Hollywood Dead: Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective

by Rachel Graves

  “You’re wearing my necklace.”

  My hand went to the necklace at my throat. She’d told me to put it on Saturday night. Sunday morning, I’d slipped it over my head. The weight of the gold and the sparkle of the diamonds and opals only fascinated me for a second. After that, I’d forgotten it was there. But it was hanging around my neck broadcasting my emotions to Jo.

  “I am not jealous,” I announced calmly and evenly, wishing my emotions were as easy to control as my voice. “I’m worried about Gina.”

  “You were worried about something, then you were sort of happy but not really happy, some emotion you don’t usually have, then surprised, followed by jealous. In fact, most of the afternoon, I got straight green jealousy, not a drop of worry.”

  She’d read most of my day exactly. I’d been worried about Ted, at the end of church the belief and comfort, my shock at Dad and what he’d told me and then… Well, maybe there was a hint of jealousy.

  “Look, Elisabeth, I’m not saying I won’t set up the meeting. I’m not even saying you’re wrong. Those guys tried to run you down in the street. I’m just saying don’t lie to yourself about it. Part of why you want this over is worry. Sure, yeah. But a bigger part is Jeremy works for your family in a way you don’t and that bothers you.”

  “So you’re okay with me setting him up but I can’t lie to myself?”

  “Pretty much,” she agreed. “I’ll call Maman.”

  I told her thank you before I hung up, then spent a long while toying with the locket, her necklace. I opened it, expecting to see the aristocratic face of Marie, the vampire queen of the city. Instead, Marie graced one side and LaRue the other. Jo made a place for both of the people she loved in her life, even though they’d once been willing to kill each other for her. There was some deep life lesson there I should apply to the Jeremy situation but I needed to figure out the jealousy Jo had picked up first. I snapped the necklace shut and went downstairs.

  I’d spent more time working on my client’s problem than looking at her. Today, she wore her beauty like armor. Her hair shined deep brown touched with red—a few weeks ago it had been a lighter brown touched with blonde. Her outfit matched the new hair, deep brown sleeveless sweater with a pair of dark washed jeans and bright red heels. Gina had once tried to convince me red was a neutral just like black. Red shoes, my sister argued, could be worn with anything. My client agreed, matching the red leather sling backs with a red leather purse and lipstick echoed that same shade.

  She’d left the baby at home with the nanny, which told me she’d made her choice. Women who are going back to Montana don’t walk around in expensive shoes and leave the baby with a nanny.

  “You paid me for proof, and I have it, so the job is done. But if you’d like, I can keep the photos here. You don’t need to see them.”

  She pulled her lips together, then abruptly stopped, probably remembering her perfect lipstick. “I need to see them. I need to know who she was and why all this happened. I—” She stopped, again. “That’s not really your concern is it?”

  She’d decided to stay all right. A girl from the Midwest would talk to a friendly person. A Hollywood housewife knew better than to gossip with the hired help. Was this the future that Gina wanted? Even if I removed all the threats from Jeremy’s lifetime of lies, he could destroy the girl Gina had always been and replace her with a cold, polished, stranger. I shook my head at the thought of losing my sister that way, and at the words my client had said.

  “The situation isn’t what you think.” I used my most comforting voice but the mask she’d put on this morning was as hard as the diamonds on her rings, ears, and wrist. She didn’t smile back. I’d never seen any detective’s manual about how to break bad news. I decided to be blunt. “Dan isn’t having an affair with a woman.”

  “Well, then how do you have proof? You’re not making any sense!” Her voice boomed though my office, too loud to be polite.

  I struggled to distance myself from her story and the way it could be Gina’s story in a few years. Only Gina would be asking about some supernatural thing while tears glittered in her eyes, not about a lover. My sister was smarter than the woman across from me when it came to lovers. But those sparkling unshed tears would look the same for both women when their Hollywood marriages ended, whether it was over affairs or spellwork. My hand started for the tissue box, ready to give my client something to hold on to as the news destroyed her life. I stopped, willing myself to separate from her. She paid me—this was just a job. I handed her the stack of photos and sat back in my chair.

  Sometimes magic told me what people were feeling even when I didn’t touch them. It was usually fuzzy—a general emotion, an idea of what they were thinking. But this morning, I had Jo’s necklace around my neck and its magic boosted my own. My client started out very confused. You could see the moment she understood even without a drop of magic. It was the next emotion that made me grateful for the extra supernatural energy. Damned if it wasn’t curiosity. I coughed, but it didn’t stop her staring. I coughed again, still no luck.

  Finally, I spoke in a loud clear voice, “I have the invoice here.”

  “Oh yeah, sure.” The jolt knocked her mask aside. Her Montana accent came back and her cheeks blazed bright red. “This isn’t what I expected.”

  “Life never is.” My thoughts stayed on Gina and the future she wanted with Jeremy as I pushed the invoice to the edge of my desk. My client got out a fancy wallet, from an even fancier purse marked with a French name.

  “This isn’t as bad as I thought.” She stopped, looked up at me from her wallet and smiled. “You don’t tip detectives, do you? But I want to say thank you, so, here.”

  She shoved a wad of bills at me with at least two extra hundreds. I took it with a quick nod, hoping my eyes weren’t too wide.

  “I’m sorry about being so bitchy before. I just keep thinking of how I can’t compete with these Hollywood women.” She ran her fingers through her hair self-consciously. “They know so much. It’s like they’ve studied how to be sexy in some secret school we don’t have back home.”

  “But that doesn’t matter now?”

  “Not one little bit.” She grinned. “I’m not competing with another woman anymore. Oh sure, this isn’t the best thing in the world, but it’s not the worst. The worst is six-two, blond, a size zero, and carrying an Oscar.”

  The vibe she gave off was a very pleasant mix of relief and anticipation. I enjoyed it for the rest of our short time together. Then I grabbed my swim gear and a deposit slip. I’d hit the bank to get rid of most of the cash before I hit the pool.

  It wasn’t even lunch time yet, and I’d already checked one thing off my list.

  26

  “You have a problem,” Jo told me through my cell phone.

  “Oh, I’ve got several. Which one are you calling about?” The bank had taken forever, and the swim had been too short. I didn’t mind though, I had things to accomplish. Gina’s chances of ending up like my client would be over in a matter of hours.

  “Gina.”

  “What?” I hit the brakes, and jerked forward. The light in front of me had magically gone from green to red without a yellow in between. That or I hadn’t been paying attention. I blamed the light.

  “I called Maman to set up the appointment. She’s busy until tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow works for me. How’s that bad for Gina?”

  “Gina talked with Maman yesterday night. She wanted to know about how it felt when I left to be with LaRue and if Maman ever forgave me.”

  I hoped Marie told Gina to stay at home and never run off with a mystery man. “What’d your mother tell her?”

  “It broke her heart every time I left. She could barely breathe waiting for me to get back. It was horrible and terrible but when she found out I was married, that helped. Women are supposed to leave their parents to join their husband after all.”

  “Damn it.” Traffic had moved forward and I should have
pulled over. If I had, I could have beat my head against the steering wheel until I blacked out. As it was, I had to keep driving and that meant staying conscious.

  “I’m guessing Gina’s planning on running off somewhere with Jeremy,” Jo said words I didn’t want to hear.

  “Yeah, that’s pretty obvious, but where? And when? Did Gina act like the story changed her mind? Like, maybe she would tell one of us she was going?”

  “Well, she’s not going to tell you. Maman says it’s a terrible shame how you’ve let a man come between you and your sister.”

  “What?”

  “Apparently, you’re horribly jealous—so jealous that Gina can’t bear to talk to you about Jeremy.”

  “No way. I’m in love with someone, someone I can trust, in a grownup relationship without secrets and kidnapping!”

  “Really?” Jo asked, smug. “Because Gina doesn’t know that.”

  “Goddammit!” I wanted to pound on my sister until she saw sense. She’d written all of my concerns off because I was jealous. Now she wouldn’t listen to me no matter what I said. I swore viciously in my head until Jo reminded me the necklace connected us. “Sorry.”

  “No worries. I mean, it’s not like I can hear words or anything, but you’re fuming over there. Give the girl a break, huh?”

  “Look, I need to find Gina. She’s probably got something incredibly stupid planned, something showy and dumb like a week in Hawaii or jetting off to Paris to have her photo taken for the tabloids.”

  “Or maybe, she’s just going to spend a week in a hotel screwing his brains out.”

  “That doesn’t help.”

  “She was asking about sex on Saturday. Now it’s Monday and she’s maybe going away with him. This could all be no big deal.”

  “Do I need to remind you about the threat, the guy almost running me over, or how Samuel looked?”

  “Nope. But it sounds like I need to remind you that none of that was Jeremy himself. It was the studio tailing him. Studio cops made the threat, came after you, and almost killed Samuel. So maybe Jeremy’s taking her out of town for a tryst to keep her safe.”

  “Maybe,” I growled. “But dumping Jeremy sounds like a better idea to me.”

  I called Ted at the spa. No one picked up but it was around two o’clock, so half of them would be at lunch. I tried his cell phone next, that got him.

  “Keep Gina late at work today, okay? It’s important. I need to see her right away.”

  “I wish I could.”

  I hit the brakes. Had she told him? Did he know what her crazy plan was? “Why can’t you?”

  “We’re not open today. I’m at home. She’s at home. Doesn’t have to be at work until her first appointment tomorrow, probably around eleven o’clock.”

  That didn’t help. “Shit.”

  “Problems?”

  “She might be running away with Jeremy right now. I’m going to see if anyone has seen her lately.”

  “Hmmm.” He stopped humming after a second. “Can I suggest you try calling your mom to see if she’s home first?”

  “Only if you want me to bite your head off.”

  “That’s what I figured. Have fun.”

  I called Mom like he said. Surprise, surprise, Gina wasn’t there. I pointed the car toward my parents’ house, hoping Gina left a note or a diary entry or something for me to use. When I hit a stop light I started scrolling through my cell phone. Gina’s best friend in the world was Crystal, a dark-skinned girl who worked next to her every day at the spa. Unfortunately, I didn’t have Crystal’s number. Mom would. When the light changed, I drove even faster.

  The house I’d grown up in looked stable, narrow, and safe. I suspected that’s why Gina wasn’t in it. Family shapes us in ways we don’t imagine. For Gina, the blue collar life of a plumber’s daughter in a small town made her long for Hollywood glamour. I hoped that wasn’t about to get her in trouble she couldn’t solve.

  “I’m in the kitchen, is that you, Lizzie?” Mom could guess which one of us came in the front door from a room away. Hopefully, she could use that same sixth sense to tell me where Gina was.

  “Yeah, Ma.” I pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen to find her alone. “Have you seen Gina?”

  “This morning before she went shopping.” Mom looked up at me, her hands still wrapped around a half-peeled potato. “She said she wouldn’t be home for dinner and maybe not breakfast tomorrow.”

  “Shopping overnight?”

  “I know but she’s almost nineteen now. I’m not going to pry.” Mom fluttered over to the fridge to get some carrots. A side of meat sat coated in onion soup mix, ready to become pot roast.

  “Okay, I’ll pry. Did she say where she’d be shopping?”

  “No. I’m sorry, Lizzie. Just shopping. She did say she might be late so she’d stay with a friend.” Mom washed the carrots without looking at me. “We all have secrets, you know. Maybe it’s time you start letting Gina have a few.”

  “The last time I did that, you ended up duct taping a guy to a chair in the kitchen.”

  “I never have gotten that tape gunk off the chair.” She shook her head as if the tape part had been the most important thing, but then her voice changed. “I’ll assume this isn’t nearly that bad?”

  “No. Maybe, but probably no. I don’t know. Could be nothing.” The last time Gina had been kidnapped. When a guy with ugly tattoos and an uglier disposition came to search the house, Mom had clobbered him with her cast iron frying pan.

  “You sound a lot like a parent. Track Gina down or don’t—I trust her.”

  “What about Jeremy? Do you trust him?”

  “Actually, I sort of do. Isn’t that strange?” That got Mom to stop looking at dinner. Instead, she titled her head and gave it a few a minutes of thinking. “They might be off on some romantic tryst?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, check the closet. Gina wouldn’t go off for romance without half of her high heels and all of her makeup.”

  Mom was right. I left her cooking and went to Gina’s closet. It had been my closet once, but even before the Army, I had never been much for clothes. Now it was stuffed, literally packed with clothes spilling out and on to the floor. As nearly as I could tell, nothing was missing.

  A glance in the bathroom showed me the same. Maybe some of the more neutral stuff was gone but all of the important items—the five different shades of bright red lipstick, the gray and black eye shadows she used to give herself smoky eyes, were neatly arranged around the sink we’d once shared. If she was going somewhere, she either expected to buy new or planned on not wearing much makeup at all.

  That comforted me, but not much. I headed back to the kitchen.

  “What was she wearing?” I asked Mom. She was happily adding spices to the raw-but-ready-to-go meal.

  “One of the Sophia Loren dresses—the white one with the halter top from the movie with her on the boat going into Italy.” Mom did her best to describe it but I was still lost. “Well, a dress with a light blue cardigan to cover her arms.”

  “Did it look like a dress to go shopping in?”

  “If you were shopping someplace upscale. Honestly, if you’d put white gloves on her, I’d have said she was going to church way back when. Maybe Jeremy was taking her someplace nice.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed.

  “You could let your sister be, you know,” Mom tried.

  “No, I can’t. Big sister and all that. Thanks Mom.” I kissed her on the cheek before I started searching.

  I chewed over what I knew while I drove to all of Gina’s usual haunts, hoping she was still in town. I spent two hours driving and talking to people who knew my sister and got nothing.

  I gave up, and got Crystal’s number from Mom. I got voicemail once, then tried again. On the third try, I got Crystal.

  “Is Gina with you?” I demanded, not bothering with any greeting.

  “Yup. I’m looking at her now.”

  “Is
she okay? Where are you? I need to talk to her right away.”

  “No.”

  “What? She’s not okay?”

  “Oh, she’s fine. She’s beaming, having the time of her life and no, you cannot talk to her, Elisabeth.”

  “What? Crystal, this is serious, put her on the phone.”

  “No. And by that, I mean, hell no. Gina is having an amazing day and I’m not going to let you mess that up. I know you’re jealous over the Jeremy thing—he’s a movie star that makes sense, but the boy is crazy in love with your sister so get over it. She’s fine. I’m with her. Move on.”

  “Crystal, wait. Just tell me where you are.”

  “Nope, hanging up now. Bye, Lizzie.”

  And with that the phone went dead in my ear.

  Crystal’s annoying grasp of the situation aside, this was good news. Gina couldn’t get into too much trouble with Crystal beside her. I went back to the office and got the photos from Randall’s email. Once Gina saw them, her dangerous fun with Jeremy would be over.

  I gave up on solving the Gina problem and headed over to Ted’s.

  27

  The car was back. The one bought by a maybe-corpse. Parked two doors down from Ted’s house like it belonged there. It stopped me in my tracks. My advice to Ted and William was going to be simple. Find out if the person in the car was Rudy or Ruby and see if they wanted to help us. They could be a problem, too. There was a chance, and it wasn’t small, that whoever was in the car was the killer. The weight of my gun in its shoulder holster reassured me. After I walked past a few houses, I switched it to my coat pocket. Even more reassuring.

  The car blended in, a non-descript sedan in dark green. I approached it, trying to decide if I should knock on the window or open the passenger door and slip in. One had the safety of the street—the other the element of surprise. I ditched the idea of getting inside when I saw how it was parked. There was no way for me to surprise her.