Evening Bags and Executions (4 page)

Sheridan Adams was the wife of Hollywood's highest profile, most prolific, Academy Award–winning director and producer, Talbot Adams. The man was a gazillionaire. Sheridan, a former actress, staged extravagant events at their estate in Holmby Hills to raise money for her charitable foundation. Anyone in their right mind would die—or kill—for an invitation to one of her parties.

I knew all of this because I was a vigilant reader of
People
magazine.

This was an event on a massive scale. An entire staff of planners could hardly handle all the work required to pull it off. Why would Vanessa have dumped it in my lap?

Then it hit me—Vanessa had given me this party because she knew how much work was involved. She thought I couldn't handle it. She wanted me to fail—big-time.

Oh my God. Vanessa was trying to get me fired.

When L.A. Affairs saw how bad I screwed up on this party, they would have no choice but to fire me. Then Vanessa could force them to rehire her old assistant planner.

No way was I letting that happen.

No way.

C
HAPTER
5

“M
y life is falling apart,” Mom announced when I walked into the house.

Note—she hadn't said hello, asked how I was feeling, or checked on what my day had been like, which was just about all the info anyone needed to get to know my mom.

I'd texted her this morning and cancelled our lunch plans—which I still had no memory of making—but Mom had insisted I come to her place after work. So here I was, anxious to get in and out quickly because I had to work tonight at Holt's—which I did, unfortunately, still remember.

Of course, Mom didn't look like her life was falling apart. As a former beauty queen, she always dressed as if a red carpet might suddenly roll out in front of her and she would have to walk down it, smiling her pageant smile and waving her pageant wave, dressed for a black-tie awards presentation.

Today, for absolutely no reason, Mom had on a cocktail-length, strapless Pucci dress, four-inch Louboutin slingbacks, a diamond choker, and full-on makeup, with her hair styled in an intricate half updo.

Yep, that's my mom.

Actually, Mom and I look somewhat alike. We're the same height, with the same dark hair and blue eyes. While Mom was stunning, I was merely pretty, as she'd told me many times. She'd tried for years to mold me into a duplicate of herself, and I'd spent most of my childhood taking all sorts of lessons—ballet, tap, modeling, voice, piano—with Mom coaching me, trying desperately to unearth some miniscule nugget of natural talent in me. I dropped off her radar after my younger sister stepped up and the big proton cannon that was Mom's desperate desire for a Mini-Me turned to her.

It didn't hurt that I'd set fire to the den curtains while twirling fire batons.

“You won't believe what I've been through,” Mom told me, as I followed her through the house to her office—a room she'd decorated mostly with pictures of herself.

Until I'd escaped to my own apartment, I'd lived here all my life along with my dad—he's an aerospace engineer—and my older brother who's an air force pilot, and my sister who attended UCLA and did some modeling.

The house—a Spanish-style mansion in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena with an awesome view of the Los Angeles basin—had been left to Mom by her grandmother, along with a trust fund. No one in the family had ever divulged—or confessed—exactly what my great-grandmother did to end up with so much wealth.

The bigger mystery, to my way of thinking, was how my mom could have possibly ingratiated herself to anyone—let alone a family member—to warrant such an inheritance. And in yet another bizarre, unexpected, and totally unprecedented twist of fate, my mother had been so grateful that she'd honored her grandmother by giving me—her firstborn daughter—the middle name of Thelma, after her.

Mom had started several businesses, none of which had ended well—long story. That was probably because her idea of running something meant coming up with an idea, then turning the whole thing over to someone with minimal qualifications and questionable credentials and ignoring everything that happened after that.

“It's that new girl,” Mom announced, and gestured toward the door with a graceful, carefully manicured hand.

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

“She's completely unacceptable,” Mom said.

I could have asked her where the heck she was going with this, but I knew she'd get to the point sooner or later.

I hoped it would be sooner.

“Her work ethic is atrocious,” Mom declared.

Then it hit me. She was talking about her new housekeeper.

Juanita, her former housekeeper, had worked for Mom for as long as I could remember. Aside from performing all the duties of a housekeeper, Juanita had been kind and caring. She'd always been there for me, which I had especially appreciated. Somehow, for all those years, she'd been able to put up with my mom.

Then, suddenly, a few weeks ago, Juanita disappeared. She just stopped coming to work. I'd gone to her house in Eagle Rock and looked for her—long story—but I never found her. I never discovered exactly what happened to her, where she went, or why she left—but I was pretty sure it was all Mom's fault.

“She's only worked here for a few days,” I said.

Mom had already been through a number of housekeepers since Juanita left. I'm sure everyone at the employment agency was talking about her.

I know I would be.

“Maybe she just needs more time to get into a routine,” I said.

Mom held out both hands and gave me a why-aren't-you-seeing-the-obvious look.

Then I realized what she was getting at. Her hands were empty.

Mom almost always had a wineglass in her hand—and, really, it should have been the rest of us knocking them back. Juanita had always made sure Mom had a glass of wine, which probably made her days here go a little smoother.

Still, Mom never drank too much. I'd never seen her drunk, thanks to her beauty queen metabolism, though I'm sure it would be a real hoot. She just liked to carry a wineglass around because she thought it made her look sophisticated.

I'm pretty sure she saw that in a magazine.

“The agency screens the housekeepers really well,” I said. “I'm sure they would be happy to make any changes you want.”

Mom put her hands on her hips. “Really, Haley, I'd expected more from you.”

I wasn't sure how I'd gotten drawn into this, but it probably had something to do with my recent extended stay in breakup zombieland. Still, I saw no reason not to try to get out of it.

“There's nothing I can do,” I said.

“Of course there is,” Mom insisted. “You said you'd handle the unpleasantness of finding a suitable housekeeper.”

I did?

“You assured me you wouldn't rest until you found someone to replace Juanita,” she said.

This whole thing started to sounded vaguely familiar, unfortunately.

“Okay, Mom,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Fire her. Now.”

“Now?”

“Immediately,” Mom said, and pushed her chin up a bit. “I simply cannot abide such a thoughtless, self-centered, irrational person in this house.”

I really had enough of my own problems to deal with at the moment, but I couldn't refuse to help. Mom was Mom.

I felt kind of sorry for her, also, that Juanita had left and here she was trying to get to know a new housekeeper, form a bond, and make a connection with her.

“Fine, Mom, I'll fire her,” I said. “What's her name?”

“I have no idea.”

Honestly, where is my mind at times?

I left Mom's office and found the new housekeeper in the kitchen. She looked to be in her midtwenties. She was short, dark haired, and wearing one of those pale blue multipurpose uniforms.

“Sorry, but you're fired,” I said.

Her eyes got big. “I'm fired? When?”

“Right now.”

“You don't want me to stay and make dinner?” she asked.

“No.”

“Or clean up something?”

“Just leave.”

“Thank you!” She rushed forward and threw her arms around me. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

She grabbed her purse and sweater from the cabinet beside the pantry.

“I'll tell the agency it wasn't your fault,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “Don't worry about it. They know all about your mother.”

I guess I should have realized that.

“No offense, but your mother is a real piece of work,” she told me.

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

She pointed to the door. “You want to come with me?”

It was the best thing I'd heard since I'd gotten here.

“Sure,” I said.

I followed her out the door.

“We have a great deal of very exciting news to cover today,” Jeannette announced.

I slid into a seat in the Holt's training room—my usual spot behind that big guy who worked in menswear where I could dose off, as necessary. Around me the other employees settled into the don't-bother-trying-to-get-comfortable-because-it's-impossible chairs, none of us the least bit interested in this evening's training session yet glad for the brief reprieve from our duties on the sales floor.

Not that I would have been working all that hard, but still.

At the front of the room Jeanette, the store manager, easily mustered an enthusiastic smile probably because she actually believed she was about to impart news that the rest of us—at minimum wage—would find exciting. If we all received her huge salary, quarterly bonus, and profit sharing, perhaps we would.

Not that she put all that income to good use. Jeanette, for a reason no sane person could fathom, chose to dress in the clothing Holt's carried. To be kind, let me just say that Jeanette was full-figured and in her fifties—not the easiest demographic to find stylish clothing, but she could sure as heck put her money to better use shopping elsewhere.

The Holt's clothing buyers who were, apparently, vision impaired and color-blind, somehow managed to consistently purchase the most hideous clothing on the planet. Nothing on our racks was ever the current style. The prints were all wrong, the colors were out of season, the styles were outdated. To make matters worse, though you might not think that was possible, nothing in the shoe, outerwear, or accessory departments coordinated with the clothing.

Jeanette always did a bang-up job of demonstrating how truly horrid the Holt's clothing line could be, and today was no exception. In what I could only guess was a tip of the hat to the fall season, she had on a skirt and blouse, topped with a swing coat, all in orange.

She looked like the Great Pumpkin.

Jeanette plowed ahead with her exciting news.

I drifted off.

Since, apparently, I'd promised my mom that I'd take care of finding her a new housekeeper, I really had no choice but to handle the situation—though I had put considerable thought into trying to figure a way to get out of it. I hadn't come up with anything, so I'd have to contact the agency that had sent the last girl—whatever her name was—and start the interview process.

A more pleasant thought flashed in my head—that Enchantress evening bag. Locating and purchasing the hot
it
bag of the season was something akin to a big game hunt. Certainly it wasn't for the faint of heart, the timid, or the ill-prepared. I'd have to get with Marcie soon and lay out a strategy for finding that evening bag. Then, of course, we'd have to come up with an occasion to carry it, plus buy the perfect outfit to go with it.

Then, for no apparent reason, Shuman popped into my head.

I get that a lot.

I hadn't heard from him or his girlfriend all day, as I'd expected. I'm not a worrier, usually, and I'm not big on suspense, so I was going to have to call them both again and find out just what the heck was going on. If I interrupted Shuman's vacation or his honeymoon, oh well. I needed to find out what Detective Madison was up to with Lacy Hobbs's murder investigation, and I couldn't wait forever.

The image of Lacy lying dead in her workroom floated into my head—preferable to listening to Jeanette, which says a lot about the Holt's training meetings. I couldn't help but wonder who would have wanted Lacy dead. Her bakery had been around for years, and that wouldn't have happened if her stellar clientele didn't love her work. Reputation was of supreme importance, and nobody lasted long in L.A. if the rich and famous turned on you. Plus, it was hard to imagine anyone would get so worked up about a cake that they'd murder the baker.

I guess stranger things had happened. Especially in Los Angeles.

“Haley? Haley?” Jeanette called, just as the guy seated next to me nudged me with his elbow.

I realized the room was quiet, everyone had turned toward me, and Jeanette was staring.

I was pretty sure I'd missed something.

“How is everything coming?” she asked.

I had no idea what she was talking about, so what could I say but, “Great.”

“Excellent,” Jeanette said. “It's a big project.”

I was involved in a big project?

“Thank you for taking this on,” Jeanette said.

I'd agreed to take something on? In violation of my own personal say-no-to-everything policy? Yikes! When had I done that?

Oh my God. It must have been while I was drifting through life in my breakup fog.

“Let's get out there and have a successful evening,” Jeanette called, our cue that the meeting was adjourned.