A Corpse in a Teacup (6 page)

“Yeah, if I told anyone about his calling me
. But I had already called Miss Tuesday and so I was really worried. And then I find out that Ariel Cuthbert who is also up for the part is dead. Well, I guess she
was
up for the part. She isn’t anymore.”

“Can you give us that name again, ma’am”?

Holley complied and his partner said, “Yeah, we got that one this morning.”

Tuesday couldn’t name the sense of danger washing over her
. Perhaps it was because she feared the officers would nail them for not notifying the police right way. Perhaps they would realize as Tuesday just had that Holley would benefit from the actress’s death and accuse her of murder. Oh no. If she hadn’t insisted that Holley call the police, they wouldn’t be on her trail. So she said, ”We
immediately
called you. Well, Miss Wood did.”

“But not last night.”

Tuesday leaned forward. “I beg your pardon?”

“You didn’t, ra
ther Miss Wood here didn’t report this last night when the calls actually came in and we might have been able to do some work on a trail still warm. Can you explain that? Why it took you so long to let us know about these threats, after a death that may or may not be connected?”

Tuesday started to answer
, but the cop stopped her. “Miss Wood can speak for herself. Can’t you Miss Wood?”

Holley gave him a doe-eyed, uncomprehending smile. “Yes, of course
. I can what?”

“Why didn’t you notify us when the calls came in.”

Holley started to cry. “I was so scared. He said he would kill me. And I didn’t know that Miss Ariel had died. I didn’t know what to do so I called Miss Tuesday. She always guides me. Reads my tea leaves. She has a gift.”

Tuesday groaned
. She hated having to explain her calling to the unbelievers, especially those in authority. But this was worse. These two cops could like them for the murder as fast as you could say I see a tall handsome stranger coming into your life.

“Tea leaves
. Yeah, I bet she has a gift. Tell me, Miss Wood. Are you sure it was a man who called you?”

Holley gave him a little wink, her flirt
switch still on. “Officer, I know the difference between a man and a woman.”

“I’m sure you do
. But did the voice sound at all familiar?”

She shook her head
making her ponytail dance around her shoulders.

“Do you know any reason why anyone would want to threaten you?”

“Well, except for the camera guy who is mad at me because I won’t go out with him. He keeps calling me, so I’d know his voice. And really, he’s harmless.”

The t
wo officers gave each other wondering looks. “Tell us about this guy. What’s his name?”

Just then,
a cell phone rang. The officer nearest Holley signaled it was his. He answered it and after listening to the caller for a few mumbles, gave the high sign to his partner.

“We
need to go now, but someone from our homicide squad will be calling you. Don’t leave town.”

Holley said, “Oh I can’t leave town
. We haven’t wrapped on the alient movie yet.”

The officer said, “The what? What’s an alient,” but his partner hustled them both out the door before she could explain.

Tuesday gave Holley the narrowed eyebrows action. “What do you mean a camera guy has been bugging you? And why didn’t you tell me?”

Holley waved her away. “Oh, that’s just Roger
. He’s a sweetheart, but he just doesn’t do it for me. We worked on another movie together. He’s assistant to the Director of Photography on the zombie one. Or something.”

“Was he at the reading yesterday?”

“Yeah. I told you about him. He gave me a pep talk before I went into the audition room. He was getting coffee out in the hall. Said I was a natural. He hoped I’d get the part and we could work together again.”

Light bulbs
were going off in Tuesday’s head. “Holley, my sweet little cabbage. Don’t you see? He has a motive for killing Ariel.”

“Roger? He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“But if he got rid of your competition, he’d be sure to have you all to himself. You know how these stalkers are. They get obsessed with their love objects and will do anything to possess them.”

“Oh Miss Tuesday, I never said he stalked me.”

“But didn’t you say he called you all the time?”

“Yeah, but he never threatened me
. And if he killed Ariel to be with me, why would he threaten to kill me?”

Finally, Holl
ey was making some sense. But wait a minute. “Maybe that was a ruse.”

“
And he didn’t creep me out. I thought he was kinda sweet.”

“Oh Holley
. You are such a babe in the woods. There are all kinds of reasons he could have for wanting you off the project. Maybe he was jealous of the director. I don’t like the sound of this. We have to check this guy out.”

Tuesday’s praye
rs were almost answered. She’d hoped Detective Ryan Gosling would show up. But it was Beyoncé with a badge that rang Holley’s doorbell. Oh, well. Holley flashed a cordial smile as she introduced herself and shook Detective Kanesha Jameson’s hand, then her partner’s, a whale of a guy coming through the door behind her, perspiring from the short walk from the car to the house.

D
etective Thomas Butel. She had just seen Casablanca for the fourteenth time. He was a dead ringer for one of the characters in his white linen suit, Panama hat and portly frame.

Jameson
strode uninvited into the living room with her iPad under her arm, ignoring Tuesday, but peering around the room as the two uniformed officers had. She gave Holley a fierce look. Detective Big Guy, Butel, took a seat. Actually, the same leather club chair recently vacated by one of the officers. Tuesday watched him lower his sizable bulk down and heard the squeak of the leather blend with his huffing and puffing as he got himself settled. She hoped the chair would hold up. From the look on Holley’s face, she was thinking the same thing.

Jameson
began questioning Holley, while Tuesday considered the wisdom of giving the detective free fashion advice. Holy eyelashes girl. Hadn’t anyone told her that it took more than legs up to the ceiling, cascading hair and moon sized orbs to make a statement? If she wanted someone to put a ring on it she’d have to do better than a shiny three-piece pant suit with super wide lapels and shoulder pads that went out in the ‘80’s. But the detective clearly wanted to move things along and got down to business.

“M
s. Wood, the uniformed officers told me that you’ve been informed about Ms. Ariel Cuthbert’s death.”

Holley gave her
a mournful shake of her head. “It’s way shocking.”

“Did
you know the deceased?”

“Oh, yes
. Me and Ariel? We auditioned for the same part. It’s in a new zombie movie. I play a lady pilot of the last plane to leave planet earth . . .”

Without apologies
Kanesha made it clear that she was piloting this ship. She interrupted Holley mid description of the space age costume she would wear if she got the part, strategic cutouts and all.

“And you we
re colleagues, is that right?”

“No, we just work
ed on the same movies sometimes.”

“
Can you tell me where you were last night between ten p.m. and four a.m.?”

Holley looked surprised
. “Here. I got these phone calls and I was afraid to go out.”

“
We’ll get to those calls in a minute. Tell me about your relationship with Ms. Cuthbert.”

“Well,
like I said, we worked on some films together. The best one was Love Among The Flesh Eating Vampires. I played the beautiful but fragile daughter of the ruler of the last days of planet Earth. Sort of a princess type thing, only they weren’t really royalty. See my father . . . “

“MISS Wood
. Would you say you were on friendly terms with Miss Cuthbert?”

“Oh yes
. I’m on friendly terms with everyone. She has a bit of a rep, though.”

Butel broke in. “We’ve heard about that.
”

Holley answered, “But
I believe in manifesting positive vibes, and I make sure I drop negativity from my aura.”

Detective Oh Beautiful One put up her hand to stop her, either because she was getting hopelessly lost in the plot or she was tired of Holley’s digressions.

“You have a pretty strong motive for wanting Miss Cuthbert dead.”

“But how could I have caused her death? I don’t manifest heart attacks or anything.”

“How do you know she had a heart attack?”

“That’s what someone
said on Facebook.”

James looked at her partner. “How’d that get out?”

Butel curled his lower lip and shrugged
I don’t know.”

Jameson
turned back to Holley. “Okay. But let’s just say it wasn’t a heart attack. We don’t know that for sure, but let’s just say. With her out of the way, you have a lock on the role, right.”

Holley considered this
. “Yes, that’s true. But if you think I killed Ariel, you couldn’t be farther away from the truth. I mean, how much negativity would that bring down on my head? I wouldn’t live long enough to meditate that karma away.”

“Nevertheless, it would be a plus for you.”

“Yeah, but I’d get the part whether she was dead or alive. I mean Mr. Vitale walked me out to my car. What more do you need?”

“Who is Mr. Vitale?”

“You don’t know Goren Vitale? Director of the Immortal Night of the Living Man Eating Viruses, Spawn of the Man Eating Living Dead and . . . “

“So Mr. Vitale was choosing between you and Miss
Cuthbert.” The detective was jotting down notes on her iPad.

“No contest, detective
. It would do me no good to off Ariel because the job was mine anyway. Goren as much as told me so. Maybe she would have gotten a supporting role. Like my handmaiden or something.”

The detective tacked to starboard
to avoid the rocky shoals of Holley’s digressions. “You reported receiving a threatening call.”

Holley confirmed this with a nod of her head and described the call, word for word, breath for wheezy breath.

“Have you noticed anyone lurking around your apartment? Has anything in your apartment been disturbed?”

“No.”

“Have you ever received troublesome calls before?”

Holley waved her hand. “A
re you kidding me? All the time. Drives me bananas.”

Jameson
shot a
Yeah, now we got something
look at Butel, then furiously took more notes. “Tell me about them.”

“Well, every night at dinnertime I get this call to see if I want my carpets cleaned. Then . . . “

Jameson took a deep, aggravated breath that Tuesday could relate to, while Butel snorted behind his hand. He had to study the ceiling quite intensively to keep from laughing. He gave Tuesday a wink that was so good-natured she could have married him on the spot.

Tuesd
ay decided that Holley’s sincerity would convince the most hardened skeptic. It was time for her to leave. She opened her tote bag to take a quick peek at her phone and saw the time. Holy wandering plot line. She’d done enough client handholding for the morning. She had to get to work at the Mulberry Cat. After a snafu on opening day when Tuesday made a pit stop on the way to work and mistakenly took the Starbucks’ restroom key to the Café and left the Cat’s key on Starbuck’s hook, Tuesday made sure that opening the Café on time was her top priority. Natasha, the owner, had made it clear that she didn’t care how popular her readings were, another screw up that lost customers and Tuesday was out. It had taken Tuesday months to convince the new owner that a tea leaf reader and a Café went together like sugar and lemon, and she wasn’t going to jeopardize her gig that paid salary plus hefty tips to listen to the detective ask questions to which she already knew the answers.

“I’m sorry detective, but
I have to split. I’m a working girl and I don’t think you need me anymore.”

Detective Jameson took a long look at Tuesday as
though deciding whether to file criminal charges for wearing bilious yellow and black corduroy genie pants and a Mick Jagger tee shirt with a chartreuse leopard scarf. She studied the pink Afro and turned away for a moment to catch her breath before she asked, “And you are exactly?”

Tuesday jumped in with “Miss Wood’s confident,” before Holley could cause more trouble by revealing her occupation
. “The ball and chain will have my hidey ho if I don’t get to work on time.”

If she expected a laugh at the Cab Calloway reference, she was
mistaken. Stoneface Jameson asked, “What is it you do?”

“I’m the manager of The
Mulberry Cat Café in Larchmont Village,” she said, which was almost true. She had a key to open up and start setting tables for the lunch crowd.

Unsympathetic to Tuesday’s employment pressures, t
he detective said, “Please give me your contact information in case we need talk to you later to corroborate Ms. Wood’s story.”

Incredulous, Tuesday said, “At work?”

Jameson flashed a cold smile and her badge. “At wherever we think it’s necessary.”

Tue
sday flashed a look at the ceiling and muttered, “Whatever,” and dug a Mulberry Cat business card out of her wallet. Then she gathered up her tote.

Holley bounced off the couch
. “You’re not going to leave me, Miss Tuesday, are you? I thought maybe you could give me another tea leaf reading and tell me who the corpse is you saw in my tea cup.”

Tuesday raced out of the house before the detective could take that in,
but had to stop when she saw the detective’s car parked behind hers in the driveway. She turned back toward the house, but Detective Jameson was already outside waving her keys. On her way to her car she said, “Miss Tuesday, what time do you get off work?”

Tuesday confirmed that it was four o’clock.

Before Jameson moved her car she said, “I’ll need you to come down to the station and give us a statement. I’d like to know more about bodies you see in teacups.”