The Dead and the Beautiful

by Cheryl Crane

  “It’s too crazy. You won’t believe me,” Alison murmured.

  “Try me.”

  Alison slowly dragged her gaze up to meet Nikki’s. “Please find out who killed Ryan. I can’t go to trial. I can’t risk it.”

  “So tell me,” Nikki insisted softly.

  Then Alison launched into a tale that Nikki had to admit was far-fetched, but the longer Jeremy’s sister talked, the more the puzzle pieces fell into place.

  “I don’t know how it even came about that they asked me,” Alison began. “That . . . Angel asked me.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I didn’t just walk their dogs. I planned private parties for them. Very private parties.”

  Nikki kept her face blank. She didn’t want to appear judgmental. She wasn’t judgmental.

  “They wanted private, themed parties at their houses. I was to provide the food, decorations, costumes, props, whatever. It was at different houses, but only the four houses.”

  “The houses of the Fab Four,” Nikki said.

  Alison nodded and went on. “It was always the same. I went in on a Friday or Saturday afternoon and set up. Just me. No help. I even went to the caterer and took the food to the houses myself. I carried the stuff in my van.”

  “So it looked like you were there to take care of a client’s dog,” Nikki said, “but actually . . .”

  “Oh, I took care of their dogs, too.” Alison nodded her head up and down. “This was just a way . . . to make extra money. You know what real estate costs these days. I’ll show you my bank accounts. I can prove to you that I’ve been saving every penny I could. I wanted to get a nice place for us. For Jocelyn and me.”

  “So . . . you set up for the party on a designated day . . .” Nikki nudged. “And then what?”

  “And then I left. And I went back the next morning and cleaned up the house. I removed all the costumes, props, caterer’s equipment, whatever. And erased any video recorded on their security systems for the previous twenty-four hours. They said I wasn’t to look and I never did. I didn’t want to see what they were doing.”

  Nikki almost smiled at Alison’s seeming innocence, which was interesting, considering the film she had once made. “That’s why you knew how to erase the security footage at Diara and Ryan’s house the day he was murdered?”

  She nodded. “No one ever said what the parties were. What the eight of them were doing.” Her voice trembled. “But I had a pretty good guess.”

  Nikki waited.

  “I read about it in a magazine. It’s called swinging. They . . . you know, share partners. Have sex with other people’s husbands and wives.”

  Share partners . . . that was exactly what Maurice had suggested. It was what the men had been doing years ago when they were still filming School Dayz. And he’d said the girls were worse than the men.

  “I didn’t ask,” Alison said. “They paid me well. To be discreet. It wasn’t my business what they were doing.”

  And Alison had been discreet, hadn’t she? The Fab Four had gotten away with it. There had never been a word about their private parties in print, blogged, or spoken. Their reputations had been protected.

  “I’m sorry,” Alison whispered. “I knew it was wrong, but I wasn’t making enough money with the dogs. And this seemed like a quick, easy way to buy a home to take Jocelyn to.” She gripped her coffee cup. “So do you think their parties have anything to do with Ryan’s murder?”

  Nikki sat back in her chair to think. She reached for the orange she had brought out and began to peel it. Her dogs had returned from whatever adventure they’d found in the garden and now lay under the table. Stan rested his head on her bare foot.

  Her thoughts were flying in a hundred directions. They had paid Alison well to keep their secret. So what would they have done to protect it if it had been threatened from another source? Would they have paid to keep someone else’s mouth shut? Even if the someone was one of them? That would explain Betsy and Hazel’s meetings once a month with Ryan and the envelope. What if he was blackmailing the Fab Four? What if he was threatening to disclose their secret sex lives and destroy their squeaky-clean images?

  Ryan had wanted money to open a club. An expensive club. It all made sense, in a crazy way.

  So what happened? Why kill him? Had he demanded more money? Is that why he was murdered?

  Which led to the next question. Who had done it? Not Diara or Kameryn. They had been at the studio.

  Nikki looked at Alison, who sat in the chair looking like she just wanted to disappear. To fade away. “Can you tell me again what happened the day Ryan was murdered?”

  “I’ve told you everything. I swear I have.”

  “I believe you. I just want to hear it again. In case . . . there’s some detail you missed. I missed.”

  Alison exhaled. “Okay.” She exhaled again. “I went to Ryan and Diara’s house to pick up Muffin. Ryan was in a towel in the living room. He came on to me. He said he liked what he’d seen on the film he found on the Internet. He said he was tired of Diara getting away with whatever she wanted. He was going to do what he wanted to do.” She stopped.

  As Alison spoke, Nikki tried to picture it all in her mind. She’d been to the house. She remembered the white living room. “It’s okay. Go on when you’re ready.”

  “When I went into the living room to get Muffin, Ryan touched me. I pushed him away, and I left the house. I took the dogs to Runyon Canyon Park. When I took Muffin back to Ryan and Diara’s house, he waved to me from the pool deck.”

  “But he was seated in the lounge chair, right?”

  “I hung up the leash in the back and left by the front door. He waved from Diara’s chair on my way out. I left the house, but I pulled over on Mulholland because I got to thinking about the security recordings and how paranoid Diara was about them. When they had the parties at their house, she always erased them herself. I was supposed to check, but they were already always erased.”

  “Wait. Go back. You said Ryan waved to you from Diara’s lounge chair?”

  She nodded. “Hers is the white one. Everything she had was white. You should have seen her bedroom.” Alison took a deep breath. “So then I went back to the house, and I went to the pantry and erased the security recording for the day so Diara wouldn’t know that Ryan and I had . . . had an altercation. I was on my way out of the house when I saw the fish guy. I went to my van. Then he came out and said Ryan was dead.”

  “Mars,” Nikki said.

  “Yeah. And you know the rest.”

  Both of them were quiet.

  “So?” Alison finally said. “Do you know who did it?”

  “No,” Nikki said. She closed her eyes for a second. “But it’s there. It’s right there.”

  Chapter 26

  At noon, Nikki walked out onto her mother’s stone terrace, which extended around the pool. The dogs ran past her and out onto the freshly cut grass.

  Victoria was sitting in a lounge chair in a black bathing suit, wearing a big white hat. Nikki noted that she looked darned good for a woman her age.

  Victoria had been reading. There was a pile of magazines on the glass table between two chaise longues: Ladies’ Home Journal, The Economist, and Variety. Victoria Bordeaux had eclectic taste in reading.

  Which was even more evident when Nikki saw the paperback book open in her mother’s lap that featured a young woman in a bonnet on the cover. Nikki pulled off her T-shirt and tossed it on the vacant lounge chair. “What on earth are you reading?”

  “An Amish romance. It’s quite good.”

  Nikki laughed and stepped out of her gym shorts. Her bikini was bright blue.

  After Alison left the house to walk clients’ dogs, Nikki had felt restless. She’d had to get out of the house. She had so much going on in her head. Alison’s story was so unbelievable that she believed her. Completely. She felt as if she had all the puzzle pieces that would lead her to Ryan’s killer; she just had to put the pieces together.

  Nikki�
��s best guess right now was that Angel had killed Ryan. He’d jogged over to the house, killed him, and jogged home. Harley had seen him jogging home. But the previous night Angel had made a point of telling her he’d been at lunch when Ryan was killed. Had Harley been mistaken as to what time of day he’d seen Angel? Had Angel been lying about being at the restaurant?

  “Since when are you reading Amish romances?” Nikki spread out a pink towel that Victoria had left on the chaise longue for her.

  “Since I started reading this one. I bought it at the drugstore. It’s very sweet. Renews my faith in mankind.”

  Nikki sat on the chaise and then laid back. “So what are you doing laying out in the sun?” She removed her Persol sunglasses and closed her eyes. “You never lay out.”

  “Vitamin D.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m laying out to absorb vitamin D. And because it feels good.”

  “Ah.”

  “There’s tonic water and I sliced a lemon. Would you like a drink?”

  “You sliced a lemon?” Nikki asked. “You didn’t have Ina do it?”

  “No, I didn’t have Ina do it.” She slipped a bookmark into the paperback. “It’s Sunday. Ina has the day off.”

  “Ah, that explains it.”

  Victoria was quiet for a moment. “Nicolette, that was unkind. I know you and I have this . . . repartee. It’s part of who we both are, but . . .” She hesitated. “But I’m worried about you. It’s not like you to be unkind.”

  Nikki groaned. “You’re not going to use the word shrink again, are you? I didn’t come here to talk about this.”

  “I think you did. I think you’ve needed to talk about it for some time. For some reason, this nonsense with Alison has brought it all back.”

  Nikki reached for her sunglasses, then slid them on.

  “You shouldn’t feel badly that you did what you did to that monster. He was going to kill you.”

  “Mother.”

  “Say it. For me, if not for yourself. Say it.”

  Nikki pressed her lips together. “I killed Albert Tinsley to save myself and Erica.”

  “He would have raped and murdered and left you both buried in the desert like he did those other girls.”

  “But I didn’t know that,” Nikki whispered. “No one knew he was doing that.” It had all come out later when the police investigated him.

  “You knew your life was in danger,” Victoria insisted.

  Nikki felt her eyes sting with tears. What was wrong with her? She’d fought with Albert Tinsley in that parking lot over twenty years ago. Where were these feelings coming from? “I shouldn’t have gotten in his car with him. I shouldn’t have been drinking. I shouldn’t have told Erica we should go.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have.”

  Nikki pressed her lips together and looked out over the pool. The water was so blue and looked so inviting. Oliver lay under the diving board, in the shade. Stanley was standing on the edge of the pool, watching something. His shadow? A water bug?

  “You shouldn’t have been in that bar. You shouldn’t have had too much alcohol to drink,” Victoria went on. “And you certainly should not have gotten in his van with him.”

  “But I did,” Nikki whispered.

  “You did.”

  “He could have killed me.” Tears slipped down Nikki’s cheeks and she wiped them away, self-conscious. “He could have killed Erica.”

  “He would have,” Victoria agreed. “But you didn’t let him. You protected her when she couldn’t protect herself.”

  Nikki squeezed her eyes shut. She remembered laughing and dancing with Erica and Albert Tinsley at the club where they met. He had been nicely dressed. Said he was in finance. She and Erica had agreed to go back to his apartment for a glass of wine after last call. On the way, Erica passed out in the back seat. It wasn’t until he pulled into the abandoned parking lot that Nikki realized something was wrong. Something was very wrong with Albert Tinsley.

  Nikki exhaled, fighting the flashes of memory. Usually she could keep them at bay.

  She remembered how light from a streetlamp reflected off the steel barrel as he pulled the 9mm handgun out from under his seat. She remembered the smell of his cologne. The feel of her heart as it pounded in her chest. It was raining.

  Everything happened so fast.

  He told her to get out of the van. Erica was out of it on the back seat. Nikki remembered that when she glanced at her friend, she noticed that Erica only had one heel on. Blue. Where was her other shoe?

  Albert told Nikki to get out of the van, then pointed the gun at her face when she refused.

  Seeing the 9mm had sobered her.

  Nikki couldn’t leave Erica in the van, not with a man with a gun. She hollered to Erica, called her name. But Erica wouldn’t wake up. Albert got mad. He said he’d shoot Nikki; then he’d take Erica with him, do what he wanted, and then he said he’d kill her, too. He told her he’d done it before. She had believed him.

  The parking lot was empty. It was three-thirty in the morning. Nikki had remembered thinking that no one would hear her scream. No one would hear the gunshot when he killed her.

  “Nicolette?” Victoria murmured.

  Nikki shuddered. She didn’t remember making any plan. She just knew she couldn’t get out of the van. Not leave Erica with him.

  He got out of the van and walked around it to Nikki’s door, holding the gun on her. When he started to open it, she pushed as hard as she could, startling him. He fell back, dropping the handgun. Nikki fell out of the van, onto the wet pavement, and scrambled to get to the gun.

  He came at her with a knife from a sheath on his ankle. A hunting knife, with a serrated edge. She remembered thinking to herself that financiers didn’t carry hunting knives.

  Nikki felt her mother’s hand on her arm. Victoria was sitting on the chaise longue beside her. Nikki didn’t see her mother move over.

  Nikki cringed as, in her mind’s eye, she saw Albert lunge at her with the knife. He said terrible, awful things about what he was going to do to her with the knife.

  So Nikki pulled the trigger.

  “If you hadn’t come . . .” Nikki realized she was sobbing. “If you hadn’t come . . .”

  “If I hadn’t come, you’d have dealt with it yourself just fine.”

  Nikki shook her head. “No, I couldn’t have . . .”

  Nikki had called Victoria that night. From Albert’s cell phone. Amondo had put Victoria on the phone. Victoria had been calm. She had told Nikki to get in the van and lock herself inside with Erica. She had told her to say nothing to the police, to anyone until she arrived. Then she had disconnected. First, Victoria had called her attorney, then the police.

  Even when the police arrived, the ambulances, the EMTs, Nikki had said nothing until her mother and the attorney had arrived. At first glance, it looked like Nikki had simply shot a man. It was Victoria who held Nikki’s hand, who kept telling her everything was going to be all right.

  “It’s all right,” Victoria soothed, putting her arms around Nikki.

  Nikki sat up and clung to her mother.

  “It’s going to be all right, darling,” Victoria assured her. “It’s just a nasty old nightmare. You’re going to be fine.”

  “But I wouldn’t have been,” Nikki managed, her tears falling on her mother’s bare shoulder.

  In the weeks and months that had followed Albert Tinsley’s death, Victoria had helped Nikki put the pieces of her life back together. The pieces of herself. It was after that that Nikki began to find herself, her true self. That was when she started working for her father, first in his restaurant, later managing apartments. That job had led her to become a real-estate broker.

  “Shhh,” Victoria soothed, stroking Nikki’s hair.

  “I’m sorry.” Nikki let go of her mother and pulled off her sunglasses to wipe her face with a towel from the table. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she sniffled.

  Victoria
, who had removed her sunglasses, gazed into Nikki’s eyes. In Victoria’s Bordeaux blues, Nikki saw herself.

  “Sometimes a girl needs a good cry.” Victoria brushed her hand across Nikki’s cheek. “How about a little tonic water?”

  Nikki sniffed. “Sure. I could use something to drink. I’ll get it.” She started to get up.

  “Nonsense.” Her mother rose. “I’ll get it, and then we’ll just sit here for a while and enjoy the peace and quiet. And when you’re ready, you can tell me all about your conversation with Alison this morning.”

  By the time Victoria returned with the drink, Nikki had wiped away her tears and actually did feel better. She didn’t understand what had been going on in her head, but just allowing herself to relive killing Albert Tinsley, just for a moment, had been cathartic. She didn’t think about the incident often, so maybe she needed to allow herself a few tears over it once in a while.

  Victoria poured her daughter a drink and added a slice of lemon. “Put some sunblock on, dear,” she instructed as she sat in her chaise longue and adjusted her hat. “Use mine.”

  Nikki took a drink of the tonic water and then, while applying sunblock, relayed to her mother everything Alison had told her. When she got to the sex party part, she warned her mother she could never speak of it, not to anyone, including Alison. Or Jeremy.

  “Good heavens,” Victoria remarked. “I know what gossip to repeat and what gossip not to repeat. How do you think I’ve made it this long in this town?”

  Nikki laughed and went on with her story. Victoria was fully onboard until Nikki got to the timeline.

  “So, you think Angel went into the house, after Alison dropped off the dog, killed him, and was gone before the fish tank guy arrived?” Victoria made a face. “That could have been only minutes.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s one of the flaws in my thinking.”

  “And Alison was certain he waved to her and he wasn’t already dead in the chair?”

  “She included that detail from the beginning, even when she wasn’t telling the whole truth. I don’t think she made it up. Why would she? If she knew he was dead, she wouldn’t have said he waved to her.”