Swept Up (Maid in LA Mystery #4)

by Jacobs, Holly

  So, why would someone want the cops looking at me, or the movie? Maybe because whoever killed Mellie didn’t have anything to do with the movie and wanted to point the cops in that way because it was the wrong direction?

  Cal was just finishing up his call when I hung up. I filled him in.

  Cal listened and got very serious. “Quincy, I know that we tend to spend some time at our own places and not sleep over—I hate saying that I sound like I’m a ten-year-old girl planning a slumber party. Anyway, I know that I should probably make some move to go home tonight, but I don’t want to leave you until we find out who killed Mellie and they’re in custody.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.…” I said.

  “And?”

  “When you asked me to marry you, I asked for time. Time on my own to get to know myself. Well, I’ve had my time. And I know I’m better when you’re with me. So it’s stupid for you to go home every night or two. The truth is, I don’t find any great insights into myself when you’re gone…I just miss you.”

  “What are you saying?” he asked cautiously.

  “Why don’t you move in with me? I mean, we haven’t talked about where we’ll live after we’re married, and if you’d rather we can look for some place totally new for both of us, but for now, my place is bigger than yours, so we could live here.”

  “If you want a new place, we can look, but I’m fine with here. Quincy, I’m fine living pretty much anywhere, as long as you’re there.”

  I know it wasn’t champagne and caviar. And my proposal wasn’t that either. But for me, his last sentence was one of the most romantic things anyone had ever said to me.

  Wow. The last week had brought about a lot of changes in my life. I was officially engaged. I’d won a Mortie for my screenplay. I’d found another dead body. My best friend was having a baby, and I was going to be a godmother. And now I was living with someone…officially.

  Now, if we could just find the murderer, it would be a very good week indeed.

  The next day, Cal had to go to a hearing for a guy he’d busted a while back. He could have said he was taking personal time and got the court date pushed back, but he didn’t want to.

  I knew his hesitancy to go wasn’t that he was worried about me working on the investigation and not filling him in—it was that he was worried about me.

  “Go,” I told him. “My only plans for the day are to reread everything we’ve gathered and maybe got to Psst for lunch.”

  “Nowhere else?” he asked.

  “Honey made a new dish and invited Peri and me to try it.”

  “You’ll be with Peri?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I will.” I wasn’t sure what he thought Peri would do if some big, bad murderer came after me. I wasn’t sure what he thought she’d do if a mouse came after me. Or a bug. Peri didn’t have any killer instincts.

  Peri and Jerome still hadn’t been allowed to move back into their home. They were staying at Le Celebre Hotel—which was home to Honey’s restaurant, Psst—so it was very convenient.

  “Don’t forget, we’re partners in this,” he reminded me, as if I needed reminding. “Talk to Honey, and to any of her staff that are there, but nowhere else, no one else without me.”

  I knew what he was really saying was, I’m afraid for you. I love you. Don’t get yourself killed.

  I mock-spit in my hand and crossed my heart. The boys used to do that all the time when they were younger.

  Only they didn’t mock spit.

  Reluctantly, Cal left.

  I did some laundry and reread all my notes. I’d become a copious note-taker. When Mr. Banning died, everything seemed so vivid—so much bolder than real life. I figured there was no way I’d forget a single second of it.

  Then I started writing the screenplay and realized how much of the detail was hazy.

  Determined to have a complete record of Mellie’s murder I’d been diligent this time. My notepad was full, and I’d taped a number of conversations.

  Somewhere in all those notes, there had to be something I’d missed.

  But I couldn’t find it.

  At noon, with details swimming through my head like some macabre film, I put the files away and headed over to Le Celebre Hotel. I went up to the Presidential Suite.

  Peri opened the door.

  “Don’t say a word about this.…” She waved her hand at the stately, opulent room. “I told Jerome we should just stay with you, he said it was weird rooming with an ex-wife. I pointed out you were more than that, you were the mother of his children and my friend. He wouldn’t listen. So, I agreed when he wanted to move out. I thought we’d be in a normal hotel room, but Quincy, this is ten times bigger than my first apartment. Not to name drop or anything, but George—“

  “George?” I asked.

  “Gorgeous George. Come on, Quincy, he played a doctor on television and his his aunt was a famous singer. Hollywood’s Gorgeous George.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t want to point out there were other George’s in Hollywood, because I’d have had to admit none were quite as gorgeous as he was.

  “Yeah…oh,” Peri said. “He has stayed here. I don’t have a lot of Hollywood crushes, but him I might crush on a bit. Do you think that he might play Julian in Dusted? Oh, he’d make a perfect Julian. And of course, you’d get to know him and could introduce me.”

  “Peri, I don’t know for sure Dusted is going to sell, and I think your George might make more than a movie airing on the HeartMark Channel can afford.”

  She sighed. “Well, a girl can dream.”

  “How about dreaming on your way down to the restaurant?” I teased. “If we’re late, Honey will be annoyed. She’s preparing this just for us.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Honey Martin was a good friend. Her daughter, Beatrix, aka Trixie—for all you Trixie Belden fans, their names make me smile, too—was Mile’s age. We’d commiserated a lot about being the mothers of college-age children.

  We walked down to the lobby level and into Psst.

  “Well, if it isn’t our own Quincy Mac, award winning screenwriter and super-sleuth extraordinaire,” Honey shouted when she spotted us.

  “I wish I was doing more screenwriting and less sleuthing this week,” I muttered. Peri must have heard me because she wrapped her arm around mine and led me into Honey’s kitchen. Everything was white and stainless steel. It was as bright and shiny as Honey.

  “I set a table for you back here, so that I could sit with you.”

  Honey’s an artist. I’m never exactly sure what she’s serving me, but it’s always beautifully presented and it’s always amazing to eat.

  Today’s dish, according to Honey, was a sandwich.

  I looked at the plate she set in front of me and said, “I’m the mother of three boys, and I’ve made thousands of sandwiches, and this is to those what a hamburger is to filet mignon.”

  The sandwich was pretty. Paper-thin bread stuffed with some sort of salady thing sitting on a bed of some kind of coleslaw thing. A red sauce was drizzled all over the place, and a small fruit salad ringed the entire presentation.

  “I wanted something that was gluten free as well as vegan. Something that would.…”

  Peri had already popped her first bite in her mouth and said, “Wow.”

  Honey clapped her hand. “That was exactly the reaction what I wanted.”

  We ate and I asked Honey to run through her recollections of the party. She had a unique perspective. She was there as a guest, but I’d already heard that she’d pitched in and overseen the bar and food. I learned while investigating Mr. Banning’s murder that service people are invisible—well, I didn’t actually learn it then. As someone who’d built her career in the service industry, I knew it from personal experience well before Mr. Banning.

  And even though Honey had been a guest, I thought there was a good chance she wasn’t noticed when she was behind the bar.

  “I knew a lot of the people, but not al
l. No one did anything that really stood out. The girl who played you and her husband had a fight. They were giving each other the cold shoulder for a while.”

  “Did you see Mellie at all?” I asked as I took another bite.

  “A couple times. I saw when she came into the party. No one seemed happy to see her. I saw her drape herself over almost every available man at the party, but none of them seemed overly inclined to take her blatant offers. And I already told Detective Randolph that I saw her talking to one guy I didn’t know. They were on the other side of the room, so I didn’t get a good look at him, but it was close enough that I’d have recognized him if I knew him. I could tell Mellie had a cat-who-ate-the-canary sort of look, but he wasn’t happy at all. Detective Randolph said he’s bringing over pictures of everyone on the guest list later. I know it wasn’t anyone on the catering staff.”

  I pulled out my cellphone and opened the file where I’d stashed all the guests’ pictures.

  She thumbed through the photos as I finished the meal and said, “If I could live in a world where you or Big G cooked for me every night, life would be perfect.”

  She stopped thumbing through the pictures and looked up at me. “I’m going out with him. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I glanced at the picture on my phone. “Jonas?”

  She shook her head. “No Big G.”

  “Why would I mind? That’s delightful news.” To be honest, they were perfect for each other.

  Peri put down her fork and clapped her hands. “Oh, that’s wonderful. Quincy and I decided a while back the two of you were perfect for each other. You both like food. You’re both nice. And—”

  Honey held up her hand. “He is nice. And do you know, he’s read all the Trixie Belden books.”

  Now, Big G was many things, but I’d never imagined that he was a fan of teen girl mysteries.

  “Your expression is priceless,” Honey said, laughing. “He read them when he was a kid and was laid up with a broken leg one summer. His sister had the collection. He was so cute when he told me he never felt emasculated by how much he liked them. He claims they were manly in their own way, that there were enough major male characters that he felt they could be guy-reads.”

  “So he enjoyed the fact that Beatrix is called Trixie?”

  She nodded. “That’s how the conversation started. He realized the connection in our names.”

  She started scanning through the pictures again. “I don’t see him.”

  “I haven’t got everyone picture yet. Let me check out NetMovieDatabase and Facebook and see if I can find pictures of the dozen or so people I don’t have yet. Can I text them to you?”

  “Sure.”

  Peri grinned as we left Psst. “Honey saw a strange man talking to Mellie. That has to be him. I just knew it wasn’t someone we knew and liked.”

  “That would be too simple. A strange man sneaks into your house and murders a woman who no one liked, then snuck out again without anyone being the wiser?” It was the perfect scenario, but I didn’t think someone with no connection to us killed Mellie. It would make things simpler though.

  And sometimes the simplest answer was the best one. Occam’s Razor. Hey, I don’t just watch detective shows, I watch Big Bang, too. And we all felt that the Mortie in Mellie’s hand was a distraction. It made sense that someone who wasn’t connected to the movie wanted us to look at the movie.

  “Yes. A stranger. Quincy, your friends are my friends, and I worked with the cast and crew. The only person at the party who I think might be capable of murder was Mellie.”

  I had to agree.

  “Do you have any more investigating to do today?” Peri asked.

  “No. I promised Cal. You, then lunch with Honey, then home. He’s trying to pretend that he’s my trusty sidekick in this investigation, but he really sees himself as my bodyguard. He’s convinced that whoever killed Mellie might come after me.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “The Mortie. It was too much like Mr. Banning’s murder. We think it’s a distraction. Someone put it there to have the cops concentrating on me and the movie.”

  “Maybe you have a deranged fan. Jerome made that movie last year about the actress with the deranged fan. And there’s that Kathy Bates movie. I love Kathy Bates. She’s one of my favorite actors.”

  “I like her, too, but frankly, I wouldn’t want her or anyone else to be my deranged fan.”

  “But think of the screenplay you’d get out of that? Dick would be thrilled.”

  I laughed. “He would.”

  “So, listen, since you’re not allowed to investigate, I have an idea…”

  “…and I will never listen to another one of Peri’s ideas again,” I told Cal that night. “But before I knew it, she’d called Tiny and they dragged me to the bridal shop.”

  “Oh, the horrors,” Cal exclaimed in a mocking sort of way.

  “It was. They called Mom and then texted her pictures as I tried on dresses. They’ve all agreed that a traditional white Cinderella gown won’t do. But none of them could agree on what they think I should wear.”

  “What do you think you should wear?” he asked in a much more supportive way.

  “Jeans and a Mac’Cleaner’s sweatshirt?” I asked.

  He laughed, as if he thought I was joking. “You’ll survive.”

  “You think?”

  “Quincy, clothes are clothes. Whether you’re wearing a gown or jeans, you’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Now, this was sweet. You’d think that I’d be all swoony and melty. And I was a bit, but Cal’s cavalier clothes-are-clothes attitude nettled a bit, so I shared my mother’s offer with relish.

  “I’m so glad you feel that way, darling.” Now we rarely use terms of endearments. He’s Cal. Occasionally Caleb. I’m Quincy. Occasionally Quince. So that darling caught his attention.

  “Mom decided that I need something unique,” I said with relish. “And given that I’d named Mac’Cleaners after our actual family name, she had a brilliant idea. All the Mac men would wear kilts. They all have them. She was ordering a Mclean kilt for you before I even got home.”

  His clothes-are-just-clothes expression disappeared and was replaced with horror. “Wait, what?”

  “Yes. She wanted you and all the Mac men to wear kilts to our wedding. Sporrans even.”

  “What’s a sporran?” he asked.

  I could hear the trepidation in his voice. And while I loved the man like crazy, I will confess, I did sort of enjoy picking on him more than might be considered seemly.

  “That little purse guys wear over their,” I gestured at the bodily region the sporran covered.

  “A man purse?”

  “A man purse that tends to sit right.…” I graphically pointed this time.

  “I take back what I said. Clothes do matter. Let’s just elope. You can wear jeans and your Mac’Cleaner’s sweatshirt. I’ll wear the same, too for that matter.”

  “It’s too late, buddy. Mom, Tiny and Peri have their little fingers in this particular wedding cake. There’s nothing we can do. Honey’s already planning our menu.”

  “I think I’m going to have to wear my family’s traditional wedding garb,” he said.

  “Parker is English. Your mom was a Baeur. You want to wear lederhosen?”

  He sighed. “No.”

  “Mom will be thrilled you decided to embrace our family tradition.”

  “You’re enjoying this,” he accused.

  “No. But hey, if I have to suffer, I think you should, too.”

  “I think we’re going to have to have a serious talk about what kind of wedding we want.”

  I hugged him. “Don’t tell my mom, Tiny or Peri, but the only thing that really matters to me is that you’re there.”

  “Me, too,” he said sweetly. But I couldn’t miss the fact that he mumbled, “But it would be nice if I didn’t have to wear a kilt.

  Chapter Eight

  O
n Saturday, I decided to wear black to Mellie’s memorial service. I sucked in my stomach as I looked at myself in the mirror and immediately felt vain that something like my baby pooch should bother me when I was on the way to a funeral.

  Then I felt worse because I was wearing black to Mellie’s funeral.

  I didn’t know her well, and what I did know I didn’t like. So looking like I was in mourning made me feel disingenuous.

  But I decided to keep the black dress on. I might not have liked Mellie, but I didn’t wish her dead, so I could mourn the fact that someone lost their life too soon. I guess I was mourning the fact that she’d never have a chance to be the person she could have been.

  I was mourning the loss of her potential.

  I felt a bit less fake as I walked out into the living room and found Cal in a dark, navy suit.

  “You look nice,” I told him.

  “So do you,” he said.

  Now most of the time if either of us said something like that, we’d have done that particular little eyebrow wiggle that indicated how we’d like to celebrate our looking-niceness. But we were both somber because it was a funeral. There was no eyebrow wiggling. No suggestive looks or comments.

  We were a somber duo as we headed out to the memorial.

  “Charlie called and interviewed all three boys. They didn’t have anything to share with him. Neither did my family or Lottie.” I voiced my inner fear. “We’re not getting anywhere, Cal.”

  “We’ll figure it out, Quincy. It hasn’t even been a week.”

  “Almost. Last week at this time we were getting ready for the Morties. I was so excited. I know they always say it’s an honor to simply be nominated, and it’s so true…it was. I kept wanting to pinch myself.”

  “I know.”

  I was quiet, mulling and then said, “Peri said they released the crime scene. She and Jerome are moving back into the house today.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Cal, Peri said my Mortie will be there. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, it even if it wasn’t mine, but rather Sean’s Mortie they found with Mellie.”