by Nic Saint
“Genes,” said Stien, not hiding the admiring look on her face. “They have amazing genes.”
“And great pores,” said Strel with a yawn. “I’ll bet they all use a facial mask. I know I do.”
She was right. I could still see traces of the facial mask she had applied on her chin.
“Maybe I should try one of those facial masks?”
Strel grinned. “Don’t bother. On some people that’s just money lost.”
“Hey, take that back,” I said. “I can be pretty if I wanted to.”
“Problem is, you don’t want to,” said Strel.
“Edie is beautiful just the way she is,” said Gran. “Now be nice to each other or I’m taking those dresses away again and rescinding my offer to open the store today.”
“You don’t have to sink your offer,” Strel said.
“Rescind,” Stien said.
“Whatever. I’m just saying that with Edie’s pores facials are simply a waste of money.”
“My pores are fine,” I said, giving her a pinch on the arm.
“Your pores are like craters. You can sink a bucket of cream in them and still not make a dent.”
“That’s it,” said Gran. “No festival for you.”
“Oh, come on, Gran!” Strel cried. “I’ll be nice.” She rubbed my arm. “See? This is me being nice.”
I slapped her hand away and stomped off to my room to have a look at my pores. Maybe next time I should ask Gran to give me better skin instead of a new dress. And a pair of cement shoes for Strel.
Chapter 26
The film festival was in full swing when we arrived, which wasn’t surprising. In the ride over—in an Uber and not a limo, as Stien had expected—Glenn had explained that there’s a pecking order to these things, and when you’re higher on the totem pole you will do well to arrive later, when all the paps are ready and waiting. Arrive early, and you’ll just end up looking silly with nobody to catch your big arrival. Arrive late, and the fun will be over and the paps gone home. Just one of those things to keep in mind if I ever decide to make it big in Hollywood. Like when they ever bring back Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I could play Sabrina. Or maybe not. With my pores? Who am I kidding?
So Manhattan was in motion and so were we, and when we finally got to glide down the red carpet, we discovered that we were simply one amongst many—a lot of manies, actually. So many manies that nobody cared that we were there! We might have expected to be Glenn’s dates, but we weren’t. The moment we arrived, Glenn was whisked away by some tough-looking broad with a clipboard, paired up with Gwyneth Paltrow, and sent on his way, the paps snapping and yelling like crazy.
Us? We were relegated to the quiet part of the red carpet, where all the nobodies were parading for their sixty seconds of glory. Only minor paps were here to snap shots, and when they caught sight of the three of us, they didn’t even bother. Bummer. Well, bummer for Stien, who’d probably imagined this scene a little different. She even revealed to me she hadn’t slept a wink last night, hoping she wouldn’t trip when she strode down the red carpet on Glenn’s arm. Now she was striding down the red carpet with her two sisters. It just wasn’t the same.
I didn’t mind, actually, and now saw that Strel had been right not to want to spend her hard-earned savings on a dress. It wasn’t worth it. Still, it was fun while it lasted—however brief—and then we were whisked inside and reunited with Glenn, Gwyneth Paltrow nowhere in sight. Huh. Strel had actually hoped to meet the woman and ask her a few questions about Goop, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. Two hopes dashed, Strel still held high hopes for a meet and greet with the Kardashians, but when she asked Glenn, he said, “The Kardashians? Oh, they’re not coming, honey.”
“Not coming!” Strel cried, aghast.
“Of course not. The organizers of these events always announce a bunch of people that they know will never show. It’s all part of the business of drumming up interest. Like this one year they announced that all the actors who ever played James Bond were going to be here. Nobody showed, but the place was packed. It’s all PR.”
“PR!” Strel cried, clutching her clutch so firmly now I thought it would snap. “PR!”
“Yep. Do you still want to have that chat with Dolphus Wooler? Cause he’s here.”
Strel muttered something about sticking Dolphus where the sun doesn’t shine. Luckily Glenn was distracted by the arrival of some more luminaries of the silver screen, and momentarily abandoned us.
“This sucks,” said Strel.
“This sucks big time,” Stien agreed.
It was one of those rare moments where they both agreed on something, and I didn’t want to spoil it. “Look, you guys. We’re here to solve a murder, not to cozy up to a bunch of stars. So what do you say we focus on the mission at hand and forget about the rest?”
They grudgingly agreed. When Glenn finally returned from his schmoozing, he walked us into the bar, where he was sure to find Dolphus. “The guy is always hanging out at the bar. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without a drink in both hands. One for immediate consumption and one just in case.”
“In case of what?” I asked, looking around the packed bar.
“In case they run out of alcohol before he’s hammered.”
He walked us up to a very large man with an orange complexion and long, flaxen hair. He had skin like leather and looked about sixty years old. He was definitely not someone I’d ever seen before, but when Glenn introduced him as Dolphus Wooler, action hero, he displayed a perfect set of teeth, straightened his red bandana, and performed a complicated and probably very manly handshake with Glenn before sending him on his way.
“So you’re the Flummox triplets, huh?” asked Dolphus. “I’ve heard so much about you!”
“You have?” I asked.
“Nah, not really.”
“Well, we’ve never heard about you either,” Strel said, “so I guess that makes us even.”
He laughed a raspy laugh and gestured at the bartender. “What’s your poison?”
Strel’s eyes were glittering so I directed a warning look at her. Ignoring me, she said, “A mimosa.”
“Me too,” Stien said miserably. Her big moment had been spoiled and Glenn hadn’t even paid her a compliment for her dress, so as far as she was concerned, the day was already a bust.
“I’ll have an orange juice,” I said, not wanting to get shit-faced in front of a potential suspect.
“So what did you guys want to ask me?” asked Dolphus once our drinks had arrived and both Strel and Stien had taken them eagerly. “Glenn said you had some questions about Johnson Junqueras?”
“Yes, we’re actually with the local neighborhood watch,” I explained, “and we’re investigating Johnson’s murder.”
He grinned widely, once again showing those perfect snappers. Wow. People in Hollywood not only have great pores, they also have the most amazing teeth.
“Three little girls are solving the murder of Johnson Junqueras? What happened to the NYPD?”
I frowned at him. “And what’s wrong with us trying to solve a murder?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Nothing. I just hadn’t pegged you for law enforcement. Then again, the world is changing, right? Used to be that all detectives looked like me, and now I guess they look like you. Three gorgeous ladies.”
Strel gave him a dazzling smile. “Gorgeous?”
“Oh, yeah. I think you’re the most gorgeous creatures in this entire dump! I mean, just look at you. You look like you just walked off the set of the latest live-action Disney movie.”
“Cinderella,” said Strel. “We’re the three Cinderellas.”
“Hallelujah. You look like someone waved a magic wand and spirited you out of nowhere.”
“Thanks, Mr. Doofus,” said Strel appreciatively. “That’s the first nice thing anybody has said to me all morning.”
“It’s Dolphus, not Doofus,” said Dolphus, “and you’re welcome. So tell
me, do you have any clues yet?”
“Well, we do have a few suspects,” said Stien, also perking up. Dolphus Wooler wasn’t exactly in the same league as Glenn Kerb, but he was still Hollywood. And he had great teeth. Better to be complimented by him than to be ignored completely.
“Suspects, huh? Am I one of your suspects?”
“Oh, no,” Stien assured him. “Why? Do you think you should be?”
I gave those mimosas a hard look. Both Stien and Strel were behaving a little weirdly.
“Well, I could be,” said Dolphus. “Heck, everybody knows me and Johnson hated each other’s guts. Then again, since that was all just for show, I would never, ever hurt the guy, let alone kill him.”
“Your feud wasn’t real?” asked Stien, looking disappointed. She seemed to feel that nothing about Hollywood was what it seemed.
“No, of course not,” said Dolphus. “We were brothers, but only behind the screens. Once we were on, it was on, baby. We slugged it out on set, in the trades, on the talk shows. We once even went toe to toe on the Johnny Carson Show.”
“Who?” asked Strel, confused.
“He was a famous talk show host,” I explained. “Long before your time, though.”
“And yours,” said Strel, not missing a beat.
“So none of that was real?” asked Stien again, blinking confusedly.
“Nope. My manager and his manager came together, and figured our careers could use some extra oomph. So they decided that the Johnson/Dolphus feud would attract the most attention, and it did. It worked like a charm. Wherever we went, people would ask about how much we hated each other. So we turned it up a notch, and declared that we were going to each star in a movie and duke it out at the box office. We hoped the attention would turn them both into blockbusters. Unfortunately by then Johnson was already enjoying his nose candy a little too much, and was getting into a feud with the IRS, which is one opponent you just can’t beat. His movie bombed, mine did, too, and our careers both went down the crapper.”
“But you’re still here,” I said.
He grinned. “Baby, I’m too dumb to bomb. I just keep coming back, and for some reason they keep hiring me, though it’s mostly junk these days. But whatever. I’m still in the game, and I’m still loving it.”
“Like McDonald’s,” said Strel, then blinked and burped.
Dolphus frowned. “Take it easy on that mimosa, darling.”
“Oh, I can take it,” said Strel. “I’m too dumb to get drunk.”
He grinned. “My kind of gal.”
“So Johnson…” I said.
“I had no idea the guy lived out here. If I had, I would have paid him a visit. He just disappeared one day. Poof. Without a trace. I’d heard rumors he died, and then others claimed he’d moved to Mexico and was living the quiet life down there. But Brooklyn? Who knew?”
“Apparently no one,” said Stien, then sucked down some more mimosa.
We thanked the big guy for his time, and as we left, he gave us one final pointer: “When you’re down and out, just keep on slugging, girls. It’s the only way to live.”
I didn’t know why we would be slugging, exactly, since we were Disney princesses, and Disney princesses rarely, if ever, slug it out, but we thanked him for his valuable advice and went in search of Glenn, who had mysteriously disappeared once again. He, unlike Dolphus, apparently wasn’t a big fan of slugging princesses, even if they were triplets conducting a murder investigation.
Chapter 27
We hung around the festival a little while longer, but since our date had disappeared, and we’d done what we set out to do—or at least I had—we finally decided to call it a day and leave early. We weren’t movie stars, after all, so we didn’t have any interviews to give, and we weren’t really interested in watching any of the movies that were showing either, as they all turned out to be artsy-fartsy stuff. So we got a cab and whisked ourselves and our Disney dresses back to Brooklyn.
Back at the house, I carefully folded up my dress, in case I ever needed to bust out my inner princess again in the near future, and dressed in my usual outfit: black jeans, black T-shirt, black sweater and black combat boots. I heaved a sigh of relief. I felt a lot better in my own clothes. And those glass slippers were starting to give me a serious case of foot cramp, not to mention one very painful blister on my big toe. So much for the princess life.
We walked the short distance to the store, deciding to relieve Gran of her duties. The mood was somber. Strel was disappointed she hadn’t been able to exchange beauty tips with Kim Kardashian, and Stien felt betrayed by Glenn, whom apparently she’d somehow already envisioned going down on one knee right there on the red carpet and offering his hand in marriage in front of the world’s paps. I could have told her that men like Glenn don’t marry girls like us, but I wisely kept my mouth shut, not to add insult to injury. As far as I was concerned, the morning had gone well. We’d had our talk with Dolphus Wooler, and I’d been able to scratch one more suspect off my list.
“It’s not fair,” said Strel. “Why would they announce someone is coming when they’re lying?”
“You heard Glenn. It’s PR,” I said.
“It’s a disgrace,” she countered. “An outright lie.”
“Well, I’m sure it wasn’t the organizers’ fault. Probably some PR person thought it was a good idea to drum up interest for the festival.”
“I’m never going to that festival again,” she said stubbornly.
Since she hadn’t even been aware that the festival existed before last week, I was pretty sure this wasn’t a great loss for Manhattan in Motion.
“At least we got to talk to Dolphus. The only reason we went down there in the first place.”
“Glenn behaved abominably,” Stien said. “He didn’t even lead us down the red carpet.”
“We’re nobodies, Stien,” I said. “Stars like Glenn associate with other stars, to make their mutual… stardom shine even brighter.”
“But we looked like stars today. We could have increased his sparkle a lot more than any of those other stars.”
“Who cares?” I cried. “He’s just some stupid actor. Are you really going to let your entire day be ruined just because he didn’t pay attention to you? What did you really expect, Stien?”
“I expected him to be stunned and amazed by how beautiful we looked,” she said, wiping away a tear that had trickled down her cheek.
I took her hand and squeezed it. “Well, it just goes to show what an idiot he is. Because you looked stunning, and he didn’t even notice.”
“Dolphus noticed,” said Strel. “Now there’s a gentleman for you.”
Yeah, Dolphus was a thousand times the gentleman Glenn had been. Then again, we could hardly blame the guy. He probably just did what his own publicist told him to, his life not entirely his own. All in all, I thought, there was a lesson here: next time we weren’t going to get excited over some actor. Even I had gone along with this game of dress-up. Me! Who would never be seen dead in a dress.
“I thought you looked gorgeous, Edie,” said Stien now.
“You did? I thought I looked like Fiona from Shrek in that dress.”
She laughed. “No, you didn’t. You looked like a Disney princess, just like us.”
“Probably the weirdest-looking princess in the history of Disney princesses.”
“No, you looked gorgeous,” Strel agreed. “We all did. And it’s Glenn’s loss if he didn’t see it.”
In a rare moment of unity, we held hands, and crossed the rest of the distance with smiles on our faces. Those smiles disappeared when we arrived at Floret & Bloom. The store looked perfectly fine, but Pretty Petals looked like a war zone. It was as if someone had chucked a bucket of acid over the store’s exterior, and Tisha and Gran stood shouting at each other in the middle of the street!
We quickly made our way over. “What happened?” I asked.
“What happened is that this person tried to destroy my store!” Gr
an said, pointing an accusing finger at Tisha, who stood glaring at her, hands on hips.
“I did no such thing! You chucked acid on my flowers! You’re deliberately trying to destroy me!”
“I didn’t lift a finger against your store. Everything that’s happened is your own damn fault.”
I could see what had happened. Tisha had probably tried to pour a bucket of detergent or some other corrosive substance on Gran’s flowers, making them wilt, but because of the protective shield Gran had erected around Floret & Bloom, the stuff had sprung back and had hit Tisha’s own flowers instead. Gran must have extended the reach of the protection, for the repercussions to be this grave.
“Why don’t you two simply bury the hatchet and stop this nonsense?” I suggested.
“I didn’t do anything,” said Gran with a grim smile. “If she wants to play this blame game, count me out. You’re not going to destroy me, Tisha. You tried before and you failed and you will fail now.”
“I’m not trying to destroy anybody!” said Tisha. “You’re trying to destroy me by opening a store directly across from mine!”
“Oh, you mean like you opened Pretty Petals after abandoning Flor et Bloom?”
“I simply wanted to strike out on my own. Is that so bad?”
“It is bad when you steal all of my customers!”
“All right,” I said. “Look, this has gone on long enough. Why don’t you just try to get along?”
Tisha hit me with her best glare. “I can’t get along with this… witch!”
“Watch your mouth, young lady,” Gran growled. “Or I’ll wash it out with soap!”
“I’d rather see you burn at the stake, you witch!”
I could have told Tisha she didn’t know who she was messing with, but I saw that nothing I said would make her calm down, so I stepped back and decided not to get involved. Gran’s eyes had narrowed into slits, and I could tell she was itching to unleash her most devastating spell ever. Instead, she managed to control herself and walk back to her store without a word. Tisha did the same, and soon the show was over, to the disappointment of the neighboring store owners, who’d all come out to watch the showdown take place. We moved into the store with Gran and closed the door.