by Laura Levine
Then I looked down at his hands and saw he was wearing something room-service guys rarely wear—nail polish.
“Pam!” I blurted out, before I could stop myself.
“It’s me, all right.”
There was a manic gleam in her eyes that froze my blood. Gone were all traces of the friendly woman I’d met at the Bargain Barn.
“Too bad you had to drop my purse today. Once you saw the lottery ticket, I knew it was only a matter of time before you figured things out. So I rented this costume and took a chance I’d get you alone in the elevator. Guess I lucked out, huh?”
And with that, she tossed aside the metal cover from the room service tray, to reveal a butcher knife.
Oh, Lord. It was big enough to gut a whale.
Frantic, I sprinted for the control panel to push the alarm button, but before I could reach it, Pam yanked me back by my ponytail and hurled me against the wall. I howled in pain.
She was stronger than me. A lot stronger.
“Don’t be crazy,” I said, holding my throbbing head. “The elevator could stop any minute. What if someone sees you?”
“They won’t see me. They’ll see a deranged room service waiter.” She picked up the knife and I felt a wave of bile rise in my throat. “When they find your body, they’ll think a man did it. Maybe even Marty. Don’t forget. I’ve got that paper you signed this afternoon blaming him for your murder.”
I cursed myself for writing that damn statement. Thanks to my stupidity, Pam was going to get away with murder—twice.
But I couldn’t just stand there and let her slice me open like a Benihana chef. I had to keep her talking and somehow get that ghastly knife away from her.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did you have to kill Marybeth? Couldn’t you have just stolen the ticket?”
“She saw me take it from her purse. The bitch had eyes in the back of her head. She threatened to tell everybody. Can you imagine? Telling everyone that I was a thief?”
I refrained from pointing out that’s exactly what she was.
“I gave her a sob story about how sorry I was and begged her not to say anything. She said she wouldn’t, but I knew that sooner or later she’d blab. And until then, she’d torture me with the threat of exposure every chance she got. She’d enjoy that. And besides, I wanted that fifty grand. You may not mind shopping at the Bargain Barn, honey, but I’m sick of it.
“So you see,” she said, her knife poised to attack, “I had no choice. Just like I don’t have any choice now. Which is really too bad. I tried to warn you, you know.”
“By putting those nails under my tires?”
“I thought for sure that would scare you off. It’s a shame you were so damn persistent. Now I have to kill you. What a pity. I like you, Jaine. We could’ve been friends.”
“Can’t we still be friends? I won’t tell anyone; I promise. Marybeth deserved to die. You were doing the world a favor. And I’m sure Rochelle’s lawyers will get her off on a technicality. Let’s forget about this silly murder thing and head on over to Ben & Jerry’s.”
“You don’t really think I’m going to fall for that, do you?”
No, actually I didn’t, but it had given me time to inch over to the metal lid she’d tossed on the floor. I grabbed it now and swung it with all my might, knocking the knife from her hands.
As I lunged for the knife, she lunged for me, grabbing me by the train of my bridesmaid dress. I heard the rip of the seams, already thisclose to bursting, as they tore apart. Then, just as I was about to grab the knife, I felt a searing pain in my legs as Pam rammed me with the room service cart and sent me sprawling to the floor.
Before I knew it, she was on top of me, frantically searching for the knife, which had disappeared from sight, hidden somewhere under the mountains of chiffon in my dress. At least the dratted dress was good for something. We spent what felt like centuries but was probably only seconds clawing at each other, my dress now completely torn from my body.
By this time I was screaming for help at the top of my lungs. Where the hell were all the people in this hotel anyway? Couldn’t anybody hear me?
Then, to my horror, I saw Pam retrieve the knife from under a pile of chiffon.
“Sorry, Jaine,” she said, holding it aloft. “Oh, and by the way, thanks again for the resume.”
Then, just as she was about to plunge the knife into my chest, the elevator door dinged open, and we were on the rooftop terrace, surrounded by a crowd of gaping Union National employees. Thank heavens. Someone had heard me.
The next thing I knew, a couple of security guards were prying Pam off me and hauling her away. And then the hunkalicious Andrew Ferguson stepped out of the crowd and kneeled down next to me.
“I’ve heard of bad room service,” he said, “but that was ridiculous. Are you okay?”
Was I okay?? Of course I wasn’t okay!! I was lying there in front of half the staff of Union National Bank, practically naked in my waist-nipper pantyhose and Reeboks!
“Yes,” I managed to say. “I’m okay.”
He glanced down at my waist nippers and whispered: “You know, ever since I saw those pantyhose on my desk, I’ve been wondering what you looked like in them. And out of them.”
Then he smiled a smile that made me blush right down to my Reeboks.
What do you know? Looks like my Fairy Godmother was working that night, after all.
Epilogue
Needless to say, the cops released Rochelle and arrested Pam. Her lawyer’s going to have one hell of a time explaining the “building inspector” costume the cops found in her apartment.
After all that happened, it was no surprise that the PMS Club broke up. Not long ago, we met for lunch and caught up on the events in each other’s lives.
You’ll be happy to learn that Doris is engaged to a widower she met at a “How to Survive the Loss of a Love” support group.
Ashley is no longer pretending to be rich and seems a lot more at peace with herself. She’s renting out her house to movie production companies and got herself a job as a personal shopper at Saks. Last I heard, she was dating a guy in ladies’ lingerie. (No, not a cross-dresser, but a buyer from the New York office.)
Colin landed a terrific gig as a personal assistant with one of L.A.’s hottest new caterers. And you’ll never guess who that caterer is. Rochelle! Yep, she divorced her ratfink of a husband and went into business doing what she does best—cooking.
After catering some movie shoots at Ashley’s house, the word spread, and now Rochelle is whipping up empanadas and margaritas for Hollywood’s “A List.” (One thing she refuses to make, though, is guacamole. If a customer insists on it, she buys it at the market.)
Marty Meyers is living with his latest mistress—not poor Cissy, but the 19-year-old bimbette he hired to replace Nurse Medusa. Pam was lying about seeing him on the day of the murder. At the time Pam claimed to have seen him outside Ralph’s supermarket, he was actually holed up in his office, drilling his bimbette.
Colin and Lance were a hot and heavy item for a couple of months, until Lance let Colin redecorate his living room. I warned him not to do it, but did he listen? Nooo. They got into a huge fight over the coffin Colin expected Lance to use as a coffee table, and things went pffft from there.
Bad news about Kandi. She’s single again. Steve dumped her. It seems he fell in love with Armando, the wedding planner. I guess they bonded all those nights when Kandi was working late. At first, she was devastated, but you know Kandi. A month later, she was signing up for a course in Singles Kickboxing.
As for me, I spent six weeks with my leg in a cast. Not from my elevator encounter with Pam, but from tripping over one of Mr. Goldman’s two left feet at Mambo Mania. What a night. Trust me, you don’t want to know the details. Let’s just say it’s the last time I’ll ever go dancing with a man who uses his dentures as castanets.
My big job at Union National? It was heavenly while it lasted, which was all of
two weeks. Yes, two weeks after I started editing the Tattler, Union National was bought out by a German conglomerate. One of the first things they did was save $40,000 a year by firing me and folding the Tattler.
The second thing they did was transfer Andrew Ferguson to Stuttgart, Germany. A quatrillion miles away. Can you believe it? I didn’t even get a chance to go out with the guy. By the time the doctor finally took the cast off my leg, Andrew was auf wiedersehen, gone with the wind. He called before he left, though, and promised to keep in touch. I’ll let you know if he does.
Well, gotta go. Prozac’s howling for her dinner.
Catch you next time.
P.S. By the way, I finally got Prozac to stop eating bacon bits. I convinced her that, with all those chemicals and artificial ingredients, they were way too unhealthy.
Now she insists on real bacon.
Freelance writer Jaine Austen is back! This time around she’s writing jokes for a female comic in order to make a buck. But when the comic’s male rival is found dead, strangled by a pair of pantyhose, and Jaine’s client is arrested, it’s once again up to her to figure out whodunit…
Jaine Austen has never been able to resist the siren call of an Eskimo Pie, just like she can’t resist renewing her romance with Andrew, an old crush. With her bank account hitting new lows, she’s also just agreed to write jokes for Dorcas, a stand-up comic who throws her pantyhose into the audience as a punch line.
Not only is Dorcas’s act a bomb, she is heckled by Vic, a gorgeous fellow comic who is equally good on stage and in the sack. Unfortunately Vic loves performing in both venues. He gets in bed with a sexy waitress, a pretty new lover, and a sweet girlfriend while professing his undying love for each. Worse, he is two-timing his aging agent. Pretty soon Vic has an enemy’s list a mile long, and when he needles Dorcas one time too many, she assaults him at a club’s open-mike night.
Naturally when Vic is murdered with Dorcas’s pantyhose and that same Dorcas is standing over his dead body, the police arrest…Dorcas. They figure it’s an open-and-shut case although Jaine figures no killer can be that dumb—even Dorcas. But when Jaine sets out to find the real culprit, she is distracted by one dating disaster after another with Andrew—and she may not see the dark side of comedy until she faces the business end of a gun and a cold, deadly grin…
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek at
Laura Levine’s
DEATH BY PANTYHOSE
coming next month in hardcover!
Chapter 1
Ever have one of those days where everything seems to go your way, where the gods smile on your every move and good luck follows you around like an eager puppy?
Neither have I.
No matter how great things start out in my life, sooner or later something is guaranteed to hit the fan.
Take the day the whole pantyhose mess began. It started out smoothly enough. My cat, Prozac, waited until the civilized hour of 8 A.M. before swan diving on my chest to wake me up.
“Morning, pumpkin,” I murmured, as she nuzzled her furry head under my chin.
She looked at me with big green eyes that seemed to say, You’re my favorite human in all the world. (Well, not exactly. What they really seemed to say was, When do we eat? But I knew deep down, she loved me.)
When I looked out the window, I was happy to see that the early morning smog that hovers over L.A. for months on end had finally taken a powder. The sun was back in action, shining its little heart out.
Things got even better when I discovered a free sample of Honey Nutty Raisin Bits with my morning newspaper, which meant I didn’t have to nuke one of the petrified Pop Tarts in my freezer for breakfast.
After feeding Prozac a bowl of Moist Mackerel Guts and inhaling my Honey Nutty Raisin Bits straight from the box, I did the crossword puzzle (with nary a trip to the dictionary) and spent the rest of the morning polishing my resume for an upcoming job interview. And not just any job interview. I, Jaine Austen, a gal who normally writes toilet bowl ads for a living, had a meeting lined up that very morning at Rubin-McCormick, one of L.A.’s hottest ad agencies.
And so it was with a spring in my step and Honey Nutty Raisin Bits on my breath that I headed off to the bedroom to get dressed for my interview. I took out my one and only Prada suit from my closet, pristine clean in its dry-cleaning bag. No unsightly ketchup stains ambushed me at the last minute, like they usually do. I checked my one and only pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes. Not a scuff mark in sight. I checked my hair in the mirror. No crazy cowlicks or Brillo patches in my natural curls. Like I said, the gods were smiling on me.
And that’s when I saw it: a zit on my chin the size of a small Aleutian island.
Now I’ve got nothing against the Aleutian Islands. I’m sure they’re quite scenic. But not on my chin, s’il vous plaît.
I was surveying the disaster in the mirror when the phone rang. I let the machine get it.
Hi! A woman’s eager voice came on the line. I saw your ad in the Yellow Pages, and I’m calling to see if you write comedy material. I’m a stand-up comic, and everyone says I’m hilarious.
Uh-oh. My Bad Job Antenna sprang into action. People who say they’re hilarious are usually about as funny as leftover meatloaf.
I need someone to write some new jokes for my act. Your ad said your rates were reasonable. I sure hope so. I was thinking maybe five bucks a joke. Six or seven if they’re really funny.
Five bucks a joke? Was she kidding? Court jesters were making more than that in the Middle Ages.
Give me a call if you’re interested. My name is Dorcas. Oh, and by the way, you can catch my act at the Laff Palace on open-mike nights. I’m the one who throws my pantyhose into the audience.
Did I hear right? Did she actually say she threw her pantyhose into the audience? Sounded more like a stripper than a comic to me.
Needless to say, I didn’t write down her number. In the first place, I wasn’t really a comedy writer. And in the second place, even if I was a comedy writer, the last thing I wanted to do was write jokes for a pantyhose-tossing comic. And in the third and most important place, for once in my life, I wasn’t desperate for money.
Yes, for the past several months, my computer had been practically ablaze with writing assignments: I’d done a freelance piece for the L.A. Times on 24-hour Botox Centers. A new brochure for Mel’s Mufflers (Our Business Is Exhausting). And to top it off, I’d just finished an extensive ad campaign for my biggest client, Toiletmasters Plumbers, introducing their newest product, an extra large toilet bowl called Big John. All of which meant I had actual funds in my checking account.
What’s more, if my job interview today went well, I’d be bringing home big bucks from the Rubin-McCormick ad agency. I’d answered their ad for a freelance writer, and much to my surprise Stan McCormick himself had called me to set up an appointment. Who knows? Maybe he’d seen my botox piece in the L.A. Times. Or maybe he was the proud owner of a Big John. I didn’t care why he wanted to see me; all I knew was that I had a shot at a job at one of L.A.’s premiere ad agencies.
Which was why that zit on my chin was so annoying. But with diligent effort (and enough concealer to caulk a bathtub), I eventually managed to camouflage it.
After I finished dressing, I surveyed myself in the mirror. If I do say so myself, I looked nifty. My Prada suit pared inches from my hips (which needed all the paring they could get). My Manolos gave me three extra statuesque inches. And my frizz-free hair was a veritable shinefest.
I headed out to the living room, where I found Prozac draped over the back of the sofa.
“Wish me luck, Pro,” I said, as I bent down to kiss her good-bye.
She yawned in my face, blasting me with mackerel breath.
Hurry back. I may want a snack.
“I love you, too, dollface.”
Then I headed outside to my Corolla, where the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and the grass was growing greener by the minute.
/> Nothing, I thought, could possibly go wrong on such a spectacular day.
I’m sure the gods had a hearty chuckle over that one.
Chapter 2
The Rubin-McCormick Agency was headquartered in a high-rent business complex in Santa Monica, a gleaming Mediterranean extravaganza with swaying palm trees and waterfalls out front. If you didn’t know it was an office building, you’d swear you were at a Ritz-Carlton. I drove past the waterfalls to the impeccably landscaped parking lot, thrilled to have landed an interview in such august surroundings.
The lobby was deserted when I got there. It was nearly eleven, that quiet time before the lunch rush, and I had the place all to myself. I rang for the elevator and started rehearsing my opening greeting.
“Hello, Mr. McCormick,” I said to the elevator doors. “I’m Jaine Austen.”
Nah. Maybe “Mr.” was too formal. These ad agencies were hip, happening places.
“Hey, Stan. Jaine here.”
No, no, no! That was way too familiar. I wanted to be his writer, not his golf buddy.
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. McCormick,” I tried. “I’m Jaine Austen.”
Suddenly a voice came out of nowhere.
“A pleasure to meet you, too, Ms. Austen.”
I whirled around and saw a tall guy in his late forties, graying at the temples, in khakis and a cashmere blazer. He wore tinted aviator glasses and carried an attaché case that cost more than my Corolla.
Dear Lord, I prayed. Please don’t let him be Stan McCormick.
He smiled a craggy suntanned smile.
“Hi. I’m Stan McCormick.”