Murder at the Academy Awards (R): A Red Carpet Murder Mystery

by Joan Rivers

  Ah, yes. Malulu would. Only because of Elizabeth Taylor and a wacky fan who went overboard to impress her did Malulu and I meet four years ago. Call it fate. The nut job wrote Liz several hundred love notes on Brut-scented stationery and sent them all here, to the Hotel Bel-Air, addressed simply to “Ms. Taylor,” and the huge sack of perfumed devotion was mistakenly delivered to me the next time I checked in. The times being what they are vis-à-vis wack-job fans and celebrities, I naturally thought I was being stalked by a crackpot with atrocious taste in men’s aftershave and was advised to hire a full-time bodyguard, as soon as possible. Enter Malulu Vai, my karate-chopping Samoan savior. Then later, when we came to our senses and discovered I was not the target of any fool’s fondest longing, Malulu stayed on with me. Just as it was meant to be.

  The five of us—Cindy, Drew, Malulu, Killer, and I—passed a young couple heading back toward the lake on our trek across the grounds, and I remembered another tidbit from the past. “You’ll love this, Malulu. I heard that Liz and Dick knew how to keep room service hopping. The Burtons had a standing order for two bottles of vodka with their breakfast tray.”

  Drew looked up at me. “Are you sure? I thought that happened at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

  “Honey, don’t wreck a good story.”

  At the curb in front of the main entrance to the hotel was parked a large, white stretch limo.

  “A Hummer?” I said, looking at Drew as if she were out of her mind. Nice way to make a quiet arrival at detox.

  “Not a Hummer, Mom,” Drew said, smiling. “The Hummer.”

  Cindy had slowed her pace. “This is Halsey’s limo.”

  Drew whispered to me, “And Halsey’s driver. I got lucky. It was available, and so was he. I knew you’d want to ask him some questions. Find out about Burke, Mom. If Halsey’s driver didn’t see Burke anywhere near Halsey on Sunday, then we are home free.”

  I stopped and stared. The driver of the limo stood by the door, and by the tousle of his thick, brown hair and the gleam in his smile, I would put money down that he worked his driving gigs around his auditions.

  “Cute?” asked Drew under her breath.

  “You hired Patrick Dempsey’s stunt double to take me to rehab? What woman wouldn’t be thrilled?”

  Drew beamed.

  I watched the hunk help Cindy load my luggage into the limo, while Malulu and Killer took care of some last-second “business” before they headed into the vehicle, and I pulled Drew aside. “Honey, I hate to ask. But those diamonds that Burke gave you. I’ve been thinking about them. Did you leave them back at your house?”

  “No. I didn’t know if that was safe.”

  “Good, good.” The last thing I wanted was the police to return to Drew’s house with a search warrant. Drew had sent Burke away, so that was good. But if the police looked around her house and somehow stumbled over the stash of Halsey’s Best Actress bra diamonds, would they assume Drew had been in on the heist? “Do me a favor,” I said. “Go in and ask Mori if you can put that little bag into the safe.” Every guest at the Bel-Air could use the guest safe-deposit boxes. And if the police were looking for the jewels, they’d be more likely to check area banks to see if anyone connected to the case had been seen going into their vaults. Who would think to look here?

  As Drew dashed into the hotel’s main entrance, and the hunk finished loading my bags into the limo, I pulled Cindy aside. “I can’t go into details, but something very important has come up, and I must get in touch with Unja.”

  “I’ll find him,” Cindy chirped. She would do anything to work her way into my good graces. I found that comforting.

  “Find him and find his camera. I need to see the footage he shot of the red carpet. All of it. Get it to me as soon as you possibly can.”

  “Okay, got it. It’s done.” Cindy ran off without another word, bounding down into the hotel parking lot.

  Drew emerged from the lobby and gave me a thumbs-up. Good. The jewels were safely tucked away. Malulu, Drew, and I all lined up at the side door of the stretch Hummer. Now, normally, an H2 Hummer is an SUV of impressive size. With the two-hundred-inch stretch modifications, it was gargantuan.

  The driver-for-hire gave me a gleaming smile, and my dear protective Killer, not far away, began to snarl at him. Malulu held on to Killer a little tighter as the driver looked deep into my eyes. “Ms. Taylor, it is a pleasure to drive you. My name is Barry, and I’ll be all yours for the day. Whatever you have in mind.”

  What a thought. I had a forbidden daydream. I fantasized about how Barry might look standing up on a ladder, reroofing a patch of Drew’s red tile that had been causing her sunroom to leak. A good roofer costs a fortune. Ah, but back to reality!

  Inside the Hummer, I already had a headache. The old-time Vegas glitz of twenty feet of zebra-striped upholstery was reflected in the mirrored ceiling, mercilessly doubling those damned stripes into infinity. The subwoofers and amplifiers hidden under the seats pounded out the latest hip-hop sounds, while the neon strips along the ceiling were flashing through a rainbow of unnatural colors, pulsing to the beat. Three TVs and a DVD player stood at the ready. I sat there, mouth open, taking in the sight of all the lava lamps, lightning disks, acrylic bars, and fiber optics. Above the music one could not even hear Killer as he barked his heart out.

  “Barry, make it stop,” I begged. “For the love of all that is holy, make it stop.”

  “You don’t like it?” Barry asked, then closed the back door and sprinted to the front. A few seconds later, all sound was halted. The aqua blue neon light that had bathed the entire interior in its unearthly disco glow was cut, and the two sunroofs were opened.

  “Much better,” called Drew to the front.

  “Dis is crazy,” said Malulu, trying to contain Killer, who would not stop barking at Barry.

  I looked over the interior in the new calm and still shuddered. “So this is where Halsey spent the last afternoon of her life.” We all got quiet then. All except Killer. “Killer, sweetie,” I said, looking for a treat in my purse. “Darling boy. Quiet now.” He did as I asked, but kept his eyes on Barry, who was now sitting up in the driver’s seat, steering the limo away from the curb.

  I turned to Drew. “Could we be any more ostentatious?”

  She said, “We have a method here, Mother. Stay the course. I just know that Barry will tell you everything. I think he really likes you.”

  I laughed. “Oh, please. He’s a driver-for-hire, Drew. He really likes…tips.”

  Malulu said, “Killer is not very happy, Mrs. L. He usually loves everybody, right? But dis new driver? Dis mon he no like.”

  I waved away her concerns and scooted up the long, long center aisle, shifting from banquette to banquette, to get to the front of the limo. Drew followed me closely, and so Malulu scooted along as well, holding on to Killer.

  “Oh, Barry,” I said.

  Naturally, he couldn’t hear me, and I had to get the hang of the hands-free intercom before communication could be initiated. Really, this limo needed to come with an instruction manual, which I would still refuse to read.

  “Barry,” I tried again, into the intercom.

  Barry looked in the rearview mirror and gave me a brilliant smile. “Something you need?”

  “We need to make a quick stop. We’re not going to Pasadena.”

  Drew shot me a wary look.

  I amended, “Not right away, I mean. First, we need to stop down the road.” And I handed him an address to a house above Sunset.

  “Oh, okay,” Barry said. “You’re going up to Halsey’s place. Cool.”

  Halsey’s mom, Dakota, had asked me to stop by, and, of course, we had known her daughter for many years, even before the crazy years. It was the right thing to do. But in addition, I had a wild hope that if the people who were closest to Halsey were angry enough, maybe someone in the family would tell some stories about Halsey and Burke. It was just possible.

  Maybe we’d hear a bit more of th
e real story from Jimmy Hamilton, Halsey’s dad and manager. I bet he knew the romantic history of his daughter, and I hoped he would talk. Drew would finally hear that her former love had been an unfaithful rat, but she would at least hear the terrible news from someone other than me.

  And after that, who knew? If she was disgusted enough, I might even be able to cancel my trip to Wonders.

  On Halsey’s street, a winding road up a leafy canyon, there were dozens of reporters surrounding her house, at least ten vans, with their telescoping uplinks up high, blocking the street, and a madhouse of photographers standing in groups on her lawn. Just another day in Beverly Glen.

  When we pulled up in front of the house in the disco-Hummer, paparazzi hell broke loose. I took the large box of freshly baked brownies from Malulu—she had baked 150—and instructed her to stay inside the limo with Killer until Drew and I returned.

  “You no need bodyguard?” she asked, staring at the group of reporters crowding around our limo, hurt.

  “Watch your soaps,” I suggested, pointing at the array of screens.

  Drew said, “I have an idea to get us into the house.”

  After Barry walked around the Hummer and opened our door, we stepped outside and faced the crowd with smiles.

  Drew said, “We brought you hardworking guys something.” She held up Malulu’s perfectly wrapped package.

  As four dozen starving paparazzi gratefully ripped into the box, Drew and I hurried up the walkway and into Halsey’s house unscathed.

  14

  Best Escape

  Arriving empty-handed, Drew and I were let into the tall, sunlit entry hall of Halsey’s ultramodern, steel-and-glass home by her sister, thirteen-year-old Steffi. We couldn’t help but stare. She’d grown a lot since we’d last seen her. Tanned, and with the same wide-set, oval eyes and fresh smile as her late sister, Steffi Hamilton looked so much like Halsey it was eerie. Steffi had white streaks bleached into her dark hair and sported a tattoo of a mermaid on her shoulder, but, despite that, anyone could see she would be a beauty. She was almost as tall as Halsey, but standing in front of us in tiny white shorts and a skinny, blue T-shirt, she was wafer-thin where Halsey had been curvy.

  A man’s voice, from the back of the house, bellowed, “Steffi? Who the hell is at the door?”

  “Daddy,” she screamed, without even turning around, so that her voice thundered in our faces. “Shut up. I’m here with Max and Drew Taylor.” Then she smiled at Drew and touched the bottom of her gauzy shirt. “Hey, this is real nice. Is it Dolce?”

  “Actually, Nordstrom Rack,” Drew said.

  Steffi nodded seriously. “Cool.”

  Into the large, slate-tiled entry hall came Jimmy Hamilton, his pale, pink dress shirt, with the top three buttons unbuttoned, tucked into expensive jeans. He was in his stocking feet and was carrying, I noticed, a bar glass filled with half-melted ice. “Well, hey there, Max. Drew. Isn’t this nice of you to drop by and visit.”

  I cleared my throat. “We wanted to tell you how devastated we are. If you need anything, Jimmy, you or Dakota, please just let me know.”

  He smiled. “That’s kind. Yeah, that’s real kind.” He stood there looking at us, and the longer he smiled, the more uncomfortable we became. “Of course,” he finally said, “if you really wanted to help, you might have seen to it my little girl Halsey didn’t die.” He shook his head. “But, no. You weren’t too helpful when it really might have done our girl some good.”

  “Now, wait a minute.” With all the years of escalating problems to which Halsey had fallen victim, did he actually think that I, in thirty seconds on the air, could have stopped the momentum of Halsey’s freight-train rush toward tragedy?

  Drew grabbed my elbow and whispered a warning, “Mom,” through her polite visiting-the-grieving-relatives smile.

  Jimmy smiled his little smile. “I’ll wait all the minutes in the world if you can give me my daughter back.”

  Steffi pouted. “Well, I’m right here, Daddy. Duh.”

  Jimmy said, “My famous daughter, I mean, kitten. Can they give us Halsey back? Her mama is crying in the back bedroom, and I can’t even get the woman to come out and fix me a drink. Our whole family is in misery. So if Max Taylor wants to help, she should have done something at the Oscars, shouldn’t she?”

  Drew began backing up, pulling me gently by the elbow. “So sorry, Mr. Hamilton. I loved your daughter too. But now Mom and I have to be leaving.”

  Jimmy looked at Drew, then hit his head in an exaggerated gesture. “Oh, yeah. You gotta take your hopped-up mama to go dry out somewhere, isn’t that your racket? I watched the whole lousy story on Nightline, who, by the way, were supposed to devote their entire hour to our dead Halsey. Did you know that? The producer promised me. One solid hour. But, no. They just had to cover your fucking recovery story, Max. So thanks to you, Halsey loses again, doesn’t she?”

  I took a deep breath. The man had been drinking too much, no matter how early in the day it was, and the man had just lost his daughter. Love and guilt. The horrible what-ifs. And let’s not forget—the loss of a family’s source of income. Grieving in Hollywood could get twisted.

  “Well,” I said to Steffi, “please tell your mother we stopped by. Very sorry.”

  Jimmy roared at us, “She wasn’t an easy girl to raise. You know that, Max. My girls are headstrong, and let me tell you, you just can’t beat that out of them. Halsey was over eighteen, and she had no idea of how much trouble she could get herself into. The men, all those damn parties. You think it’s all my fault, don’t you? That’s what everybody is thinking. Where the hell was her dad when Halsey needed him the most?”

  My hand had been reaching for the doorknob, but I stopped. That was actually quite a pertinent question. Drew shoved me gently, trying to keep me moving, but I wanted to hear what else would spill out of Jimmy Hamilton. “So,” I asked, “where were you, Jimmy?”

  “I was inside the goddamned Kodak Theatre, that’s where I was,” he shouted. “With Halsey’s mama and all the other goddamned nominees. When Halsey didn’t show up on time at the red carpet like she was supposed to, how the hell did we know what was wrong? She must have just chickened out, that’s what we thought. Don’t you think I called her cell phone like every five minutes? She didn’t pick up.”

  “But,” I said, “while all the rest of the world thought Halsey was still in rehab, you knew she was coming to the Oscars.” He should have been with her, I thought. Who would leave a vulnerable girl alone?

  “Of course I knew,” Jimmy yelled. “I planned this whole big entrance back to Hollywood for her, didn’t I? I had the dress deal and the limo deal and all that stuff nailed down. And I made sure everyone we were working with kept their mouths shut so her big surprise entrance there on the red carpet would be a fucking miracle.”

  “So you’re the one who made it all happen.”

  He wanted to be admired for managing the hype machine, but I could only see extra pressure placed on a girl who was already fragile.

  “Hell,” he continued, “I’m the one who told Halsey she was going to give just one exclusive interview out there on the carpet before the Oscar show started. Less is more, I told her. Make the public drool for your next words.”

  Steffi, standing to the side, spoke up. “I always listen to you, Daddy. I don’t give any inter—”

  Jimmy didn’t let the girl get the whole sentence out. He put his hand up and, still looking hard at Drew and me, continued, “So where the hell was Halsey, our little Oscar-nominated star, that night? She stood us all up. Her mama and I went on inside the hall and took our seats. What else could I do? I figured I would just have to pick up her Oscar statuette myself when her name got called.”

  But she didn’t win. Jimmy Hamilton was one disappointed man. All that bitterness was eating him up. Perhaps when the truth of his girl’s death sank in, when he was over his anger at how the world had cheated Jimmy Hamilton, he might finally be ready to cry over th
e life that had been lost, the daughter who would never come home.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Jimmy,” I said, and whether he thought I meant about Halsey’s Best Actress Oscar or the end of her life, I figured he could interpret my words any way that most mattered to him. Then Drew and I left.

  Outside the house, in the dazzling sunshine, standing in the street, a field reporter from a New York tabloid called, “Max, Drew, those were the best brownies I ever ate.” The gaggle of cameramen laughed and agreed as Drew led us down the front walk to the waiting limo. Then he said, “Help us out here, ladies. We’ll make sure you look good. But give us something. Did you see the family? How are they holding up?”

  I figured Drew and I had just absorbed about fifteen minutes of abuse—why not talk to the press? We stood where he suggested, in the good light, and a dozen sleepy broadcast stringers came to life and trained their cameras on us.

  “It is horribly sad,” I said into a dozen microphones, my voice in its lower registers. “But they are a close family. They are together. They will get through this unimaginable pain. But let’s send them all our prayers.”

  Drew kept a straight face in front of the cameras, but almost giggled as she and I entered the limo, with Barry shutting the door behind us. “Class.”

  “Never try to stoop lower than the lowlifes,” I advised her. “Believe me, it simply cannot be done. Take the high road.”

  Drew saluted. As she and I settled ourselves onto the glaring faux-zebra cushions, my darling Killer wagged his little tail in ferocious happiness. I asked, “Did you miss Mommy?”

  Malulu smiled and said, “The men outside love my brownies, Mrs. Livingston. I watched them eat every one.”

  It was always best to travel with gifts, always, and I thanked Malulu, again, for her hard work. Who knew when we’d need the celebrity press to be on our side? The story with Halsey was far from over, and in the frenzy to broadcast new speculations and rumors, the reporting could bounce many unflattering ways. What were those words Halsey had said? She didn’t even blame Drew. I shuddered and put that outrageous thought out of my mind. As we pulled away, the stringer from Us Weekly waved, and I waved back.