Death by Tiara Read online

  “Our third judge,” Candace was saying, “is none other than Antoine ‘Tex’ Turner of Turner BMW, Alta Loco’s number-one car dealership.”

  A hunky dude in western gear, Tex graced us with a high-testosterone grin.

  “Howdy, gals!” he said, doffing his cowboy hat and revealing a headful of thick, Brad Pitt hair.

  A soft murmur of approval rippled through the audience.

  “And last but not least,” Candace said, yanking her charges back from their fantasies, “I’d like to introduce your pageant emcee, star of stage, screen, and television—my hubby, Mr. Eddie Burke!”

  At which point a short, stocky guy in a bad toupee came bounding out on stage, waving to the audience.

  This was a star of stage, screen, and TV? Really? On what planet?

  “I just flew in from New York,” he announced, “and boy, are my arms tired.”

  Good heavens. Pterodactyls were telling that joke in Jurassic Park.

  He waited in vain for some laughs, then took a seat at the end of the table next to Tex, where he proceeded to scratch his toupee, moving it ever so slightly askew on his head.

  “We’ll be doing Q and A with the judges and Eddie in a few minutes,” Candace said, “but right now I want to remind you of our upcoming schedule of events.

  “Tomorrow we’re having the swimsuit and talent competitions, and on Sunday, the ball gown production number and final crowning, during which one lucky young lady will become Alta Loco’s Teen Queen and receive this genuine Tiffany tiara!”

  She held up the tiara I’d seen in her office, the one with the strange clock in the center.

  “It’s got a built-in clock, so the winner will always remember this very special ‘time’ of her life!”

  “It sure doesn’t look like Tiffany to me,” Heather whispered.

  She was right, of course. As I was to later learn, the manufacturer of this silver-plated headgear was an outfit in Taiwan called Tiphany Novelties and Erotic Toys.

  But at that moment the teens in the audience were gazing at it with unadulterated lust.

  “Remember, girls,” Candace was saying, “the next two days are going to be the most important two days of your life. The Teen Queen America title has been the stepping stone to all sorts of fabulous careers in show business, modeling, and TV weathercasting.

  “Why, just a few months ago Bethenny here,” she said, gesturing to the former teen queen, “was cast in an exciting TV infomercial!”

  Bethenny nodded modestly as the girls in the audience swooned with envy.

  “Of course,” Candace continued, “there can be only one winner of the Teen Queen Tiphany Tiara. But that doesn’t mean the rest of you are losers. Just by being here today, you’ve shown you’ve got what it takes to be a proud competitor.”

  Not to mention a thousand bucks in entry fees.

  “Win or lose, these next two days will give you the chance to learn, to grow, and, most important, to make new friends—friends you’ll treasure for the rest of your life.”

  As Candace babbled on about the value of friendship, my eyes wandered over to the judges’ table. Glancing down below the banner hanging from the front of the table, I saw that the former teen queen had slipped her foot out of her stiletto heel and was now rubbing her toes up against Tex Turner’s ankle.

  Somebody was making friends, all right.

  Very good friends, indeed.

  Chapter 6

  “And now,” Candace chirped, “it’s time for Q and A with the judges!”

  My cue to make my exit for my dinner date with Scott’s parents.

  Getting up from my seat, I saw Candace frown in disapproval, and as I scurried up the aisle, I could practically feel her eyes burning holes in my back.

  I’m surprised she didn’t have me arrested for going AWOL.

  Back in the broom closet posing as my room, I threw off my clothes and jumped into the shower, which I soon discovered had all the water pressure of a leaky faucet. I sudsed myself as best I could with a complimentary sliver of Amada Inn soap, and patted myself dry with one of the graying towels hanging limply from the towel rack.

  Never had I felt less refreshed.

  I slipped into my new silk slacks with the matching kimono-sleeved top, my one and only pair of Manolo Blahniks, and some dangly silver earrings.

  Then I slapped on some lipstick and mascara and surveyed my mop of curls, which—having been unsuccessfully jammed into the Amada Inn’s Barbie-sized shower cap—had sprung out like a chia pet. I thought briefly about blowing it straight, but did not want to risk electrocution with the Amada Inn’s antique hair dryer.

  A final spritz of perfume, then I grabbed my purse and was out the door.

  While waiting for the elevator, I checked my phone and found a text from Scott with his parents’ address. I was surprised to see they lived in Malibu. When I first met Scott he told me he grew up in my hometown of Hermosa Beach, and I’d figured his folks still lived there. Somehow I didn’t picture a cop’s blue-collar family living in tony Malibu. Oh, well. Maybe they lived in a modest pocket of town, just like my duplex in the slums of Beverly Hills.

  After I’d Googled directions to their house, the elevator still hadn’t shown up. So I proceeded to clomp down four flights of stairs in my Manolos. By the time I got to the lobby, I was sweating like an Olympic gymnast.

  All that time in the shower, for nothing.

  Oh, well. There was nothing I could do about it. So I got in my Corolla and headed for the freeway.

  Traffic, of course, was a nightmare. The only time traffic in L.A. isn’t a nightmare is between 3 and 5 AM and when I’m going for a root canal. Then everything flows like mustard on a frank-in-a-blanket.

  I sat in my ancient Corolla as traffic inched ahead, simultaneously cursing and trying not to sweat into my kimono-sleeved blouse. It was a hellish hour and fifty minutes, but at last I made it to Malibu and found myself on a winding road lined with gated estates.

  This sure as heck wasn’t a modest pocket of town.

  I pulled up at Scott’s parents’ address and peered through the gates. My jaw dropped when I saw what looked like a small castle in the distance.

  Smiling awkwardly into a security camera, I pressed a buzzer, and seconds later, the gates swung open. Then I drove my Corolla up a tree-lined path, eventually reaching the castle-like home I’d seen from the road, a sprawling affair with enough wings to host a Teen Queen America convention.

  Was it possible, I wondered, that Scott’s parents worked as caretakers for a fabulously wealthy family?

  Getting out of my Corolla, I groaned to see my beautiful silk top was a mass of wrinkles. If only I’d remembered to pull it out from under my seat belt. Now the darn thing looked like a road map of the Rockies.

  I headed for the Willises’ elaborate front portico, desperately trying to smooth out the creases. But it looked like they were set for life.

  What’s worse, when I checked my watch, I saw that it was close to eight. And I was supposed to have been there at seven.

  I rang the bell, an hour late and draped in wrinkles.

  Soon a sweet, cherubic woman came to the door, the same kind of rosy-cheeked woman I’d imaged Scott’s mom would be.

  Unfortunately, this was not Scott’s mom.

  It was the maid, Rosita, who greeted me with a warm smile and ushered me down a hall into a gargantuan wood-beamed living room, dotted with overstuffed furniture, French doors leading out onto a terrace, and a fireplace big enough to house a Cessna.

  A regal woman with a slightly beaked nose unfurled herself from where she was sitting on one of the overstuffed chairs. Her black hair, streaked with gray, was swept back at the sides in perfect wings.

  Like me, she was dressed in silk pants and flowy top. But unlike my Nordstrom special, hers had undoubtedly cost thousands of bucks. And needless to say, there was nary a wrinkle in sight.

  Rosita announced my presence before skittering away down the hallw
ay.

  The woman with the beaked nose, who I could only assume was Scott’s mom, looked me up and down with cold gray eyes.

  “A pleasure to meet you . . . at last.”

  The latter said with a pointed glance at her watch.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late. I got stuck in traffic. I hope I didn’t hold things up.”

  “Not at all,” she assured me. “We finished our hors d’oeuvres ages ago.”

  I glanced over at a glass-topped coffee table littered with the remains of cocktail hour munchies.

  “I’m Scott’s mother, Patrice,” Ma Willis was saying, “and this is my husband, Brighton.”

  “Bri!” She called out to a red-faced guy sitting on a recliner, nursing a scotch and watching The Weather Channel on a TV mounted above the fireplace.

  “Bri, say hello to Scott’s friend, Jan.”

  “Um. Actually, it’s Jaine.”

  “As if I give a rat’s patootie.”

  Okay, so what she really said was, “Oh, right.” But I could read between the lines.

  Scott’s dad tore himself away from a storm in Topeka and tossed me a halfhearted, “Hello, there.”

  “Sit down, Jaine,” Ma Willis said, “and help yourself to whatever’s left of the hors d’oeuvres. The pâté’s gone, but I think there are a few crackers left. Dinner should be ready any minute. I’ll go check with Rosita.”

  She slithered off, and I sat down on a sofa across from Scott’s dad, who seemed to have totally forgotten my existence, his eyes still glued to that storm in Topeka.

  By now, I was starving. It seemed like ages since I’d scarfed down those franks-in-a-blanket at the Amada Inn.

  I checked the coffee table and found a few cheese rinds, some abandoned shrimp tails, and exactly one uneaten cracker.

  I snapped it up eagerly.

  I was looking around, wondering where the heck Scott was and hoping to find a stray bowl of nuts, when I noticed a half-finished glass of champagne in front of me.

  For an instant I was tempted to slug it down, but I didn’t dare. What if Pa Willis lost interest in The Weather Channel and caught me in the act?

  I was staring at the champagne longingly when I realized there was bright coral lipstick on the rim of the glass.

  Funny. Ma Willis’s lips had been colored a deep blood red.

  Suddenly I began to feel uneasy. Whose lips, I wondered, belonged to this coral lipstick?

  I was about to find out, because just then Scott came walking in through the French doors with a lithe, blond, willowy creature. With startling blue eyes and sun-bleached hair pulled back in a headband, she practically radiated blue blood and old money.

  Her simple jeans and T-shirt made my wrinkled kimono getup seem wildly over the top. She and Scott were laughing gaily as they entered the living room—a little too gaily for my tastes.

  “Jaine!” Scott cried, catching sight of me. “I’d like you to meet an old friend of the family. Chloe Landis.”

  “Lovely to meet you,” the willow grinned, revealing a mouthful of impossibly white teeth.

  “Scott and Chloe used to be engaged.”

  This newsflash delivered by Ma Willis, who came sailing into the room with a mischievous gleam in her eye.

  “But that’s all over now!” Scott hastened to assure me, shooting his mother a dirty look as he hurried to my side.

  Impervious to his glare, Ma Willis smiled brightly and said, “Let’s all head in for dinner, shall we?”

  Then she turned to her husband, who still sat rapt in front of The Weather Channel. “Brighton!” she shouted. “Time for dinner! Turn off the damn TV!”

  Stirring from his stupor, Scott’s dad clicked off the TV, then pressed another remote. And before my astonished eyes, a painting that looked like an original Renoir came sliding down from the wall to cover the TV screen.

  So this was how the one percent lived.

  We trooped across the hall to a dining table set with an exquisite Battenberg lace tablecloth and enough crystal to stock a branch of Bloomingdale’s.

  Pa Willis took a seat at the head of the table while Scott and I sat down next to each other, across from Chloe, who sat by herself at the other side of the table. My fanny had no sooner hit the chair than Ma Willis hoisted me up by the elbow.

  “Oh, no, Jaine!” she cried. “You can’t possibly sit here. You must switch seats with Chloe, so you can have an ocean view.”

  And before I knew it, Chloe had whipped across the room to sit thigh by thigh with Scott and I was all by my lonesome at the other side of the table.

  “But, Mom,” Scott protested. “It’s dark out. Jaine can’t see the ocean.”

  “Maybe not,” Ma Willis conceded. “But she can see the moon and the stars and our new patio furniture.”

  Scott shot his mom another dirty look, which she proceeded to blithely ignore.

  “Want some wine, Jan?” Scott’s father asked, holding out a bottle of cabernet.

  I nodded eagerly. Something told me I was going to need a wee bit o’ alcohol to make it through this dinner.

  Pa Willis poured me a generous slug, and passed the bottle around to the others.

  “So, Jaine,” Ma Willis asked with an icy stare, “what is it that you do?”

  “I’m an advertising copywriter.”

  “She wrote In a Rush to Flush? Call Toiletmasters!” Scott beamed proudly.

  “Is that so?” Ma Willis replied, as if she’d just seen a rat prancing across her Battenberg lace tablecloth.

  “How wonderfully kitschy,” Chloe said, practically blinding me with her perfect smile. “Who are some of your other clients?”

  I started reeling them off, eager to make a good impression.

  “Oh, I’ve got Mattress King Mattresses, Ackerman’s Awnings—”

  “Where Everything’s Just a Shade Better!” Scott piped up. “Jaine wrote that!”

  “And there’s Fiedler on the Roof Roofers,” I continued. “And Tip Top Dry Cleaners.”

  “We clean for you. We press for you. We even dye for you!” Scott chimed in.

  “Really?” Pa Willis said, suddenly jumping into the conversation. “Can you get this stain out of my tie?” He flapped his tie in my face. “I got pâté on it.”

  “Jaine writes for a dry cleaner’s, Dad. She doesn’t work there.”

  “Oh,” Pa Willis said, disappointed.

  “Jaine’s really very talented,” Scott insisted, my one-man cheering squad.

  But Ma Willis was not impressed.

  “Chloe used to model for Tommy Hilfiger,” she pointed out with pride.

  “Oh, Patrice,” Chloe blushed. “That was ages ago.”

  “Now she’s a marine biologist.”

  I smiled weakly.

  “Okay, I give up. Chloe wins.”

  No, I didn’t really say that. I just took a slug of wine and said, “How interesting.”

  A few painfully awkward moments passed, during which Pa Willis scratched at the pâté stain on his tie, Scott fidgeted with his fork, and Chloe smiled sweetly at Ma Willis.

  At last, Rosita came hurrying in from the kitchen and started passing out bowls of soup.

  Oh, foo. It was plain old consommé. Not a thing in it. Chicken noodle soup without the chicken and the noodles and the flavor.

  Everyone slurped at it in silence.

  I was dying to reach for the basket of rolls Rosita had set down on the table, but no one else was eating them, so I refrained.

  Desperate to make conversation, I said to Ma Willis, “You have such a lovely home.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” she replied. “Too bad we don’t get to stay here more often. We spend most of our time at our country house in the Cotswolds.”

  “The Cotswolds?”

  “It’s in England, dear.”

  I knew that.

  “We’re avid horse people,” Ma Willis explained. “We love to ride.”

  “Horses,” Chloe added, clearly having pegged me as men
tally deficient.

  “I don’t suppose you ride, do you, Jaine?” she asked, with a smug smile. “You don’t seem the type.”

  I’d have given anything to wipe that smile off her face.

  And out of nowhere I suddenly heard myself saying, “As a matter of fact I do.”

  “Really?” Scott asked, eyebrows raised in surprise.

  Oh, what the hell. It was a long way from the Cotswolds. They’d never know the truth.

  “Yes, I’ve been riding ever since I was knee high to a saddle.”

  With that, I threw caution to the winds and reached over to grab a dinner roll.

  And that’s when tragedy struck.

  I watched in horror as my flowy kimono sleeve brushed against my glass of cabernet and knocked it over—spilling red wine all over the Willises’ exquisite white lace tablecloth.

  “Gosh, I’m so sorry!” I cried, watching the stain spread into a big red blob.

  “Don’t worry, Patrice,” Pa Willis said. “Jan can clean it. She works at a dry cleaners.”

  “She writes for a dry cleaners!” Scott cried, exasperated.

  “I’m afraid I’ve ruined your beautiful tablecloth.” I moaned.

  “No matter, dear,” Ma Willis said, her voice dripping icicles. “There’s another one at the Victoria and Albert Museum. We can go visit it when we’re back in England.”

  The rest of the dinner passed in a mortifying blur. Rosita’s pork chops tasted like ashes in my mouth. In the background, I could hear Ma Willis and Chloe chatting away, and every once in a while I looked up to see Scott shooting me an encouraging smile. But all I could focus on was the big red blob of wine on the tablecloth. I was so depressed, I could barely finish my second helping of julienne potatoes.

  At last the meal came grinding to a halt, and I excused myself, explaining that I had a long drive back to Alta Loco. By now, I could not wait to get out of there. And I was sure that, as far as Ma Willis was concerned, the feeling was mutual.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” Scott said, jumping up to join me as I started to leave.

  “I can’t believe I spilled that wine on your mom’s tablecloth,” I said, as we headed out into the night.

  “Accidents happen,” Scott said, taking my hand in his. “It’s no big deal.”