The Celebutantes

by Antonio Pagliarulo

  “All I see is white T-shirt and blood,” Madison said.

  “Me too,” Lex agreed.

  “Look closer,” Park urged them. “Pretend the bloodstains aren’t there. Look right in the middle of the shirt. Do you see it?”

  Lex leaned forward, cradling the magic purse against her chest. She squinted and cupped her hand over her eyes. “Oh, shit!” she said a few seconds later. “It’s a handprint.”

  Park smiled. “Bingo.”

  “Move over,” Madison said. She pushed Lex to the side and assumed the same position. Then she righted herself, and her eyes went wide.

  The faint outline was there, darker in certain spots than others. At first glance it looked like a simple, light water stain pressed into the white fabric. But on closer examination, it totally resembled a handprint. Or the first three fingers of a handprint.

  “I see it,” Madison said quietly. “But…couldn’t he have made that himself? What if it’s his handprint we’re staring at?”

  Park shot her a suspicious look. “What if it isn’t?”

  “It’s definitely not a simple stain,” Lex said. “Look at how dark the upper tip of the imprint is. If it was water, it would have dried by now.”

  “I have to agree with you there.” Park reached for her cell, flipped it open, and snapped three pics.

  “So you’re saying that he was pushed just because of that little mark?” Madison asked incredulously. “That handprint could be anything. Maybe it’s not water, but what if it’s something that just dried there?”

  “Like what?” Park asked in return.

  “Like…” Madison’s voice trailed off.

  “Like an oil-based moisturizer?” Lex said suddenly. “I hate them—they always leave stains.”

  “Both of you are taking this too far,” Madison countered. “You can’t make that kind of assessment until his shirt has been examined forensically.”

  Park dropped the cell into her purse. She examined the body more closely. She noted its position, its slackness. Then her eyes caught something suspicious, and she felt her pulse quicken. “Look at his hands.”

  Madison blinked. “His hands?”

  “Yep,” Park said firmly. “I don’t like what I’m seeing here.”

  Lex squatted down beside the body, her heels just missing pools of blood. She looked at Elijah’s right hand, then his left. She gasped. “His palms are scraped,” she said fiercely. “And two of the fingernails on his left hand are broken.”

  “Evidence that he tried desperately to hold on to the ledge after he was pushed,” Park deduced.

  “Or evidence that he got scared and tried to hang on to the ledge in the last moments before he committed suicide.” Madison folded her arms across her chest. “Like maybe he changed his mind.”

  Park walked around to examine the other side of the body. “We saw him less than two hours ago, Madison. He didn’t strike me as the suicidal type.”

  “Maybe not outwardly,” Madison replied. “But who knows what was going on in his head?”

  “That’s true.” Lex stood up. “We really didn’t know him at all.” She cupped a hand over her eyes and stared up. “But if he plunged from that penthouse balcony, he knew it would do the trick. That’s totally high. I think it’s forty-two stories.”

  “Tallula,” Madison whispered suddenly. “Oh my God. What happened to her? What’s going on up in that penthouse suite?”

  Lex slipped an arm around her sister’s shoulder. “Just stay strong. Everything will be fine. I’m sure Tallula is…”

  “Is what?”

  Lex gulped uncomfortably as she looked up at the tower. “I’m sure she’s just…hanging out somewhere.”

  “Hanging?” Madison’s voice broke. “Oh my God! Oh—no!”

  Lex bit down on her lip. She probably shouldn’t have used that word.

  In the distance, sirens wailed.

  Park circled the body completely. She stopped when she was directly beside Elijah’s waist. She swept her eyes across the ground and trained her gaze in an outward circular motion, scanning the concrete for clues. The spatter of blood spiraled off to the left; several drops had sprayed Madison, so that was the trajectory that followed the impact. She had read all about body splats in one of her forensic textbooks. The cause of death would ultimately be hemorrhaging of the internal organs caused by blunt trauma, but when a body hit hard ground after a lengthy fall, what it left in its wake was an ugly, Spin Art mess.

  Splat.

  Without standing exactly where Elijah had been standing just before he took the plunge, Park couldn’t deduce all that much. There wasn’t anything too telling about the rivers of blood—except that they were plentiful. Crimson stained the sidewalk in ugly, jagged slats.

  She raised her gaze and scanned the crowds. Too much commotion for her and Madison and Lex to really be noticed. A monkey wearing Victoria’s Secret could have been hopping around out here, but all eyes would still be locked on the blood and gore.

  She was about to walk away when something caught her eye.

  Right there against the wall of the hotel, a good ten feet from the street and maybe four feet from the body, sunlight glinted off a metal object.

  Park walked over to it as casually as possible and bent down. Her lips parted in surprise when she saw a skeleton key lying beside the wall. It was silver and scratched…as if it had bounced off the ground and skidded across the concrete.

  A key; its stem was silver, its square top blue. WTF?

  She knew leaving it there would be the right thing to do, but she gave in to impulse and picked it up, closing her fingers around it. She stood and threw a glance over her shoulder just as a long line of uniformed men poured out of the front doors of the hotel. Security.

  And careening down the avenue, the cops. Lights and sirens flashed everywhere as several cruisers screeched to a halt.

  “Get over here!” Madison ordered her, instinctively backing up, wanting to join the crowd of onlookers.

  Standing close together, they watched as security guards tried to fend off photographers, as uniformed cops dropped blue barricades into place, sealing off the street. A white sheet was immediately draped over Elijah Traymore’s body.

  “Hey!” one of the onlookers said. “Isn’t that the famous sculptor kid? The one who was on Entertainment Tonight last week?”

  “I read about him in Vanity Fair,” another person said. “Oh, God—did he kill himself?”

  “You see?” Madison whispered. “There’s no reason to suspect Elijah was pushed.”

  The word pushed grated against Park’s brain again. That was when she remembered something else she had read in one of her forensic books, and the mathematical equation of suicide by jumping didn’t compute here. “People who jump from high floors usually land facedown,” she said. “Elijah landed on his back.”

  Madison swallowed hard again. “Well, maybe he decided to do a few flips on the way down? Like maybe he wanted to go out feeling like an acrobat?”

  “Hey, Brooklyn!” Lex’s voice suddenly echoed above the din of the crowd.

  Madison, shocked and horrified, grabbed Lex’s arm and gave it a tug. “What the hell are you screaming about? We’re in Manhattan, you birdbrain.”

  “Brooklyn!” she called out again.

  “Is your dress cutting off the blood to your head?” Madison snapped. “People are staring at us.”

  “Don’t people generally stare at us?” Park tossed that out nonchalantly as she studied the skeleton key in her hand.

  Then all eyes fell on the tall, incredibly good-looking guy racing toward Lex. There was a hint of a smile on his face.

  “Holy Jeez!” he yelled, running up to her. “Are you okay? We heard about a body landing on the pavement and we were all like, What? No way!”

  “We saw it happen!” Lex said. She rested her right hand on his arm as she stared up at him. “The body fell like a few feet from us! It totally almost flattened us!”

&
nbsp; “They’re saying it’s Elijah Traymore!” Brooklyn looked to them like he wanted details. “That he jumped from the penthouse balcony.”

  Lex nodded gravely. “It is Elijah. We saw him…and all the blood.”

  “Damn.” Brooklyn turned and stared in the direction of the body. Dark stains had begun seeping through the sheet. “He seemed like a cool guy too.”

  “Did he?” Lex sounded as though she didn’t believe him.

  “Yeah. I mean, I only met him once. Saw him and his girlfriend when they checked in with their assistant. They all seemed pretty cool.”

  Madison cleared her throat loudly—so loud, in fact, that Park jumped.

  “Oh,” Lex said, smiling and shrugging. “Sorry. Brooklyn, these are my sisters, Madison and Park. Girls, this is Brooklyn DiMarco.”

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Park said, shaking his hand.

  “Hello.” Madison shot him a long stare before smiling politely, if a bit uncertainly. Then she turned the stare on Lex.

  And Lex knew what that meant. An explanation was in order. “Brooklyn and I met earlier today, when I went searching for Coco. He and I kind of…” She smirked. “Bumped into each other.”

  “We kind of keep bumping into each other.” Brooklyn laughed.

  “Oh,” Madison said, confused. She cleared her throat, unsure what to say. She smiled again and held her hand out to Brooklyn. “Nice to meet you. Where…um…where do you go to school?”

  His eyebrows knitted together. “Huh?”

  “School,” Madison repeated. “You look about our age.”

  “Oh. Right.” He nodded. “I’m a senior at LaGuardia. You know, Performing Arts. Over on Sixty-fourth and Amsterdam.”

  “No kidding!” Lex said. “That’s where Jennifer Aniston went. We were just at her birthday party!”

  “I didn’t go to that party,” Madison said. “I was at the UNICEF dinner.” She stared up at Brooklyn again and couldn’t help feeling suddenly hot. One more blink and she would officially be flirting with him. “Is Brooklyn your real name, or is that just a nickname?”

  “It’s my real name. But everyone calls me Brock.”

  “Except me,” Lex said. “I call you Brooklyn.”

  Park, who quickly recognized the attraction between Lex and Brock, smiled broadly. “A few of the production assistants on the set of Short Fuse went to LaGuardia,” she said. “Are you an acting student?”

  “Nah,” Brooklyn replied. “I play violin.”

  Lex squeezed his forearm again. “That’s my favorite instrument. It’s so romantic.”

  “I’d love to play for you sometime,” he said, and took a step closer to her.

  “Hey, Brock?” Madison looked him squarely in the eyes. “Do you know anything about what happened here? Do you know if Tallula Kayson is okay? Where is she?”

  “The cops are swarming the hotel,” he said. “Right before my father—he’s one of the security directors here—ran out, I thought I heard him say that they located Tallula.”

  “Oh my God,” Madison whispered. “So they’ve told her. They’ve—”

  And for the second time that afternoon, a high-pitched scream pierced the air.

  Madison spun around and saw Tallula standing just outside the hotel doors. She was being contained by a doorman as she wailed and fought to break free from his hold. “No!” she cried. “Elijah! He can’t be dead! He can’t be dead!”

  People everywhere were cupping their hands over their mouths and whispering to each other.

  Madison rushed forward, ignoring a number of security guards who screamed for her to stop. “Tallula!” she called, opening her arms wide. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry!”

  Tallula tore herself from the doorman’s hold and hugged Madison fiercely. “I don’t believe it’s him!” she sobbed. “They won’t let me see his face, but I have to see his face! I don’t believe it’s him!”

  Madison wrapped her hands around Tallula’s shoulders. “It’s him,” she said gently. “I saw him.”

  “No! No!”

  Park and Lex joined Madison’s side. Brooklyn stood a few feet behind them. They remained silent as Tallula cried and cried on Madison’s shoulder.

  “I loved him,” Tallula sobbed. “Why would he do this to me? How could he? We…were going to get married in the spring…. Not my Elijah. Not my Elijah…”

  Park had been looking down at the ground. Now she raised her eyes to get a glimpse of the police activity.

  Two detectives were kneeling beside the body, pointing to the trails of blood. One of them stood up and, his gaze locked on Tallula, began walking toward her.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Kayson? I’m Detective Roan.” He was short and bald with a ruddy complexion and small blue eyes. Probably fifty, but too many years of being a cop in New York City had added puffy dark bags under his eyes. “This is a terrible tragedy. I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you a few questions.”

  Tallula lifted her head from Madison’s shoulder. “I don’t know what happened!” she cried. “I wasn’t up in the penthouse! I don’t know why Elijah’s dead!”

  “Had he been having any suicidal thoughts recently?” Detective Roan asked her flatly. “Did he say anything like that to you?”

  Tallula wailed louder.

  “Maybe now isn’t the right time, Detective,” Madison said gently.

  Park tugged at the sleeve of Detective Roan’s shirt. “Hi,” she said quietly, pulling him off to the side. “I was just wondering…didn’t you happen to take a look at the deceased’s fingers?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Park brought her face close to his. “Scrapes in and around his palms. And two broken fingernails. They could be defensive wounds, but they could also mean he tried to hold on to something….”

  Detective Roan’s face registered confusion and outrage. “You’re Park Hamilton, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I’m a fan, and so are my daughters,” Roan said. “But I think you should leave the police work to us.”

  “Just look into it,” Lex urged him quietly, if a bit impatiently. “We’re rarely wrong when it comes to murder.”

  The detective’s eyes nearly popped from their sockets.

  That was the precise moment Park stared over his shoulder and saw Coco McKaid running out of the hotel’s front doors, looking mussed and harried and disheveled. “Coco!” she called out. “Over here!”

  Brooklyn tapped Lex’s shoulder. “Who’s Coco?”

  “One of our friends,” Lex explained. “I was looking for her when I bumped into you.”

  Coco eased her way past the security guards and the police. She was more sober than before, but she still looked like hell. She nearly stumbled into Park. “Hey,” she said breathlessly. “What’s going on? What’s with all the cops?”

  “Where have you been?” Madison asked. “We were looking for you!” She stared Coco down, noting her disheveled appearance and the pallor of her skin. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m sorry. I just…I…well…” Coco swallowed hard and shot the detective a curious glance. “Hey, that’s Tallula…. Why is she crying?”

  Park cocked her head to the right.

  Confused, Coco turned around. Her eyes widened. She drew in breath to speak, but no words came out.

  As the body was being lifted onto a gurney, the sheet fell away for a split second and revealed Elijah’s bloodstained face.

  “Oh my God!” Coco screamed. She stared in disbelief. She brought her hands up to her mouth, and her purse tumbled from her fingers and crashed to the ground, spilling its contents over Park’s shoes.

  Everyone looked down.

  Tallula gasped, her jaw dropping. She lowered herself to the ground and, pushing aside a lipstick and compact and a bottle of custom-mix perfume, twined her fingers around one item in particular: a gold rope chain. She held it up and let it dangle from her forefinger; at its end was a five-pointed star.

  “What is it,
honey?” Madison asked.

  Tallula stood up and fixed her eyes on Coco. The grief evident on her face only moments ago was replaced by rage. “This is Elijah’s,” she whispered. “He never took it off. Never. What the hell is it doing in your purse?”

  6

  My BFF, the Killer

  “I found it on the floor on my way to the bathroom,” Coco explained quickly, trying to keep her voice steady. “I picked it up because I knew it looked important. Expensive. I meant to turn it in to the front desk, but I never got the chance.”

  “Liar!” Tallula screamed.

  Detective Roan had moved the party into the lobby, which had been cleared several minutes earlier by hotel personnel. Now they were all standing in a nook beside the empty bar. Madison, Park, Lex. Coco and Tallula. Brooklyn had been called away by his father promptly—the entire security team would be working late—but before leaving, he had managed to slip Lex his cell number.

  That, however, was the furthest thing from Lex’s mind now. Her stomach was in knots as she watched the surreal scene unfold in front of her. She couldn’t believe any of it. She felt as though she were walking through a nightmare that had just taken another ruthless turn.

  Tallula’s accusatory eyes. Coco’s frightened voice. Detective Roan’s mounting suspicion. Those ghastly red dots on Madison’s dress that clashed terribly with her shoes. It was almost too much to bear.

  “I’m not lying!” Coco screamed back. “You don’t even know me! How can you accuse me of anything?” Her voice broke and her eyes welled with tears. Her fear was painfully obvious.

  “I think we should all calm down,” Park said, not for the first time. “Things will get better faster if we all just take a deep breath.”

  “And maybe do a quick yoga stretch,” Madison chimed in.

  Tallula rolled her neck. “Oh, I’d love to be able to stretch right now.”

  “Excuse me!” Detective Roan shouted. “Nobody is doing anything except answering my questions!” He glared at Madison, Park, and Lex. “And you three are just getting in the way! You’ll have to wait outside!”

  “Absolutely not!” Tallula screeched. She clutched Madison’s hand firmly. “I won’t answer any questions without my new BFFs here!”