Pandemonium broke out; guests and partiers bolted en masse for the exit doors. A few entrepreneurial folks held up their smart phones to record the chaos.
I raced away, too, but headed against traffic, in the opposite direction from the crowd. I stepped on more than a few toes to get out of my aisle, pushed down the narrow stairs, and ricocheted off frantic people. “Excuse me,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to poke you in the eye.” I winced but soldiered on. “No—your boobs slapped me in the face. It was not the other way around.”
Julia knelt next to Slice’s body, cradled his head, and sobbed. My feet were killing me in these pumps but I was determined to reach her, and elbowed my way through the crowd. “Hang on, honey! I’m coming!”
“I’m right behind you,” Grady said.
Thank God for back up.
Life could be so emotional and oftentimes, not fair. One minute you’re riding high and accepting a lifetime achievement award. Moments later you’re sprawled out dead on a cold floor. My eyes misted, and I turned around grateful for Grady, thankful for everyone who would be there for me during a rough time, because most people couldn’t be bothered.
And that’s when I spotted him. The ghost of Dr. Derrick Fuller, naked except for his silver Pucci thong, made his way toward the stage. He hopped from row to row on the abandoned seats, completely skipping the congested foot traffic clogging the aisles. Once again he was taking the easy way out, which irked me. “Just go away, Derrick. Leave!” I said. “We don’t need your help tonight.”
“I beg to differ,” he said. “I heard your nickname bandied about, Cupcake, and I was intrigued. I thought I’d check out the scene, and color me not surprised—it’s death and chaos again. One would think that the Grim Reaper has a tracking device on you.”
“I would prefer the Grim Reaper,” I said, “to you—his under-dressed understudy.”
“Ouch!” Derrick said. “You say that now, but I think you secretly enjoy our special time together.”
“I also secretly enjoy getting my upper lip waxed. Doesn’t mean I want to do it every day.”
“Annie, where are you?” Julia implored.
“On my way!” I turned and hustled toward her.
“Slice and I had a good time.” She sobbed. “Everything was going so well until he was hungry, and I left to get him a sandwich. Right?” She patted his shoulder.
“That’s nice, honey,” I said because I didn’t think Slice would respond.
Security guards raced toward the stage. They were in better shape than I was, which was totally not fair, so I jogged even faster, despite the blister that had just erupted on my heel. I pushed past a guy sporting a bright blue Mohawk and a girl with a pink Mohawk clutching a service dog in a little vest, who had a Mohawk as well. “I love your matching outfits!” I said and gave them thumbs up.
I was making headway. “We’ve discussed this before, Julia. At the end of the day, they’re just men!” I said. “You clear the air with a guy, and think that you finally have the whole kerfuffle figured out. Then they do something crazy, or stupid, and mess it all up again.”
“Like dying on me,” Julia said. “Why’d he have to go and die on me?”
“I don’t think he planned on that,” I said.
Just as I wondered where the law enforcement was, police and security guards surrounded Julia as quickly as OCD parents decorated a Christmas tree the morning after Thanksgiving. I paused for a second. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought—but then realized—all their attention was focused on her. Not me.
I could look at this situation as horrible and tragic—which it was. Or I could think more positively and see it as an opportunity—which I did. I snuck low and quiet up a small set of back stairs leading to the rear of the stage. I passed a few dressing rooms, a control booth, and a makeup area with nary a suspicious glance in my direction.
When all of a sudden, a woman wearing a smoking hot Band-Aid dress appeared yards away from Julia, pulled a Glock 22 pistol from God-knows-where, and aimed it at my best friend. “Police! Hands in the air, Miss. Step away from the body. Now!”
Chapter 6
Cinderella’s Nonsense
Annie
“Excuse me. He’s not just ‘a body.’” Julia’s lower lip quivered. “He’s Slice: my first love. He’s an icon, a connoisseur of words and life, a humanitarian—”
“Don’t care, Miss,” said the woman holding the Glock. “Step away from the body.”
I had successfully trespassed backstage at a huge, jam-packed, internationally known theatre. I was so close to reaching my best friend and helping her during a dreadful time. I didn’t know this chick with the gun, but in spite of sexy outfit, I made her for a police officer. I needed to buy a little time to finagle the situation. “Do as she says, Julia!”
Just then, a man popped out of a dark corner and thrust his muscular arm in front of me. I wobbled precariously on my high heels and fell out of one of my pumps. “Aw, crap. What’d you do that for?”
“I’m sorry, Annie,” he said. “You can’t go any further.”
I glared at him and rubbed my heel. “How do you know my name?”
He glared at me with a pinch of arrogance. “Like you don’t know.”
“No, I don’t.” I pulled on my wayward shoe, which suddenly seemed a size too small, and wondered how Cinderella had put up with this kind of nonsense. I checked out the bossy guy: he was ruggedly handsome—if you liked your men tall, muscled up, and covered in tats. Even more confusing, he was the ‘pal’ who had pulled the foul-mouthed pervert back down into his seat.
“Would you rather I call you ‘The Cupcake Killer?’” he asked.
“Shouldn’t you be minding your friend, the Pervert from aisle ten?” I frowned.
“My friend—the Pervert from aisle ten—is in a limo on the way back to his hotel where he’ll freshen up.” He rubbed his head and I noticed he had a sexy—I meant distinguished—touch of silver in his ash brown, cropped hair. “Tonight has been a total freaking nightmare,” he said.
“Ditto on that one,” I said.
“Look, I’m sorry Paul was such a jerk. He’s got a well-deserved rep for that behavior. I thought you’d remember that.”
I squinted up into his face: his blue eyes were rimmed with lustrous black eyelashes, and I got lost for a few seconds wondering from which side of his family he inherited his high, strong cheekbones. “Of course I remember. He was a complete asshat to me only fifteen minutes ago.”
The man glanced down at his watch. “Actually it was more like forty minutes. I wasn’t talking about recently. I was referencing the more distant past.”
“Do I look like I’m here for a history lesson?” This man smelled awfully familiar, like expensive men’s cologne—leather with a hint of chocolate and single malt scotch. I could go for the two on the end right about now, the latter preferably on the rocks.
“Still opinionated, I see.”
“I hope your asshat pal, Paul, pays you buckets and buckets of money to hang out with him,” I said. “Because you couldn’t write me a check big enough to befriend someone that awful who behaves so thoroughly inappropriate in a public forum.”
“Annie! They think I murdered Slice!” Julia said as a uniformed policeman snapped cuffs on her. “They’re taking me in for questioning.”
“Oh, my God!” Grady said from the front of the stage where a security guard blocked him from going any further. “That woman in the safety pin dress is roughing up Julia!”
“It’s a Band-Aid dress.” I squinted. No one was roughing up Julia. The woman was, however, enormously annoying, not only for arresting my BFF, but totally pulling off that outfit. “Excuse me, Officer.” I waved my arm high in the air. “That’s Julia Devereaux you’re hauling away in cuffs. She had nothing to do with Slice’s murder. Besides, she’s an L.A. County Public Defender.”
“Then she should be able to score a decent defense attorney on the cheap,” the fe
male officer said.
I took in the woman’s salon expensive hair, her skimpy outfit, and couldn’t help but squint to search for flaws. She should have droopy arm muscles, or at the very least, a little cellulite, but she was a pinch short of perfection, and I frowned. “She’s in a sister occupation, Officer. Where’s the professional courtesy?”
“It’s flattened underneath the dead rock star on the floor,” she said and dialed it all in on her phone.
“Oh, I get it.” I tried to push my way onto the stage but Mr. Looked Awfully Familiar stepped in front of me again, and no matter which way I turned, I couldn’t maneuver my way around him. “You’re one of those chicks who never had girlfriends in high school, right?” I shouted over the guy’s shoulder at the stunning brunette. “You got along great with the boys, and you probably still do, because you flash a lot of leg and toss your big, pretty hair. But when it comes to treating another woman with professional dignity, you forget the sisterhood, because you’re just all about yourself!”
“That wasn’t very nice,” Tall, Gorgeous, and Tatted said.
“Do I look like I’m here to be nice?”
He frowned.
The woman kept talking into her phone and pretended like she didn’t hear me. Maybe all the hairspray had transformed into waxy ear buildup, causing her convenient hearing loss. But, a positive person would give her the benefit of the doubt, so I spoke more loudly. “I have a good relationship with the LAPD, Officer. Why don’t you and I talk about this?”
Technically I had intimate relations with my boyfriend, the gorgeous Detective Raphael Campillio, but that still counted as good… Didn’t matter, because she continued to pay me no heed. I’d been ignored by hordes of smart, intelligent, and wealthy people in the past, but I was in no mood to be ignored right now, especially not when it came to the well being of my best friend.
“I want your badge number, Officer, as well as your name,” I said. “If one hair on Julia Devereaux’s head is split, a fingernail broken, or a single bruise marked on her porcelain complexion, I’ll be coming after you, and I mean that in the legal sense because I’m a non-violent woman. But I’ll be coming after you with a special fury that only friends and family possess.”
“My name’s Officer Maria Campillio of the LAPD,” she said. “You can get my badge number when you visit your friend at the station.”
“Annie,” Julia said. “Call my boss. Tell her to send a good public defender to meet me at L.A. Central Division. Not just anybody. Maybe David Schoenfelder.”
“I thought you hated David Schoenfelder,” I said.
“I hate that he’s such a smart ass,” she said. “But I like that he’s smart.”
“On it,” I said. “If this Officer Maria Campy, or whatever her name is, hurts you in any shape or form, take notes because I am all over this one.”
“The name’s Officer Maria Campillio,” the scantily attired detective said.
A chill swept over me—not the prickly sensations when I ran into a ghost—more the sense of dread that floated around my stomach upon realizing I ate chicken that had expired a week prior. The female officer’s name sounded awfully familiar…
“Low on my list of my worries right now,” Julia said. “Do you still have Slice’s hair?”
“Safe and sound.” I squeezed the voodoo-dad. “Just like you’d better be under the care of Officer Frump-illio.”
“Campillio.” She shepherded Julia into a wing leading away from the stage. “Do you want me to spell it?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I was runner up in the 6th grade spelling bee. I’m good with phonetics.” I was also pretty good at problem solving. Maria shared a last name with my boyfriend, Detective Raphael Campillio. But why was I worried, let alone sick to my stomach?
Calm down, I told myself. This was probably just another empathic reaction. Someone nearby was feeling queasy over Slice’s demise. Besides, last names were common; no one had special claim to a surname. There were undoubtedly thousands of Officer Campillios proudly serving across our country. Although I doubted more than a handful could successfully pull off a Band-Aid dress.
Police techs converged on the stage taking countless photos, looking for evidence. One uniformed man confiscated the guitar. “I’ve got you covered, Julia.” I reached into my purse for my phone. “I’m right behind you. No worries!” I turned away from the delicious smelling man and started toward the stairs.
But his large hands clamped onto my arm, stopping me in my tracks. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Wherever I please. Get your mitts off of me!” I elbowed him in the stomach or groin, I couldn’t tell for sure; it was a combination of hard and soft parts.
“Oof,” he said and flinched. “That hurt, you know. I thought you were non-violent.”
“Who told you that?” I asked.
“You, thirty seconds ago when the words dropped from your lips.”
“It should be perfectly obvious I wasn’t talking to you. That’ll teach you to treat me like I’m some piece of candy—hey wait a minute!”
He hoisted me up in the air and tossed me over his shoulder.
“What do you think you’re doing? Put me down!”
“I can’t. I’m getting you out of here before your face is plastered on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the tabloids. You’re leaving this auditorium through a different exit than your friend.” He carried me away from the stage, in the opposite direction that Julia was going.
I slammed my fist onto his back and winced when it impacted against rock-hard muscle. “On whose authority?”
“Paul Vanderveen.”
“Paul the Pervert?” I squeaked.
“Paul, the CEO billionaire pervert who owns Pacific Records. He told me to protect you.”
“Help! I’m being abducted by a stranger!” I hollered.
“We’re hardly strangers,” he said, “You slept in my T-shirt for over a year.”
Chapter 7
A Ghostly Nature
Theodore (The Cat)
Some experts said that cats technically couldn’t watch TV; that felines saw only quick images of ‘prey’ bouncing across a screen. They might as well have implied that we were fragile creatures that needed to be patronized or our precious feelings would be hurt. Yes, on occasion that tended to be true, but I surmised that these ‘experts’ were probably not all that good at studying felines, or watching television for that matter.
I’d been prematurely woken from my catnap by screams emanating from the antique viewing device. I yawned, stretched, and glanced up at the dusty flat screen.
People on the small box were milling about haphazardly, racing about in confusion and terror. My whiskers twitched for a few moments, as a few of them looked enticing: especially the round woman with the big hair who scurried to and fro before she disappeared off screen.
I hopped off the couch, meandered a few feet toward the television, and sat down on the floor in front of it to get a better look. It appeared that all the people were engaged in one activity: hurrying. Some made their way toward the stage, others away from it. I sighed and stared dejectedly at my paws.
Humans liked to think they were individualistic, free-spirited beings, but in reality they were, at best, predictable. Hurrying was one of their favorite past times: they raced from their homes to their jobs, rushed from their work back to their abodes, and then changed clothes, trotting around the neighborhood in athletic gear. Now they were sprinting on TV. Color me not surprised.
I was not a natural runner. In my humble opinion, running was for the most part overrated and undignified. If you moved too fast, you just set yourself up to be chased. Annie and I once watched a documentary about the mountain lions of Southern California. The narrator clearly stated that if one encountered a dangerous wilderness cat, one should not turn tail and scurry away. Instead, a being could survive an encounter with one of these magnificent beasts by staring directly into its hypnotic eyes, pu
ffing up as big as possible, and demonstrating that you were an equal.
It dawned on me that perhaps there was a mountain lion loose on this TV show. Maybe that was why all these poorly informed people were running. Or even worse—a coyote? What if Annie, my personal deliverer of food pellets and dispenser of chin rubs, was in danger? I shivered, but then thanked my lucky stars that I was safe and sound here in our apartment.
I peered more closely at the screen desperate to find her in the masses of fleeing humans that, quite frankly, resembled lemmings—we’d watched a show about that on Animal Planet as well—when I heard the dulcet sounds of her sweet voice.
“Help! I’m being abducted by a stranger!”
She sounded displeased, and from personal experience, this spelled trouble. Annie didn’t suffer fools, narcissists, stupid people, bad drivers, bicyclists who cut in front of her, litterers, people who’d overdone it on the plastic surgery, bombastic politicians, meanies, folks who tried to sell her things and then pretended that they weren’t and took umbrage when she called them on it, or other perpetrators of bad behavior. On more than one occasion, I’d been on the receiving end of her wrath, and sad memories of harsh tongue-lashings flooded my brain.
“No, Theodore! We do not rip up mother’s new designer pillow,” Annie said upon discovering that I’d gnawed off a tassel, and turned it into a cat toy.
How else could I have survived an insufferable patch of boredom on a long, lonely evening?
“Theodore von Pumpernickle! Do not eat the food from my plate when I leave the room for five seconds.”
Then don’t grill the fresh salmon, drizzle melted butter on it, and pair it with couscous…
“Oh, Theodore! Must you upchuck on the rug I just washed?”
Perhaps Annie should try the gluten free, low-fat, turkey pellets and attempt to keep them down.
A chill sifted through the night air. I shivered and glanced around the room. Something felt different, slightly off, as if there were a mischievous force in the universe soon to be unleashed upon unsuspecting residents. I hoped there wasn’t going to be an earthquake and I trod back toward the couch. It was best to hunker down in a safe position in its corner to avoid being flattened should the ancient TV fall.
The Annie Graceland Cupcakes Cozy Mystery Box Set #2: Books 5 - 7 Page 31