“Pearl, what are you doing?” she asked her.
Pearl glanced over her shoulder. “Looking for something to clean the walls, of course. And the floor.”
“Of course,” Bernie said. Wouldn’t that be everyone’s first thought? “Don’t do that. The police won’t like it.”
Estes lifted his hands in supplication, dropped them to his sides, and looked up at the ceiling. “Why, dear God, does everything happen to me?”
“I think it happened to Hortense,” Bernie pointed out.
“Hortense is no longer among us. I am,” Estes shot back.
“Precisely my point.” Bernie turned her attention back to Pearl. “Pearl,” she said in the same voice she imagined she would use on a recalcitrant small child. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave the walls alone.”
Pearl straightened up. Bernie noted that she had a roll of paper towels in one hand, a bottle of spray cleanser in the other, and a look of steely determination in her eyes.
“I think Top Job would be better, but this will do.”
Bernie wanted to say, “Don’t do it,” but before she could get the words out of her mouth, Pearl walked over and let loose with a spray of cleanser on the wall. “I prefer high-gloss paint for cleaning purposes, but semi-gloss does just as well, don’t you think?” she asked Bernie. “Thank heavens this room wasn’t painted with flat latex. For a while, Hortense was thinking of using a flat yellow latex in here, but I managed to talk her out of it.”
“Really,” Bernie said. She didn’t know whether to be fascinated or appalled. “You have to stop,” she told Pearl. “You have to stop what you’re doing now.”
Pearl gave her an exasperated glance.
“But I can’t just leave it like this,” she protested. “Hortense would be immensely displeased if I did.”
“The police will displeased if you don’t,” Bernie told her.
Jean La Croix waved his hand around the room. “But this is … how you say … so ugly.”
Bernie gestured at the blood-splatter pattern on the wall. “Would it be better if it were attractive? Something you could make into a new wallpaper pattern?”
“That is a horrible thing to say,” Jean La Croix huffed.
“You’re right,” Bernie told him as she refocused her attention on Pearl. “Maybe what you say about Hortense is true,” she told her, “but you’re going to have to leave things alone anyway.”
“I can’t,” Pearl wailed.
She turned back and directed another shot of cleanser at the wall. Visions of forensic evidence vanishing danced before Bernie’s eyes.
“Libby, take the bottle away,” Bernie told her sister, who as luck would have it was standing right next to Pearl.
Libby looked at Bernie uncertainly.
“Me?”
“No. The king of Siam.”
“There’s no need for sarcasm.”
Bernie took a deep breath. “Please,” she got out through gritted teeth. “Just take the cleanser away from Pearl now.”
“I don’t know,” Libby said as Pearl clutched the bottle to her chest. “Why don’t you do it?”
“Because you’re closer.”
“By five steps.”
“Why do things always have to be so complicated with you?” Bernie snapped.
Libby bit her lip. “We shouldn’t be arguing.”
“No. You’re right. We shouldn’t be.” Bernie thought for a moment. She nodded in Pearl’s direction. “Why don’t you take Pearl into the green room and make her a nice cup of tea?”
Libby brightened.
“I think that’s a splendid idea,” Brittany said.
“I think we could all use something,” Consuela observed. “Maybe a shot of scotch?”
“Cognac,” Jean La Croix said. “What we need is some cognac.”
“How about some cookies?” Libby suggested. “I always find cookies help in times such as these.”
Reginald rolled his eyes.
“Really, my dear,” he said to Libby. “You’ve been reading too many British murder mysteries. Next you’re going to suggest crumpets.”
Bernie watched a flush grow on Libby’s cheeks.
“Hey,” Bernie told Reginald. “That was entirely unnecessary. Libby was just trying to be helpful.”
Reginald put his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“So sorry. I didn’t realize your sister was such a delicate flower.”
Bernie took a step toward him. “Don’t be nasty.”
Reginald appealed to everyone. “What did I say?” he asked.
Bernie caught herself before she answered. Just calm down, she told herself. Calm down and focus on the big picture. The important thing was that they were contaminating the crime scene by being here—if it was a crime scene. After all, Estes could be right, Bernie thought. There was a chance. Albeit a slim one.
Maybe the list was in the bedroom. Maybe the stove exploding was an accident. After all, accidents did happen, stoves did explode because of the way they were installed. Unfortunately, Bernie’s gut told her different.
“Who put you in charge anyway?” Estes demanded of Bernie as Libby started leading Pearl out of the room. “I’m the producer. I’m the person around here who’s supposed to be giving the orders. Everyone listens to me.”
“We’re not taping the show yet,” Bernie retorted.
“Good point, Joe,” Reginald said. He pointed a shaking finger at Bernie. “You’re like some Jonah.”
“Jonah?” Brittany said.
“If you were in any way literate,” Reginald snapped at her, “you would know that I was referring to someone who brings bad luck.” He pointed at Bernie. “Wherever you go, bad things happen.”
“That’s not true,” Bernie said, even though she was beginning to believe it might be. After all, she and her sister had been involved in investigating two murders already. “Anyway, no matter what you think of me, you still have to call the police and report this.”
“We will. After the show,” Estes said.
“Are you nuts?” Bernie demanded.
“We have to go on the air soon.”
“Unfortunately, there seems to be a problem.” Bernie pointed to Hortense. No one looked down. “What are you going to do for your hostess? Prop her up, attach some strings to her arms and mouth, and have someone move them?”
“That’s disgusting,” Consuela cried as Brittany Saperstein’s cell went off again. “Show some respect for the dead.”
“I’m trying to,” Bernie said as Brittany answered her call.
“You won’t believe what happened,” Brittany said into her cell.
“I’ve had it with that,” Estes roared as he made a grab for Brittany’s phone.
Brittany feinted, took a step back, and almost tripped over Hortense. “I have to go,” she told the person on the other end of the line. “I have a situation here I have to deal with.”
“A situation?” Estes growled. “Is that what you’d call this?”
Brittany put her hands on her hips.
“Well, what would you call it?” she demanded.
“A catastrophe,” Estes replied.
“Same thing,” Brittany said.
“No, it’s not,” Estes replied. “It’s not the same thing at all.”
“I have to agree with Estes on this,” Bernie said.
“Who cares?” Brittany retorted.
Bernie pointed to herself. “I do.”
Consuela gave the gold chain around her neck a tug. “What I want to know,” she said, “is what are we going to do about it?”
“Yes,” Jean La Croix repeated. “What are we going to do?”
“I’m trying to tell you,” Estes said.
“So,” La Croix said, “we are waiting.”
“We have a problem, and we’re going to solve it. As I’ve been trying to say for the last five minutes, Eric will take her place.”
Eric’s thumb stopped in midpress of one
of the numbers on his cell phone keypad. His head popped up. “I will?” he croaked.
“You’ve always told me you wanted to, haven’t you?” Estes asked.
Eric lowered the phone to his side. “Well"—Eric began when Estes cut him off.
“In fact, I’ve overheard you say any number of times that you could do a better job than Hortense.”
“I never said that,” Eric stammered.
“You most certainly did.”
La Croix stepped forward. “So, Eric, are you going to let me use my pans?”
“I don’t know,” Eric stammered. “It’s not my—”
“And I need my knives,” Pearl added.
Consuela crossed her arms over her chest.
“If they get to use their things, then I want to use my special salt,” she said.
Bernie decided that Eric was acquiring that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look.
Estes stroked his chin. “So, Eric, who are you calling?” Estes asked him.
Eric bit his lip.
“Well?” Estes said. “Are you calling the New York Post? The National Enquirer? Your grandmother? Your nephew? Who?”
“No,” Eric yelped. “I was calling Bree Nottingham.”
Bernie watched Estes nod his head. The effect was somewhat like one rubber ball hitting the other. He rubbed his hands together.
“That’s the first decent suggestion I’ve heard in the last ten minutes,” he said. “Bree will know what to do.”
Libby groaned.
“I think I feel sick.”
Bernie took a good look at her sister. In the last ten minutes, the green in her complexion seemed to have mutated from lime to olive.
“Do you want a drink?” Bernie asked her. They had to have alcohol somewhere around here, and heaven only knows she could use one herself.
Libby shook her head.
“A cookie?”
Libby shook her head again.
“You sure?” Libby refusing a cookie? Now things were serious.
“I think I need to lie down.”
Bernie was leading her out of the room when Libby turned her head and leaned over. Bernie jumped out of the way, but it was too late. Libby had barfed all over her pink suede wedges.
Chapter 6
Libby rinsed her mouth out with tap water again, then looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She still looked green. Why did she have such a weak stomach? No one else had puked at the crime scene but her. No one else had made a spectacle of themselves, that was for sure.
She should have gotten some air when she felt herself going queasy, not tried to tough it out. But oh no. Now she was going to owe Bernie for a new pair of shoes. Why couldn’t she have thrown up on the floor, for heaven’s sake? It would have been cheaper—both financially and emotionally, Libby reflected. She patted her hair in place and went outside.
As she stepped into the hallway, something that Bernie had said to her when she’d been working in L.A. struck her.
“Never underestimate the power of stardust on civilians,” Bernie had said. “Proximity to television and movies makes people do nutty things.”
Libby had told her she was the one who was nuts, but given what was happening, she was beginning to think her sister had been right. Or maybe it was the power of Bree Nottingham, real estate agent extraordinaire, who was responsible for the fact that they were going on the air in a little over an hour. Bree. Just the idea that she was waiting for her made Libby cringe. The only good thing was that Bree hadn’t seen her throwing up.
“There you are,” Bree said as Libby reentered the room. “Are you feeling better?” she asked.
“She’s fine,” Bernie said. “Aren’t you, Libby?”
“Yes,” Libby said in as positive a voice as she could manage.
Looking at Bree now, resplendent in her black and white tweed Chanel suit and black Manolo Blahnik stiletto boots, Libby was once again struck by her ability to engineer any situation with the aid of those indispensable aids to modern life—her BlackBerry and her cell phone. It was why she was who she was.
From her experience, Libby would have bet anything that once the police were called, a predictable sequence of events would follow. The police would arrive, the rooms would be taped shut until the forensic team had completed their investigation, people would be interviewed, and the station would be showing a rerun of the Hortense Calabash Show this evening.
But that’s not what had occurred, no sirree bob, not by a long shot, as her mother had liked to say. Bree had taken one look at Hortense’s body, briskly stepped back out of the test kitchen, whipped out her cell, and summoned the Longely chief of police, Lucas Broad, to Hortense’s estate.
Libby didn’t know what Bree had said to him, because after she’d said something about “my people,” Bree had walked away, and Libby hadn’t been able to hear the rest of the conversation, although not from want of trying, she had to admit. But whatever Bree had said, she and Bernie agreed it had certainly been effective.
Fifteen minutes later, there was Old Lucy, as her father called him, studying the scene of the “tragic misfortune,” as Estes kept insisting on calling it. Then he and Estes and Bree had huddled together for a ten-minute confab, while everyone else milled around the green room. At that point, Libby was all set to have Estes tell everyone the taping was off. Which was more than fine with her.
“No way, Sherlock,” Bernie had whispered when Libby had told her. “Bet you ten bucks.”
“You’re on,” Libby had whispered back.
She’d really wanted Bernie to be wrong. All she wanted to do was go home, take a bath, down some aspirin for her headache, and get to work on her soup for the next day. Was that too much to ask? Evidently it was, because two minutes later, Lucy had walked over and announced to everyone that the show was going to go on as planned. The police would work around the shooting schedule.
Bernie had just smiled and stuck out her hand, palm upward.
“Told you,” she said.
“The trouble with people today is that they don’t have any respect for the dead,” Libby had grumped as she slapped two five-dollar bills into Bernie’s palm.
“You sound like Mom,” Bernie had told her as Bree materialized beside them.
How does she do that? Libby wondered as Bree looked at the money in Bernie’s hand, then looked back up at Libby.
“I forgot to pay Bernie for the eggs she picked up this morning,” Libby stammered. She didn’t know why she was lying to Bree. There was no reason to, but Bree always made her feel crass.
“Actually it was the snails,” Bernie added. “Haven’t you heard? We’re raising our own. Kind of a test run. Did you know that some archaeologists think that snails were the first animal that man domesticated? And that the Mesopotamians ate them as did the Romans and that a French recipe for their use appeared in a 1390 cookbook, although they didn’t become popular until the beginning of the sixteenth century.”
Bree raised an eyebrow. “Really. How fascinating.”
She idly touched her French knot. Libby noted that it was perfect as per usual. Then she wondered if there was anything about Bree that wasn’t perfect.
“I need to talk to the two of you for a minute,” she informed them.
“Wonderful,” Libby muttered under her breath as Bree motioned for her and Bernie to follow her into the hallway.
Knowing Bree, she probably wanted her to cater a sit-down dinner for twenty-five by tomorrow night for under two hundred dollars, Libby thought, as well as arrange for the flowers.
“Now, my dears,” Bree said once she, Bernie, and Libby were standing outside the green room, “I have a teeny, tiny little favor to ask of you.”
Here we go, Libby thought. Then she realized from the expression on Bree’s face that she must have groaned out loud.
Bree had raised her eyebrow again. “Surely you wouldn’t begrudge me in this time of need.”
“Of course not,” Bernie replied f
or Libby. “She was just groaning because her feet hurt, right, Libby?”
“Right, Bernie.”
What else could she say? Not something along the lines of, “You don’t ask for tiny favors.” They’re all either expensive, time-consuming, or both.
Bree looked at Libby’s feet and said, “I feel for you, my dear. Bad feet can be such a trial. It’s so sad to go shopping and not be able to wear the cute shoes. I would die if that happened to me. But I understand they’re doing wonderful things with surgery these days.”
“I don’t need surgery,” Libby said.
She realized she was gritting her teeth so hard her jaw was aching. She looked down at her feet. She was wearing perfectly respectable black leather ballet flats. Even Bernie had said they weren’t bad.
“I never said you did.” Bree sighed. “You always have been overly sensitive. I just gave you a fact.” Then she changed the subject before Libby could reply. “Poor, poor Hortense. She was going to have her bunions removed. Not that she has to worry about that now.”
“Guess not,” Bernie said. “Though she might have to worry about a pedicure. I understand people’s nails keep growing after they’re dead. Maybe that could be a new service for funeral homes. Postmortem pedicures.”
“Really,” Bree shrilled. “Sometimes I don’t know what’s the matter with you, Bernie.”
This, Libby decided, might be the only subject that she and Bree agreed upon.
“Sorry,” Bernie replied, although Libby noted that she didn’t look at all contrite.
After a moment of silence, Bree beckoned for Libby and Bernie to come closer.
“Well, the police are telling me"—here Bree lowered her voice even more—"that they suspect a homicide.”
“What a surprise,” Bernie muttered at the same time that Libby said, “Great.”
Why couldn’t Hortense’s death have been an accident? Libby didn’t have time for a crime, not now, not before Christmas and New Year’s Eve. This was party season, for heaven’s sake. Hortense should have been more considerate.
Bree shot her a dirty look, and Libby shut up, but she couldn’t stop running her to-do list in her head. Maybe she was more like Pearl Wilde than she wanted to admit, she decided.
A Catered Christmas Page 5