimes, too.”

  But Ryan didn’t strangle himself, Nikki thought. “Okay. Go on. Did you see Ryan when you dropped Muffin off?”

  “Yeah, I was dreading going back in. I even thought about keeping Muffin until Diara got home.”

  Nikki noted that Alison was calling Ryan and Diara by their first names. She tried to recall if Alison called all of her star clients by their first names.

  “But then, I decided that if I wanted to keep the job, I couldn’t be afraid to go into the house. And I needed the job. And I . . . I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Where was Ryan when you dropped Muffin off?”

  Alison had pushed her coffee cup aside and now rested her hands on the placemat on the table. “Out by the pool. The French doors were open between the living room and the pool deck.”

  The same doors Nikki had walked through that day when she saw Ryan’s body. “Did he speak to you?”

  She shook her head. “He just waved as I was on my way out.”

  “He was in the pool?”

  “No, his lounge chair.” She took a shuddering breath. “Where they found him dead later. When I went through the house, he was sitting in the chair with his back to the house. He didn’t even turn around; he just waved. I guess he was just embarrassed by the way he’d behaved.”

  “But you definitely saw him when you returned the dog?”

  “Definitely.” Alison exhaled. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was that he didn’t get up and come into the house.”

  “And you saw him when you were taking the leash to the utility room, or on your way out of the house?”

  “Definitely on my way out.”

  Nikki thought for a minute. “So Mars was there then, servicing the fish tanks?”

  “No, not then.” Alison hesitated. “I left, but then I got to thinking about the video. I pulled over in the van and I sat for a few minutes. Then I went back.”

  “You went back to the house? Why? To talk to Ryan?”

  “No, I went back because of the surveillance videos in the house. They have a bunch of cameras. If Diara saw what happened between me and Ryan that morning, I was afraid she would fire me.”

  “But he propositioned you. If you pushed him, she wouldn’t have thought you were coming on to him,” Nikki argued. “It would have been obvious what was going on.”

  “Would it have mattered? She’d have fired me anyway. So Ryan wouldn’t be tempted by me.”

  “You really think she would have watched the recordings?”

  “I was afraid to take the chance. Ryan was smart, but he didn’t think things through. I didn’t know if he’d think to erase the security recording himself. The thing is, Diara was always reviewing them. She fired two different maids over stuff she saw on the video footage.”

  “How does she view them?”

  “They had the whole system installed when they moved in. There’s a laptop in the kitchen pantry. You can watch the recordings from all of the cameras from there.”

  “And erase them?” Nikki said stiffly. “You erased the surveillance recordings?” Which meant the cops also had her fingerprints on the laptop.

  She nodded, staring at her hands. “That’s when I passed Mars in the hallway. I guess he arrived to work on the fish tanks between the time I dropped Muffin off and went back.”

  “Weren’t you afraid you’d get fired for doing it?”

  “If she saw them, I was going to get fired anyway. I was hoping no one would notice.” Alison pushed hair out of her eyes. “They got erased all the time.”

  The back door opened and both turned to see Jeremy walk in.

  “Jeremy,” Alison said.

  He halted in the middle of the kitchen and hooked his thumb in the direction of the living room. He looked a little lost and obviously still pretty upset. “I’m going to get the girls dressed and take them to the park. Then maybe to a movie. I don’t know how late we’ll be, so you need to pick up Jocelyn at the high school at two.”

  Alison rose from the table. “Jeremy, I feel awful about this.” Her voice quavered. “Can we talk?”

  He didn’t make eye contact with her. “Not now. I just can’t.” He glanced at Nikki. “I know you’re going to your mom’s. I’ll call you later.” The tone of his voice suggested that he was none too happy with Nikki either.

  When Jeremy was gone, Nikki and Alison just sat there for a minute. Alison was the first to speak. “I need to talk to Jocelyn, but are you serious about letting us stay with you?”

  “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it, Alison. You’ve known me long enough to know that I mean what I say.”

  “It’s really nice of you. I mean, my own brother . . .” She let her voice fade. “You know, I always wished you and I could be friends. I always admired you so much. You have everything: you’re smart, you’re beautiful, you’ve got a great boyfriend, a great career. Your life is so . . . together. I’m not embarrassed to say that I wish I could be more like you.”

  She was making Nikki uncomfortable. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew the truth,” she said, only half-joking.

  Alison closed her eyes and lowered her head for a minute. “Do you really think we can prove to Jeremy that I didn’t do this? Because the more I think about it”—she raised her head to look at Nikki again—“the more I realize that even if Lillie gets the charges dropped, that’s not going to mean anything to Jeremy. He really thinks I could have murdered someone. What kind of person does he think I am that I could do that to another human being?”

  That took Nikki to a place she didn’t really want to go to right then. An image of the man she had killed when she was nineteen flashed in her head. She knew Alison knew about it; everyone did. It had been in the papers and on national TV. But so many years had passed, she knew Alison wasn’t thinking about Nikki or the incident. She didn’t mean anything by her words. She was talking about herself and about her relationship with her brother.

  Nikki patted Alison’s hand and got up. “Why don’t you go to work, and talk to Jocelyn tonight after you pick her up? I don’t know that you need to actually move. Maybe . . . just stay with me for a few days and give Jeremy some space. You c
ould present it to Jocelyn that way.”

  “Give him some space, huh? You think that’s all he needs? Space?”

  “And a little time,” Nikki said, trying to sound as upbeat as possible. “He’ll come to his senses. He’s a sensible guy.”

  Alison rose from her chair. “I want to think you’re right. I really do.”

  “I am,” Nikki reassured her. She was already contemplating what her next step would be. Whom did she talk to next? “Thanks for talking to me. I’m going to run all this stuff around in my head and see what I can come up with.”

  Alison groaned. “God help me. I sound guilty to myself when I hear my story.”

  “Well, thanks for trusting me.” Nikki grabbed both cups of their now-cold coffee. “I won’t share anything you told me with anyone. Lillie Lambert need never know you spoke to me.”

  Alison followed her to the sink. “You have any idea who could have killed Ryan? I mean, everyone liked him. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  Right now, the only possible suspect Nikki had was Diara, which made no sense. She was shooting on the set of Casa Capri the day her husband was murdered. Nikki would have to look into that. She needed to make sure Diara was on the set at the time of the murder, which she was guessing fell in the window between one when Alison dropped the dog off and when Mars arrived. Which couldn’t have been much time. She’d have to find out from Mars what time he arrived at the Melton/Elliot residence.

  Nikki rinsed out the coffee cups and put them in the sink. “I’m going to go.”

  “Right. Sure. I’ll walk out with you. I should go anyway, and not force my brother into an awkward moment in front of his girls.” She followed Nikki out of the house.

  “Ms. Sahira!”

  “Miss Harper! Nikki Harper, do you have a statement?”

  A group of men and women with cameras had gathered outside Jeremy’s gate. The minute they saw Nikki and Alison, they started hollering to them and taking photos with cameras with telephoto lenses.

  “Great,” Nikki muttered, heading for her car.

  Alison stood on the front porch, frozen for a moment. “What do I do?” she asked, staring at the men and women outside the gate.

  “Any comment on the accusation that you starred in pornographic movies in the nineties, Alison?”

  Apparently, someone besides Marshall was reading Miss Tinseltown Tattletale’s blog.

  Alison covered her face with her hands and turned her back to the paparazzi.

  Nikki was glad that while she was dressed casually, she looked okay. Thank goodness she’d taken the time to follow Marshall’s advice and put on some makeup. If her photo was going to end up in a tabloid, she didn’t need Victoria criticizing what she looked like. Nikki opened her car door, grabbed her sunglasses, and slid them on. “I’ll wait for you, if you like,” she called back to Alison. “We can make a run for it together.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Alison groaned.

  “You need to go to work, and you need to show them that you haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Alison looked over her shoulder at the paparazzi at the gate and then to Nikki. “I’ll be right out.”

  Nikki backed up her car and turned it around so she could leave first. Jeremy’s car had a device to open the gate coming and going, but Nikki and Alison had to operate it manually. He’d just had the fence and electronic gate installed a couple of months ago.

  Which was a good thing, apparently. Otherwise, the paparazzi would have been at his door. Nikki had grown up with the press and had experienced this—to some degree—her whole life. But Jeremy and Alison, they lived pretty quietly, despite Jeremy’s previous fame. The only time anyone approached Jeremy with a camera was when he occasionally showed up at a cancer research fundraiser or was spotted at a restaurant with someone more famous than he was.

  A minute later, Alison came out of the house wearing a baggy fleece jacket and dark sunglasses, and carrying a canvas messenger bag on her shoulder.

  “Ready when you are,” Nikki called.

  Alison got into her van and pulled behind Nikki. Nikki eased up to the gate, ignoring the paparazzi in front of her, put down her window, and hit the button to open the gate. The gate began to slide open and she eased the Prius forward. The crowd parted and Nikki stepped on the gas. She pulled onto the street and looked in her rearview mirror. Alison was right behind her, a death grip on the steering wheel.

  They wound through the quiet neighborhood and then pulled onto Rockingham, a street made famous by the location of O.J. Simpson’s house. Nikki glanced in her mirror again, waved to Alison, and dialed the number for the Age of Aquarius Aquariums.

  “Age of Aquarius Aquariums, this is Mars.”

  “Mars, hey, this is Nikki Harper.”

  “You ready to have that fish delivered?”

  She chuckled. “Not quite. Listen, what I called about was . . . do you know what time you arrived at Ryan Melton’s that day?”

  “Uh, a little after one. One-fifteen, maybe.”

  That meant someone had to have gotten into the house, killed Ryan, and gotten out in under fifteen minutes. That was an awfully tight window. Was it even possible?

  “And . . . I’m sorry to be a pain,” Nikki said. “But do you know what time you placed the call to 911?”

  “Around one-thirty. One-forty at the latest. Hey, that was really cool of you to get those tickets for Moon and her friend to see the Dalai Lama.”

  “I hope they have a good time. I have to run. Nice to talk to you, Mars.”

  “You too. Just give me a holler and we’ll get that fish tank of yours set up.”

  “Have a good day,” Nikki said. As she hung up, she tried to decide what her next move should be. In the meantime, apparently she’d be cleaning Victoria’s attic.

  Chapter 16

  “Why won’t you tell me what she said?” Victoria pursed her lips in annoyance. She was in hair and makeup, preparing to shoot her next scene for Casa Capri. Then she had an interview with Ryan Seacrest. Nikki stood beside her mother’s chair, watching her in the big mirror. She was as gorgeous as ever. To Nikki’s surprise, the long days of filming seemed to energize her, rather than drag her down. Lately, it seemed as if Victoria had more energy in a day than Nikki did.

  Saturday, while starting the attic project at Victoria’s, Nikki had expressed her desire to snoop around the set a little and learn what she could about Diara, without being too conspicuous. Victoria had invited her daughter along for her Monday shoot. Nikki had had to call out at work, which she could be in trouble for because on Mondays the brokers all got together for Monday Morning Meeting. But she figured that she could get away with it this week since she was certain she was going to be the top broker in the agency again this month.

  “I can’t tell you because Alison spoke to me in confidence,” Nikki told Victoria.

  “Could you lift your chin, Ms. Bordeaux?” the makeup artist asked. She was a cute Japanese girl with super-short hair and rosebud lips she had painted with bright red lipstick, staying inside the lines of her mouth so she had kewpie doll lips. Bizarre for seven-thirty in the morning. She didn’t look a day over twelve, although Nikki guessed she was a little older than that since she was here and not in middle school.

  Victoria raised her chin regally so the makeup artist could swipe a powder brush down her neck. “But I’m your mother. I won’t tell anyone. And Asami won’t either, will you, dear?”

  “I don’t hear anything anyone says,” the girl assured her. She dropped one brush onto the counter and grabbed another from a black brush roll that must have had fifty brushes in it.

  “I gave my word, Mother.” Nikki sat down on a stool Asami had brought for her.

  “I suppose you won’t tell Jeremy either?” Victoria turned her head left, then right as Asami shaded her cheeks.

  Nikki really didn’t want to discuss Jeremy with her mother. With anyone. She hadn’t talked to him since she saw him at his house Saturday. He’
d told her he would call her. He hadn’t. She left a message on his cell Sunday, while trying to put some order to her spare rooms for Alison and Jocelyn. So far, he hadn’t called back. Nikki tried to tell herself it was just that he was busy with the kids. He liked to spend as much time as he could with them on the weekends.

  But he was avoiding her. She knew that. Maybe he would call her tonight when he didn’t see his sister and niece at the dinner table. They were coming to Nikki’s today, after school. But then, maybe he wouldn’t call her.

  “What do you think?” Asami leaned over Victoria’s shoulder.

  All three of them stared in the mirror. Even clothed in a black cape to protect her clothing, Victoria was gorgeous. Her platinum hair framed her petite face elegantly, and her bright blue eyes shone even brighter than usual, thanks to Asami’s tricks with her makeup brushes.

  “Maybe bring the blush a little higher?” Victoria suggested.

  “Definitely.” Asami went back to her brush roll on the counter.

  “I haven’t seen much of Diara, except when we’re shooting,” Victoria’s tone suggested casual conversation, but her glance at Nikki suggested more, which Nikki found interesting since her mother thought there was a chance Alison might have actually killed Ryan Melton.

  “Do you know how the poor dear is doing?” Victoria asked.

  Asami raised perfect black eyebrows. “She seems fine, which creeps me out a little. I can’t imagine. If my boyfriend was murdered, I’d . . . go crazy. I’d be ripping my hair out, sobbing uncontrollably. There’s no way I could work. Ah-ha!” She held up the brush she had, apparently, been looking for and went on. “And what’s with the private burial? Just the Fab Four. Gabriela, in props, said she overheard that they all had dinner at Angel and Betsy Gomez’s Saturday night. She said Ryan’s already been cremated and stuck on a shelf. In the same mausoleum as Norma Talmadge at Hollywood Forever. We’re going Friday, my boyfriend and me, to check it out.”

  Nikki met her mother’s gaze.

  “You don’t know Norma Talmadge?” Victoria asked. “The Talmadge sisters.”

  Nikki shook her head.

  “Then I was remiss in your early film education. Norma was a star in the twenties. She was the first to have her footprints in cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.”