Killing Bridezilla Page 11

  “Like this.” I chomped down again.

  “Oh, you’re impossible!” she said, spearing a shard of broccoli from her chopped veggie salad.

  We’d nabbed ourselves a prime table in the mall’s outdoor food court. Kamikaze shoppers in their Nikes and Juicy Coutures rubbed elbows with office workers on their lunch breaks, and the warmth of the hazy L.A. sun felt good on my back.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Kandi said. “Did you ever find a guy to be your fiancé at that wedding?”

  “Yeah, I got a guy from an escort service.”

  “How’d it work out?”

  “Terrific—until one of the bridesmaids remembered seeing him at a male strip club.”

  “I told you you shouldn’t have lied about having a fiancé,” she said, with a smug smile. “You know my motto.”

  “You’re Never Too Young to Moisturize?”

  “No, silly. Honesty Is the Best Policy.”

  “Oh, puh-leese. This from the woman who’s been lying about her age since kindergarten.”

  “Lying about your age doesn’t count,” she said with a dismissive wave. “Everyone does that.” And then, deftly changing the subject: “So what about the rest of the wedding? How did that work out?”

  “Not so hot for the bride. She got killed.”

  “Omigod!” Kandi sputtered. “What happened?”

  “She fell from a balcony. Impaled in the heart by a statue of Cupid.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Wow. I read all about that in the paper. That was your wedding?”

  “Mmmff.” I nodded, my mouth full of nitrates.

  “How come you didn’t call me right away?”

  I’ll tell you why I didn’t call her. Because I knew I’d be in for a bossy lecture (see hot dog lecture above) about minding my own business and staying out of danger.

  “Don’t even think about getting involved in this, Jaine.”

  What did I tell you?

  “It’s too late, isn’t it?” she cried. “I can tell from that shifty look in your eye. You’re already involved, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe just a little.”

  “Jaine, Jaine, Jaine. What am I going to do with you?”

  “For starters, you can pass me the mustard.”

  “You can’t keep running around chasing killers! Don’t you realize how dangerous it is? One of these days I’m going to be reading your name from a toe tag at the city morgue.”

  “Until then, can I please have the mustard?”

  She shoved the mustard across the table with an angry grunt.

  “At least promise me you’ll be careful.”

  I swore on her BlackBerry, which is practically her Bible, that I’d be careful, and we polished off our chow without any further lectures. (Well, I polished off mine; Kandi, as she always did, left a ladylike portion of salad on her plate.)

  “Want to swing by Bloomie’s with me,” she asked, as we chucked our garbage in the trash, “while I pick up something to wear to Minnesota?”

  “Minnesota? Why are you going to Minnesota?”

  “To meet Carl.”

  “Who’s Carl?”

  “Didn’t I tell you about him? The most wonderful guy I met on Air Date.”

  “Air Date?”

  “It’s the newest way to meet people online. You chat about where you’re going, and then if you happen to be going to the same place, you book tickets on the same flight. Anyhow, it turned out Carl was flying to St. Paul to visit his folks, so I told him I had to fly there on business.”

  “Wait a minute. You’re pretending to have a business meeting in St. Paul to hook up with a guy you met on the Internet? What happened to Honesty Is the Best Policy?”

  “What’s dishonest about that? I am going to St. Paul on business. The business of finding myself a suitable life partner.”

  Talk about your verbal tap dancing. If the bottom ever falls out of the cartoon biz, Kandi can always get a gig as an HMO claims adjuster.

  “So what do you say? You coming to Bloomie’s with me or not?”

  “Not. The only thing I can afford at Bloomie’s right now is their shopping bag.”

  I hugged her good-bye and started for the parking lot.

  “Promise me you won’t go chasing after murderers,” she called after me.

  “I promise I won’t go chasing after murderers.”

  Not right then, anyway.

  First, I had that ninety-dollar corkscrew to return.

  Knights of yore had about as much luck finding the Holy Grail as I had finding a parking spot in Beverly Hills that afternoon.

  Ferragamo must have been having a fire sale, because all the municipal lots were packed. After circling endlessly looking for a spot on the street, I finally broke down and pulled into the lot behind The Cookerie. I gasped to see the parking rate was an exorbitant three dollars every fifteen minutes. I got out of my car with a sigh.

  The parking attendant, a young Hispanic guy, eyed my Corolla appraisingly.

  “You want to sell it?” he asked. “I’ve got two hundred. Cash.”

  That made about $150 more than I had.

  “Sorry,” I smiled. “Not interested.”

  I tossed him the keys and he zoomed off to park my rustmobile in the alley, so as not to contaminate the Rolls and Mercedes in the lot.

  I hurried in through The Cookerie’s back entrance, making my way past jet-propelled blenders and museum-quality espresso machines.

  The same snooty blonde who’d sold me the corkscrew was manning the register, ringing up a sale. I saw to my dismay that her customer was buying a dozen long-stemmed brandy snifters, each one of which had to be individually wrapped.

  Blondie was taking her time, chatting gaily with the customer, a stick-thin fashionista sporting tight jeans and fake boobs. The woman looked like she had a few hours to kill before it was time for her next celery stick and was clearly prepared to kill them jawing with Blondie.

  “These are such fabulous glasses,” Blondie cooed. “I just know you’re going to love them.”

  “I saw them in Architectural Digest,” Fashionista Gal replied.

  “They were in the New York Times magazine section, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I think I have a copy here somewhere. Would you like to see?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  Oh, for crying out loud, I wanted to scream. Don’t go traipsing after some stupid magazine. Finish wrapping the damn brandy snifters!

  But Blondie had abandoned the glasses and was now busy rummaging behind the counter.

  I looked around for another clerk, but the only one I saw was busy with a customer over by the espresso machines.

  “Here it is!” Blondie exclaimed. I stood there, grinding my teeth as she and Fashionista Gal oohed and aahed over the magazine.

  “Is there someone else who could help me with a return?” I finally asked.

  “I’m afraid not.” Blondie shot me a wilting look. “You’ll have to wait your turn.” Then she turned back to Fashionista Gal and, still blathering about brandy snifters and the New York Times, painstakingly wrapped the rest of the glasses.

  I could feel the minutes ticking away. And at three bucks every fifteen minutes, it wasn’t a very pleasant feeling.

  Finally, when the last glass had been wrapped and Fashionista Gal had sailed off with her brandy snifters, Blondie turned to me with ill-concealed disdain.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’d like a refund.”

  I reached down to whip out the corkscrew, but before I could even get it out of the shopping bag, she said, “No refunds without a receipt.”

  A receipt? I rummaged around in the shopping bag, but it wasn’t there. Ditto for my purse.

  “Gosh, I don’t seem to have it with me.”

  “No refunds without a receipt,” Blondie repeated with a put-upon sigh.

  “Can’t you credit my charge card?”

>   “Sorry,” she said, without a trace of regret. “The only credit I can give you is a store credit.”

  Oh, great. What was I going to exchange a $90 corkscrew for in a joint like this? Two $45 potholders?

  With great effort, I forced myself to smile.

  “C’mon. You can break the rules just this once, can’t you?”

  Apparently not. Not from the blistering look she gave me.

  “But surely you remember me. You rang up the sale. For a $90 corkscrew.”

  “Yes, I remember you,” she said, as if she’d spent the past several sessions at her therapist’s trying to forget. “You were buying a gift for the Devane/Potter wedding. The cheapest gift on the registry.”

  Okay, so she didn’t say the part about the cheapest gift on the registry, but trust me, she was thinking it.

  “You were at Patti Devane’s wedding?”

  I turned and saw that the espresso machine customer, an aristocratic dame with a beaky nose and thick mane of sun-bleached hair, was staring at me.

  “So was I,” she said.

  “Small world.” I managed a weak smile.

  She, however, was not smiling. On the contrary, she looked horrified.

  “And you took back your gift? With poor Patti lying dead in the backyard?”

  “I’m not surprised,” Blondie murmured.

  “Wait a minute,” Espresso Dame said. “Aren’t you the one who set fire to the best man’s toupee?”

  “You’re kidding!” Blondie gasped.

  “It was an accident!” I protested.

  “And then her fiancé turned out to be a male stripper,” Espresso Dame blabbed to Blondie.

  They both shook their heads, wondering how a social clod such as I had managed to wander into their rarified midst.

  I grabbed my shopping bag and slunk out of the store, just as Espresso Dame was saying, “And it turned out the stripper wasn’t even her fiancé. He was a paid escort!”

  I could hear their tsk tsks ringing in my ears all the way to Hermosa.

  Chapter 14

  It was a picture postcard day in Hermosa—the kind of day dreamed up by the Chamber of Commerce—with clear blue skies, fluffy white clouds, and gentle breezes rustling the palm trees.

  I’d debated about whether to phone first before showing up at Eleanor’s. But in the end I decided not to. I wanted to catch her off guard.

  Luckily she was home when I got there. I found her in the driveway of her modest Cape Cod house, bent over her Civic hatchback, humming happily to herself. She wore a nylon jog suit that revealed an impressive array of figure flaws (it seemed I didn’t have the biggest tush in Southern California, after all), and as I headed up the driveway I saw she was about to unload some groceries.

  “Hi, there,” I said.

  She spun around, startled.

  I had indeed caught her off guard.

  A quick peek into one of her shopping bags revealed a champagne bottle and a bag of Oreos. It looked like somebody was getting ready to party.

  “I’m Jaine Austen,” I smiled. “We met at the wedding.”

  “Of course. How could I forget? The woman who set fire to the best man’s toupee.”

  Jeez. From the fuss everybody was making, you’d think no one had ever seen a hairpiece on fire before.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  Translation: What the heck do you want?

  “Actually, I’ve just come from Normalynne’s.”

  A lie, of course, but she didn’t know that.

  “Poor Normalynne,” she clucked. “I heard the police brought her in for questioning. From what I read in the papers, they think she’s responsible for Patti’s death.”

  “Yes, and she’s terribly worried. In fact, she asked me to stop by and talk to you.”

  “Really?” She squinted up at me, shielding her eyes from the sun. “I didn’t know you were friendly with Normalynne.”

  “Oh, yes,” I maintained, keeping up my lying streak. “We don’t see each other often, but we’ve been close ever since high school.”

  “Is that so? I thought you were Patti’s friend.”

  “Oh, no,” I quickly assured her. “I was just a hired hand at the wedding. Patti and I were never close in high school.”

  That seemed to score some points with her; at last she graced me with a faint smile.

  “Anyhow, Normalynne wants to know if she can count on your support if her case goes to trial.”

  “Of course she can. Normalynne didn’t kill Patti. She wouldn’t have the nerve,” she said, looking very much like someone who had more than enough nerve to pull off a homicide.

  “Any ideas about who might have done it?” I asked.

  “None whatsoever.”

  Whatever smile had been hovering around her lips now bit the dust.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I really have to bring my groceries in the house, otherwise my ice cream’s going to melt.”

  Ice cream, too, huh? How very festive. It really was party time at Casa Potter.

  And with that, she picked up her bags and turned to go.

  “Just one more thing,” I said, embarking on yet another lie—this one a whopper. “I happened to be talking to the Devanes, and they told me that the day of the wedding all the upstairs bathrooms were locked. Apparently Daphna didn’t want strangers snooping in her medicine cabinets.”

  I couldn’t see Eleanor’s face, but I thought I saw her shoulders tense.

  “Fascinating,” she snapped, and started for her front door.

  “I only mention this,” I called after her, “because when we ran into each other in the house after Patti was killed, you said you’d been upstairs to use the bathroom.”

  She stopped in her tracks and spun around to face me.

  “Okay, so I didn’t use the bathroom. I went upstairs that day to get something.”

  The murder weapon, perchance? A power drill you’d stashed away after sabotaging the balcony?

  “Mind if I ask what it was?”

  “Yes, in fact, I do. But I’ve got nothing to hide, so I’ll tell you. I went up to Patti’s room to get a cameo Dickie had given her as an engagement present. It belonged to my mother. From the first, I hated the thought of her having it, and I wanted it back. Patti never appreciated it. All she ever wanted was diamonds.

  “It was tacky to take it back,” she said, shooting me a look that could melt steel, “but, if I recall, I wasn’t the only one taking things back that day.”

  Bingo. She got me, right in my $90 corkscrew.

  “I suppose you’re right,” I said, blushing.

  “Surely you don’t think I had anything to do with Patti’s death. That was a terrible tragedy. Just terrible.”

  I blinked in disbelief as she tried to look mournful. Did she not remember I was standing not two feet away from her during her Top Ten Reasons Why I Hated Patti rant at the funeral reception?

  “It’s no secret I didn’t like her,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “And yes, I’m glad the marriage is off, but I didn’t kill her. Really, Ms. Austen, if I were the one who’d tampered with the balcony, do you think I’d tell a room full of mourners how much I disliked her?”

  She had a point. If she were indeed the murderer, why call attention to herself?

  But I still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced. For all I knew, she’d blurted out her true feelings in a moment of uncensored madness.

  I thanked her for her time and made my way back to my Corolla.

  I was just about to take off when I saw a blue sedan pulling into the Potters’ driveway. I watched as Kyle Potter got out of the car, briefcase in hand. He stood there for a minute, alone in the driveway, staring out into space, and in the bright afternoon sun, I could see worry lines etched deep in his face.

  From the day I first saw him, he’d seemed concerned about Eleanor. Always trying to either hush her up or pacify her. I remembered the look of horror on his face at the funeral reception when
she had her little outburst.

  I wondered what was troubling him now, on this picture-perfect California day. Was it taxes? Business? The price of oil?

  Or was he afraid that his loving wife, the woman who’d borne his son and cooked his meals, had sent their future daughter-in-law hurtling to her death?

  Cheryl lived on the fringes of Hermosa, far from the palm trees and sandy beaches of the shoreline. Her apartment building was a dismal three-story affair, the kind of place with rusted hibachis and dying plants on the balconies.

  It didn’t surprise me in the slightest to see a VACANCY sign out front.

  She came to the door in sweats, her hair a frizzy nimbus around her once-beautiful face. In her hand, she clutched a can of beer.

  “C’mon in,” she said, ushering me into a living room full of bland oatmeal-flecked furniture. I figured the stuff was either salvaged from a thrift shop or castoffs from her parents.

  As I gazed at her in her stained sweatsuit, her bare feet cracked and dirty, once again I marveled at how far she’d fallen since her golden days in high school.

  She picked up a bag of pretzels from the coffee table.

  “I was just about to eat dinner,” she said, ripping it open. “Want some?”

  “Sure,” I said, grabbing a handful.

  I wish I could pretend to be appalled at her lack of couth, but who am I kidding? I’ve been known to dine on Pringles and martini olives myself.

  “Let’s eat outside,” she said. “It’s so depressing in here.”

  Minutes later, we were sitting out on her narrow balcony in sagging lawn chairs, beers in hand, the bag of pretzels on the floor between us.

  “Nice view, huh?” she said. “More than ninety-nine billion sold.”

  “At least you’re never far from a Quarter Pounder.”

  “I’m still not sure what you wanted to talk to me about.” She propped her bare feet on the railing. Her toenails, I saw, were painted a bilious purple. “I’m sorry I was a little groggy on the phone last night, but I was sleeping when you called.”

  Yeah, right. Sleeping with her good buddy Mr. Budweiser.

  “Have you been following the story of Patti’s murder in the news?” I asked. Somehow she didn’t seem like the kind of gal who was up on current events.