“I know a rental place. I had to get one for a performance. I’m studying drama.” Toby’s eager eyes sought me out. “I make recordings of announcers and study them, like your newscasts. Maybe you could listen to my practice recordings and tell me what you think?” He pulled a black iPhone from his pocket.
“Sure,” Delia agreed. “Give him a card or your email address.”
I took a silver card holder from my Prada handbag, removed a card and handed it to him.
He studied it as though it contained a hidden treasure map. “Thank you, Miss delaGarza.”
Delia picked up the holder. “Nice. With your initials outlined in diamonds?”
“Birthday present from Rick, the soon-to-be-dead prick.”
“I promise not to tell police how he died.” Toby grinned as he pocketed my card along with his phone.
Delia’s laugh rang out and I glanced around to make certain we weren’t disturbing anyone. An older man at a nearby table frowned at us. He cleared his throat loud enough to draw Toby’s attention. Excusing himself, Toby walked toward the table.
“He’d look cute in a tuxedo.” Delia eyed him as though contemplating a chocolate sundae. “Don’t you have an event coming up? Wouldn’t it be great to have a young stud escort?”
“If I return to dating I’m setting two rules—no coworkers and no young guys. I’m not a cougar!”
Her eyes grew wide as she pointed a red tipped finger at the door. “There’s tuxedo material. Check the guy who just walked in. He’s not wearing a wedding band...”
“You can see that from here?” I glanced into the mirror and my breath caught. The tall man carried himself with regal assurance and sported the patrician look of privilege. His peach polo shirt emphasized his tan as did white tennis shorts that displayed long, muscular legs. A man who wasn’t afraid to wear peach was fit to be king, right? Or gay. This guy didn’t look gay, despite the shirt, chiseled features and precisely trimmed silver hair.
Delia was right. Enough of this pity-party. A new king was preferable to thirsting for revenge. I swiveled toward the door.
His eyes zeroed in on me like blue lasers and I smiled my queenly best. He tipped his head, returning the smile. Definitely royal material!
“Maybe he wants to buy us a drink.” Never one to let a good looking man get away, Delia slid off her stool as he disappeared through the glass door that led to the outdoor deck.
I held up my drink to her departing back. “To the conquest of new kingdoms.”
Before I could contemplate where to find those kingdoms, the outer door swung open again. My martini-dazed mind cleared, and I whirled around and grabbed a menu from the bar to shield my face.
Rick’s new girlfriend had just pranced through the door, blonde hair dancing around bony, golden shoulders.
Chapter Two
I hunched behind the menu until I heard approaching footsteps and caught sight of Delia’s emerald skirt.
“He’s meeting his sister.” Disappointment dripped from her voice as she resumed her seat. “What’s with the menu? I’m not hungry yet. I’m doing fine with the olives.”
I jerked my thumb toward the door. “It’s her!”
“Who? The bimbo?” Her voice rang out in the quiet room.
My barstool wobbled as I reached out to shush her, and I teetered back and forth. “Del, keep your voice down,” I hissed. “What’s she doing here? Is he with her? Can you see without being obvious?”
She craned her neck toward the door. “I don’t see Rick. She’s with an older guy who’s wearing a toupee and a young blonde babe who’s probably a trophy wife.”
And she would know a trophy wife. Delia proclaimed in college her goal was to marry older, wealthy men. Walter was her third.
“You’re safe,” she said. “They’re going to the patio. How do you know it’s her?”
Warmth rushed to my cheeks, and I put the menu between us as I delivered a hated confession. “I checked Rick’s phone. He had pictures of her, and her name was on top in his contact file—Bobbi. Not only that, but you know how he hates programming things? He had her address listed. She lives in a gated mansion in Bel Air.”
Delia pushed the menu aside to confront me. “You went by her house?”
The memory still disturbed me. “Like a jealous teenager.”
She erupted with a raucous giggle. “Why didn’t you call me to go with you? I love that sort of shit.”
That was why I hadn’t called. I kept hoping to change my mind. I still couldn’t believe I’d stooped low enough to stalk the Bimbo. “Enough. What happened with the silver-haired god?”
Her brows danced up and down above a sly smile. “I gave him your number.”
“What did you tell him? That I’m dumped and desperate? I hope you didn’t give him my real name.” Giving false names to guys was one of the first tricks we’d played together in school.
Delia rolled her eyes. “He knew who you were, of course. He wants to meet you. His name is Miles S. Brookings.”
The name was vaguely familiar.
She leaned toward me. “As in Miles Standish Brookings?”
“Like the pilgrim? You’re lining me up with pilgrims?”
She flicked her hand at me. “Dummy! Pilgrim Development. Surely you’ve seen that name plastered on building sites from here to Riverside. His name constantly pops up in the society columns. He’s between wives so maybe he’ll call.”
“Whatever.” I slapped back at her and my hand hit my drink, tipping it over. The glass shattered as it hit the bar, and the sound reverberated like the crack of a rifle shot. Cold liquor splashed me.
“Oh, shit!” As I jerked away, I wobbled and the olive rolled toward me. I stabbed at it to keep it from falling and toppled off the stool. Somehow I managed to land on my feet, but the vision of me tottering on my stiletto sandals to save the damned olive was so ludicrous, I burst into giggles. The olive bounced harmlessly to the floor and Delia joined in until our wild laughter echoed through the bar.
Good thing the group had gone outside. I didn’t know if the girl knew me, but it would be quite a story to tell Rick about the drunk and disorderly Ex.
“Are you all right, Miss delaGarza?” Toby rushed to our aid, concern etched on his face. He handed me a wad of napkins and began cleaning up the broken glass.
“My olive attacked me,” I said, setting off another round of hysterical laughter.
Using her cocktail napkin, Delia picked up the stem of my broken glass—a wicked looking object with a sharp point at one end. “May I keep this? I might be able to use it.”
Toby flicked her a look of uncertainty but didn’t protest. Delia wrapped it in a napkin and stuffed it into her purse.
Soaked with gin, I excused myself. “Order me a fresh drink and watch for Rick. I don’t want to run into him.”
Delia pointed a finger at me, similar to aiming a pistol. “I’ll shoot the sucker on sight.”
****
Walking into the cool quiet of the restroom was like entering church. I paused, letting silence envelop me, fighting to clear my fuzzy head. Of all the places with trappings of wealth that I frequented, bathrooms in upscale restaurants never failed to amaze me. Marble walls and floors. Stalls with wood-shuttered doors. Vases filled with fresh flowers on the vanity beside piles of cloth towels and baskets of toiletries and hair sprays. A hair dryer was hooked into one edge of the basket. Did people use this stuff?
Water pooled at the edge of one of the marble sinks. Making a face, I reached over and plucked a towel from the basket and wiped it. I glanced at my reflection in the mirror. For an instant I wasn’t the number one anchor in the number two television market in the country, wearing Chanel casual wear. I was young Kimmie D, in faded jeans and sneakers, scrubbing toilets in fancy restaurants to earn money to get through college.
With a shake of my head, Kimmie D vanished and I stopped wiping. I focused on cleaning the liquor off my knit shell with a damp cloth. Behind me, mo
vement caught my eye. The woman from the Bimbo’s group stepped through the door. Beyond her, Rick’s young fiancée came into view. Bobbi. From her wild blonde hair to the blue eye shadow to the pink-and-green extra-tight, extra-short dress to her bright extra-high yellow stiletto sandals she resembled a real-life Barbie doll.
She drew back when she saw me. For an instant we stood frozen like a snapshot. The girl moved first, tossing back her head, like a defiant rearing horse. Her blonde mane flew in all directions before settling back around her narrow skull. She stepped into one of the stalls and closed the wooden door.
I stood my ground. I wasn’t going to let these two chase me out. I focused on drying my top with a soft towel.
Bobbi’s petite friend approached the vanity. She was in her mid-thirties, with a pixie haircut and gold hoop earrings that were too large for her small face. Her tanned face looked untouched by makeup, except a hint of blue eye shadow. She wore a sleeveless white cotton blouse with beige trim that showed off small, freckled shoulders. Matching capris clung to short, muscular legs. I’d seen the outfit at Neiman’s carrying a two-thousand-dollar price tag. Thick gold and gem-studded jewelry dripped from her wrists and fingers. Delia was wrong. This woman was no trophy wife. She’d been born to money and wore it like a gilded cloak. Pixie and Barbie were pure California thoroughbreds.
The woman nodded at me with a nasty thin-lipped smile. “Looks like you’re having a good time.”
My anchor smile came forth, though my lips were numb. I was tempted to tell the joke about being attacked by my olive, but instead I turned to gather my purse from the counter. It hung open and a lipstick tube spilled out. I reached for it but my visual acuity had grown impaired and I missed.
The woman caught it as it rolled off the counter. With a throaty laugh, she handed back the golden tube. “Had a few too many?”
“I’m fine,” I lied. I took the lipstick and turned to the mirror to prove it. The hazel eyes that stared back looked glazed and the high cheekbones Delia admired were flushed. For a moment I feared the woman could see through my perfectly made-up face to the unwaxed brows of Kimmie D.
I took my time reapplying lipstick and powdering my nose in deliberate motions. I wasn’t Kimmie. I was the Queen of L.A. TV.
Ask Toby.
The door flew open, revealing Delia. She looked from me to the Pixie, sizing up the woman like a rival gunfighter.
Here it was. Showdown in the Geneva John.
Delia, whom I considered the Doc Holliday of bathroom brawls, fired first.
“I hate women who go to the bathroom in pairs, but I couldn’t wait any longer.” She took cover behind the door of a stall, leaving me on the open battlefield armed only with my lipstick.
Pixie fussed with her hair, ignoring me, but she shot back, aiming her voice toward the Bimbo’s stall. “Bobbi, is the wedding announcement in this week’s paper or the next?”
Aha! Aiming at the heart. I ignored her to let her know she’d missed her intended target.
“Next week, I think.” Bobbi the Bimbo’s voice was small, an uncertain potshot.
“I’m so pleased Rick talked you into registering at David Orgell. It is the place for brides.” The Pixie was determined to wound. She faced me point blank. “Don’t you agree?”
The Beverly Hills jewelry store with its array of china and silver, plus an exquisite jewelry collection, was one of Rick’s favorite places. My gaze fell on the platinum diamond-studded bracelet on my wrist and the diamond and sapphire ring on my right hand.
Wait. I had weapons and some pretty damn lethal ammo. I held up my hand to let the light catch the glitter of diamonds, like an explosion from a firing gun. “Absolutely. My old boyfriend bought both of these there.”
A barrage of dual flushing drowned the Pixie’s response, but she appraised my jewelry with glittering eyes. She knew who the boyfriend was.
Direct hit.
Delia’s grin was pure malice as she stepped from her stall and discharged a rapid-fire round. “Didn’t you tell me he bought you something there last week?”
“This?” I touched the delicate pendant at my throat in reflex. All eyes traveled there. It was like dropping a cache of dynamite. We all knew who bought it and Delia’s words made it clear he’d given it to me since becoming engaged.
The Pixie’s catty smile froze, and her tanned face blanched as Bobbi stepped out of her stall. The girl’s wide eyes rested on the diamond pendant. The confident confection who’d tossed her blonde hair vanished. She crossed her arms and hugged herself, as though taking a direct hit to the mid-section. Her eyes wore a wounded look that penetrated my insides worse than a bullet.
What was I doing? This kid had probably never done battle like this. Delia and I were old hands at bathroom shootouts. This was Billy the Kid facing a farm boy experimenting with his first set of pistols.
I closed my purse and marched out of the restroom without waiting for Delia to go in for the kill.
She stomped out behind me. “Damn bitches! Maybe we should bomb the wedding and wipe them all out.”
Del believed in big-time revenge, having once spray-painted a lover’s Rolls Royce. She’d destroyed another boyfriend’s marriage out of spite and socially demolished her first husband’s ex-wife. Vengeance soothed her, but I didn’t have the stomach for issuing pain, despite my loud proclamations against Rick. I’d wounded that girl but I felt like I was the one bleeding as I struggled to walk a straight line back to the bar.
Chapter Three
Sunday, 4:30 a.m.
A rocking woke me, setting off a throbbing inside my skull, which threatened to explode.
What the hell?
For an instant, confusion clouded my brain, and fear clutched at my chest. The bed shook as though I was having great sex with an athletic guy. But I was in no condition for anything like that. My head pounded like a bass drum. No, a Chinese gong.
As faint tinkling drifted into my groggy consciousness and the agitation intensified, I realized what it was—earthquake. I waited for the shaking to stop as my heart began to thump in rhythm with the throb in my head.
Fingers of fear edged into my muscles. How long was this sucker going to last? Was this the Big One that brought the house crashing down on me? The ten-point-zero that cut California in half?
The shuddering slowed, but the pulsating rhythm in my head intensified from one gong player to a symphony. My dry mouth resembled a basket of cotton balls, but my stomach threatened a violent revolt if I tried to drink anything.
I forced myself to my feet. Beside the bed, the green numbers on the clock read 4:32.
Four in the friggin' morning. Why didn’t earthquakes ever hit in the afternoon? I wanted to crawl back into bed, but when the earth trembled, TV Queen Kimberly delaGarza had to act. Time to go on the air and calm the Southland subjects.
I didn’t bother checking in. Showing up for work on a big story was automatic. “Preferred procedure,” the boss called it. I considered it a “pain in the ass,” but my agent Evan Flynn labeled it a “profitable inconvenience,” useful at contract time.
I tried a quick, cold shower to numb my skull. That’s how I felt—like a total numbskull for drinking so much on Saturday. To make matters worse, my stomach roiled like a storm swept sea. Dressing was agony—what do you wear to an earthquake? I grabbed the first suit in the closet and matched it to a pair of Jimmy Choo sandals.
My stomach and head competed for a gold medal in misery as I drove to the station, searching in vain for open coffee shops. My cell phone buzzed and I checked the number before hitting the talk button for Reba Mackenzie, our executive producer.
“On my way.” My voice had the timbre of a frog after a busy night at the bog.
“Superb! Probably not much damage, but you never know.” How could anyone sound so awake at this time of the morning?
I cleared my throat. “Do you know where it was?”
Her response was staccato, Reba’s normal cadence. She co
uld make a vending machine selection sound critical. “Near Baker. The satellite truck and a crew are on the way, another van is headed to Cal Tech and another is searching for local damage. If they’re not on the air when you arrive, get ’em going. Lindy is a new producer.”
Baker was a desert town on Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. A crack in the road or downed bridges that closed the freeway could wreak havoc on Sunday afternoon when California gamblers came home.
Delia, you evil witch! I recalled only fuzzy bits and pieces of the day after our battle with the Bimbo. We turned from discussing murder to Delia’s upcoming four-week trip to the Amazon. Her husband eventually sent a car for her and a driver to take me and my car home.
Now I felt like a throbbing piece of crap. I gulped back rising waves of nausea, sipping directly from a Pepto Bismol bottle like a wino as I turned into the station lot. The parking space painted with my name was taken, so I parked in my co-anchor’s slot. I’d beaten James to work, let him walk the few extra steps.
Peter Murphy, a weekend reporter, lounged by the door. “Wow, the big guns. I get to be part of the ‘Jim and Kim Show’ on Sunday.”
I was tempted to yank the cup of coffee from his hand as I caught a whiff of the aroma. His sarcasm annoyed me but wasn’t surprising. I’d embarrassed him with on-air questions he should have been able to answer. He probably blamed me for being stuck on weekends.
“Don’t let the promo people hear you say that,” I replied. Our management loved people to think of us as “Jim and Kim,” but they used our formal names to keep away from that silly rhyme. “Shouldn’t you be on your way to a live shot?”
“Grumpy to be up so early? I’m waiting for the van to pick me up.”
“Uh-huh.” I yanked open the door and it brushed him as I walked past.
Behind me, he cursed. “You hit my coffee. Shit, that’s hot!”
I suppressed a smile as I marched into the building to the newsroom. Weekend anchor Gwen Cardinal sat at the flash-camera desk, fidgeting with a microphone, cheeks flushed. “Someone needs to write up information.” She stared at the computer in front of her and gestured wildly around the room. “I can’t go on the air without written copy.”
Blues at 11 Page 2