Death Prefers Blondes

by Caleb Roehrig

  25

  Two more days passed before Margo received her next dose of human company—this time from someone she wasn’t expecting. When the doorbell rang, she dragged herself from an hours-long torpor in her room and shuffled down the stairs to the foyer. Whoever it was, she was in no mood for company.

  “Surprise!” Her visitor said with a bright smile, holding aloft a brown paper bag. Margo froze, a slovenly deer in the headlights.

  “Dallas?” Immediately she regretted not changing her clothes. Her hair was tangled, her face greasy, and she still wore the same grungy T-shirt and boy shorts she’d had on since returning home from her ominous conversation with Dr. Khan. “What are you doing here?”

  “I brought you some food!” He made a game-show-model gesture at the paper bag. He was wearing fashionably ripped jeans and a sweater that somehow made his broad shoulders look even broader. “This is the only Chinese food in LA that Eugene Yang approves of, and I had to drive all the way downtown to pick it up, so I’m going to need you to sign an affidavit swearing you’ll appreciate it properly.”

  In spite of herself, Margo couldn’t help smiling. “I know better than to question your dad’s taste, so I’m happy to sign the paperwork. Besides, I’ve been eating Irina’s leftovers for a week straight, and I’m not sure I can handle any more cabbage.”

  “Then, uh, don’t ask what’s in the spring rolls.” Dallas wore a goofy smile as he pushed the bag into her hands. It was a very large bag. “You know, there happens to be enough food in there for two.” He picked at something on the doorframe, not looking at her. “Way more than you could eat by yourself. And in case you’re not picking up the hint, I’m very hungry.”

  “I’m picking it up,” Margo promised, “but I’m also not exactly fit for visitors.”

  “What visitors?” He made a show of looking around the empty forecourt. “I see no visitors. I see only a hungry Cubano-Chinese boy with a killer smile, and maybe also some homemade pastelitos de guayaba in his car. Which you can only have if you invite me in.”

  He punctuated this with another goofy smile and an eyebrow wiggle, and Margo laughed. “I’m seriously gross right now, Dallas. I haven’t showered in … well, I’m not going to tell you, because the truth is actually worse than your imagination. And to be honest, I’m in kind of a bad headspace these days.”

  “I get it. No pressure.” He gestured with one of those beautiful hands. “But you might feel, like, five percent better with another person in the house. Just for a while. We don’t even have to talk if you don’t want to, but at least you’d have the option.” When she didn’t answer right away, he made his index fingers dance, singing, “Pastelitos de guayabaaa…”

  “Go get the pastries, you weirdo,” Margo relented with a laugh.

  The Chinese food was great, and the companionship was actually welcome—and the guava pastries were unbelievable, so on the balance she figured she’d made the right call. As they were slurping ropes of lo mein from oily cartons, she asked, “You take all the girls on a culinary tour of your varied ancestry, or am I lucky?”

  “A little of both. I only have a few tricks, and this is one of ’em.”

  “It’s a good trick.”

  “Culture’s important to my parents and … I don’t know. I like sharing it.” He kept his eyes down. Then, after a noticeable silence, he ventured, “You heard about that civil war in Malawi? Rebel forces seized control of the airport in Lilongwe, and there have been more reports of child soldiers—” He cut himself off. “Yeah, I should probably stop.”

  Margo widened her eyes. “And I thought it had been a while since I spoke normally to another human.”

  Dallas laughed, the sound throaty and charming, and for a fleeting moment she let go and admired his jaw, the shape of his neck. His eyes catching hers, warm and soft, he asked, “How’ve you been holding up?”

  “Pass.” Margo’s tone was firm but polite. “Next question.”

  “Sorry. You’ve been hearing that a lot?”

  “Every time the phone rings.” She sank her chopsticks into coiled noodles. “It’s nice that people are thinking of me, but it doesn’t help. It just takes up energy.”

  “Know what’s good for energy?” He held up a flaky square of puff pastry. “Pastelitos de guayabaaa!” With a snort of laughter, she accepted it, their fingers brushing together. “Tell me to shut up if I’m prying, but where’s your mom? Is she seriously still in Italy while you’re here, alone?”

  “Yeah.” Margo took a bite, the guava filling so sweet it tingled in her mouth. “We talked a few days ago. She asked how I was holding up.” Hastily, she added, “You have to understand. My mom … I love her, but we’ve never been close. We haven’t lived near each other for most of my life, and we don’t always have a lot to say.”

  “That’s…” Dallas didn’t seem to know how to finish his thought.

  “It’s fine, trust me.” Margo shrugged, unbothered. It was hard for people to understand that Angela Hopwood Manning—now Ferrara—had never been anything like the moms on TV; that she’d never really been cut out for motherhood. “Actually…” She cleared her throat, scared to articulate a thought that had been poking at her like a spring through a mattress. “I’ve been thinking about maybe surprising her with a visit. For a while.”

  “Oh?” He tried to sound casual, digging into a carton of rice with a preoccupied expression. “Cool, cool. Like, when would you leave?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered gently. “I’ve got people here who are counting on me for stuff, but … soon? Probably?” Tossing a limp hand around the empty mansion, she said, “This place is too quiet—or too loud, maybe. One of the two. And everywhere I go, I see my dad; I’m seeing him more now than I ever did when he was alive. I’m tripping over his memory, Dallas, and it’s just…” She trailed off. “I don’t think it’s good for me.”

  It was the loudest silence in the world—filled with her father’s laugh, her father’s complaints, her father’s absence; and it was filled with other voices, too, which were getting more persistent but no more answerable every day.

  I was expecting a different outcome from this reading.

  Don’t you think it’s odd that he cut you out like that?

  Did your dad ever talk to you about his plans for the company?

  “Dallas, is something going on that I should know about?” She asked abruptly, hoping to catch him off-guard, and he glanced up with a mouthful of rice. “Because it seemed like a lot of people—including you—were surprised by what came out when my dad’s will was read.”

  “I … honestly, Margo, I don’t know how to answer that.” He pushed his food aside, shifting uncomfortably. “Anything I think I know is based on something I learned in confidence; and if I broke that trust, I could be in serious shit.” Dallas rubbed his mouth, fingers agitated. “And I wasn’t there that last day in the hospital. I don’t know what prompted the changes he made that afternoon. Only Win knows what was on your dad’s mind at the very end.”

  Win and Addison Brand, Margo thought darkly, but there didn’t seem to be much point in bringing it up. She hadn’t been in the room, either, and all she had was empty speculation. Everyone seemed surprised that she’d been shut out of the company—and that Addison had been handed every rein of power. Maybe that was strange, but so what? She was a seventeen-year-old socialite who would never have to work a day in her life; was it really so bizarre that her father had decided to leave full control of his company to someone as committed and nakedly ambitious as Brand? After their heart-to-heart, maybe Harland had decided to free her from the weight of his expectations for good.

  She shook the thoughts away, silently cursing Nadiya for lacing them with paranoid suspicions. “How is Win? I hope he’s, um … feeling better?”

  Dallas twirled a chopstick, lips tugged into a frown. “He’s not. He’s … not.” The boy looked back up at her. “Honestly? He’s a fucking mess. I’ve never seen him like this.
I figured he was grieving, and eventually he’d pull out of his emotional swan dive, but it’s only gotten worse. If he shows up for work, he comes in three hours late and three sheets to the wind. And he won’t talk to me.”

  “That’s…” This time it was Margo’s turn to lack for words. “Maybe he needs help.”

  “Maybe. I talked to my mom about it, and she sighed. Like, that mom sigh that feels like a knife in your ribs? She told me that Win has a ‘dark side’—whatever that means—and that she’d try to talk to him.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.” It was hard to picture Win—big, cheerful, blustering Win—with anything like a “dark side.” But people could surprise you, as she well knew.

  “It isn’t good.” Dallas pushed all his food aside, conjuring a weak smile. “And now that I’ve sufficiently distracted you from your grief with all this talk of civil war and alcoholic despair, it’s probably time I started my long drive back to Pasadena-adjacent.”

  “Thank you for coming,” Margo said as they walked to the door. “You were right: It actually was nice to have company, and to talk. Even about civil war and alcoholic despair.”

  “Next time we’ll talk about rising sea levels and the resurgence of preventable diseases,” he promised. “It’ll be a blast.”

  “I can hardly wait.” She opened the door, and for a moment they just stood there, a few feet apart, saying nothing.

  “Will there be a next time, Margo?” he asked quietly, his face silvered by moonlight. “I meant what I said at the memorial, about wanting to be here for you as a friend, but … I’m starting to think I was full of shit. Because the way I’m hoping there’s going to be a next time isn’t … friendly.” His fingers tugged at one of his sleeves. “And maybe that’s not fair. If you’re planning to leave…”

  “I don’t know what I’m planning. I don’t know what I want.” Margo’s voice caught. Why did everything have to be so hard? “Or maybe I know exactly what I want, but I don’t know if it’s something I can hold on to.”

  “I get it.” He nodded slowly. “It sucks—everything sucks—but I get it.”

  He moved to offer a hug, just as she leaned in to kiss his cheek; reading each other, they switched, and he planted an awkward kiss on the side of her forehead while she clumsily wrapped her arms around him. A beat passed and they began to laugh.

  “Our timing is for shit,” he remarked.

  “Drive safe, okay?”

  Margo watched him jog across the forecourt, sort of wishing she’d thrown caution to the wind. She didn’t want to take a big step with Dallas that would forever be linked to the turmoil of her father’s death, but she hated thinking they might never take that step at all.

  His taillights flared, and his battered SUV vanished down the drive; and then she became aware of an electronic jingle echoing through the empty mansion—her burner phone, plugged carelessly into an outlet in the living room, now that she no longer had to hide it from her father.

  The text message was short, a set of coordinates and single word: NOW.

  It was Vojak.

  26

  In the year that they’d been doing business, Vojak had only ever summoned Margo once—and this text made the second time in as many weeks. He’d already paid her for the paintings, and she could think of no outstanding items from previous jobs he was still trying to move. Not sure what she was heading into, she donned dark jeans she could maneuver in, her leather jacket, and a pair of boots.

  The coordinates he’d sent led to an address on Mulholland Drive, and Margo had plenty of time to consider what lay ahead as she steered up into the hills. It could be another warning—one more dire than the last, which he felt needed to be delivered in person; or, optimistically, a surprise reveal that the dogs had been called off, for some reason, and Margo was safe from danger.

  Or it could be a trap.

  Turning onto Mulholland, one hand on the steering wheel, Margo reached down to her hip where she’d tucked her retractable baton before leaving the house. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

  The location Vojak had selected was yet another property under development—a swath of cleared land, where a home had been razed so another could take its place. She left her car beside an exposed network of water pipes and crossed a patch of dusty earth to where the man stood, inches from the precipitous verge. Eucalyptuses towered, shaking in the breeze, and the vast, glittering bowl of the city shimmered below through a curtain of lingering heat. His face swallowed by shadow beneath the brim of his hat, the fence hailed her. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

  “To be honest, ‘now’ didn’t exactly read like an invitation open to rain checks.” Margo scanned the narrow footprint of empty land, searching for anything that didn’t belong, “Do you have a boner for build sites, or is there another reason we’re not meeting at your office?”

  “Neighbors. A travel agency with people coming and going at all hours would demand attention sooner or later.” Vojak leaned on his cane, eyes on the igneous glow of Los Angeles. There was something odd about his energy, Margo realized when she got close, and she threw another glance around. The man shifted. “How have you been hold—”

  “Pass,” Margo interrupted. “Next question.”

  “Fair enough. I won’t waste your time.” Vojak faced her, the silver wolf’s head of his cane baring its teeth. “I have a job for you.”

  The words settled, and Margo shook her head. “Sorry, Vojak, but I’m not sure I’m good for that right now, you know?”

  “Would numbers change your mind?” Stepping closer, his cane stabbing the dirt at her feet, the man’s eyes gleamed. “Because this guy is offering five million dollars, Margo.”

  She went still. “Okay, I’m listening.” Five million would be a life-changing number for all of them; they could toss Petrenko’s jewels into the ocean, for that price. “Just to be safe, your client isn’t a thirteenth duke, right? We talked about that.”

  “No more nobles, I promise.” Vojak grinned, his teeth sharp and white under the moon. “This is your run-of-the-mill international businessman with a fetish for high-end automobiles.”

  Margo frowned. “Cars?”

  “Predictable, right?” The fence spread his arms in a shrug. “Young, rich, likes shiny things that go zoom.”

  “The shinier and zoomier the better, yeah, I know the type.” She’d dated plenty of them. “Look, it’s a great offer, but my team … we’re not exactly car thieves.”

  “But you’ve boosted wheels before, right? For getaways?” Vojak parried confidently, and the back of Margo’s neck prickled. Reading her expression, he laughed. “Don’t get paranoid. I read the police blotter, and when the Museum of Fine Art is hit, a vagrant pulled over in a stolen van with French government gear inside, and an Escalade snatched from the same block on the same night, I connect the dots.” He tilted his head. “GTA might not be your specialty, but you’re capable.”

  “We’re capable,” she confirmed. It was hard to see anything around a number as big as five million, which could solve a lot of problems for a long time, but something about the situation was off. “I’m not sure why you’re coming to me, though. There must be other talent, auto specialists, who’d be a better fit.”

  “You’re selling yourself short. You’ve pulled off every job you’ve taken; you’ve got a reputation for tech, speed, and precision; and your team has five members now, right?”

  A gust of wind swept through the clearing, rustling the giant red flag that had just gone up in Margo’s mind. This was another detail she hadn’t told him. They’d only pulled two jobs with five people—LAMFA and Petrenko; for reasons, the jewel theft had gone unreported, and although the art heist had made international headlines, the guards had only identified three perpetrators. Schooling her features, Margo countered, “Why?”

  “The target is an actor—a name you’d recognize—up in Trousdale Estates,” Vojak went on, missing her discomfort. “Guy owns a fleet
of rare sports cars in excellent condition, five of which the client wants in particular; but from what I’m told, this actor has above-average security measures on account of a stalker problem. So. You infiltrate, boost the cars, and Fast and Furious your way out! You could do this job in your sleep.”

  “I haven’t slept since my father died,” Margo answered immediately. “Look, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think it’s right for us, and I’m not sure I’m up to it.”

  She stepped back, as if pulled by her car, and cast another nervous look around the build site. Branches swayed, cars zooming by on Mulholland behind a screen of shrubs; if someone was watching, they were well-hidden. Vojak’s eyebrows came together, and he repeated, incredulously, “It’s five million dollars. I know you don’t need the money, but you’ve been stealing for a reason. Take it to your team; see what they say.”

  “I speak for my team.” Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to be out of there. Everything about this set-up felt staged. “Thanks for thinking of me first, though, and good luck.”

  She slammed the car door on his response, firing the engine and quelling the urge to peel out of the lot with the pedal to the floor. Her jaw clenched tight, Margo kept her eyes on the rearview all the way down Sepulveda to Westwood, certain she was being followed.

  * * *

  The farther she got from Mulholland, however, the more Margo started to doubt herself. Vojak had been acting oddly, but maybe he was intoxicated by the price tag. And past police reports had made note of the distinctive white, red, blue, and purple wigs Margo and the boys wore—and Joaquin, in his acid-green shag, had been seen by a guard at LAMFA. So maybe Vojak heard about a fifth color and assumed a fifth member.

  Maybe.

  Her phone pierced the silence with a ring, shrill tones blaring from the car’s speakers, and Margo nearly yelped. “H-hello?”