Jaine Austen 2 - Last Writes (18 page)

No rat poison in sight.

I was just about to call it quits when I looked over at Audrey’s desk and noticed her datebook. It was hand-tooled leather, buttery soft, her initials discreetly em-bossed in the corner.

I debated the ethics of invading Audrey’s private records for a second or two, then opened the book. Every entry was written in black ink, printed carefully in attractive block letters. Quelle neatnik. The woman probably color-coded her bras.

I glanced through the entries, taking in Audrey’s busy schedule of network meetings, business lunches, manicures and hair colorist appointments. Aha, so that perfect blond hair of hers came from a bottle. Very gratifying.

Every once in a while, I’d see an entry simply marked “Q.” If the “Q” stood for Quinn, and I strongly suspected it did, it looked like Audrey had been meeting him at least once a week.

On a hunch, I checked the entry for the day of the murder. There, between “network meeting” and “dinner—Spago,” was another “Q.” Did that mean she planned to meet Quinn that day? Did she want to have it out with him once and for all? Or was she beyond meetings? Had she already made up her mind? Had she decided not to meet him, but to murder him instead?

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Bianca breathing fire. I looked up and saw her glowering in the doorway.

“Brad Pitt’s not shooting a commercial on the lot,” she hissed.

“Oh?” I said, surreptitiously closing Audrey’s datebook. “Somebody told me he was.”

“And what the hell are you doing in here?” she said, narrowing her already beady eyes.

“Uh…Audrey called and asked me to bring her something from her desk.”

“Bullshit.” She smiled slyly. “You were snooping. And I’m going to tell Audrey.”

“You do,” I said, “and I’ll tell the cops about the deal you made with Danny to give each other alibis.”

It was a gamble, but I had to take it.

It worked. Her face went white with fear.

“How did you know about that?”

“It doesn’t matter how I know. I just know, that’s all.”

I walked over to her, trying my best to look tough.

“You keep your mouth shut,” I said, “or I’ll call the cops. I mean it.”

She nodded numbly.

Then I strode back into my office, not missing a beat.

Gosh, I was getting good at this.

Stan and Audrey were still down on stage chatting it up with
Entertainment Tonight
when Kandi came back from the cops.

“How’d it go?” I asked, as she trudged into the office.

“They warned me not to leave the country.”

She plopped on the sofa, limp with defeat.

“I should’ve gone to dental hygienist school like my mother wanted me to. I should have stayed in New York and married Sandy Needleman the accountant. But no, I had to be a big-deal comedy writer. I had to have an affair with an ac-tor. And I had to be the idiot who volunteered to get those damn donuts.”

She shook her head, dazed, as if unable to believe the shit that was hitting her fan.

“Oh, God,” she moaned. “Any day now I’m going to be sharing a jail cell with a woman named Big Earl.”

“Kandi, honey. Listen to me. They can’t arrest you just because someone happened to see you go into the prop room. It proves nothing.”

“Do you know how many innocent people are jailed each year for crimes they didn’t commit? Hundreds, probably thousands.”

“Kandi, you’ve got to stop thinking such negative thoughts.”

“That’s what Dr. Mellman says.” She took out a small book from her purse.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A book of affirmations. I’m supposed to say a new one each day.” She opened the book and read one aloud:
I trust the process of life. I am safe. I am free
.

“Yeah, right,” she said, tossing the book aside. “Free to remain silent because anything I say can and will be held against me.”

“Look,” I said, trying desperately to lift her spirits, “we’ll go to Dale’s party tonight. We’ll mellow out, have some laughs, some free hors d’oeuvres. Who knows? Maybe Melanie and Antonio and Julia and Brad will be there.”

“I can’t go to Dale’s party.”

“Why not?”

“Tonight’s my night at the soup kitchen.”

“The soup kitchen?”

“I made a deal with God. If She gets me out of this mess, I promised to lead a worthy life. I promised not to obsess about trivial stuff like men and cellulite, and to devote my energies to noble causes. So I signed up to feed the homeless one night a week. And tonight’s my night.”

“That’s great,” I said, somewhat dubiously. Somehow I just couldn’t picture Kandi in a soup kitchen. I only hoped she wouldn’t wind up dating one of the residents. But I smiled encouragingly, hoping that her time spent there would help put her own problems in perspective.

“Well, I’m going to the party,” I said. “I want to nose around and ask some more questions.”

“Are you sure you want to keep doing this, Jaine? After what happened last night?”

“I’m sure.” In spite of Audrey’s gag order, I was determined not to give up on the case.

“Oh, Jaine! I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Kandi’s eyes filled with tears, and she threw her arms around me. We sat hugging each other for at least five minutes.

Good practice, Kandi said, for when she moved in with Big Earl.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I
was soaking in the tub, with my hair in a turban and a pore strip on my nose, writing out my list of suspects. I was determined to clarify my thoughts (and my blackheads) before Dale’s party. I had just managed to balance a legal pad on my bath-oily thighs when the phone rang. I let the machine get it.

“Hi, Jaine. It’s me, Lance. Hope you’re enjoying your bath. I can hear you splashing around in there.”

Good heavens. With neighbors like Lance, why bother with walls?

“I was just about to head out, but I thought I’d call and find out how things are going with Audrey. Did she say anything about my treatment?”

“No, Lance,” I called out. “Not yet.”

“Oh. Too bad. Let me know when she does, okay?”

And then he hung up.

I don’t mind admitting I was a bit shaken. If Lance could hear me splashing around in the tub, I hated to think what else he could hear in my bathroom. Oh, well. No time to worry about that now. Not with a murder waiting to be solved.

I went back to my list of suspects, scribbling away on the damp legal pad. And then, just when I was almost through, the damn thing fell into the water. I fished it out, and blew away the bubbles. It was still faintly legible, so if you want to read it, here it is:

My Suspects

by Jaine Austen

Audrey Miller. Ice Queen and Scorned Lover. Threatened to “get rid of” Quinn. Very possible that she did. Easy enough to slip into the prop room on her way back from her network meeting and sprinkle some rat poison on a box of donuts.

Stan Miller. Ineffectual alcoholic, specializing in gin consumption. Knew that Audrey was sleeping with Quinn. Possibly sleeping with Vanessa himself? Either way, he’d been cuckolded by Quinn. Could he have poisoned him in a jealous rage? More important, could he have stayed sober long enough to do it?

Vanessa Dennis. Did Quinn break her young heart? Did she get even with a deadly donut? Claims she was in her trailer while the prop room was left unattended, but she also claims her boobs are her own. So much for her credibility.

Zach Levy-Taylor. Obviously loathed Quinn, threatened to kill him in front of a stageful of people. Did he reenact his murderous TV movie role and bump off his enemy? And then, scared that I would discover the truth, did he snip the wires on the overhead light?

Dale Burton. Overheard telling his agent he was going to “do something” to save his job. Was that “something” murder?

Vanessa’s mom. Mousy on the outside. The Terminator on the inside? Found out Quinn was boffing her daughter and cooked up a way to get rid of him?

Bianca. Frustrated secretary and irritating bitch. Probably boffing Quinn. Lied to the cops about her whereabouts the night of the murder. My choice for Woman I’d Most Like to See Turn Out to be the Murderer.

Danny, the Production Ass—

No, that wasn’t an editorial comment. That was when the list fell in the water. After I blew it dry with my hair dryer, I read it over. Sad to say, no startling insights occurred. I was just as confused as when I started out. I promised myself I’d study it in excruciating detail the minute I got back from Dale’s party.

In the meanwhile, though, I had to get dressed. I threw on a pair of black slacks and a black turtleneck sweater. I was going for the unobtrusive look. My goal was to blend in with the scenery, so people would forget I was there and talk openly. Leaving my hair and makeup for last, I headed off to feed Prozac.

“Dinner time,” I called out gaily.

Prozac, who was hard at work trying to shed as much fur as possible on the living room sofa, decided to ignore me.

I reached into my purse and took out a can of crabmeat I’d bought on my way home from the studio.

“Look, honey,” I said, waving the can in front of her. “Look what Mommy bought you for dinner! A seven-dollar can of crabmeat!”

She sniffed at it dismissively as if to say,
What, no caviar?

“C’mon, sweetpea,” I said, heading back to the kitchen. “It’s delicious.”

I guess she must have decided she was hungry, because she started trotting after me. The minute I reached for the can opener, she knew food was in the offing, and she began doing what she always does when food is in the offing: yowling and clinging to my ankles, in the mistaken belief that tripping me will somehow get the food on her plate faster.

I was just starting to open the crabmeat when tragedy struck. The can opener broke.

Now Prozac was yowling louder than ever, demanding to be fed. The poor thing was ravenous. After all, it had probably been a whole twenty minutes since she’d last snacked on her bowl of dry cat food.

“Just a minute,” I said, “Mommy’s can opener broke. Mommy’ll have to find you something else to eat.”

I hurried to see what I had in the refrigerator. I would have given her leftovers, but there
were
no leftovers. There are never any leftovers in my refrigerator, because in order to get leftovers, you actually have to cook. There was nothing in my refrigerator except for a half a bottle of chardonnay and that jar of garlic-stuffed olives.

By now, Prozac was in high hysteria mode. Think Janet Leigh in the shower scene in
Psycho
.

“Don’t panic,” I said, grabbing my keys. “Mommy will just run over to the hardware store and buy another can opener. I’ll be right back, I promise.”

I ran down to Olympic Boulevard and then two blocks east to Beverly Hardware, the world’s most expensive hardware store, where you need a co-signer to buy a hammer.

I dashed in, prepared to fork over whatever they were overcharging for a simple can opener. I was rummaging around the kitchen gadget section, searching for a can opener that cost less than a Porsche, when I heard the clerk say: “Will that be all, Mr. Miller?”

Now I’m sure there are scads of Millers in the city of Los Angeles. Any one of whom could have been in Beverly Hardware that night. I don’t know why I thought that this one might be Stan. But I did. I vaguely remembered Kandi telling me that he and Audrey lived somewhere in Beverly Hills.

I tiptoed over to the end of the aisle and—hiding behind a display of Roach Motels—peered out at the checkout counter.

Sure enough, it was Stan.

“So, Mr. Miller,” the clerk was saying, “how did that poison work out for you?”

Stan paled. “Poison?” he said, practically choking on the word.

“The rat poison you bought last week. Did it get rid of your rats?”

Stan stood there, blinking, struggling to make his mouth work.

“Uh…yes,” he finally managed to mumble. “It worked fine.”

And with that, he grabbed his package and hurried out the door.

“Can I help you miss?”

I looked over and saw the clerk staring at me. It wasn’t every day he found a customer hiding out at the Roach Motels.

I held up one of the “motels.”

“Does the room come with cable TV?” I asked, going for a joke.

“Huh?” he replied, going for the security alarm. The guy clearly had me pegged for a loony. And then I glanced up at the overhead security mirror and saw that I still had that damn pore strip on my nose! No wonder he was so spooked.

I quickly grabbed a twenty-dollar can opener and paid for it before he could put in a call to the Cedars Sinai psychiatric ward.

I made my way back home in a daze, still shocked at what I had overheard. So Stan had bought rat poison. Of course, it was possible he actually bought it to kill rats. Rats are a common problem in Los Angeles. So maybe it was a perfectly innocent purchase.

And if you believe that, I’ve got a comedy about a bunch of shoe salesmen I’d like to sell you.

Chapter Twenty-Four

T
he first thing I did when I got home was call Detective Incorvia. The desk sergeant said he wasn’t in, that he was at a UCLA screenwriting course. I left a message telling him to call me as soon as possible and hung up, secure in the knowledge that the city was safe from poor story structure.

Then I fed Prozac and wrenched that ridiculous pore strip off my nose. Which wasn’t easy. The damn thing had hardened to the consistency of cement. I practically needed a hacksaw to get it off. Not only did it remove all my blackheads; as an added bonus, it also yanked off a healthy layer of skin. Which left my nose a lovely shade of Rudolph Reindeer Red.