"She told me Liz totally gave her the boot. We didn't really get into it too much, though, 'cause she was out with that ball player whose name I can never remember."
"The ballplayer—you mean with Bucky Davis?" I asked, confused.
Blonde Number Three laugh-snorted, the sound coming out a cross between a horse whinnying and a two-year-old blowing raspberries. "No. God, everybody knows Bucky Davis. No, it was some other guy. Tall but has kind of a gut."
I felt my heart rate speed up. "Ratski?"
She stabbed a finger at me. "That's the one! I totally didn't get why Lacey was out with him. He's, like, way old and kinda smarmy. I mean, if I had Bucky at home, trust me, I'd be at home!"
My mind reeled over the possible reasons Lacey would be having dinner with Ratski…and lie to her boyfriend about it. Had Lacey been meeting Ratski to extract blackmail from him? Or had she been seeing him behind his wife's back? While it was certainly possible Liz's "unaccounted for" money had something to do with Lacey, it was now starting to look like there could have been one other baseball wife who might have wanted Lacey out of the way badly enough to kill her.
Beth Ratski.
Blonde Number Three brought my attention back to present, asking, "Did you want to try that on?" She gestured to the blouse in my hands.
I looked down, almost having forgotten my browsing cover. I shoved the blouse back on the rack. "No thanks. But…" I couldn't help myself. "…do you have those kitten heels in a seven?"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The first thing I did when I got back to my car was dial Dana's number. She picked up on the third ring with a, "Hello?" followed by loud noises in the background.
"Hey, it's me. Is this a bad time?"
"Nope. Just getting a makeup touch-up between scenes at the moment. Today's my big trial where I get a hooker off."
I stifled a giggle at her pun.
Lady Justice was based on the concept of a lawyer who inadvertently becomes an advocate for female porn stars, fighting for their rights in a male-dominated industry. At least, that was how Variety put it. Dana and her cast & crew usually just referred to it as the "porn lawyer show." Clearly, sex sold, because Lady Justice had been one of the top rated shows on the network for the new season. My fingers were crossed they picked it up for another thirteen episodes. As much as Dana loved being "movie star Ricky Montgomery's girlfriend," she was ready to step out of his shadow.
"I was hoping you were on the Sunset Studios lot today. I need to get in to see Beth Ratski. She should be filming her interrogation scene this afternoon."
"Ooo," Dana cooed. "New development?"
I quickly filled her in on what Blonde Number Three had told me about seeing Lacey out with Ratski.
"What a jerk. He really can't keep it in his pants, can he?" Dana said.
I nodded as I turned on my car and let the welcomed air conditioning wash over me.
"Do you think you could put me on the list at the gate?" I asked.
"Sure. I've got to shoot another scene right now, but then we'll be breaking for lunch around noon. Ricky's supposed to meet me here, too, so we can all go eat together."
"Perfect," I agreed. I heard more noise in the background and someone shouting.
"Hey, I gotta go. They're calling me on the set. See you later," Dana said, as she hung up.
I looked down at my cell. It was just past eleven, which gave me almost an hour to brave the traffic toward the studios. I decided to take the long way there, doing a little drive-by experiment.
Ratski all but told Dana that the gym alibi was a joke last night. Which left Bucky, Ratski, and Blanco alone at the time someone was tampering with Lacey's tanning booth. It begged the question: just how far from Fernando's salon was this gym?
I pulled up a web browser on my phone. After a little surfing of the tabloid sites I found out that Bucky was frequently seen leaving the L.A. Fit Gym, which I had never heard of. While my best friend Dana was an exercise devotee all the way, I had a definite love-hate relationship with gyms. I love to avoid them and hated to go. Google told me it was located on Blake Street, and according to my GPS, it was only a mile from Fernando's. Of course, in L.A. a mile could mean a two minute drive or twenty, depending on the time of day and what part of town it was in. I pulled my car into traffic and pointed it toward Fernando's.
Twenty minutes later, I was slowly driving past Faux Dad's salon, which, sadly, looked as deserted as ever. I spied Marco through the front windows, idly picking at his cuticles. As tempting as it was to park, storm in, and yell at him for dropping a cotton candy machine in my living room at 7 AM, I instead noted the time on my cell and continued on toward Blake Street.
Six minutes later I was idling in the parking lot of L.A. Fit. Any of the three players could have made their way to Fernando's, slipped in the back door to add the poison to the tanning solution, then made their way back here in under half an hour. All the killer would have had to do was find out when Lacey was going tanning, then casually suggest a trip to the gym to the other two to create an alibi.
Which left me back at square one. Again. Plenty of suspects, plenty of motives, no alibis. I really hoped that Ramirez was making more headway on getting that warrant than I was today.
With that depressing thought, I jumped back on the 2 toward Hollywood, and, after braving both the tourist traffic and the Wilshire corridor lunch rush, I finally made my way up to the gate of the Sunset Studios. True to her word, Dana had put my name on the visitor list, and the guard waved me through, gesturing to the massive parking lot to the right where I swapped out my real car for a golf cart. I hopped in, slowly motoring my way toward Studio 4B.
Quite frankly, I wasn't sure what I was going to ask Beth when I got there. It seemed a little forward to come right out and say, "Did you kill Lacey Desta because she was sleeping with your husband?" Even hinting that Lacey might've had a relationship with Ratski was treading on thin ice. I knew the Baseball Wives might not be the sharpest crayons in the box, but Dana and I were likely to lose our "girl talk" status if we didn't tread lightly.
Unfortunately, any ideas I had of hinting at her husband's infidelity disappeared as soon as I parked my golf cart and entered the studio. Standing next to the crafts services table, with an arm around his wife, was Ratski himself.
I paused suddenly wondering what to do now. Ratski was sure to recognize me the second he saw me. I ducked into a narrow hallway to the left and took refuge behind a rack of sparkly cocktail dresses. I watched Ratski shove a donut into his mouth, licking the icing off his fingers one by one, as I wondered how to get Beth alone. I spied Laurel and Hardy standing on their X's, already being miked. It wouldn't be long before Beth was called to set.
"I told you to keep quiet about it."
I froze. I slowly peeked out from behind the wardrobe rack and spied Kendra Blanco on her cell, stomping down the empty hallway. Her lips were tight, her forehead pulled taught in a way that suggested if she could frown through her Botox, she would.
"That's not good enough!" she hissed into her phone.
I ducked down lower, hoping I'd hit the eavesdropping jackpot. Kendra was clearly upset about something.
"Look, we had a deal. I've kept up my end, now you keep up yours." She paused. "Well, you better do something! The cops are nosing around enough. I don't need them looking at me."
I felt an eyebrow rise. And just why would the cops look to Kendra?
"Oh, you better care," she spat into the phone. "You and I both know that if I go down, I'm taking you with me."
With that she stabbed her phone off and stalked back onto the set.
I moved out from my wardrobe hiding place. Very interesting. Just what was Kendra afraid of "going down" for? Did it have something to do with Lacey's murder? The fact that she didn't want the cops looking into it was a good sign it wasn't 100% on the up and up. Whatever "it" was. I bit my lip, wondering just who had been on the other end of that call.
I didn
't have long to contemplate that as my cell vibrated with the text from Dana.
Ricky and I on our way to meet you
I quickly texted back that I'd meet her out front.
I slipped out from my hiding place, keeping one eye on Ratski as I made my way back out into the assaulting sunshine. Two minutes later I spied Dana and Ricky approaching. Something seemed to be in the air today because the two of them were arguing as well. An odd occurrence for them. Ricky had proposed to Dana just a few months ago, and ever since then you would swear that the two had already started their honeymoon phase. Only today it looked like the honeymoon was on hiatus, Ricky's features pulled into a frown, Dana waving her hands rapidly in the air.
I took a step forward, hesitant to interrupt.
But as it turned out, that wasn't an issue. Ricky stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the open doors to Studio 4B.
"You!" Ricky pointed an arm toward the doorway.
I whipped my head around just in time to see Ratski and Beth emerging.
Ratski's eyes bounced from Dana to Ricky. "I…I…" Ratski started.
"You were putting the moves on my fiancée last night!"
Uh-oh.
"Uh…" Ratski's eyes shifted to his wife with a deer-facing-the-business-end-of-an-SUV look in them.
So much for me delicately broaching the subject of her husband's infidelity. I watched her reaction carefully. If I had to guess, confusion was the overriding emotion playing across her face. "John?" she asked.
"I…I don't know what he's talking about," Ratski protested,
"Like hell you don't!" Ricky yelled back. And like a shot, Ricky closed the few feet between them, cocked his right fist back, and hit Ratski square in the nose with a blow that sent him reeling backwards.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ratski fell backwards, knocking into a wardrobe rack by the door and taking down a dozen dresses with him as he hit the ground. Dana shrieked, diving for Ricky. Beth shrieked, diving for Ratski. And two guys in security shirts appeared from inside the studio, rushing out at the sound of the screams.
"Ohmigod! Oh, my poor pooh bear," Beth cried, trying to disentangle Ratski from the mess of cocktail dresses and pant suits.
"Poor pooh bear, my ass," Ricky shouted. Though all of Dana's hours at the gym were paying off. She had him around the waist, just barely able to hold him back from hitting Ratski again. "You stay the hell away from my fiancée, you got that, pal?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Ratski sputtered again, scrambling to his feet.
"It's all over the L.A. Informer's website. I saw the pictures of you two at dinner last night."
Mental forehead thunk,
"Ricky, I told you it's not what you think," Dana started.
But neither of the guys was paying attention to her. They were completely focused on the pissing contest going on in the middle of the studio lot.
"What's a friendly little dinner?" Ratski said, grinning.
Ricky growled and lunged for him. Ratski jumped out of the way just as the security guards made it to the center of our group, the larger of the two restraining Ricky.
"What's going on here?" one of them barked.
"He's a two-timing jerk!" Ricky yelled stabbing a finger Ratski's way.
Ratski was still wearing a superior smirk on his face. He held his hands up in a surrender motion. "Me? I'm a married man. What would I want with that floozy?"
"Hey!" Dana cried.
I stepped in just in time to save Ratski from being punched twice in one day. While he was still smirking I could see blood trickling from his nose, his whole face starting to swell. He might be enjoying riling Ricky up, but I'd wager he'd be feeling that tomorrow.
Beth must've noticed too, as she started bawling. "Oh, my poor pooh bear! How could you do this to him? How dare you accuse him of something like that! He would never!"
I barely restrained myself from rolling my eyes. How one woman could be so clueless about her husband, I had no idea.
Beth put an arm around Ratski, dabbing at the blood on his upper lip with her thumb like the mother wiping gook off her kindergartner.
"You stay away from her, you understand. Or next time no one will be able to hold me back," Ricky growled, still under the vice-like grip of the security guard.
"Are you threatening me, pretty boy?" Ratski asked. Then he turned to the second guard. "You heard that, right? That was a threat. I want to file charges. I want a restraining order. Knowing these Hollywood types, he's probably hopped up on something."
Ricky growled again, lunging forward, and the security guard lost his grip.
Ratski jumped back behind his wife with a terrified yip.
Good grief.
"All right, all right, enough!" the second security guard said, inserting himself between the two. "Ratski, if you want to press charges I'll call an officer down here and have this guy arrested. Is that what you want?
Ratski looked from the security guard, to Ricky, to Dana shooting daggers at him, and then to his wife, still sobbing beside him. He must have realized that if he brought the police in, what he'd planned that night with Dana might be called under closer scrutiny. I didn't have great respect for Ratski's intelligence, but at least he had the brains to know the whole thing was better swept under the rug.
"No," he said. "You just keep this guy on a leash," he told Dana.
The security guard turned to Ricky. "If I find you anywhere near this set again, I will call the police."
Ricky shook the guard off and straightened his shoulders. "Trust me, I don't want to be anywhere near this place. Come on, Dana, let's go." He grabbed her arm and turned away.
Dana made a motion with her hand at her ear like she'd call me later. I nodded my agreement. I had a feeling the two of them needed some alone time.
I wasn't much in the mood for lunch, anyway. Truth was, I'd had enough of the Stars gang for one day. I drove my golf cart back to the lot entrance and was just swapping it out for my minivan when a text came in on my phone. I looked down to see Ramirez's name on the screen.
A pony just arrived. A live pony.
I pursed my lips, wondering if Ricky's fists of fury were available for hire. There was one party planner I wouldn't mind seeing decked at the moment.
Before I could even respond Ramirez shot off another text, saying he was taking the kids and going to Mama's.
I was tempted to join him, but I was worried about what might arrive next at my humble abode.
I hopped into my minivan and quickly pointed it towards home, only stopping once at a drive-through for a Double-Double and some Animal Fries. If I was going to face the worst, better not to do it on an empty stomach.
One precarious drive down the 101 later, I was happy to report I did not drop any pink sauce on my pants. However, as I pulled up to the front of my house I felt my good luck disintegrating.
A catering truck blocked my driveway, and a Jeep with a cheetah-print custom paint job sat at the curb. A magnetic sign on the driver's side door read "Aaron's Exotic Animals," and I could've sworn I recognized the bike parked by the front door as that of one former Spanish-soap-star-turned-clown.
I parked my car. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I tried to get the tick twitching over my left eye under control before grabbing my purse and making my way into the house.
I had to look at the number on my mailbox twice just to make sure it really was my house as I walked through the door.
My furniture had been moved out to God knows where, replaced with a pinball machine, a vintage Pac-Man arcade game, and a foosball table. Huge decals sporting balloons and rainbows had been stuck on one wall, elephants and hippos with party blowers in their mouths on the other side. People in various company uniforms filtered in and out through the sliding glass doors, carrying folding chairs, flowers, dishes, and plastic novelty blowups of various circus animals.
And in the center of it all stood Marco, waving his arms in the chaos like so
me sort of mad conductor while chatting into his Bluetooth.
"…well, of course we can't have a pony without a Wild West gunslinger. What did you say you charge by the hour?" Pause. "That much? Wow. Well, what if the pony's handler just puts on a cowboy hat?"
"Ahem." I cleared my throat loudly.
Marco turned around, a bright smile lighting up his features. "Dahling, I'll have to call you back," he said into his Bluetooth before enveloping me with air kisses.
Which I did not return.
"What's going on here, Marco?"
"Don't you just love it?" he asked, spreading his arms wide. "I'll admit the decals might've been a bit much. But we have to have some décor in here. I mean, not to say there's anything wrong with your décor, darling, but it is a bit…well…" He scrunched up his nose, "…on the pedestrian side. Drab. Ish. For a children's party, mind you."
"Did you just call my décor too pedestrian for children?"
"Well, once the belly dancers arrive, they're going totally stick out like sore thumbs without a pop of color somewhere in the room."
I blinked at him. "The what?"
Marco took a deep breath to launch himself into another monologue but was interrupted as a guy in a chef's hat crashed through my kitchen door.
"I simply cannot work in zat kitchen. It eez much too small."
"And you are?" I asked.
"Oh, Maddie, meet François LeRue. He's classically trained. In Paaaaaaris," Marco said, drawing out the words.
I stared at Marco. "You realize my children's palates runs from mashed bananas to mashed sweet potatoes?"
Marco waved me off, addressing the chef. "François I'm sure you can find some way to work around the size."
"Impossible! There eez no counter space. I cannot even find room to lay out zee crepe station."
I rolled my eyes. "It's not that small."
"Dahling, I'm sure we can work something out," Marco addressed the chef. "I know! You can use the banquet table on the patio."
"We have a banquet table?" I asked, craning to see around him out the sliding glass doors to our yard.
Homicide in High Heels Page 13