Swag Bags and Swindlers

by Dorothy Howell

  I wished my face was full of Botox so Laronda couldn’t read my expression.

  Then my employee job performance review bloomed in my head, followed quickly by the vision of walking out of Holt’s for the very last time—a great motivator.

  “No problem,” I said.

  “Contact my assistant. She’ll give you the costume sizes for the children,” Laronda said, then left.

  I left, too, and went back to my office.

  This whole thing with Ty was consuming my thoughts and sapping my energy. I needed to make some progress on finding out exactly what he’d been up to in Palmdale. Luckily, I had two sources to turn to for info.

  I grabbed my cell phone off my desk and walked to the window. Traffic was heavy on the streets below, as always, and people were coming and going from the nearby office buildings and the Galleria. I called Detective Shuman. His voicemail picked up, so I left a message. Next I tried Jack Bishop.

  Jack was a private investigator who managed to be totally hot and totally cool at the same time. He was gorgeous, smart, and beyond competent. We’d worked together many times and seeing him, or hearing his voice, or even thinking about him always made my heart beat a little faster. Nothing romantic had ever happened between us, but we’d had a couple of close calls.

  Jack was wired in to most everything that happened in L.A. If anybody could uncover info on the Kelvin Davis murder investigation and Ty’s possible connection, it was him.

  My hand trembled a little as I punched in Jack’s number on my cell phone. His voicemail answered—jeez, he had the sexiest voice ever—so I left what I hoped would come across as an oh-so-clever message.

  Just as I turned toward my desk, my cell phone rang. My heart jumped. Wow, Jack had called back already.

  “Hey there,” I said when I answered, using my I-can-beas-cool-as-you-are voice.

  “How is it coming?” my mom asked.

  Mom? Oh my God, I thought I was talking to Jack and it was Mom? Damn. That’s what I get for not checking the ID screen.

  “Haley? How’s it coming?” she asked again.

  I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “You’re finished with my résumé already?” she asked.

  Oh, yeah, her résumé. I’d forgotten about it because, really, I figured Mom would have forgotten about it.

  “I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided we should focus on a particular area,” she said.

  Note: Mom said “we” when I was the one doing all the work.

  “Sure, Mom, that would be great,” I said, as I collapsed into my desk chair.

  “I’d like an outdoor job,” she said.

  I looked down at my cell phone, then pressed it to my ear again.

  “Did you say you wanted to work outdoors?” I asked. “As in, not inside? Actual outside?”

  Okay, this was really weird because Mom’s idea of being in nature was walking the grounds of the Beverly Hilton.

  “Alexander McQueen just previewed a line of the most fabulous casual wear,” Mom said.

  Now it made sense.

  “You know, Mom, if you’re outside there will be a lot of bugs,” I pointed out. “Spiders, too.”

  Mom gasped in horror.

  I understood how she felt. I was wary of anything that had more legs than I had.

  “Perhaps the outdoors isn’t really my milieu,” Mom said.

  “Let me know. Bye,” I said, and hung up.

  I sprang out of my desk chair. I’d really been in the office too long already today.

  I grabbed my things and left.

  When I walked into the reception area at Hollywood Haven, the first thing I noticed was that Karen wasn’t at the front counter. She hadn’t been there the last time I was here, either. I wondered if she was out sick.

  Or had she been fired?

  Vida in HR had told me Karen was on Derrick’s hit list of employees to get rid of. But Derrick was gone now. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who wanted Karen out of there.

  I’d come to the retirement home to talk to Rosalind, the gal who’d taken over for Derrick. I needed her input on a number of things for the anniversary gala. But now I had to find out what was going on with Karen.

  I walked down the corridor past the offices and saw that crime scene tape was still stretched across Derrick’s door. Not a good sign. Apparently, Detectives Walker and Teague hadn’t closed the case yet.

  I really needed to talk to Shuman and find out what was up with the investigation. I glanced at my cell phone, hoping he’d returned my call. He hadn’t. This didn’t suit me, of course, but what could I do?

  The door to Rosalind Fletcher’s office was open, so I stepped inside. The same elderly woman sat at the reception desk. Her chin rested on her chest and her eyes were closed.

  Great. Just what I needed. Somebody who was, literally, asleep on the job.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  The woman didn’t move, didn’t respond. I rapped my knuckles on the door frame. No change. Wow, she must be a really deep sleeper.

  “Excuse me?” I said, a little louder.

  Still nothing.

  Maybe she was hard of hearing, I decided. Maybe if—

  Yikes! Was she dead?

  I went into semi panic mode.

  Was she really dead? Sitting up at her desk? While I was standing here looking like an idiot trying to talk to her?

  I was about to bolt from the office when she suddenly roused, plastered on a smile, and gazed up at me.

  “Can I help you?”

  Oh my God. Why did thinking that this lady was dead bother me so much? It’s not like I’d never seen a dead body.

  Maybe it was because I’d never seen one sitting up before.

  No two ways about it. I was never taking on another event at a retirement home, and I intended to make that clear to everyone who’d listen at L.A. Affairs—after my job performance review, of course.

  “I need to talk with Rosalind,” I said.

  She smiled sweetly. “She’s in a meeting.”

  “When will she available?” I asked.

  “Not long.”

  This was a retirement home where elderly residents wiled away years and years of their lives. “Not long” could mean anything.

  Plus, Rosalind’s receptionist had been asleep and she was really old. I wasn’t sure she knew who Rosalind was, let alone where to find her.

  “Thanks,” I said, and left.

  I figured I’d give Mr. Stewart a try and see if he knew where I could find Rosalind. I walked down the hallway and saw that the door to his office was closed. I glanced around, didn’t see anyone, and leaned closer, listening. No raised voices this time.

  Rosalind could have been inside meeting with Mr. Stewart, since he’d closed the door. Or maybe he was napping. Or maybe he was dead.

  No way was I going in there.

  I headed back, crossed the lobby—still no Karen—and went into the hallway that led to the residents’ wing. Someone was at the piano playing a tune that was kind of familiar. When I reached the dayroom I saw four women crowded around the pianist, singing along. Alden the Great was in the far corner presenting a bouquet of flowers that he’d pulled from his jacket sleeve to an elderly woman. His daughter Emily was beside him. She saw me and waved. I waved back.

  Emily seemed to be here a lot, so I decided I’d ask her if she’d seen Rosalind. I headed that way.

  “Haley? Haley, dear,” someone called.

  I spotted Delores, Shana, and Trudy hurrying toward me. All of them sported updos and bright orange nail polish, like they’d had a sleepover and done each other’s hair and nails. If so, the party was definitely over, because they all looked troubled.

  “We heard,” Delores declared.

  “Say it’s not so,” Shana implored.

  “It can’t be true,” Trudy insisted. “It simply cannot be true.”

  “Tell us, honey,” Delores said. “Com
e on now, be straight with us. We can take it.”

  All three of them gazed wide eyed at me. I had no idea what they were talking about.

  “The gala,” Trudy said. “We heard it might be canceled because that horrible Derrick went and got himself murdered.”

  I wasn’t sure how they’d found out the home’s upper management had doubts about going ahead with the gala. Maybe Mr. Stewart had said something, or perhaps it was another staff member. I didn’t like this kind of rumor circulating. I had too much at stake—oh, and it would be nice for the residents to attend the gala, of course.

  “I’m sure the gala will proceed as planned,” I said. “Some of the staff members were a little concerned that it might look bad to go ahead with it unless the murderer is caught.”

  “It was that Mr. Stewart, wasn’t it?” Delores said. She shook her head. “He’s such a wimp. That’s what he gets for letting everybody else run the place all this time. He’s forgotten how to make a decision.”

  “And besides,” Trudy said, “everybody knows it’s that Vida who had it in for Derrick.”

  “Those two,” Delores agreed. “Like oil and water. That’s what they were. Oil and water.”

  If I’d had this-might-be-a-clue antennae, they would have stood straight up and wiggled.

  “Vida Webster?” I asked. “The head of HR?”

  “Her and that hair of hers,” Trudy said, and sniffed distastefully. “A bad dye job, if you ask me.”

  “Thinks she’s Liza Minnelli,” Shana said, rolling her eyes.

  “She’s no Liza Minnelli,” Trudy said. “We heard them arguing.”

  The other two ladies nodded.

  “Honey, you should have heard the things those two said to each other,” Delores told me.

  “Vida and Derrick?” I asked, just to be sure.

  “It got ugly, honey,” Delores said. “Let me tell you, it got very ugly.”

  “She told him he wasn’t fit to walk through the front door of this place,” Trudy said, “let alone be the assistant director.”

  “That’s exactly what she said,” Shana agreed.

  “And then Derrick threatened Vida,” Trudy said.

  “Derrick told her she’d better watch her step,” Shana said, “or he’d see to it that she got thrown out of here.”

  “Ugly,” Delores said. “Like I said, ugly.”

  “We heard it all,” Trudy said. “Word for word.”

  “Every word,” Shana added, and pointed toward the patio. “Right out there. Right next to the fountain.”

  Vida had told me that Derrick had intended to fire Karen. Now, it seems, Vida was also on Derrick’s hit list.

  I couldn’t help but think this was a heck of a coincidence. I wondered if Vida had been lying to me about Karen. Had she told me about Karen’s impending termination to throw suspicion off herself?

  I didn’t know. But at least now I had two murder suspects.

  CHAPTER 11

  When I left the dayroom and headed down the hallway, I spotted Karen standing behind the front desk. Finally. Where the heck had she been?

  No wonder Derrick wanted to fire her if she was never at her post.

  I mean that in the nicest way, of course.

  “Hi, Haley,” Karen said when I walked up.

  “I didn’t see you earlier,” I said, using my I-hope-it-sounds-as-if-I’m-genuinely-concerned-and-not-just-fishing-for-info voice. “I was afraid you were out sick, or something.”

  “Busy, busy,” Karen said. “Just trying to keep up with everything.”

  I caught a glimpse of a lighter and a pack of cigarettes sticking out of her jacket pocket and figured she’d been on a smoke break. This was a nonsmoking campus, so I imagined she’d found a secluded spot outside where nobody would see her—especially since the place had dozens of oxygen tanks that might blow up.

  I’m pretty sure something like that would be mentioned in a future employee job performance review.

  Karen leaned toward me. “This place has turned into a complete zoo lately. Everybody is doing somebody else’s job, taking up the slack since Derrick’s . . . not here anymore.”

  “I guess he’s really missed?” I asked.

  Karen made a really unattractive snickering sound.

  “Believe me, nobody misses Derrick,” she said. “Except Mr. Stewart, of course.”

  I was glad Karen had jumped right in on the topic of Derrick’s murder and everything that was going on here at Hollywood Haven, because that was exactly what I wanted to talk to her about.

  “Rosalind got bumped up to acting assistant director,” Karen said. “She’s going crazy trying to untangle the mess Derrick made.”

  I gave her an oh-my-god eyebrow bob and said, “You’re kidding.”

  “It’s true. In fact”—Karen glanced around, then leaned closer and lowered her voice—“I heard that Rosalind is thinking about going to the board and complaining.”

  “About Derrick?”

  “About Mr. Stewart,” Karen said.

  Oh, wow. This was some good stuff. I had to keep Karen talking.

  She, however, needed no promoting.

  “There are . . . shall we say questions . . . about Derrick’s qualifications for the assistant director position,” Karen said. “Derrick smooth talked Mr. Stewart into giving him the job. That was Derrick. All he could do was talk.”

  I remembered then that somebody had told me Derrick’s chattiness had offended some of the residents.

  I leaned closer, matching Karen’s now-we’re-seriously-gossiping posture and tone.

  “I heard Derrick got a little too nosy with some of the residents,” I said.

  “There were complaints from the families,” Karen said. She shook her head. “Nothing ever came of it, of course. Mr. Stewart wasn’t about to reprimand Derrick. He doesn’t like to rock the boat, if you get my meaning. He just wants to sit in his office and draw his paycheck until he retires.”

  “There was no push-back from the families?” I asked.

  “More complaints, but nothing ever became of them—at least, not that I’ve heard,” Karen said. “Everybody was wary of Derrick.”

  That was great for the residents who had family members visiting regularly. But what about the others? The ones who were, essentially, left here to fend for themselves?

  “And let me tell you something else,” Karen said, leaning even closer. “Rosalind isn’t going to let Mr. Stewart get by with anything. She’ll—”

  Raised voices drew Karen’s attention. I turned and saw a very frail white-haired woman in a wheelchair being pushed by a younger woman. The elderly lady faced forward, a stoic expression on her face as the other woman railed on about something. I realized I’d seen the two of them before.

  “Ida Verdell,” Karen whispered. “And that’s her daughter Sylvia.”

  Sylvia was probably midforties, tall with dark hair, dressed in jeans and a knit top that I was pretty darn sure she’d bought off the clearance rack at Holt’s.

  “Sylvia visits her mother almost every day,” Karen whispered.

  Judging by Ida’s expression, I didn’t know if she was enjoying her daughter’s visit or enduring it.

  “Really? Almost every day?”

  “Don’t ask me why,” Karen said. “Sylvia isn’t happy about the visits, and she makes sure nobody else is happy either.”

  “She’s a complainer?” I asked.

  “She’s made a nuisance of herself with the whole staff,” Karen said.

  I wondered if that included Derrick.

  Karen must have somehow read my mind.

  “She and Derrick,” Karen said. “There was bad blood between the two of them.”

  Bad enough for Sylvia to murder him? I wondered.

  “Why? What happened?” I asked.

  Karen shook her head. “I never heard the details. But it was something huge. I heard Sylvia yelling—screaming, actually—at Derrick in his office one day.”

  “When?
” I asked.

  “Last week sometime,” Karen said.

  The possibility that I’d come across yet another murder suspect zapped my brain. If Sylvia had been arguing with Derrick last week, perhaps Sylvia had stewed over it all weekend, growing angrier and angrier until she barged into Derrick’s office and murdered him.

  Of course, whatever they were arguing about could have been nothing significant. After working with customers and clients at Holt’s and L.A. Affairs, I’d learned that people could lose their minds over the smallest thing. For all I knew, Sylvia could have been complaining to Derrick about something as non-murder-worthy as the amount of garlic in the spaghetti sauce.

  “And poor Ida,” Karen said. “Sylvia’s always giving her a hard time about something.”

  We both watched as Sylvia swung the wheelchair round and headed back toward the residents’ wing, leaning over Ida’s shoulder, yammering on.

  Karen kept watching the two of them.

  “It’s the saddest thing,” she said, shaking her head. “Ida had a good career going for herself. She was an actress. This was years ago, of course. She was beautiful. All the major studios wanted her. She could have been a huge star.”

  I caught one last look at Ida as Sylvia pushed her wheelchair around the corner.

  That tiny, frail woman had been a young, vibrant, sought-after actress, destined to become a huge star? It was hard to fit both of those images into my head.

  “Too bad she fell in love,” Karen said. “It ruined everything.”

  Ty flashed in my mind, along with the days I’d spent in breakup zombie land after we’d ended things.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “He was a musician and a songwriter making quite a name for himself in Hollywood,” Karen said. “Arthur Zamora. You’ve heard of him, I’m sure. No, maybe not. You’re too young. He was before your time but his songs are still being played today. He was a timeless composer—at least, that’s what everybody says about him.”

  “So what happened with him and Ida?” I asked.

  “You’ve never heard this story? Everybody talks about it,” Karen said. “Well, anyway, they fell deeply in love. They were in all the celebrity gossip columns. Their pictures were plastered in all the newspapers and magazines. One of those fairy-tale romances, you know? Then he dumped her.”