Pampered to Death (15 page)

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Authors: Laura Levine

BOOK: Pampered to Death
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O
lga stayed barricaded in her office the rest of the afternoon, no doubt trying to stem the tide of customers canceling their reservations. If she had indeed murdered Mallory to save her spa, it looked like her plan had backfired.
So I took advantage of the Diet Nazi’s absence to hole up in my room with Prozac and a supply of snacks I picked up on an emergency run to Darryl’s. In spite of my stern lecture to myself the other night, I’d been hoping to run into my deli doll, but was disappointed to see a strange clerk at the counter. Oh, well. What did it matter? Darryl wasn’t interested in me anyway.
Time to focus on the murder.
By now my head was spinning with suspects. Everywhere I turned, a new one seemed to pop to the top of my Most Likely list. What I needed was to sort things out in my mind. And at times like this it often helps to write out the facts of the case.
So after a nourishing snack of peanut butter on Ritz crackers, I hunkered down with my laptop. Unfortunately I made the mistake of checking my e-mails first. You’d think by now I would have learned to Just Say No to anything from Shoptillyoudrop and DaddyO. But like a freeway rubbernecker unable to avert her eyes from an accident, I just had to find out what happened next in the disaster-thon known as my parents’ lives.
Gaak! Can you believe Daddy showing up on TV in his
I
My Gnome
boxer shorts? Not to mention setting fire to the men’s room!
It’s a wonder he hasn’t been exiled to Boca Raton.
But I couldn’t think about Daddy now. After a tad more peanut butter (it’s a protein, you know), I bit the bullet and wrote out my suspect list.
Here’s what I came up with:
My Suspects
 
By Jaine Austen
KENDRA FRANCIS. Mallory’s doormat of a sister. After years of abuse, had she finally snapped? Hoping to inherit a bundle, had she tossed her drugged tea outside her cubicle window and strangled her sister with a piece of kelp? Were those scratches I’d seen on her chest really from Armani, or from Mallory fighting for her life?
HARVY. Mallory’s personal hairstylist and head cheerleader. Mallory was about to pull the plug on the salon of his dreams. According to Shawna, he was missing from his cubicle at the time of Mallory’s murder. Was he back in his room, as he claimed, getting an aspirin? Or across the hall with Mallory, strangling the life out of his boss from hell?
SVEN. Studmuffin aerobics instructor with the morals of an alley cat. Cheating on his wife with both Mallory and Delphine. And Lord knows how many others. Clearly a rat of the highest order. But why would he want to kill Mallory? He was the one person at The Haven having fun with her.
SHAWNA. Sven’s long-suffering wife. Says she was in the gym arguing with Sven while the murder took place. But she could have easily slipped into Mallory’s cubicle to strangle her rival in romance with a deadly hunk of kelp.
CLINT MASTERS. Cross-dressing macho action superstar. Mallory was about to the spill beans about his penchant for ladies lingerie. Says he was in his room at the time of the murder. But who knows if that’s true? Maybe he slipped out of his lace teddy and snuck over to the Spa Therapy Center to choke the life out of the woman about to wreck his career.
DELPHINE. The larcenous maid. Semi-threatened to wring my neck with a boa feather. A bit of theatrical bravado? Or had she really meant it? Was my little highway robber a killer, too? Had she wiped out Mallory to save her relationship with Sven? NOTE: Anyone who charges thirty bucks for an American cheese sandwich is a hot suspect in my book.
OLGA. Aka the Diet Nazi. Resented the hell out of her former friend. Swallowed her pride year after year as Mallory showed up at the spa to lord it over her. But then Mallory had threatened to destroy The Haven. Had Olga resorted to murder to save her spa? She admits she was at the scene of the crime, but claims Mallory was already dead when she got there. (Also claims to be a health food nut, but we’ve seen her swan diving into a Sara Lee. So we can’t exactly trust her, can we?)
SARA LEE. Should have picked up some at Darryl’s. Why didn’t I think of it? Possible to dash out before cocktail hour? Nah, too tired now. Maybe later—
 
Okay, so my mind wandered. That happens occasionally to us part-time semi-professional P.Is. The important thing is that I’d taken the time to write out my thoughts.
And after carefully reading over my list, one thing was certain—
I still had absolutely no idea who the killer was.
With a weary sigh, I reached for some more peanut butter.
 
“Yoo hoo, Jaine!”
Cathy’s eyes lit up the minute she saw me walk into the lounge for “cocktails.” She waved me over to where she was sitting across the room from the others, who were well on their way to getting blitzed on vodka-enhanced celery fizzes.
My tush had barely made contact with the chair when she broke the news.
“I finally figured out who the killer is!”
“Who?”
“Al Qaeda!” she replied in a hushed whisper.
“Al Qaeda? Why on earth would Al Qaeda want to kill Mallory?”
She paused dramatically to pluck a “radish rumaki” from the plate of crudités in front of us.
“Remember in
Revenge of the Lust Busters
how Mallory single-handedly fought off those Arab terrorists, armed with nothing but an emery board and her bullet-proof bustier?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Well,” Cathy said, chomping down on the rumaki, “I bet Al Qaeda took offense and sent a secret operative to kill her! Makes sense, right?”
Only to a space cadet like Cathy.
“If you ask me, Jaine, I think we should call Homeland Security!”
If you ask me, we should’ve called the nearest psychiatric ward.
“And I know who it is! The Al Qaeda operative!”
“Who?” I asked warily.
“Clint Masters!”
I looked across the room where Clint was chomping on a carrot stick.
“Clint? A secret terrorist?”
“Yes,” she nodded with assurance. “His room is next to mine and the other day I saw him walk out onto his balcony in a long white silky robe. Just like Arab men wear. I could’ve sworn I saw some sequins on it. But that must have been my imagination.”
Oh, Lordy. I couldn’t possibly tell her that her Arab terrorist was merely a cross-dresser. The next thing I knew, she’d be blabbing the news to the gang at the Piggly Wiggly and before long it would be all over the tabloids. For all I knew, Clint was a perfectly innocent sexual deviant, and I wasn’t about to ruin his career.
“Movie star by day,” Cathy was saying, “Al Qaeda operative by night. Don’t those guys each get forty virgins for every westerner they kill?”
She clutched my arm in an iron grip.
“My God, Jaine. We could be next! We’ve got to stick together and never let each other out of our sight!”
Okay, this was where I drew the line. No way was I going to spend the next few days with this delusional talkaholic glued to my side.
“Look, Cathy. I seriously doubt Clint is a member of Al Qaeda.”
“Really?”
“Of course! They do all sorts of background checks in the movies. If Clint were a terrorist, they would have found out long ago.”
I had no idea if any of this was true, but she seemed to be buying it.
“Gee, I didn’t know that.” She sighed wistfully, reluctant to give up her roll as a Great American Crimefighter. “I guess I’d better cancel Homeland Security, huh?”
“Good idea.” I nodded. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an important call I really must make. Catch you at dinner, okay?”
Before she could object, I scooted into the lobby and out the front door, my cell phone glued to my ear, pretending to be talking, just in case she was watching.
Outside, I headed down the main path, past the parking lot, and came across a small wooded lane.
Don’t ask me why I decided to go walking down a deserted lane when I knew there was a killer on the loose. Maybe I figured I was safe because three of my top suspects were back in the lounge, scarfing down radish rumakis.
Or maybe my brain was just fried from Cathy’s wackadoodle terrorist theories.
Whatever the reason, I put away my phone and began strolling down the lane, surrounded by stately eucalyptus trees.
It felt good to breathe in the fresh, Cathy-free air.
After a few steps, I bent down and picked up a rock. I still had a shred of common sense left, and remembering my nearfatal adventure in the jacuzzi, I wanted to be armed, just in case.
I tried to make good use of my alone time to focus on the murder, but I’m afraid all I could think about was running over to Darryl’s after dinner for some Sara Lee cheesecake. I was wandering along, trying to decide between strawberry and cherry topping, when I noticed a cottage up ahead.
Probably an old guest house. Was it possible Olga lived there and not in those two cramped rooms I’d seen earlier?
Intrigued, I walked up the path to the small Spanish style casita.
From an open window I could hear laughter and soft music. And then the unmistakable sound of Sven crooning, “Oh, babe, you know I’m crazy about you.”
Good heavens! Was Sven having an affair with the Diet Nazi?
Quickly, I tiptoed over to the window where the music was coming from and peeked in, eager to see Sven’s lover du jour.
Whaddaya know, folks? It was Shawna. This must’ve been where she and Sven lived. I blinked in amazement to see her lounging on a sofa in shorts and a bikini top.
What astonished me, however, was not Shawna’s outfit. (Although I must say, if her shorts were any shorter, they would’ve been a belt.) No, what caught my eye was the honker emerald pendant nestled in her cleavage.
Yikes! That was Mallory’s necklace. What the heck was it doing around Shawna’s neck?
Never in a million years would Mallory have given it to her.
I flashed back to the morning I’d seen Sven running out of The Haven, having spent the night with Mallory. At the time I figured all he’d left with were some fond memories of whoopsie doodle, but now I wondered if he’d scampered off with Mallory’s pendant, too.
Maybe Mallory found out about it, and threatened to report him to the cops. And maybe, just maybe, Sven had killed her to shut her up.
All along I’d assumed Sven had been ready to dump Shawna for the Hollywood glamour queen. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was just playing her, sleeping with her to gain access to her jewels. And maybe Shawna, his long-suffering wife, hadn’t been suffering at all. Maybe she was in on the plan from the beginning.
If Shawna had ever been afraid of losing Sven, she sure didn’t look it now.
Indeed, she was radiating confidence as she patted a spot on the sofa and said, “C’mere, you.”
Sven put down the two champagne glasses he’d been carrying and shimmied in next to her.
“So how do you like it?” he asked, holding the emerald up to the light.
“It’s gorgeous,” Shawna replied, watching it sparkle. “But you shouldn’t have done it.”
“Don’t worry, babe. Everything’s going to be okay now that Mallory’s out of the way.”
Then he ran his finger along her lush lower lip.
“Love me?”
“You know it.”
And with that, she snaked her arm around his neck and drew him in for one steamfest of a kiss.
And it was at that very moment, just as they were sucking the saliva out of each other’s innards, that the mood was shattered by the ring tone of a cell phone.
As rotten luck would have it,
my
cell phone.

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