Drop Dead Gorgeous

by Heather Graham

  “Well, are we having lunch or not?” Ricky demanded impatiently.

  They went into the restaurant.

  Once they had ordered, Sean became insistent. “Ricky, what’s up?”

  “I ran into Ted right after he left your house this morning, Lori.”

  Sean looked at her sharply. “Ted was at your house this morning?”

  “Worried about you,” she told him. She grinned across the table at Jeff. “Another friend was by—Jeff. He thinks you should really sue the reporter.”

  “Lori, did Ted tell you about… the cat?” Ricky asked.

  “The cat?” Sean snapped so sharply that they all stared at him.

  “Yeah, seems that what has him so upset about Sue is her cat. Her stuff really was gone, place was closed up as if she was going away and all that—but her cat was dead.”

  “Did it dehydrate?” Lori asked.

  Ricky shook his head, watching them all. “It’s neck was broken.”

  They all stared at him.

  “She broke her own cat’s neck?” Andrew said incredulously.

  “I doubt it,” Ricky said impatiently. “If she went away with the guy, he’s some kind of a real loser.”

  “Ah, Sue doesn’t deserve such a jerk,” Andrew said angrily.

  “Jerk? He may be a killer,” Sean said.

  “Yeah. I just thought you guys should know.”

  “Ted had told me,” Jeff said quietly.

  “I don’t want Jan to know,” Andrew said. “She’s spooked enough.”

  “Maybe she needs to know,” Sean said.

  “Maybe. Because it is getting a little scary here,” Ricky said. “All right—real scary. Weird, bizarre.”

  “Only for women, it seems,” Lori said quietly.

  “Lori, don’t you even think about being alone anywhere!” Andrew warned her.

  “I won’t, Andrew, I’m careful—”

  “Jeff knows good alarm people; he told you he did.”

  “I’ll have an alarm put in—”

  “Tomorrow. Before you go back to work at the school,” Sean told her.

  “I’ll see to it, Lori,” Jeff said.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. She would borrow the money from Gramps, and keep them all quiet.

  “You need to keep an eye out, too, Andrew. This is a strange business you’re in,” Ricky told him.

  “But I think I really am getting out of it soon. I’ve an appointment next week with some highly respected Hollywood types interested in a screenplay I submitted.”

  “Andrew! How wonderful!” Lori said. “What is it?”

  Andrew winced. “A movie about a serial killer in Miami.”

  Despite the topic, Lori made a point of being very supportive—he was her brother, her blood.

  It was all right for her to quiz him. She wasn’t sure what she felt about Sean doing the same— except that he should have gotten her permission.

  When she left the men, she didn’t realize at first that Sean had gotten right into his own car to follow her, but he did so, bursting into the house right behind her after she had unlocked the door.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing?” he demanded furiously.

  “I told you, seeing my brother—”

  “Bull!”

  “Well, then, what the hell were you doing?”

  “Questioning him.”

  “My brother. How dare you? How dare you?” she screamed, alarmed at the way her voice rose. She sounded like a shrew. But she was angry.

  And scared.

  “Oh, gee, now, why would I question the porn king of Miami?”

  “Don’t you dare call him that!”

  “Don’t you start being such an idiot!”

  “He’s my brother! He’d never hurt me—”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I trust him—I—”

  “How can you?”

  “I trust you!”

  He stood with his whole body tense, blue eyes dark as cobalt, knuckles white, teeth audibly grinding. She knew that she must look the same. They were like two combatants, poised to go to war.

  “Don’t! Don’t do it, Lori, don’t start hanging around anywhere questioning people, not even your brother.”

  “And don’t you dare go after my own family!”

  “Why? Haven’t you wondered if it wasn’t my brother?”

  “Haven’t you?” she demanded.

  Again, he was very still. “You know, if you were a guy, I’d be swinging right now.”

  “You are a guy, and I should slug you for being so suspicious of Andrew.”

  His jaw tightened, and he took a step forward. Adrenaline raced through her body at an ungodly speed. She wanted to fly at him… He paused.

  “Want to make love?”

  “No!” she exclaimed incredulously. Then she realized that yes, she did, very much. “Yes… maybe.”

  He swept her into his arms, tension and anger vented in sheer physical passion as he kissed her, fumbling with her clothing. She was half naked, kissing him back hungrily, when he murmured, “Want to go upstairs?”

  “I don’t care. There, here, the floor…”

  He glanced at his watch, groaning. “Have we got time before Brendan gets out…?”

  “Not much.”

  “Then, the floor will be just fine.”

  Muffy didn’t finish work at the shoot until late.

  She left the hotel after dark, walking along the street. South Beach was usually busy, a great place. All kinds of people came here: punk kids, rich Arabs. Women walked by in veils—and in thong bikinis, almost nothing at all! And the guys… beach bums, the gay community, bodybuilders, some dopers… everyone. It was the most fantastic place in the world to be.

  Tonight, it was kind of dark. Storm clouds on the horizon. People seemed to be staying in. The streets were nearly deserted when she heard the whistle.

  She looked up and saw the van coming toward her, pulling to a stop at the curve. Funny, she didn’t know anybody who had a van.

  But then she saw the driver, recognized him, and brightened.

  “Why, hi!” she said.

  “Hi, Muffy,” he returned, leaning far over to open the passenger side door. He smiled at her, and his smile was devastating. “You busy? Or just off work? Can I buy you a drink?”

  “You want to buy me a drink?” she said. “Sure. Sure, why not?”

  And she climbed in.

  Late that night Sean lay beside Lori, and she knew he was about to get up and go back downstairs to the sofa. Yet he was staring at the ceiling, tense, wide awake.

  “Sean?”

  He turned to her. “I’m really worried. I’m afraid for you, for me, for us… God, you’ve got to be careful. Let me call an alarm company.”

  “All right. I’ll ask my grandfather—”

  “Damn it, please, will you let me do this thing? If you love me, can you trust me enough to do something for you?”

  She hesitated just slightly. “All right.”

  He pulled her still damp body into his arms, kissing her shoulder tenderly.

  “Sean… is there something else?”

  “Sue’s cat’s neck was broken.”

  “I know. Ricky said so.”

  “Remember that dead cat in your trash pile?”

  She felt prickles of fear assail her.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, it wasn’t hit by a car. Its neck was broken, too.”

  19

  “Damn!” Jeff swore, missing his shot. “Boy, am I over par!”

  “Thank God we’re not playing for money,” Andrew said.

  Jeff made a face. “I am playing for money. I bet Brad fifty bucks that I could beat you if no one else.”

  Andrew started to laugh. “Looks like you’re going to have to pay up, though it doesn’t seem Brad’s faring so well himself back there!” Sean, too, glanced back. Brad’s swings were wild; his game was really off. They had divided up since they wound up
with eight playing. Ted, Jeff, Andrew, and he had teed off first, followed by Brad, Ricky, Brendan, and Michael, who had come up that morning for a meeting with the Seaquarium about taking in a wounded dolphin discovered off Miami Beach that weekend.

  Brendan was a surprisingly good golfer for his age; the older men had offered to give him a handicap, but Brendan was quietly beating the pants off most of them. The kid was a natural athelete.

  “He’s got a swing just like yours, Sean,” Jeff commented. “Kid’s good. Really good. Kind of like you, Sean, remember? Football, baseball, whatever, you aced it. The kid even golfs like you do.”

  “He swings like I do?” Sean said skeptically.

  “Yeah, he does,” Andrew agreed, walking forward to eye his shot, and then prepare for it. “He is good, even if I might be just a little bit biased regarding my blood relation. He’s a natural—with everything he touches. All Lori needs to do is buy him good clubs, a guitar, a football, and a computer—and he’ll make it rich somewhere along the line.”

  Andrew putted—the ball obediently fell into the hole, causing Jeff to groan.

  “Nice shot, Uncle Andrew!” Brendan called cheerfully from behind them, adjusting his baseball cap on his head.

  “Thank you, thank you very much!” Andrew said, and collecting his ball, he kissed it, and stepped aside for the others to finish. “I am personally ready for the Jacuzzi, if you all don’t mind picking up the pace here…”

  Sean took his shot, surprised that his ball went where he wanted it to go when he felt so strangely disjointed. Even the comments about Brendan nagged at him. But his was the low score, and it amazed him that it was possible to keep functioning with such apparent normalcy when he wanted to shake his “old friends” one by one and demand to know who had killed Mandy, and just what the hell was going on now.

  But as he looked around, he gritted his teeth, realizing that he was getting nowhere.

  He was golfing normally, and his friends looked just as normal as could be. Of course, there was something simmering beneath the surface. Ellie Metz had been horribly murdered. Sue was still missing—and a dead cat had been found in her house. And a dead cat had been found at Lori’s, and reporters were taking potshots at him.

  One of them was a killer—or was he entirely out of line and a stranger was doing these heinous things and the world was full of coincidence?

  Could it be Ricky, swearing violently now that he had missed his shot? Ted, the clean-cut Gables guy? Could either of them function quite so well as cops? Michael—was it possible to be so talented with animals, and hate people? Brad—he admitted to some of his fantasies, but did he have darker desires? Andrew dealt in the down and dirty daily. Jeff, Mandy’s brother. Josh—Lori’s cousin…

  Where did he begin ruling out people? If he watched long enough, would the killer make a mistake? Do something that gave him away, gave a single clue?

  “Maybe you should go back to California, Sean,” Brad said, looking at the scores when they had all played through.

  “Don’t worry; I have my bad days.”

  “You’re not going back to California soon, are you?” Brendan asked him anxiously. “No matter what that lady says in the paper,” he added.

  There was an awkward moment when Sean felt the others looking at him. He stared at them, then at Brendan. “No. I’m not leaving. I’m not running. Ricky’s a great cop, and the guys he works with are going to catch whoever killed Ellie.”

  Brendan looked pleased. Andrew turned, starting for his car.

  “You riding with me, Brendan?”

  “Nah, my stuff is in Sean’s car, Uncle Andrew,” Brendan called back to him.

  They all shouldered their golf bags, and started for the cars. Sean glanced over at Brendan. There was something about the kid’s face, the way he walked, moved.

  Andrew’s words seemed to echo to him. He’s got a swing just like yours.

  He suddenly felt as if he’d been hit in the chest. He couldn’t breathe; his face felt flushed, his heart was hammering. Jesus.

  What a blind ass he’d been.

  Lori was in the pool when the men arrived hot and sweaty from their golf game.

  Visions of dead cats, and dead women, had swum before her eyes all day. The simple acts of walking and talking seemed strained.

  The idea had been to order pizzas so that Jan wouldn’t be put to any trouble, but she and Lori had prepared salads and dips, and there were bowls of chips and other snacks around. From the pool Lori heard Jan tell the guys she’d waited for them to arrive before phoning for the pizzas so that they’d be hot.

  “Put in that call, honey,” Brad told her. “We’re all starving—since we rushed right here without so much as a breeze through at the nineteenth hole!”

  A few minutes later Sean appeared, having changed to swim trunks. He dived in, swimming to her.

  “Anything?” she asked him.

  “I won,” he said. She thought that he was studying her strangely, that he seemed tense.

  Naturally. Dead cats, dead women, public “Congratulations. Anything else?” she asked anxiously.

  “Your son came in second.”

  “My son is a good player. Sean—”

  He shook his head, eyes grave, reflecting the light from the pool. “Your son is definitely an excellent player. A real natural—”

  Lori cut him off impatiently. “Thanks. But did you learn anything new about our old friends?”

  “I learned nothing. Anything up with Jan?”

  “I haven’t been here that long, really. The phone kept ringing, and we were busy with salads and tables and the like. We haven’t gotten to talk much,” she told him.

  “Neither have we—you and I, that is—or so it seems,” he said pointedly.

  Something about his manner gave her a chill, but Brad made a sudden dive bomb into the pool, distracting them both, and soon the others were piling in, too. Jan cried out, “Chicken! Let’s have a chicken championship!”

  “Oh, I don’t know…” Lori murmured uneasily, but whatever she had seen in Sean was masked now as he came toward her.

  “Come on,” he told her, “let’s play. We can beat them. You’re tough. You know a good fight, and a good bluff.”

  She found herself on Sean’s shoulders, playing a wicked game of chicken against Brad and Jan. She couldn’t stop thinking that something wasn’t quite right. What had happened during the game of golf to make Sean so cool toward her? But she found herself involved in the game, in the pursuit of winning. She even quit imagining dead cats and was laughing, still atop Sean’s shoulders and struggling with Jan when the doorbell rang.

  “Pizza!” Brad announced. “Off, woman! I’m starving!” he cried.

  “We won!” Jan stated.

  “The hell you won!” Lori protested.

  “It’s a draw!” Brad declared.

  Sean allowed Lori to slip into the water. He didn’t drop her; he just let her slip off. He had played the game hard, yet it suddenly seemed as if he was ridding himself of an unwanted touch.

  She surfaced, smoothing back her hair. He was staring at her as if she was an enemy and they had suddenly discovered themselves to be at war. What could have happened?

  She was suddenly afraid that she knew. “I’ll go get the kids,” she said, swimming toward the steps.

  Andrew, already out of the pool and mostly dried off, said, “It’s all right. I’ll get them. Are they playing Nintendo in Tina’s room, Jan?”

  “Yep!” Jan called.

  Lori put on a terry cover-up, aware that Sean was watching her, though he kept his distance. She ignored him, slowly realizing that she was waiting for the world to cave in around her, trying to behave normally all the while. She went out to the picnic tables to help Jan open up pizza boxes. Andrew suddenly came striding out of the house, looking anxious. He beckoned to her, wanting to speak with her in private. She walked over to join him in a corner of the patio.

  “Do you know what I found?�
�� he whispered tensely.

  “What?” she asked in sudden panic. What had he found? The kids, gone. Tina—injured?

  “Your son and Tina—kissing.”

  “Kissing,” she repeated. “Here? In Tina’s house, in her room?” She exhaled. “I’ll talk to Brendan immediately. I can’t believe that in Jan’s house…”

  “In Jan’s house? Lori, that’s… it?”

  “Andrew, it’s really not that terrible. Brendan is fourteen, she’s thirteen, and that’s the age when kids start experimenting like this. Don’t look so horrified—”

  “What do you mean, it’s not that terrible?” Andrew demanded, hands on his hips, staring at her incredulously. “They were kissing, dammit!”

  Confused by the depth of his concern, Lori just stared at him in return, frowning. “Andrew, don’t worry, I intend to talk with him—”

  “What—have you been living in a fantasy so long you’ve forgotten the truth? Tina is Brad’s daughter! Brad’s. Lori, remember genetics! Brendan—”

  “Brendan what?” she mouthed carefully.

  “Oh, come on, who else were you seeing? Brendan surely never belonged to Ian Corcoran!” Andrew said with exasperation. “Ian died of AIDS, and he had the disease before he ever met you.”

  Her jaw dropped as she stared at him. It had never occurred to her that her brother had assumed that her son belonged to Brad. “Andrew,” she said slowly, enunciating her words, “pay attention to me. Brendan is not Brad’s child.”

  His eyes widened. “He’s not?”

  “Andrew—” she began again, and she broke off, sickly aware that Sean was watching them from the other side of the pool, where he had appeared to be in casual conversation with Jeff.

  Had he heard them? Impossible. Could he read lips? Or had her original fear that evening been well founded? Had he been slowly realizing the truth, and had he—sometime during the day—found himself being hit right in the face with it?

  She felt her cheeks flame. She was hot, uncomfortable, and afraid.

  “Hey,” Andrew said awkwardly. “Fm sorry. I guess I was wrong. I always thought—I mean, you were dating Brad, and you had Brendan pretty soon after you left—”