Killer Mousse

by Melinda Wells

  Keely advised sweaters. “Because your boobs are still defying gravity. Take advantage while you can.”

  Mom was practical. “Don’t wear silk tops. Silk shows spots when you splash something, and you always splash. If you wear silk, you’ll spend a fortune on dry cleaners, and it’s not deductible.” Even when giving such no-nonsense advice, I always thought of my mother as having a hug in her warm voice.

  On the subject of what dishes I should demonstrate, Jean spoke first. “Your breadless meatloaf. Absolutely. And that crème brûlée—teach people how to make the hard crust on top. It’s fun to watch you work with that blowtorch.”

  Keely’s pronouncement was: “The Gangster Chicken.”

  “Daddy and Sean always loved your shepherd’s pie,” Mom said. “Oh, good heavens—I forgot about Sean. Do you think he knows what happened?” My brother, Sean, was serving on an aircraft carrier in Manila.

  “I don’t think they get the Better Living Channel on his ship,” Keely said wryly. “I’ll shoot him an e-mail, Della—and tell him your first TV show was murder.”

  “That’s not funny,” Mom chided.

  The four of us were on the phone together for forty-five minutes. By the time we said our affectionate good nights, I was barely able to keep my eyes open.

  At last I was able to take off my clothes, brush my teeth, and collapse into bed. Tuffy was already stretched out lengthwise on his side, snoring softly.

  I dreamed that I was Nancy Drew, searching under lilac bushes and exploring dark cellars, armed with only a flashlight and a ton of gumption. But in the dream, Nancy wasn’t “titian-haired” anymore; she was a brunette like me. We—or I—or the Nancy–Della combination were getting close to solving a serious crime, when all of a sudden, from out of the darkness, I heard a dog barking. Barking …?

  Tuffy?

  I fought my way to consciousness and realized that it was Tuffy barking—because someone was ringing the doorbell. I squeezed my eyes to focus on the bedside clock’s inch-high red digital numbers.

  Three A.M.? I’d been asleep for only a little more than an hour.

  The bell kept ringing. I quieted Tuffy with a reassuring pat and struggled into a robe. I’d just managed to thrust one arm through a sleeve when I opened the door to the hallway and practically collided with my young houseguest and cooking school assistant, Eileen O’Hara. Twenty, tall, naturally blonde, and naturally slim, Eileen was so pretty that if I didn’t love her like a daughter I might hate her, or at least feel depressed around her. Even in the middle of the night, in her rumpled old UCLA Bruins T-shirt and faded sweatpants, she looked fabulous. On the other hand, I must have been a puffy-eyed mess.

  Eileen grabbed my arm and whispered, “What’s happening?”

  “I have no idea, but whoever’s at the door isn’t giving up.”

  As I went down the hallway, Eileen and Tuffy were right behind me, practically on my heels. At the entrance to the kitchen, Eileen thrust a big, heavy Maglite into my hand; it was part torch and part cudgel. “It’s one of Daddy’s police flashlights. He gave it to me to carry at night.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Take Tuffy and go stand by the phone in the kitchen. If I scream, call nine-one-one.”

  Eileen curled her fingers around Tuffy’s collar and turned on the kitchen lights. I flinched against the brightness and saw that she’d kept one hand on Tuffy and was reaching for the wall phone with the other.

  When I got to the living room, I flipped the wall switches that controlled both the brass ceiling fixture above my head and the outside lights. Clutching the hefty flashlight against my thigh, I looked through the picture window to see a man jabbing at my bell as though he was summoning a sluggish elevator. It was a relief to recognize him, but he was not anyone I would have expected to find at this hour standing on my doormat. No—“standing” was the wrong word. Shifting impatiently from foot to foot, he looked like a jogger running in place while he waited for a red light to turn green.

  My surprise visitor was Phil Logan, head of publicity for the Better Living Channel. I’d met him two weeks earlier when he supervised the photographer who was taking pictures of me to publicize the show. Phil oozed energy the way some people ooze sweat. In his thirties and thin as the blade of a knife, he had an explosion of sandy hair. I imagined every calorie he consumed rushing right to his scalp.

  I opened the door. In an angry whisper, I demanded, “What are you doing here at this hour?”

  Phil brandished a leather file folder. “Sorry, Della, but this is a business emergency. I need information from you that I have to start e-mailing out in a couple of hours.”

  On one hour’s sleep I was in no mood for a visitor, business or social, but I couldn’t keep him out on the doorstep. “Shhh. Come in before you wake the neighbors.”

  Phil stepped inside, and stopped. He said, “Nice house,” but he was surveying my living room with a frown.

  Why is he frowning?

  His expression annoyed me. I should have ignored it, but before I could stop myself, I was defending my home. “I decorated the living room so it would feel like a country garden, with lots of flowers and plants. That sofa is so comfortable I practically have to pry people out of it. One evening a woman came over, wearing the same floral print, and when she sat down, all I could see was her head.”

  Phil didn’t laugh at my attempt at humor, or even acknowledge it. With brow still puckered, he said, “If we hide the TV, rent some antique pieces and decent art, and bring in a pair of settees in pale yellow silk, I might land an at-home photo spread for you.”

  “But then it wouldn’t be my home anymore.” At three A.M. I wasn’t even trying to keep the edge out of my voice. “Isn’t there supposed to be truth in advertising?”

  “That’s ‘advertising’—I’m talking about publicity. Different animal entirely.”

  “I need coffee,” I said, gesturing for him to follow me down the hall. When we got to the kitchen doorway and he saw Tuffy, he practically skidded to a halt. Tuffy stood beside Eileen, on guard. Seeing Phil, Tuffy’s lip curled slightly on one side, and I heard a soft growl low in his throat.

  “It’s all right, Tuff. Phil is a friend.” Calling Phil a friend was an exaggeration, but Tuffy stopped growling.

  Phil was gawking at Eileen with the enthralled expression I had witnessed often when men saw Eileen O’Hara for the first time.

  Had I ever looked as good as Eileen in the middle of the night, even twenty-odd years ago? Mack used to tell me I was beautiful, but he was in love with me, so I never regarded him as an objective judge. I used to joke that I’d cast a spell over him with my homemade pastas and chocolate cheesecakes.

  I introduced Phil and Eileen to each other. “Phil handles publicity for the network—and,” I added pointedly, “he works very odd hours.”

  “I’m a business major at UCLA,” Eileen said. “Publicity’s important.”

  For the first time since he’d seen my living room and found it wanting, Phil looked pleased. “You’re right. Without properly managed publicity, nobody would know what TV show to watch or which movie to go see.”

  “Sit down,” I told Phil, indicating a chair at the kitchen table.

  Phil looked at Tuffy with concern and remained by the door, as though he’d taken root in that spot. “In the bio you filled out, you said you had a poodle. I thought you meant a fussy little hairball. Does he bite?”

  “He’s very gentle,” I said. “Here, give me your hand.” Without waiting for Phil to extend it, I took his wrist and guided him toward Tuffy. “Hey, Tuff, this is a nice man. See?” I let Tuffy sniff Phil’s fingers. Apparently, Phil passed what I called “The Tuffy Test.” My standard poodle did his version of a shrug, strolled over beside the kitchen table and settled down. He rested his chin on his front paws, but his eyes stayed open and watchful.

  Eileen took a seat at the kitchen table. Phil glanced at Tuffy. Noting the dog’s lack of interest in him, he looked relieved and sat d
own beside Eileen.

  I turned on the coffeemaker and took mugs from the shelf.

  “No coffee for me,” Phil said, “but I need sugar. Do you have something sweet around?” With a laugh, he added, “Anything except chocolate mousse.”

  “That’s not funny,” I said—and realized that I sounded like my mother. Aggghhh. When did that happen?

  Eileen, the human bridge over troubled waters, said smoothly, “How about some of Della’s chocolate almond-butter fudge?” She took a plastic container out of the refrigerator. When she removed the top, Phil’s eyes widened with desire for something other than Eileen.

  “My mom used to make fudge,” he said. “Not like the stuff you get in stores that tastes like gum erasers. You got any milk to go with it?”

  I took care of Phil’s milk request while Eileen put pieces of the fudge on a small plate and gave it to him with a paper napkin.

  After the first bite, Phil said, “This is fabulous.”

  “When I was in college, I was so broke I couldn’t afford to buy Christmas presents, so I made fudge for everybody,” I said.

  “You could make me a present of this anytime.”

  I poured coffee for myself and for Eileen. One of the traits my young friend and I share is the ability to sleep soundly after drinking coffee, even if we do it late at night.

  Phil pushed his empty plate aside and placed his file folder on the table. “That’ll keep me going. Now, let’s get down to business. Damn, I wish I’d been at the studio tonight, but I thought your show was going to be dull.”

  “Phil, a woman was murdered,” I said.

  “Oh, well, yes. I mean, that was a tragedy, of course. But it happened. We can’t change that. Now we have to look on the bright side.”

  “What ‘bright side’?” I asked.

  “The Better Living Channel got ten thousand new subscribers before midnight, after the story broke on the national news. The head of sales thinks that by the end of today they’ll have another fifty thousand.” Phil wasn’t trying to disguise the excitement in his voice. “What’s happened is big. Maybe you wondered why you didn’t do any interviews before the show went on?”

  “No, I hadn’t. This is all new to me.”

  “Well, the reason is that I couldn’t give you away to the TV or print media even if I’d tossed in season tickets to the Lakers—not that they’d take a bribe,” he said quickly. “They wouldn’t. I couldn’t even get you on local radio. But since the murder, you’ve become interesting.”

  “I don’t want to profit from a woman’s death.” The idea of it put such a bad taste in my mouth I pushed my coffee mug away.

  “Let’s think this through,” Phil said calmly. “Did you kill Mimi?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then your conscience is clear, so don’t worry about it. Right now you’re hot, Della. We’ve got to take advantage—but we have to do some damage control.”

  I looked at him with suspicion. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute, but first…” Phil extracted several eight-by-ten photos from his file folder and placed them facedown on the kitchen table. “Ready for the big reveal?”

  “Yes.”

  With a flourish, Phil turned the pictures over.

  Eileen squealed in delight. “Oh, Aunt Del—you look gorgeous.”

  Staring at the pictures, I asked, “Who is that?”

  “It’s you,” Phil said. “Same dark hair, same nice eyes.”

  “Where are the little lines around my ‘nice eyes’?”

  “The retouch artist got rid of those. And that crease in the middle of your forehead—I stood over him until it was gone.”

  “My face looks frozen, like I wouldn’t be able to frown.”

  “Della, sweetie,” Phil said, “nobody looks as good as their publicity pictures. That’s the whole idea of a portrait shoot: improving on real life.” In spite of his upbeat attitude, I heard a note of strain in his voice. It made me feel bad about my negative reaction. Maybe I was so upset at seeing a woman die in front of me that I was being unreasonable.

  “They really are lovely photos,” I told Phil. “It was just that I hadn’t expected to be all glamorized and retouched.”

  “Don’t take it personally,” Phil said. “You’re very attractive for a…for a…”

  “For a woman my age?”

  “I mean for somebody who isn’t an actress.”

  “Nice save,” Eileen said dryly.

  “Speaking of that dreaded subject ‘age’…” Phil pulled a sheet of paper out of the folder. I recognized it as the bio form I filled out. “Now that circumstances have put you in the spotlight, I’ve got to create a hot new bio for you, to make you sound exciting. That’s what I’ve got to start sending around this morning, and what you’ve given me won’t do. See here, under ‘age’? You put down forty-seven. How old shall we tell the media you are?”

  “Forty-seven.”

  “You don’t look it. How about we say…late thirties?”

  “I can see that you’re really good at your job, Phil, and I appreciate that you’re trying to be helpful, but I’m not going to lie.”

  Phil shrugged, giving in. “Okay, we just won’t mention age. Let people guess. Next: Are you having—or have you had—a romance with anybody famous?”

  Eileen giggled, which wasn’t a particularly flattering reaction.

  “No,” I said. “I did meet Jay Leno a few years ago. One morning in Beverly Hills, when my car broke down. He was riding a motorcycle and stopped to see if he could help me.”

  Excitement lighted Phil’s eyes. “Great. What happened between you two?”

  “Nothing. I told him that I’d already called Triple A, so he rode off.”

  Phil grimaced in disappointment. “That’s not enough to get you on the Tonight Show.” Then he brightened. “What if we drop hints in the press about you and a dead celebrity—somebody fabulous but who isn’t around to deny it? I’d let it slip that you were the last great love of that guy’s life. Of course, you’ll deny it, but nobody will believe your denial. It’s perfect.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  He deflated like a balloon character after Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. “All right…So what do you want to do about the publicity photos?”

  I felt bad that I was making his job so hard. “Go ahead, use them,” I said. “They’re really beautiful pictures. Maybe my actress friend Liddy will teach me some makeup tricks, so I’ll be able to look a little more like the retouched me.”

  “Good idea.” Phil scooped them up and put them back in the folder. “Now for the next item on the agenda.” He extracted three folded newspapers and smoothed them out on the table. “I got the early editions. Mimi’s murder made the front page of the L.A. Chronicle, is on page three of the New York Post, and on the front of the L.A. Times ‘California’ section. Mimi herself isn’t such a big deal, but how she died is—live on a TV network, even if it is basic cable.”

  Eileen and I scanned the stories. Straight reporting; no accusation that I was suspected of murder. One paragraph caught my eye. “This paper refers to me as ‘TV novice Delia Carmichael,’” I said. “They got the novice part right, but Delia?”

  Phil waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, well, they can get your name wrong when you’re an unknown. But you won’t be unknown for long. I’m lining up interviews—I already promised the Chronicle first crack at you. Promotion-wise, this is huge, Del. I didn’t think I’d be able to get you into the Chronicle for months—if ever. The reporter’s name is Nicholas D’Martino. He wants to come over here at one o’clock today. Can you do it then?”

  “Yes, but there won’t be time for you to go out and rent better furniture and art.”

  Phil either missed the irony in my voice or he ignored it. “We can do that later. Nick doesn’t do life and style pieces. His specialty is crime.”

  7

  When the doorbell rang at five minutes past noon,
I was on my hands and knees, vigorously scrubbing the kitchen floor, scouring away traces of the cooking and baking I’d done yesterday for the TV show. At the same time, I was trying to erase the image of Mimi Bond’s agonized face as she died in front of me.

  I’d put Tuffy in the fenced yard behind the house while I was washing the floor, but he must have heard the bell because he started to bark. To quiet him, I went to the back door, shushed gently, and assured him that everything was all right. His response was to settle onto the grass beneath the big elm tree and chew on a new tennis ball. From the time he was a puppy, Tuffy seemed to understand what I said.

  The doorbell kept ringing. Stripping off my rubber kitchen gloves, I hurried toward the front of the house. I’d have to get rid of whoever it was quickly in order to have time to take a shower and dress before the Los Angeles Chronicle reporter arrived.

  Glancing through the living room window, I saw a man in his forties, medium height with thick black hair. A wavy lock fell onto the middle of his forehead, brushing the top of black brows. He was attractive, if you liked the tanned, a little too good-looking, Las Vegas singer type with the beginning of a stubble on his face. All he needed to complete the image was a cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other.

  But this wasn’t Las Vegas. I guessed he had come to my door for one of the three usual reasons that strangers rang my bell: a) to try to convert me to their religion, b) to try to persuade me to list my house with their real estate office, or c) to offer to trim my trees.

  He saw me peering at him and flashed me a semi-smile. The slight curl of his lips didn’t seem in the least bit religious, and judging by the fact that he was wearing a sweater and sports jacket, I couldn’t picture him trimming trees. That left real estate; this would be the third agent in a week inquiring if I wanted to sell. I decided that when I made a little extra money, I would have the front yard fenced and put a lock on the gate.

  I opened the door a few inches. “Yes?”

  “I have an appointment with Della Carmichael.” He passed a white business card through the narrow gap. “Nicholas D’Martino.”