Death of a Neighborhood Scrooge

by Laura Levine

  Frankly, I got the feeling he was just where he wanted to be—in close proximity to his luscious landlady.

  His eyes lit up the minute she came back from her session with the detective.

  “How’d it go?” Dave asked.

  “Okay, I guess,” she shrugged. “Apparently Scotty was killed sometime between a little after ten when he ended a phone call with his broker and eleven when Jaine found the body.”

  Oh, brother. Can you believe Scotty had the gall to bother his broker on Christmas Day?

  “I told the detective I was out running the whole time,” Missy was saying, “but he didn’t seem convinced.”

  Frankly, neither was I.

  I flashed back on Missy returning to her bedroom, sweaty in her shorts and tank top. She well might have been out running. But who knows if she hadn’t burned off a few extra calories knocking off her hubby?

  I didn’t have time to ponder Missy’s guilt or innocence, however, because just then I was summoned to chat with Lt. Muntner.

  “Come in,” he said, waving me into the Parkers’ den, a musty affair with threadbare furniture from the Left-Out-on-the-Curb-on-Garbage-Day Collection.

  The detective sat on a recliner, a recorder and a notepad on an end table by his side.

  I plopped down on a nearby sofa, trying to steer clear of the many stains adorning its cushions.

  In his lap Lt. Muntner had a copy of The Return of Tiny Tim: Vengeance Is Mine! He rifled through the pages, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “What a stink bomb,” he pronounced.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Mrs. Parker tells me you were helping Mr. Parker write it.”

  “No, I was helping Scotty edit it. I was trying to get him to cut out the really awful parts.”

  “I’d say that’s just about everything.”

  I was beginning to like this guy.

  “So,” he said, pulling his notepad from the end table and getting down to business. “You’re the one who discovered the body.”

  “That’s right. I was upstairs visiting my cat when Missy came home from her run and told me Scotty wanted to see me. So I stopped by his office and that’s when I found his body.”

  “Did you see or hear anything unusual while you were upstairs?”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I thought I heard a thud, and then some footsteps. I figured it was Scotty going to the kitchen to get himself a snack.”

  “And the thud. What did you think that was?”

  “I had no idea. But now I realize it was probably Scotty’s head hitting his desk.”

  I was shuddering at the memory of Scotty crumpled over his desk when the Jockey model cop showed up.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said to Lt. Muntner. “I thought you should know that the victim’s security surveillance tape is missing. Also, we checked the murder weapon for fingerprints. Looked like the killer was wearing gloves. But somewhere along the line he or she got sloppy, because we managed to find a print on the Yule log. We just sent it off to the lab for identification.”

  I sat up with a jolt. Because I suddenly realized that the fingerprint in question was none other than mine.

  If only I hadn’t tiptoed into the kitchen to get a taste of that frosting!

  In no time, they’d match up the print with the one on my driver’s license, and bingo, I’d be sharing a cell with a gal named Bruce.

  Oh, hell.

  I had to play it cool and monitor my speech. I’d seen enough cop shows to know that anything I said could be held against me in a court of law.

  And so, with all the sangfroid of a Yorkie on uppers, I shrieked:

  “Omigod! It was me! All I wanted was a taste of the frosting. The Yule log was out on the kitchen counter when I got here and the frosting looked so yummy, nice and creamy just the way I like it, and I couldn’t resist. After all, it was chocolate and I mean, who says no to chocolate? But when I tried to scoop some up with my finger I realized it was frozen so I went upstairs to Prozac with my Mowse and I swear I never touched it after that.”

  I tend to babble when I’m nervous.

  “Let me get this straight,” Lt. Muntner said, a bit dazed. “You saw the Yule log on the kitchen counter and tried to eat some frosting but it was frozen solid, and you were so upset, you had to go upstairs and calm down with a Prozac.”

  “No, Prozac is my cat.”

  “And your mouse? Is that another one of your pets?”

  “No, Mowse is a toy I bought Prozac for Christmas. The cutest little thing. It scampers around just like a real mouse, but Prozac hardly looked at it; all she cares about is Missy and Rhett Butler!”

  Omigod. Why was I babbling like this? Would somebody please shut me up???

  “I see,” said Lt. Muntner, no doubt making plans to book me in the nearest psycho ward. “Maybe it’s time for you to take a Prozac for real. You’re probably going to need it.”

  Oh, dear. I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Ms. Austen, you were found at the scene of the crime. And if, as you claim, yours is the fingerprint on the murder weapon, you’re definitely a suspect in this case.”

  “But why? Why would I want to kill Scotty?”

  “That’s for us to find out, isn’t it?” the good detective said with a genial smile.

  Okay, now I didn’t like him so much.

  “In the meanwhile,” he cautioned, “don’t leave town.”

  Thoroughly shaken, I staggered out of the den and back to Casa Van Hooten, where Lance greeted me in a cranberry-stained apron.

  “Just in time!” he grinned. “My goose is cooked!”

  And so, it appeared, was mine.

  Chapter 14

  Lance led me to the kitchen, beaming with pride. “Doesn’t it smell yummy?”

  “Actually,” I said, taking a sniff, “it smells like smoke.”

  Sure enough, the minute we walked in the kitchen we saw wisps of smoke seeping out from the oven.

  “Lance, I think your goose is on fire!”

  Grabbing an oven mitt, Lance raced to the oven and yanked open the door, where flames were leaping up from the roasting pan.

  And before I could stop him, he’d filled a glass of water and tossed it on the fire, which made the flames shoot up even higher.

  Apparently, the very worst thing you can do in a grease fire is to try to put it out with water.

  And a grease fire was precisely what was going on in Connie Van Hooten’s oven. As I was later to learn, Lance, the master chef, had cooked his goose without reading a single recipe, figuring, as he put it, “it would be just like roasting a turkey.”

  But as all you gourmet cooks out there undoubtedly know, roasting a goose is not like roasting a turkey. It seems these geese love their cholesterol, would never dream of joining Weight Watchers, and thus are chock full of fat—fat that must be periodically removed from the roasting pan with a baster, a step Lance neglected to do as he busied himself watching yet another rerun of Christmas in Connecticut.

  So, after several hours in the oven, the goose was swimming in a bed of fat that got hot enough to ignite.

  Frantic, I now raced to the kitchen pantry and pulled out a fire extinguisher I’d noticed a few days ago when I was rummaging around for Double Stuf Oreos.

  Of course, finding a fire extinguisher is a lot different from knowing how to use one. After a few desperate attempts, we pulled out a pivotal pin, which released the trigger.

  Lance then took aim, blasting the oven like Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral.

  The good news was the fire was out.

  The bad news was the oven was now a mountain of foam.

  We spent the next several hours exfoliating Connie Van Hooten’s oven of all goose fat and fire extinguisher foam.

  Which gave me plenty of time to tell Lance about Scotty’s murder.

  “Are you kidding me?” he said when I told him I’d discovered the body. “If you find one more corpse, they’re going to name y
ou honorary coroner.”

  (It’s true. I’ve found more than my fair share of bodies in my day, spine-tingling adventures you can read all about in the titles at the front of this book.)

  “If you ask me,” Lance said, scraping foam into a hefty bag, “the killer’s got to be Missy. From my short time at dinner with them, it was clear she hated Scotty.”

  “Actually, the police think I might have done it.”

  “You?” He looked up, shocked, from a particularly nauseating clump of charred goose fat. “Why on earth?”

  “Because I left my fingerprint on the murder weapon.”

  Somewhat shamefaced, I explained how I’d tried to nab some frosting off the frozen Yule log.

  “Honestly, Jaine,” Lance tsked. “How do you manage to get yourself into these crazy scrapes?”

  “Look who’s talking,” I said, waving at the mess around us.

  “Yes, but I’m not the one with an orange jumpsuit in my future.”

  “You don’t really think it’ll come to that, do you?”

  “No, hon. Of course not. I’ll get you the best lawyer money can buy. My attorney, Raoul. You remember him, don’t you? The guy who got me five hundred bucks when I tripped over a chopstick at PF Chang’s?”

  I remembered Raoul Duvernois, Esq., all right, a sleazebag graduate of the Wile E. Coyote School of Law. I sincerely doubted this clown would be able to get me out of a parking ticket, let alone a murder rap.

  No, if anyone was going to get me off the hook, it would be yours truly. I made up my mind then and there to do a little snooping and clear my name.

  But I murmured some feeble words of thanks to Lance, knowing that his heart was in the right place.

  We took turns scraping and scrubbing, knocking back a lovely bottle of pinot noir during our breaks, and at last, Connie Van Hooten’s oven was sparkling clean.

  It was then, and only then, that we noticed a “self-cleaning” button on the control panel.

  Cursing ourselves for not discovering this handy little doodad hours earlier, we tossed our blackened goose in the trash, and sat down to eat the only thing that survived the fire: Lance’s godawful cranberry tofu stuffing.

  No doubt about it: Worst. Christmas. Dinner. Ever.

  It took an entire pint of Chunky Monkey to get the taste out of my mouth.

  Oh, who am I kidding?

  Two pints.

  Chapter 15

  Normally, I am a bath girl. I like nothing better than to lie up to my neck in strawberry-scented bubbles, soaking my blues away.

  But that was before I’d laid eyes on Mrs. Van H’s guest bedroom shower, a marble extravaganza, complete with four wall jets and a ginormous rainfall showerhead.

  The next morning, I stood under its heavenly spray, my body massaged from all angles, and thought about my suspects in Scotty’s murder. There was Missy, of course, who was desperate to get out of her marriage. And Dave, who was desperate to get into Missy’s panties. There was also Marlon, the bruiser of a neighbor whose little boy Scotty had traumatized. He sure looked like he wanted to kill Scotty the day he’d stopped by to ream him out for ruining his kid’s Christmas.

  And for a brief instant I considered Lupe. After all, she loathed Scotty for keeping her apart from her family. But I had to rule out the diminutive maid. The Yule log was on the kitchen table, untouched, when Lupe snuck out of the house to visit her loved ones.

  After every inch of my body had been sprayed to oblivion, I got dressed and headed down to the kitchen where Lance, dressed for work, was packing the remains of last night’s tofu and cranberry stuffing in an unlucky plastic container.

  “Morning, hon! How about a smoothie?” he asked, pointing to the blender, half full of green grassy gook.

  The guy was never going to give up, was he?

  “Maybe some other lifetime.”

  After a disapproving “tsk,” he handed me the stuffing.

  “Here’s the rest of my cranberry tofu stuffing. I thought you could bring it over to Missy Parker as a condolence offering.”

  Condolence offering? Was he kidding? Condolences were what you needed after you ate the stuff.

  Funny how eager he was to get rid of it, after he’d raved about it at dinner last night, calling it “the yummiest stuffing ever.”

  But now it occurred to me: He probably hated the glop just as much as I did!

  “Sure you don’t want to keep some?” I asked. “Just to snack on? After all, you really love it so.”

  “That’s okay,” he said, putting on his martyred saint face. “You know me. Always willing to sacrifice.”

  Oh, puh-leese. This from the guy who gives up broccoli for Lent.

  “Gotta run, sweetie.” He plunked a grass-scented peck on my cheek. “After-Christmas sale starts today. Bound to be a zoo.”

  As Lance trotted off to work, I settled down with my morning CRB and checked my emails, where I found a Smatch.com message from NiceGuy in Santa Monica.

  I’ve spared you the harrowing details until now, but even after I’d de-Lancified my Smatch profile, I’d been barraged with missives from the world’s least eligible bachelors, the bottom of the barrel, guys one step up from the penitentiary. Such as the Tantric Papa Seeking Acrobatic Mama. The five-foot-three bald gnome in search of a Charlize Theron lookalike. And the research librarian still living with his mom and into handcuffs and hot fudge sundaes.

  But NiceGuy didn’t seem bad. Not bad at all.

  According to his profile, he was a stockbroker living in the marina, into movies, Brazilian jazz, and daily gym workouts.

  And those workouts had really paid off.

  His profile pictures showed a guy with a ripped muscular bod, slicked-back hair, and the kind of chiseled Clint Eastwood laugh lines I find so appealing.

  Having at last heard from someone who bore a passing resemblance to a human being, I wasted no time and wrote him back.

  After a brief exchange of messages, we arranged to meet the next day for lunch at the pool area of his condo. He was off from work for the holidays and laid up with a sprained ankle (no doubt from all those gym workouts), so he’d asked me to meet him where he lived. In a public space, of course, for safety’s sake.

  Feeling buoyed by my upcoming date (I might have been facing a murder rap, but at least I’d have a boyfriend to visit me in prison), I headed into town to pick up something edible to bring to Missy. I couldn’t possibly show up to pay a condolence call with only Lance’s ghastly stuffing.

  A half hour later, armed with the stuffing and a lovely take-out roast chicken, I was knocking at Missy’s front door.

  Lupe answered it, positively beaming.

  “Ms. Jaine! Come in! Did you hear the terrible news?” she asked, still smiling. “Mr. Scotty is dead! But of course you heard. You were the one who found the body!”

  So happy was she that I was beginning to wonder if Lupe had something to do with Scotty’s death after all. But it couldn’t be. When she left the house, that Yule log was in pristine condition on the kitchen table.

  “I guess I should feel bad,” Lupe said, probably realizing that now was not the time for a smiley face, “but Mr. Scotty was a terrible man.”

  Couldn’t argue with her there.

  “I brought some food for you guys in your time of . . . um . . . mourning,” I said, holding out my sympathy chow.

  “Muchas gracias!”

  Staring somewhat dubiously at the stuffing, Lupe led me to the living room where Dave was on the sofa engrossed in some paperwork.

  “Look who’s here, Mr. Dave!” Lupe announced. “It’s Ms. Jaine.”

  And off she trotted to the kitchen.

  Dave looked up, startled, and quickly shoved the papers he’d been reading into a folder. Whatever it was, he didn’t want me seeing it.

  “I just stopped by to pay my respects, and I brought some food, too. A roast chicken and a side dish.”

  I figured the less said about the cranberry tofu nightmare, th
e better.

  “How kind of you,” he replied with a weak smile. “Come, sit down,” he added, waving me to a rumpsprung armchair. “Missy’s upstairs. She should be down any minute. Scotty’s death has been quite a blow.”

  To Scotty, anyway. Right on the noggin.

  “I don’t suppose you heard anything yesterday morning, when you were in your room studying? Any footsteps? Or any other signs of an intruder?”

  If I’d heard the noises, surely he had, too.

  “Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “Didn’t hear a thing. But then, I wouldn’t. I wear earplugs when I study. Helps me concentrate.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. I thought I heard someone in the house, but at the time I figured it was Scotty.”

  Now, of course, I wondered if it might have been Dave nipping down the hallway to knock off his rival in romance.

  “Luckily it’s Christmas break and I don’t have any classes this week,” Dave was saying. “This way I can stay close to Missy in her hour of need.”

  At which point we could hear the grieving widow, at the apex of her hour of need, tripping down the stairs, calling out:

  “Guess what, darling! I booked us into the Four Seasons Maui next month. I’m sure the whole Scotty thing will have blown over by then. Won’t that be fun?”

  Looking over at Dave’s folder, I could now see the Four Seasons logo peeking out from one of the pages. No wonder he hadn’t wanted me to see what he was reading.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Missy crooned. “I can’t wait to get there and—”

  But I never got to hear the rest of her Hawaiian plans because she had now entered the room and clammed up at the sight of me, flummoxed, like a blond deer caught in the headlights.

  For a minute, I thought she was going to try to reprieve her Grieving Widow act. But even she could see what a waste of time that would be.

  “Oh, dear,” she said with a sigh. “I suppose you must think I’m awful. Planning a vacation right after Scotty’s death. But I told you, Jaine. Our marriage was the pits. I’m sorry he died the way he did,” she added, trying to work up a soupçon of grief, “but frankly, I’m glad to be rid of him. Don’t take that the wrong way. I didn’t kill him. As much as I wanted him out of the picture, I would never have the nerve to commit murder.”