The Butcher of Beverly Hills

by Jennifer Colt

  Or so we thought.

  The phone was ringing when we walked in the door at home.

  “Probably Aunt Reba,” I said, picking up the receiver. “Hello?”

  It was Reba, and she was more than usually agitated. “Terry? Kerry? You’ll never believe—”

  Terry picked up the extension. “It’s both of us. What’s going on?”

  Reba sucked in air. “Lenore is dead.”

  “Dead?”

  Terry and I fell back onto the couch at the same time.

  “When did she die?” Terry finally asked.

  “This afternoon. Can you fathom that—right in the best hospital in the world!”

  “What was the cause of death?”

  “They think it was an aneurysm but they won’t know for sure until after the autopsy.”

  “An aneurysm?” I swallowed hard. “Is that something that can be caused by a shock? Like a dog in the face when you’re not expecting it?”

  “What?” Reba said.

  “Rhetorical question,” Terry said, waving at me to shut up. “How did you find out?”

  “The hospital called me. Evidently she’d put me on her forms as a local contact. You know, girls, there’s something very wrong about all this.”

  She had that right.

  “There’s other news to report, too,” Terry said. “We went to Lenore’s house earlier today, and it had been tossed.”

  “Tossed?”

  “Broken into. Everything was wrecked. Someone was looking for something and tore up the house in the process.”

  “Oh my, my, my,” Reba said. “Was anything stolen?”

  “Hard to say. But in any case, we think they were after something other than her valuables.”

  “Oh my, oh my,” Reba said again. One of these days we’d have to teach her some new expressions of shock and dismay—like Getthefuggouttahere!

  “You didn’t happen to notice if there was a black Judith Leiber bag in the house when you were there, did you, dears?” she inquired.

  Terry rolled her eyes at me. Here her best friend was dead, and all Reba could think about was her damn handbag.

  “No, but I wouldn’t necessarily know it if I saw it,” I said. “I’m a Kate Spade girl, myself. Guess you’ll have to wrangle with her estate to get it back.”

  “Oh don’t be stupid,” Reba spat out. “I don’t care about the bag, it’s last season anyway. But I can’t help thinking there was more to that situation in Hattrick’s garage than a mere catfight over a purse. I know I got a little out of control and so did she, but that’s what bothers me. We’re such . . . we were such dear friends. Much too close to let an accessory get in the way of our friendship.”

  I nodded at Terry. “So you think she had something in the bag that she didn’t want you to see?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  “We had wondered about that ourselves,” Terry said.

  We all three contemplated this development in silence. Lenore had gone to the Great Beyond with her mystery intact. Had she been a blackmailer involved in a criminal conspiracy with Mario and possibly Rini? Had her actions resulted in Mario’s death as well as her own?

  “Girls, here’s what I’d like to do,” Reba declared suddenly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’d like to get involved with this case.”

  “What case?” Terry said with her typical tact. “Our client is dead. There is no case anymore.”

  I flinched. Terry could be a little more sensitive to Reba’s feelings, but she was right. Besides, if Lenore’s death was somehow a wrongful one, that made it a police matter.

  “The only thing left for us to do,” I said, “is to get in touch with the executor of Lenore’s estate. We have to find out who to turn the dog over to and who we should give the eight thous—”

  The phone was knocked out of my hand. It sailed across the room before clattering to the floor. Reba’s voice barked through the speaker. “Hello? Hello . . . !”

  “Sorry,” Terry said. “Kerry dropped the phone, she’s such a klutz.”

  She shook her head at my woeful lack of coordination, as if completely convinced of her own lie. She knew I’d been seconds away from telling Reba about Lenore’s money and she’d made sure I couldn’t.

  “Now what were we saying?” she said to Reba, inspecting her nails casually.

  I got up from the couch to retrieve the phone. Terry frowned and waved me off. I shot her the finger. I shot her both fingers, then I put the pieces of the receiver back together, lifting it to my ear.

  “I’ll give you whatever Lenore was paying you,” Reba was saying.

  Reba wanted to finance us?

  “Well, she was supposed to pay us four hundred dollars a day,” Terry said, “but obviously she didn’t get the chance.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Terry wanted to keep the money and hit Reba up for inflated fees. What a crook!

  Of course, we did have those pesky bills.

  “I’m back,” I said into the phone, keeping it cool. “Want to fill me in, somebody?”

  Reba’s voice was full of conviction. “I want to know what’s been going on. I want to know why somebody’s tossing around my friend’s house and possibly knocking her over.”

  Oh boy, she was really getting into this. Throwing out what she imagined to be detective slang. Crimespeak. “Reba, have you been watching cable TV by any chance?”

  “Just a little HBO,” she said defensively. “And MTV.”

  Terry made a face of astonishment. “Well, you don’t knock over a someone,” she corrected her, trying not to laugh. “You knock over a something. Like a jewelry store.”

  “I’ll learn, I’ll learn,” Reba said eagerly.

  What did she mean by that?

  “Look, Reba, I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” I said.

  Terry’s arms started flailing at me again.

  “I won’t hear any arguments,” Reba said. “For one thing, I know Lenore’s family lawyer. It’s Hugh Binion, of Hartford, Huntington, and Binion, on Rodeo Drive. I’ll call him first thing in the morning to find out who’s executor of the estate. I’m onto it, girls!”

  And with that she hung up.

  Oh boy. Reba was onto it. I’d sleep much better knowing that.

  The next morning Reba called while we were still in our pajamas to say she had spoken to the hospital administrator. He told her that Lenore’s postmortem would be conducted that afternoon. If there was anything unusual about her death we’d find out about it then.

  “I spoke to Hugh Binion regarding Lenore’s will, and what do you know? He’s executor of her estate, and I’m her beneficiary,” she reported, bristling with excitement.

  “What about Mario?” I said. “He was still her husband. Doesn’t he get something under community property?”

  “Well, Hugh says not.”

  Terry made a face. “What do you mean, Hugh says not? Mario’s not entitled to anything?”

  “Not her husband. You won’t believe this, girls, but it turns out they weren’t married at all! The whole wedding business was apparently a charade. There were no nuptials in Las Vegas or anywhere else!”

  Terry and I shook our heads at each other. Our woman of mystery just kept getting more mysterious.

  “Lenore told you they’d eloped to Vegas?” Terry said.

  “Yes and it turns out that was a blatant lie.”

  “What’s that about?” I said. “Lenore didn’t want people to think she was living in sin with a man a third her age?”

  Terry laughed. “Well, there’s no sinning going on at all anymore.”

  “Look,” Reba said, annoyed, “just get your tushies over here and we’ll talk about it over breakfast. Then I want you to go to Binion’s office with me. I’ve got an appointment with him to discuss the will.”

  We had to say yes. After all, she was our new boss.

  “He’s on Rodeo Drive, dears, so do wear somethi
ng decent. I got a whole new outfit for the occasion.”

  The occasion? Reba didn’t already have an outfit suitable for going to a lawyer’s office? She had enough clothes to stock a dozen department stores and enough shoes to make Imelda Marcos look like a slacker. Then again, you get a new outfit anytime you want when you’re that loaded.

  By “decent” I hoped she didn’t mean a darling little suit off the showroom floor at Neiman Marcus marked down to $1,500. These days, our definition of decent was boot-cut jeans without holes in the crotch or the knees. We dug around and found a clean pair each, threw on leather jackets over our baby tees, and figured we were well enough attired for government work.

  We arrived at Reba’s at eleven o’clock. The large black door swung open before we’d even touched the brass lion that served as a knocker.

  Grizzie stood in the open doorway looking panicked. “Ya got to do somethin’, girls. She’s lost ’er mind. She’s like some kind of Catwoman creature. Ya got to stop her or I won’t be able to show m’ face at Bristol Farms, ever again!” Bristol Farms being the market where the elite went to buy their gourmet eats.

  “I’ll be right there, dears,” Reba called from the living room. “Wait till you see my new look!”

  Grizzie stomped past us into the kitchen with a full-body shudder, shaking her head and muttering Popeye-isms. We waited in the foyer next to the sweeping staircase, and in another few moments Reba scurried in—looking like a seventy-year-old chemically peeled Emma Peel.

  She was wearing skintight black stretch pants that were tucked into knee-high, black patent leather stiletto-heeled boots, and topped by a form-fitting black turtleneck sweater, with a thick black belt that cinched her insectile waist. Her hair was suddenly platinum, a chin-length blunt cut with bangs, and her lips and fingernails glistened in blue-black hues.

  Oh dear God in heaven.

  I hazarded a sideways look at Terry and saw her shoulders shaking, her hand over her mouth.

  Hold it in, I beamed to her telepathically. Keep it together . . .

  “How do I look?” Reba said, spinning around. “Ready to catch some evildoers?”

  Oh sweet Jesus.

  “It’s just a little something I put together to start work as a detective,” she said, looking at herself in the Rococo mirror in the foyer. “Do you like the wig?”

  Oh good, it was a wig. It could be removed and burned. But how to tell Reba tactfully that she looked ridiculous? Terry mumbled something about having to use the bathroom, and then scurried off to the powder room before her laughter gave away her true opinion.

  I had just made up my mind to hint that maybe Reba could find something a wee bit more age-appropriate for catching evildoers, when I heard Robert’s voice croaking on the stairs.

  “Hello-o-o! Do I hear the dulcet tones of the Bobbsey Twins . . . ?” he said. Then he saw Reba and his eyes bugged out.

  “Mother!” he cried, startled. “What in the name of—?” But before he could finish, he lost his footing and slipped off the top step, landing on his rear end, and—to our horror—sliding down the remaining twenty stairs at an alarming pace, his body picking up speed like an olympic luge contestant, screaming his brains out. He arrived on the floor’s marble surface without slowing down and zoomed across the entire foyer, slamming into a free-standing pedestal holding, you guessed it, a priceless Ming vase.

  I got to the vase before it crashed on the marble. But I neglected to catch the pedestal before it toppled over and crashed onto Robert’s head, knocking him unconscious. He lay there motionless, mouth agape, bare belly hanging over his pajama bottoms.

  “Well!” Reba exclaimed. “That reaction was a bit extreme, don’t you think?”

  I reached down and felt Robert’s pulse. Thin, but steady.

  I hollered for Terry and called 911, while Reba huffed off to change her outfit, ripping the wig from her head as she mounted the stairs. Underneath it, her hennaed hair was slicked to her head and surrounded with a thick elastic band. The resemblance to Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard was more than just a passing one, I thought, and it was definitely a better look for her.

  “No sense ripping around town detecting at my age,” Reba said. “Besides, I have a child to think of.”

  Terry came out of the bathroom, wiping tears from her eyes and blowing her nose.

  “What’s up with Robert?” she said. “Is he dead?”

  Robert was not dead, just slightly concussed. He refused to go to the hospital, probably because his room wouldn’t have a wet bar. The EMTs were relatively sure that he was okay to stay at home, although he failed an examination in which they asked him to name the current U.S. president and to list the states that border California.

  He told them that anyone could be expected to repress the name of our current president, given who it was, and that the “provinces” bordering California held no particular attraction for him—hence his decision not to clutter his mind with their names. The paramedics left convinced that his brain was functioning well enough, within obvious limits.

  Reba put him to bed with a toddy, and we were seated at her dining room table for coffee and muffins. She’d canceled the meeting with Binion during the hubbub, telling his secretary she’d call to reschedule later.

  She was now attired in a more subdued version of her previous outfit. A leather bolo jacket over a silk blouse, and jodhpurs tucked into knee-high riding boots. It was an elegant ensemble, if a complete sham. Reba had never ridden a horse in her life.

  “So Lenore and Mario weren’t married at all,” Terry said to Reba.

  “Apparently not,” she said, dabbing marmalade on her muffin. “I suppose she had her reasons for associating with him, but undying love was not among them.”

  Surprise, surprise.

  “As I said, Hugh Binion is the executor of Lenore’s will,” Reba continued. “I was pleased to hear that she left the contents of her house to me, then I remembered you said the house had been robbed. I wonder if everything of value has been ruined.”

  “There are some crotchless panties that are still in working order,” Terry said.

  Reba made a little moue of distaste.

  “She had a very valuable painting on the wall,” I offered.

  Her penciled eyebrows twitched greedily. “Oh?”

  “A Francis Bacon.”

  “No, you must be mistaken, dear. Lenore had no paintings by masters of any era.”

  “I’d bet you money,” I said.

  She allowed herself a little excitement. “What did it look like? What did it depict?”

  “It’s a portrait of a man with a kind of ghostly grimace, sitting in a chair. There’s a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and the man has a large wristwatch on his arm.”

  “Hmmm. I wonder if it was part of a series. My friend Suzie Magnuson also has a Bacon—a real Bacon—which is also a portrait of a man in rather the same surroundings.”

  Was this the same Mrs. Magnuson we’d encountered at the hotel?

  I looked at Terry and saw that she also remembered the little old lady who’d nicked her in the shin getting off the elevator. The one with the bruised face who got a parting gift basket from Alphonse.

  “She didn’t by any chance just have facial surgery?” Terry said. “I ask because we saw a lady leaving the Dauphine by the name of Magnuson.”

  “Why, I believe she was due for a touch-up, now that you mention it. Give me a sec, I’ll get her on the phone. She can help us settle the issue of Lenore’s Bacon.”

  “Or settle Lenore’s hash,” Terry whispered.

  I rolled my eyes and we waited for Reba to complete the call, but no one answered.

  “Tell you what,” Reba said. “Suzie’s just three blocks away. Why don’t we see if the maid’s home, then we can have a look at her Bacon. And when I get the keys to Lenore’s house we can compare them.”

  “We have the keys to Lenore’s,” I said. “The maid gave them to us.”

&nbs
p; “Fabulous! Then there’s no need to wait for Hugh Binion. We can let ourselves in, take an informal inventory, and check out that painting.” Reba pushed up from her seat. “Let’s rock it, girls!”

  We were at Lenore’s in less than ten minutes. I started to put the key in the lock, but Reba put a restraining hand over mine, shaking her head.

  “What?” I said.

  “Well, we can’t just barge in.”

  Terry shrugged. “Sure we can. You’re her beneficiary, and we were employed by her as investigators.”

  “I don’t mean that,” Reba said, her eyes tearing up.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said gently. “I should have realized this would be emotional for you.”

  Reba nodded, then lowered her head and sniffed, dabbing at her nose with a linen handkerchief.

  Terry looked at me and raised her shoulders, palms out—What do we do? I shrugged, but then Terry got an inspiration. She cleared her throat, stood up straight, and began to speak in a reverential voice, like a preacher delivering a eulogy.

  “We stand here today on the front porch of Lenore Richling, who was taken from us all too soon . . .”

  Oh no. I was afraid Reba would find this offensive, but she kept her head lowered and made a sign of the cross over her chest.

  Okay, nobody here is Catholic, I thought. But I went along with it, crossing my chest. Terry crossed hers, too, without missing a beat.

  “She was a good woman. A kind woman. A faithful friend . . .” Terry intoned. “A woman who, when you were in need, would give you the shirt off her back . . .”

  Reba nodded again, sniffling.

  “Or the handbag right off her arm. Be it a Prada, a Gucci, or even the humble Coach. These earthly labels had no meaning for a woman of Lenore’s spiritual qualities . . .”

  Reba frowned and I made a cut it gesture to Terry across my throat, followed by a wrap it up gesture, waving in a circular motion. She nodded, but then stopped—at a loss as to how to continue.