by Laura Levine
With Lenny gone, I’d run out of people to talk to. Feeling a tad awkward standing there alone, I looked around for Lance. But he was still yakking with Ms. Botox.
I spent the next half hour doing a very poor imitation of someone having fun. I wandered around sniffing the gardenias and grabbing the occasional hors d’oeuvre or three, the waitstaff’s leading contender for Guest Most Likely to Get Heartburn. I drifted over to the isolated table where Bunny’s urn was on display, thinking how she would have hated not being the center of attention. Then, curious, I peeked behind the row of potted palms lined up in the center of the roof and saw they were screening off the party area from the store’s unsightly air-conditioning units. I considered hiding out there for a while, but I didn’t want to give up the hors d’oeuvres.
At one point, the mariachis stopped to serenade me, and I had to stand there, smiling stiffly through the endless lyrics of “Besame Mucho.”
Finally, when I had circumnavigated the party at least five times, Marvin and Ellen rescued me from my wallflower status.
“Jaine!” they cried, still firmly welded together arm in arm, radiating happy vibes.
“We’re so glad you could make it!” Ellen’s apple cheeks glowed in the light from the tiki torches. “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate all you did to bring Owen to justice.”
“We’re both very grateful,” Marvin chimed in.
“Grateful enough to give me a job?”
Of course I didn’t say that, but you can bet your bottom tiki torch I was thinking it. I’d dropped off my mattress slogans at the showroom days ago but had not heard a peep from Marvin.
My employment was the last thing on the lovebirds’ minds, however, as they launched into a detailed description of a cruise they were about to take to the Fiji Islands.
When they finally wound down and abandoned me to circulate, I gave up all pretense of being a party person. I did the unthinkable and sat down alone at a table for six near the potted palms. Someone had left what looked like a martini and a chicken kabob behind.
I picked up the chicken and examined it for bite marks. There didn’t seem to be any so I started chomping it down.
Oh, don’t go all Emily Post on me. I had to do something to while away the time.
Once more I surveyed the room, taking in the happy partygoers, still laughing and chatting and slugging down the booze.
Yes, everyone was in excellent spirits. Except me. And it wasn’t just because I was sitting alone at a table for six.
Actually, I was still worried about the murder. I know I should have been happy the cops had set their sights on Owen. But something was bothering me, a nagging question lingering in the back of my mind like a pesky piece of corn stuck between my teeth. If Owen had really killed Bunny, why would he have left such an incriminating e-mail on his computer? Wouldn’t he have at least deleted it, or sent it to his recycle bin? Why leave it there for a snoop such as myself to discover with just a click of the mouse? It didn’t make sense.
Was it possible Owen wasn’t the killer? It may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn I’d seen that boxy black car following me the past few days. Surely it couldn’t have been Owen. He drove a BMW. Besides, if anything happened to me, he’d be the first person the cops would suspect.
“Gather round, everybody!” Marvin called out from a microphone near Bunny’s urn. “It’s time for the scattering of the ashes.”
Eager for this dramatic climax of the evening to begin, the guests quickly scooted over to where Marvin was standing.
Absentmindedly I reached for my glass and took a final slug of my margarita before joining them.
Wait a minute! What was an olive doing in my mouth? This wasn’t my margarita. I looked down and realized I was holding my predecessor’s abandoned martini. I’d picked up the wrong drink.
And just like that, it came to me—a whole new way of looking at the case.
What if Bunny drank the wrong drink the night of the murder? There were two glasses out on the patio that night. Lance’s and Bunny’s. What if someone poisoned Lance’s drink, and Bunny drank it by mistake?
Over at the other end of the roof, Marvin was inventing nice things to say about Bunny as he tossed her ashes to the wind. But his words were a distant buzz as I thought back to the night of the murder.
A scenario began to take shape in my mind. Lupe was a clumsy creature, always dropping things when she was nervous. What if, in her haste to bring Bunny her dirty martini, she’d spilled it? And then, terrified of Bunny’s angry reaction, she’d hastily poured Lance’s drink into the Marilyn Monroe glass.
Omigosh. That would mean that all along, Lance was the intended victim—not Bunny!
But who on earth would want Lance dead?
The answer came to me in a flash: Fiona!
Bunny was Fiona’s last remaining client, the one person in the world keeping her afloat financially. But then Bunny met Lance and he became her fashion advisor. Hadn’t Bunny raved about what a fashion genius he was? Hadn’t they gone on all those shopping excursions together?
I remembered how dismissive Bunny had been that first day at the pool when Fiona stopped off with some clothes for her to try on. She’d waved them aside and gone right back to chatting with Lance. Lance was rapidly becoming her “pet du jour,” cutting off Fiona’s financial lifeline. So Fiona had to get rid of him. She dosed his dirty martini with weed killer, only to have Bunny drink it by mistake!
I thought back to what Fiona had said the night of the murder, as Bunny lay writhing on the carpet:
This can’t be happening. Not to Bunny!
That’s because it was supposed to have been happening to Lance.
“Oh, wow!” I gasped, as a few of Bunny’s ashes floated my way. “It was Fiona all along!”
“So you figured it out, huh?”
I whirled around as Fiona stepped out from behind the potted palms. In her hand she held the same stun gun she’d been toting that day in her apartment.
I got up to make a break for it, but I wasn’t fast enough. I cringed as a painful jolt of electricity shot up my arm.
Dammit. I’d been zapped.
Suddenly I felt my muscles turn to Jell-O and my knees buckle beneath me.
Before I hit the ground, Fiona grabbed me by my underarms and began dragging me past the screen of palm trees to the far side of the roof.
I screamed for help, but no one could hear me over those damn mariachis. Not to mention the fireworks, which had just begun to explode in the sky.
“Why the hell can’t anything ever go my way?” Fiona muttered as she lugged me past the massive air-conditioning unit. “First that idiot Lupe gives Bunny the wrong drink. Then she doesn’t die when I bash her head in with a tire iron. And now you have to go butting in.”
It wasn’t easy dragging my inert body, and she struggled with the load. For once I was glad to be toting around a few extra pounds.
“I’ve had nothing but bad luck ever since your buddy Lance waltzed into Bunny’s life,” she continued ranting. “The minute he showed up, I was toast. Everything he liked was gold; everything I chose was crap. That two-bit shoe salesman was stealing my only source of income.”
“So you decided to get rid of him with a dose of weed killer.”
“It all would have worked out so beautifully, but then Lupe had to go and give Bunny Lance’s drink. Can you believe my rotten luck?”
Somehow I was unable to dredge up any sympathy for her plight.
“I figured out what had happened right away,” she boasted, proud of her mental prowess. “I convinced Lupe that if she told the cops what really happened, they’d deport her. That scared the stuffing out of her. So she kept her mouth shut. But I couldn’t let her live. She knew too much. Just like you know too much.”
Ouch. I didn’t like the sound of that.
By now some sensation was returning to my limbs. Not enough to fight her off, but at least I could feel something. I
had to keep her talking till I got my strength back.
“So you lured Lupe to the mall,” I prompted. “And—just in case anyone saw the two of you together—you came to meet her disguised as a man.”
With Fiona’s short, spiky hair and lanky, androgynous build, I could easily see why the busboy mistook her for a guy.
“Pretty clever, if I do say so myself,” she preened. “I called her, pretending to be an A-list bimbo offering her a job. Needless to say, her future employer never showed up for their appointment. But I did, and after faking surprise at running into her, I very kindly offered her a ride home. I explained my jeans and baseball cap by telling her I’d just come from a softball game. The sap bought it. Then, once she got in my car, I shot her with my stun gun and drove her to an alley in Skid Row.”
“Where you bashed her head in with a tire iron,” I said, stealing her punch line.
“Bingo, Sherlock. Now it’s your turn.”
By now we’d reached the edge of the roof.
“In case you didn’t realize it, you’re about to fall to a very tragic death.”
“No one’s going to believe I killed myself, Fiona.”
“I’ll take my chances. Now buckle up.” She smiled grimly. “It’s gonna be one heck of a crash landing.”
That’s what she thought. The strength had returned to my limbs and I wasn’t about to check out without a fight. As she leaned down to get a grip on me, I punched her in the groin with every ounce of strength I possessed.
Which, alas, turned out to be not much.
I guess I’d overestimated my recovery. I barely grazed her trousers.
I continued to flail at her, but I was no match for the sinewy Fiona. The woman had clearly been working out between trips to the liquor store. She knocked me to the ground with a quick sock to the jaw.
A wave of terror swept over me as she whipped out her stun gun and zapped me again.
Before I knew it she was hoisting my limp body over the parapet.
I looked down—way down—at the deserted alley below. Not a soul in sight.
Was it all going to end like this? Splattered to death behind Neiman Marcus, the ultimate fashion disaster?
“Okay, sweetie. Prepare for takeoff.”
Just when I was convinced I was headed for that great Ice Cream Parlor in the Sky, I heard three of the most welcome words in the English language:
“Jaine, my beloved!”
Omigosh! It was Vladimir.
“Have no fear!” my Uzbek Romeo cried, his squinchy black eyes aglow with heroic fervor. “Vladimir will save you!”
Reluctantly, Fiona loosened her grip on me, and I slid back down onto the roof as Vladimir came rushing at us.
But skinny little Vladimir was no match for Fiona, who zapped him with her stun gun before he could say Holy Plov.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Fiona clucked at us in irritation as we lay limply on the roof. “Now I’m going to have to kill the two of you.”
Correction. Make that three of us. Because just then someone else came charging on the scene. A thundering mass of fury named Sofi.
That’s right. It was Cousin Sofi, in the flesh, all three hundred pounds of her.
“You leave my Vladdie alone!” she cried, as she stomped across the roof.
Unfortunately, the sight of a human locomotive barreling toward her didn’t seem to faze Fiona a bit. Before Sofi could even land her first blow, Fiona whapped her with her stun gun.
I fully expected Sofi to crumple to the ground alongside Vladimir and me.
But then a miracle happened.
Sofi barely flinched. Maybe Fiona’s stun gun had run out of juice. Or maybe the electricity couldn’t make it past all that padding.
All I know is Sofi hauled off and decked Fiona with a single blow. Now it was Fiona’s turn to lie limp on the black tar.
Vladimir looked up at Sofi, stunned.
“Sofi! What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been following you for days, while you’ve been following this skinny minnie.”
“You were the one tailing me?” I gasped.
“Yes.” Vladimir nodded proudly. “I borrow Boris’s brand new used car to follow my beloved Jaine.”
“What you wasting your time for on her?” Sofi sniffed. “She nothing but a bag of bones. Don’t you see, Vladdie?”
“See what?” He blinked, puzzled.
“I love you!”
With that, she took him in her ham-hock arms and laid a giant liplock on him.
“I’ve always loved you,” she said when they finally came up for air. “With all my heart and soul!”
“It’s true, Vladimir,” I chimed in. “And it’s time you gave up this crazy notion of marrying me. Sofi is so much better for you than I am.”
“She sure is!” he agreed, just a little too enthusiastically for my ego. “What a terrific kisser!”
He gazed at her with the same lovesick expression that had been beamed in my direction not two minutes ago.
“Lay another one on me, hot stuff!” he crooned.
I sat there, trying to ignore the most nauseating slurpy sounds as the two of them played kissy-face. Good heavens. This was almost as bad as the stun gun.
By now, the other party guests had become aware of the commotion at our end of the roof and had gathered around us in an astonished huddle.
“What on earth happened?” Marvin asked, eyes popping, as he took in the scene.
Sofi and Vladimir were kind enough to stop slurping each other as I offered a brief summary of recent events.
The cops were quickly summoned and, after hearing my tale, wasted no time carting Fiona off to the criminal wing of USC General Hospital.
Watching her still-comatose body being wheeled away, the Barbies buzzed with excitement.
What a night it had been. Mariachis. Fireworks. Attempted triple murder. And best of all—a full bar!
Yes, in years to come everyone would agree:
It was Bunny’s best party ever.
Epilogue
Good news, fashion fans! You’ll be happy to know that Fiona Williams has been voted best-dressed inmate at her maximum security prison in sunny Chowchilla, California, where she is now doing twenty-five to life.
Lupe, thank heavens, survived her bout with Fiona’s tire iron, and—with the help of generous financing from Marvin—has started her own catering biz. Her first job? Marvin and Ellen’s wedding. Yep, the ex–Mr. and Mrs. Cooper retied the knot and are now happily ensconced in a Comfort Cloud love nest out in Encino, where Lenny is a regular and most welcome guest.
And Marvin and Ellen aren’t the only ones who’ve made a love connection. Ever since Bunny’s death, cupid has been working overtime:
Sarah, rebounding quite nicely from her divorce from Owen, is engaged to Zubin, her lab assistant at UCLA.
Kandi is dating a guy she met at a “Why I Keep Dating the Wrong Partner” seminar.
And mousy little Amy, unable to cancel the rooms she’d booked for her romantic getaway with Owen, checked into the Romeo & Juliet Suite by herself, where she told her tale of woe to a most sympathetic innkeeper. One thing led to another, and by the end of the weekend, they were making sweet love amid the heart-shaped throw pillows. Last I heard, she was working there full-time as his receptionist, and his wife.
On the sadder side of the romantic coin, Lance and Peter went off on their tropical getaway to Barbados, where Peter promptly proceeded to fall in love with their scuba instructor.
Cupid’s arrow has also failed to make an appearance at my apartment, which is fine with me. I’m thrilled to be footloose and Vladimir-free.
Speaking of Vladimir, I’m happy to report that he and Sofi exchanged wedding vows and sloppy kisses back in Uzbekistan. They sent me pictures from the wedding. I must say, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen the Maid of Honor eating a tin can.
As for Owen, rumor has it he’s working the night shift at a Dairy Queen out in Pacoima.
And you’ll never guess what I got in the mail not long ago. A letter from Fortuna. Just as I’d suspected, she was the one who pushed me that day at the movies. She followed me from her apartment, terrified I’d bad-mouth her to the cops. She begged my forgiveness and assured me she had her anger under control, thanks to daily affirmations and enough Paxil to choke a buffalo.
Should you need to reach her, you can find her at 1-800-Call-A-Psychic.
Saving the best news for last, I’m thrilled to tell you that Marvin gave me the Mattress King account! Yes, I am now the official Mattress King copywriter. The winning slogan, FYI, was: If you can find a cheaper mattress anywhere, I’ll eat my crown.
Okay, so it’s not Shakespeare, but it’s a paycheck. Yes, thanks to dear sweet Marvin, my checkbook balance is no longer in the Emergency Resuscitate zone. First thing I did with my mattress loot was paint my walls a heavenly shade of inoffensive off-white. Then I treated myself to a new cashmere sweater. I never did join that Fudge of the Month Club. It was way too decadent, even for moi. Instead, I took the sensible route, and am now a proud member of the Cookie of the Month Club. Next month is Double Dutch Chocolate Chip. I can’t wait.
Well, that’s it for now. Gotta run. Her royal highness wants her back scratched.
Catch you next time.
PS. I thought you might be interested in the following item from the Wall Street Journal:
TURBOMASTER SUED BY CONSUMER PROTECTION AGENCY
The Consumer Protection agency has filed a $3.5 million lawsuit against Turbomaster, Ltd., manufacturers of the Turbomaster convection oven and Turbomaster Secret Spice. According to the consumer watchdog group, Turbomaster ovens are prone to explosions, and their Secret Spice, which Turbomaster claims to be made from fifteen exotic spices, is in reality nothing more than paprika.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2010 by Laura Levine
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