A Star is Dead

by Elaine Viets

  ‘The order says, “NO PEANUTS” – underlined three times,’ Amy said. ‘Jemima was very worried about peanuts. I told Jemima what I told you, we don’t put nuts in our Bavarian cream cakes. Never ever.’

  ‘But there were traces of peanuts in it,’ I said. ‘Enough to send Mrs Rappaport to the ER. And I have a lab report that proves it.’

  ‘I don’t know how that happened.’ Amy looked distressed.

  The shop doorbell jingled again and another customer came in, a Forest lady in a navy boiled wool coat with brass buttons. She asked, ‘Do you have any more of that peanut butter cheesecake? My husband loves it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mrs Sullivan,’ Amy said. ‘It’s made right here on the premises.’

  I pricked up my ears. Peanut butter cheesecake. Made right here at the shop. That’s where the peanut traces could have come from.

  ‘Sixty-five dollars is a good price for a whole cheesecake,’ Mrs Sullivan said, as Amy boxed up the cake.

  ‘It’s our peanut lovers’ special this month,’ Amy said. ‘We also have peanut chocolate chip cookies, chocolate-peanut butter pie, and our bittersweet chocolate peanut butter cups. Those are my favorites. They’re all made right here.’

  Now I saw a flyer by the cash register, sprinkled with red hearts and pink flowers: ‘February is for lovers!’ it said. ‘Peanut lovers! Treat your true love to peanut chocolate chip cookies. Chocolate-peanut butter pie. Bittersweet peanut butter cups. We promise the pea-nuttiest treats ever!’

  At the very bottom the flyer said, ‘Proudly baked in our shop for extra freshness!’

  I thought of the standard warning label: ‘made in a facility that uses peanuts, ground nuts and tree nuts’ that appeared on so many baked goods.

  The Forest Bakery didn’t use it, but they did produce peanut desserts. Lots of them, made on the premises. That’s how Clare Rappaport’s cake picked up those near-fatal traces of peanuts. And she didn’t get any warning.

  Once Mrs Sullivan had paid for her cheesecake, Amy asked me, ‘Is there anything else I can do for you, Angela?’

  ‘May I have a copy of that cake receipt to show Mrs Rappaport? It would ease her mind.’

  ‘Of course,’ Amy said. She came back with a copy in about two minutes.

  ‘Anything else I can help you with?’ she asked.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘You’ve been a big help.’ I took two peanut lovers’ flyers and left.

  Back in my car, I called Clare. She answered on the second ring. ‘Angela,’ she said, and I heard the wariness in her voice. ‘Do you have news for me?’

  ‘I do. Very good news. When may I come see you? Or would you rather see me at my place?’

  Her wariness changed to pure pleasure. ‘I’d love to talk to you as soon as possible. Could you come over in half an hour, if you’re free? Cook just made the most delicious caramel-apple tart, and we should both enjoy it. We’ll have some with tea.’

  ‘Coffee for me,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Thirty minutes later, I was in Clare’s morning room, a sunny alcove that looked out on the south lawn. Clare – or her housekeeper – had prepared a handsome round table with a snowy, perfectly ironed linen cloth, two lace-trimmed napkins, and as a centerpiece, a round apple tart, drizzled with caramel. The table was set with Sèvres china.

  Clare fit perfectly into this comfortable domestic scene: Her white hair was freshly coiffed, and she wore pearls and a pale blue twinset the same color as her eyes. There was no sign of her recent hospital battle. Clare greeted me with a warm smile and I sat across from her.

  Millie, her housekeeper, served coffee for me, and English breakfast tea for Clare, then left both pots on the table. Clare cut us two generous slices of apple tart. My mouth was watering, but I held off tasting it until I gave Clare the news.

  She took a big forkful of tart and I said, ‘Your cake didn’t have peanuts in it.’

  ‘Really?’ Her fork hovered in the air and she abandoned it on her plate.

  ‘The Forest Bakery’s Bavarian cream cake doesn’t have peanuts,’ I said, ‘and Jemima made sure to tell them that you could not eat peanuts. In fact, it was underlined three times on the order. Look, see for yourself.’ I presented her with the copy of the receipt.

  Clare smiled as she read it. ‘That sounds like my daughter. Jemima is thorough.’

  ‘I also have the lab report right here.’ I put a copy on the table, and told her what it said.

  ‘There were trace amounts,’ Clare said. ‘That’s enough to cause anaphylactic shock in someone like me.’

  She looked confused. ‘So how did traces of peanuts get into my cake?’

  ‘I’m guessing this caused it,’ I said, and gave her the bakery flyer promising the ‘pea-nuttiest treats ever!’

  ‘Those are all made at the shop,’ I said. ‘That’s what Amy the salesclerk told me and it’s also on the flyer.’ I showed her the line at the bottom that said, ‘Proudly baked in our shop for extra freshness!’

  ‘Proudly baked!’ Clare said. ‘Stupidly baked, without a hint of warning. I almost died because of their carelessness. They have no idea the damage they did to my health and my family!’

  Clare looked misty-eyed now. ‘My children! I’ve been so angry at them I’ve been avoiding their calls.’

  I remembered when she was going to declare Trey and Jemima guilty of attempted murder, without an investigation. A hardness lurked in the heart of the Forest. Clare’s children would never know how close they came to being disinherited, and losing all that lovely money. Their mother wouldn’t take their calls for three days.

  Now she said, ‘I’m going to call them right this instant.’ Tears were running down her face.

  ‘I’ll go then, Clare.’ I wanted to give her privacy, and I thought I might gag at this sudden show of maternal affection.

  ‘Absolutely not. You finish your coffee and apple tart. I’ll be back shortly.’

  Clare left the room to make her calls, and I finished the coffee and the tart. The caramel-apple combination was luscious. I was wondering whether it would be polite to cut myself another piece when Clare returned, wearing a wide smile.

  ‘Angela, dear, I’m so happy. You remember that I gave my children a test, telling them that I was having money problems? Well, when I talked with Jemima just now, she said I could move in with her and she’d give me the whole third floor of her home so I could have privacy. She even wants to install an elevator, so I won’t have to deal with the stairs. She says my grandchildren would love having me live with them.’

  Clare had somehow managed to polish off the whole slice of apple tart during that conversation, and she cut me another piece without my having to ask.

  ‘And my son …’ she was so overcome with emotion that she had to stop. ‘My son said that the condo next to his was up for sale and he’d buy it for me.

  ‘Both my children want me! I’m inviting them to dinner this weekend to celebrate and give them the good news.’

  Charming. A real Hallmark moment. But what kind of mother ‘tests’ her children? I wondered. Had I idealized Clare because she’d been kind to my mother? Probably. Either way, my mission was nearly over. I would finish my apple tart and leave.

  ‘Will you tell them what went wrong with their cream cake?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But only as a warning not to buy anything from the Chouteau Forest Bakery. And I’m also calling my attorney. The bakery should pay for my hospital bills, at the very least. There must be other people in the Forest with allergies. That place should learn. I could have died! That cake could have killed an innocent child with peanut allergies.’

  Ah, now the weepy Clare had been replaced by a proper Forest reaction: Someone must pay – and she had a high-minded reason for her revenge. There would be money involved, of course. And it would go to her.

  Clare and I finished our cake at a leisurely pace while she chatted about her grandchildren. She asked abo
ut my DI cases, but they were too grim to discuss over food. I did give her the inside gossip on Mario and Jessica Gray’s murder. Now that he was free, I could talk about it.

  ‘Blaming Mario for Miss Gray’s death made no sense to me,’ she said. ‘He was so proud to be her hairstylist. I’m sure it was prejudice on the part of that police detective.’

  I was, too. I thanked Clare for the apple tart and got ready to leave. Clare wrote me a check for the cost of the lab test and then tucked a check for five hundred dollars into my jacket pocket.

  ‘Thank you, Clare, but I didn’t do this for the money.’

  ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘But everyone needs money. If you don’t want it, give it to your favorite charity. I’ll be insulted if you give it back.’

  She sent me off with a hug and these words, ‘Angela, your mother would be proud. You’re just like her.’

  I stepped out into the blustery day, warm and well-fed. Despite my feelings about Clare, those words meant more than the money.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Jessica Gray had arrived in the Forest with fanfare – luxury limos, splashy banners, police escorts, and hordes of reporters. She swanned around on-stage in sequins and glamorous gowns slit up to there. Everyone marveled at her timeless beauty.

  No one noticed when Jessica left the Forest. Her ashes were sealed in a plain cardboard box. The Uber driver who picked up Stu and Tawnee for a trip to the airport had no idea the great Jessica Gray was in the footwell of his SUV.

  Tawnee carried Jessica aboard the flight back to California, along with a turkey panini and her new purse. She deposited Jessica in the overhead bin, where the star spent the flight under a raincoat.

  I wondered if Jessica had found peace in death. Was she once more young and beautiful, and spending eternity with her lover? Was she suffering the purifying fires of purgatory for all her petty acts, as the nuns had taught me? Or was she simply a pile of ashes and bone fragments in a cardboard box?

  Whatever happened to her spirit, Jessica was finally free of the hated Forest, though their names would be linked in every article about her.

  Monty returned Tawnee’s locket to her. She said it was a gift from her mother and she must have dropped it when she was looking for Jessica’s spray. I thought Stu palmed it as a petty punishment when she accused him of stealing the spray, but said nothing. Tawnee had agreed to be Stu’s assistant while he settled Jessica’s estate. The press had no interest in Jessica’s widower, except for a brief mention that he was returning to California. Their stories implied there was something vaguely nasty in his relationship with Jessica.

  The media was focused on Will, the make-up artist who had murdered Jessica, with stories like ‘Oh, Artful Death.’ Their interest was obsessive. Everyone wanted to know why he killed her. Missouri is a death penalty state, and uses lethal injections for its executions. Will was charged with murder one, and he’d heard the horror stories about botched executions. He knew about the Oklahoma inmate who took forty-three minutes to die, and it was a heart attack that finally killed him. And Ohio let an inmate gasp for death for an inhuman (and inhumane) twenty-six minutes.

  Will was terrified of that gruesome ending – never mind that he’d condemned Jessica Gray to vomiting and spasming in the back of a black limousine. His delicate sensibilities couldn’t bear the thought of his own death as an awful, long-drawn-out public spectacle.

  So Ethan Heller, Will’s LA lawyer, worked out a deal – life in prison without possibility of parole. Once the death penalty was out of the equation, Will talked. In fact he never shut up.

  He said that Jessica Gray had promised to marry him and finance his line of cosmetics. When she was in the hospital, he accidentally found out that she had married Stu. Will confronted Jessica in her hospital bed, and she said, ‘I saw you with that faggot hairstylist, and it wasn’t the first time. Do you think I’d risk AIDS to marry you?’

  ‘Then you won’t finance my make-up line?’ he’d asked her.

  ‘Hell, no,’ she said. ‘Get one of your bum boys to fork over the cash for your schemes.’

  She laughed at him. Will said it was a ‘wicked, witchy laugh.’

  Will brooded on her harsh words and broken promises until he decided to kill her. That night, when she was asleep, he stole both bottles of throat spray that Tawnee kept in her bag and poured vape juice into the blue one. Then he hid the fatal bottle and the harmless one in his make-up case. Will thought there was justice in that manner of death. After all, Jessica had decreed that her entourage give up cigarettes and vape.

  Will said that Becky the homeless woman must have seen him make the switch. I knew she’d been lurking in the shadows at the hospital, waiting to steal from Jessica’s sleeping staff. So did Will.

  ‘Why didn’t Becky say something?’ people asked. ‘She could have prevented Jessica’s death. Maybe even gotten a reward.’

  ‘Because she hated Jessica even more than I did,’ Will said. ‘She wanted her to die.’

  Will hoped that Mario would be blamed for Jessica’s death, but that didn’t happen. He’d slipped the empty vape juice bottle into Mario’s styling case at the hospital and was sure he’d get away with murder. But that didn’t happen.

  ‘Nothing worked out for me,’ Will whined.

  The Forest was relieved when Will’s lawyer proposed that deal. (Between you and me, Will would have done better with a local attorney. Monty told me that the prosecuting attorney, Harper Jackson, was prepared to settle for a sentence of twenty years for Will.) A plea bargain meant there would be no publicity-packed trial. Will was quietly bundled off to prison, where he was quickly forgotten, except for an occasional ‘What Ever Happened To?’ feature.

  There was also some interest in Becky’s death, and much praise was given to the city police for ‘solving a homeless person’s murder.’ Never mind that Becky was living in a hotel at the time of her death. She would forever be labeled ‘homeless.’

  In addition to dropping the charges for drug dealing, the Forest PD issued a formal apology to Mario. In return, Monty had agreed not to sue the PD for false arrest, and Mario vowed not to distribute drugs. I doubted he’d stop using, but I hoped he’d be more careful in the future.

  After the national press departed and Forest life continued, Mario held a huge celebration at his shop – calling it his Grand Re-Opening – and invited all the Forest dwellers.

  Monty and I were the guests of honor. Mario made sure I had the last appointment at his shop before it closed for the party – three o’clock. He did my hair and make-up ‘as a gift to you, my friend.’ He also presented me with a fabulous black Gucci pencil dress to ‘make up for the one that was torn while you were fighting to save me.’ And last – but certainly not least – he gave me new heels that could have been copies of the ones I’d lost running from Will’s car.

  ‘They’re beautiful!’ I said, and could think of no other words.

  ‘Don’t you dare cry,’ Mario said, and smiled at me. ‘You’ll ruin your eye make-up.’

  So I held off with the waterworks and thanked him. Mario said, ‘You must honor me by wearing both my gifts tonight – the shoes and the dress.’

  By that time, the florist had arrived, bringing in waterfalls of live orchid plants, and the caterer was starting to set up. I hurried home, and changed into my new cocktail dress. It fit like a glove, and the shoes worked, too. I knew they would.

  Mario looked magnificent that night. His dark hair was long and lustrous, his body was lean in black with a Spanish silver belt and bracelet.

  The catered food was probably the best ever served at a Forest party. There was something for every palate: mini filets mignon topped with blue cheese on crostini, chilled lobster rolls, and as a nod to his Cuban heritage, massive platters of arroz con pollo, ropa vieja (shredded beef in tomato sauce), and a giant avocado salad. Plus long loaves of warm Cuban bread, with lashings of salted butter. Desserts were cups of flan, cinnamon-and-sugar dusted crema frit
a (fried cream), apple pie, and chocolate cake.

  And the wine! The servers poured wine and champagne as if they’d be fired for leaving a glass empty.

  I saw almost all of the Forest regulars, except Detective Greiman, thank goodness. I met Monty and Katie at the party, and we sat together at a table near the DJ. Officer Christopher Ferretti was there, looking handsome in a dark blue suit.

  He stopped by our table to say hello as the DJ played a Beatles’ tune – ‘Something.’

  ‘Want to dance, Angela?’ the officer asked, and blushed like a shy boy.

  I hesitated for an instant and Katie hissed in my ear, ‘It’s a dance, not a date.’

  She and Monty stood up to dance, and so I said, ‘I’d be delighted, Officer Ferretti.’

  ‘Chris,’ he corrected me, and held out his hand. I went easily into his arms. As the Beatles serenaded us, he guided me around the salon, past the styling chairs, the tables piled with food, and the manicurists’ stations. ‘You look lovely,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s over,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘You’ve saved your friend and caught the killer of that poor homeless woman. You risked your life to do that. I’m so impressed. You’re as smart as you are beautiful.’

  His arms were strong and his chest was broad and it felt good when I put my head on his muscular shoulder. He smelled of Old Spice.

  Soon we were in Mario’s alcove, with Elvis crooning ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ while we danced in clouds of orchids.

  EPILOGUE

  Jessica Gray’s poison lingered in the Forest for a long time. The national press visited our enchanted area and slammed it brutally. A hip blog irreverently said Reggie’s party ‘featured a collection of local clench-butts,’ but Reggie didn’t deign to notice blogs. My favorite was this quote from the New York Times, which called the Forest an ‘enclave of the one percent, the finest minds of the nineteenth century, barricaded in drafty mansions to avoid facing the problems of this new century.’ The newspaper of record ruffled more than a few feathers, but no one canceled any subscriptions. The Forest preferred the Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine, and neither had covered the event.