Murder of a Botoxed Blonde (18 page)

Sure that she was about to reveal herself, she poked her head around the banister and assessed the situation. Simon had seated himself on one of the sofas in the lobby, and although she couldn’t see Spike, Skye could hear the murmurings of a female voice from the cushion next to him.

Bunny bounced over to join Simon and Spike, and Skye strained to hear what was being said. She chewed her lip. How to get over there without being seen? She spotted a housekeeping cart piled with fresh towels in the corner of the room and darted over to it. Using the cart as a shield, she inched it forward until she was behind the couch Simon and Spike were occupying.

Bunny had taken a chair at a right angle to the sofa and Skye heard her say, “I still don’t understand. How can you be both Spike Yamaguchi and Nancy Kimbrough? I thought Spike was a college friend of Simon’s. You look way too young to have been in college the same time he was.”

Nancy was Spike? But Skye liked Nancy. She frowned. The pseudo-reviewer’s friendliness must have been an act. Skye moved the cart a little closer, not wanting to miss a word.

Simon’s voice became edged with impatience. “Bunny,
I’ll explain it all later, once I understand it. How about you give us a little privacy now?”

Nancy’s pleasant contralto interjected, “Let her stay, Simon. And Skye might as well join us, too. It can’t be comfortable crouched behind the sofa. Besides, she’s the reason I’m here.”

Simon leapt to his feet and twisted around. “Skye’s here, now?”

Skye rose grudgingly to her feet and gave a little wave, feeling stupid, exposed, and curious all at once. She took the chair opposite Bunny, leaving Simon and Spike—AKA Nancy—on the couch between them.

Simon asked Skye, “How long were you there?”

“Since you started talking to Bunny, before Nan … er … Spike appeared,” Skye reluctantly admitted.

“How much did you hear?”

“Nothing since you started talking to Nancy or Spike or whoever she is.”

“Call me Spike.” Spike ignored Skye’s churlishness. “Nancy is the writer who never showed up.” Spike turned toward Simon and said, “Let’s start over and clear everything up, once and for all.”

“If that’s what you want, but don’t do it for my sake.”

“That’s what I want.”

“Okay.” Simon nodded. “Let’s start with what you’re doing here.”

“I came to straighten things out.” She shook her head at Simon. “When you told me what had happened between you and Skye after I answered the phone, when you were staying with me in California, I felt like your splitting up was somehow my fault. And I knew you’d never break your promise to me, even if I gave you permission to.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Simon said. “You have a right to your privacy. Besides, I don’t think telling everything at this point will fix things.”

“Maybe, maybe not, but it’s time for everything to come out into the open.” Spike’s expression was resolute.

“So, you came to Illinois to find Skye and explain?” Simon asked.

“I needed to interview some people in Chicago the first part of this week,” Spike clarified, then as an aside said to the two women, “I’m an investigative reporter.”

“But how did you get here, at the spa?” Bunny asked.

“When I arrived in Scumble River, everyone told me Skye would be at the spa for the weekend. So, I decided to come here and see if they had any rooms available. When I arrived, Margot mistook me for this magazine lady who was a no-show. I realized right away it was the perfect setup. I could get to know Skye without her prejudging me. And it worked. We were on our way to becoming friends. At which point I would have explained the mix-up concerning Simon and me.”

“Mix-up?” Skye yelped. “You call sleeping with my boyfriend a mix-up?”

“No.” A tiny smile was trying to break out on Spike’s face. “The mix-up was you thinking I was a guy, then when I turned out to be a girl, you thinking Simon and I had a sexual relationship. We don’t and never would.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because I’m his half sister.” Spike gazed meaningfully at Bunny as she spoke.

The redhead’s face registered total shock; then she lost consciousness, pitched forward, and hit the ground without a sound.

“
Y
ou know, for a second before she said she was Simon’s half sister, I thought she was going to say she was gay.” Skye sat with her back to the headboard of her bed, telling Trixie about Spike’s bolt from the blue. “Then when Bunny fainted, I thought we had another death on our hands.”

“I’m still having trouble putting it all together.” Trixie lay on her side across the bottom of the mattress, her head supported on her hand. “How can Spike be Simon’s half sister and Bunny not know her?”

“I stayed for the short explanation, but I couldn’t really ask questions. I felt like I had to leave the three of them alone to hash things out. After all, I’m not family.”

“Which brings up another matter. Now that you know Simon didn’t cheat, where does that leave you two, not to mention you and Wally?”

“I’m not going to think about that right now.” Skye clutched her head. “First I need to get the whole Spike-as-Simon’s-half-sister clear in my mind.”

“Okay, tell me what you know.”

“Until this morning, I knew Bunny had left Simon’s father when Simon was three, then only saw him intermittently until he was fourteen, at which point she disappeared for good.”

“That leaves twenty to thirty-one years of her life unaccounted for, depending on how you count.”

“Right. Simon never seemed willing to discuss Bunny’s past, with her or with me.” Skye pursed her lips. “At the time, I thought he didn’t want to know what his mother had been up to, but now I’m confused. It’s as if I never knew him at all.”

“Simon has always been hard to read,” Trixie agreed, then asked, “So, what did you find out today?”

“To start at the beginning, when Bunny left Simon’s father, she was already sleeping with the owner of the club she was working at.”

“And this guy was Asian-American?”

“Right.” Skye adjusted the pillow behind her back. “A month or maybe even less later, Bunny discovered she was pregnant.”

“Oh, my. Was abortion legal back then?”

“I’m not sure, but that doesn’t matter. Despite all of Bunny’s faults, she’s a practicing Catholic. No divorce. No abortion. She was going to have the baby.”

“Did she know who the father was?” Trixie sat up and hugged her knees.

“She told the club owner it was him, but since she wasn’t divorced, and I suspect the guy wasn’t really sure it was his kid, he arranged for a black-market adoption.”

Trixie asked, “How did that turn out?”

“Surprisingly well. He must have been a smart man. He had two couples lined up, one Asian-American, one Irish-American. If the baby looked more like him when it was born, it would go to the Asian-American couple. If it looked like Bunny, it would go to the other couple.”

“Did Mr. Reid know she was having a baby?”

“No.” Skye shook her head. “Once she started to show, she stopped visiting Simon and didn’t go back until she had regained her shape.”

“So, Spike was born, had Asian features, and was adopted by the Asian-American couple. Did she know she was adopted?”

“No, she didn’t find out until their deaths, when she was sixteen.”

“How awful for her.” Trixie winced. “In a way, it must have been like losing her parents twice.”

“No doubt. It’s always a mistake not to tell children they’re adopted.”

“Yeah, but sometimes it’s not the kids the parents are keeping the adoption secret from,” Trixie pointed out. “So, let me guess. As soon as Spike found out she was adopted, she tried to track down her birth parents?”

“Right you are. Her birth father was dead—he was quite a bit older than Bunny—and Bunny was somewhere in Las Vegas, moving from apartment to friend’s house to motel, depending on her finances, which made her impossible to find.”

“On the other hand, Spike’s half brother Simon was right here in Illinois,” Trixie finished Skye’s thought.

“A senior at Northwestern University at the time.”

“So Spike tracked him down and told him he had a little sister?”

“Yep. That’s why he claimed she was his college friend,” Skye explained.

“But why the big secret?” Trixie leaned forward. “Why not tell you he had a half sister and was visiting her? Especially once you heard her voice and accused him of cheating?”

“After Simon told Spike about Bunny, and what she was like, Spike decided she didn’t want to know her mother after all. Spike made Simon swear that he would never tell anyone about their relationship, especially Bunny.”

“I’m surprised she took Simon’s word for it.” Trixie made a scornful noise. “What if he had been lying?”

“Look at it this way, she was only sixteen.” Skye’s face furrowed. “No doubt, part of her was afraid to meet her biological mother, a woman who had already rejected her once. She probably grabbed at what Simon offered her.”

“I sure wouldn’t have believed a half brother I had never met before. I would have wanted to see for myself.”

“It’s hard to say what we would or wouldn’t have done at sixteen.”

Trixie didn’t look convinced, but she let go of the subject and asked, “Is Spike staying at the spa or what?”

“She’ll explain everything to Margot, and ask if she can stay as a paying guest. Now she wants a chance to get to know Bunny,” Skye explained. “And I can’t see Margot turning her down, especially since she
is
a part of the media, and while she might not write a review, she could write a favorable feature story about the spa.”

Skye and Trixie were silent before Trixie said, “Which brings us back to my original question—does this change things between you and Simon?”

“We’re getting together to talk after dinner tonight, but I think this info came a little too late for us.”

“As in one day too late?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Skye was not ready to reveal her and Wally’s lovemaking to anyone yet, not even her best friend.

“Let’s just say you were glowing last night, and I don’t think it was because of the Oreos.”

“It must have been the new face cream I tried.” Skye refused to meet her friend’s stare.

“Sure.” Trixie rolled her eyes. “I believe that almost as much as I believe Michael Jackson never had plastic surgery.” They were both quiet again until Trixie said, “Gee, for someone as calm and composed as Simon, he sure has a lot of drama in his past. I wonder how many more siblings he has floating around out there?”

The invasion of the men and Spike’s revelation had eaten up most of Friday morning. Skye hadn’t been able to talk to any of the people she and Wally had targeted for her to question. Now, she had only the afternoon, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning left to quiz the staff. She had decided the best way to have a casual conversation would be to sign up for a treatment with each of them, so she studied the list of options.

Kipp, Amber, Frisco, and Ustelle were easy, as they were involved in several activities a day, but Margot led only the “Dress for Sexcess” seminar and Dr. Burnett saw only
guests for medical procedures such as Botox and collagen injections.

Skye was willing to learn how to dress for “sexcess,” but she drew the line at invasive medical procedures. She would need to figure out a different way to grill the good doctor—although maybe she could just let him talk about the treatments.

Glancing at the bedside clock, Skye saw that it was nearly twelve fifty. Margot’s class started at two, thus taking the decision of whom to talk to first out of Skye’s hands. She picked up the phone and signed up for the seminar, then realized that lunch, what there was of it, ended at one.

She grabbed her fanny pack and a book, dashed out the door, and sprinted down the stairs. She was hoping the dining room would be empty and she could chat with the second waitress, the one she hadn’t yet interviewed.

A couple of Scumble River women were just finishing up their meals when Skye entered. They waved, and Skye waved back, but held up her paperback as a silent explanation of why she didn’t join them, and then took a seat at a table across the room.

When the waitress appeared, Skye covertly glanced at the girl’s name tag. She had recognized her previously as a former student of Scumble River High School, but hadn’t been able to place her.

Now that she could identify her, Skye said, “Hi, Farrah. Do you remember me?”

“Like, sort of.” The girl wrinkled her brow. “You’re, like, Mrs. Frayne’s friend? She was, like, my cheerleading sponsor in high school.”

“Right. I’m Ms. Denison. You graduated, what, a year and a half ago? What have you been up to since then?”

“I, like, went to JJC, but it was boring.” Farrah swished her blond ponytail. “Then I worked as a receptionist for old Doc Zello, but he was, like, obsessed with me being on time,
every single
day. So, when my mother saw the ad for this place, she made me apply?”

Skye put on her counseling face and murmured the occasional, “Mmm,” as Farrah continued. JJC—Joliet Junior College—was one of the best community colleges around,
but clearly it hadn’t been able to break the teen from using “like” every other word or making statements sound as if they were questions. Maybe that had been the boring part. Finally, Skye asked, “How’s this job?”