Death Prefers Blondes

by Caleb Roehrig

  She smiled a little, automatically, but felt suddenly defensive. Millions of people followed her life in magazines and on the internet, a sensationalized mix of highs and lows—Margo Manning at fashion week; Margo Manning on the beach; MAD MARGO HEADED FOR REHAB?—and she was pretty sure she’d given up caring about the opinions of relative strangers. So why did his casual remark bother her so much?

  “Who needs social media when you’ve got the paparazzi?” she volleyed back to cover her disappointment, and they both laughed awkwardly.

  “So, um, I hope this isn’t a sensitive question,” Dallas began, “but what’s the matter with your dad? All Win said was that he hasn’t been feeling well, but your housekeeper made it sound like he should be in an iron lung or something.”

  “We don’t really know.” She experienced the usual stab of hopelessness whenever she admitted those words out loud. “At first we thought it was a digestive thing, then a blood infection, and then they started looking into autoimmune disorders, but … no conclusive results.”

  “Some buddies of mine were interns at this hospital in Geneva with a whole unit on rare illnesses. Maybe—”

  “He’s seen all the specialists,” Margo declared flatly. “He’s consulted everyone. Nobody knows what this thing is. Nobody knows how to treat it.”

  There was a thick silence, and then voices rose from the first floor—Irina’s blunt accent hammering against a quiet and smooth male voice. Footsteps pounded the stairs, and then a tall, gaunt man in a pricey suit emerged into the hallway. Seeing the two teenagers, he gave a wolfish smile. “Margo! What a pleasant surprise.”

  “Mr. Brand, hi.” Margo greeted the man unenthusiastically, but he moved forward anyway, taking the girl by the arms and leaning in to kiss her cheek. Instinctively, she stepped back, putting her hands out to stop him, something hard and heavy in the man’s coat pocket bouncing off her wrist.

  Brand ignored the rebuff. “How nice that you’re home. I thought you’d be in school.”

  “Half day,” Margo mumbled. “Dallas, I don’t know if you remember Addison Brand—he’s the executive vice president at Manning. Mr. Brand, this is Dallas Yang. His mother, Liliana, used to work with Win Martin.”

  Brand acknowledged the boy without apparent interest. “Good afternoon, Mr.… Yang, was it? I thought Liliana’s name was something Mexican.”

  “Cuban,” Dallas corrected, his polite smile hardening in place. “She kept her last name after marrying my dad.”

  “How nice. Well, you young people enjoy your day. I’m here for Harland.”

  As he headed for the bedroom, Dallas called out, “Mr. Manning is asleep. I don’t think we’re supposed to disturb him.”

  “He’ll want to see me,” Brand replied, his tone the verbal equivalent of an eye roll, and shoved open the door without knocking.

  Dallas turned an apologetic grimace on Margo. “I’m sorry. If he’s really going to wake your dad up, I might as well get these papers signed. But it was nice to see you again. Maybe we can catch up sometime?”

  “Sure,” Margo answered as he grabbed the briefcase and headed for the bedroom, but her mind was on the object she’d felt in Addison Brand’s suit pocket—the weight, the shape, the flash of silver she’d caught when he turned; it was a hip flask, and she knew she’d just figured out where her father was getting his whiskey from.

  10

  The Moreaus’ home was guarded by an iron gate, the scalloped edges of its Spanish-style roof just visible past a tall screen of manzanita. The brick gateposts were painted a sloppy black, and the pavement of the driveway was badly scarred, multiple acts of vandalism requiring the cheapest solutions. Margo had helped Axel with the cleanup a few times, lungs burning as she scrubbed away ugly epithets with caustic chemicals.

  The villa itself was beginning to look haunted, a year and a half’s worth of unhindered decay casting a long shadow. Paint peeled from the walls, weeds emerged between pavers in the flagstone walk, and the pool—which cost too much to drain and too much to clean—had been covered indefinitely, the water growing murky and rank in the permanent darkness.

  That evening, Margo parked her car in the forecourt beside a long-dry fountain, and let herself inside, where a barren foyer opened onto an equally barren atrium. Beyond it, past a grandly soaring arch, lay the living room. Through tall windows backed by moonlight, Margo could just make out the few sticks of furniture that remained. With stone flooring, delicate ironwork, and hand-carved molding, it was a home with amazing bones—from which the flesh had long since been stripped clean.

  “Is that Margo?” A thin but musical voice echoed in the cavernous dark, and a moment later a lamp sprang to life in the living room, illuminating the familiar figure of Jacinta Flores. Reclining on a small sofa, half hidden by a thick blanket, she looked Victorian and delicate in the sea of shadows. “It’s so good to see you! How are you, mija?”

  “I’m good,” Margo said reflexively.

  “And your father?”

  “About the same.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Jacinta’s voice softened and drifted through the empty rooms. “Why don’t you come here and take a seat, let me keep you company while you wait for Axel. He’s still getting ready, that show pony.”

  Obligingly, Margo settled on one of the two chairs that faced the couch. But for the seating arrangement, the lamp on the floor, and a modest television, the living room was empty. Most of the house was empty. By degrees, the villa had been plundered—first by the feds, who seized whatever was in their warrant, and then by Axel, who sold everything else to keep the lights on.

  “I’m glad you two are going out tonight.” Jacinta smiled warmly, but her eyes were shadowed, her face puffy from her medications. “Axel … he just worries so much. He has his shows, and he has you, and sometimes I’m afraid that’s all that keeps him going.” It was a struggle to process this, a compliment wrapped around a gut punch that made Margo feel twice as guilty for the fight they’d had. Jacinta’s eyelids fluttered and drooped, and the woman took a deep breath, shaking herself awake. “I’m sorry, mija, it’s these new pills. They help with the pain, but they make me so drowsy.”

  “It’s okay, I understand.”

  “I wish it could be different—well.” Jacinta gestured listlessly at the vacant living room, featureless walls looming in the darkness. “I wish everything could be different. We don’t get to pick our cards, I guess.”

  “No,” Margo said quietly. “We don’t, do we?”

  Long before Harland had taken ill, long before Basil had been arrested, Jacinta had begun to experience recurring phantom pains. At the time, it hadn’t seemed a mystery; a few aches and pains were to be expected from a long acrobatic career and two complicated pregnancies. But then the pain got worse, metastasizing, new symptoms sprouting: fatigue, headaches, insomnia, muscle spasms. Doctors couldn’t settle on a single diagnosis, trying different medications and different therapies as Jacinta steadily deteriorated.

  And then Basil was arrested. His assets seized and his accounts frozen, it left Jacinta, Axel, and Joaquin with little income and no insurance. In a matter of months, medical bills and lawyer fees ate what was left of their savings, and then moved on to consume the art, the furniture, Jacinta’s car. And still they needed more—more bills to pay, Axel and Joaquin’s tuition at Somerville Prep coming due. The villa, miraculously in Jacinta’s name rather than Basil’s, could still be sold … but it was a safety net they could only fall into once.

  The best solution, or so it seemed at the time, was for Margo and Axel to turn their hobby of petty break-ins into a career of high-stakes crime.

  “Hey. You ready to go?”

  Margo turned to see Axel framed by the high arched doorway. Dressed in a leather jacket and skinny jeans, his hair painstakingly styled, he looked more nervous about Ryan Labay’s party than he ever had about committing a B&E or facing down an armed guard. Getting to her feet, Margo answered, “As I’ll ever be.�
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  “You two have fun,” Jacinta called as they headed for the door. “If I’m asleep when you get home, don’t wake me.”

  “We won’t, Mom,” Axel called. “Love you.”

  The echo of the front door banging shut was the loneliest sound in the world.

  * * *

  Hollywood is a study in contrasts: glamorous and trashy, full of petty crime and pettier people, and overrun by trendy bars—an invasive species in LA’s ecology. With the proper zoning permits, the dingiest block in town could suddenly become home to the hottest and most exclusive club; and then, when the shininess wore off, the city’s hive-minded pleasure-seekers would abandon it for an even dingier block.

  Astrology, a lounge on Cahuenga Boulevard north of Sunset, had been a particularly blistering hot spot in LA’s social scene when it first opened two years earlier; but its temperature had plummeted since and, with it, the quality of the clientele. Now it was the sort of place that happily suspended disbelief when teenagers from Malibu came by with passable fake IDs—and thousands in cash to spend on bottle service in a private room.

  Axel decided to wait until they were passing Vine, way too close to their destination for Margo to seriously consider turning the car around, to tell her what he’d been holding back. “So, uh, I think maybe I forgot to mention it, but this is a birthday party.”

  “A birthday?” Margo made a noise in her throat. “You should’ve said something! Are we supposed to have a gift? We’re gonna look like assholes.” And then it clicked. “Wait—I thought Ryan’s birthday was in the summer?”

  “It is.” Axel shifted uncomfortably, inching his fingers closer to the door handle so he could jump out if she started hitting him. “It’s, uh … he’s hosting the party, but it’s not for him. It’s for … Valentina.”

  “Valentina? Valentina?” Margo turned a shocked, baleful look in his direction, eyes like laser cannons. “You tricked me into going to Valentina’s birthday party? We hate her!”

  “We can stay on the other side of the room,” Axel promised. “There’ll be a ton of people there. We probably won’t even have to talk to her.”

  “We’ll still have to see her. We’ll have to share oxygen.” Margo glowered over the steering wheel. “Air molecules that she exhales from her lungs may go into my lungs, Axel. If that happens, I’m going to kill you.”

  Axel tried not to smile, but it was hard to resist. Valentina, the daughter of a Russian billionaire who’d made a fortune in mining rare metals, was one of the richest kids at their school. She lived in an actual reconstructed castle, shipped brick by brick from England to a sprawling property in Topanga Canyon, and her father owned additional homes in St. Petersburg, Paris, and Dubai. For a little while, she and Margo had been a Thing—arguing at school but hooking up together at parties, their chemistry volatile and irresistible; but when Basil was arrested, and the Somerville Prep kids picked sides, Margo had chosen Axel while Valentina chose … well, everybody else. Being his best friend had cost Margo a lot, a heavy truth that gave their occasional disagreements the weight of a small planet.

  Pulling up in front of Astrology, they handed the car keys to a valet at the curb, and then started down a narrow alleyway leading to the club’s private entrance. They were dressed alike, Axel realized: leather jackets, white shirts, fitted jeans—Margo in high, black heels to his dark boots. It looked like a uniform, like they belonged together, and somehow it made him feel stronger. A rush of gratitude swept through him, so strongly that tears heated his eyes.

  Crashing this party was maybe a bad decision. He’d been popular at Somerville, way back when, and he knew he had more pride than common sense. The previous summer, Quino had practically begged Jacinta to let him go to a public school in the fall, but Axel had paid their tuition with his ill-gotten gains, and that had been the end of the discussion. They were still the targets of a lot of misdirected rage, but Somerville was the best private school in the county, and Axel refused to let Basil take one more thing of value away from them.

  It was a daily struggle, though. The furious energy of those early days had subsided, and for most of the past year he’d simply been ignored at school. Like the dry fountains at the villa, he’d become a sad symbol that people were too polite to notice.

  But Axel wanted them to notice; he wanted all of them to realize that they weren’t Basil Moreau’s only victims. He would show them, if they would just give him the chance, that he hated his father twice as much as any of them ever possibly could.

  The bouncer at Astrology’s back door was tall, beefy, and bored, scarcely glancing at their expensive fake IDs before waving them through to the private room. Inside, music thudded and murals shimmered under blue lights, the bar’s theme expressed in paintings inspired by the zodiac. With a wide banquette of pale leather and roughly ten square feet of open dance floor, the air smelled strongly of spilled beer and cleaning solvent.

  As soon as his eyes adjusted, the crowd of Somerville faces swimming into clarity, Axel decided this had definitely been a bad idea. A few gazes turned his way, then a few cold frowns, and then a few backs. Others simply pretended not to notice him, like usual.

  “We don’t have to stay,” Margo ventured, reading the room loud and clear. “As long as we keep it low-key and you let my chest do the talking, I bet we can get drinks at the main bar.”

  “No.” Axel tried to sound confident. “We’re here. Let’s at least say hi to Ryan, and … and then we can do whatever.”

  They found him at one end of the banquette, right beneath a painting of Taurus; long-limbed and dark-haired, his body toned from pitiless hours in the gym, the boy had one arm slung over the cushions—and the other wrapped around Valentina Petrenko. The girl was laughing uproariously at something he’d just said, slowly stirring a clear drink, her platinum hair as shiny as the conspicuous emerald necklace draped in her décolletage.

  “Fuck.” Margo’s shoulders drooped, and she turned to Axel. “If we do this, I don’t owe you anymore.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, just marched forward, plastering a friendly smile across her face that looked like it hurt. “Hey, guys, nice party! Thanks for the invite—my fake ID needed the exercise.”

  “What about your other fake parts?” Valentina asked sweetly.

  Margo turned a look on her that would have sliced a redwood log in half, but kept the smile firmly in place. “Valentina, I love your necklace! It really brings out your boobs.”

  “Margo, thanks for coming out,” Ryan said, but his eyes were on Axel, his face flushed from alcohol and his mood unreadable. “Moreau, what’s up?”

  “Hey.” Axel tipped his chin. “Um, happy birthday, Valentina.”

  “Real cool of you to come all the way out for V’s big day.” Ryan’s face was still expressionless, but something about the moment felt off, his voice a little too loud. “I thought we forgot to invite you.”

  “It’s—I, I guess.” Axel’s face started to heat, his nerves screaming abandon ship. He’d hoped that a party outside of Malibu—somewhere far away from the ugly rut of everyday life—would give him a chance to make the Somerville kids see him in a different light; but Ryan was staring at him blankly, eyes somehow hot and cold at the same time. “We just wanted to say hi, and that we hope Valentina has a fun party.”

  “Oh yeah?” Ryan achieved an expression at last, his brows going up. “A fun party, really? But you didn’t bring her a present!”

  “Oh, I … I—” Axel froze, put on the spot. “It was kinda last minute—”

  “Or maybe you wanted to buy her a drink? To celebrate her birthday?” The boy’s voice was getting even louder. “I mean, it’s the least you could do, right?”

  “Sure.” Axel nodded mechanically, his underarms boiling. Suddenly he just wanted to turn and walk away—to run out the door and not stop till he hit the beach. “Yeah, sure, no problem.”

  “Or maybe you want to buy everybody a drink.” Ryan grinned, his face redder.
“Make up for how your dad fucked us all the fuck over.” There was nothing to say to this, so Axel dropped his gaze to the floor, while Ryan bellowed to the room, “Hey, everybody: Bottle service is on Moreau tonight! He’s gonna use the money his dad fuckin’ stole from us to buy a few drinks! Ain’t that fuckin’ cool?”

  People stared, people muttered, Valentina whispered to the girl next to her and giggled. Axel was trying to figure out if he’d still be able to afford food until the payoff for the diamonds came in, when Margo spoke up. “Something funny, Petrenko? Maybe you’d like to share with the rest of the class.”

  “It’s nothing.” Valentina gave an insolent shrug of one slim shoulder, her glossy mouth in an unfriendly smirk. “I was just saying how sweet it is that you two dressed the same. Like the X-Men! You’re like … Superthief and Wonder Whore!”

  “First of all, those names aren’t even remotely creative,” Margo said impatiently, “and second of all, Superman and Wonder Woman aren’t even X-Men. They’re not even characters from the same superhero universe!”

  “But you don’t deny being a whore.”

  “Save the slut-shaming, V. I’m not embarrassed of my sex life.”

  Valentina cupped a hand to her ear. “I’m sorry, Margo, I couldn’t understand you with all those dicks in your mouth.”

  Ryan had called attention to their corner, but Margo was drawing an audience as she returned, brightly, “I’m sorry, I just realized I never wished you a happy birthday. I’d ask how old you are, but I think it’d be more fun to cut you in half and count the rings.”

  Struggling to her feet, Valentina stood an inch taller than Margo in her precarious heels. “Maybe we should count your STDs!”

  “Fine.” Margo gave a smile that showed all her teeth. “Let’s start with the ones I got from fucking your dad.”