Death of a Neighborhood Scrooge

by Laura Levine

  The cashmere sweaters were half-off, which was still triple what I’d pay for one, but just for kicks, I decided to try on a cute jewel-neck number with a row of delicate ruffles at the hem.

  Major mistake.

  Putting ruffles on my hips is like putting frosting on a BLT. Simply too much! Those damn ruffles made my hips look like the SS Jaine Austen.

  I quickly whipped off the sweater, vowing to go on a strict diet.

  A vow that came to an abrupt halt about three minutes later when I was strolling past one of Neiman’s restaurants. I’d eaten lunch with Lance at Neiman’s a couple of times and ordered their burger, which was absolutely yummy. Gosh, I thought, a burger sure would hit the spot right about then.

  Yes, I know I’d just vowed to go on a diet and it was utterly disgraceful of me to be even thinking of food, but I needed sustenance to help me get over the memory of those damn ruffles.

  But then I saw something that sent all thoughts of ruffles shooting off into the stratosphere. There, seated at a cozy table for two, was Mrs. Sinclair, the chisel-cheekboned aristo.

  And she was not alone.

  Seated across from her was the bald guy from the Mercedes, the one on Scotty’s security tape. The man Mrs. Sinclair had claimed was her brother.

  At first glance, they looked perfectly innocent, smiling and chatting like two loving siblings.

  But then I looked down and saw that Mrs. Sinclair had kicked off one of her heels and was rubbing the bald guy’s calves with her toes. Definitely not a sisterly move.

  Wow. What an Academy Award–winning performance she’d given the other day, when she’d hovered over her husband as if he were the love of her life.

  Now the bald guy, his eyes glazed over with either lust or cataracts, took Mrs. Sinclair’s perfectly manicured hand in his, and began kissing her fingertips.

  Right there in the middle of the ladies who lunched!

  No way was this guy her brother. Mrs. Sinclair was having an affair, all right. And Scotty had been about to blackmail her.

  A perfect motive for murder.

  * * *

  “May I help you?”

  I looked up to see a gazelle-like hostess standing before me, her white-blond hair swept up in a sleek chignon, menus cradled in her arms.

  And with a sinking sensation, I realized she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed me standing at the entrance to the restaurant.

  Over at the Sinclair love nest, Mrs. Sinclair had torn her gaze from her inamorata and was now glaring at me with a look so icy, it could freeze a Jacuzzi.

  I knew she was cheating on her husband.

  And now she knew I knew.

  The question was: What did she intend to do about it?

  One thing for sure: I wasn’t about to stick around and find out.

  Chapter 26

  Needless to say, I came to my senses and forgot about stuffing my face with a Neiman’s burger. Instead I scooted over to the nearest Mickey D’s and stuffed my face with a Quarter Pounder and fries.

  Back at Casa Van Hooten, I somehow managed to shake off the haunting image of Mrs. Sinclair’s death ray glare. True, she’d catapulted to the top of my suspect list. But I hadn’t forgotten about a very important runner-up. Namely, Dave Kellogg—aka Chambers—and his cozy cottage in Rancho Park.

  What was that all about?

  Soon I was nestled on the living room couch with my laptop, Googling “Dave Chambers.”

  The results came up instantly. It turned out that Dave Chambers of Rancho Park, California, was a certified CPA. I clicked on his website, and sure enough, there was Dave’s clean cut face smiling out at me.

  If Dave was a CPA, why was he pretending to be a law student?

  As my good buddy L. G. Carroll would say, this whole thing was getting curiouser and curiouser.

  But I didn’t have time to ponder the matter further. Not right then, anyway.

  As it happened, I had to gussy myself up for another Smatch date.

  I haven’t told you because I didn’t want to get your hopes up, but in spite of my last disastrous date with Phil, the white-collar crook, I’d decided to give Goon another Smatch date.

  Clearly living with Lance had turned me into a dating daredevil.

  I’d exchanged a few messages with Mr. Write, a very attractive screenwriter, into Scrabble, crossword puzzles, Frasier reruns, and cross-country skiing.

  Except for that cross-county skiing thing, we were practically soulmates.

  We’d agreed to meet for coffee that afternoon. So I hurried upstairs and slipped into what I was beginning to think of as my Smatch dating outfit: skinny jeans, blazer, and silk blouse.

  Hopping in my Corolla, I drove over to where I was meeting Mr. Write—Los Angeles’s original Farmers Market, a hodgepodge of produce stands and food stalls, with patio areas set among the stalls for al fresco dining.

  I decided to park next door at the upscale Grove shopping center to take advantage of their first hour of free parking. After spiraling up what seemed like the Mt. Kilimanjaro of parking lots, I finally found a space and then rode the elevator back down to the ground floor.

  There I hurried past shoppers busy returning unwanted Christmas gifts, and tourists riding the bright green trolley that wended its way along the main street of the mall.

  Arriving at the decidedly less glitzy Farmers Market, I made my way to the West Patio where Mr. Write—whose real name was Duane—and I were to meet.

  I scanned the tables for my future significant other. Finally I spotted a very handsome guy with a shock of tawny brown hair. He didn’t look much like the picture I’d seen on Smatch, so at first I wasn’t sure it was him. But then he looked up, shot me a big smile, and waved.

  Yes! It was him! Yahoo! What a cutie!

  I only hoped he wasn’t going to turn out to be another royal waste of my time.

  And good news: He wasn’t about to waste my time at all. Because just then I turned around and saw he wasn’t waving at me, but at a gorgeous young thing behind me, who went flitting over to his table and slapped him with a big wet smacker.

  At that same moment, I heard someone calling my name.

  “Yoo-hoo! Jaine!”

  I turned to where the voice was coming from, but all I saw was a nanny with a toddler and an old man with a bad toupee. A very bad toupee. Honest. It looked like a live hamster on his head. I was surprised it didn’t come with a running wheel.

  “Jaine! Over here!”

  The old man with the hamster toupee was waving me to his table.

  Yikes! Don’t tell me he was my date! The man was older than my dad! Heck, the guy was probably fraternity brothers with Methuselah.

  As I walked over to his table, I could see a faint resemblance to the picture he’d posted on his profile. Only that picture must have been taken decades ago, when he had real hair on his head and not a napping hamster.

  “Jaine, my dear,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand. “So nice to meet you!”

  Then he flashed me a gleaming smile, baring a set of teeth that, I am fairly certain, had been ordered online.

  “Pardon me for not getting up,” he said, “but my hip’s a little out of whack. A recent skiing accident.”

  Yeah, right. The last time this guy had gone skiing Herbert Hoover was president.

  “Do sit down!” he said, with a flash of his store-bought teeth.

  “Sorry, Duane. But I can tell right now this will never work.”

  Oh, how I wish I’d had the nerve to actually say that. Instead, like the spineless wonder I am, I sat down across from him.

  “I brought my own hot cocoa and peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” Duane said, pointing to a thermos and wax-paper wrapped sandwich on the table. “But feel free to order anything you want. My treat.”

  With a flourish, he reached into his wallet, and handed me a dollar bill.

  In a trance-like state, I got up and wandered over to the food stalls.

  Now, you’d t
hink I’d head straight for a pizza stand or a frozen yogurt joint, right?

  Wrong.

  The only thing that was going to get me through this encounter was my good buddy, Mr. Chardonnay.

  So I headed to a booth that sold beer and wine.

  For a fleeting instant I thought about asking the bartender if there was a back entrance to his booth, so I could slip out into an alley and make a run for it. But then I looked over at Duane, unwrapping his PBJ, his hamster toupee slightly askew on his head.

  I couldn’t desert him. He was just too darn pathetic.

  So I ordered a glass of wine, making up my mind to stick it out for a half hour, after which I would pretend to feel my phone vibrating with an emergency call that would send me scooting off to freedom.

  Chardonnay in hand, I put on a brave smile and returned to the table, where I was greeted by Duane, dentures gleaming, holding out his hand.

  Wait. Didn’t we already shake hands?

  Oh, well. At his age, maybe he forgot. I reached out to shake it again, but he just looked at me and said:

  “Where’s my change?”

  Oh, Lordy. Obviously, the guy hadn’t bought any booze since his hair fell out.

  “I’m afraid the wine costs more than a dollar.”

  “Highway robbery,” he tsked in disapproval.

  “So,” he said, as I reluctantly lowered my fanny into the chair across from him, “tell me all about yourself.”

  “Well,” I began, “I’m a writer—”

  And that’s as far as I got.

  I didn’t know it, but the Duane Express was about to take off.

  “I know!” he exclaimed, taking a big bite of his sandwich and treating me to a most unappetizing view of its contents as he chewed. “That’s why I wrote you. I’m a writer, too. I just finished my latest screenplay.”

  Duane reached down into a frayed shopping bag and pulled out a dog-eared copy of a script.

  The title page read:

  Ricky

  By Duane L. Forrester

  “Want me to tell you the story line?”

  God, no!

  But before I could even open my mouth, he was off and running, reciting in excruciating detail what seemed like every beat of his story about a small-time boxer, a self-proclaimed “bum” from the wrong side of the tracks who gets a chance to take on the world’s reigning heavyweight champion. How the fighter trains with a former bantamweight boxer and falls in love with the wallflower sister of his buddy and how, after much blood, sweat, and testosterone, he “goes the distance” against the champ, making it through the fight without getting knocked out—something no fighter has ever done before—proving to himself that he’s not the bum he thought he was, and winning the hand of his true love.

  In spite of Duane’s excruciating delivery, I liked the story line a lot. I always had, ever since I’d first seen it on the screen as the Academy Award winning movie Rocky.

  “Well? What do you think?” he asked when he’d finally finished his recital.

  “It’s great.”

  “I know,” he beamed. “That’s what everyone tells me.”

  “But isn’t it an awful lot like Rocky?”

  A look of annoyance flashed in his rheumy eyes.

  “What do you mean? It’s nothing like Rocky. First of all, my character is named Ricky. And the story isn’t set in Philadelphia, it’s in Pittsburgh. And he doesn’t run up the stairs to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He runs up the steps of a StairMaster.

  “It’s not the least bit like Rocky!” he shouted, banging his fist on the table.

  Nearby the nanny looked over at us, alarmed.

  “Right,” I murmured, eager to placate him. “Not the least bit like Rocky.”

  “For your information, William Morris of the William Morris Agency is reading it right now!”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the real William Morris died in the 1930s, sometime around Duane’s last ski trip.

  Having polished off the last of my chardonnay, I’d had more than my fill of Duane L. Forrester. I was just about to pretend to hear my phone vibrating with a fake emergency phone call when Duane checked his watch and said:

  “Well, Jaine. I hate to rush you out of here, but I’m expecting my next date any minute.”

  “Your next date?”

  “Yes. I lined up five of ’em today. Plan to narrow it down to two lucky ladies. Sorry to say, you didn’t make the cut.”

  What? The old geezer was rejecting me?

  “You need to go before”—he looked down to consult a list on the back page of Ricky—“Kimberly shows up.”

  What nerve! Making me sit through his endless plagiarized saga, and then rejecting me!

  If only I hadn’t finished my wine, how I would have loved to toss it in his face.

  I got up to go, fury oozing from every pore.

  “One more thing,” Duane said. “Seeing as things didn’t work out between us, would you mind giving me back my dollar?”

  By now I was surprised actual steam wasn’t puffing out of my ears.

  I’d used up his crappy dollar to buy my drink. The smallest bill I had was a five.

  “Here you go,” I said, slamming it down on the table. “Use it to buy yourself a new toupee. And this time, make sure it’s dead before you put it on your head.”

  And yes, I really did say that. With the greatest of pleasure.

  * * *

  No doubt about it. I was through with Smatch.com. Done. Finito. Hasta la vista.

  I stormed out of the Farmers Market and onto the streets of The Grove, still fuming over duplicitous Duane, or as I preferred to think of him, Hamsterhead.

  The monumental gall of that guy! Posting a Smatch photo that had to be at least forty years old. Boring me senseless with his plagiarized screenplay. And that ghastly piece of animal fur on his head. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if the darn thing had fleas.

  I was just about to cross The Grove’s main street when I heard the clang of the trolley. I turned and saw the bright green tram approaching, filled with happy passengers, laughing and chattering, full of joie de vivre and enviably Duane-free.

  And then, as I stood there, waiting for the trolley to pass, out of nowhere, I felt someone shove me from behind. A powerful shove that sent me sprawling onto the trolley tracks.

  When I looked up, I shuddered to see the trolley barreling right at me.

  I struggled to get to my feet, but my legs were like jelly, and I kept floundering on the tracks.

  Any second now, that big hunk of steel was going to ram right into me!

  Just as I was certain I was headed for that great Shopping Mall in the Sky, I heard the earsplitting sound of brakes squealing.

  The trolley had come to a halt just inches from my nose.

  The driver, a gangly guy in an old-fashioned train conductor’s uniform, jumped down from his seat and came racing to my side.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, brow furrowed in concern, visions of lawsuits no doubt dancing in his head.

  “I’m fine.”

  And I was. Aside from a small scrape on my elbow, I hadn’t been hurt.

  (One of the advantages, I might point out, of having well-padded hips and thighs. I sent up a silent prayer of thanks to my guardian angels, Ben and Jerry.)

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” the trolley driver asked. “Nothing broken?”

  “Really,” I assured him. “I’m fine.”

  By now we were surrounded by a crowd of curious onlookers.

  “But somebody pushed me.”

  “What?” The trolley driver blinked in disbelief.

  “It’s true. Someone shoved me onto the tracks.” I turned to the crowd. “Did any of you see someone shove me?”

  They all shook their heads no.

  How very annoying. Where were all the people shooting cell phone videos when you needed them?

  Then an elderly woman with a Nordstrom shopping bag and a he
adful of permed curls spoke up.

  “I didn’t see anyone push you,” she said, “but I did notice someone running away as soon as you hit the tracks.”

  At last! Someone with powers of observation.

  “Was it a man?” I asked eagerly. “Or a woman?”

  “It all happened so fast, I couldn’t tell. All I know is that the person was wearing a blue ski cap.”

  “A blue ski cap, huh?” I filed that tidbit away for future reference.

  Assured that my bones were all in working order, the trolley driver escorted me across the tracks. After which, he resumed his seat on the trolley and continued on his route. The crowd dispersed and life at The Grove continued as usual.

  I made my way to the parking lot and up Mt. Kilimanjaro to my car, my knees still weak, my heart pounding.

  Someone in a blue ski cap had pushed me onto those tracks.

  And that someone, I was certain, was Scotty’s killer.

  Chapter 27

  I drove home in a daze, trying to figure out who’d given me that fateful shove.

  My first thoughts flew to Marlon. Whoever shoved me was strong. And Marlon was nothing if not a bastion of strength.

  But then I remembered Mrs. Sinclair and the death ray glare she’d beamed at me at Neiman’s. It’s quite possible she’d come home from her lovers’ lunch, seen me leaving the house, hopped in her car, and followed me over to The Grove.

  And what about Dave? Had he spotted me riffling through his mail? Having killed Scotty to clear the way to Missy, was he now prepared to do me in so I wouldn’t go ratting on him to the police? And there was always Missy. True, she didn’t seem like a killer, but anything was possible in the wacky world of homicide.

  And finally, I couldn’t forget about Elise, the now wealthy ex-wife. She’d known about the inscription on the murder weapon even though she’d claimed to be nowhere near the scene of the crime.

  All these suspects were swirling in my brain like chocolate in a quart of fudge ripple. By the time I reached Casa Van Hooten, I was more confused than ever. All I wanted was a comforting cuddle with Pro and a nice hot bath to soak my frustrations away.