The Butcher of Beverly Hills

by Jennifer Colt

  “What, maim a patient? I hardly think so.” Reba sliced into a dewy bit of mango. “I imagine he merely slipped with the knife. Stranger things have happened, you know. I could tell you stories about plastic surgery that would curl your hair,” she added, waving the blade at us.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “Not that you need your hair curled. Straightened is more like it. I do wish you girls would let me treat you to an appointment with Jordan. He could give you a much more sophisticated look than this Pippi Longstocking do you’re sporting, Terry.”

  Terry rolled her eyes at me, and I attempted to bring Reba back to the subject at hand.

  “We have a feeling there’s more to this situation with Lenore than meets the eye,” I said. “It all seems pretty weird. Sending us after this guy for a lousy ten thousand dollars—”

  “Well, he stole her jewels, didn’t he? That justifies prosecuting him to the fullest extent of the law. You can’t let people get away with things like that.”

  “But that’s just the thing—she called us, not the police.”

  Reba thought about it, casting her mind back. “I remember now. She told me she had called the police but they refused to pursue the matter since she and Mario were married. Hmmph. She might have expected something like this when she got involved with such an unsuitable young man.”

  Terry looked at me and nodded. Reba was playing right into our hands. “What do you think she saw in him?” Terry asked her.

  Reba’s eyebrows did a tiny dip—the closest approximation of a frown the Botox would allow. “I never understood it, myself,” she said. “I suppose anyone can be led down the garden path in later life, but I always thought there was more to it than mere animal magnetism. She married him only three months after Myron’s death, you know . . . although at our age, a year’s mourning does seem excessive.”

  “Do you think they could have been involved before Myron died?”

  Reba drew herself up. “Well, I just have no way of knowing, do I? She never mentioned a lover.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but you might have heard things. Were there any whisperings about it? Rumors about Myron’s death?”

  “Oh my yes, although I would hate to repeat them.”

  We stared her down. At length she continued.

  “Poor Myron had suffered so in recent years. His death was a blessing, really. The more vicious wags in the neighborhood said it was an assisted suicide, but I for one am positive Lenore had nothing to do with pushing his wheelchair into the pool.”

  “What?” we yelled.

  Reba nodded. “An accident. It could have happened to anyone. You’re wheeling along the slick tile, not really paying attention, you push the little lever to the left, when you meant to go right, and the motorized chair takes you right over the edge of the pool and into the water, electrocuting you before you can even drown.”

  “Uh-huh,” we said.

  “Tragic,” Reba said with a sigh. “She really ought to have sued the manufacturer, but I think she was too distraught to think of it at the time.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Terry said. “A ninety-year-old man is tooting around the edge of the pool in his motorized wheelchair, doing what? Soaking up the sun? Trying to get more liver spots on his scalp?”

  Reba shrugged. Not for her to second-guess her fellows and their strange habits.

  “And then he accidentally spins the hundred-pound chair with no turning radius completely around, aiming it at the pool, and gasses it hard enough to send it over the raised concrete lip—”

  “Brick, it was brick,” Reba said helpfully.

  “Over the brick edge of the pool and into the water and is electrocuted?”

  “That’s how it happened, apparently.”

  “Was he compos mentis?” I said. “I seem to remember your saying that Myron hadn’t been able to play canasta since the nineties. As in the 1990s.”

  “That’s right. But he was still completely charming and debonair, kind of like Bob Hope in his later years. He had that little twinkle in his eye that completely distracted you from the drool running out the side of his mouth.”

  “He was a vegetable,” Terry said.

  “No-o-o,” Reba said, shaking her head. “You’re much too harsh, dear. He was just more relaxed in his waning years. He preferred to sit back and enjoy the fun from a distance rather than actually participating in the games. And the eating. And the breathing.”

  “What?” I said. “He had an oxygen tank?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “He didn’t eat?” Terry said.

  “Oh, he did, now and then. But the oxygen mask made it awkward. Mostly he sat in the corner and . . . enjoyed.”

  Terry gave her a jaundiced look. “You mean she propped him in his chair and ignored him.”

  “Oh, have it your way.” Reba sniffed. “But it’s not like she locked him in the attic or anything. She did an admirable job with Myron, poor dear.”

  This qualified Lenore for sainthood, I guess. Not locking the old guy away in the attic when he got too feeble for canasta.

  Reba pursed her lips. “You girls are too young to understand. It’s difficult to see someone you love so changed.”

  “But if what you’re saying is true, then he couldn’t have managed the trip into the pool by himself,” I said. “It sounds like he’d have trouble even finding the switch, let alone operating the chair.”

  “And maybe it was too difficult for Lenore to watch him suffer. Maybe she took matters into her own hands. You couldn’t blame her,” Terry said, using the sympathetic interrogator method to elicit a confession. Or an accusation, as it were.

  “Well, I hardly see that it matters,” Reba said, waving a bejeweled hand, brushing the scandal away like a bad smell. “There was an investigation and no foul play was alleged. Poor Myron’s but a memory now, and those heartless individuals who want to think the worst of Lenore can just go ahead and do it. Most of them live south of Sunset, anyway.” Sunset Boulevard was a sort of DMZ in Beverly Hills, separating the obscenely rich from the merely extremely loaded. “As far as the police are concerned, Myron Richling died an accidental death.”

  Okay, but . . .

  If Lenore had helped Myron into the pool, she’d probably had an accomplice. I really couldn’t picture her doing it on her own. And then maybe that accomplice had forced her to marry him in exchange for keeping quiet about the whole thing. But when she realized she couldn’t control him anymore, she’d sought to shut him up permanently.

  Terry looked at me, and I could see she was thinking the same thing.

  “Snerrrk,” Robert said, his head bouncing up once and back down in his sleep.

  I turned to Reba. “How about finances? Did Myron leave her well off?”

  “We don’t talk about money, of course, but I haven’t noticed any belt tightening. Although come to think of it, she did let something slip right after Myron’s death, and I inferred from it that she wasn’t entirely happy with her circumstances.”

  “What was it? What did she say?”

  “Mmm, let’s see if I can remember . . . It was on the order of, ‘The old prick left me high and dry,’ or words to that effect. But she was quite tipsy, you understand. It was at the funeral reception and she’d put away quite a few Tom Collinses.”

  Terry slammed her hand on the table. Robert’s head hit the wood, jogged loose by the table’s movement. He landed splat! on his right cheek, snoring the whole time.

  Reba gave us an affronted look. “What?”

  “Aunt Reba, I don’t want to sound cynical,” I said, “but did it ever occur to you that maybe Lenore was left high and dry? And that if she’s been able to maintain her lifestyle since Myron’s death, maybe it’s because she’s been up to something in the intervening months? Something not entirely legal—?”

  “Well, I hadn’t thought of it.”

  She thought of it now and it almost caused an expression of concern, which was prevent
ed only by the cosmetic paralysis.

  “Did you ever socialize with them? Ever hang out with Lenore and Mario?” Terry asked, leaning in.

  Reba rolled her eyes. “NOCD,” she said.

  Terry looked at me, baffled. “Not our crowd, dearie,” I translated.

  “Not only was he not your crowd,” Terry said, “I’m pretty sure he’d be right at home with the Crips.”

  “Oh? I wasn’t aware that he was handicapped.”

  “The Crips are a gang, Reba,” Terry told her. “Not cripples.”

  “Oh-h-h-h, of course.” Reba nodded thoughtfully. “It never occurred to me that Mario might actually be a gang member. Although he did pull a gun on me once and threatened to kill me.”

  Terry slumped forward, shaking her head. I looked over and saw Paquito jump down from her lap. He began sniffing intently in a small circle on the Oriental rug. Terry saw this and scooped him up, then took him out to the backyard to do his business.

  Aunt Reba just had time to tell me the rest of her long-winded story about Lenore and Mario before her masseur arrived. I’d have to recount the whole thing to Terry from memory later.

  We retreated to a coffee shop on Robertson to talk things over before we went to the hospital. Housed in the base of a professional building, it served tuna sandwiches and a thinnish brew from a Bunn automatic drip machine to the working people from upstairs. We had to order something, but our caffeine meter was already in the red zone, so we asked for toast.

  A waitress brought the order and spotted Paquito seated next to Terry in the booth. She looked a little conflicted.

  “Do you allow dogs?” Terry asked her.

  She shrugged. “No, but I don’t think he counts. We got rats bigger ’n that in the kitchen. Cuter ’n that, too.”

  The waitress walked away and Terry made an indignant face at her back. “Don’t you listen to her,” she said, nuzzling Paquito. “She’s just jealous because she wouldn’t look half as fetching in a rhinestone dog collar.” Then she got him situated under the table with a saucer of water.

  I pulled out a steno pad and started to make notes. I scribbled Who, What, Where, Why, and How across the top of the page, then drew a circle in the middle with lines radiating out to the sides.

  “Oh no,” Terry said, jamming her finger down her throat. “Not the diagram.”

  She hated my diagramming technique. It smacked too much of school for her, a place she was only too happy to see in her scooter’s rearview mirror.

  I ignored her, running a hand through my unruly hair, and then wrote the names of the characters in our little soap opera on the lines. Mario, Lenore, Tatiana, Rini, and Hattrick. I put an arc between Mario and Lenore and wrote underneath it—

  Murder?

  Terry yanked the pen from my hand. “Hey! I’m sitting here. Let’s talk and we’ll diagram it later.”

  “This is how I get it straight in my mind!”

  “Quit messing around and tell me what I don’t know, and then we’ll take it from there.”

  I dropped the pencil and began to fill her in on the rest of Reba’s story. “Reba was going to Hattrick’s office, at the insistence of Lenore—”

  “Where’s his office?” Terry said.

  “You know where it is.”

  “When was this?”

  “Couple of months ago.”

  “Why was she going there?”

  “For a pre-op consultation.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re trying to annoy me.”

  “Just covering the bases on your little steno pad,” she said, pointing to the four W’s. “One H to go.”

  Sigh. “He put a three-dimensional image of Reba’s face on the screen, revising the image with his fancy-schmancy software to show her what she’d look like after he performed surgery on her.”

  “And how was that?”

  “Just like Cindy Crawford.”

  “Just like my ass.”

  “You wish your ass looked like Cindy’s. Anyway, Reba said she ran into Mario and Lenore in the underground parking garage.”

  “Coming or going?”

  “Going. And they seemed to be in a real hurry.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “And Reba was chatting them up when she noticed that Lenore was carrying a black Judith Leiber bag that Reba had loaned her ages ago, and it struck Reba that the bag would be perfect for the do she was going to attend that night.”

  “What sort of do?”

  “Charity.”

  “We could be a charity, if she wants a charity.”

  “No margin in it with us. No rubbing elbows with Angie Dickinson and Connie Stevens.”

  “Silly of me.”

  “So Reba spots the bag and says, ‘Oh dear, you know I’ve simply got to have my bag back, it’ll go perfectly with the Donna Karan. Could we possibly switch bags right now?’ She didn’t think Lenore would refuse, seeing as how it was Reba’s own bag, and she was offering her a Prada to use in the interim.”

  “That as good as a Judith Leiber?”

  “It’s probably a wash. Anyway, Reba had the moral high ground, the bag was hers, and she needed it for that night, but Lenore fought her off.”

  “How so?”

  “She squeezed the bag to her side so hard it would take The Rock to pry it loose.”

  “Reba’s analogy or yours?”

  “Hers, believe it or not.”

  “Reba watches the WWE?”

  I shrugged. “Evidently.”

  “Must be the hole in the ozone layer.”

  “Anyway, Lenore ran to her car, saying, ‘I’ll get it to you tomorrow, shall I dear?’ ”

  “But Reba wasn’t taking no for an answer?”

  “Nope. The bag had set her back three thousand dollars. It was perfect for her outfit and she wasn’t about to buy another exactly like it, although she could go out and get a new Tom Ford, but didn’t want to, as a matter of principle.”

  “Okay. So then what happened?”

  “Then Reba ran to Lenore and grabbed the bag—the straps were digging into Lenore’s shoulder—and Reba was yelling, ‘Give me the bag, it’s mine!’ and Lenore was shouting, ‘Not now! I’ll bring it to you tomorrow!’ and in the middle of all of this, the gun went off.”

  “The gun?”

  “Reba looked over and saw Lenore’s bridegroom with a handgun pointed at the roof of the garage, and a big hole in the concrete.”

  “And?”

  “And Mario said, ‘Leave it alone, bitch. Or the next one goes in your bony ass.’ ”

  Terry gasped. “Aunt Reba said ‘ass’?”

  “Direct quote. She said ‘prick’ earlier, if you’ll recall.”

  “It’s the end of life as we know it. So then what happened?”

  “Lenore and Mario got into her BMW and sped out of the garage. Then the security guards got there and Reba said, ‘They went thatta way,’ then she hopped in her Mercedes and fled the scene.” I gave Terry a sardonic look. “Guess it runs in the family.”

  “What?”

  “Fleeing the scene.”

  She smiled. “It’s the only way.”

  “So the question is—what was in that bag?”

  “Who knows?” Terry sipped her water. “Maybe nothing. Maybe it was truly about the fashion statement.”

  “Could it have been the ten thousand dollars?”

  “Why would she be hauling it around? Not to pay the doc, since she got free surgery.” Terry sat back in the booth, rubbing her forehead. “Anyway, all this speculation is hurting my brain. I say we go over to the hospital and get it right from the horse’s mouth. Lenore needs to do some talking. You ready to give her the old one-two punch?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “I think Paquito needs a rest stop, first.”

  As soon as we got outside Paquito ran to a scrawny tree poking out of the sidewalk, sniffed its trunk, then squatted in the twelve-inch-square opening around its base. A Beverl
y Hills patrolwoman appeared out of nowhere and walked up to us, swinging her nightstick, her other hand on her holster. She had sandy blonde hair in a ponytail and a curvaceous figure, but the mirrored shades gave her a somewhat fearsome appearance.

  “Be right back with the scooper,” I said with an apologetic grin. I tore back into the coffee shop and snagged a dozen paper napkins from the dispenser, then ran back outside to the scene of the crime, where I was surprised to find that Terry had not fled.

  Instead, she was engaged in a passionate discussion of the relative merits of k. d. lang and Melissa Etheridge with the lady cop.

  Who was no lady, needless to say.

  The cop hitched up her belt and inched her jacket away from the holster on her ample hip, accidentally on purpose revealing her 9mm Glock.

  Terry tossed her hair and “oohed” and “ahhhed” and asked her what it was like to be armed, did it give her a sense of power? And the officer assured her that yes, it certainly did, and Terry said her wimp sister wouldn’t let her have a gun, and the cop gave me a sour look.

  Then the wimp sister picked up the poop and deposited it in the trash bin that exhorted her to Keep Beverly Hills Clean! and the cop nodded her approval. Terry handed her our business card, then the patrolwoman went on her crimefighting way.

  Hmmm. Looked like Terry’s attitude toward law enforcement was evolving.

  She picked up the dog, weighing him in her hand. “Amazing. He’s at least two ounces lighter. You know, he might slide by in a rat-infested coffee shop, but I doubt we can get him into a hospital.”

  “Unless we’re fiendishly clever,” I said.

  We swung by the drugstore and grabbed a Hello Kitty backpack and half a dozen knockoff Beanie Babies for sneaking Paquito into the hospital. Terry shoved the beanie knockoffs into the bottom of the pack for a booster seat, and we picked up a bag of low-fat, high-protein kibble, a few cans of tuna-flavored cat food we were hoping to pass off as caviar, and a Lilliputian blue leash to match his collar.

  A woman with permed yellow hair and thick glasses on a chain totaled up our purchases. Her name tag said Marge—Since 1989, although I was pretty sure she’d been Marge since Cadillacs had fins.