“I remember you,” she said, staring out at me from an ashen face. “You worked for that bitch.”
“Only temporarily,” I assured her. “Honestly, I disliked Joy as much as you did.”
“I hardly think that’s possible.”
She stood there, arms clamped tightly across her surgically enhanced chest, making no move whatsoever to invite me in.
“Well?” she said. “What’s so damn important?”
Something told me she was not about to open up to me if she knew I was there to question her about the murder.
Time for a tiny fib.
“The L.A. Times has hired me to write a story about Joy. Ever since her death, rumors have been circulating about how unscrupulous she was, and they want to run an exposé on her.”
At last, I saw a chink in Alyce’s armor.
“That horrible woman!” she cried. “It’s about time someone told the truth about her!”
Then a worried look crossed her brow.
“But I can’t have my name in the paper. I’d die if anyone found out I’d been using a dating service.”
“Not a problem,” I assured her. “I’ll quote you anonymously. Your name will never be published.”
Not unless she turned out to be the killer, of course.
“Come on in,” she said, her defenses finally down.
I followed her past a dimly lit foyer into a tiny living room crammed to the gills with large-scale pieces of furniture—expensive items made for the wide open spaces of a Bel Air estate—not a one-bedroom apartment with a view of the Taco Bell across the street.
Off to the left a small kitchen was separated from the living room by a Formica breakfast bar.
“Coffee?” Alyce asked, heading for the kitchen.
“Sounds great.”
She reached into her cupboard and pulled out a mug. After sloshing in some coffee, she turned to me and asked, “Milk? Sugar? Brandy?”
“Brandy?”
“Costco’s finest,” she assured me.
I watched as she added a generous slug to her own mug.
“Um, no thanks,” I said, opting to stay sober for the time being.
“Your loss,” she shrugged.
Then, with her coffee mug in one hand and the brandy bottle in the other, she led the way into the living room.
“God, what a nightmare it’s been,” she said, plopping down onto an oversized leather sectional. “I’ve been so stressed out, I haven’t had my nails done in weeks. I tried press-on nails this morning, but one of the pinkies fell in the carpet and now I can’t find it.”
She held out her fingers, all but one pinky adorned in cherry red press-ons.
“Would you mind taking a look for it, hon?” she asked, adding some more brandy to her mug. “I’m exhausted.”
And so the next few minutes found me on my knees, rooting around in her none-too-clean avocado shag carpeting. I unearthed a dime, a stale peanut, and an Extra-Strength Tylenol (which Alyce downed with her spiked coffee), but no pinky.
“Oh, there it is!” Alyce cried. “Under the coffee table.”
She scrambled to her knees to pick it up.
“Damn. It’s stuck to the carpet. Help me pull it out, would you? I don’t want to break a nail.”
I tried to pull out the damn pinky, but it was cemented there for life. Finally Alyce cut it out with manicure scissors, leaving a tiny bald spot in the carpet.
“There goes my security deposit,” she groaned, eyeing the hole.
Then she added some more brandy to her coffee and took a deep slug.
“If one more thing goes wrong,” she said, plopping back down on the sectional, “I may shoot myself. My life’s been such a mess ever since Sonny died.”
“Sonny?”
“My husband. A hedge fund manager. He lost his shirt in the market and was selling off all our assets to stay in the game. The stress of it all killed him. After I sold our house in Brentwood to pay off his debts, I barely had enough money to move into this dump.
“Then I took my last ten grand and signed up with Joy.”
Lacing her coffee with more brandy, she took another gulp.
“I know it was a stupid thing to do, but she promised she’d set me up with a rich guy. And like a dope, I believed her. She wound up sending me on one lousy date with an insurance salesman from Downey.”
“I remember. I was there when you confronted her that day in the parking lot.”
“Can you believe how horribly she treated me?”
“It was awful,” I agreed.
She added some more brandy to her coffee. By now it was probably all booze.
“And to make things worse, now the police suspect me of murder!”
At least I wasn’t their only suspect.
“They say they have witnesses who saw me threatening Joy the night of the murder.”
Through her alcoholic fog, she suddenly narrowed her eyes.
“Hey, wait a minute. You weren’t one of those witnesses, were you?”
“Gosh, no,” I managed to lie with a straight face.
The last thing I wanted was one of those press-on nails gouging my eyes out.
“When I said I was going to ‘put a stop’ to Joy, I didn’t mean I was going to kill her. Although God knows I wanted to. I was only going to report her to the Better Business Bureau. “You believe me, don’t you?”
She looked at me pleadingly with bloodshot eyes, and I have to admit I was swayed.
Either she was telling the truth or she was a damn good actress.
Then she looked down at her hands in dismay, remembering her press-on nail crisis. “Dammit! What am I going to do about this stupid pinky? Oh, well,” she sighed. “I guess I’ll just have to buy another set of nails.”
By this point I’d had more than my share of her press-on saga. I really had to get in some serious questioning.
“I can’t believe the police suspect you,” I said, trying valiantly to wrench the topic back to the murder. “Do you have any idea who might have really killed Joy?”
“Anyone who ever met her.”
A fat lot of help that was.
“Did you happen to see anyone go into her office on your way out of the party?”
“Hey, wait a minute.” Alyce shot me a wary look. “I thought you were doing an exposé on Joy. Why all the questions about the murder?”
“Just gathering background,” I said, channeling my inner Woodward and Bernstein. “Standard reportorial procedure.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Thank goodness, she bought it.
But before I had a chance to ply her with more questions, she jumped up from the sofa.
“Omigosh!” she cried. “With all the fuss over these damn nails, I forgot to give myself my insulin shot.”
“Your insulin shot?”
“Yes, I’m a diabetic. Excuse me, hon. Gotta shoot myself up.”
I watched in disbelief as she hurried down the hallway to her bathroom.
I’m no doctor, but I don’t think diabetics are supposed to be guzzling brandy for lunch.
I was sitting there, wondering if I had time to snoop around her place for clues, when suddenly it hit me.
If Alyce was going to give herself an insulin shot, that meant she had access to syringes—exactly what she’d need if she wanted to inject a dose of cyanide into Joy’s chocolate!
Sure enough, minutes later, she came back into the living room, tossing a used syringe into a wastepaper basket.
“There. That’s done. Now where was I?”
At the top of my suspect list, that’s where.
Chapter 15
The rest of my visit with Alyce was a total bust.
I tried to get in a few questions about the murder, but all she cared about was trashing Joy and the shoddy quality of press-on nails. Finally, I gave her my card and urged her to call me if she remembered seeing anyone go into Joy’s office the night of the murder.
By the time I go
t out of there, I was ready for a shot or two of that brandy myself.
Instead I drove home and nuked myself a jumbo cheese burrito I had sitting in my freezer. By now I was pretty darn hungry and stood hovering over the microwave as the plump burrito spun around, cheese oozing from its seams.
At last the countdown was over. The microwave dinged.
But just as I was reaching in to retrieve my cheesy treasure, there was a knock on my door.
With a sigh, I went to get it, afraid it was Lance hoping to mooch a free meal.
But it wasn’t Lance. It was someone worse.
Much worse.
Standing on my doorstep was Skip Holmeier III. All spiffed up in a seersucker suit and polka dot tie (the latter coordinating quite nicely with his liver spots).
Oh, groan.
“Skip!” I forced a smile. “What brings you here?”
“Don’t you remember? We have a date. We’re supposed to have lunch today.”
Yikes. I suddenly remembered that he had indeed called and asked me out. But that had been days before Joy died, and—bound by Joy’s five-hundred-dollar bribe—I’d been forced into saying yes.
In all the hoo-ha of the murder, I’d forgotten all about it.
And now here he was, the world’s least eligible bachelor, ready to take me to lunch.
“I hope we’re still on,” he said, with a pathetically eager smile.
I wracked my brain, frantically trying to think of a way out of this. Maybe I could tell him I was sick with the flu. Better yet, I’d tell him I’d contracted a tiny case of malaria. But then I saw that pathetic smile of his, and
I just couldn’t do it. The guy had driven all the way from Malibu (at twenty miles per hour, no doubt). It wouldn’t kill me to have lunch with him, would it?
“Sure,” I said. “We’re still on. I’m just running a little late.”
“That’s wonderful!” he beamed. “I was afraid you were going to make up some lie and tell me you had the flu.”
“Ha ha, what a crazy idea!”
“So how’s my precious angel?” he asked.
“She’s on the sofa, examining her privates.”
Love light gleaming in his cataracts, he rushed over to my couch and swept Prozac up in his arms.
“You go get dressed,” he said to me, kissing Prozac on the nose. “Prozac will keep me entertained. Won’t you, darling?”
Wriggling uncomfortably in his arms, Prozac shot me a warning look.
Just FYI. He wears dentures. And they’re loose.
I hurried off to get dressed, thinking longingly of my jumbo cheese burrito. Heaven only knew what kind of ghastly organic glop Skip would try to foist on me for lunch. I made up my mind that this time, no matter where Skip took me, I was going to order something decent to eat, preferably something with a side of fries.
After throwing on a pair of jeans and a cashmere sweater, I slapped on some lipstick, corralled my curls into a ponytail, and headed back out to the living room where Skip had Prozac trapped in his lap, gazing down at her like a lovesick teenager and making obnoxious kissy noises.
She glared up at me in high dudgeon.
If he pats my fanny one more time, I’m calling Gloria Allred.
Somehow I managed to drag him away from his beloved, and we headed outside to his mammoth Bentley.
“By the way,” he said as we strapped ourselves in, “I thought it would be fun if I took you to meet Mother.”
“We’re having lunch with your mother?”
“She’s dying to meet you,” he nodded, inching out from the curb. “I’ve been telling her so much about you.”
Good heavens. Skip was old enough to be my grandfather. His mother had to be pushing 100. Oh, well. At least with his mother at the table, there’d be no chance of him trying to play kneesies.
Soon we were on the road, Skip driving at a maddening twenty miles an hour. Which was bad enough on surface streets, but a nightmare on the freeway. People all around us were honking and cursing and giving us the finger, but Skip just kept on driving along, humming off-key, oblivious to the world.
Skip finally exited the freeway and was enraging the drivers on surface streets when suddenly we came upon a vast expanse of green on our right.
I looked up and saw a large sign that informed me we had arrived at:
MALIBU HILLS CEMETERY
To my utter shock, Skip pulled in.
“What are we doing here?”
“Like I told you,” he grinned, flashing his loose dentures. “We’re meeting Mom.”
Holy Moses! This nutcase was taking me to meet his dead mother!
He meandered along the cemetery’s winding roads, then pulled into a parking spot and popped open the Bentley’s trunk.
“I had my housekeeper pack us a nice organic picnic lunch,” he said, hauling out a huge picnic basket.
Imagining the vegetarian nightmare lurking inside, I thought longingly of my jumbo burrito, oozing cheese.
Life can be so cruel sometimes, can’t it?
With heavy steps, I followed Skip as he led me to an ornate headstone in a prized location under a shady elm tree. There he pulled out a blanket from the picnic basket and spread it out on the grass at the foot of his mother’s headstone.
“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the blanket.
I squatted on the itchy wool, feeling the cold ground beneath my jeans.
“Isn’t this cozy?” Skip asked.
“Very,” I said, watching some grave diggers prepping a final resting place in the distance.
“Hi, Mom!” he chirped to his mother’s headstone. “I brought Jaine!”
Then he turned to me.
“Mom says hello.”
“That’s nice.”
“Don’t you want to say hello back?”
Oh, hell. He expected me to talk to her!
“Er ... hello, Mrs. Holmeier,” I said, forcing myself to talk to the headstone.
“Mom says no formalities around here. Her name is Miriam.”
“Hello, Miriam.”
“But she likes to be called Mimsy.”
I forced a smile and said, “Hello, Mimsy.”
“So what do you think, Mom?” Skip asked his dead mother. “Isn’t she a peach?”
He cocked an ear, listening to Mimsy from beyond the grave.
“She says you’re very sweet.”
“How nice.”
He looked at me expectantly. Dammit. He was waiting for me to talk to her again.
“Er ... thank you, Mimsy,” I said, shooting the headstone a dopey grin.
“Well,” Skip said, “now that you’ve met Mom, it’s time you said hello to Miss Marple.”
“Miss Marple’s here, too??”
“She sure is. Check out the headstone next to Mom’s.”
I looked at the neighboring headstone, and sure enough, it read:
JANE MARPLE HOLMEIER
BELOVED COMPANION TO SKIP HOLMEIER
“OUR LOVE IS HERE TO STAY”
I gawked at it in disbelief.
“But you’re not allowed to bury pets in a human cemetery.”
“You pay the right people enough money,” he said with a wink, “and you can do anything. Anyhow, Miss Marple asks if you’d mind moving just a tad. You’re sitting on her tail.”
I jumped up, as if I really had been sitting on her tail.
The guy had me practically believing this nonsense.
“So what do you think of my Jaine, Miss Marple?” He cocked his ear toward Miss Marple’s grave. “Omigosh!” he said, turning to me. “Can you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“She’s purring. That means she really likes you.”
And on that good news, he grinned and said, “Let’s eat!”
Smacking his lips, he opened the picnic basket and started taking out our lunch from culinary hell: pieces of cardboard posing as crackers, slabs of rubber posing as nonfat cheese, and a viscous white glob of what tur
ned out to be goat yogurt, topped with sunflower seeds.
To wash it all down, he broke out a bottle of vintage celery tonic.
Somewhere in my mouth, my taste buds were playing taps.
And then a miracle happened. Skip reached into the basket and took out a humungous sandwich on a plate, covered with saran wrap.
“What’s that?” I asked, my taste buds suddenly jolted awake.
“Egg salad sandwich with bacon,” Skip replied.
“Looks dee-lish,” I said, reaching for the plate. “Don’t mind if I have a bite.”
“Oh, no!” he said, snatching the plate away from me. “The sandwich is for Mom. It’s her favorite. All this cholesterol is what put her in her grave. It can’t hurt her now, though,” he said, laying the plate at the base of the gravestone.
“You think she’d mind if I took a tiny bite?” I asked.
“No, not at all. But I would,” he said, swatting away my hand. “I can’t have you clogging your arteries with cholesterol.”
I can’t tell you what torture it was sitting there, gnawing at those cardboard crackers and rubber cheese, Mimsy’s egg salad sandwich just inches from my grasp. It was all I could do not to leap over and nab it.
But somehow I refrained.
The meal flew by in a volley of questions from Mimsy and Miss Marple—as relayed by Skip—about my education, my hobbies, my background, as well as my favorite authors, movies, and cat foods.
Apparently I passed the test.
“They both love you!” Skip exclaimed, toasting me with his celery tonic. “Which means our relationship can go on to the next phase.”
That phase, as far as I was concerned, was called “Over.”
No way was I going out with this guy again. I had to cut things off right here and now, and tell him I simply wasn’t interested.
“Look, Skip, I have something to say.”
“Me, first,” he said like an eager puppy. “I just want to say thank you. This has been the happiest day I can remember in years.”
His cataracts misted over with tears.
I looked down at his frail, liver-spotted hands, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with pity for this loony old coot. It was the happiest day he’d had in years, and I wasn’t about to ruin it. Today would be my gift to him.
Killing Cupid (A Jaine Austen Mystery) Page 10